She found like $40,000 in cash in my freezer one night.
So she's like, what is going on?
You know, and so we have this conversation
and I tell her, look, people are looking for me.
Who? Law enforcement.
Which ones? All of them.
You know, 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, two months before, you know.
She's like, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-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, I go, 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 name?
And I go, look, you know, it's, you don't need,
don't even worry about it.
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.
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support 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. Yeah.
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 W-2s.
We want your paystubs.
We're gonna call your employer.
We're gonna check to make sure your employer,
how long they've been incorporated.
We're gonna check to make sure they're registered.
We're gonna, it's like, ah, your whole plan fell apart,
you know, because the average guy can't do that.
He can't even come up with a paystub and W-2.
So the average person, you know,
or I'm gonna put down this much money,
but you're gonna 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 gotta have been there
for 90 days or 60 days, depending on the bank.
And so 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 saved his deposit.
Like 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 you're 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, you know, doing it,
I would say, oh, it's in the gray area.
There's no gray area, you're either lying
in some capacity or you're not.
So it, for instance, the very first loan I did,
I whited out, my borrower had been 30 days late
on her rent.
So they're really looking at the last two years.
So when you go into the bank and 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.
Well, she had been in an apartment complex,
but she'd been 30 days late.
Now she caught it up, but she was late.
Bank, you know, 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, you know, 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 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 gonna close
and I have to commit fraud to make that happen.
And the idea, my fear was they were gonna figure it out
and then 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 you'll 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 maybe paint the picture here.
Where were you working?
Who was the manager?
The manager was, it's funny
because I don't think I ever really mentioned this.
Her name was Gretchen Zayas.
I don't mind saying it,
but she eventually ended up going to jail for fraud.
Her name was Gretchen Zayas and she was a manager.
I was working for a company called Eagle Lending
and it was in Tampa and 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 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, what's going on?
She goes, perfect, file's perfect.
She goes, but your borrower was 30 days late on her rent.
And she says, 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 thing, a whiteout.
Remember the whiteout, not the sticks,
but the one, and she started going.
And I was like, what?
She goes, 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,
they're never gonna catch it.
She said, look, I do stuff all the time.
She said, they're not gonna catch it.
And 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.
And I was, you know, 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.
How old were you at this point?
Probably 29, I think it was 29.
You know, 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,
tried to be a, an insurance adjuster.
Tried that for about a year, 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 gotta be a mortgage broker.
You know, she's just had just started as a mortgage
in 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 did she see in you?
She said, it's just, you're a salesman.
And I was like, cause I was like, you know,
I barely balanced my checkbook.
Like, I don't, I don't know anything about numbers.
And she was 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 sales salesman.
And I figured I'd, I needed 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 SunTrust.
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 ended up, ends up happening
is you're negotiating with sellers.
You know, you would think that a lot of the stuff that,
in that industry that real estate agents should do,
the brokers end up doing.
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'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 costs.
So you have to go to the real estate agent and say,
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 up the contract.
So now you're having to get them to rewrite the contract.
Or you're having, you're, you know,
there's little things you're trying to do.
And the more deals you get done
and the more you deal with certain real estate agents,
the more you start to realize that they're,
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, all right, I've been doing this for years
and they go, oh, okay.
And then they raise the purchase price.
They add some money.
They have the seller of the house,
give the borrower some money, they stick it in the bank
or they put it in 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 white out?
Well, I mean, when that went through, you know,
I think a normal person probably would have said,
wow, it was a one-time thing, got away with it.
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 W-2.
If you, based on his current track record
or his year to date of his pay stub,
he made just enough money.
But if you factored in last year's W-2, he was shy.
So if I changed 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 done.
Now, if you were in bankruptcy or something,
there's some things you just, you'd pull their credit
and you just couldn't help them if they were,
if they had a 550 credit score or something and no job.
I mean, you know, they had to be within reason.
But very quickly it was changing W-2s, changing pay stubs,
changing appraisals, fixing, like I said,
verifications of rent.
So it evolved very quickly for me.
And you're essentially helping people.
That's what 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,
you're doing a 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 I was in prison and I had to write,
the government asked me to write an ethics and fraud course
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 my book.
And that kind of, I started reflecting on what I had done.
You know, and the truth is like,
and this is a horrible thing to say,
because the first time I ever 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, you know,
and there were many occasions
where I put someone in a house
that they 100% swore they could afford.
It was, 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?
Broker fee.
Yeah, I charge a broker fee.
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 eight and a quarter, you know, 8.25,
then I get 1% of the loan back as a fee.
So if I charge them eight 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 gonna 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 it feels like there is...
Well, every time I changed something, it wasn't gray area.
I just committed fraud.
At this level, 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?
Like, I mean, you've committed fraud
and it's like they've looked at 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.
But just because they can't find it
doesn't mean it's not fraud.
Exactly, 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 name, date of birth, your address,
and your social security number.
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, right?
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?
Like 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 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, 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 they're self-employed,
like liar loans, you've heard the term liar loans?
Okay, no doc loans, where they don't ask
for any documentation.
If he's got over like, 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 gonna raise his interest rate
by 1% and he's got, you know, that's it, he's got the loan.
So, but 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 bank
or 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 caught a fake W-2.
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 W-2s
and we're assuming the pay stubs 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 of state's website
that registers corporations and we checked
and the tax ID number didn't match.
And now I know every W-2 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 W-2s
and then you're slowly learning.
Yeah, exactly.
What's the process for detecting fraud?
I mean, I had a pretty good understanding anyway.
But so I'm starting to learn that.
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 in and said,
hey man, he's like, can I show you something?
I was like, yeah, what's up?
He goes, look, he said, I've got this woman's W-2s 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 W-2.
And I went, okay.
Keep in mind, 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, she just brought them in.
She's here.
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, 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 are, 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 husband's surname, it was denied, bad credit.
So he had bad credit, their credit went bad.
So he switched to her, she switched to 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 daughter's or son's 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, 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 goes, 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 approved.
She'd been making the payments ever since.
She has 750 credit scores.
She thought she'd try her hand at buying a house
in his social security number.
And we caught it and she got a house in that name.
We closed it.
I just was like, wow, this is great.
Can I 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
like her a 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 bad 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 mean, I don't think she had walked out
of my brokerage office before I went
and I just started making up names.
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 kids' social security numbers
and their name and went and pulled them.
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 mismatch this, mismatch that.
It didn't say anything.
It just said, you know, no file found.
Well, then we went and we pulled,
applied for a couple of credit cards
using a child's 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, or 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, you know, I'm a novice.
I don't really know what I'm doing.
So I call up and I say, hey, yeah,
yeah, I was, never had a social security number issue.
And they were like, how old are you?
And I was like, I'm 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 gonna happen.
Hang up, call back.
Hi, my son is seven years old or three years old.
And he never had a social security number issued.
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 up, call back.
So I called back probably 10 times
and eventually someone said, I kept altering it.
Kept altering what I was saying
till 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 fill out paperwork, we'll have one issued.
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 his shot record
and you can come in, fill out the paperwork,
we'll issue you 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, you know,
when you make a copy, it says, you know, void if copied.
So 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 like the county,
they give you a blank form
and then they actually show you
what it looks like filled out,
like a handwritten 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 couldn't get anybody to make that.
So I changed it to like Richland County
Office of Virtual Records.
And then I took like 220 grit sandpaper
and hid it over and over and over again to wear it down.
And then I did the embossment on the corner
and I printed it on the security paper, embossed it.
Nobody looks at those things.
You could see Richland County.
You know, you could kind of see that.
And really they just grab it and they go like this.
This is what you realize after you,
when I started getting driver's licenses issued
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 than actually make one.
So, but you notice they would just grab the thing.
They'd feel the form and go, okay.
Like 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.
And they're going like, hey bro, like 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 through, so.
Okay, 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.
There's homeless people involved.
So sometimes it's grounded in real people or real names.
And then you're, like some part is fake,
some part is real sometimes.
And sometimes it's completely all fake.
Right, because now I have the name,
I have the social security number.
What's great is they mail you.
What's even better is you get,
then you get to pick whatever name you want.
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 just say,
oh, my wife's last name is this.
If they questioned it, which they never did.
But 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'd then fill out the secured credit card
and I'd 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 a social security number that I know was issued
a couple months ago has three credit cards.
They don't even say secured.
They just say, there's like, this credit card is $500.
It was issued by Bank of America.
This one was issued by Capital 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'll bet you they know that the credit bureaus
don't generate credit scores for at least a year.
And I was like, God, this is gonna be a year-long process.
And while that was happening, I was starting other ones.
Because I figured at least in a year,
I'll have a bunch of these,
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 at six months,
I went and I randomly pulled the person's credit
and they had 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 phantom borrower?
How do you make money on this?
So I think most people,
if you were just like a scammer or fraudster,
you would probably just get credit cards
and maybe build up that history
or maybe try and borrow a personal loan, which is limited.
Personal loans used to be you could go
to an FDIC insured bank, which borrows money,
those personal loans, they lend out at the max $15,000.
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 or so.
Right, you get 15, maybe,
if you wanna keep making the payments,
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 get 7,500.
There's a $7,500 from Citibank,
$5,500 from American General.
So you maybe get what, 25,000,
maybe 30,000 in personal loans.
Maybe you could then apply for,
you could maybe get another 20 or 30,000
in regular credit cards, 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 being 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 I mean, ultimately that's what I ended up doing.
And so each one of those identities was worth
a few million.
Can you explain how that works?
So to leverage them against property.
So how does that work with a mortgage?
So what I did eventually,
I mean, this was like is down the road,
but I mean, at this point when things are just,
my whole life had 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 Ybor City.
So I was going to start flipping houses in Ybor City.
And I thought, okay, I can buy these houses for,
you could buy a really crappy house at that time
for 50, $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 regular people.
But I also had been working on the synthetic identities.
And then I thought, well,
or I could just sell them to synthetic identities.
And then I wouldn't have to dump 25,000 into it, right?
And these guys are perfect.
They have perfect credit.
I can provide W2s and pay stubs
because by this point I'm manufacturing businesses.
So I've incorporated businesses.
I've got websites for the businesses, W2s, pay stubs.
So these guys look perfect.
So I figured 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.
But how am I gonna get an appraisal for $100,000?
Well, do you know how appraisals work?
Okay, so the bank sends 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 on the computer
and they never go out to the property.
Or they send someone out, they call that,
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 up the outside of the house.
So what I did was, but the problem 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 houses 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 dock 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 $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 the porch rail on maybe,
we paint it real nice, we black out all the windows,
you can't see inside, but 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 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,
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 bank's rated, they're not gonna 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 schedule a closing and we close on the house
and I walk away with $60,000.
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.
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 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, man, Matt, 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
and 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
in any of these conversations.
It's pretty easy for me to keep them,
everything in the correct category.
Does that make sense?
It's, 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
as in like you're able to tell good stories
with those people, right?
Like, cause if you're talking to the appraiser
or if you're talking to everybody involved.
Well, keep in mind, the appraiser almost never
meets the borrower, never.
Not even almost like 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, it was, a lot of it was.
There's a template.
Yeah, exactly.
But.
Yeah, I got it.
Yeah, and listen, all, matter of fact,
almost every one of them had the same birthdate.
You know, so because I, you know, who knows?
There's, so it, yeah, it wasn't difficult.
And keep in mind, a lot of the brokers
barely ever meet the borrower.
They call in on the phone, but it didn't matter anyway,
cause I'm walking in saying,
I got a slam dunk deal for you.
And they're like, oh, wow, man,
you got the W2s, the pay stubs,
you've got all the, you got all their 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.
Assuming they didn't already know about it.
Almost everybody involved in this,
by the time I was done, was involved.
There was 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, yeah.
Maybe not 100%, everything,
but they definitely knew this is fraud.
And they were still going along with it.
Yeah, yeah.
Keep in mind that even when,
I'll give you an example.
One of my,
let's say, and this happened with almost all of them,
was he would buy five houses.
So the guy bought, what happens,
the basic design was I buy the houses,
I record the values higher,
and this person buys all five houses, refinances them.
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, $20,000 worth of credit cards
in the guy's name.
So the guys are all worth like a million,
million and change.
Well, once I stopped paying,
you start getting letters from the collection companies,
right, from the banks,
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 an article about,
let's say, like a 12-car pileup.
So there's a huge accident on I-4.
It's very dangerous.
So there's a 12-car pileup,
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 borrower's name
into the article saying that Brandon Green
was life flighted to Tampa General Hospital,
is currently in critical condition.
I would then print that article out on newsprint,
and then make a copy of the, cut it up,
make a copy of the newsprint, highlight his name,
and I would write a letter
from Brandon Green'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,
stop writing those letters, and take the houses back.
And that's all they're looking for is a reason.
At this point, even if they look into Brandon Green,
they can't figure out if he's a real person or not,
because he's got a social security number.
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 in accidents.
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 almost like a tangent,
what's your thinking process?
There's a lot of cleverness going on here.
So like the car pileup as a solution,
the newspaper, and you mail it.
Are you sitting there alone and thinking through this?
Like, 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, you know?
But I thought, I don't know.
Like what if, you know, like some of these places
had like, you know, 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 parties, 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 you.
They wait to be notified by the bankruptcy court.
But my fear there is, you know,
nobody's ever gonna 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.
You know, you could, there's lots of things you could do,
but to me, this was, they're not gonna try.
How do you shut it down without him dying?
How do you shut that down?
This is how you shut it down.
He's in 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 his sister.
I wrote you the letter.
It's a one-time letter that seems to tie up all the sense.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You know, I don't know exactly how that,
you know, what sparked that,
as much as there were so many other avenues
that I could have gone that I was, 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 was bouncing ideas off of.
There were other guys that were involved in the scam.
Everybody, I think that scam ended up making,
like the FBI said,
I think it was like 11 and a half million or something.
And, you know, 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, 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'd put it back on the MLS.
They put it back on the MLS for 200,000, it wouldn't sell.
Then they'd drop it to, you know, 150, it wouldn't sell.
Then they'd drop it to 125, 130, it wouldn't sell.
They'd drop it to 90.
And somebody would buy it for like 90.
It wasn't worth 90.
But by that point, that whole area had,
we'd 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 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 Ybor 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 mad
because this place is a dump.
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 there was fraud, you know?
Like, I would say, it wasn't all fraud, but whatever.
60, 70% of it was fraud that was going in there.
And from the outside of that business,
it looked very legitimate.
You know, 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, you know, it kept getting, you know,
it became a game, right?
You know, 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 underwriter's 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, you know what we could do?
We could create our own bank.
What?
Yeah, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna go on, like, how do they know
if this bank exists?
These people are in California or they're in New York.
Like, they don't know.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go online.
And keep in 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 GoDaddy, 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 Ebor.
You know, we cut and pasted things that we liked
from other banks.
And we got a 1-800 number you could call,
or a 1-86 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 down payment.
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 five 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 100% financing or 110%.
Some of them turned into 130.
We want to pay off their car,
give them an incentive to sign.
They still don't have the money to buy it.
So we're doing all kinds of insane things.
Well, at some point, remember Gretchen Zayas,
my old manager?
Yeah, the original OG.
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 get go
because it was called Creative Financing.
It was CFM, Creative Finance.
No, Creative was-
Creative was in the name.
Yeah, yeah, Creative was in the name.
Oh boy, it's really on the nose.
So she's doing very well.
And we became very close, by the way.
Where we'd go on vacation, went to Puerto Rico together.
I got married at the time, I was married.
Our kids play 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 W-2?
Or hey, can you make me a pay stub?
Sure, no problem, we're friends.
That's what fraudulent friends do.
So if I needed somebody to verify rent
or verify somebody's rental history or employment,
she had cell phones she would answer,
that sort of thing for me.
Well, what ends up happening is
she gets in trouble.
She starts doing fraudulent loans for some guys.
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 getting a, they're buying the house
for whatever, 600,000.
It's really only worth 300, 350.
But she happened to be in an area
where she could get the appraisal jacked up.
So they buy the house, they get two, $300,000 back.
And it's a straw man scam, right?
It's a cashback straw man scam.
So this is a real person that's buying the house.
He's got perfect credit,
but 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 two, $3 million.
They've lost five, 600, six, $700,000.
And these guys never even make the first payment.
They just let them go into foreclosure.
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, they're like,
oh, 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 W-2s, pay subs, fake.
The whole thing's fake.
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.
I don't know how you got $75,000.
The attorney knows something's wrong
because the attorney's like,
your whole mortgage company was just shut down.
There's no way you could borrow $75,000.
So he's like, this guy's doing fraudulent stuff.
And she says, yes, of course he is.
And he says, you need to work with the FBI,
wear a wire against this guy.
So she calls me one day and says, listen,
I got to talk to you.
The FBI is asking questions about you.
And I go, what?
And she goes, yeah.
And I was like, meet me at the pizza place down the street.
So don't come into 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 they're the FBI.
Everybody quits.
So I said, 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 pizzeria.
And I sit down and she starts telling me
that the FBI is asking questions about me.
And I'm like, well, what are you talking about?
Like, what are they asking?
And 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 ago
and they have some of your files.
Cause 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 could not close those loans at my mortgage company
because I own 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 purchase the property at.
But I bought these properties for 80 or 100,000,
renovated them, sold them for two, 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.
So, but my wife was not working
and I provided W-2s and pay stubs.
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 W-2s 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 down.
You know, it doesn't go anywhere.
There's no way, there's nowhere for them to go.
Everybody just kind of stonewalls 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 he says,
we've never lied to the FBI.
We may not have told them everything, but we've never lied.
And I thought like, 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 were probably just wearing wires,
but I just remember thinking those cell phones
are microphones.
They probably weren't, but I remember thinking, oh, wow.
And I just, I looked at it and I went, wow.
And I said, well, I hope you're gonna get something
for this and she immediately starts crying
and she says, Matt, I'm sorry.
I have a kid, I can't go to jail.
You have kids at that point?
Yeah, like I have a kid, like I have a kid.
And I was like, wow, I, wow.
What have you learned about friendship from that?
Like loyalty?
Oh yeah, there's no, there's, that's a, that's, it'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 tell you why.
So I go back to my, I go back to my office.
I remember I told her, I said, 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 guy's 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, get out and close it.
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.
And I don't really tell him exactly what's going on,
but I tell him this is what's happening kind of,
and I may be 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.
It's the 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 convinced.
Initially, he had me convinced
I was probably gonna go to jail for a few years.
But really that's what they kind of do
to justify you giving them $75,000.
But the more I thought about it and read,
he gave me the guidelines that supposedly
I had, the fraud that I had committed
and 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 gonna 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 at 250,000.
My ex-wife borrowed like 180.
So there's plenty 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, no, 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 what I always kind of look back at.
When I first 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.
A fraud mill over there and that you guys
are churning out fraudulent loans.
Now they can't come and they can't come
and raid 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 pretrial, it's a pretrial intervention
where we go in and what we'll do is 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 kicked myself to this day.
I said, absolutely not.
I'm not gonna snitch on them.
I'm not gonna cooperate.
I'm not going to, I'd seen the Godfather.
You're not supposed to cooperate.
You're supposed to be loyal.
I'm not gonna do any of that.
And so I say all of this where looking back,
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, don't do that.
And what happened was when the other thing falls apart,
when the next scam falls apart,
every one of these people go to the FBI.
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 indicted 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.
Sacrifice.
I'm not sure that applies to this, but that's okay.
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.
And this happened 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?
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.
I'm a thief.
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 it's in the 90 percentile
of people that cooperate, 90 something percent.
And people cooperate when they're not even looking
in 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 standup guy over here.
He got 30 years.
He could have cooperated against all of his co-defendants,
but he didn't.
Nobody comes to see him.
His wife divorced him.
His kids ended up in foster care.
His friends are cleaning out his house.
Nobody puts money on 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 going for him
is that he can walk around and say,
well, he's a standup guy.
That guy's going to the same halfway house as me.
He's probably, he's gonna do 30 years
where I'm gonna do 10.
The standup guy meaning 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 remember I talked to one of the COs at the prison one time
and he said, I said, shit, 50% of the guys here snitched.
He goes, it's more than that.
He said, but listen, he was 100% of them are lying about it.
He said, so there's nobody here
that's gonna tell you they snitched, nobody.
So there's guys, tons of them that cooperate.
If 80, 90% of defendants cooperate,
you know, you start doing the math.
And if you ask 10 guys in prison,
all of them say, I didn't cooperate.
I didn't cooperate.
I didn't cooperate.
Like, okay, well, you ask 100, I didn't cooperate.
Nobody's gonna say I cooperated.
Does that break your heart a little bit?
That people backstab each other like this?
It does, but I have such a low opinion of people.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not that I don't like people.
It's that I just don't expect anything of them.
I don't expect you to look out for me.
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, why'd you do that?
Oh, 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, 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 robs banks.
You stick guns in people's faces.
You kidnap people.
You torture people.
You sell drugs.
You're not a moral ethical person,
but you want everybody else to hold up to some ethical code
while you're robbing grandma.
That's not right.
So I get the whole Omar to a code,
and there was a time when I was delusional enough
to believe that,
but after you're going through it, no,
and after going through it multiple times, no.
I have to really think about that.
And I deeply appreciate your honesty on this.
I think,
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?
It wasn't part of it an attraction
to the creative aspect of this,
of breaking the rules when nobody else can,
and you figure out a way to do it?
I think initially it was I needed the money.
Like, that's the first thing.
You say, oh, okay, well, and if you ask most guys,
oh, well, man, I needed the money.
You needed 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 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,
you're making five, $10,000 a month just in rental income.
Why are you still committing fraud?
So I think it morphs into the creativity in 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 out of 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,
and they cut me a check for $250,000.
Like, wow, I'm amazing, you know?
And guess what?
They're never gonna get their check,
and they won't 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 James Bond.
I felt like 007.
It was amazing, and you know, and it did it.
It feeded my need to feel important, you know?
Even if it was, even if that was a lie,
because all that success was just a lie.
Well, no, you were good at it.
It was good at it, but it was, it's not.
It was illegal.
It's not like I'm Elon Musk.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's not like I'm an exceptional human.
I'm an exceptional human being
at a horrific thing at committing 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,
I take off on the run, and people do lose money.
I didn't take that money directly.
And for some reason, in my 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 a position
where I damaged the title to their house,
and they had to go get a lawyer to fix that.
And so they had to go pay a lawyer $10,000.
So I absolutely caused that person 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 phone calls, it'll be fine.
It wasn't fine.
And if I had really put any thought into it at 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 financed 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.
What does that involve?
Initially it was such a slap on the wrist.
Were you allowed to still practice being the lawyer?
Okay, so I wasn't.
I couldn't own the mortgage company anymore.
That was a good question,
because you would think wouldn't it be great
if I could keep on going?
But what they said was 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.
Because they went, my lawyer goes to the judge
and says, what else can he do?
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?
And I would say, I could have,
so you look back and it's like,
I could have claimed bankruptcy.
I could have moved into my parents' spare room,
something like that.
Because I had, I lost everything in my divorce.
I had huge child support payment.
Not that that has anything to do with my ex-wife.
I absolutely signed up for that.
I wanted to pay that.
But it was a chunk of change.
So we're talking about a couple thousand dollars a month
for child support.
She got all of the apartments that we had.
We had about a million,
million and a half dollars worth of apartments,
which isn't a lot now,
but that's probably a five or $6 million now.
So she got all the apartments.
So she got everything.
So now I'm sitting here like,
I 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 gonna start flipping houses.
Legitimately or not?
Well, initially I thought about doing it legitimately.
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, three months,
no credit scores, no credit scores, no credit scores.
And I'm also saying,
I'm gonna start buying houses, renovate them, sell them.
So 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, great.
Me and this guy, actually Dave Walker,
the guy that bought my business.
So we renovate it.
And it just so happens at the same time
I go to pull the credit one day and wow,
700 plus credit scores.
And I went, we don't have to sell this thing at all.
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.
I ended up selling it to this synthetic identity.
Do you remember the first synthetic identity, the name?
The first one was a Joel Colon.
And then I started getting creative
because the ones after that, I started naming.
So I had like Joel Colon and an Allen 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 like a Michael White, a Lee Black.
I had a William Blue, David Silver, Brandon Green.
So then I start 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 in retrospect that was a mistake?
That was so stupid.
That was just, there's so many things,
so many mistakes I made.
I mean, within the fraud, there are mistakes I made,
but you know, other than just the overall committing fraud,
but it was just like, I thought it was so cute.
And then, you know, 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. That.
And he's looking at me just like, you jackass.
Like, and you know, what am I saying?
I'm like, yeah, 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 they want three months worth of bank statements
to see that, hey, he's got his $50,000 in the bank.
And then the more properties you buy,
they start to wanna see what's called reserves.
They wanna 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 gonna go,
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 statements.
Oh, you wanna 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, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.
You know, and hold on, okay.
What's the name again?
Or do you have the account number?
Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.
Hold on.
You wait a little bit.
Oh, okay, I got it here.
I can't tell you the exact amount right now,
but what was his balance last month in the data?
Oh, yep, that's it, exactly.
Okay, thank you, click.
Would you do different voices or would you be-
No, I've done different voices
or I just have somebody else do it.
Gretchen would have done it
or one of the brokers, Susan would have done it,
one of the brokers that worked for me
or Kelly or Johnny Moon.
I have so many guys and they just get on the phone
and they do it
because they're all doing something fraud
and we're all working together.
So, hey, I need you to call this guy.
I need you to call this guy and verify this
and say, oh, I'm at the bank.
Okay, I'm at the bank, okay, cool.
And they call back and-
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 would say it was, you know, you're a bunch of,
you're just a bunch of guys, you know,
it's, you're joking around with everybody
and you're helping each other
and it's not like everybody's, you know,
kicking up the Tommy, you know?
So-
And then all these new puzzles come up
and you figure out which is-
Right, you go in and you say,
hey, I've got this loan.
I need to get this loan
and this guy's 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 a 4506.
So they're like, oh, okay, listen,
so-and-so's got a program that, you know,
and you go back and forth,
but you have to have this much in reserves,
but you got the bank, yeah, yeah, I got 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, you know, I mean, part, a big part of that,
the reason is 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?
Your financial success?
Yes.
At which point, what was the first time you told him
you did something and he was like,
you could sense him being 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 closed four loans my first month
and my dad was like, well,
how much money are you going to make?
And I'm like, oh, 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 serious?
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 a check.
It's like $9,000 or something.
And then, you know, 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 and if it was illegitimate.
No, he thinks, he thinks, my son, he's brilliant.
You know, 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.
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, 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.
And 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, you know, he was polite to me.
You know, we were cordial, but yeah, I wasn't,
I think he felt he deserved a better kid.
So.
Well, when you started doing mortgages,
that's when he was like.
Of course, he was like, oh, this kid's got something.
I'm driving, I'm driving a new,
I gotta just pulled in in a new car
and I gotta, 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 a duplex and another duplex and a quadplex.
And it's like, what the hell's going on?
This guy is blowing up.
He's going on vacation here and vacation here.
And, you know, so he, you know, 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 I'm buying 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 Ybor City back then.
It's, I still think it's rough,
but those same houses are going for three and 400,000.
So, you know, I'm buying houses.
I gotta get qualified borrowers.
I have to do all the renovations.
It's a nightmare, you know?
And if I, you know, looking back, it's like,
okay, well then you 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, you know, I just thought I'm good at this.
I'm gonna run, I'm just gonna start running a scam.
I'm gonna 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 identity was James Red,
and he had 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 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 of 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 wanna do?
Do you wanna 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, give me a couple of days, let me figure this out.
And she's like, okay, well, I don't know
how that's gonna happen, he didn't exist.
Keep in mind, at this point, I don't need IDs.
I don't need a real ID.
I mean, 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 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.
A cop's not gonna, it's not gonna pass muster with a cop,
but somebody at the 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, right?
To put on the driver's license, right?
So 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 needed a fake,
I need a copy of an ID, but I need a picture.
Where do I get the picture?
So I go to Hillsborough County's arrest website
and I would find people that I knew that had been arrested.
And so I found a guy named Eric Tamargo
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 for James Redd.
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 notarize all the documents,
even though they'd never seen this person.
They have a copy of his driver's license,
everything's signed, Cox 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.
I knew he'd been in 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, let me call him.
I don't know, bro.
Like that's the kind of conversations you're having.
But really looking back-
I would love to hear the opener 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,
we'd buy a house and we'd call him up.
We'd say, hey, can you, you and 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'd go, yeah, sure, no problem.
Because that's what he did,
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 goes 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, hey, how's it going?
I said, yeah.
I said, 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 these houses
we've been having you go and clean up?
He's like, yeah, you painted that one house, you did this.
Yeah, 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 explain, I just 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 some, that's smart.
Like, wow, I was like, okay, so 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 goes,
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,
cause 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, cause that's a big favor.
I said, it is a big favor.
I could be in a lot of trouble.
And I said, I know.
And he goes, well, wait a minute.
He goes, I can't go.
He said, you have to give these people a driver's license.
You said the driver's licenses,
you were using mug shots.
You said she's closed a couple of these.
She already, she's seen this guy's picture.
And I go, she has seen his picture.
I said, the thing is for James Red,
I pulled the mug shot offline of you
when you were arrested a couple of years ago.
And he jumps up and he goes, you motherfucker.
And I go, oh, 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'd have the balls to go walk in and do it.
And he sat there and he went, yeah, you're right.
You're right.
And I mean, 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.
So, it's like, I've weathered that part of the storm.
And he sat there and he goes, 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, what are you 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,
I think I said like tens of thousands
we're really walking away with hundreds of thousands.
It's not like we're walking away with a bunch of money
or we gotta buy more properties, we gotta keep it going.
We gotta make the payments.
No, I know, but still I could get in 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, I'll just, I'll do it myself.
We'll just change title companies
and we'll go and 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 in mine.
I was like, $500?
It's gonna take you 30 minutes.
And he's like, I don't care, bro.
I get in a lot of trouble.
I was like, oh, well, yeah, I'm not paying you now.
You gotta sign first.
And he's like, oh, you know, I'll sign, I'll sign.
I know you're good for it.
Right, he did for 500 bucks.
I made a fake ID for him.
He goes in to the place.
He signs James Red.
Comes out.
What was even funny, 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 and she goes, Mr. Cox,
I don't know why you're here.
She goes, I told Kelly, that was the broker.
She goes, I told the broker that I'm not closing the loan
unless James Red shows up.
And Eric stands up on Q&E 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, oh, I'm so sorry.
Give me five minutes, I've got the file.
Prints up 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 have the construction coming in and I have that.
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.
And he's like, bro, there's a lot of money.
A lot of that money goes back in the properties, Eric.
And he's like, ah, still bro.
And I said, and I counted out 500 bucks.
But listen, a week later, we had another closing.
So he comes in, I said, hey bro, he's hey, what's going on?
And I said, I need you to do 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.
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, oh my God.
So I gave 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 got, I have other people in the wings waiting.
So 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.
He was one of the people.
Why do you think nobody said anything?
Well, I mean, I think everybody was making money.
The appraiser, at that time I had an appraiser.
Eventually I ordered the appraisal software
and I just start doing the appraisals myself.
Like why give this guy 500 bucks?
So.
So you were doing the appraisal yourself.
Bro, I'm doing the appraisal.
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 emailing, it was called Alamo, Alamo Appraisal Software.
So I ended 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 her the, I send them the license
and then we paid for it with a credit card.
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 him like back then, it was a long time ago.
So 1500 bucks, they mail it to us
and now I've got the software.
So now 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 gonna look at it.
Like they're gonna have their in-house appraiser
is going to do a desktop review.
He's gonna go online.
He's gonna 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, where, how far they are.
He's gonna 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 them long.
So it's cheaper that way where we pay for the appraiser,
appraisals, 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 Ybor City in 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.
I 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.
Like, 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 every once in a while, you know,
like we're, you know, where 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 calls me up and said, listen, we got a problem.
This was, I want to say this was Alan Duncan.
This was one of the first ones that I had done, right?
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-defendants,
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.
So it's not like I'm pocketing hundreds of thousands
of dollars or even, you know,
even 20 or $30,000 on every closing.
I'm more like I'm getting 25, 10, 20,
and this guy's getting 10 and this guy's 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.
So we're trying to kind of take all this
and turn it into a development company.
But we still have to pay our bills.
So, you know, my buddy's got to go to,
he's got to go to Amsterdam at least for two weeks, you know.
He's from Belgium.
That's, you apparently have to do that at least once a year.
So he was, so when I gave him his check, the check,
I said, look, you're going to make the,
here's the 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, Alan Duncan did not, did not make his first payment.
And I went, oh my God.
And he was actually renting the apartment downstairs for me.
So I run downstairs and I opened 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 due?
And I was like, oh my God.
So I run back, you know, I grabbed the phone.
I'm like, he didn't make it.
He didn't make it.
She's like, okay, well, here's what's happening.
The account executive is calling.
They've got the file and it was called Southstar Bank.
Southstar 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.
She didn't tell me that on the phone.
Like 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 who hasn't paid?
We're calling the cell.
Nobody's answering.
And really most of this was my buddy, Rudy's fault.
He's just not doing any of this stuff.
Any of the things he's supposed to be doing.
So we go to the office and I call Southstar 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.
And she says, I'm sorry, he's in a business meeting.
I said, well, listen, tell him this is Alan Duncan.
Like you need to go tell him
is Alan Duncan's on the phone right now.
I'm assure you he wants to talk to me.
And she's like, all right, hold on.
And I mean like 20 seconds later, speakerphone.
Hey, Mr. Duncan, this is so-and-so.
And I'm here 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 apologize.
I said, but I can get you a cashier's check today.
I will overnight it, no problem.
Hope that's gonna be okay.
I say, they said, wait, we're way past that.
Way past that.
I said, okay, well, 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 and this was why we had gone
with like SunTrust 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 Southstar 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 right now.
And you were just, but you have to be playing it cool,
I guess.
I mean, I know, what am I gonna say?
No, you're talking to Matt Cox.
Like, I can't say that.
Like, I'm just gotta keep running with it.
Just like, okay, well look, and he's like,
we called the DMV, they don't have a list for you
in their website.
We think that the, we don't think you exist.
We're still waiting for a phone call back
from so and so and so and so and so.
And I'm just like, oh my God.
And I said, 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 his name,
but the head of the fraud department
worked for the FBI for like 10 years
or something or 12 years.
And so, I mean, I'm just like, 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?
Like, it's weird.
And I said, look, why don't I just,
let me just pay you back.
They said, ah, we'll get the money.
We're not worried about it.
I said, you don't seem worried about the money,
about getting any of the money back.
Like, why don't you just let me, I'll cut you a check.
I can get you the money back.
Like, what do I, I owed him like 150 or something.
I forget exactly.
It was nothing.
I owe you 150,000.
Let me cut you a check for 150,000.
And they were like, no, no, that's,
we'll get the money back when we foreclosed on 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, do 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 lay it out, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I said, so you can call the FBI,
but you're not gonna 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 of making all the payments.
It's a glitch.
You caught me.
No, my bad.
And so these guys are all 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 said, listen,
you still have the money?
I said, yeah.
Well, first they come back.
They threatened me.
Oh, well, when we give us to the FBI, you're...
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 is gone.
You will never see that money.
I will be cutting you.
If I pay you back at all, that'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 to the mall,
ran up all the credit cards
and just threw everything away and walked away
because it was shot.
That whole, that guy was shot.
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.
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 Washington Mutual one time.
I was caught by Washington 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 gotta put down 20%.
You get about 80% financing.
So a buddy of mine who was a sheriff's deputy,
we had his wife buy,
I'm gonna say six owner occupied duplexes
saying she lived in every single one of them.
Well, you can't owner occupy six dwellings.
Like that's fraud.
Now, granted her W-2s and pay stubs were correct,
but she didn't put the down payments down.
Even the down payments we didn't put down.
We actually got cash back.
But months later, they called a lawyer
from Washington Mutual ends 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.
So it was a couple months later when they went to sell it
and they packaged them together and sell them.
They realized we have the same customer
with two duplexes side by side, both owner 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 ended up getting on the phone with him.
We have a conversation.
And I'm like, he's like, look, 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 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 any.
It was absolutely fraud.
I had a broker one time,
we got caught with over a million dollars
in loans that he had done that were fraudulent.
Pinnacle Bancorp, which was out of Chicago,
the owner called me and he was like,
look, your mortgage broker did this.
Like there was a bunch of canceled checks.
They were fake canceled checks.
So they looked like they had run through the bank
for somebody's rent, but they hadn't.
Does that make sense?
Like you pay your rent, they deposit it,
it goes to the bank and they've got all the numbers
and everything.
Well, I had a bunch that were blank
that all you had to do was fill out
your borrower's information
and then you cut and pasted his name and his address
at the upper left-hand corner.
You make a copy of it, it looks like canceled checks.
We had 24 of them.
Well, one of my brokers was using them
for all of his files.
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's 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 check for a million dollars,
I just don't have it, I don't have it.
And this was when I owned the mortgage company.
And he says, no, 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.
We'll foreclose, we're gonna have to resell them.
I don't wanna be flying down there.
Just help us get rid of them.
I said, absolutely, of course, no problem.
I said, what about the,
I said, well, what are you gonna do with them?
He goes, well, they're gonna 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 gonna take care of them.
It's not what happened.
In fact, Gary flew down a couple of 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?
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 in mind, a lot of the loans that caused the problems
were like, they called them liar loans,
or no qualification, no qual loans, right?
No income.
Well, those loans, they exist again.
There are subprime companies that are doing that again.
I don't think they call them subprime anymore.
They call them, so they got some other name.
Yeah, rebranded.
Yeah, they've rebranded a little bit,
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?
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 a loan.
And the thing is, some of these loans,
sometimes changing a W-2,
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 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, 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 Reservoir Dogs scams, right?
I'm not just doing those guys.
I'm also creating other identities
because I've got other people that are involved,
they wanna do a scam.
So this chick I was dating,
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 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 her name is Allison,
and she's pretending to be a Puerto Rican woman
named Rosie de Perez.
Allison has brown hair and blue eyes,
Rosie de Perez 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 $100,000,
we've got like three of these scheduled,
and she changes her hair color.
She dyes it back like a dirty blonde,
and she goes to the first closing,
and she gets a check, a check for 100,000, let's say.
I don't know what it was like, 95 or 105, whatever,
roughly $100,000.
She gets a check at the closing, they give it to her.
We then go to the next closing.
Well, at the next closing,
the title person has her sign all the documents,
but she's looking at her like, something's not right.
Looks at her ID, makes a copy of the ID,
looks at it and says, this doesn't look like you.
And she's like, you don't look Hispanic.
And she's like, I'm half Hispanic, what do you, what?
And she's like, you don't, but keep in mind,
the photograph was her.
So she's saying, this doesn't look like you, but it's her.
Granted, she had 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 gonna give you the check.
Yeah.
I'm like, let's just sign the documents.
We can get 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 down the road, she explains it to me.
I realized, 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 it was probably more of a yell, screaming and yelling,
like, what the hell did you do?
Well, I 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?
And she's like, I changed my hair, what's the big deal?
It's still me, sure enough.
And that's like, it's not that I knew
that that was gonna happen, but why tempt fate?
How'd you meet Allison?
She was a mortgage worker.
Okay.
And I had done some fraudulent.
She worked 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 when guys would call me, I'd say, great,
I'll come pick it up.
I'll give you a $300 or a $500 referral fee.
No, no, it's a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
We wanna close it.
Well, if you then close it.
Well, I can't close it.
We need a W-2 or we need this, we need that.
We can't figure out how to do it.
So I go over there and typically I convinced them,
just give it to them, they're not gonna close.
You'd have to see this chick, she was gorgeous.
She was gorgeous, very flirtatious,
made me feel like I was thin and handsome.
So like she gets whatever she wants.
So I'm like, okay, look, here's what you do.
And I explained to her, do this, do this, do this,
send it here, it'll close.
And should 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 in on this.
So now we do the closings, we're on our way.
I say, look, that chick's 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
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 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, hers was in Clearwater, his was in Orlando.
So I'm all, I'm getting 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 pulling,
we're still refinancing properties, right?
So he's about to close on another half a million dollars
worth of 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 was, let me call him.
She calls him.
I think I called him and I explained the situation.
He's, do you think it'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, nah, 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,
cause 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, oh, okay.
So you'd 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.
And for me to come in, I went, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I said, something's wrong.
Something's wrong.
Don't go to the bank.
What do you think is wrong?
I think the cops are waiting for you.
That's what I think is wrong.
And he goes, no, the cops aren't.
He goes, 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.
Then 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,
because you've chopped it up with the manager,
he's gonna let your fraudulent check go through.
So he walks in, the cops are in there.
They locked the door.
He just told me later, they closed the door, locked it.
The cops are in there and 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 here's where he told me
he wouldn't say anything.
I told him I'm not talking to your coppers.
Oh, he told you, but he actually did talk to him.
He actually did talk to him.
So what he ends up doing,
what ends up happening is we can't get in touch with him.
So we're calling and calling and calling.
And then finally I decide, you know what?
I'm not gonna call his cell phone anymore.
I'm gonna call the name of the person he was,
the synthetic identities 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 force.
And he's like, no, who's this?
He goes, no, this is officer so-and-so, who's this?
And I go, I was like, oh, this is Lee Black.
I said, he said, he goes, how do you know so-and-so?
I was like, oh, no, no, click.
I just hung up and I called for like a payphone.
So I turn around, I said, he got arrested.
And then later on that night,
he showed up on the county website,
you know, 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, you gotta go.
So I have to give his brother-in-law money.
You know, we get him out of 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.
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 gonna 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.
Of course he tells me,
look, they asked me a bunch of questions.
I told him that he made up some story about,
he's working with another guy,
but he doesn't know the guy's name.
He made up a name.
Like he has this whole kind of thing
where he tells them about me, but not me.
And he's like, none of the numbers led anywhere.
So they all 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 mean, 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 don't have, oh, I need a thousand dollars.
Of course, here's a thousand dollars.
I don't know what I was, I'm embarrassed you had to ask.
Here's a thousand.
A week later, 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 trimmer.
How much are those?
5,000, of course, that's fine.
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 the whole time
he's actually working with a task force
that's been put together.
Federal or?
This is state at this point.
It's a state task force.
Cause there's multiple counties involved at this point.
And it wasn't hard for him to explain.
This comes back to Reservoir Dogs.
I got a much, all he had to say to the officers was,
listen, you gotta let me go.
I can't do any prison time.
I'm gonna tell you about a much, much bigger scam.
And they go, okay, well, how can you prove that scam?
Pull up Hillsborough County's tax appraiser website.
Okay, look up the name, James Red.
Look, all of these were 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, all of them are foreclosure.
Hey, pull up James, pull up Brandon Green, pull up.
So all of these are going in foreclose.
I mean, it's so, it's like,
that what I thought was so cute, not cute.
It was just stupid.
And so he very quickly, they put together a task force.
He's working with them on the task force.
And we're still buying houses, flipping houses,
doing everything.
Cause I believe him.
I believe he's not, he's saying, look,
if I have to go to jail for a year or so,
and he's also paying, he hasn't paid them back yet,
but we're saying he can pay them back.
It's like, look, if we get to the point,
when we get to that point, we'll pay them back.
But we haven't paid them back yet
cause we have no way to show where that money came from.
We can always go to one of his relatives
and give his dad 40 grand, give his mom 20 grand,
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, 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
cause 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,
remember the sheriff's deputy.
And keep in mind, it's funny because like,
I've done bad loans for police officers,
sheriffs, lawyers, doctors, like,
across to everybody across, these aren't like all,
Yeah, everybody.
Guys that, these aren't all like,
construction workers or guys that work in our mechanics
or something, these are like the legitimate,
these are 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 seems like, 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.
I'm getting phone calls from people.
So I know something's up with the newspaper.
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.
And then one day I'm in my office
and the sheriff's deputy walks in, Steve Sutton,
in his uniform too, which everybody always stiffened
when he would walk in.
So he walks in, I go, Steve, I said, what's going on?
He said, and usually he's jolly and laughs and stuff.
And he goes, and he says, I gotta talk to you outside.
I was like, okay, I walk outside, what's up?
And he says, I used to date this girl
in the Tampa Police Department or something.
I was like, okay.
So she showed up at 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 Ebor,
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 gonna come arrest you in a couple of days.
They just handed over the task force findings
to the FBI and the FBI is going to come arrest you
in a couple of 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 gonna cooperate
and not to talk to you
because she's afraid you're gonna get me hemmed 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, well first he said, what should I do?
And I go, 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, 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 he was like, cause he did it cause he had a job.
He was a Sheriff's deputy.
I'm not a, I went in, I applied for a loan at a bank.
They said, you can buy the house
and we'll give you $30,000.
So of course I'm gonna do that.
That's not gonna happen, but he doesn't know.
And I said, just tell him, yeah.
Tell him you'll cooperate.
Like, absolutely.
He's, what are you gonna do?
I said, me?
I said, I'm leaving bro.
I'm leaving.
I said, 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 gonna be cool
with me getting popped again.
Like, I mean, he, I can't do it.
Can't do it.
I said, I'm leaving.
Can't go to prison.
I'm adorable, bro.
Like, you know, I can't, I saw Shawshank redemption.
I know what's gonna happen.
I can't.
You're too good looking.
Yeah, I can't do that.
That's not gonna happen.
Like I can't, you know, I'm 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, I'm a nonviolent, you know,
soft white collar criminal.
So I was just like, I was like, yeah, I'm leaving, bro.
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 go into 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 did 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 chick named Rebecca Halk.
We'd been dating about a month.
And she shows up at my house.
You know, I hadn't returned our phone calls all day,
and apparently we were 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 and she's like, what's going on?
I'm like, I'm leaving.
Where are you going?
I thought we were 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 gotta 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 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 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, or yeah, 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 casino company that I worked for.
She said, I got caught embezzling,
nothing, it was like 10 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 she got to Florida.
And she's like, 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 any of this.
She's like, he was going back in December.
No, 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, I've been married three times.
I am a gambler.
I've blamed bankruptcy.
I'm sleeping with my old boss.
I got like, she went from this thieving adulterous,
and I thought these are all really beneficial
to my future plans.
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 feel like-
Is that the first time you've done something like that,
like leave to go on the road?
Yes, so I'd never just up and moved.
And keep in mind 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 called 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 were packing?
I never did.
Well, you're leaving your life.
I mean, it feels like a fundamental transition.
Oh, listen.
You think?
I mean, it's not just that.
Like I'm leaving my son.
I have a son.
And I was leaving everything.
I was just terrified of going to prison.
And I mean, I don't know, it was just so stupid.
It was just arrogance.
And I should have stayed.
Like I made things so much worse.
But I also thought, I'm smart.
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 appearance much?
Yeah, a little bit.
I was balding.
I got two hair transplants, two hair grafts.
So the hair in my head, this isn't my hair.
It's my hair, but it's from back here.
So they cut it here and they, I appreciate it.
So they re-implanted it there.
Got liposuction, just some other stuff.
And got my teeth done, that sort of thing.
And that was kind of like my plan.
I'll go, I'll take off.
I got 80 grand, I'll steal some more money.
But 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 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, 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 Cugno that I'd done a loan for.
So I had his vital information, right?
Like I have his name, date of birth,
social security number, mother's maiden name
and where he was born.
One day we were having a conversation
and I just slowly pried all that out of him, right?
We'd done a loan for him.
So I had his name, date of birth, social security number,
but I need to steal his identity.
I need to know where he was born
and his mother's maiden name.
So through the course of a conversation,
I just pried, Cugno, is that, what is that?
Is that like Irish?
Is it, no, it's such and such.
What's your mom's name?
Oh, such and such, oh, okay.
Were you born here?
You're born in, where aren't you from?
Oh man, I was born here.
I was born in such and such.
Oh, it'll broke out.
No big deal.
We get to Atlanta, I make a fake ID for both of us.
But keep in mind, I don't have a driver's license.
I do, but they're fake.
I can't give this to a cop.
Can't give a driver's license that says David Freeman.
What's David's residence, Florida or is this Georgia?
No, this is 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.
That's enough to get like rent a place or do something.
So we go to Atlanta, make an ID, set it up,
make some business cards, set up a couple of 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 100 bucks a month
and they'll afford them.
So it seems like you have an office.
They give you a phone number that you call up
and they say, hi, United Southern Bank,
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 Alpharetta.
And I then go to Alabama, wait,
I then order Scott Cugno's birth certificate,
social security card.
I think I registered to vote in 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 into DMV, give them all these documents
and which almost all of them are real except for the lease.
They said, sit over there.
I sit over there, I sit down, boom.
20 minutes later, I have a driver's license.
It was 20 something dollars, it was nothing.
So I get the driver's license, now I'm driving this,
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 a loan.
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.
So Michael Shanahan owns a house
in the name Michael Shanahan.
He has one mortgage with Bank of America and 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.
It's a one-page document and it's notarized.
So I filled out two of them.
I just ordered, you can do 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
and now I know what the basic template is.
And 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 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 notarized the satisfactions.
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.
I think 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 Cugno, driving a car as Scott Cugno.
We open up several bank accounts.
We have multiple bank accounts.
And then we ended up going to Vegas.
And we do go to Vegas, but what happened was
we're driving around and I remember thinking,
telling her, I was like, this is the problem.
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 loans.
Government, VA, FHA, fine, whatever.
Call this number.
So people start calling and I'm getting their information.
And 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 does it cost?
And is this possible?
Let me see if I can change this guy's name.
It was 1,500 bucks.
I changed it.
It's not him ever showing up anywhere.
So you can fake it.
Well, I have a driver's license in his name.
Right.
I am him.
So he did show up.
He showed up at the lawyer's office.
He, 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,
these government survey questions at the very end,
it's like 20 questions and I'm rambling them off.
And at some point he was like, he said, he volunteered.
Like I didn't know,
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's like, he was, I mean, it was a DUI.
I've had a couple of 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're not getting a loan.
I'm just taking your, I'm just stealing from you,
stealing 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 got to 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 are you thinking?
Are you thinking like, like criminals
or are you thinking like, like prisoners,
like mental patients?
Like, and I went, I mean, I don't,
and I looked over and there was a homeless guy
holding a sign and I went like that guy.
And I remember she goes, she's the hobo?
Like, I don't know who calls them hobos.
And she's like the hobo?
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, I said,
when was the last time you were gainfully employed?
He's like, ah, whatever, 10 years.
I'm like, oh, okay.
Do you have a criminal record?
He's like, ah, I've been arrested in misdemeanors,
like, you know, vagrancy.
And he named off some things, you know,
drunk in public, whatever.
And I was like, are you on probation?
He goes, I can't, I can't, I can't do probation.
They don't give us probation.
They keep us for 90 days.
They release us.
Like, 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, is it just a DUI?
He's 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, okay, well, you know.
He told me he 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, what, you taking a survey or something?
And I remember thinking, I kind of chuckle.
I go, you get a lot of surveyors out here?
Like that, and he goes, yeah, sometimes.
And I was like, really?
He goes, yeah, he said like the,
he said people from like 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.
I'm like, oh, okay.
And I was like, I thought that's good to know.
So I go back, I grab Becky and she's like,
oh, did you give him money?
I said, I gave him like 40 or 60 bucks or something.
Forget what, he's like, that's a what a waste of money.
That was good, that was money well spent.
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 DUI.
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, federal form 17-017.
And so I print out these forms.
I go buy a clipboard.
I make a little, a Salvation Army ID.
I pin it on me and I go out and I start-
Doing surveys.
I start surveying 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.
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.
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 system.
They're not employed.
They don't have housing, all that kind of-
They don't file taxes.
They don't.
So one of the questions I even asked the guy,
one of the last questions I said,
do you believe that you will be gainfully employed
within the next two years?
Every one of them said, no, no, no.
So it was like, okay, they're not even trying.
And they all had alcohol problems.
Or honestly, the few of them I talked to,
like it was pretty clear.
I mean, it takes literally five minutes,
less than five minutes to fill out the form.
And I filled it out for them, of course.
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.
Something's not right with you.
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-
Do you feel bad about this little, small tangent?
No.
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 kind of 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.
Like, I don't know what the solution is
other than just kind of keeping them fed maybe,
and keep them away from normal people,
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,
or we gave you 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 I guess we still have to remember
that they're human beings.
I mean, we mentioned off-mic,
Soft, White, Underbelly.
He highlights the humanity of people
who've had a real difficult life.
He does it well.
Mark Leda is amazing.
He's amazing.
And one of the things he had said was,
he was like, these are real people.
And he's like, they're 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 the street.
I mean, it just 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.
And you can say, well, 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 social security number.
They got 20 bucks.
They seem very happy.
There you are with a clipboard, taking a survey.
Right, took a survey, went home, ordered their,
and they, you know, of course they give me everything,
name, date of birth, social security number,
mother's maiden 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 in?
Have they ever been arrested?
They've 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 to know.
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, what else do you need?
You know, I know exactly what you need.
But you know, they'll be like,
oh, is that high school transcript?
Yeah, I'll take that.
And oh, voter's registration card, give me that.
Yeah, that's, you're perfect, you're good.
Sit down right over there.
That's it.
Who is, by the way, lurking in the shadows
trying to catch you?
You've mentioned FBI, Secret Service.
You mentioned, I think I've heard you mention
U.S. Marshals, which is interesting.
Cops in general, the police, CIA.
I guess CIA is international only.
FBI is internal.
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 raided my office.
I guess I kind of missed that.
Back in Florida.
Back in Florida, when I left and drove to Atlanta
and left, remember the 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 raid 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
in like seven different states.
I've had two dozen passports.
Because if you're going to get the driver's license
in the guy's name, you might as well get, or an ID even,
you might as well get a passport.
Because a passport's not difficult to get.
They don't fingerprint you.
All they're doing is saying, this is your ID
and were you born here?
And then they run a check,
and if it comes back or it doesn't.
And back then you could do it expedited,
and I'd have it in like two weeks.
Like now it takes like 90 days or 60 to 90 days to get one.
And if you have multiple IDs for a single identity,
that's more proof.
Right.
So-
Wait, what number did you say?
How many IDs, how many identities?
Well, I've had over 50 identities,
but I've had 27 driver's licenses issued
from state DMVs, Department of Motor Vehicles.
So 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 I lost my driver's license, bro.
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, okay.
I need a primary.
Okay, here's my birth certificate.
Okay.
And I need a secondary.
Here's my social security card.
But I also registered, I registered to vote.
My girlfriend made me vote immediately.
And she said I would need it.
Oh yeah, it's perfect.
You're good.
I don't even need that.
Okay, great.
Stand over there.
Pay that person.
They call your number, 275.
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'm opening up different bank accounts
in these guys' names.
And just about-
What are you mostly doing with that, Dad?
Are you opening up different bank accounts?
Right now.
Are you doing a credit,
starting to establish credit or no?
Some of them.
Like I might order,
I might order a secured credit card.
So I can't get credit.
You know, 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 American, 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 although 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 driver's licenses in other states.
So I'm in 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 time?
Oh, well, I mean, right now I'm living in this guy's house
and I satisfied his loans.
The house is worth 200,000.
So what happens is one day we go
and we check public records.
Remember 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 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 shows up
saying he's got some credit cards,
but 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.
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 pre, I mean, not pre-internet,
but it's post-internet, but it's in its infancy.
Like nobody's, it's not huge.
And honestly, 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 our house.
So, but I'm living in this place.
I make a fake ID in the name Michael Shanahan
and I call up three secured, or sorry,
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 he doesn't have to really meet 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 lend you 100,000
or it's like 150,000, 150,
like they all lend roughly 150,000.
So we schedule three separate closings.
None of them know about the other person.
So what I do is I close one loan on let's say Monday
and then one on Tuesday and then one on 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 after costs and everything.
The total ends up being roughly 400,000.
So I've got 400,000.
Becky and I run another scam in Tallahassee, Florida
and we get like 50 grand.
And plus the 80s dwindled down to close to nothing
because 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 and Becky.
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 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 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 looking.
We haven't had plastic surgery at this point.
We're still pulling money together.
So.
Oh, Becky.
Yeah, Becky's a problem.
And at some point I actually send her to a psychiatrist
and 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 can you give me a timeline 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 months.
Three years.
Well, so.
Three years.
What happens is we get that little chunk of money.
We put it deposited into these bank accounts
and we start pulling out cash.
And which works out fine
is 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,
oh, is there someone here trying to cash a check for $9,000?
Can you verify the payee?
And they go, oh yeah, that's Scott Cugno.
Oh, okay, thank you.
And they cash 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 frustrated
because it was just taking forever.
And I had gone into a bank one time
and they have banks where they cash,
they actually cash like large checks.
Like if you go into Bank of America
and you try and cash a 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 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 refinanced Michael Shanahan's name.
I've got a check for 29,000 that was issued to Scott Cugno.
So I'm sitting in the bank.
I go in there, I say, I need to cash this.
And she says, you're gonna have to talk to the manager.
I go, okay.
She says, go sit down over there.
I go sit down in the little glass cubicle.
He comes over and he says,
I see you're trying to cash this check.
And I was like, right.
He goes, why don't you just deposit in your own bank?
And I went, 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 cashier's check, like it's good.
And he goes, no, 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'd 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 work for.
We're putting on an addition on.
Okay, that makes sense.
Comes back and why do you need cash?
And I was like, I'm cashing 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 cashing 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.
And he went, yeah, hold on.
He leaves again.
And I remember my cell phone rang
and I pick up the phone as 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.
And I went, I can't get out of the 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, don't call me again.
I'll let you know.
It'll be fine.
Hang up the phone.
She calls back.
Same conversation.
I'm bouncing on the walls.
I'm like, I'm going crazy.
It'll be fine.
Hang up the phone.
He comes back out and he goes, he said, I said, hey,
I said, what's, what's taken so long?
And he goes, we're trying to get in touch
with Michael Shanahan to verify the check.
That's not good for me.
Like I'm thinking, right, right.
Okay.
Okay.
And he walks away.
The phone rings.
Speccy, what's going on?
I go, they're trying to get ahold of Michael Shanahan.
She goes, oh my God.
Oh my God.
And I'm like, oh my God.
And I remember thinking I should,
I shouldn't have left her 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,
you're who Scott, you're Scott?
I'm Scott Cugno.
And then the other guy.
He's calling Michael Shanahan.
Right.
They're saying they're trying to get in touch
with Michael Shanahan.
So then the phone rings, my 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 SunTrust 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 the amount's $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 looked in any other way,
they could have gotten in touch
with the real Michael Shanahan.
So I was like, oh, okay, hang up the phone.
You answered the phone from the bank
while sitting in the bank as Scott Cugno.
As Scott pretending to be Michael.
So I just verified the check myself.
As Matthew pretending to be Scott,
as pretending to be Michael.
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'm like shoving the money in my pockets.
Like I'm trying to get out of there so quick.
I'm like, hey, I'm like, okay, cool.
Like I'm thinking this whole thing is,
you know, feels bad.
And I'm getting up and 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 in mind 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 apprehension.
So the FBI is looking for me kind of in Tampa.
Yeah.
And they've put out a fugitive warrant for me,
which is how the US Marshals got involved.
So US Marshals tracked down fugitives.
Yes, federal fugitives they tracked down.
But everybody's after you.
You're on every list.
I'm on the FBI's most wanted list.
At that point, the secret service got involved
once I leave Atlanta.
So when Becky 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 counterfeiting
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 it.
That's their territory.
So they don't-
And the US Marshals are just fugitives?
US Marshals just fugitives.
They don't do any investigation.
But they're all kind of work, okay.
But they're all kind of working together?
Yeah, like the US Marshals are like,
let's say 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 ever sense it?
No, I mean, every day you're looking your name up every day.
Like I'm not,
because 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, dating.
That's the only thing on the internet.
I'd never been on Facebook.
At this point, Facebook isn't 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,
like I didn't go out and buy a red Lamborghini.
I'm driving 40, $50,000 cars.
I've had some sports cars, 70, 80,
maybe that's $150,000 sports car now,
but it's still not flashy.
It's not like it's bright red or yellow.
I mean, these are, it's always something nondescript.
And I'm living in areas that these cars are everywhere.
So I ended up going to Charlotte, North Carolina.
We rent an apartment.
We decided 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,
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're always,
usually I don't feel bad telling these stories.
You make me feel bad.
I'm sorry, my judgment is showing.
No, but you have to be collecting identities, I guess,
to be constantly creating new identities.
So I got my survey forms.
So I go and we go out and we're taking,
I'm taking surveys and I end up going up to this guy.
There's like two or three guys
that are standing on like a bench
or sitting on next to a 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 said, it pays 20 bucks cash right now.
It'll take you five minutes.
And they're like, $20 cash right now.
I was like, yeah, I can show them 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 record.
He's like, yeah, I've been arrested.
He's like, I've been arrested like three, four times
for, he said, 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.
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 for.
And I was like, and I was like, no, no, bro.
I said, okay.
And he's like, yeah, he said, he goes,
he goes, I mean, he said, I mean,
a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
And he 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 in my car, I leave.
We get back to North Carolina.
I order 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 are asking for owner financing.
I'll put down 10%.
I want 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 that's worth 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.
Look way different?
Like appearance changes or?
Thinner, better looking,
just tightened everything up, I guess.
She was in her, she'd had a kid
and she was 30, 33, 34.
I don't know how old she was, 32, 33.
Roughly my age.
So yeah, I thought she looked,
she lost like 15 pounds.
Like she was, not because of the surgery,
but just in general, we're just working out.
We're going mountain climbing.
We're riding bikes.
We're doing, fraud's not a full-time job.
So we have plenty of time.
So we're goofing off.
But she's also a lunatic.
She's getting the cops called.
She's able to go out and she's able to stay stoned
24 hours a day.
She's going out with friends, drinking.
I never leave the house.
Even to this day, I really barely ever 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 my apartment.
Like I had an apartment downtown, 30 story building.
I actually move 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 ended 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 refinanced those houses.
Cause keep in mind, there was owner financing,
but they also had mortgages.
So there's something called a wraparound mortgage.
So these guys did wraparound 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, I give you 50 grand down,
but I'm not able to get a loan from the bank
to pay off your mortgage.
So what we do is you do a wraparound 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 wraparound.
It's wrapped around your first.
That's legal.
Yeah, so I wouldn't lie to you.
So these have wraparound mortgages.
You're always selling and you're good at it.
So I go, I satisfy the loans, the owner finance loans,
the wraparound mortgages.
And I satisfy the loans, the original loans
that these people took out on their own mortgages.
One of them, by the way, you have to sign
as the president of the bank, right?
Yeah.
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.
So I sign that and I notarize 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, nobody knows who C Montgomery Burns is.
So I sign it, notarize it.
All of those are satisfied.
I then go to the multiple bank banks
and I refinance, start 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 house is like 225,000.
I think it was like 230, whatever.
I borrowed like four or five loans on that house.
So I borrowed like $190,000 like five times.
So I've got like $800,000.
And then I borrow another three or 400,000
on the other house, the one, the smaller one, right?
So it ends up being like $1.3 million.
It's actually like 1.5 million.
It was more, but what happened with that was,
so keep in mind, 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 might even 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 AccuCheck.
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.
If you go to whatever, Mercantile Bank,
there might be, they might go, okay, we're gonna open one.
They're gonna need an explanation,
but you're not opening more than three.
By the third one, they're gonna 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 wanna let you walk away with,
let's say $100,000.
So one of the things I did
was I would typically record another mortgage
and have them pay that mortgage off.
So 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,
it's going off the corporation.
So I can open up multiple corporate bank accounts.
These corporations are fake or real?
No, no, I went to a real corporate bank attorney,
corporate attorney and had him open them.
I gave him whatever, I gave him like $1,500, $2,000
and he opened up a corporation for me, Gary Sullivan.
And I then turned around and I went
and opened up multiple bank accounts
in that corporation's name.
How are you keeping track of all this?
I don't need this.
So I'm only- Is it in your head
or do you have good- No, no, no, no.
I have every single identity has its own file
with plastic inlays, sleeves for their passports.
That's nice and organized.
It's super organized.
You open this, I'm Gary now.
Right, that's exactly what it is.
Like you kind of go over boom, boom, boom,
when you sit in your car for a minute,
you put it down, you walk in.
Well, what happens is it went up to 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 lawyer.
They call up, he says,
hey, I'm lawyer with Washington Mutual.
We have an issue.
I said, 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 pieces of property with
noticed that they'd been sent a document
that showed that I had purchased the property.
And I said, I purchased it cash.
And the document said I purchased it cash.
And they got that.
And there was actually a mortgage on the property.
And so somehow or another, 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, you owe us.
And it wasn't that much.
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 error, not a big deal.
Have you contacted law enforcement?
And he said, no, I haven't.
I was hoping we could rectify this some other way.
I said, you know what?
I think we can.
I'm gonna have my lawyer call you back.
I'm gonna go to his place right now.
Give me about two hours.
No problem.
I immediately run, jump in 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 my law partner is a criminal defense attorney.
I'm gonna set up a meeting right now with all of us.
Okay, I get there 45 minutes later.
I walk in the door.
I sit down.
He says, what happened?
I said, they said, Gary, this doesn't sound right.
What happened?
I said, okay, so listen, bought this house.
I bought it cash.
I then refinanced it.
I didn't buy it cash, but I told him.
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.
I explain how I do it.
I said, Washington Mutual just found out
that they're in like second position or third position.
Or I said, but they're probably,
they may be in fourth position.
They mail these things in, so you never know.
And he was like, oh my God.
He's like, that's, what do you wanna do?
I said, I want you to contact them
and agree for them to not contact the authorities
provided I pay them off.
He's, 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 faxes, right?
So they fax some documents back and forth.
They make, they do a couple emails back and forth
and they have a conversation.
I remember the lawyer started arguing
because he wanted to charge me like yield spread
and fees and stuff.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Like, I'll pay it.
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, 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 into Washington mutual branch, bro.
I'll bring you the check.
So he calls them back.
He's not doing that.
And he's like, okay, I'm not, 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.
And he went, so they both laugh.
Gary, you can't just leave town.
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 them.
And he, listen, they looked at me and they went,
and I remember he said, he goes,
we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
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.
Can't believe you got away with the Washington mutual.
Bro, this is-
I mean, these are all really close calls, it seems like.
No, this is the close call.
I have two more close calls that my hands sweat
thinking about it.
I walk into Wachovia.
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, $6,000, anything over $3,000,
they had to call to get permission, right?
Like authorization.
So she's like, okay, yeah, I gotta 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,
you're Mr. Sullivan, you're being detained.
We're taking you into custody and we're holding you
until a detective gets here.
Who are these guys?
Is this US Marshals or is this cops?
These are sheriff's deputies.
Sheriff's deputies.
And as they walk 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, well, 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 wanted list.
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.
I don't really know.
At that point, I couldn't tell you the difference
between everybody.
And then five minutes go by and I'm sitting there going,
what is going on?
Do you guys have any idea what's going on?
They're like, we don't know.
We're just grunts.
We just do what we're told.
So suddenly this guy walks in.
He's probably in his early 30s maybe.
He walks in, gray suit.
I think he looks like he's FBI.
He says, hey, I'm a detective with the,
I wanna say Richland County, whatever, sheriff's department
or police department, whatever.
And I was like, oh, okay.
And he says, yeah, listen, we've got an issue.
Wachovia, Wachovia wants this.
They want us to arrest you.
He said that they're saying that you've got
three mortgages 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 Wachovia's fraud department.
And he's saying, this guy is running
what's called a shotgunning 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 and he's like,
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 could 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 it a 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 all the cash.
Why are you taking out all the cash?
I said, well, I mean, I don't know if this sounds,
I don't know if 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 cashing 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, no, that's fine.
That's a decent thing to do.
It's not, that's fine.
I'm like, oh, okay.
So he's talking to the guy
and, you know, Wachowy is screaming out hollering.
He says, he's doing that.
You know, 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, you know, 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?
I go, look, I didn't do this.
He said, I came to Wachovia.
I met with a loan officer.
I said, I need a first mortgage.
I need to pull out like a hundred thousand dollars.
I want to start buying houses.
He goes, 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 him I need a hundred thousand dollars.
They said, that's fine.
They said they could only get me a hundred thousand dollars
out for something about Fannie Mae guidelines,
which is true.
And I said, so then she said,
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.
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 they got me an equity line of credit.
I said, I haven't committed fraud.
I said, I wouldn't know how to commit fraud
if you told me.
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 zero, zero, zero.
South Carolina IDs start with zero, zero, zero.
This guy's in California.
He has no idea.
So when he says that, the detective 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 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 gonna take him downtown.
I'm going to talk to my, whatever, Lieutenant, whoever,
Captain, and I'm gonna fill out a police report
and I'll let you know.
And he 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 goes, you're 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 in Vegas.
Wow, right.
I listen, I'm humiliated.
I 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,
but he knows that's not my car.
And he asked me, whose car are you driving?
I said, oh, that's my boss, Michael Eckert.
I said, that's 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 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, is it valid?
And he looked at me and he goes, yeah, well.
He said, it says he's like, he says he's five foot 11.
Like it was like five 10, five 11.
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.
I follow them back to the police station.
Becky is calling me on the phone, screaming her head off.
Now I'd always told Becky, if I ever get arrested,
yeah, immediately go get me a lawyer.
The lawyer will be able to get me out on bond
cause it'll, I'll be arrested for something stupid.
I said, it'll be something like trying to cash a check,
you know, a fake check or, you know, use of something.
I said, it won't be the, all my IDs are real.
So it won't be for, for a fake ID.
So my ID won't be in question.
And most, most police departments and sheriffs
at that time did not run your fingerprints through APHIS.
So they didn't, cause 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 services 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, 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, I'm not a NASCAR driver.
Like I'm driving, it's a sports car,
but it's not gonna 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 talked 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 police, or you can get me an attorney.
He can get me out.
And she goes, I'm not getting you an attorney.
I'm not getting you out on bond.
I'm not risking everything I've got for you
because she has all the money.
We've got seven, $800,000 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 broke, fell apart,
we were gonna move to Texas.
So we were already moving there.
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,
do 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, I probably should have bought diamonds
or bought gold or bought, like, I don't know any of that.
All I could think of is go in slowly, be patient.
Don't drain the accounts, fluctuate them.
Like I was writing, getting cashier's checks
from one account to another,
so the balances were doing this.
They weren't just going, they were doing this.
And then one day, boom, they're gone.
Okay, got it, got it.
So we got out, like, whatever.
We got, we've gotten out like six or 700,000.
There's still like six or 700,000 in the bank,
but I'm not going back, I'm done.
I actually, to be honest with you, so, well, look,
I go in, so I go into the police station
and, well, first she says,
if you go in the police station, I'm done.
If you get arrested, you're done.
I said, well, then 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 goes, can you wait in the hallway?
I can't leave you in the, I said, no, no problem.
So I go and I wait in the hallway.
In the hallway are a whole wall full of, on the cork board,
wanted posters, black and white, black and white,
like, car thief, rapist, murderer,
secret services, most wanted.
And I'm on my faces right there.
I'm like, holy Jesus.
And everything in me told me, run, bro,
just fucking hollash right now.
Right now, just go, your luck's run out.
Not that I even thought he was, there 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 into a police station,
you're not getting out of it.
Do you understand to get in?
There's a lot of cops around.
Well, not just that, but they buzz you in.
You get in the elevator, you have to punch in a code.
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 gonna wait for a phone call from the,
no, the district attorney called already.
They're looking into it.
I'm gonna 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 goes, 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, Wachovia, they fucked up.
And he's like, I believe you.
I believe you.
He said, well, he said, whatever.
He's like, I hope you, I hope they were right.
I'm sure you're right.
Okay, so I get in 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 could tell something's up.
Like, oh no, no, no, no, no, something's up.
So I get my car back out.
One of them kind of runs out and looks at the tag number.
So I drive, I get on the interstate.
I go, Becky, of course, she's, I'm sorry, I love you.
I would have never done that, I was just scared.
I understand.
I go-
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,
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 of days.
I unload it into, we have some guys unload it
into a storage unit.
Cause 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 20th floor
or something of some huge high rise, great apartment.
We drive by and I go, oh, stop the car.
And I want to get out on, it's one of those cone things
where there's flyers for the house, for a house.
I jump out and I get the flyer.
And she's like, what are you doing?
I go, I just want to, I just look at the 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 fine apartment.
And she goes, oh, you just, I'm just so disgusting.
You can't 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 going to get me caught.
She's never going to 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 as soon as she got on,
Becky gave me that, 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 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.
We have a screaming match, kind of.
Tell her I want to split up the money.
She tells me she's not going to get 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.
I have to live off this money.
Did she threaten you?
Oh, she threatened the, it was funny too,
because the conversation back and forth,
I remember saying, no, I won't happen.
And she goes, and she said, I'll give you $10,000.
I said, you're out of your mind.
I said, I'm telling right now,
you come up with some reason, well, I'll take all of it.
And she said, what'd she say?
I said, I'll take all of it.
She was in what?
Escape in that U-Haul they're going to,
she was the cops are going to be looking for in five minutes.
And I went, I just remember thinking, oh wow.
And keep in mind, all of my IDs,
everything are in the storage unit that she has a key to.
Like, I'm not getting those, it's over.
I got an ID right now that says my name is Michael Eckert.
I am driving a U-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.
I said, I'll take it.
She counts it out, she counts out the 100,000.
Later when I recounted, it wasn't even 100,
it was like 98,000.
That's fine, it's fine.
So, but you know, we've got them all marked,
you know, 2,000, 5,000, 6,000.
She's like, 2,000, 5,000, that's 12, that's it.
She ends up stiffing me.
That's fine, it's not my money.
So I take it, I end up, you know, I take it,
I leave and as I'm leaving,
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.
And 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.
Got it.
So I can't be driving, I can't drive from this truck.
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,
called my mom, she's in tears crying,
my dad's yelling in the background.
I call, what's your mom, just a small tangent,
what does your mom and dad say?
Do you remember anything standing out to you?
My dad, you know, well, I hope you're happy.
Your mother, every time someone mentions your name,
your mother cries, which is funny to me.
Cause like growing up,
like he was never concerned about her crying, you know?
So it was like, since when did you care, you know?
And I just, so I mean, my dad, like, he's an alcoholic,
you know, he's been sober for two years,
a month and a half drunk, drunken binge or drinking, sorry,
drinking binge and then sober for six months
and then did it again and sober, you know,
just went back and forth 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'd put them
into a 30 day program and I mean, like he has to stay there
and they were the only ones that had that kind of control
cause they're like, you're gonna do this
and you're gonna 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 and trained a ton of agents
and he had one of the top performing agencies.
So he was worth a lot to them.
And, 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, you know, she's crying.
She's like, I love you so much.
You know, I just wanna make sure you're safe.
I end up calling up 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?
How's your, she's like, oh, Matt and you know,
what's going on, FBI is everywhere.
Like they're, they've been talking to everybody.
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, including her.
And so as we're talking, she said, look, I've,
the main FBI agent on the case, she told me,
she told me if I ever spoke with you to have you call her,
and I was like, yeah, I'm good.
So she goes, her name is Candice,
and she wants you to call her.
She goes, at least call her.
For God's sakes, maybe you could just turn yourself in.
Maybe, maybe you can negotiate just like a couple years,
like a, cause they're, if they're not gonna catch you,
then maybe turn yourself in, maybe it'll help.
But at least hear her out.
And I was like, okay, all right, you're right.
Hang up the phone, I call Candice.
She picks up the phone, I go, hey, she goes, who's 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 goes, I do.
I said, what can I do for you?
She goes, you can turn yourself in.
I go, well, that's not gonna happen.
I said, what else do you need?
And she said, I think that you should think
about turning yourself in.
I said, why?
Well, what am I looking at?
She goes, 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.
I said, that's not good enough.
I said, I'm not stupid enough to turn myself in
and I hope for the best.
So she says, well, let's talk about this.
And I said, well, what am I looking at?
And she goes, I don't really know.
I can't really, I can't tell you that.
And I said, well, then we don't really have
anything to talk about.
She goes, well, wait a second.
She said, hold on, let me call the US attorney.
Maybe we can work something out.
So she calls the US.
So I said, okay, I'll call you back.
And she said, well, give me your phone number.
I'll call you.
And I went, no, no, no.
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 triangulating
this phone call right now or something, you know?
And she goes, oh, give me a break.
She goes, you're not that important.
And I remember thinking, who do you think you are?
Like, right, you're just some little fraudster guy
running around, you know?
Like, you're not a terrorist, you know?
And I almost, I almost was like, oh, 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 on.
I said, no, you know what?
I said, I'm gonna hang up the phone.
I'm gonna turn it 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 go immediately
to the place where I had been.
Damn.
Oh, listen, yeah, I mean-
They work fast.
Yeah, she's-
And 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 my vehicle
and I leave, but who knows?
I don't know if they showed up 30 minutes late.
I don't know.
I could have hung out.
Like, oh, I'm just gonna finish my food,
could have shown up.
So I go, I call her back an hour or two later.
She says, listen, the first time he wasn't,
he hadn't gotten back with her.
Then he did.
Then he came back.
He said, seven years, he's gotta 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 that happened, like in Atlanta,
like in 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 in Atlanta?
And she's like, look, you don't wanna do that.
You don't wanna do that.
Well, because that would have been the Secret Service
would have gotten credit if I'd walked in there, right?
So, 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, well, 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, no, 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 ended up going to Charlotte,
drop off the U-Haul van,
go to my, I would have actually brought it back
to the dealer.
Like, it's not like I abandoned, 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, by this point, it's been five, six days.
So I know they've tracked 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's like five,
it's one of those four, five, six story apartment,
those are parking things that stack up.
So I go into this underground, it's not underground,
but whatever, this parking garage thing.
So I go in, I'm on like the third floor or something.
I look at my car and I get in my car.
And I remember as soon as I drove out of the parking garage,
I was like, whew, I'm good.
So I can go ahead and pull across the street
and stop at Starbucks.
So I stop at Starbucks.
I walk into 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 none.
And I remember thinking this is like the fifth of the month.
I hadn't paid my rent.
I hadn't been there.
I thought that it makes sense.
Maybe they, like I'm picturing an eviction notice
or a three-day notice on my door or something.
And I'm like, okay.
And then one of them bolts out the back.
The woman, there's a guy and a girl,
the woman runs out the back.
He's standing there staring at me.
I get my venti vanilla latte.
I get my little, I get my froufrou drink.
So I got my froufrou drink.
I walk out, I get into the car.
He follows me.
Get in the car.
I set everything up.
I put my seatbelt 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.
I look in the rear view 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.
I wasn't like a TJ hooker where I jumped over the,
slid across the hood and they didn't catch the car
and hang on the back.
But you know, so they're running and I boom, hit it.
Did you spill the cough here?
No, because it was one of those little things.
It was actually nice, but it just sounded.
You were making it sound like you were pretty calm.
What, you're panicking here?
I was terrified.
Yeah.
Terrified.
So you're under fear.
You still operate like calmly.
Yeah, I operate.
It's funny you say that because 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.
The guy was 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
or after the 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 were 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, you know, in the future.
And it was US Marshals.
All right, so.
Sounds pretty dramatic to me.
US Marshals running towards your car.
You pull, I mean, you know, but it's all right.
It's hard not to tell it like it's dramatic.
I understand.
But it's like-
There's not much traffic.
It was okay.
Yeah, it's not like their, 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.
Did you consider giving up there or no?
No, all I could think of was,
listen, my instinct is get out, is go, go, go, go, go, go.
You're already on the run.
I'm already in trouble.
It's not like they're gonna be, they're gonna,
they're gonna add anything.
Although to be honest, you know,
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 it, I think, what were you thinking?
But there were three homeless guys
that were in their early 30s,
and they were all Caucasian.
That's hard to find.
So trust me, I've looked,
spent hours before finding these guys.
So that's like the golden thing you're looking for
is white guys in their 30s.
Right, because I was in my 30s.
I wasn't an old man like I am now.
So I survey 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 Kinko's.
There used to be, they used to be called Kinko's, but.
I remember Kinko's.
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'd give you like 100 business cards.
So I go get 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 a name.
One of the guys' name that I surveyed was,
his actual name was Joseph Marion Carter Jr.
I went by Carter.
So I get business cards made of 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 planning on going to an apartment,
but I'm still, I don't have an ID.
I don't have anything.
I'm wondering, what am I gonna do?
How am I gonna get a place to stay?
I'm gonna stay in a hotel.
What am I doing?
I'm using an ID that the cops are looking for.
So as I'm driving, 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 pull in, jump out of the car
and I said, hey, is 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 work for a company,
Manufactured Funding Group, boom, ham thing.
I said, I've been in Europe for the last,
I forget what I said.
I said, England, I had some little town outside of London
and whatever, Dexter, London for the past five years.
I don't really have any credit, but I said,
I can put down a double the security deposit
or 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 take the first month's rent and deposit.
And he said, now go get a lease right now.
And I said, okay.
And I said, oh, okay.
Filled out a lease right then, gave me the keys.
Like, nice, like very trusting in that town.
Oh yeah, but there must've been also something about you
where you're just, got a nice car.
I know you're going to get a lot of comments
that say white privilege, but I think the charisma
has something to do with it.
Well, so he gave, I appreciate that.
So he gave me the keys.
Listen, I ordered all of Joseph Carter's vital information.
Like all of his birth certificate, social security card,
everything that night from like a Kinko's 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 wifi everywhere.
So I ordered the stuff.
It shows up a couple of days later.
I take that information.
I go and I get a driver's license.
We're talking about within like seven or eight days,
I've got a driver's license in his name.
I get in 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.
Wasn't brand new, it was a couple of years old.
But from like CarMax, within two weeks,
I am completely 100% set up.
I start dating for three, four months.
That gets really boring.
Where again?
Nashville?
Nashville.
Okay, got it.
So I started dating a bunch of chicks
and then I ended up meeting this one girl.
By the way, are you lonely here?
Cause you're on the run?
Listen, 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 always so concerned
and looking over my shoulder and it wasn't, I wasn't.
Keep in mind, 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 pulled over, like I'm not concerned.
So your confidence just was over the top here.
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 a US Marshall.
Right, right.
You could start believing that it's impossible to catch you.
That is exactly what it is.
Every time I just kept getting more and more emboldened,
more and more cocky, arrogant.
Like they're not going to catch, I'm too good.
Which is great until they catch you.
And so I meet a girl named Amanda Gardner.
Well, what I ended up doing is,
just keep in mind, I've only got 100,000 or so.
So I go and I start buying houses in the area,
in this area called JC Napier next to,
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,
one to 205, that sort of thing.
Same thing.
And I refinance the house as 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 three and a half million dollars
and I'm buying houses.
Now I'm buying houses, recording the value.
I started all over.
I borrow like whatever, three and a half million dollars.
I meet Amanda.
We move in together.
We're buying-
Do you tell her?
Do you tell her?
She kind of, what she knew was that it's odd, right?
I have no photographs.
Everything I own is brand new.
She's like, 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, it's every stick of clothing is brand new.
You don't have old pairs of jeans.
Do you tell her stories about the past or anything?
Is there a fabricated-
The initial, initially there 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.
Started doing very well.
I got bought out by household bank.
I have a non-compete clause.
I got, 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, I'm gonna start renovating houses.
But that, 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, it's just like, ah, shit.
So at some point I basically just said to her,
look, I'm, listen, at one point I had to have a check cut.
I refinanced the house, right?
And I had like, I wanna say, I'm gonna say something like,
it might've been 30,000, but let's say 20,000.
I had a $20,000 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 provide,
I provide different things.
And I knew, I need names of people to cut these things to.
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 goes,
oh, you had a refinance?
She goes, how'd that thing go?
You're refinancing.
I go, oh, thank God you said that.
Boom, I said, I need you to deposit this.
Get a check for 20,000.
She's like, I can, I can go tomorrow and I can deposit it.
And I'm like, no, no, I'm like, look, it's fine.
Just deposit it.
So I can get, as soon as it clears,
I'll get you a 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 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, people know you,
like your general contractor,
which I met four months before.
This guy, six months before, two months before.
She's like, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-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, I go, well, that's identity theft.
And she was like, what do you mean?
I said, well, my name's not,
my name's not, it's not Joseph Carter.
And what is your name?
I go, look, it's, you don't need,
don't even worry about it.
This is what's happening.
This is where I'm at.
This has been months into the relationship.
I mean, this is, or I'd 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, you know, I had the other day,
in this conversation, the other day I opened up
the Popsicle box and there's cash.
And I'm like, so I kind of explain it,
but I had a feeling she's not gonna,
she's gonna be okay with this, you know?
So she was okay.
She was okay with it.
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.
That's a doozy.
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 you're like, to be honest,
you're not a violent criminal.
So it's like, you know.
But she didn't know my name.
Like she was like, she, and I told her, 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 in mind too, this girl,
oh, your car's broken?
Or your car's not doing well?
Take it and trade it in.
We'll go get you another car.
We'll go get you an Infiniti 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.
We're renovating houses.
We're building brand new houses.
We're buying lots.
Like she's like in the middle of this, like, 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 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.
And Trina is semi lesbian?
So.
Is this like a sexual thing?
Yeah.
Or actual relationship?
No, it's more like a,
she's coming over a couple of times a week.
Okay.
So we've got a ton of tons going on.
And,
how do you 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, outran marshals.
Although then 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, bro.
That's huge.
Suddenly Chicago Tribune's running a series,
The Fugitives.
I'm in Bloomberg Businessweek.
They run an article called Sharks in the Housing Pool.
Then you've got a Fortune Magazine
that comes out with the thing, because by now, guess what?
Becky's been caught.
Oh, 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, hey, there you go.
No.
Oh no, she told on me immediately.
Oh, she did.
Oh no.
It's fine.
She did the right thing.
So here's what's funny about that.
I don't know about that.
She, here's what she says.
Loyalty is everything in this world, my friend.
That you and I disagree on.
I just took off.
I just took off.
Still.
On her and left her with, listen,
with like six or like five or $600,000
is what I left her with.
It's not all about money, Matthew.
It's also about just like, you know, ride or die.
There's a meaning to that.
Oh my God.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
So she told, she said everything.
Well, here's what, when I say gangster,
when she gets caught.
Yeah.
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 gonna open like a salon or something.
So she's in there cutting hair in a class, you know,
on a mannequin 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 their 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.
And they put her in the car
and they're driving the whole way.
She goes, 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.
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, 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 Don Juan 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.
That's when she got caught ultimately.
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?
And her mom, bipolar, I just wanna see my daughter.
I'm gonna call the secret service.
I'm doing the right thing.
And honestly, she isn't doing the right thing.
So you're getting more and more famous nationally.
Right, so I've got all these houses.
You're having threesome with Amanda and Trina.
And what ends up happening is we ended up going on,
and listen, Amanda and I, we've gone on.
We've gone to Greece, Italy, Croatia.
Croatia, we're going on multiple, just multiple trips.
And we'd just gotten back from like a 10 day cruise
of the Greek Isles.
And we get home and Amanda goes online
and there's a blog about Dateline,
about one of their new specials called the Thief of Hearts.
And that's me.
Apparently I'm the Thief of Hearts.
And I'm apparently going around and I'm,
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.
And it's going to be released in a few, in a month or so.
So I'm terrified.
I've at this point, I've been on the run three years
and I'm like, I mean, there's lots of things
I could care less about.
Fortune, I don't know anybody that reads Fortune.
Bloomberg, come on, I hang out with,
I'm hanging out with contractors and laborers
and I'm not hanging out with these guys.
So local news, who cares?
Even local news channels, I don't care.
But Dateline, there weren't 400 channels back then.
So Dateline 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 five years,
10 years from now, they might rerun it again.
My face is going to be on it.
So I could be perfectly fine five years from now
in one day, the barista that I go to every other day,
it looks at Dateline and goes, oh my God,
that's Mr. Johnson or that's Mr. Thomas or whatever.
So the point is, is that I was like, I got to go,
I can't stay here, I got to get out of the country.
So I was going to 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, no, I'm 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'll start pulling out money as quick as we can.
I'm asking guys, laborers, guys that I work with,
my general contractor, my real estate agent,
hey man, can you cash this check for six grand?
Nobody says no, everybody, yeah, no problem, no problem.
Few guys like, yeah, man, if you give me 10%,
yeah, I'll give you 10%.
So 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 like what 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 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 arrest me.
So it's a little bit longer than that,
but that's a short version of me getting arrested.
And I've probably skipped over a whole bunch of-
It's so simple because you've gotten away
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.
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 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 deserve loyalty.
I don't think so.
I'm ripping people off,
and she's thinking that her friend is in danger.
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 a concealed weapons permit,
but I had gotten 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 used that to say,
they said, oh, he had a concealed weapon permit?
Okay, well, then he's armed and dangerous.
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.
That's what he's gonna do to your friend.
So she negotiated.
Also, I think she got 10,000, which is 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 arrest me.
They bring me downtown.
What did you feel like when you got-
I didn't feel good, bro.
It was bad.
It was a bad day.
It was a bad day.
First of all,
Casino Royale was coming out on Friday.
It was the first Daniel Craig as James Bond.
Yeah.
And the whole week I'd been telling Amanda,
I'm gonna go see Casino Royale.
She'd go, okay, well, on Saturday,
we're gonna go to the festival.
I go, that's fine.
But on Friday, Christina, and she's like, right,
Casino Royale.
And then she's like, okay, by the way,
on Thursday, I thought we could go to dinner.
That's fine.
But on Friday, Casino Royale.
And when they put the handcuffs on,
you remember the first thing I thought of?
I'm not gonna fucking sit to see Casino Royale.
I'm not gonna get to see it.
Not gonna see it.
And I saw it about five, six years later
on the institution's movie channel.
It was nice.
It's not the same, but yeah.
So they bring me to Nashville.
Then they transport me to all over the place.
I go on Con Air.
They fly me to Oklahoma.
They fly me to Atlanta.
Then I go to Atlanta.
I'm placed in the U.S. Marshal's holdover.
I get assigned an attorney, go in front of the judge,
plead not guilty, meet with my attorney.
You always plead not guilty.
Whenever these people say,
can you believe that he plead not guilty?
That's the first thing.
Nobody walks in and pleads guilty.
You plead not guilty
while you kind of figure out what you're gonna do.
So I plead not guilty.
There's no bond, obviously.
They caught me.
When they caught me, I had four or five passports.
So that's no good.
They charged me with bank fraud, conspiracy,
commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud.
Passport fraud, conspiracy, or what was it again?
Aggravated identity theft, money laundering,
use of a fraudulent passport.
And there's like 30 counts of this, 20 counts of this,
20, but none of that matters.
Like even if you just took the, dropped all the counts
to one count and stacked them,
it's like 150-something years.
Not that they're-
So everything they could-
Yeah, and that's what they always say.
You're looking at 150,000.
And your lawyers, they're like this.
You're not looking at that.
You're looking at 54 years.
What?
That's no better.
That's no better.
So, yeah, so my lawyer comes in and sees me one day,
like our first meeting.
And she says, I'm Millie Dunn.
And she says, listen, I've looked at everything.
For first they say, you're responsible for,
it's like 25 or 26, or 30, 25 or $26 million in loss.
I've never, that's not true.
That's not true.
And I was like, not even, I said, not even potential law.
There's just no way.
I mean, there's no way.
And then they come back, she comes back and she says,
well, they're saying 19 million.
Now, it's not possible.
Tell you anything I didn't know.
So when the FBI is 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 she gets them to drop like the 40.
Like that's his brokers.
That's this, that's that, drop it.
And they're like, he's so done.
It doesn't matter.
They dropped that.
So it ends up being like 15 million.
And then it's down to, what does he owe?
They said 9.5 and I got it down like 6 million.
So, which I'm good for.
So, what ends up happening is they've charged me
with all these things and she's like, okay,
you can plead guilty and you can go
with the sentencing guidelines, which is gonna be like,
she's like, I mean, it depends.
She said, it might be whatever, 54 years.
If they run them concurrent or consecutive,
depending on which one they do,
she said, 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 try and figure out what I'm looking at.
Now, as we go through the whole thing,
we end up, she ends up with, she ends up saying,
she knocks off a bunch of stuff that they're saying I did.
You know, enhancements.
Cause you all have a base level of let's say a level eight.
You know, that should be maybe a few years,
but then they start adding on enhancements, you know.
Did what he do, was it sophisticated?
Yes, okay, three levels for sophisticated means.
Were there 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'm in like a 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-sentence 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.
It 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 gotta cooperate.
And I was like, okay.
And she said, because you're guilty,
you're extremely guilty.
She was like, you can't go to trial.
And she said, so you need to cooperate.
I was like, well, what do I get if I cooperate?
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, part of the problem is she said,
everybody in Tampa has cooperated.
Rebecca has cooperated.
Everyone across the board has cooperated.
There's nobody that hasn't cooperated.
By the way, when you say cooperating,
you mean they're an informed, they told,
they said, AKA snitched.
Right, 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.
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 there's like probably 20 people that are involved,
but there's like 12 of them that are.
So I've got all these names,
KB, DL, CY, 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 plead 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 sentenced her and 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 her
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.
Is there like a tour I can take?
Because I like to know where I'm going
and what it's going to be like, how I should prepare.
And they just started laughing.
They said, there's no tour, sweetie.
We'll give you the tour when you get here.
You got to love that.
Like she, I mean, I thought I was,
I didn't think, I thought I wasn't prepared.
There's no tour.
So 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 that.
Because she cooperated that term.
Right.
Do you want to say snitch or ratted?
Well, there must be, I mean,
snitch is too harsh of a word, but yeah, the ratted.
I mean, you're saying, I don't know.
Well, we can get there.
We'll get there.
All right, all right.
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.
No, that's not true.
I could have been a gangster.
I don't need to be a gangster in this case.
Like a standup guy, I could have said, I'll just take it.
Give me 54 years, go fuck yourself.
I'm not going to 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'm not doing it.
I don't want to do 30 years.
I was hoping for, 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 my lawyer asked me,
what do you really think you deserve?
And I thought, I deserve 10 years.
I deserve 10 years.
But so she said, look, they want to talk to you.
So the FBI, well, first the secret service flies in.
They come in and they interview me.
Who's more terrifying, FBI, secret service?
You know, the secret service
was so overwhelmingly professional.
The FBI, and really only one of the FBI agents
that interviewed me.
I don't know how he's an agent.
I don't know.
He was just ineffective, incompetent.
Oh, so it's a competence issue.
The other one was Candace.
Oh, you met her eventually.
Of course I did.
Of course.
She's 5'11", wearing three inch heels.
She's a giant and in 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, what'd you think of her?
And I'm like, what, why?
I was like kind of aggressive.
They go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's a bulldog.
I mean, all of them are like, yeah, yeah.
She's something else.
Secret service is a little bit more like,
very personal, 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 come and they fly in
and they meet with me for three, four days.
One of the funny things is that
when I first sat down with them,
the one guy's name was Dan,
like Brosnaskowski or something.
So he sits down and he says, look, before we get started,
we need to talk about something.
And I said, well, he said, we know you've hidden money.
And we, you know, I was like, what?
And he goes, you know, we know you've got money hidden.
I said, I don't have any money hidden.
What are you talking about?
And my lawyer's like, do we need to talk?
I'm like, no, no, no, no, I don't have nothing.
I gave you everything.
I gave 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 IDs,
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 Holcomb.
And I went, did you call the bank?
He says, yeah, we called the bank.
I went, okay, did anybody call you back?
And they said, well, no, we've left several messages.
I said, did you go to the bank website?
He goes, yeah, I went to the website.
I said, what'd you think?
And he went, what do you mean?
I said, it was bank website.
I said, yeah, but it was professional, right?
It was like a professional website.
And he goes, it's a bank website.
I go, yeah, but it was well done.
And he goes, oh God.
And I go, yeah, convincing.
And 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.
And I was like, yeah, it's an illusion.
The bank statements, he's like,
they're color bank statements.
I'm like, yeah, well, no shit.
So there's no, I said, a matter of fact,
I said, who did you leave?
I haven't paid for the service in months.
And he turned around and he called it
and it went, it was disconnected.
And I was like, how do you not know that's a bank?
Well, it 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,
for a split second there,
I was kind of like really embarrassed that they caught me.
I was like, believe this, you're the secret service.
Anyway, I talked to them.
I, you know, 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 raided my house, they've got boxes and boxes.
So it's laid out.
We still, it took forever.
Like 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, like questions?
Yeah, it was like, they questioned me for all day.
And then they take me back to the marshal's 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.
Be charismatic.
It was part of the games you played.
Are they good at conversation?
I mean, they're, you know,
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 manipulate you?
I'm not, I'm not holding anything back.
Okay.
I'm not, it's not like I'm sparing Jim.
You know, trust me, Jim's got to go.
I mean, you're looking at,
you're there 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 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 time
where an inmate got a guarantee
to have his sentence reduced.
And it was signed by the head of the FBI.
It was 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
with both the secret service and the FBI.
So FBI was, Candice was irritated, didn't like me.
And I remember when I, she took the cuffs off.
I was like rubbing my wrist.
She goes, your wrist hurt?
And I go, yeah.
And she goes, get used to it.
I mean, she was just an asshole, just all around.
Not that she didn't have a right to be,
but everybody else was professional, you know?
So,
Oh, Candice.
So we talked for three or four days with the FBI.
And they asked a ton of questions.
They brought a ton of, they brought documents.
So it's like, hey, who signed this?
It's like, oh, that's not my signature.
That's so-and-so's signature.
Or I signed that, I signed that, I signed that.
That's so-and-so.
Where'd this check go?
Who is this?
Oh, 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 seems 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 our, the lots.
We bought like a hundred vacant lots in Ybor City.
And I wanted them all, they were all single family.
We wanted them zoned 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 stuff.
That's pretty, I mean.
That's a whole nother thing.
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 Redd donate $500 to Kevin White?
Why did Brandon Green donate?
Why did Alan Duncan donate?
Why did, and so I had explained to him,
oh yeah, well, he was,
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,
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.
Can I take a small tangent here and ask,
how many politicians do you think commit crimes
are a little bit or a lot criminals?
I mean, I think there's some ways that are,
they're seemingly legal.
The aforementioned gray area.
Well, that's not gray.
This guy was, at one point,
I couldn't find anybody to write $500 checks anymore.
So I just gave him cash.
I'm just handing him seven, $8,000, $10,000 in cash.
But I think most of them have legal ways
to make ungodly amounts of money for influence.
But is it legal?
No, they're 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.
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 these 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 at trial, I couldn't get more than 30.
Well, more than 32 years, because you can't get life.
32 was the max, it's just a mistake.
He said 32 years to 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, might as well 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 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 lawyer 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 too, prior to this,
a month or two prior to this,
the US attorney had called Millie and said,
look, Dateline, Dateline had already come out, by the way.
Remember, I was worried about Dateline coming out.
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 wanna recut it
with interviews with him.
Well, Gail McKenzie, 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 Dateline,
we'll consider it substantial assistance.
And Millie says, you have to do it.
By the way, what's the idea behind that?
You serve as a warning for others or something like that?
Yeah, exactly, you become a cautionary tale,
don't let this happen to you.
So I go and I'm interviewed by Dateline.
Keith Morris, or whatever his name is, that guy.
Mr. Kochwarsh, that guy.
So he comes and he interviews me.
Becky's interviewed, I'm interviewed,
Amanda's interviewed, Allison is interviewed.
The Secret Service agent, I think, is interviewed.
Everybody, prosecutor's interviewed.
It's funny, at the time, when I watched it,
I was like, that's not true, and that's not true,
and that, and it honestly 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 Dateline?
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, you have to really,
the meaning of words is so important.
I'm going to use that at some point.
I will consider, I'll consider it.
I considered it?
Stop.
So, and still feel the same.
So she calls me, I'm crushed.
And she's like, but look, 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 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 arrests 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 these 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.
Millie was a great attorney.
She was always polite to me.
And by the way, to this day, we'll answer my phone call.
Most public defenders, you call them now,
you call them after your sentence,
they don't answer your call.
Great person.
Thank you, Millie.
I didn't give her anything to work with.
It's like, I'm overwhelmingly guilty.
It's like, there's no defense.
So I ended up getting sentenced 26 years.
That's a lot of years.
I would like to tell you that they,
when they gave me the time,
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.
You've never seen anyone cry like this in your life.
I was just, how did I get 26?
What did I do to get 26 years?
Like murderers, rapists.
I've met guys that kidnapped guys that got 15.
26.
So yeah, I was scared.
Does the Pope wear a funny hat?
Of course I was scared, terrified.
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 in 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, 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 penitentiaries.
And so I get moved to the medium.
I'm moved to the medium not because,
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 someone's feelings once.
But other than that, I'm not gonna be 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 am 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 guy's getting stabbed.
The very first day people are being stabbed.
I get locked into, you go to my cell, meet my celly.
They scream lockdown.
Somebody got stabbed in the rec yard.
I remember I asked that my celly,
which I met 20 minutes earlier.
I was like, what's, he's like,
hey, we gotta get in the cell.
I was like, what's going on?
He said, somebody got stabbed in the yard.
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 gotta get out of here.
So anyway, I go to the medium, I'm there.
Like what was 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 marshal, they're holdovers,
but they're really county jails.
They just keep you with the federal guys.
So I'm not mixed in with like hobos and people like that.
Like I'm mixed in with the federal people.
It's already felt like a prison?
Yeah, it's a prison.
I mean, it's jail, but it's a prison.
Unless you've been locked up,
you don't really know the difference.
So it's a jail, jails 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 to prison, bro.
And I was like, why does everybody keep saying that?
Like prison's worse than this, bro.
Like I saw a shank, saw a shank.
Like it's horrible.
And they're like, bro, prison?
Listen, prison, I can walk the rec yard.
I could go to the movie room, watch movies.
Listen, within right after count,
for this four o'clock count, they count everybody at four.
So they are like, right after count,
I'm gonna go to 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 a prison.
Like, that sounds nice.
I'd love, I'd like an ice cream.
Yeah, but there was a stabbing in the first day.
Yeah, well, you know, 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.
You know, and honestly, I was, very quickly,
I was walking on the rec 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 exactly what you think
of prison as being.
But it feels like a fundamentally different experience
when it's 26 years and the door locks and.
Yeah, so I, yeah, I have a celly.
And, but I'm also, they sent me to a prison
where guys have, tons of guys have 30, 40, 50 years,
you know, life sentences.
There's gangsters there.
There's murderers.
There's serial killers.
There's, you know, really bad guys.
There's, you know, there's guys that are, you know,
trying to take advantage of guys, right?
You know, like sexually?
Yeah.
But by the time I got there, I'd heard all 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, you know, 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, you know?
Attract a white dude.
Yeah, it's a problem.
It's a problem.
This, it's bad.
It's all bad.
Well, it's good in the outside world, but bad in prison.
You know, yeah, my fear was there.
Make me shave my head to make sure
that the mop wig fits 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 coming.
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 just 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, 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, bro.
Like they all think they're gonna get out and flip houses.
So I started, you know, from the fundamentals,
I talked about credit, how to borrow,
how hard money lenders, different types of bar,
like everything.
And, you know, guys are walking,
it's the first time in my life, this was funny.
Not that I think I was really ever 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 roll,
multiple guys are stopping and saying, yo bro,
I'm putting their hand out and 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?
I go, what do you mean?
My celly's telling me he's gonna get out
and make millions.
I'm taking Cox's real estate class.
I'm telling you, I can do this.
I'm gonna 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?
So 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
and you're not scared and you're not,
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
and I do the whole thing, these guys like they loved it.
So I was, and 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 wanna go, you don't wanna be here,
you just want it cause your counselor's making you
get a certificate, you don't wanna 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 of coffee and creamer
cause 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, which is like a huge sign of respect, by the way,
cause they don't owe 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, the FBI starts showing up,
asking me questions.
They asked me questions about the politician I bribed,
asked me questions about him.
Statute of Limitations was up and they were trying
to tie him into the bank fraud
cause his name was Kevin White
and one of my guys' name was Michael Kevin White.
And so they were trying to tie him in.
Did he know about it?
Cause if he knew about it,
Statute of Limitations is 10 years.
We could, no, he didn't know.
Should have thrown him in there.
But anyway, cause like a couple of years later,
he gets indicted, he ends up going to jail anyway.
It could have decreased your sentence.
Yeah, listen, listen, stop, stop.
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,
cause 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 interviewed 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, the hole, 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?
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 when he told you that it's actually
a much higher percentage.
Right, he goes, but 90%, he said,
but 100% of them are lying about it.
He said, you just came out in the newspaper.
I go, man, I'm not concerned.
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, 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.
Guy comes to me, he has a goatee and he's got a,
it comes down here and he's got a skull,
like a little skull thing he'd made,
whittled out of wood or something.
And definitely looks scary.
But so I'm walking and he stopped and he goes,
I've never talked to these guys.
I'd been there for a year or so
and never talked to any of these guys.
They're all like bikers and Aryan brotherhood.
And so I'm like, yeah, what's up?
He said, Bubba, Bubba's their leader.
He goes, Bubba told me to tell you not to walk the yard.
He don't want to see you out in the yard.
And I went, okay.
I said, well, I'm going to walk the yard tonight.
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 skull
hanging off his beard?
I did, but you know what?
It was right in front of the guard shack.
And so there was guards in the guard shack.
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,
laid down, a couple of 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.
A guy might walk up and just smash me in the head,
but it didn't happen.
And it's not the 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, and I wasn't rude to him.
He wasn't even rude to me, really.
He said, don't walk the yard anymore, Bubba,
I didn't want you to walk in the yard.
I said, well, listen, I'm gonna go to chow
and then I'm gonna 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 gonna be there.
And if that happens, then 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.
And he goes, 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.
Bubba and a group of his guys stood there and looked at us.
And as we walked, probably closest we got to him
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 Bubba would walk up
and tell the other guys at the table,
I wanna let you guys know,
he didn't even call me a snitch.
He said, you're sitting with a cooperating witness.
He said, if that's how you wanna roll,
he said, you ain't gonna be rolling with us
if there's any trouble.
And then they all kind of looked at me
and they 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 he could be.
Whatever you wanna say about Bubba,
he was a respectful man.
You ever talk to him directly?
Never had a conversation with him.
So that went on.
But I mean, when I say that went on,
I mean, literally like that's a couple of times.
He said the same thing to a guy in line one time.
Guy came up to me later and said, look, man,
but I'm sorry, Matt.
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, Matt, I'm sorry, bro,
but you know, 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 ended up getting,
well, the FBI started showing up there at the prison,
questioning me about my files in Tampa,
the room of the 12 guys that were indicted.
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 ended 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, 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's 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 goes, I'll do that, but that's not going to happen.
We're going to get the indictments and everything.
I was like, okay.
So of course, a year later,
she shows up after nothing happens
and they've dropped the case.
She shows up and she tells me what happened
and he's not going to do it.
I go, do you remember that you,
she goes, I got the letter right now, gave me the letter.
She was like, that's it, great letter.
It says, Mr. Cox has worked, blah, blah, blah.
He's done this, this is great.
And even said, he deserves a reduction in my opinion,
blah, blah, blah.
But there's nobody was arrested.
So I call my public defender.
I call Millie, I explain it to her
and she starts crying and she's sorry
and well, what are we going to do?
Well, there's nothing you can do.
You're time barred.
Like 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'd 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 write it,
I write it and then I have to rewrite it.
Couldn't really know what I'm doing.
And I'd 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 Devaroli.
Ephraim Devaroli and his business partner,
a guy named David Pakows,
were selling munitions, AK-47 rounds,
really tons of munitions,
but they got in trouble with this.
And they were selling them to the US government
for the Afghani security forces.
And there had been an article in Rolling Stone magazine
about him and I'd read it.
And somebody points him out and says,
hey, that's that guy.
And I went up to him and said,
hey, bro, you just got here?
He's like, yeah.
And 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.
Do you need any help?
He's like, yeah, all right.
Ephraim Devaroli was played by Jonah Hill
in the movie War Dogs.
So a few months later, he comes to me and says,
hey, they sold the movie rights.
I was like, oh wow, that's great.
And I'm like, 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 going to be Spicoli
from Fast Time at Ridgemont High.
You're going to be a joke.
All because you don't want to 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, 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.
So he asked me if I'll 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 on a small tangent,
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 them in the car.
I liked 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.
And I wrote a book, put it in my desk
and the FBI found it and they'd 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 or him.
But it's still kind of interesting that
it was kind of John Grisham didn't.
Right.
I mean, if John Grisham did something similar
to what one of the.
I saw a quote somewhere that the criminal
is the true artist and the detective is merely a critic.
Something like that.
Does that resonate with you or not?
I'll have to look that up.
So you already knew you could write.
Well, I knew I liked it, but yeah,
I think I got better and better at it.
As you're writing and they had creative writing classes
in prison at the low.
The low was a much different breed of animal.
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.
With knives.
So anyway, 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 rapid cycling bipolar
with features of schizophrenia.
Rapid cycling bipolar with features of schizophrenia.
Rapid cycling.
It's just constant, right?
And so there are moments in his manic state
where 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, disbarred,
stole close to $200 million from the federal government
and 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.
This doesn't say a ton for legal community, but.
How do you 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, there's a ton of, a ton.
And then if you saw him in action,
he'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'd go,
that makes me so angry, I can't,
I'm not gonna 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 gonna need your transcripts.
I'm gonna need a 2255 form, we're gonna file up.
And it would just, and everybody would sit there
and be like, okay, Frank, I'll get this and I'll get.
It was insane, it was the most 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, it's like a law school, right?
Like he's teaching these guys.
He, listen, they made such a mistake locking this guy up.
So he's a great lawyer.
Listen, it's gonna get worse, it'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 looking at me
like this guy's delusional, I know.
It works, whatever works.
So at some point, one of my buddies comes to me
and says, look, you gotta 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 this.
Keeps them busy.
But suddenly you start hearing people get released.
Jimmy just got 10 years knocked off his sentence.
He's going to Halfway House next month.
Tom got an immediate release.
Frank's walking people up to R&D shaking their hands.
The guys are walking up to him in tears crying.
And so, you know, crazy or not, what choice do I have?
I called three different lawyers on the street
and said, this is what happened, what can I do?
What can I do?
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 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'd love to take your money, Mr. Cox,
but it's not going to happen.
I can't, I'm not just going to take your money,
you're going to lose.
Three different lawyers, I talked to 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 talked to him.
Based on your case.
Yes, I won't let this happen.
He's like, I'm going to need your transcripts.
I'm going to need you to get this.
I need to see your indictment.
I'm going to need your pre-sentence report.
I'm going to need, he's like, okay.
And I turned to my buddy.
He's like, bro, I know, I know what you're thinking.
It's fine, it's fucking crazy.
And he's like, I understand, just what choice do 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 I could get a reduction
simply for doing Dateline.
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 interviewed.
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 the government and 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 ethics and fraud course.
I write an ethics and fraud course.
The guy I write the course with, he flies up to Atlanta.
He talks with, I think he drove up,
but he goes up to Atlanta.
He talks with a US attorney, 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 goes, every time they asked you to do something,
it reset the time bar.
You have a year from that time to file a 2255.
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, 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 forth.
This goes back and forth 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,
filing a Rule 35, reducing my sentence.
And I, you know, I'm like, I read it,
but I couldn't even understand.
Like, well, I don't understand.
So, I mean, I rushed to go find Frank.
I show it to Frank, and he says,
he says, yeah, they're staying it.
They're gonna send you a lawyer,
and you're gonna negotiate
for how much they're gonna reduce your sentence.
He says, perfect.
So, they fly this woman down.
Her name was Esther Panitch.
She flies down.
We come to the visitation room.
They bring me there, the lawyer's room,
whatever they call it.
And so, we're sitting there, and I remember we're talking,
and she says, listen, your motion, your 2255,
it's written well, but honestly,
you don't have much of a prayer,
and they're offering you a one-level reduction,
which is 30 months.
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, you know, I mean, I don't know.
I gotta talk to Frank.
Frank said I deserve this many levels,
and we're going back and forth.
She goes, who's Frank?
And I go, Frank's the guy that's doing all my legal work.
She goes, he didn't write all this?
And I was like, no, who wrote it?
And I explain it to her, and she's like, he's an inmate?
And I was like, yeah.
And she's, why is he here?
And I tell her, well,
because 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 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 was gonna,
he could get this done.
And she's like, well, I mean, you know, you don't,
like, 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 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 gonna do.
So, I leave.
I call her a couple days later.
I tell her, and I talked to Frank.
Frank said, go back, go back and argue for more.
He said, I think the judge is gonna give you more.
He's gonna give you at least, you know, between whatever.
He said like six or seven levels or something.
So, 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 ineffective.
You're incompetent, you know, but she knows the game.
She's like, I get it.
She gets on the stand and testifies for me.
So, the judge goes, eh, 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 your sentence.
He goes, that was never gonna happen.
I was like, it felt like I got slapped.
And he said, so I'm gonna go with six levels.
No, no, I'm sorry, he said three levels.
I'm gonna go with three levels.
He goes, 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 why that's his judgment
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he hammered, puts the gavel down and walks off.
That's it, it's over, I got seven years.
And I was hoping for more.
So, I get moved back to Coleman.
I get moved back to Coleman and I go up to Frank.
And I said, Frank, I got seven years off.
And he's like, I know, I know.
I said, I don't mean to sound unappreciative.
I said, I just, I was hoping for more.
He goes, I was too.
He said, it looks like we're gonna have to eat this elephant
one spoonful at a time.
And he goes, something will come out.
Something's gonna happen.
He said, keep your ears open, something will happen.
And I said, okay.
And honestly, by that point, I'd done eight years.
And I remember if I got a year off for 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, I can do that, I'll write.
I'd been writing.
By that point, I'd actually written a story.
I got a book deal for Devaroli.
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 an advance, it's like 3,500 bucks
for being in prison, a prisoner to get a $3,500 advance.
Like, I'm a millionaire.
There's a lot of money.
So, and then we optioned the film rights.
Basically the synopsis that I wrote for this reporter,
journalist for Rolling Stone.
He goes to Rolling Stone 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,
Guy Lawson, Douglas Dodd, which is the name of the kid
I wrote the memoir about, and Matthew Cox.
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 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 a writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
Like you understand, 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 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.
But they optioned 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, oh, they charge you for phone calls,
writing, 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 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, if you look in 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, and I liked Ron.
So we're walking around the compound and he's like,
so what are you gonna do?
I mean, like eight or nine more years to go.
And I was like, eh, I'm gonna keep writing.
And when I get out of here,
maybe I'll have a huge body of work
and maybe I'll be able to 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.
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-defendants.
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, even if they charge those guys
and even if this happens,
they're not gonna reduce my sentence.
They're not gonna cut my sentence.
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.
If you cooperate, they're gonna have to.
And if they don't, we'll have a frank file of 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, they think I hid Ponzi scheme money.
And he'd actually dug up like five or $6 million
in Ponzi scheme proceeds that he'd dug.
He'd buried in these-
Oh, 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.
They're not gonna find anything, so don't worry about it.
And so he mentions it a couple of weeks later,
a couple of weeks later.
And then one day I go, bro,
why do you keep bringing this up?
Like, what are you concerned about?
It's not gonna 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, did you bury it in a can somewhere?
And he's like, no.
He said, I gave my wife like 150,000 in cash.
I said, okay, well, she's not gonna say anything.
She's using it.
He said, no, you don't understand.
Since then, she found out I was having an affair.
And we're gonna 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,
it doesn't matter what you've done for them,
they won't give you anything.
And so he's, I mean, I'm sorry, Secret Service or,
anyway, he has 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 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.
You son of a bitch.
And I went 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.
And they didn't wanna give me a reduction.
My prosecutor was pissed that I got seven years off.
She wanted me to get 30 months.
She's not gonna give me anything.
It's up to her, she's not gonna 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,
I had a manuscript for my book.
And I wanted to put some of the stuff
that was said 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 were gonna, she's like,
oh God, 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 goes, so what else is going on in there?
And this, she never wanted to talk to me.
Like she didn't, when they were paying her,
she didn't wanna talk to me.
And I was like, what do you mean?
Nothing, I just need my transcription.
She's like, nothing's happening?
There's nothing you wanna talk about?
And I was like, and I went, you know what?
You know what?
There's something weird happened.
Listen to this.
And I told her about Ron Wilson.
And she goes, hold on, she looks him up on the computer.
She goes, oh wow, this is a bad guy.
This is a bad guy.
And he told you, then you know where it is?
Absolutely, and I can tell you exactly.
And she goes, okay, okay, okay.
She goes, let me look into this.
I go, okay.
So a week later, a CO comes to me and goes, hey Cox.
And I go, what's up?
He goes, listen, at the next move,
cause 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 though.
There's no running on the compound.
But you can walk fast, yes, to the rec yard
or the library, whatever.
He says, at the next move, go to SIS, you know?
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, 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'd go, no,
I ordered it for him and I'm writing a story.
And I'd already been in Rolling Stone
and everything, they're like, what's the story?
And I tell them the story,
they go, that's a pretty good story, here.
And so I go down there, but this is different.
This, the guy answers the door
and this guy, they call him Bulldog.
He was a real asshole.
He was a lieutenant at SIS and he's like,
come in here, get in here, cocks, sit down.
And he dials the phone and he goes,
here, you gotta talk to this guy.
And I'm like, what?
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.
So I start doing that and they go, okay.
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 it substantial assistance
if they make arrests
or recover a substantial amount of money.
That's the best I'm gonna get, is consider.
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 prison snitch now.
So I'm not just like cooperating, I'm a prison.
So I've moved down.
I've moved down actually
from being just a cooperating witness.
Because you're in prison?
Is that what makes you a prison snitch?
You can't even really say,
no, you could say prison rat.
You can say prison rat.
I think prison snitch.
I think that's probably the closer to the term
that most guys would use.
What's the 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 prison snitch.
I don't know.
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this.
So what happens is 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.
And I go, okay.
And they go, he's like, I don't wanna tell you what it is.
Let us know what happens.
So like two days go by and Wilson comes up to me one day
and says, Cox, Cox.
And I'm like, oh shit.
I'm like, hey, what's up?
And he's like, oh, you're not gonna believe this.
I got indicted.
I was like, what?
What happened?
No.
Yeah.
My wife, they questioned my wife and my brother
and 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 him $250,000 in cash
and a bunch of silver, like gold bullion and silver.
Cause 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.
I'm 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, so I'll tell you something
for the icing on the cake, by the way,
I sound the cake, let me explain one more thing.
So if you're gonna, if somebody cooperates
with the federal government, let's say I get arrested
and they go, you wanna help yourself?
And you go, yeah, okay.
Look, Jimmy is a, he lives next to me
and he's running a meth house, a meth lab, whatever.
And they go and they raid Jimmy and he gets arrested.
You're gonna get something off for that.
Not a lot, but you're gonna get something.
Now, and they could just say,
we were gonna bust him anyway.
We were already onto 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 active, 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 testify.
There's no better cooperation than that.
So when Wilson says to me,
they're gonna move me back to South Carolina.
They've indicted me, they charged 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 call me as a witness
just to let you know.
Cause I don't want you to,
I don't want to walk out of here and have you feeling like,
hey, there's some good to this guy.
So I'm ready to cut Wilson like a fish.
But you are putting yourself in danger
if you get on the 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?
It does, but it also increases my ability
to get more off my sentence.
So what happens is a couple of 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 he's now from 19 and a half to 20 years.
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 point, he's 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 sending them home on an ankle monitor.
Like he's an old man.
He's not gonna 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 even 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 a hundred years,
she got like a hundred hours of community service
or something or 60 hours.
And I think his brother got six months papers.
They got charged with obstruction of justice.
And they didn't, neither one of them,
it's like six months probation and community service.
Nothing.
So when 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, the prosecutor,
both districts, no response.
Then I go to Frank.
I explained to Frank and Frank has known
what's going on the whole time.
And Frank goes, okay, I'm gonna file a 2255.
So we file a 2255.
Government comes back and the first thing they say is,
your 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 may be time barred,
but I'm gonna let the appeals court hear it.
Now, typically you have to get what's called
like a certification to appeal.
You have to make sure that you actually have a case.
He says, I'm waiving the cert
and I'm waiving the $500 fee to file it with them.
He said, and he 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 the way he writes his motion, it's basically saying,
I don't have the jurisdiction to hear it, 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 cert.
So the prosecution immediately comes back.
They file a one level reduction.
And we immediately, Frank files something saying,
hey, stop, we don't want the reduction.
We don't want the one level, we wanna come back to court.
Please don't rule on it.
So the judge says, okay, I'm freezing everything.
I'm putting a stay on everything.
I'm gonna give this guy a lawyer
to try and figure out what you're gonna 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 wanna go back
and fight this and this, but honestly,
I don't think you're gonna get anything more than one level.
I talked to the prosecution.
They said, they'll give you, but she said,
I can work on trying to get you two levels,
but you don't have much of a prayer.
You're gonna get crushed.
And I said, well, then why are you here?
If they can crush me so easy, why don't they do it?
Why would they pay you?
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.
I said, 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 taking 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 incompetent, absolutely.
And Frank said, we want four levels.
He said, for me to tell you, we want four levels.
She goes, okay, she leaves.
She goes to the US attorney, we argue two levels.
They come back and 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, what, you want to turn this into a circus?
Exactly, what do I want to do?
I'm gonna turn it into the biggest circus
because I've already got one level.
They come back and one day she says, listen,
three levels is the best you're gonna get.
She said, so I guess you'll be moved back here.
We'll go to the hearing.
I said, no, no, no, I'll take three levels.
And she goes, what are you talking?
She said, you said four levels.
You said Frank wouldn't let 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 of here in like a year.
So, and I don't want to be moved back.
I don't want to have to get on that bus.
Do you know what it's like 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.
At 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 gonna, insane.
But I can, like, I didn't have a fucking prayer
without that guy.
And as crazy as he is, and much of a pain in the ass
as he was, like, I could never repay him.
And bro, like, I shouldn't be here.
I'm supposed to be in prison right now.
My out date was 2030 without that guy.
Where does he know?
He got himself out.
He didn't do all that time.
He got himself out.
I don't even know how he did it.
They even threw him back in prison again for six months,
and he got himself out again.
He's insane.
He's incredible.
He's insane, but he's incredible.
Is he really that insane?
He's in Orlando.
I mean, he seems like a good lawyer and a good man.
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, 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
it's possible, and he does.
It's interesting.
Well, I think he's willing to badger them
into doing 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.
I mean, literally, it tried to take over the Congo.
I mean, there's a documentary about it.
It's called Nine Days in the Congo.
It's an insane story.
It's one of those stories that's just like,
how is this not a movie?
It's not a movie yet?
No, I've pitched it several times, and it would be great.
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.
But about a year and a half later,
I ended up getting out of prison,
and I went to the halfway house.
What'd that feel like?
Freedom.
I was, oh, this is bad, bro.
This is bad.
I remember when I was leaving the prison.
So I met some great guys in prison,
which is a weird thing to say.
But I 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're just hanging out because we like to laugh,
or we're gonna 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.
It's like nobody talked.
I was so uncomfortable.
It was just, I started crying.
And it wasn't because I was like, oh, it's over.
It was because, it was like survivor's guilt.
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 Truelinks 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, and they charge you every time you use the card.
Like, I don't even have enough to spend the 18 cents,
because the charge is like $3.
So I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was like, I wonder if they'll still give me my debit card.
And I'm laughing.
Everybody's like, what are you gonna eat?
What are you this, what are that?
And my one buddy looked at me and 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.
You know, I said, no, it's cool.
I said, I wanna 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 he was like, well, I think you're gonna need
to buy clothes.
I think that's enough.
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 indigent.
And I said, I'm indigent.
And a couple of 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 have $400 on my account?
And he said, I can't let you go for 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 a Super Bowl, they're huge.
And I go there and I buy a bunch of clothes.
I buy about 300 bucks worth of clothes.
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 Treon, Treon Coulter.
And he owns a gym.
And I grew up with him, his whole family,
like they owned 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 he was gonna give me a job.
He was, bro, you're hired, I'll give you a job.
Minimum wage?
I said, that's fine.
If I can stay out of here,
I can either 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 goes, 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 he calls me periodically.
He's like, have you started a website?
Because 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'd written.
And I was like, no, Pete, I don't, I can't.
Like, I don't have a computer.
He's like, well, how much is a computer?
I was like, I don't know, they're like 300 bucks.
I was like, I don't, I said,
I could probably get a used Apple MacBook,
like a five-year-old MacBook or something.
I don't know, for like $350 or whatever.
And I said, but he was like,
okay, so that's all you need, 300 bucks.
I go, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I said, it's not 300 bucks, bro.
It's 300 bucks, plus it's getting a WordPress website,
which I said costs money.
Plus it's hiring somebody to help me figure it out
because I'm inept.
I don't know how anything works.
So he, okay.
And I said, plus I need this, plus I need that.
I need 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'll get you, okay, I got it.
So he reads off a list, he goes, I got you.
But 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, oh, he's 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.
I'm putting pictures up, I'm trying to figure out
how Photoshop works, all this stuff.
The whole time I wanted to start,
because the last one I was just getting out of prison,
everybody kept telling me like,
bro, you gotta start a podcast,
you gotta start a 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'd 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.
This is what a podcast, you need to read.
Look, true crime's huge.
And you have to think, guys are asking me
every couple of days, Cox, you got any stories?
And I'm like, yeah, did you read Cash and Coke?
And they're like, is that the one where the guys
are robbing the drug dealer?
Yeah, oh no, 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, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm giving these little stories
and then they'd come back and give them to me.
You don't have anything in there, right?
So this is, guys that would never read in their life
are reading.
And I'm writing about the guy in B2, the guy in C1.
So I put up the whole thing.
And well, anyway, they're all telling me
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,
serial and cold case files, that kind of stuff.
And I think that's what I wanna do.
Well, my buddy Treon 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 miles from me.
I see him all the time.
And I went, okay.
And he said, you should email him.
He's got a guy on there all the time that does real estate.
And I go, I just got out of prison for bank fraud
related to real estate.
He doesn't wanna interview me.
He goes, well, you could, maybe he does.
Maybe you could ask him about starting a podcast.
Okay.
So I sent him an email.
I remember Danny called me and he said,
hey, is this Matt Coss?
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, yeah, I got your email, bro.
He was like, that's a good fucking email.
And I was like, what?
He goes, I get a lot of emails, bro.
He said, that is a good one.
He said, that was really good.
I mean, that was well-written.
He's like, I immediately knew I had to talk to you.
And I said, oh, okay.
I said, cause you know, I start off with,
I think I started off with, hey, my name's Matt Cocks
and I'm a con man.
Who was recently released from federal prison.
And so he was like, oh yeah, I mean, who says that?
So anyway, he said, well, what's going on?
I said, well, and I tell him what's going on.
I wanna start a 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.
YouTube's not really like that.
And that's not really how we do it.
And I don't know that you're gonna have to get
a production company and blah, 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.
Shameless, trying to get some content.
Well, I mean, so as I told you offline,
Danny and Concrete Podcast is really good.
So people should definitely listen to it.
But yeah, I mean, it turns out people do like listening
to you, turns out.
I mean, you're good at telling stories.
Well, anyway, by the time I got,
I couldn't do Danny's podcast.
I was like, I can't do it, bro.
I'm in the halfway house.
So maybe I get out of the halfway house
and a couple of months go by.
So maybe two months, three months go by.
And one day I get a phone call from Danny.
He's like, bro, you're out of the halfway house, right?
And I was like, cause I told him I got out in July.
It was like October, 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.
I'd call them five, six times.
You said, and I was like, ah.
I was like, fuck it, I'll do it.
That video got like a 2 million views.
Then I did, Patrick Bette David flew me out.
Then I did soft white underbelly.
Then I did Vlad.
Then I did all, like people started, and I'm sorry.
And then 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 dad 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.
When is the first time he found out
that you were doing fraud?
The first time I got in trouble.
When you got the probation?
Yeah, because I had to kind of explain
that something's happening.
I didn't want him to hear from anybody else.
So you talked to him directly about it?
Super disappointed.
Did he ever tell you he loves you after that?
So after I got the 26 years,
and the government decided they weren't going
to indict anybody, and 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, something happened to my mom.
And as soon as I walked in, he walked in,
I go, where's mom?
And he goes, oh, no, she's fine, she's fine.
And he sat down with me, and he said,
he said, how are you doing?
And I was like, I'm good.
And he was just like, he was getting sick,
he was getting older.
So we talked for a little bit just about the situation.
And I was like, yeah, and he's like,
well, what are you going to do?
And I was like, there's nothing I can do.
Everybody, I've called multiple attorneys,
I've talked to people, there's nothing I can do.
And he was like, well, you're going to figure it out.
You know, he said, you're clever, and you're smart,
and you're not going to do all of that time.
And I was like, I'm done, it's over.
I'm going to 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, that's not going to happen.
So he said, 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 know, you got the look, like he was like impressed.
But we were sitting there, and he said,
I remember he said, because it's 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.
You know, I wish you'd used your talents
for something different, but you've done things
that I could have never done.
And you've led an amazing, adventurous life,
and I'm proud of you.
And that, you know.
I wish he could see you now.
My mom, I know my mom saw 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 her.
My brother and sister would be like,
mom, are you sure you want to go?
Like, you know, it's so hard to, it's such a long drive,
and you get so tired, well, I'll sleep in the car.
I know, but you know, then we have to wait in that,
that, you know, in that, the waiting area, you know,
is 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 and out.
And she was like, she goes,
I'm going to see my son, and you're taking me.
Yeah, so I, so she, yeah, she was something else.
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, oh,
I wouldn't have done that,
and I'd have been a standup 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 motherfucker's 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.
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.
Do you regret?
If you just look 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 always hear these guys say,
I wouldn't change it because it made me the man I am today.
Or the man I am today is a fucking 54-year-old scumbag,
multiple felons, starting my life over, broke,
living off of scraps, trying to make YouTube work.
I've got 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.
You can't even argue with him, he's got a powerful argument.
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 three years old.
I don't want anything to do with him.
I get it, and I've tried to do all the right things.
I wrote the letters, I drew him 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 person.
You know, 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.
And if I wasn't the calculating, backstabbing,
scumbag motherfucker that I can be,
I'd be in prison right now.
Sorry, you know, so yeah, yeah.
I would much rather be a CPA right now.
I would much rather, you know,
should have stuck with being an insurance adjuster
or something, I mean, you know,
I never should have whited that 30-day lay out, never.
That was a mistake.
That was your first mistake.
That was a huge mistake.
You think your son will forgive you?
No.
Unfortunately, according to my ex-wife,
and my sister and everybody,
that he is a part of their lives.
You know, and I've seen him, you know,
my mother's funeral, I saw him, you know.
I've seen him at several functions.
You look across and he looks right through me.
I think that everybody says 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 drop.
Never done any drugs because my dad was an alcoholic.
And my dad smoked two packs a day,
and everything in our house reeked of nicotine.
And I've never smoked.
And my dad was a pill head.
He was always on some kind of prescription medication.
He was, you know, and I didn't want to be that person.
And 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 gonna die on,
and I'm not gonna back off it.
And the thing is, my ex-wife tells him,
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, you know, his dad.
Nick has told him.
Nick came to see me when I was in prison.
You know, Nick has told him like,
hey, this is a mistake, you're making a mistake.
Nick, everybody that knows me knows him.
And 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 in this podcast.
He's 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 them
how to live a life they can be proud of?
I mean, I'm in a position
that anybody would listen to me,
but I, because to me, and I don't have any advice
that 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 happier in prison with nothing
than I was with two or $3 million prior to prison.
And driving, dating a chick
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 miss 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 bad-ass people do in Florida.
My wife-
Hog 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.
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,
we went in the middle of the night,
went to 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 nice.
She didn't want to date me in the halfway house 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.
That's 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,
who've made mistakes in their life.
Thank you for talking today.
I appreciate you having me on.
That 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 Puzo,
author of The Godfather.
Behind every successful fortune, there's a crime.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.