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Catch me if you can! Matt Cox · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi. I'm Brian Cassidy.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the nightmare success.
• 0:07
  And Now podcast where we explore a, how to overcome your fears
• 0:11
  and Nightmares is set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring. Sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:24
  humor but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something
• 0:27
  that will help you knock down some of the prisons.
• 0:30
  You built up in your own mind. Welcome back nightmare, success
• 0:38
  listeners. I've got a, I've got a treat for
• 0:41
  you today. Matt Cox is my guest and I was
• 0:46
  lucky enough, I was on Matt's show, I was that Monday?
• 0:49
  I think it's Monday and so Matt, very interesting guy, he
• 0:56
  probably if you guys ever watch the movie, Catch Me.
• 0:59
  If You Can with See, who was in that Leonardo DiCaprio, how in
• 1:07
  the world could? I forget that name fascinating
• 1:10
  show, but Matt Cox kind of lived that life.
• 1:13
  He's author of several books. He's the host of inside True
• 1:16
  Crime podcast, he was more or less known as one of the
• 1:22
  Mastermind mortgage fraud in the South Southwest area.
• 1:29
  Really? The United States wants a kind
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  of got going. Dateline called him the modern
• 1:34
  day. Bonnie and Clyde.
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  He's been, he's been chronicled and so many different things,
• 1:39
  Dateline, NBC, CNBC American Greed, Fortune Magazine, all
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  kinds of others, fascinating. He's even involved.
• 1:51
  And I don't even know if this has gotten resolved, but he was
• 1:54
  involved with writing the Memoir of the guy that the movie
• 1:58
  actually became war dogs. And the guy I think was with
• 2:02
  him. At the time that he served time
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  with he said, hey, I'll write this and let me get half of this
• 2:07
  or whatever and and that didn't happen and I think they're still
• 2:10
  working that out. But the War Dogs movie became a
• 2:12
  huge deal. It was a it was a big big movie
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  with Bradley Cooper and all the stars in it.
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  So, fascinated, I was a guest on his show, but I was so
• 2:22
  interested to know. I want to know about Matt Cox.
• 2:25
  So Matt, welcome in, man. Thanks for being here.
• 2:29
  All right, thanks for having me. Yeah, the war dog says, I'm
• 2:33
  curious. Yeah, I thought we settled that
• 2:35
  after I got out of prison. Okay, I was embalmed ever
• 2:38
  Rollies, the name of the character.
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  That Jonah Hill plays. Yeah, Jonah Hill.
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  I wrote, yeah. I wrote his Memoir.
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  So it did get settled because I couldn't tell from reading up on
• 2:48
  all this. Because, you know, you got out
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  in 2019. So I didn't know, you know, it
• 2:53
  hasn't been that long and thank God you weren't in there with
• 2:55
  covid. I've interviewed and talked to
• 2:58
  so many guys that have were in prison.
• 3:00
  When Covid head and I mean prisons, are horrible Place.
• 3:03
  Yeah. All the time.
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  But having all those covid reactions and then having the
• 3:08
  CEOs just having free rein to enforce whatever they wanted to
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  because it was convenient for them had to have been a
• 3:15
  nightmare but you didn't have to go through that.
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  I didn't either just fantastic. But you know, kept in touch with
• 3:22
  a bunch of guys. Everybody's tell them that, you
• 3:23
  know, they're, they're just they're using covid now as an
• 3:26
  excuse to not, let them go to the rec yard, not They've
• 3:31
  canceled all the programs they've got them locked up all
• 3:34
  the time now and they're like and they're just, they don't
• 3:36
  covid Kovac covid. Yeah, it's like oh, it's code
• 3:39
  word for no Freedom, even in prison, anything that you
• 3:43
  thought you might like as a release of sometime Escape of
• 3:47
  the mine. Now we're just going to call it
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  covid and you know there were bad things in prison.
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  I mean guys that would come in we had a scabies run, that was
• 3:55
  bad, you know, just and they loved a lockdown and and make
• 4:00
  it, you know. I think those guys got knocked
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  locked down for, like two weeks and that place and I luckily was
• 4:05
  in the, the story below them, but they were, it was a bad
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  deal. Anyway, I got off on this mat so
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  tell me because, you know, somebody that has lived, the
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  life you have. I mean, your life is like a
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  movie when you were growing up as a kid.
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  Were you living kind of a normal?
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  Kid life. What was your life?
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  Like growing up as a kid? No because I didn't really go to
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  public school, like I went to public school initially and I
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  failed like the second grade and you know, I had a learning
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  disability and so I ended up having to go to a special
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  schools that were small schools, that were an hour away from
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  where we lived or 45 minutes away from where we live.
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  So you know, I grew up I didn't have friends in the
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  neighborhood. I there's a barely any kids.
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  Age at the school. So, you know, there's this goals
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  with 25 30 kids in them. Did they diagnose that pretty
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  early with you with a duck's Lexia the, with?
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  Yeah, it would I had done really well on all of the You know, on
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  all the IQ test. Yeah.
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  So I so they didn't understand like you I had like 139 140, you
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  know, IQ and they were saying, you know, this is kind of how I
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  could smart. Yeah.
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  But he could barely read if at all.
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  He's you know and it. So they did several tests.
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  Obviously this is a battery of tests and then they eventually
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  just came back and said, yeah, listen, he we think he's got
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  dyslexia. And I have the I was diagnosed
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  with auditory and visual dyslexia, which, which means
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  that if you and I are having a conversation and two people next
• 5:55
  to me, start talking, I can't hear anything you're saying it
• 5:59
  immediately becomes Charlie, Brown's teacher someone wall.
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  I don't know why. Just that, you know, it's like
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  if the radius of the TV's on, and you're talking, I can't
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  focus on anything. I'm like, what we got to go over
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  here or hey, let me shut up. TV off or ugly, really?
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  I'm curious if because there's something I read that.
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  Where one of the teachers said, hey, you better figure out
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  something to do, labor, wise, do something with your hands
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  because you're going to make it in the smart world was that if I
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  was told that as a kid and I know and then your personality
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  is one, I can tell was that something of a driving force of
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  yours too. Not worth it wasn't, it wasn't
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  that brutal but bit like you're you're not going to make it in
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  the art world. It was, it was, it was in.
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  Well, I mean, I've obviously had heard this during, you know, in
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  school but when I went to college, I was trying to get a
• 6:57
  degree in business, you know, my counselor was just like, listen
• 7:01
  that. So you were like another two
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  then yeah. Yeah.
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  He was like it's just not going to happen and he's like you need
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  to figure out something to do with your, with your hands,
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  something to do something. And I was like, okay well I
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  paint and I draw like, well, I'm an artist.
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  So I changed my major to Art and, you know, of course I'm a I
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  am getting got straight A's. Yeah.
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  You know, even my core classes I got it was just a vastly
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  different. Everything was multiple choice
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  and are you left? Oh.
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  No. Okay, so go ahead, ask what that
• 7:38
  is. That's like a thing, right?
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  Like you're so it's kind of a thing.
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  I mean, I'm left-handed and I'm my wife is Left-Handed.
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  And there's something where we think on the other side of the
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  brain, where, right brain instead of left brain.
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  So you come at things differently, like standardized
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  tests are absolute nightmare, an essay, lovely, right?
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  Yeah, I forgot. Yeah.
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  Well the spelling is an issue for me with the FAA.
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  Yeah but I can certainly write an essay well either way it.
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  Yeah it was you know so I end up getting a degree in in fine art.
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  USF which prepared me to do pretty much nothing.
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  Yeah, that's got a little science degree and there's
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  there's not a lot. You can go.
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  I mean you can become an attorney but that's not
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  necessarily. Yeah, I get it.
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  Yeah. So what did you what were you
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  thinking? When you got out of that because
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  you ended up, I think, in an insurance job, which is kind of
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  one of those things where those were I'm trying to figure out
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  what I'm doing while I'm doing this, I'm assuming that's what
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  you were thinking. Well, you know, my father had
• 8:44
  worked for State Farm Insurance, okay?
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  And he was a manager for State Farm Insurance.
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  And so you know, one I barely graduated high school and then I
• 8:55
  went to college and he really just didn't think I was going
• 8:58
  to. He was thinking or vocational.
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  Okay, I'll go to a Vo-Tech, you know, get a degree or to get
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  out, you know, get a learn how to fix, you know air
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  conditioners or something along those lines.
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  What Your relationship like with them because you know father
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  figures always play a role in our lives.
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  Even though he lived in our house he essentially worked
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  about 70 80 hours a week just because he wanted to you know,
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  he would go to work and the morning before I pretty much
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  before I got up and then he'd come home at 6:00 that night
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  And, you know, he came home and dinner needed to be ready.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  So 6630 were all eating dinner. He would go into the den and
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  start reading. And that was pretty much it.
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  Like, I just didn't see this guy of much and the when I did see
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  him, the most of the times when he wasn't working, he would go
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  on drunken binges and he would drink for a week or two and then
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  he was but he was such a good manager, it's a army was like he
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  was his he was always in like the top at the top of Iowa
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  complicated everything. So every year, he won the two
• 10:16
  weeks to go to Hawaii or And he or wherever it was, they were
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  sending these top ranking guys in the nation, he did really
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  well. And so when he did go, he would
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  sold her up for six months, three months, maybe a year.
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  And then he'd go on a drunken binge for a week or two and then
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  State Farm would figure it out and they would put them into
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  like a detox. Yeah.
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  And he'd be in there for one time, they put him in for I'm
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  telling you it had to be 60 to 90 days.
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  How did your mom play into all this?
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  You know, she was an enabler, he, you know, don't tell the
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  neighbors, you know, get your father inside, he's drinking and
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  what's look normal, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  What it was that time period? Where everybody wanted to fit
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  in? You don't want to be, you know,
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  you don't want to be that guy. And so, yeah, he just makes, you
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  know, that makes a little bit more sense than why you picked
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  the insurance profession because you'd lived by it and around it
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  with your dad growing up. Forever.
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  You know what's so funny about that, was that I like the last
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  semester of school that I went to, I went to take.
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  There's a the insurance licenses in Florida.
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  There's like a 440 license and a 220 license and the 220 is like
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  the big one and it you can basically accidentally passed
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  the 440, right? So so it's like it's a life
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  life. It for life, life and health,
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  this will force the other one. Property casualty and everything
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  else. Right under this one.
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  So that's the harder one. So I went to school at night for
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  that. I took a course at night and
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  then during the day I went to school about 15 out 15 credit
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  hours a week and about a week or two before I graduated college,
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  I took the test for the insurance test and I passed it.
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  and I remember you and what's funny is right then you, you
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  get, you get your You get your your results right then.
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  And my father had me so convinced that I was not going
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  to pass it. He said, you understand that, my
• 12:38
  agent, I had the best agents in the some of the best agents and
• 12:41
  they don't know what is, right. He thought he had like 25 guys
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  working form half of them failed.
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  It is half my agents failed, the test the first time here.
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  So you're probably going to take it two or three times and if we
• 12:56
  have to I'll get you a tutor whatever I was like okay and so
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  I go And I take the test and the three people in front of me as
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  your standing line, you have like, the little of the little
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  card right, for multiple choice. You give it to them, they ran it
• 13:13
  through and they would go. They look at the guy and say,
• 13:18
  okay, well you didn't pass, you can schedule in 30 and 30 days
• 13:25
  and then they would give you the tandem like a piece of paper and
• 13:28
  say call this number may go. Okay thanks may walk off.
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  Next guy, Why same thing? That's out there and she was
• 13:36
  okay, I'm sorry. You didn't pass.
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  Give him a piece of paper call this number.
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  Okay? Next guy.
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  Sorry you didn't pass. Here's a piece paper, call this
• 13:44
  number or you can reschedule. Okay, I give them the saying OK,
• 13:49
  stand over there and I went. Okay, so when can I retake it?
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  And she doesn't know you. You passed?
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  She said, stand over there. You got to get your picture
• 13:58
  taken. You sure like and I was like
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  what? Like I was like what that that?
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  No no. My dad said I'd never passed.
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  Yeah. So I went drove straight to my
• 14:08
  dad's office and walked into his office and The passing down and
• 14:14
  that it down and I said that test was a joke.
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  What do you say? He goes.
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  He looked at he goes no I said, yeah, yeah.
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  He said my God and he was like, I can't believe you passed it.
• 14:28
  I said. Yeah.
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  Welcome. So joke.
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  So anyway, so yeah, I graduated college and and immediately try
• 14:36
  to get a job with State Farm Insurance.
• 14:39
  Back then they had something called an aptitude test.
• 14:42
  Yeah. So, I took the insurance
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  aptitude test with State Farm and I failed it, even though
• 14:48
  they say it's not a pass fail, it's a wheel hire you.
• 14:52
  We won't right. They would.
• 14:56
  So then I went and I took one with like USAA or something like
• 14:59
  that, I took the same tasks. They wouldn't hire me and they
• 15:03
  were so perplexed. They actually had me.
• 15:05
  Come back and do it again because they were like, we don't
• 15:07
  understand like your yeah. Why didn't this work out?
• 15:09
  Yeah, you you were great. You had two interviews.
• 15:12
  You were listen. I went to multiple companies
• 15:15
  that were offering me jobs and then they give me the aptitude
• 15:18
  test. I would fail it and then they
• 15:19
  would come back and they'd say, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 15:23
  We can't hire you. You.
• 15:24
  So I ended up working like construction job.
• 15:26
  Okay. Well, no, I effort, you know
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  what? I didn't.
• 15:29
  I worked as an insurance adjuster for about a year.
• 15:32
  Okay. Yeah.
• 15:33
  For what men's comp company. Yeah.
• 15:36
  And another company to so how did you end?
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  I got laid off. How did you end up finding the,
• 15:43
  the mortgage brokerage mortgage world.
• 15:46
  Where did that come from? Was that just the next step?
• 15:49
  Where did you know somebody that was in that?
• 15:51
  Or how did that all happen? Dating a girl.
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  I was dating a girl. That was a stripper and she was
• 15:58
  a mortgage. Broker their lives.
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  Is he met a guy who owned a mortgage company?
• 16:03
  Oh, at the club? Wow.
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  Okay. With or five other Executives at
• 16:10
  this lender was going to be a mortgage broker to be there was
• 16:12
  a lender okay, and they talk to her.
• 16:14
  Now keep in mind, she was about to graduate with her degree in
• 16:18
  finance. Okay, so you know how this
• 16:21
  always the closest store she's put herself through.
• 16:23
  College and right. Yeah.
• 16:25
  She was putting herself. First isolated three years.
• 16:29
  Yeah, but she's much Brad. So they talked to her and yeah.
• 16:34
  So so the guy was like he explained what she did in the
• 16:37
  fact that she could follow what he did and understood it and
• 16:41
  they realize, wow, you really are taking classes like you're
• 16:44
  smart and so they said look, why don't you come to work for us
• 16:50
  and so the owner of the company hired her as a broker, And she
• 16:55
  told me you have got to do this, you have to, you have to be a
• 16:59
  moment, that's how you got into it.
• 17:02
  That's so that's what I did. I went I became more focused.
• 17:05
  So you become the mortgage broker things.
• 17:08
  You're in the wild wild west of mortgages at that time, it was
• 17:12
  like, 2,000, something at you doubt.
• 17:16
  It was like 1999, 1999. Yeah.
• 17:19
  The world, the world was going into the next few years is going
• 17:23
  to be whatever historic history will call all that.
• 17:27
  But so you get into that. Do you like it?
• 17:30
  Yeah, I loved it. I was, I was great at it.
• 17:32
  Yeah. Like I it was like, I'd never
• 17:33
  been that good at anything, you know, maybe with the exception
• 17:36
  of like art or I'd never really thrived at anything like I did.
• 17:41
  With, I mean, that's how it reads.
• 17:43
  It sounds like you came into this world and you were really
• 17:46
  good at it. And then there were some gray
• 17:48
  lines, or gray areas where a lot of people were playing in the
• 17:52
  gray and that time period. And you got, I mean, yeah,
• 17:58
  there's no gray. Like, it is fraud.
• 18:00
  I mean, there's no I'm saying that there were people.
• 18:03
  I'm not saying you, I'm seeing in the world of mortgage and
• 18:06
  what was going on in me at the time that when the world
• 18:09
  collapsed, there was Was all kinds of things that were being
• 18:13
  done where people were getting out, you know, 345 mortgages,
• 18:17
  they didn't have any income to back it up, all those different
• 18:19
  things and all that stuff was going through.
• 18:21
  Yeah, yeah. So how I'm curious, how did this
• 18:24
  all concoct in your mind of? I'm going to do a fraud, I've
• 18:28
  got, and I'm going to make this very first one.
• 18:30
  I did the very first one. I did have broaden.
• 18:33
  I mean II brought a, I had this woman come in, single mother
• 18:37
  wanted to buy a house. Had a real estate agent gave her
• 18:40
  too. Me and she had five percent
• 18:43
  down. She quit five-person down on the
• 18:44
  house and she had a horrible credit but I work for a subprime
• 18:47
  lender, got are qualified and I brought her file into my, my
• 18:53
  mortgage broker my, the manager of the brokerage business of the
• 18:57
  business, she looked through everything and then she pulled
• 19:00
  like one piece of paper out and set it to the side.
• 19:03
  And she said, look, it's a great file.
• 19:06
  You hurt your clients, been 30 days late on her rent in the
• 19:10
  last 24 months and I was like what?
• 19:12
  Like that's a deal. Killer 38?
• 19:15
  Wait. So and she said, yeah, she goes
• 19:20
  and I said oh man, I just thought oh man, that's it.
• 19:22
  I'm done. I'm done.
• 19:24
  Like I banged everything on becoming a mortgage broker like
• 19:27
  I stopped doing everything. I was doing to pay my bills.
• 19:30
  I'm now behind on everything because I felt like I would be
• 19:33
  good at it and I follow the kind of money you could make and so I
• 19:39
  remember I was like probably at this point a month or so behind
• 19:42
  on my truck I was behind on everything anyway but you know
• 19:45
  it's behind on my mortgage payment because I had actually
• 19:47
  bought two houses by this point. Well II, the townhouse in a
• 19:52
  condo so I just it was bad. Like I was like this is like a
• 19:57
  major problem here and she looked at me and I said, wow,
• 20:00
  what do I do? I said that, I guess it's dead
• 20:04
  and she pulled out a little thing, a white out and started
• 20:07
  shaking it up and she goes white it out.
• 20:09
  Make a copy, stick in the file will never catch it.
• 20:12
  I was like, are you serious? And she goes, I do it all the
• 20:14
  time and I went that's Squad and she was like, she is Yeah.
• 20:20
  And she and I said, you know, oh my God and your I said, I don't
• 20:23
  know. Can I get in trouble?
• 20:24
  She's even worse that happens. If they catch it and think you
• 20:26
  had something to do with it. They'll fire.
• 20:28
  You most likely? They just turn the loan down to
• 20:31
  the nobody's going to call the NCI fine and so I trusted her, I
• 20:35
  went and made the copy stuck it in there was terrified for about
• 20:39
  three or four days it went through underwriting.
• 20:41
  Few days later we close. I got a check for like three
• 20:44
  thousand maybe 3,500 bucks as your friend.
• 20:46
  So the neck First, the old next guy that came in, he made like
• 20:51
  forty five thousand dollars a year, so I didn't quite have
• 20:55
  enough money to buy the property, but if he made like
• 21:00
  52,000, he could have bought it. So I took his W-2s and I changed
• 21:05
  them, you know, I altered them slightly now he made 52,000 on
• 21:09
  average, he barely made enough money now and he was able to get
• 21:13
  the loan, the loan closed and I made three or four three
• 21:15
  thousand dollars. Next person that came in they
• 21:17
  were Some other issue next person that came and I started
• 21:19
  realizing that like almost all my customers had an issue almost
• 21:23
  all of them. So yeah and you can make it work
• 21:28
  so about it but I immediately start making money.
• 21:31
  Oh yeah. They make good money.
• 21:34
  So and I think it was 2002. When, when it comes down on, you
• 21:38
  can you kind of walk me through what, what was going on at that
• 21:41
  time? And did you know that something
• 21:42
  was coming at you, at that point?
• 21:45
  Well, you know, I that one company I work for they ended up
• 21:49
  closing, okay? Right.
• 21:51
  So they actually got shut down by like the department of
• 21:54
  Banking & Finance and the I think the FBI closed them or
• 21:57
  something to. I'm not even sure I wasn't there
• 22:00
  but one day just there was like no like the front doors are
• 22:03
  chained and and so I ended up taking a bunch of files and
• 22:10
  going to a couple of another mortgage company and then
• 22:12
  eventually I opened my own company by very quickly.
• 22:15
  Within months, I've opened my own company.
• 22:17
  I hired a bunch of guys ran up my credit cards hired, a bunch
• 22:21
  of guys to come work for me. Had a dozen guys working for me
• 22:24
  by this is quite 2000. Okay.
• 22:27
  A few thousand, I got my own place, I've had about a dozen
• 22:33
  guys, a couple guys working at home, guys in the office and I
• 22:38
  still start just kind of running a mill.
• 22:39
  We just started running through everybody that walked in the
• 22:41
  door. We did everything we could to
• 22:43
  get him alone. And so now we're doing, I don't
• 22:46
  know what it is five or ten million dollars a you know, a
• 22:49
  month in mortgages and we're just cranking them out and and
• 22:54
  now at this point I'm I started getting really really creative.
• 22:58
  So it wasn't like changing a W-2 anymore.
• 23:00
  Now, it's you don't have enough money in your bank account.
• 23:05
  So I'm altering the bank statements and then that got to
• 23:07
  be a pain in the ass. So I just started making bank's
• 23:10
  online website for an online for a bank.
• 23:12
  Yeah. And then Call it, like Bank of
• 23:15
  Ybor. And I have a whole planet of my
• 23:19
  sight. Oh, you hit multiple Pages,
• 23:21
  everything. Phone number, the whole thing.
• 23:25
  So so it would be, you know, Bank of, you know, e Bank of the
• 23:27
  board.com. Like, it wasn't a big deal.
• 23:29
  I just open it up and the whole thing was perfect, it looked
• 23:32
  great. And then I had Bank of Ybor bank
• 23:36
  statement color in front and back color bank statements just
• 23:41
  like that I could make statements I could print out the
• 23:43
  bank statement showing you have enough money in your Name.
• 23:48
  And then I could put those in the file and show that you had
• 23:51
  your down payment. So, wait a minute, we're like,
• 23:55
  were you thinking at that time when you were doing all that?
• 23:59
  Oh my God, I'm I could get caught doing this or you were on
• 24:04
  such a high or such an adrenaline rush that it was just
• 24:07
  that's you were figuring out new ways, better ways to make it
• 24:11
  work. That's the whole thing is, I did
• 24:14
  get caught. Yeah, I got caught multiple
• 24:15
  times so I got called multiple times and I would just convince
• 24:18
  the bank they call up and they're like, look, this is
• 24:21
  fraud like these are canceled check.
• 24:23
  They look like cancer. X.
• 24:24
  But it's a it's not. There are, they're not canceled
• 24:26
  check. They just look like a more.
• 24:28
  This guy doesn't even work here. Yeah.
• 24:30
  This company doesn't even exist and or for whatever reason so
• 24:35
  there what would happen I'd say but that's crazy.
• 24:38
  So what do you think? You feel like what you think my
• 24:40
  borrower made up made a company. Yeah and they said well I'm
• 24:44
  honestly man I don't know what your bar or did you know II
• 24:47
  think maybe your mortgage broker?
• 24:49
  Did it? My my my mortgage broker he
• 24:52
  would never Never something like that.
• 24:56
  Know, I've known this guy for two years.
• 24:59
  He is above board, very ethical, he would never, I'm offended,
• 25:05
  you know, I did the whole thing. Yeah, but in the end, they just
• 25:08
  wouldn't close a loan. And we during that conversation,
• 25:11
  figure out how they figured out. What was wrong?
• 25:14
  We correct it. We send it to another lender
• 25:17
  Bowman flow through. Wow, we go through.
• 25:19
  Wow, they are check. I get my check and we just keep
• 25:23
  Turn amount and you know, you just getting better and better I
• 25:27
  kept it. Would it got to a point where
• 25:29
  somebody would come in and they would have, let's say had four
• 25:33
  jobs in the last two years. Yeah.
• 25:35
  And it was like, you know, this is a pain in the ass, it's
• 25:37
  easier for me to just make the pay stubs and say they work for
• 25:40
  this company over here that I've created.
• 25:43
  It's been to be honest and try and have to track down all four
• 25:47
  of these companies. Get their W-2s, put it all
• 25:51
  together. That's too much.
• 25:52
  Let's just have them. They work here.
• 25:54
  Well, it's crazy. As you think, you know, on the
• 25:56
  outside people just everyday life.
• 25:58
  Think that there's a lot more pieces to that that just doesn't
• 26:03
  go through because there's some kind of magic system that
• 26:05
  doesn't allow that and you were working all around the edges of
• 26:08
  that. And and that we're just going
• 26:10
  through. You just had to find the right,
• 26:12
  the right bank or there is a magic that them, but I knew the
• 26:15
  system. That's what I mean, you figured
• 26:16
  it out. So so mad and in this time
• 26:20
  period in 2002, was it a surprise?
• 26:23
  Eyes, when you get indicted or was, did you know that something
• 26:28
  was coming at you or was it just like oh my God.
• 26:31
  I know where it is though. I only knew it was, I only knew
• 26:36
  because this woman that worked for me, at one point she had
• 26:40
  went and started her own company and she ended up getting kind of
• 26:44
  roped into a Scam like a straw man scam where she was running,
• 26:50
  all the paperwork for a scam for these Italian guys that were
• 26:56
  buying properties and and, you know, pulling out money and not
• 27:01
  making any payments. Well, those, those loans got
• 27:03
  investigated by the FBI, FBI came in and they raided her
• 27:07
  office. She cooperated with the FBI.
• 27:11
  And she ended up having calling me one day and asked me, if I
• 27:17
  could have, would have lunch with her.
• 27:19
  I said, sure, no problem. So, I met her and her husband
• 27:22
  for lunch. It was all in a dope.
• 27:27
  I guess it was all a setup. The FBI was actually sitting at
• 27:31
  the next table. They were wired and halfway
• 27:33
  through the conversation. I mean, I just started burying
• 27:35
  myself. Like they asked me, they said,
• 27:38
  oh my gosh, you know, they know about this, they know about that
• 27:40
  and without getting too too much into it, you know, it led back
• 27:44
  to me and my ex my wife at the time and you know, I immediately
• 27:49
  started saying oh my gosh, you know.
• 27:52
  You didn't tell him this. Did you?
• 27:53
  You didn't tell him this? Like they don't know.
• 27:55
  The W-2s are fake, do they? They don't know this.
• 27:57
  They don't know that. And I start trying to come up
• 28:00
  with some kind of a story that they can tell the FBI to kind of
• 28:02
  fix the situation and And in the course of that whole
• 28:06
  conversation I realized that they're wired like they're just
• 28:09
  too over-the-top asking questions.
• 28:11
  And some point they want to know too many.
• 28:13
  Yeah. And at some point, the husband
• 28:16
  of this woman her name is Gretchen Gretchen husband like
• 28:19
  stands up, because I say they're like, oh we don't want to lie to
• 28:22
  the FBI, we can't lie to her like what are you talking about?
• 28:24
  You've been lying to him this whole investigation and he like
• 28:26
  stands up and says, we've never lied to the FBI.
• 28:29
  Yeah, we may not have told them everything but we've never lied.
• 28:33
  And I, and, of course it was, Like what do you why would you
• 28:39
  say that? Like, who are you telling that
• 28:41
  to, I know the truth. So you're not telling me you
• 28:44
  haven't lied when the, you know, clearly know that I have no,
• 28:47
  you've been lying. So who is it?
• 28:52
  You know. And then I realized they're
• 28:53
  wired They end up sweat. Oh, I I knew right then I was
• 29:01
  done and I actually said to her, you know, I hope you're going to
• 29:05
  get something for this. She started crying.
• 29:07
  She said, I don't have to go to jail.
• 29:10
  And I said, you know, she said I have a kid.
• 29:13
  I said, well, I have a kid and she's like mad.
• 29:16
  I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I said well, tell the FBI to
• 29:18
  call me, tell him, not to come into my office and I get up, I
• 29:21
  leave. So the FBI agent calls me like,
• 29:24
  20 minutes later at my office. I go to my office, 20 minutes
• 29:27
  later, he calls, I don't even pretend like they weren't wired.
• 29:33
  So I tell them, okay, I'll come down and talk to you and
• 29:36
  instead, I go get an, I get an attorney.
• 29:38
  Pay an attorney 75,000 dollars and that attorney ends up
• 29:42
  negotiating. A plea deal where I plead guilty
• 29:47
  to wire fraud and I agree to not renew my license and I couldn't
• 29:55
  run the mortgage company anymore.
• 29:59
  So you know that was it like I didn't, you know, I didn't at
• 30:02
  that time I didn't cooperate against my what they wanted me
• 30:05
  to do my my lawyer was telling me I could do what's called a
• 30:09
  pre-trial intervention where he was saying if you cooperate with
• 30:14
  them. And you give them more cases.
• 30:18
  I can keep you from being indicted, okay.
• 30:22
  And I was like, and I didn't do that.
• 30:24
  I said I don't want to do that. I don't I'm not going to do
• 30:26
  that. I'm not going to actually in The
• 30:27
  Godfather. Yeah, I'm gonna keep my mouth
• 30:29
  quiet. I'm not.
• 30:30
  Keep my Master's okay, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 30:32
  The stand-up guy which, you know, looking back.
• 30:35
  Now if I had known, then what I knew.
• 30:38
  Now, sure. I would have pulled a A pickup
• 30:44
  truck up to my office in the middle of the Friday meeting
• 30:48
  with the twelve guys. What 10 or 12, guys.
• 30:50
  Standing there walked in with a with a dolly and load it up the
• 30:55
  file cabinets and driven them straight to the FBI's office and
• 30:59
  cooperate against every single one of those guys, because every
• 31:03
  single one of those guys, when things start going bad,
• 31:06
  immediately started cooperating against me.
• 31:08
  Yeah. Like I mean, you know and
• 31:12
  everybody like Everybody, I know across the board has cooperated.
• 31:16
  Well, it scares people to death, I mean, that when people sit and
• 31:20
  on their doorstep and say, hey by the way if you don't help us
• 31:23
  out you're going to prison and it will change every changes
• 31:27
  people's way, they say they're going to act and how they're
• 31:30
  going to act and how how they see you as friends and so on so
• 31:34
  forth, but they interesting that you didn't do that.
• 31:37
  But so I think is the next step to this, though, Matt.
• 31:42
  And I Couldn't really quite make sure that I was piecing this
• 31:45
  together, right? You get and dieted, you plea is
• 31:50
  it right after that, that you say I'm out of here like, you
• 31:57
  know, become the, when do you become The Fugitive that ends
• 32:00
  up? No, no, that doesn't, that
• 32:02
  doesn't happen for another year and a half.
• 32:05
  Okay. So what happened after this?
• 32:08
  Why don't go anywhere? I mean, I'm still basically
• 32:10
  running the mortgage company. I sold it to I sell it to a
• 32:13
  friend of mine on paper. Okay, he was an accountant or
• 32:17
  eat that you have somebody else that's in.
• 32:19
  It's in their title, in their name, and they're doing, what
• 32:22
  you are not supposed to be doing because you're not licensed
• 32:25
  right? The we open up another company
• 32:28
  as the development company and I decide that I'm going to raise
• 32:32
  money for this company and I'm going to start developing new
• 32:35
  properties in an area of Tampa, called Ybor City.
• 32:37
  And I thought, well, how can I braised the money to do this?
• 32:41
  And I thought well I'll just run a scam Guys, I've been changing
• 32:44
  documents here and there but these have all been legitimate
• 32:47
  real people. So I'm gonna, you know, II by
• 32:53
  that point, I knew the system. So well that I decided I was
• 32:57
  just going to start creating synthetic identities and we call
• 33:01
  them, you know, Phantom borrowers.
• 33:03
  So I'm going to start creating my own borrowers.
• 33:06
  And so what I did was I, I figured out how to get Social
• 33:13
  Security to issue me, Social Security numbers to people that
• 33:18
  don't exist so interesting because that's the most
• 33:22
  important number. Yeah, so what I did was I got
• 33:26
  first or diced, start creating birth certificates, fake birth
• 33:28
  certificates, and I order the order the security paper and
• 33:33
  then I get I I get shot record like I created a shot record and
• 33:41
  so you know I had to buy all these the it's complicated but I
• 33:44
  had to create a birth certificate and a fake shot
• 33:48
  record for a child that would be let's say 9 or 10 months old
• 33:53
  because if you if the child's over 12 months old, you have to
• 33:55
  come in with the kid. You can bring your birth
• 33:58
  certificate, your driver, your driver's, license.
• 34:00
  Your birth certificate in your child who's two years old but
• 34:03
  he's under 12 months old, you can just come up with the shot
• 34:05
  record. So I came up with a shot record
• 34:09
  birth certificate and I will convince Social Security to
• 34:13
  issue me a social security number to my ten month old
• 34:17
  daughter or son. And then I would take that
• 34:20
  social security number and I would order three secured credit
• 34:24
  cards. So I would go online and apply
• 34:25
  for some credit cards. Get denied that Create a credit
• 34:28
  profile. I then order.
• 34:31
  Three secured credit card and I get those credit cards and I
• 34:34
  start making the payments laughter like six months.
• 34:37
  You have the I didn't that would like 710 720 and if we credit
• 34:41
  yeah, right. It's new credit but it's still
• 34:44
  you only needed a 620 credit score.
• 34:47
  That's fine. So I got 700 so I then of course
• 34:53
  I'll I would then have this person They would work at it.
• 34:57
  They work a job. I could make their W-2s and pay
• 34:59
  stubs. I had a job.
• 35:01
  I had an employee employment company set up to employ them.
• 35:04
  I had I'd website. I had, I had a management
• 35:09
  company that could verify their employment.
• 35:12
  So I would do all of these things, you know, all these were
• 35:15
  legitimate companies that were set up.
• 35:17
  And so, I would, I would create these different characters.
• 35:20
  These days have different synthetic identities.
• 35:22
  And they would go out and I buy a property for let's say 50,000.
• 35:26
  Dollars. So buying a property in Ybor
• 35:29
  City for fifty thousand dollars is you know it's a piece of
• 35:31
  crap. And so I can't get it appraised
• 35:36
  for much more than I bought it. So I figured what I needed to do
• 35:39
  is I need to buy a bunch of properties in each person's
• 35:42
  name. And then when I buy the
• 35:44
  property, I'll record the sales price of that property instead
• 35:49
  of buying it for 50,000 and recording at 50,000, I'm going
• 35:53
  to buy it at 50,000 and recorded at 200,000, okay.
• 35:58
  So I buy a property for 40,000 recorded at 190 why 14, 55,000
• 36:04
  recorded at 220. Another one at 190, all within
• 36:07
  this one, little crappy area of Ybor City.
• 36:12
  And so I start II bought all of these houses in these different
• 36:16
  peoples names and record the value.
• 36:19
  And what that did was it, it grows the value in that area.
• 36:23
  Other comps. Yeah.
• 36:25
  Right. The comparable sales are Sharp
• 36:28
  Way off, sure. and now my guy who bought five houses for
• 36:35
  50,000 a piece, Those houses are now worth over a million
• 36:39
  dollars, so I would then have him refinance the properties
• 36:44
  which he doesn't exist. So, writing assignment for new
• 36:46
  makeup really funny character names with this that.
• 36:49
  I don't know if you guys don't know if you did that because you
• 36:52
  thought this is so fun. You know.
• 36:54
  I'm going to take Tarantino's character's name out there to
• 36:59
  Simpsons. I mean you, you were you were
• 37:02
  playing an edgy game math and then you kind of made it into
• 37:06
  fun for you. I think because these are
• 37:08
  characters were characters that anybody could have looked up but
• 37:13
  you used them as synthetic characters and they were buying
• 37:15
  properties. Yeah, I wasn't really thinking
• 37:18
  that far in advance. It initially.
• 37:20
  Initially, the guys names were normal names, like the first few
• 37:24
  I did. It was like colors for a while,
• 37:26
  mr. Dino that what it ended up being
• 37:28
  a initially? It was right.
• 37:30
  Valid, it was Alan. Duncan Joel cologne just normal
• 37:34
  people. Then I saw the movie.
• 37:37
  Reward. I saw the movie.
• 37:38
  I'm sorry, we're dogs Reservoir, Dog by Quentin Tarantino.
• 37:43
  And I ended up naming like the first guy was named like Ali
• 37:48
  black. And then it came James read and
• 37:51
  there was mr. There with Brandon green and
• 37:55
  William blue, and Michael White. So, yeah, you know, it got it,
• 38:01
  just got more and more. Well, I think the other
• 38:04
  interesting thing is that you're doing this Like, some people get
• 38:09
  convicted and curl up in a fetal position or they say, oh my God,
• 38:14
  I never want to be in that position again.
• 38:17
  That was really scary. That was the Federal Government.
• 38:20
  I'm going to do everything I can to avoid that.
• 38:23
  You actually went out and got better at what you were doing
• 38:28
  while you were in a 42 months probation.
• 38:34
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:37
  Yeah, it was, yeah, I wasn't thinking super clearly, so yeah.
• 38:42
  I and that. Yeah, I'm I was on federal
• 38:45
  probation. I have my probation officer
• 38:46
  coming by my office. Yeah, while I'm cutting up
• 38:49
  Peppa, I'm cutting up, pay stubs and W-2s.
• 38:53
  I'm making canceled check. He walks up to me in the middle
• 38:57
  of cutting these things up. I remember I have like six or
• 39:00
  eight phones cell phones on my credenza behind me.
• 39:04
  There's no reason for me to have eight cell phones.
• 39:07
  Never even occurred to him. Like he's a, hey, how's it?
• 39:10
  Going was like, oh hey, what's going on?
• 39:11
  How you doing and he talked to me for a couple minutes and walk
• 39:15
  out of the room and you know it was never even realized.
• 39:19
  And yeah I it's just it just I kept getting more and more
• 39:24
  emboldened by it. Like I would get caught.
• 39:28
  I got caught One Time by a company called southstar Bank.
• 39:32
  And they realize that the person didn't exist like I was supposed
• 39:35
  to make the first payment on a property and my buddy was
• 39:38
  supposed to make the first payment and he didn't make it
• 39:41
  and I know they didn't do it on purpose.
• 39:43
  He's just an idiot. He just forgot so by the top but
• 39:46
  they immediately investigated the loan realized it was fraud
• 39:51
  and I ended up calling them up as that person and I convinced
• 39:55
  them they're about to call the FBI.
• 39:57
  I convinced them not to call the FBI, to let me pay them back
• 40:01
  because they were about to lose over.
• 40:02
  Hundred thousand dollars there. I know.
• 40:04
  Well, we're going to foreclose on the property.
• 40:06
  Will get the property back and fell out.
• 40:07
  I said know you won't. You know I said do you want it
• 40:10
  to the property worth about 30 or 40 Grand?
• 40:13
  You lent me 140 or 150 thousand a year to lose 100 Grand and I
• 40:16
  explained exactly what I did and they were just like just in
• 40:20
  shock. And then they said okay you just
• 40:23
  send us the money back. I said sure so I sent him the
• 40:25
  money back you know, and they never called the FBI.
• 40:29
  Wow. Well, I think the other thing is
• 40:31
  kind of interesting is that they make a big deal about a lot of
• 40:34
  different things that they look up.
• 40:35
  When you look up your name about the associates, the book that
• 40:38
  you wrote That was a fiction book but the FBI and all the
• 40:42
  different people than the journalists in that say hey that
• 40:45
  was him. That was that was him creating
• 40:50
  this Mastermind of what and you know it's the same guy goes to
• 40:55
  the same school and then he takes over basically I know the
• 40:57
  southern part of the United States, you know, perpetuating
• 41:00
  this mortgage fraud and and you even talked about it, I mean you
• 41:04
  were I'm assuming you try to get it published.
• 41:07
  I don't know, but people knew about this.
• 41:09
  This book but it's a big day. It's a kind of a big deal in the
• 41:14
  world of when, you know the associates is that character was
• 41:19
  at Metcalf? Was it Matt Cox was that meant
• 41:21
  was that, you know? I mean, they thought I had
• 41:25
  written a manuscript called the associate.
• 41:29
  That was just a talking about a just more kind of like the
• 41:32
  firmware eyes like he parked the mortgage company, he ends up
• 41:35
  getting roped into a mortgage case.
• 41:38
  A fraud case, He had nothing to do with, you know, keep mine.
• 41:42
  I'm blatantly committing fraud the character in that book is
• 41:46
  not, right? And this is the way I always
• 41:48
  explain it. Like, are there similarities?
• 41:51
  Yes. But that character is as much me
• 41:57
  as any of John grisham's characters are him and then his
• 42:01
  Bloods right? Because it's a piece of him
• 42:03
  writing. Yeah.
• 42:04
  I'd because well, I mean think about he's probably pulling some
• 42:06
  stuff from real life, but the truth is there.
• 42:09
  Big thing was Matt, Cox is a mortgage broker and the guy in
• 42:12
  the book. The book is a mortgage.
• 42:14
  Broker, it's him. No, no.
• 42:17
  John Grisham is a lawyer. His characters are all lawyers.
• 42:20
  Those characters are not him. You know.
• 42:23
  Well, it's a pretty interesting discussion because, right, and
• 42:26
  what they did was they there was a bunch of articles about that.
• 42:29
  Yes. And they were trying to say he
• 42:31
  was a blueprint. Yeah, he gave it away.
• 42:33
  Yeah, you know, it was another thing that he was having fun
• 42:36
  with. He wrote it out before he did
• 42:38
  it. Why didn't you guys figure it
• 42:40
  out? But I'll say going into this,
• 42:43
  the other thing is too, is that you took the risk not only being
• 42:49
  on federal probation but you brought in women into your world
• 42:55
  to, you know, whether they call Bonnie and Clyde or whatever.
• 42:58
  The but you had three or four different women that were a big
• 43:03
  part of helping you along the way with this did that give you.
• 43:09
  Any sense of? Hmm, wonder if she would turn on
• 43:12
  me. Is it kind of what happened in
• 43:15
  the end? No, I didn't.
• 43:19
  I wasn't thinking about that. I mean push, you were kind of
• 43:23
  you were written about is this you know the Casanova guy?
• 43:26
  You could do art. You had the fancy stuff and they
• 43:29
  you were, you were lured them into, you know, the world of
• 43:33
  your world and they would have never created these things or
• 43:36
  crimes. If you weren't such a shiny
• 43:39
  object, You know that that is what they said but that's not.
• 43:44
  I don't see that as being true, but that's something that that's
• 43:47
  something that it's like, the newspaper reporters.
• 43:50
  They went with the associates was really mean because it
• 43:53
  sounds good. It does.
• 43:55
  It's winter agreed when he read what they've written.
• 43:58
  Yeah, right. Well, you know, the women they
• 44:03
  were also saying that like I was a Don Juan, I would convince
• 44:06
  these women to fall in love with me and then I would I would
• 44:09
  convince To commit fraud and I would.
• 44:13
  But the truth is I didn't convince anybody like people
• 44:16
  knew what I was doing a little here, a little there and I would
• 44:19
  State some girl and or maybe to not date her and they would just
• 44:23
  work for me and they say, look I want to do, I want to be in on
• 44:26
  this I want to do the loans. Like I have one mortgage broker
• 44:29
  who was like, I want to do the loans. that for these people
• 44:33
  because she could charge for 5,000 dollars and charge points
• 44:37
  on the loan, So the guys borrowing two hundred thousand
• 44:41
  dollars. You can charge two points, you
• 44:42
  get 4,000 of the back of the loan she could charge like 4,000
• 44:45
  on the front alone. She gets eight-thousand dollars,
• 44:47
  making good money, right? And I'm were closing these
• 44:50
  loans, like a couple of them every month.
• 44:53
  Like I did a bar to this on, like do they have to be like
• 44:56
  that 109 houses so, you know, in all these different characters.
• 45:00
  So it is these are and that that broker is a woman.
• 45:05
  Several of these women were Brokers.
• 45:07
  Yeah. So that's not You know but to
• 45:09
  then they're like oh he convinced them so it's a lot
• 45:12
  more juicy for you to be the Casanova that can make these an
• 45:17
  artist and you have these fancy places and then you will learn
• 45:20
  them and to become criminals. And what I think you know I want
• 45:28
  to know like what it was like to be a fugitive because you know,
• 45:31
  I talked to Seth Ferrante which you know and right you know his
• 45:36
  situation was is that he got more confident.
• 45:39
  The longer he was in and then he just kind of like, yeah, I don't
• 45:43
  think they're, I think they've got it and that's kind of when
• 45:46
  he got caught. What how did it work for you?
• 45:50
  Well, I, at the time I was doing the loans and Ybor City with a
• 45:54
  synthetic identities, I wasn't on the run, right?
• 45:57
  It wasn't until a friend of mine who was a sheriff's, deputy
• 46:00
  showed up and told me that the that they had a task force, have
• 46:04
  been put together to investigate me a guy that I was working
• 46:08
  together to gallop along the. Yeah, he everybody.
• 46:11
  I was working with got caught, he was cooperating with the task
• 46:15
  force, task force was handed over to the FBI.
• 46:18
  The sheriff's. Deputy To me and said, look,
• 46:20
  this is what's happening. They're going to come arrest
• 46:23
  you. So I took off on the run you
• 46:27
  know with this girl I was dating her name is Rebecca.
• 46:29
  Help didn't know what I was doing.
• 46:32
  I told her that couple days before I took off on the run,
• 46:36
  she begged and pleaded to come with me.
• 46:39
  You know, I was packing my bags. I remember I was packing my back
• 46:42
  when she showed up and I we had a date that night.
• 46:45
  I forgotten about like I have bigger issues, right?
• 46:49
  And I didn't know this. This girl, I've been dating her
• 46:50
  like a month month and a half and she showed up and she I told
• 46:55
  her what happened and you know I had like 80 thousand dollars a
• 47:00
  month to my name at the time in cash.
• 47:02
  I mean we had like a million dollars but it's all in the bank
• 47:04
  or wrapped up just to incorrect. Yeah.
• 47:07
  Or thin properly a millions and properties whatever.
• 47:10
  So I take the money, run up my credit cards, take her go
• 47:15
  straight to Atlanta And I run a scam there and make like 400 000
• 47:22
  over 400,000 dollars. You know, I I rent somebody's
• 47:26
  house. I then make an ID as him saying
• 47:31
  I'm him. The name is Michael Shanahan.
• 47:34
  That's why refine and I know what Michael Shanahan is a good
• 47:37
  friend. I refinance, I refinances how
• 47:43
  three times. I get three hard money lenders,
• 47:46
  the refinances house at the same time.
• 47:49
  So, what I do is, I went down to public records and I satisfy the
• 47:52
  loan on his house. So now they're I'm living in a
• 47:56
  house as Michael Shanahan worth 200,000 dollars.
• 48:00
  And there's no mortgage on the house.
• 48:02
  And if you pull my credit, There's no credit, right?
• 48:08
  So his mortgage, which is she do showing up on his credit isn't
• 48:14
  showing on mine because I'm using a different social social
• 48:16
  security number and I be different credit profile.
• 48:19
  So when they pull that credit profile, nothing shows up.
• 48:22
  I've got a couple credit cards that I just recently opened I
• 48:25
  have a house worth 200,000. I have three hard money lenders,
• 48:28
  come they look at the house they all say yeah, I'll lend you the
• 48:30
  money, I closed on all those and then within a day or two of each
• 48:33
  other, they let me four hundred fifty thousand.
• 48:36
  I pull that money out in cash. I take off to the next place.
• 48:40
  Where'd you go? We went to we went to Charlotte
• 48:44
  North Carolina but I ran another scam in South Carolina.
• 48:48
  Yeah, I bought a couple of burns C.
• 48:53
  Montgomery Burns, wasn't it? Yeah.
• 48:55
  Oh, that was satisfied. The loan like I bought a couple
• 48:59
  of houses there and I defied the loans and those houses than when
• 49:02
  I signed the satisfaction by signed C Montgomery Burns, which
• 49:07
  is the Aging tycoon in The Simpsons.
• 49:09
  Yes. Yeah.
• 49:12
  Yeah, the judge, no way the judge I thought it was cute but
• 49:14
  the judge when I got that the judge didn't think was funny at
• 49:17
  all. So yeah.
• 49:20
  So now I own several houses and I borrowed like 1.3 million
• 49:23
  dollars, you know? But by this point, I figured out
• 49:27
  how to I wasn't making fake IDs. I was just going into the DMV
• 49:31
  and getting them to give me an ID.
• 49:34
  Like, I could either make a fake birth certificate.
• 49:38
  And use a social security number and get an ID or I was the other
• 49:42
  thing I was doing was I was interviewing homeless people's,
• 49:44
  I was like surveying homeless, people telling the homeless
• 49:47
  people, I was a surveyor for the Salvation Army and so they would
• 49:53
  fill out a survey for me and give me all the information.
• 49:56
  I needed it to steal their identity unbeknownst to them.
• 50:00
  They thought they were filling out a, yeah, there's like
• 50:02
  they're pulling out a survey for what the census.
• 50:07
  No, no for for the Salvation Army for Salvation Army.
• 50:11
  Yeah to try and determine where the Salvation Army was going to
• 50:14
  place their next homeless facility makes sense.
• 50:17
  Though I mean I guess that makes sense.
• 50:21
  Yeah, I paid him 20 dollars. A little badge that says try
• 50:25
  them with their social security number.
• 50:27
  Their social security number. Their mother's maiden name where
• 50:30
  they were born their date of birth their full name where they
• 50:35
  went to high school. If they were ever in the
• 50:36
  military if they were currently on any government subsidies.
• 50:40
  If they'd ever been convicted of a felony, if when the last time
• 50:43
  they were gainfully employed and if they felt they were ever
• 50:46
  going to be gainfully employed again.
• 50:49
  And if they'd ever yeah, if they'd ever been in the military
• 50:52
  and if they'd ever had a passport or identification and
• 50:55
  in what if so in what state I think when you when you there
• 51:00
  was a point I think it was in the Atlantic article or they're
• 51:03
  talking about that you were in a bookstore and I think is Fortune
• 51:06
  Magazine. And the article was about you
• 51:10
  and they they were talking about different people that were
• 51:13
  affected by what you were doing and you is like your
• 51:19
  Consciousness. You and it's like, I didn't know
• 51:21
  those people where that, where did that did that happen?
• 51:25
  Yeah, I had one of the scams that Rebecca help that the girl
• 51:32
  that I went on the run with we had we had gone to to
• 51:41
  Tallahassee and we rented a house satisfy the loan on the
• 51:46
  house. So we rented a house from the
• 51:48
  guy, like a man who was the ex-husband of the woman that
• 51:53
  owned the house. He said she lived in.
• 51:54
  He was retired and lived in Miami.
• 51:56
  He was in his 60s and he said, he was running out the house
• 52:01
  whore. Okay?
• 52:01
  So we go in the house. We actually didn't even look in
• 52:04
  the house. We just look in the windows.
• 52:05
  And I said, yeah, I'll rent it. I gave the first month and a
• 52:08
  deposit, got the keys and immediately went downtown and
• 52:14
  satisfy the loan on the house. So now I own this house free and
• 52:17
  clear. Probably worth.
• 52:18
  Maybe 100,000. We then borrowed a mortgage on
• 52:22
  that house for like 50, some thousand.
• 52:24
  Dollars. And as soon as we borrow, we
• 52:29
  borrowed the money, pull the money out and left.
• 52:32
  It took maybe a few weeks to set it up, right?
• 52:35
  I mean, you know, really only took a day to set it up but you
• 52:38
  had to wait for the satisfaction to get recorded.
• 52:41
  We had to wait for title work with all that so we get 55 56
• 52:47
  thousand, something like that. I forget what it was exactly but
• 52:49
  we get that money and So, that was what that was.
• 52:55
  This one scam. But the other scam was of in
• 52:59
  South Carolina, I had bought a house from a doctor and his wife
• 53:05
  and reef and then refinance the house.
• 53:07
  Several times bar like a million dollars on the house, pull the
• 53:09
  money out. Well when the Forbes article
• 53:12
  came out suddenly, I'm reading this article and I look down and
• 53:17
  it says that the woman that I had refinanced our house Was in
• 53:22
  a wheelchair and I was like, I didn't know that, you know, and
• 53:28
  the girl, the girl I was dating at the time she looked.
• 53:30
  I remember she looked at me like, oh my God, like you did
• 53:33
  that. I was like, well I never met
• 53:34
  this woman. I met her ex-husband.
• 53:37
  She lived in Miami. I was in Tallahassee.
• 53:39
  I didn't know that and then the other one was the doctor.
• 53:46
  They were like, oh, you know, he had a sick child and you took
• 53:51
  it, you knew he had a sick child and you took advantage because
• 53:54
  he was in a bad position. I never met these people.
• 53:58
  I was shown the house by a realtor.
• 54:00
  The realtor certainly never said anything about a sick child.
• 54:04
  I didn't even go upstairs. We walked in the house.
• 54:07
  I looked around it downstairs and I said looks good to me.
• 54:11
  Let's put a contract on it. Let's go to the next house.
• 54:15
  We walked out because I was trying to find someone to owner
• 54:17
  finance, so, but the article came out and it made it that it
• 54:21
  was like he targeted to your people.
• 54:25
  He knew, they were in a vulnerable position.
• 54:28
  He knew like I didn't meet these people's children.
• 54:32
  I didn't talk to them. Separate the closing table, I
• 54:35
  met them and the conversation was very, very always is yeah.
• 54:41
  Very brief. Very oh, okay.
• 54:44
  Oh, what do you play? I'm doing.
• 54:45
  Did you just move the area? A we'd lift if we're moving to
• 54:48
  Atlanta? Okay, you know.
• 54:49
  Okay, great. That was it.
• 54:53
  So Stephanie, so that all happened there, the girl that
• 54:57
  you were with at the time that that change anything with you
• 54:59
  and her now, just how it was just like her.
• 55:03
  Just he knew who I was she wasn't concerned you know.
• 55:06
  She was like yeah she knew you know Listen by this point she's
• 55:10
  heard so many things you know read so much stuff like at this
• 55:14
  point. She's not going anywhere.
• 55:15
  Yeah walk us through Matt when you when it all comes down on
• 55:21
  you and you Don't negotiate in yourself and to me I think they
• 55:25
  were going to charge you with like 400 years or some can you
• 55:27
  kind of just walk walk the listeners through what happened
• 55:30
  to you once they put you on the most wanted list?
• 55:34
  And how did you get caught and then what did you do?
• 55:38
  Well, I was I ended up on the I was initially I was on the
• 55:42
  secret Services Most Wanted one after I went to Atlanta but then
• 55:46
  I went to Charlotte North Carolina, I borrowed like 1.3
• 55:49
  million. I was pulling that out of the
• 55:52
  bank and I found out. I actually got caught.
• 55:54
  I was handcuffed and Charlotte and taken downtown.
• 55:58
  Because the bank called the police and said, the day, a
• 56:01
  fraud was being committed. I convinced those detective that
• 56:04
  I hadn't done anything wrong and he doesn't know I'm, that cock.
• 56:08
  You think my name is Barry Sullivan and I convinced him
• 56:11
  that that the bank had made a mistake and I hadn't actually
• 56:14
  done anything wrong. You're somebody, he lets me go.
• 56:18
  That's crazy. That's you just absolutely walk
• 56:20
  out. I just walk out of the
• 56:22
  PlayStation. Wow.
• 56:23
  So so what ends up happening is, I actually at that point
• 56:29
  probably within a few days of then I actually called the FBI
• 56:32
  and talk try to convince, try to kind of kind of turn myself in,
• 56:37
  you know, if I could just Turn myself in.
• 56:38
  I was trying to negotiate like a plea agreement.
• 56:40
  That didn't work out. The FBI was the woman was not
• 56:44
  going. Yeah, she was she wanted to but
• 56:47
  they basically during the conversation I realized she was
• 56:50
  lying to me about a couple of things and I said oh well I just
• 56:53
  I don't I don't trust you like you're lying about the end she
• 56:56
  had she knew she was like she admitted she is lying.
• 56:57
  She's like no we'll listen you know why I can fix this?
• 57:02
  I can no no no so that wasn't going to work.
• 57:05
  I went to Charlotte North Carolina and I borrowed.
• 57:08
  Three and a half million there in synthetic identities name.
• 57:12
  Different new synthetic I do anything and What actually no
• 57:18
  that's right. That those were actually
• 57:19
  homeless people's names that I had gotten Social Security
• 57:23
  numbers in their names and kind of done a combination of the two
• 57:26
  so far that money and I'd had a home invasion. and, The girl I
• 57:37
  was dating at that point. Had confided in a friend of
• 57:43
  hers, like like we knew the Dateline NBC was coming out.
• 57:47
  So Dateline NBC is coming out and I realize I'm going to have
• 57:51
  to leave the United States, like the they were articles and
• 57:55
  Forbes and there was articles in like Bloomberg and there's tons
• 57:58
  of newspapers, but articles, but I felt like there was a
• 58:03
  negligible, you know, I could Get around those.
• 58:10
  But when I found out, I was going to be on Dateline.
• 58:11
  I realize that's a problem and so I was going to leave and we
• 58:17
  were pulling money out of the bank of different banks and we
• 58:22
  ended up asking a friend of the girl I was dating.
• 58:24
  We asked her. Friend to cash them check.
• 58:30
  Well that must have that ended up sparking a conversation
• 58:32
  between the two of them and she confided who I was and she ended
• 58:37
  up calling the Secret Service. Well, the Secret Service showed
• 58:43
  up to start watching my house. But the night before I'd had a
• 58:48
  home invasion. These guys kicked in the door,
• 58:52
  they stole a bunch of stuff. And so I wasn't staying at the
• 58:56
  house. Me and my girlfriend.
• 58:57
  We went to another part to it to a hotel.
• 59:00
  So the Secret Service is watching this house for three
• 59:02
  days and you're at the hotel. I don't Hotel.
• 59:05
  It's funny. How in the world is that often
• 59:08
  the police ended up calling Mission have been able to see
• 59:11
  the home invasion. There's supposed to be touching,
• 59:14
  it was the day before or the day after.
• 59:16
  Okay. Alright.
• 59:17
  The home invasion happened that night and the next morning they
• 59:20
  show up Got it. So the police call and say, look
• 59:25
  and I was living as a Joseph, Carter.
• 59:29
  They said mr. Carter, you had you, I had a
• 59:32
  surveillance cameras in my house so I caught the whole thing on
• 59:35
  camera. They said we'd like to come by
• 59:36
  and get the surveillance footage.
• 59:38
  I said, sure, no problem. I said I can meet you there
• 59:40
  right now. So I drive there to meet them
• 59:43
  and when I pull up, Secret Service, come pulling in behind
• 59:47
  me. In front of me, the sideways.
• 59:48
  They jump out and freeze. Get on the ground, get on the
• 59:51
  ground, get on the ground, I dropped to the ground.
• 59:53
  And yeah, that's that's, you know, they take me to the local
• 1:00:00
  local Secret Service office or field office and handcuffed me
• 1:00:04
  to the table. And I told my one to talk to a
• 1:00:07
  lawyer. And then it took a couple weeks
• 1:00:10
  to transport me back to Atlanta which is where I was indicted
• 1:00:15
  out. Of course it wasn't.
• 1:00:17
  Yeah I was indicted out of South Carolina.
• 1:00:24
  Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. So I was indicted in four
• 1:00:31
  different jurisdictions. I went back there and, you know,
• 1:00:38
  plead guilty and I was I was interviewed by the Secret
• 1:00:46
  Service. For maybe three days.
• 1:00:51
  I think I was interviewed maybe two days and then I was
• 1:00:53
  interviewed by the FBI for like three or four days you know
• 1:00:58
  against my you know explaining what I did in Florida and who
• 1:01:01
  helped me and what had happened on the run.
• 1:01:03
  But on the Run nobody they knew who really everybody?
• 1:01:06
  That helped me anyway and the people in Florida that had
• 1:01:08
  helped had already cooperated right there were already part of
• 1:01:11
  the case, right? So there were no although they
• 1:01:15
  could have indicted. People.
• 1:01:18
  This is now 2007. Yeah, this is like throws on the
• 1:01:21
  run that they didn't indict. Right.
• 1:01:24
  Right. I was on the run for three
• 1:01:25
  years. Yeah, it's a long time.
• 1:01:27
  So, some people went to jail. They just went in like I have
• 1:01:31
  one coat of finish named Allison.
• 1:01:32
  Allison. Went to the FBI's office.
• 1:01:35
  With an attorney and just told them she wanted to plead guilty.
• 1:01:41
  And so they said okay no problem, nobody else did that so
• 1:01:45
  nobody else even though they were all on the indictment, they
• 1:01:47
  were never prosecuted so none of them went to jail by.
• 1:01:51
  Probably the persons that these the least comfortable was Alison
• 1:01:55
  and she's the one that went in and plus she, right?
• 1:01:58
  Because she felt like I hadn't do much, I didn't really do
• 1:02:00
  anything. I'm probably not going to get
• 1:02:03
  any time. I think she got like 30 months.
• 1:02:05
  Yeah. What were you thinking?
• 1:02:07
  Like, you know, they threw a lot of stacked charges.
• 1:02:12
  You know, you only need like three or four charges, then they
• 1:02:14
  stack them and each one of those charges can carry 10, 20 years.
• 1:02:18
  And so, you then all of a sudden you're looking at, you know, 400
• 1:02:20
  years, what was going through your mind at the time because
• 1:02:23
  you had been on the run. So you, you were probably I
• 1:02:28
  don't know if you'd ever say you're prepared to get caught,
• 1:02:30
  but you knew that it was a possibility.
• 1:02:32
  So when you were and he knew you were looking at a good amount of
• 1:02:36
  time. What, how will you, how he's
• 1:02:39
  handling that? What were you thinking?
• 1:02:45
  Well, I thinking, I mean, I was thinking it's a lot.
• 1:02:49
  I wasn't thinking I was going to get caught, okay?
• 1:02:52
  You never really thought that you thought you'd never come.
• 1:02:54
  Yeah, that's me. You understand how many times
• 1:02:58
  I've been pulled over by the police and gotten ticket but I
• 1:03:02
  had a real driver's license. Yeah.
• 1:03:04
  In a real person named I have full coverage insurance.
• 1:03:06
  I'm driving a car that's financed in that person's name.
• 1:03:10
  I'm you know I'm not an idiot. I'm not driving around.
• 1:03:12
  Down with a broken, taillight knit, and a dead body in it.
• 1:03:16
  Fresh longer as much as Matt Cox.
• 1:03:19
  Driving drunk, right? Right, right.
• 1:03:21
  I'm driving around as Michael Michael Eckert, or as Gary
• 1:03:26
  Sullivan or as of cologne. Yeah, you know, I've got a valid
• 1:03:33
  driver's license so that even probably was even more of a
• 1:03:36
  shock. Then if you ever, if you really
• 1:03:38
  weren't thinking that you were going to get caught being
• 1:03:40
  caught, knowing It was it was it was a total shop.
• 1:03:44
  Yeah. Was it, we just come back from
• 1:03:48
  spending two weeks in Europe. Yeah, so I've got, I've got 20
• 1:03:53
  teams country. I have over 20, passports issued
• 1:03:57
  to me in different names from the US state department, so I'm
• 1:04:02
  not concerned. I was concerned about Dateline.
• 1:04:06
  Sure, it wasn't out yet and I figured it would come out and I
• 1:04:10
  would go to go to Australia. Right.
• 1:04:14
  And by some rental properties, and keep a low profile for a few
• 1:04:19
  years and it would just go away. Well, that didn't happen.
• 1:04:24
  It didn't happen. So you end up getting sentenced
• 1:04:26
  to was it 54 years? No, no.
• 1:04:30
  So if they stack the Chargers I think they said it was, you
• 1:04:34
  know, one article says 300 years.
• 1:04:36
  One says, 151 says, if they'd be just pleads guilty to the
• 1:04:41
  charges, he's charged with it was 54 years, I plead guilty.
• 1:04:44
  My PSI my pre-sentence report. Recommended got 30 Years to
• 1:04:51
  Life. Yeah, but it was just before we
• 1:04:55
  sentencing, they drop some of the charges.
• 1:04:57
  Yeah, and you know, they drop the charges because they make it
• 1:05:01
  sound like they're doing you a favor but really at that if I'm
• 1:05:07
  facing if my PSI says 30 years, And I plead guilty to 30 years
• 1:05:14
  even on a plea agreement, it gives me the right to appeal
• 1:05:18
  because what was the benefit for mr.
• 1:05:21
  Cox to plead guilty. When he could have gone to trial
• 1:05:27
  and gotten 30 years. So why would he plead guilty to
• 1:05:30
  30 years? So they, they dropped it to 26
• 1:05:34
  years and four months, that way, they could stay.
• 1:05:37
  There was a benefit for him to plead guilty, got a benefit out
• 1:05:40
  of the polluting. Well, I plead guilty to and I
• 1:05:44
  got 26 years and 4 months, so it's a lot.
• 1:05:46
  Matt. It's a lot, but the bad day.
• 1:05:49
  Yeah, no, Matt. It's a lot.
• 1:05:50
  It's a lot to take in because I was, I got five years.
• 1:05:54
  And that was the max. What?
• 1:05:55
  Polly was and it just kind of takes your breath away.
• 1:05:58
  I can't imagine 26 years because that's that's a life of, you
• 1:06:03
  know, time. So when you go walk, walk me
• 1:06:07
  into your where you you want to Coleman, right?
• 1:06:11
  Yeah, I went to, you know, I went to Coleman Federal Prison
• 1:06:18
  Complex, I went to the medium. Yeah.
• 1:06:21
  What was just like a real present?
• 1:06:22
  Yeah. I kind of want to know because
• 1:06:24
  you hadn't. It's an unknown world that
• 1:06:27
  you're walking into. I mean if you hadn't lived that
• 1:06:29
  life what what were you I would I was in get mine I had been in
• 1:06:34
  the US Marshals hold over for a year like I don't know if you've
• 1:06:38
  got a problem you got 20-something passports and Over
• 1:06:41
  almost 30 different IDs or driver's licenses.
• 1:06:45
  You don't get bail right there. No well there's no walking out
• 1:06:48
  the door and say come on back when we.
• 1:06:50
  Yeah, right. Like you could tell surrender
• 1:06:52
  all I surrender on this day. No that's not going to be your
• 1:06:55
  situation so you had kind of gotten indoctrinated into the
• 1:06:58
  sitch system. Yeah but but prison is different
• 1:07:02
  than you know, County jail or well, you know, the US, Marshals
• 1:07:05
  holdover like it's actually like a huge City.
• 1:07:09
  So I go to the medium. and, you know, I get to the medium and
• 1:07:16
  You know you you get bust there and your your walked in and they
• 1:07:20
  give you a sign. You a housing unit and you walk
• 1:07:23
  the housing unit. You walk in and you give your
• 1:07:25
  bed card. To the officer and he tells you
• 1:07:30
  where your room is and they, you know, you go in and you meet
• 1:07:33
  your Celly and he says, what's up and, you know, I talked to
• 1:07:37
  him, he said what happened, how much time you get and I was,
• 1:07:40
  like, 26 years. He's like, oh, what's your
• 1:07:41
  crime? And I was like, you know, it was
• 1:07:43
  bank fraud bank fraud and, you know, I start naming them all
• 1:07:47
  off and keep in mind. He's a guy, he's Mexican, he's
• 1:07:50
  there for drug smuggling. Because the makeup of that
• 1:07:53
  prison was probably 80% black. Oh yeah.
• 1:07:59
  Percent black, and most of those guys were there for fraud, I'm
• 1:08:02
  not sorry for for drugs. So rest of them were maybe 20%
• 1:08:07
  Mexican, maybe 70/30. There was probably one percent
• 1:08:12
  of that prison. That was white guys, you know,
• 1:08:16
  and those white guys were there for Matt.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  I think the interesting thing to Matt is that a lot of People out
• 1:08:22
  in the world. Think that there's white collar
• 1:08:24
  prisons, there is no such thing there.
• 1:08:27
  There is, no, it's not that white collar prison anywhere.
• 1:08:32
  But what you just did, how you kind of broke that down, that's
• 1:08:35
  really, especially in the feds, you're dealing with a lot of
• 1:08:40
  people that are dealing in drugs.
• 1:08:42
  And, you know, because they're crossing state lines and there
• 1:08:44
  and, and those people are very smart.
• 1:08:46
  I'm but I'm just saying there is no such thing as a white-collar
• 1:08:49
  prison. Usually, the white-collar person
• 1:08:51
  is a Severe minority, and any prison?
• 1:08:55
  Yeah, back before they change the federal system, right?
• 1:09:00
  The Reagan chains, like the federal system and six and in
• 1:09:05
  the 90s, they started just arresting everybody.
• 1:09:07
  For for crack. They are taking would
• 1:09:09
  essentially say charges The Matador mandatory minimums, that
• 1:09:14
  was just put away. Yeah, so what ended up happening
• 1:09:17
  was at that time, any types of low, or Oops, that were
• 1:09:22
  predominantly fraud, white prominent, we white-collar
• 1:09:26
  prison for non-violent white-collar prison.
• 1:09:29
  Like those quickly became inundated with with, with
• 1:09:33
  essentially, you know, high-ranking or top-tier state
• 1:09:38
  inmates. Right guys?
• 1:09:40
  That were necessarily selling crack on a corner.
• 1:09:43
  Maybe they were moving kilos of it or if they were selling
• 1:09:46
  crack, they had crack. And they had a gun.
• 1:09:49
  Yes. So they would take a In dollar
• 1:09:53
  practical. Yeah, right.
• 1:09:55
  So I want to know, like, how did you set up your world in there?
• 1:09:59
  Did you get a good prison job? Did you use your artist Talent
• 1:10:04
  ability? I mean, I know you started
• 1:10:06
  writing books, but how did you kind of engage yourself and then
• 1:10:10
  environment? I was you're going away for a
• 1:10:15
  while. Yeah, it took a few years but
• 1:10:18
  I've read for about two years and I taught GED.
• 1:10:21
  Yes I remember that remember that you told me that Monday so
• 1:10:26
  I did that and then I taught the real estate class.
• 1:10:30
  It was the eighth course you know the adult continuing
• 1:10:32
  education courses and I was taught that course.
• 1:10:36
  Do you enjoy that doing that? Yeah I did.
• 1:10:39
  It was the first time I actually other than my broker's you know
• 1:10:41
  being like one-on-one. I'm kind of showing them how to
• 1:10:43
  go through like a that was different that those were just
• 1:10:46
  closures. Like you kind of explain to your
• 1:10:47
  Brokers, how to disclose to a client.
• 1:10:49
  This was actually real estate. Like how do you and like and I
• 1:10:52
  started about bottom like what what makes real estate real
• 1:10:55
  estate? Yeah.
• 1:10:56
  What is Real Property? Yeah.
• 1:10:58
  We're how do you know that this person owns this property?
• 1:11:02
  How does the bank know that? So I go through public records.
• 1:11:05
  I go through the plot maps. I go through the whole thing.
• 1:11:08
  And then, you know, then I explained how wide the banks
• 1:11:11
  will are willing to lend money, how the foreclosure process
• 1:11:14
  works. Then I start explaining how to
• 1:11:16
  buy a property how to get financing, how did it.
• 1:11:19
  So I went through the whole thing and it was a well, we just
• 1:11:21
  teach you real skills. I mean that's something that you
• 1:11:23
  know, regardless of the situation that person can come
• 1:11:27
  out of prison and use those skills and that's very rarely.
• 1:11:32
  Can you find? They did?
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, they did. I actually had guys that got out
• 1:11:35
  and sent me money. It's fantastic.
• 1:11:37
  Not a Money, but like 50 bucks here, 100 bucks here, because
• 1:11:41
  they taken the class so many times.
• 1:11:43
  And they got out and they actually, you know, were
• 1:11:45
  flipping Properties. Or, you know, they take forget
• 1:11:47
  you, very quick, very cool, man. I mean, a lot of what we do
• 1:11:50
  talking about on this show, is how do you use your experience
• 1:11:53
  of what you've been through, to be able to affect good.
• 1:11:55
  That is affecting good. That's, that's giving people
• 1:11:58
  skills that they didn't have that.
• 1:12:00
  They can Implement into their life when they get out, because
• 1:12:04
  if they've learned it from somebody who actually knew and
• 1:12:07
  lived, All of that and kind of knew it like the back of your
• 1:12:10
  hand. Write what you know what the
• 1:12:12
  interesting is that is the first time that one here, it gave me
• 1:12:18
  status. It may be an important person in
• 1:12:21
  prison. The second thing is that it was
• 1:12:24
  the first time I ever had someone that walked up to me and
• 1:12:31
  just shook my hand, like walked out, there was just put their
• 1:12:33
  hand out to just kind of like hey I want to thank you.
• 1:12:38
  And this is, this is some drug gift with a 30-year sentence.
• 1:12:41
  Yeah. Whose - I'm standing at the
• 1:12:44
  door, like get everybody's name for the roster and they're
• 1:12:47
  walking. And this guy walks up, this is
• 1:12:48
  like second class, he walked up and he goes, hey, cops.
• 1:12:51
  And he said, boom, he's put his hand out.
• 1:12:53
  He's a man could collapse, bro, I thought he was joking at
• 1:12:56
  first. Yeah, I shook his hand, but he
• 1:12:59
  was sincere and then somebody else shakes my hand, and then it
• 1:13:03
  got to a point where literally every class 5 or 6, guys are
• 1:13:06
  shaking my hand and tell. Telling me how amazing that was
• 1:13:09
  then. Other guys start coming to me
• 1:13:12
  telling me. My celly taking your class, I'm
• 1:13:17
  like, okay. And they're like, he says, he's
• 1:13:18
  going to be rich when he gets out and I said why?
• 1:13:22
  And he said he's going to start flipping properties.
• 1:13:25
  He said your talk, teach how to build you teach how to do.
• 1:13:28
  So, we go through the whole thing and I'm like, okay, and
• 1:13:33
  I'm kind of like laughing. I'm like, yeah, I guess that
• 1:13:35
  makes sense. And, and so, he said, I'm gonna
• 1:13:40
  tell your class next next quarter.
• 1:13:41
  They got to the point where my class was booked for Or like two
• 1:13:44
  or three quarters in a row but you you had to sign up, you
• 1:13:47
  might get to get in and six months and I used to walk in, I
• 1:13:50
  used to, I used to love walking in and when we got to the part
• 1:13:56
  about buying houses and fixing them up and flipping them or or
• 1:13:59
  even, you know, flipping contracts or doing whatever, I
• 1:14:02
  would say, how many people are here for drugs and they know
• 1:14:05
  they, of course home with everybody raised their hand.
• 1:14:07
  Yeah. You know, and I would say you
• 1:14:10
  know this is The one time that you being a drug dealer is going
• 1:14:17
  to absolutely work to your benefit.
• 1:14:22
  I said, because you're not afraid to go into those
• 1:14:25
  neighborhoods, right that and you have a hustler man, tality,
• 1:14:29
  that no other investor, is ever going to be able to compete
• 1:14:33
  with. So you guys have been Hustlers,
• 1:14:35
  you're a whole lives and this is a legal way for you to make that
• 1:14:41
  work for Are you in a way that will make you more money than
• 1:14:45
  you have ever made? Listen, these guys with walk out
• 1:14:48
  like, bro, they they come to me, they to go, bro.
• 1:14:51
  I can't I couldn't sleep last night.
• 1:14:52
  You got them thinking, thinking about everything.
• 1:14:56
  I said. The other thing about for you
• 1:14:57
  was is that that get engaged your brain and you helping these
• 1:15:02
  guys, you know, you want things in prison to help.
• 1:15:05
  You feel like you, you know, don't lose you and that engaged
• 1:15:09
  your brain and almost really was like an escape outside.
• 1:15:12
  Those walls outside that fence because you were doing your
• 1:15:16
  thing, you're talking your game and these guys are getting so
• 1:15:19
  engaged at they're getting they're getting pumped up.
• 1:15:22
  I think it's so cool because you know, So many times you can use
• 1:15:28
  or you can have all this knowledge and you don't have a
• 1:15:30
  way to get it out. This was a back-and-forth that
• 1:15:33
  happened for you with these guys and and I think it's cool that
• 1:15:38
  you were saying that these some of these guys went out there and
• 1:15:40
  actually made it work for them. That's that's very cool.
• 1:15:43
  Very cool. I was I did that for about three
• 1:15:47
  years. And after about two years, you
• 1:15:51
  know, I had anticipated that and I've been told by my lawyer that
• 1:15:57
  the FBI and the Secret Service we're going to continue with the
• 1:16:00
  investigations. So after about two years or so
• 1:16:04
  my lawyer, I was like, what is going on?
• 1:16:06
  It's been forever and she explained to me that nobody had
• 1:16:10
  been arrested. And even though the FBI had come
• 1:16:15
  out to see me and talk to me about, like, I had bribed
• 1:16:19
  councilmember one time like a city council member.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah, I got him elected and paid for the read about all those
• 1:16:25
  kind of Interest. Yeah.
• 1:16:26
  Well, that person ended up getting charged.
• 1:16:29
  And I'm sitting there saying this guy's on the take and they
• 1:16:33
  know it. They have the canceled checks.
• 1:16:34
  They have everybody saying, yes, we gave to his campaign.
• 1:16:37
  Yes, Matt had an agreement with him, he bribed him even though
• 1:16:42
  Have all this. They didn't have enough that to
• 1:16:45
  indict him and sure enough a year later they indict him on
• 1:16:49
  bribery charges, right? But not related to talking
• 1:16:54
  about. That's what was interesting
• 1:16:55
  about. That whole thing was is that you
• 1:16:57
  were giving them the goods of what was going on.
• 1:16:59
  And then he ended up getting indicted and convicted on a
• 1:17:04
  different bribery deal which is and told you.
• 1:17:06
  It's so funny about that, it heat there were quote of him in
• 1:17:10
  the Articles where he Saying, like, this guy's nothing but a
• 1:17:14
  jailhouse, snitch. Like, he's just trying to get
• 1:17:17
  out of prison. Like listen, bro, I'm you're a
• 1:17:20
  politician. You are lying, I'm a criminal.
• 1:17:22
  I'm not lying. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  Like I'm telling the truth between you and I I'm the oldest
• 1:17:26
  one of the truth and then he gets he gets convicted.
• 1:17:29
  He's convicted yeah. Well I'm curious to did they
• 1:17:32
  come to you because somebody like you Matt, I would think
• 1:17:36
  that like the Secret Service and people in the government would
• 1:17:39
  want to understand. What you were doing and you to
• 1:17:43
  be able to tell them what you were doing so that they could be
• 1:17:48
  educated to look for. Did they ever come to you and
• 1:17:51
  say, I met help us out man? What what in the hell?
• 1:17:55
  How did you get all this? And we want to make sure that
• 1:17:58
  we're smart, you know, they do that with like guys that hack,
• 1:18:01
  you know, computers and can get in and passwords and stuff, and
• 1:18:04
  they use a foreign policy and whatever or not foreign policy
• 1:18:07
  foreign espionage. Right?
• 1:18:09
  But, you know, like hacking, you know, who Brett Johnson is.
• 1:18:14
  I've heard of that name. Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  Brett Johnson is one of the guys that started and ran.
• 1:18:19
  What's called shadowcrew? Which was one of the first
• 1:18:22
  online credit card form. And fraud, formed really Brett,
• 1:18:29
  you know like when Brett cooperated and talk to the, I
• 1:18:33
  think the FBI are the service like they had no clue what he
• 1:18:37
  had done, right? They Tell you like, he would say
• 1:18:40
  well you know you just run it through a socket server, you
• 1:18:43
  know, and they go, what's that? Yeah, or a CPU know you use this
• 1:18:48
  or you just take what you just take this and you do you know
• 1:18:52
  your they your Internet Protocol is scrambles your Internet
• 1:18:55
  Protocol where you do a anybody explaining they go what's that
• 1:18:59
  what's that like they had no clue about any everything he was
• 1:19:01
  doing was revolutionary for them.
• 1:19:05
  Well what I was doing wasn't revolutionary Like it had been
• 1:19:11
  done, but I was taking identity theft bank fraud, real estate
• 1:19:18
  fraud. And I was combining and the
• 1:19:22
  creation of synthetic identity, the creation of government
• 1:19:25
  documents, the creation and I was combining them in a fraud
• 1:19:30
  that instead of me make running a scam and making Thirty or
• 1:19:34
  forty thousand dollars, I ran a scam and I would make two
• 1:19:38
  million Dollars and so I can have a rather I could tell them
• 1:19:44
  what I was doing and I did and they had never liked all of them
• 1:19:49
  was like I've never seen anything like this but I wasn't
• 1:19:52
  saying that there's a flaw in the system and you can correct
• 1:19:56
  it right? I was just doing something that
• 1:19:58
  everybody else had done. There was a better.
• 1:20:00
  There were all these pieces are out there.
• 1:20:02
  Nobody had just arrange them and that was really the problem for
• 1:20:05
  me was that they were, it was so easy for them.
• 1:20:10
  To connect me to everything but there's a system.
• 1:20:14
  The FBI uses I guess the Secret Service uses it to work it.
• 1:20:17
  Ask questions you know is the subject male?
• 1:20:20
  Yes. What's the age range?
• 1:20:22
  Yeah. Was identity theft used.
• 1:20:24
  Yes. Was you know and then it's a
• 1:20:26
  start naming off all the things that were used in the scam and
• 1:20:29
  it very quickly Narrows down. It's one of these four people.
• 1:20:34
  well, I'm the only number that came up, you know, I was told
• 1:20:39
  like, look when we put you into and I forget the name of the
• 1:20:41
  system, I don't know if it's I forget the name of it.
• 1:20:44
  They named it. Some an acronym.
• 1:20:46
  They were like, you're like one of the only people there's like
• 1:20:48
  three or four people that come up.
• 1:20:50
  One person's in prison, one person's dead and you and you're
• 1:20:55
  the guy that was connecting all the dots, right?
• 1:20:58
  So fill the boxes enter. So I what I did do was I wrote,
• 1:21:06
  I ended up writing an ethics and fraud course, okay?
• 1:21:11
  Because you have to imprison. Yes.
• 1:21:14
  Here's what happened. My mortgage.
• 1:21:17
  I'm sorry. My, my assistant us attorney
• 1:21:20
  that was in charge of my case. She did ask me to be interviewed
• 1:21:25
  by Dateline, and she said to me, look, if your interviewed by
• 1:21:28
  Dateline, I will consider it substantial assistance.
• 1:21:31
  Now, substantial assistance is the word they use for
• 1:21:35
  cooperation, right? Well, considered substantial
• 1:21:37
  assistance, and we will reduce your sentence, and I was like,
• 1:21:42
  okay, so my lawyers like, yeah, you should you be interviewed by
• 1:21:45
  Dateline, they'll reduce your sentence.
• 1:21:48
  So I interviewed by Dateline. So when I go to to sentencing,
• 1:21:53
  my lawyer says, what are you going to recommend?
• 1:21:57
  He get and they said, 26 years and four months and she said but
• 1:22:02
  that's what he's already going to get and she's, they can get
• 1:22:04
  what about the cooperation? She said, I'm sorry, I'm not
• 1:22:09
  going to give him cooperation, but you told him, he would get
• 1:22:12
  cooperation if he was interviewed by Dateline.
• 1:22:15
  She said, no, I said, I'd consider it substantial
• 1:22:18
  assistance. I could do consider it.
• 1:22:20
  It's No, it's not enough. So while I was incarcerated, I
• 1:22:25
  was contacted by American Greed and I called my attorney, my
• 1:22:31
  attorney called, the US attorney.
• 1:22:32
  And the US attorney said, if he does, if he's interviewed by
• 1:22:35
  American Greed, will consider substantial assistance.
• 1:22:39
  It will reduce his sentence. And she said, okay this time she
• 1:22:43
  was oh yeah, absolutely this time.
• 1:22:46
  So I was interviewed by American Greed.
• 1:22:48
  It aired, we put in a motion to have my sentence reduced and
• 1:22:53
  they said we've considered it. It's just not enough.
• 1:22:57
  That's interesting because, you know, you and I both talked
• 1:22:59
  about this on the American great thing.
• 1:23:01
  Both of us had American Greed played while we were in prison.
• 1:23:04
  I didn't ever get that offer. You must have been a lot more
• 1:23:07
  interesting because they never Kasich Cassidy you do.
• 1:23:11
  Can greed and talk to us because they wanted me to talk to him,
• 1:23:14
  but I didn't see there was any benefit to it, because I've
• 1:23:16
  never seen any money on this show that they give any real,
• 1:23:19
  you know, they'll take their sound bite so that they can
• 1:23:21
  voiceover it or whatever. But I never did, I never got
• 1:23:25
  that opportunity to say, hey, we will do so little bit but I
• 1:23:28
  wasn't, I didn't have as many years but keep in mind too.
• 1:23:32
  You probably also said immediately I'm not going to be
• 1:23:35
  interviewed true. So what I did was I called my
• 1:23:38
  lawyer And I said, can I get something if I'm interviewed?
• 1:23:41
  And she said, hold on, she calls, the US attorney us.
• 1:23:43
  Attorney said, yes. Okay, yeah I am.
• 1:23:46
  I you and everyone that far which assignment my us attorney
• 1:23:51
  was a media Hound. Okay.
• 1:23:54
  She loves media. Yeah.
• 1:23:58
  But what's once again, was going to give me anything.
• 1:24:00
  So then I was contacted by a guy who runs the national.
• 1:24:04
  I want to go back to, I don't want to, I don't want to just
• 1:24:05
  walk over the American Greeting because the, how was that?
• 1:24:13
  What, what was the reaction to your American Greed episode and
• 1:24:16
  your prison? So I was I didn't see it in
• 1:24:28
  prison though. You didn't see it, no, but the
• 1:24:30
  guard saw it interesting. Other inmate thoughts because
• 1:24:36
  nobody called me and said, it's going to be on Tuesday night,
• 1:24:39
  okay. Oh, I missed the episode but
• 1:24:42
  what I was in prison for was Dateline, so I sat there and
• 1:24:47
  watched my Dateline, okay? And you know, that's what are
• 1:24:50
  some of that. I mean, it was you know, the
• 1:24:53
  guys And I genuinely mean this after when all of the criteria
• 1:25:00
  and Wang everything that happened and everything I went
• 1:25:04
  through and knowing the story and everything that I said, the
• 1:25:08
  guy was the named, Stacey keep just who owns the production
• 1:25:13
  company that makes those shows. So you know, is genuinely an
• 1:25:18
  absolute come back. I'm an absolute come back.
• 1:25:22
  Like I get it like Like I'm a, I'm a scumbag.
• 1:25:26
  I'm in prison. Okay, fine.
• 1:25:28
  But he if you took the interview that occurred and what he did
• 1:25:33
  with that interview, It's it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable.
• 1:25:40
  Like been on this crazy like he's, he literally just You
• 1:25:45
  know, they cut it. They had me laughing and joking
• 1:25:48
  and smiling at places that were completely inappropriate.
• 1:25:51
  They had me saying things that were inappropriate when he would
• 1:25:53
  ask a question. They take another answer and
• 1:25:55
  slice it in there. They, it was just.
• 1:25:58
  It was just, it was just complete complete fraud.
• 1:26:01
  Yeah. And that's where people like to
• 1:26:04
  watch it, right? But keep in mind, too.
• 1:26:07
  I get it. Like, I understand like the
• 1:26:10
  problem is that when you really weigh that out, it's like that.
• 1:26:16
  You know they said I murdered 13 people.
• 1:26:19
  That's that's a lie. I only murder 11.
• 1:26:22
  Like like you know I'm still a scumbag.
• 1:26:25
  I may not be a 13 level. I'm at 11 but it's like Indiana
• 1:26:30
  birds like so so it wasn't true now is about 95% row.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like like they put a Twist, they
• 1:26:39
  put a shitty Twist on everything.
• 1:26:40
  Yes. But in the end they did you
• 1:26:43
  there's a realm of Truth or runs through Yeah, of course.
• 1:26:46
  Did you borrow this much money? Yes, but I didn't borrow it in
• 1:26:49
  the way that they what does it matter doesn't, and it's so hard
• 1:26:52
  to, you know, like when I don't ever talk about it, I mean,
• 1:26:56
  we're talking about here but I don't ever talk about it because
• 1:26:58
  it's just like, I get it. It's on.
• 1:27:00
  You saw it, think what you want? You know?
• 1:27:03
  Yeah. Like everybody that knows me.
• 1:27:07
  They know believe that. Yeah.
• 1:27:08
  Like they watch it. They just shake their head.
• 1:27:10
  They're like, oh my god. Wow.
• 1:27:16
  How many years did you end up doing 11?
• 1:27:19
  I did 13. 13 13. Okay.
• 1:27:22
  So 13 years is a long time when you got close to the door
• 1:27:26
  getting out were you like man? I don't know I just been a long
• 1:27:31
  time. I've been in here.
• 1:27:33
  What's it like out there? Was there any anxiety on your
• 1:27:35
  part? I've obviously everybody wants
• 1:27:37
  to get out but it's getting closer to the door plugging back
• 1:27:40
  into society. What were you thinking?
• 1:27:45
  Yeah, I was I was okay in there. Yeah.
• 1:27:49
  Like by that point by after about how many years after a
• 1:27:54
  probably five years, six years about six years.
• 1:27:59
  I was really good, like I wanted out obviously sure you don't
• 1:28:02
  know but I like okay, you know, told what to do.
• 1:28:05
  I did a great routine. I knew everybody, I'd a great
• 1:28:08
  routine. Nobody bothered me nobody, you
• 1:28:11
  know, people had respect for me too.
• 1:28:15
  I agree. I had a good group of friends
• 1:28:18
  that I hung out with. I liked, I was writing people
• 1:28:21
  stories which I love, I had plenty of time to write their
• 1:28:24
  stories. Like unfortunately, I'm out
• 1:28:27
  here, writing your story requires me to say, hey, you've
• 1:28:30
  got to give me 10 or 20 thousand dollars to do this, like, you
• 1:28:33
  know thing. So I can't just write your
• 1:28:36
  stamps and commissary and but I'm not.
• 1:28:38
  They're not paying me, I'm saying, right?
• 1:28:40
  No, thanks. I don't have to make build.
• 1:28:43
  I can just write the story. Exactly.
• 1:28:45
  If I'm not on a it's not a time crunch, right?
• 1:28:47
  There's no. It's just for enjoyment and and
• 1:28:53
  so I was able to do that and so I had a really good routine.
• 1:28:57
  And towards the end when I realized I was going to be
• 1:29:00
  getting out cuz I got my sentence cut twice. so, As I'm
• 1:29:06
  about to get out, you know, I was very uncomfortable, very
• 1:29:10
  concerned about what I was going to do for a living.
• 1:29:12
  How am I going to make a living? Who's going to hire me?
• 1:29:16
  You know, I didn't realize how perverted the world had become
• 1:29:23
  just Society in general. Like when I went locked up,
• 1:29:26
  there were no iPhones or no smartphones.
• 1:29:29
  There was no YouTube YouTube had been out for like a year or so,
• 1:29:32
  it's funny Carrie, Stokes your huge on YouTube.
• 1:29:35
  I'm huge on you, ridiculous. I so I didn't I didn't know that
• 1:29:42
  like I didn't know, I genuinely thought I'm going to work.
• 1:29:44
  I'm going to end up working at like McDonald's.
• 1:29:47
  I'm going to rent a room and I'm just going to kind of, you know,
• 1:29:50
  go about my life and try and put something together.
• 1:29:52
  And I also had the the comforting thought that if
• 1:29:58
  things went bad and I couldn't pay my bill and I couldn't make
• 1:30:03
  a living, I could always just It fraud I gave I had to go back to
• 1:30:08
  that life, I would. And the problem is I make it
• 1:30:10
  sound like like as a horrible thing or horrible life.
• 1:30:14
  Like I like, I didn't want to go back.
• 1:30:15
  But the truth is, you know, I think about it all the time.
• 1:30:19
  Like I think about it because when I initially started
• 1:30:23
  committing fraud, it was kind of like to get my to get money but
• 1:30:26
  then I had money and I just kept doing it because I liked it and
• 1:30:30
  you were good at it. Yeah I was good at it.
• 1:30:32
  You you want to be good at something, you feel?
• 1:30:35
  Up at you feel pride in being good at something even if it's
• 1:30:38
  horrible. Yeah.
• 1:30:40
  Well, your parents like, were they when you went through all
• 1:30:43
  this? How did that all play out for
• 1:30:46
  you? I mean, my mother went to would
• 1:30:50
  come see me every two weeks. Yeah, that's not going to be
• 1:30:54
  every two weeks for 13 years. She, you know, my father came to
• 1:31:00
  see me, maybe three times while you were in, while I was in my
• 1:31:07
  two sisters. Never came to see me.
• 1:31:09
  My brother came to see me but only because my mother somebody
• 1:31:13
  had to take my mom and my other sister would actually pay him to
• 1:31:16
  come see me. We pay him to drive her, but he
• 1:31:19
  didn't want to come see me, he's not, he's not interested in
• 1:31:22
  coming to see me. So that's interest, you know.
• 1:31:26
  Your mother constant every two weeks.
• 1:31:30
  Yeah, contact my dad, my dad died while I was in prison.
• 1:31:33
  Yeah it's tough. I think death in prison is dark
• 1:31:37
  dark thing. Regardless of what your
• 1:31:39
  relationships are with people with death, just having somebody
• 1:31:42
  died on the outside, just shows you how far away you are from
• 1:31:44
  things, right? I was never close with my dad,
• 1:31:50
  though. It didn't, it didn't upset me.
• 1:31:53
  Yeah, and I knew he was sick. Yeah, I knew he was sick and,
• 1:31:56
  you know, it But I got out just in time to spend the last couple
• 1:32:05
  years with my mom. That's nice.
• 1:32:07
  So that wasn't God. You got out and were able to do
• 1:32:09
  that. Yeah, so that tell us like what
• 1:32:13
  what are you doing now? Because I mean you got in 2019
• 1:32:16
  that's not very long ago but you've really in your world hit
• 1:32:20
  the ground running. You're a name inside.
• 1:32:23
  True Crime is a big deal. You've continued to write Can
• 1:32:28
  you kind of just tell everybody what's going on in your life
• 1:32:30
  now? I mean, so I wrote all of these
• 1:32:34
  stories while I was incarcerated all these.
• 1:32:36
  These prisoners stories and I got some guys in like Rolling
• 1:32:40
  Stone magazine and I realized that I could option their film
• 1:32:44
  right. Right.
• 1:32:46
  Are their life rights really? And so I option the life rights
• 1:32:51
  of a couple of the guys that I wrote stories about and they've
• 1:32:56
  been they just keep being re options.
• 1:32:58
  I got one has been re opt-in like four times.
• 1:33:02
  So, you know whether it will ever become a movie or not.
• 1:33:05
  I don't know, but but they do keep optioning.
• 1:33:08
  It you need to be a movie. Yeah.
• 1:33:10
  Well I'm I'm just I actually just started actually working on
• 1:33:14
  that. Okay, be honest.
• 1:33:15
  So I have then I got out, I option, the film Row, the life
• 1:33:20
  rights of a couple other guys that I wrote stories on ADD and
• 1:33:22
  I wrote like five books. While I was locked up and I've
• 1:33:26
  written two more since I got out, So you know, those books do
• 1:33:31
  do they, you know, they're not bestseller, they're all they do.
• 1:33:33
  All right. You know, they always say look,
• 1:33:36
  they keep me from having to pay my car payment and insurance and
• 1:33:40
  get, you know, losing. I get a little bit of money
• 1:33:42
  every month which is great. I run a podcast.
• 1:33:46
  I-i'm on people podcast, I also do some true crime by the way.
• 1:33:52
  Yeah, but you really just Matt Kata, if you have a Matthew
• 1:33:55
  koslow find him. Yeah, yeah, you'll find there's
• 1:33:57
  no way you're not. Not.
• 1:34:00
  So I do that. I do.
• 1:34:04
  I'm a keynote speaker at mortgage conventions and you are
• 1:34:09
  Brokers businesses. It's funny.
• 1:34:13
  I love to say I was that one the other day and like the
• 1:34:16
  department of banking Department of Banking & Finance for
• 1:34:18
  Alabama, was there? And that the guys like there was
• 1:34:21
  like, a group on, they were just like disgusted that I was, you
• 1:34:26
  know. So, So I do that and you know
• 1:34:31
  like that I go on different guys podcast.
• 1:34:33
  I also do Consulting and I'll I don't want to say TV personality
• 1:34:39
  but it's not like like if you're running a they'll have me come
• 1:34:43
  in as like a fraud expert on TV show makes all kinds of sense
• 1:34:47
  for sure right. You are an expert right?
• 1:34:50
  But I mean it's not it's a different kind of.
• 1:34:53
  Yeah so so it's Also, you know, I've had several programs about
• 1:34:59
  me. I was just on my true crime
• 1:35:01
  story on VH1, and I was on, I guess, curiosity stream, they
• 1:35:05
  have a company. Just did a one-hour program,
• 1:35:08
  called The Inside the Mind of a con artist.
• 1:35:12
  And you know, I'm working with the production company right now
• 1:35:15
  to do the try and get a documentary done.
• 1:35:18
  Yeah. And I've been offered over and
• 1:35:21
  over again for that. And I've always said like no,
• 1:35:24
  no, no, no. I've always convince them to
• 1:35:27
  look at one of my other story. I just think it'd be
• 1:35:29
  fascinating. The girl that wrote that story
• 1:35:31
  in the Atlantic, you were trying to picture on another store.
• 1:35:35
  And she says, whoa, whoa, whoa, I want to I want to talk about
• 1:35:38
  you. I won't talk about your store,
• 1:35:40
  yeah, yeah, that one. How I contact because I was
• 1:35:42
  working with a bunch of different reporters while I was
• 1:35:45
  incarcerated for different guys. Stories.
• 1:35:46
  Yeah, you were pitching another story.
• 1:35:48
  She said that would have more complicated.
• 1:35:50
  I don't know about that but I well, I like your story and that
• 1:35:54
  became my sister dreaded last night.
• 1:35:55
  My wife say, what are you doing? I said I'm reading this lag
• 1:35:59
  store. I see soon as you've been
• 1:36:01
  raining for a long. I'm not the fastest reader but
• 1:36:03
  that was a big article but it's a great article if anybody wants
• 1:36:06
  to read that article, that's a great article and there's a lot
• 1:36:09
  of that was a lot of stuff about you that it's That's
• 1:36:11
  fascinating, that's why I think there's no doubt in my mind that
• 1:36:15
  whether it was a movie or a documentary, it would be
• 1:36:20
  fascinating because of how you did and, you know, you can tell
• 1:36:23
  a good story too, mad. A lot of people have a story,
• 1:36:26
  but they can't tell their story and yeah, you've got those two
• 1:36:30
  things locked in. And that's, that's, that's the
• 1:36:32
  secret sauce. You have a story.
• 1:36:34
  That's fascinating. But you can also tell that's
• 1:36:37
  that's not something everybody can do.
• 1:36:40
  I want to ask you this? This L met because I because you
• 1:36:43
  do have fascinating story and it's been a journey.
• 1:36:46
  I think you're a little bit kind of close to my age.
• 1:36:48
  I'm 55, I think you're 53. Yeah.
• 1:36:51
  Okay, so we're kind of close. What do you think your biggest
• 1:36:54
  takeaway through all this you've been through?
• 1:36:58
  What can you tell them out there?
• 1:37:01
  You know, the problem is, is that it's such a cliche and you
• 1:37:03
  hear it, all your life is that, you know, it's just that like
• 1:37:05
  money, just, it really just doesn't make you happy true.
• 1:37:08
  Like, I had tons of money away when I was committing fraud and
• 1:37:11
  everything. I had tons of money and I don't
• 1:37:13
  want to say, I was riddled with guilt or anxiety because I
• 1:37:17
  wasn't I loved committing fraud and I loved what I was doing.
• 1:37:19
  And, you know, and I know that sad, it's a, you know, not the
• 1:37:23
  right thing to say, but you know, but it's just the truth.
• 1:37:26
  And and but, the problem was I was doing It's like, it's like,
• 1:37:31
  you know, Gary Vee is right? Yeah, yeah, it's huge.
• 1:37:34
  The garyvee always says like you're you're trying, you're
• 1:37:40
  buying all this stuff in order to impress people that hate you
• 1:37:48
  for people that don't even like you exactly.
• 1:37:50
  And I didn't realize like that for me was so true.
• 1:37:54
  And it's like, it's funny because it was I never been able
• 1:37:56
  to articulate that feeling. Until I heard Gary Vee, I got
• 1:38:01
  out and heard him and when he said that I was like, yeah,
• 1:38:04
  looks like that was something I came to that conclusion at what
• 1:38:08
  I was locked up. Yeah but I never really been
• 1:38:11
  able to articulate it. That simple it simply and he did
• 1:38:15
  such a great job setting, you know, simplifying it.
• 1:38:17
  And at that's what it was. I was, I was desperately trying
• 1:38:22
  to impress all of these people by having a bunch of money and
• 1:38:26
  being extremely clever. And in the Those people didn't
• 1:38:31
  didn't care about me the like me, they were around me because
• 1:38:35
  I paid for their vacation or I I got them.
• 1:38:38
  You know, this guy makes a couple hundred thousand dollars
• 1:38:41
  and this guy made a million dollars and it's got to all
• 1:38:43
  these people that I'm helping my dollar amount that they finally
• 1:38:48
  hit me with those like 15 million.
• 1:38:50
  Yeah. My mortgage company.
• 1:38:52
  Did 55 million? Yeah.
• 1:38:54
  So I'm responsible for 15 million.
• 1:39:00
  So people made hundreds of thousands millions of dollars
• 1:39:05
  and those are some of those same people were never indicted and
• 1:39:08
  those same people. Now, don't even want to talk to
• 1:39:11
  me because they're like, because they have this status because
• 1:39:18
  they're now trying to impress all of their friends that don't
• 1:39:20
  really care about them. Yeah.
• 1:39:22
  So, and yeah, so I I think that it's funny because I was happier
• 1:39:26
  in prison with nothing just writing hang out with a group of
• 1:39:32
  guys that didn't want to do anything other than hang out
• 1:39:34
  with me because they liked me. Yeah, there's no benefit.
• 1:39:37
  No, no, and you go in there. The one thing I've always said
• 1:39:41
  about prisoners you go in on your own by yourself and you
• 1:39:44
  come out on your own by yourself and what you do on the inside
• 1:39:47
  there, you just got to be and make it, you know, happen for
• 1:39:51
  you. And some guys do some guys don't
• 1:39:54
  and, you know, I think you're funny.
• 1:39:56
  Yeah, it's the great equalizer is a person.
• 1:40:00
  Unbelievable equalizer. I've said that to so many people
• 1:40:04
  about prison, it's like a really weird place of a high school.
• 1:40:09
  You wouldn't want to go to, but it's kind of that world where,
• 1:40:12
  you know, you've got all these different groups and how you fit
• 1:40:15
  into those groups and whether you're respected because respect
• 1:40:18
  is such a big deal in A Primitive environment but you
• 1:40:22
  can find a way to adapt and work through it.
• 1:40:24
  The thing. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:26
  Listen. I, you know, it's funny and it
• 1:40:28
  has nothing to do with. Like there's nothing to do with
• 1:40:31
  like, where you were born or what color your skin is, what
• 1:40:34
  your religion is, because the truth is, I would meet a guy
• 1:40:37
  that was had been raised, you know, white guy middle class and
• 1:40:42
  I would talk to that guy and you would talk to him on and off for
• 1:40:45
  a month and realize, like he was just in his, in, his core was
• 1:40:49
  just a complete scumbag, just it was just nothing redeeming about
• 1:40:52
  nothing. And I would talk to someone,
• 1:40:54
  Drug dealer. Yes who is this to me the the
• 1:40:59
  lower class and this drug dealer was just an amazing guy like
• 1:41:04
  making. He's brilliant he's smart and he
• 1:41:07
  was raised in the same neighborhood as this guy.
• 1:41:09
  You know this other drug dealer this guy scumbag.
• 1:41:11
  This guy just an amazing person. He read all the time.
• 1:41:15
  He was articulate, he was smart. He tried to educate himself.
• 1:41:19
  He you know you would meet these guys and what happens is you end
• 1:41:23
  up surrounding yourself. By people that you genuinely
• 1:41:27
  like and admire and what their character is and you realize
• 1:41:31
  right away that it doesn't matter that you were born in
• 1:41:35
  Mexico in the slums. He's a good guy, that's smart
• 1:41:40
  and I respect him, and he's worked on on himself.
• 1:41:45
  But I think what you said, I think what you said is so clear,
• 1:41:49
  right? To the point is, it's an
• 1:41:50
  equalizer. It doesn't matter.
• 1:41:52
  Because nobody's going anywhere, we're all staying Right here.
• 1:41:55
  So you know who are you? And then that's that is who and
• 1:41:59
  how everybody reacts to you. There's no hiding.
• 1:42:02
  There's nowhere to go. You're all there for however
• 1:42:04
  long. Yeah, it's fascinating your
• 1:42:07
  story's fascinating. Matt, I really appreciate you
• 1:42:10
  coming on because I guess the easiest way to look for you.
• 1:42:15
  I mean, I it's so easy to find you but your huge on YouTube
• 1:42:21
  inside True Crime. You can look you Up on
• 1:42:25
  Instagram. Facebook is that's under.
• 1:42:28
  Is that under Matt Cox at Matco? Yeah, it's under Mac Contour Cox
• 1:42:33
  pop art. I sell painting because I have a
• 1:42:36
  degree in Fine Arts. So I do about your penis, you've
• 1:42:38
  got so many books, I'm sure. Is that all on Amazon?
• 1:42:42
  Oh, they're all on Amazon's. I've written two books since I
• 1:42:44
  got out and I wrote fuss over it, like got like seven books on
• 1:42:48
  Amazon. I'll get a pen and start reading
• 1:42:50
  your stuff because I just got my bike fixed.
• 1:42:52
  That's got the bike thing. I can read all my paths.
• 1:42:54
  I'm going to be reading some some mac Cox.
• 1:42:57
  I think actually I think 45 out for five of them are inaudible.
• 1:43:00
  I know you. And I talked about that and I
• 1:43:02
  think you gave me the name of that guy that can read a book
• 1:43:05
  for me, what was his name? His name is Sean.
• 1:43:09
  Yeah, I think you gave me his name.
• 1:43:11
  Okay guys, we're talking about books.
• 1:43:13
  I wrote One nightmare success, loyalty, betrayal Life, Behind
• 1:43:18
  Bars. Finally setting yourself free a
• 1:43:20
  memoir. Bring Cassie, go get it.
• 1:43:22
  It's actually out there on Amazon and To everybody.
• 1:43:26
  The love the like subscribe, hit the Subscribe button, it makes
• 1:43:30
  it easy. Just pops up.
• 1:43:31
  When I put something on every week, comments are great.
• 1:43:34
  Helps the show. Do a little apple review.
• 1:43:37
  Spotify you want to find me. Say anything.
• 1:43:40
  Communique bring cast e.com as I used to say to my people on my
• 1:43:46
  core links writing them back and forth.
• 1:43:48
  Stay strong and I'll do the same.
• 1:43:50
  Thank you, Matt Cox for today, appreciate it.
• 1:43:54
  Sure.