Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zeren How you doing.
Speaker 2: You're doing pretty good? Fun to see you, I know it.
Speaker 3: It's so fun to see me too.
Speaker 2: I know everybody says it. I love to see Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Do you know what's articulous? I do my jazz album collection,
Speaker 2: not that because I start that wrong, not the album
Speaker 2: collection itself, but I was going through it, and I
Speaker 2: don't mean like, well, I'll put it this way. The covers, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I was like, these covers are amazing. Some of
Speaker 2: these covers are. I mean I'm not just like the
Speaker 2: cool ones. I mean some of have iconic photography, Blue
Speaker 2: Note records. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking like
Speaker 2: even Later. And also I don't mean like Herb Alpert's
Speaker 2: Whoped Cream and other Delights, right, I don't mean like, oh,
Speaker 2: vaguely sexualized imagery. I'm talking about like Count Basie just
Speaker 2: dropping an album cover that is an atomic bomb going off.
Speaker 2: I got that one right. But then there's other ones.
Speaker 2: There's like Mingus dressed like a Chinese emperor. Right, He's
Speaker 2: just got a flowing gold robes dress against the dragon
Speaker 2: wall that's also gold. But you can take like old
Speaker 2: Man Coleman Hawkins the Hawks still tough, right, and he's
Speaker 2: I'm blowing so tough, I blow smoke and the photo
Speaker 2: him just blowing plumes of smoke like an angry dragon
Speaker 2: out of his nose or one of my favorites Eddie
Speaker 2: Harris and producer to be on this one. The reason
Speaker 2: why I'm talking and that's the name of the album.
Speaker 3: Is in the street.
Speaker 2: That's his broken saxophone case he smashed down. He just
Speaker 2: got his saxophone left and he's like coming at the
Speaker 2: camera like sures.
Speaker 3: You've got to make sure we put all of this
Speaker 3: on Instagram. They put the what's ridiculous stuff in the stories.
Speaker 3: It's not on the regular posts. So that's why you
Speaker 3: got to check the posts and the stories on inst.
Speaker 2: There you go the hard way. Yeah, so boom, isn't
Speaker 2: that ridiculous? I was like this album collect I should
Speaker 2: put these on my wall facing each other.
Speaker 3: The freak flex open it up exactly. Do you want
Speaker 3: to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 3: Going to jail and writing about other people's crimes.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a spin.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 3: Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh that was good.
Speaker 3: Did that hurt a little?
Speaker 2: No? No, I felt good. I was releasing something nice.
Speaker 3: I have two Volgo financial scammers for you today.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have somewhat parallel storylines that then intersect. Wow,
Speaker 3: look at you, I know, look at me, so creative
Speaker 3: and along the ways erin Yes, ridiculousness.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the adventure awaits.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to start us off with Marcus Schrenker.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And he was born in nineteen seventy in Warsaw, Indiana.
Speaker 4: Yay, nice, a little fake out.
Speaker 2: I amost threw me.
Speaker 3: He's a good Midwestern boy, thank you so much. Good
Speaker 3: one Midwestern by, very ambitious and driven. He went to
Speaker 3: Purdue he got a uh business degree. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: while he was there he added another interest to his retinue,
Speaker 3: aviation light.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like he gets out of college, he marries a
Speaker 3: former cheerleader. They get they live in this suburb of Indianapolis.
Speaker 3: He's this successful business like investment consultant guy, all the
Speaker 3: trappings of that lifestyle. So this is giant house, fancy cars,
Speaker 3: expensive suits. He's got boats, planes, a plane he can
Speaker 3: fly all by himself.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? And this is all like Indiana
Speaker 2: late nineties percent?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, according to CBS News quote, at thirty eight,
Speaker 3: he controlled an impressive slate of business through his Heritage
Speaker 3: Wealth Management Incorporated, Heritage Insurance Services Incorporated, and Icon Wealth Management.
Speaker 3: He was responsible for providing financial advice and managing portfolios
Speaker 3: worth millions. Look at him, Look at him. He told
Speaker 3: his clients that he would take the standard one percent
Speaker 3: management fee and he would only make money if they
Speaker 3: made money.
Speaker 2: Is that the standard? I don't have the money manager.
Speaker 3: Who knows? Perhaps I don't know.
Speaker 2: My money manager is gravity.
Speaker 3: My money manage. My money manager is my wallet in
Speaker 3: my pocket book. There you go, and the ATM card.
Speaker 3: So here's here's what he really did.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 3: He put their money into annuities and he took huge
Speaker 3: commissions from that. So then if they wanted to cash
Speaker 3: out and get their money back, they owed these massive
Speaker 3: surrender fees on the annuities. Or if Schranker took the
Speaker 3: money out as the broker, they'd still be on the
Speaker 3: hook for the surrender fees and for cashing that policy out. Early,
Speaker 3: because this is this is how annuities work, right.
Speaker 2: I don't quite know.
Speaker 3: It's a neither do I. It's a contract that's issued
Speaker 3: and distributed by an insurance company, so the insurance company
Speaker 3: pays out income to the purchaser of the contract. So
Speaker 3: it's like life insurance, but the payout isn't after you die,
Speaker 3: So annuities they're generally used for retirement income. Like you
Speaker 3: pay in and then you get the payments regularly when
Speaker 3: you retire, and that makes sure you don't run out
Speaker 3: of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I've heard of these.
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 2: They advertise these on my old radio shows like for
Speaker 2: Back in the Day like I've started in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 3: There are two things I need to say about my
Speaker 3: complete ignorance surance. One, I would like for my mother
Speaker 3: not to call and berate me on the fact that
Speaker 3: I have financial illiteracy and she teaches business law. She's
Speaker 3: a formidable business lawyer. Yeah, sorry, mom, I don't know
Speaker 3: what an annuity is. And also, anyone listening in on
Speaker 3: this conversation, I honestly don't care, so don't try and
Speaker 3: explain the.
Speaker 2: Know lottery winners they try to like flip them to
Speaker 2: get them to take the annuity, right. And then also
Speaker 2: people who get big settlements, they try to take their
Speaker 2: settlements and get them like we'll give you ye scheme.
Speaker 3: It seems like you get this lump sum like that
Speaker 3: you hand over and you're basically investing it. It's locked in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're taking that those payments at whatever rate they
Speaker 2: get up.
Speaker 3: When people explained financial stuff to me, it's like when
Speaker 3: they explain board game directions or card game, I'm like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 2: Well you ever heard like when things just like flat out,
Speaker 2: like on the sound thing, it just turns into white noise, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: that's what happens. People start talking about money.
Speaker 3: I don't know. So most of his clients, though, right,
Speaker 3: they're like us, They have no idea what they're buying.
Speaker 2: Good suckers like us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they thought they were doing straight up market investments,
Speaker 3: which I understand that foreign currency investments. Sometimes he called
Speaker 3: them insurance products. It was vague enough so it to
Speaker 3: sound good to like those like me.
Speaker 2: You don't that term out there. I don't really know.
Speaker 2: It's not that I know that derived from other.
Speaker 3: I think you're like betting, got a bet basically.
Speaker 2: Or we're gonna give you a PI that mom.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. Sorry, You're not the failure. I'm the failure. Okay,
Speaker 3: so Shrinker he picked up most of his clients via
Speaker 3: word of mouth. Okay, this one guy, Joe Mazzone from Alabama.
Speaker 3: He told CNN quote, when you're a pilot, you trust,
Speaker 3: that's what you do and what you're used to doing.
Speaker 3: His modus operendi is he flies into your city dressed
Speaker 3: up in a thousand dollars suit and sits down with you,
Speaker 3: buys you lunch, and the next thing you know, he
Speaker 3: has you on his side and you move your money
Speaker 3: to his Heritage Wealth Management. He's a schmoozer.
Speaker 2: Another enclassic con artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Charles Kinney he befriended Shranker in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: and then he bought in with him in like two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, and then he got his parents to
Speaker 3: buy in to the tune of two million dollars.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: He told CNN quote, this guy was family to me.
Speaker 3: He's a fantastic nice guy. He's well spoken. His customer
Speaker 3: service was impeccable. You call the guy on the phone,
Speaker 3: you would get him. He told my parents that they
Speaker 3: were investing in various insurance products, but they didn't really
Speaker 3: know what that meant.
Speaker 2: I didn't really know either.
Speaker 3: We trusted him. He said, this is a safe place
Speaker 3: to put money to avoid all the world's dangers like
Speaker 3: terrorism and impending doom and gloom associated with it in
Speaker 3: that climate. Back then, you bought it. You believed him
Speaker 3: that he would protect your money.
Speaker 2: You think it's also leaving out tax shelters.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and three, He's like, look after the towers
Speaker 3: phone to protect your money.
Speaker 2: I thought they were going to hit banks with planes and.
Speaker 3: To just quickly give me everything.
Speaker 2: Planes get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this Delta pilot and investor Dave Smith. He
Speaker 3: told CNBC quote, there's nothing more scary than having seven
Speaker 3: figures of money and not knowing what to do with it. Like, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll be scared. What kind There's so many, so many
Speaker 3: more than that, Like I come here, I'll show you.
Speaker 2: Like like it's literally that there are fewer things scarier than.
Speaker 3: That seven figures. So much the other side, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's new here.
Speaker 2: I could take up a billionaires giving him. They're scarier
Speaker 2: than that. It's like a bubba gump ship thing or
Speaker 2: just naming things.
Speaker 3: He goes on. So I started asking around, Hey, do
Speaker 3: you guys have a guy that's doing your money? Like,
Speaker 3: let's let's ask.
Speaker 2: Our friends that's doing your money. They're like printing it.
Speaker 3: And one of my favorite co pilots said, I would
Speaker 3: trust him with my kids. That's how much I trust
Speaker 3: this guy. And I said, who was that guy? It
Speaker 3: was Marcus Shrinker?
Speaker 2: What that mask?
Speaker 3: Because the man that you trust with your kids, I
Speaker 3: feel sorry for your kids. The kids are all as
Speaker 3: a measure of your trust. So Smith he put all
Speaker 3: of his savings into to investment with Shrinker, but then
Speaker 3: he found out that he was locked into a twenty
Speaker 3: five year annuity and that Schranker had withdrawn thirty percent
Speaker 3: of his money twenty year. Yeah, so he gets charged.
Speaker 3: Smith gets charged a sixty six thousand dollars surrender fee
Speaker 3: for early withdrawal. And on top of that, it turns
Speaker 3: out that Schranker was moving Smith's money from one annuity
Speaker 3: to the next, and every time he did it, he
Speaker 3: made a thirteen percent commission on it, and then it
Speaker 3: incurred more surrender fees for the clients. It's like shedding
Speaker 3: bits on that, but then what the hell? Yeah, so
Speaker 3: complaints started coming into authorities where these investments were based,
Speaker 3: like Indiana, Georgia. But then he'd switch his licensing to
Speaker 3: new states, and that would create confusion about who was
Speaker 3: supposed to monitor him. According to CNBC quote, Georgia's insurance
Speaker 3: department worked with five people who filed complaints over Schrenker's
Speaker 3: handling of annuities. The department eventually obtained two point five
Speaker 3: million dollars in refunds for the investors working with insurance
Speaker 3: companies that issued those annuities. By the time Georgia officials
Speaker 3: notified Indiana about Shranker in April two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: he had already withdrawn his Georgia insurance license. A group
Speaker 3: of relatives and friends led by Kenny Next, raised concerns
Speaker 3: in Kentucky, where Shranker withdrew his license in December two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven. Indiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Alderholtz said Schranker,
Speaker 3: who had obtained an Indiana license in the interim, created
Speaker 3: confusion by pulling the out of state licenses. Please note
Speaker 3: it was a group of relatives and friends, so he
Speaker 3: was bilking his own family.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got nine clients, including a friend of ten
Speaker 3: years and his own aunt, out of about one point
Speaker 3: five million. And that's just a fraction of the scheme.
Speaker 2: Everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything starts to fall apart when the economy tanks. Though.
Speaker 3: Investors were like, look, I want to put my money
Speaker 3: somewhere safer. Hey, pal, I trust you with my kids.
Speaker 3: Watch my kids while I'll get my money back. So
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight, Shrinker he lost five hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in judgment against one of his companies. That
Speaker 3: was against one of his companies when he missed a
Speaker 3: court hearing. What Yeah, so this triggers and investigators. They
Speaker 3: go to search his home and his office and look
Speaker 3: into possible securities violations. He starts spinning out. This is
Speaker 3: an email he sent to one of his clients quote,
Speaker 3: I walked out on my job about thirty minutes ago.
Speaker 3: My career is over over one letter in a trade error.
Speaker 3: One letter. I've had so many people yelling at me
Speaker 3: today that I couldn't figure out what was up or down.
Speaker 3: I still can't figure it out. Okay. So his wife
Speaker 3: files for divorce. She said that it was because he
Speaker 3: was cheating on her, not the criming.
Speaker 2: Oh ca see do we believe her?
Speaker 3: Well? Yeah, because when their house was being searched, he
Speaker 3: wasn't home, but she was. And then she found out
Speaker 3: that where was he. Oh he's in Florida with his girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Oh girl, She's like yeah, hold, what a devastation for her.
Speaker 2: I know, this is everything all around.
Speaker 3: So he had to get out of this, and as
Speaker 3: a true coward, he couldn't own up to what he'd done.
Speaker 3: He crafted a plan. Saren close as.
Speaker 2: Picture.
Speaker 3: It's January eleventh, two thousand and nine. You are an
Speaker 3: Air Force pilot. You fly an F fifteen fighter jet
Speaker 3: and your call sign is Dizzy. You and a fellow pilot, Viper,
Speaker 3: have been scrambled into action. Seems there's a Piper PA
Speaker 3: forty six near Birmingham, Alabama that's in distress, causing a danger.
Speaker 3: You are scurrying across the runway to your jet, fastening
Speaker 3: your helmet, saying a silent prayer to Saint Christopher for
Speaker 3: protection like you always do. Viper is alongside you, shouting
Speaker 3: out the lyrics to Party in the USA and skipping
Speaker 3: high into the air. The Piper took off from Anderson, Indiana,
Speaker 3: headed for destined, Florida. It had contacted air traffic Control,
Speaker 3: saying that the windshield had imploded and the pilot was
Speaker 3: injured and bleeding profusely. He said he wasn't going to
Speaker 3: make it. Right After that transmission, the Piper leveled off
Speaker 3: and remained at thirty five hundred feet. You and your
Speaker 3: jet buddy are now screaming through the air, headed to
Speaker 3: intercept the Piper. You see it up ahead, Fox Trot fifteen.
Speaker 3: I have visual contact round piper, Viper, responds Roger. That
Speaker 3: Eagle three approaching on the left. Be aware, he answers
Speaker 3: you confirm, I'll take right. You surround the Piper. As
Speaker 3: you look over, you see that the plane's windshield is intact,
Speaker 3: Plus the door is open. Negative for pilot. Talk to me, Dizzy, Viper,
Speaker 3: says Roger. Duck. You radio air traffic Control, Dizzy.
Speaker 2: To Range Control.
Speaker 3: Entering Point Alpha Range. You tell them about what you've seen,
Speaker 3: and the craft appears to be on autopilot. They advise
Speaker 3: you to continue following the Piper until the fuel runs
Speaker 3: out and you side. Then near the Blackwater River in
Speaker 3: East Milk, Florida, the plane crashes just shore to some
Speaker 3: houses by seventy five yards. You and Viper look down
Speaker 3: at the wreckage, then turn back and head for bait.
Speaker 3: Let's go play some dog site football. Vicker Roger bed, Yes,
Speaker 3: thank you, You're so welcome. So the authorities showed up
Speaker 3: on the ground, check out the record.
Speaker 2: I've bend to Deston and Milton, Florida. I know these towns.
Speaker 2: I know, I know Florabama.
Speaker 3: You do well? Do you have you have you crashed
Speaker 3: a plane there?
Speaker 2: Not yet, I'm waiting, give me time.
Speaker 3: So the authorities they show up, They check out the wreckage.
Speaker 3: Plane smashed up, but the windshield and the wind screens
Speaker 3: were not damaged and there was no blood inside. Inside
Speaker 3: the wreckage of the plane, though, they found handwritten notes
Speaker 3: on the inside back cover of a campground book, and
Speaker 3: it said stuff like windshield is spider cracking, doors open,
Speaker 3: bleeding very bad and graying out. They're like script notes.
Speaker 2: So was he planning unlike that, not getting caught That
Speaker 2: wasn't supposed to be like his notes of like, oh
Speaker 2: I'm leaving what notes I can going down his notes
Speaker 2: for the radio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they start to piece everything together. See obviously he
Speaker 3: jumped from the plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he expected the plane to crash, no doubt, exactly,
Speaker 2: and it's landed.
Speaker 3: And he bag exactly so near Childersburg, Alabama Coast Guard
Speaker 3: Investigative Service, they recovered cut parachute lines from tree branches
Speaker 3: and then the actual parachute with a serial number they
Speaker 3: get traced a shrinker. He later admits to dumping a
Speaker 3: bag containing more than fourteen hundred ounces of gold worth
Speaker 3: around two million dollars in the Kusa River when he
Speaker 3: floated down to earth.
Speaker 2: Wait by mistake, No, like on purpose.
Speaker 3: Oh, and it looks like he was hoping he thought
Speaker 3: the plane would make it to the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 3: Oh man, and that they would be surprised that they
Speaker 3: wouldn't find a body like Oh, he's claimed by Davy
Speaker 3: Jones's locker.
Speaker 2: But he should have had a plan to bail from
Speaker 2: the plane over the Gulf of Mexico and someone pick
Speaker 2: him up in a go fast boat.
Speaker 3: Otherwise and want someone he's got to do it alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, well, so he lands in Alabama. Yeah, walks across
Speaker 3: this river.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of bad places of land there so many.
Speaker 3: Bad places, goes into a house and tells them that
Speaker 3: he's had a canoe accident, and so the cops. The
Speaker 3: cops come take them to a nearby hotel. And then
Speaker 3: the cops they hear about the crash investigation, and so
Speaker 3: they scooted back to the hotel. Sorry, dudes, he was
Speaker 3: long gone. He paid for his room in cash and
Speaker 3: then ran off into the woods. Next Yeah, so he
Speaker 3: had parked a motorcycle with saddle bags that were like
Speaker 3: fully packed in a storage unit seven miles away from
Speaker 3: the hotel, and so so he wasn't bad in his
Speaker 3: landing bad authorities trace the storage unit to him. A
Speaker 3: few days later. The motorcycle's gone, but his jeans that
Speaker 3: were like still wet, and his socks are still wet,
Speaker 3: hiking boots, t shirt, all in a nearby trash camp.
Speaker 2: So he takes the motors, some details and others.
Speaker 3: He rides to a campground in Florida, and he pays
Speaker 3: for a night at the campground. Caudah gathers up some firewood,
Speaker 3: buys a six pack of bud light.
Speaker 2: Good place to hide up by the way.
Speaker 3: I guess. According to the New York Times, not really
Speaker 3: a quote. In the midst of the manhunt, mister Shrinker
Speaker 3: had sent an email message to a friend Tom Britt
Speaker 3: back in Indiana, asking him to straighten out the facts
Speaker 3: being reported nationwide about the case. In the message, which
Speaker 3: mister Britt turned over to the authorities, mister Shrinker insisted
Speaker 3: that the windshield had really shattered, causing a loss of
Speaker 3: cabin pressure and a condition known as hypoxia, which can
Speaker 3: quote cause people to.
Speaker 2: Make terrible decisions lack of oxygen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so federal marshalls, they took only one day to
Speaker 3: catch him thanks to a tip. Two dozen officers showed
Speaker 3: up and found that he'd cut himself at the campground.
Speaker 3: So they patch him up. He's airlifted to the nearest hospital,
Speaker 3: and so they search his computer. They take him the
Speaker 3: hospital's fine, he's like I said, he's not good at it.
Speaker 3: When they search his computer, they found Google searches for
Speaker 3: stuff like how to jump from airplanes and how to
Speaker 3: open a pair of food. Can I just say, Can
Speaker 3: I say? I am so toast If authorities ever go
Speaker 3: through my search history like ridiculous crime research will be
Speaker 3: my downfall.
Speaker 2: Oh not only that, they would just be they have
Speaker 2: so many leads to be so confused. Impossible.
Speaker 3: Yeah. June two thousand and nine, Strand.
Speaker 2: Now your shopping history.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a big problem to shrinker. He pleads guilty
Speaker 3: to charges of destruction of an aircraft and causing the
Speaker 3: coast Guard to respond when no help was needed. For that,
Speaker 3: he gets sentenced.
Speaker 2: To the crime of hassling the coast Guard. Total.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's the coast Guard in there, but it
Speaker 3: was like a air force anyway. He gets sentenced to
Speaker 3: fifty one months in prison. Then he got another ten
Speaker 3: years for all the securities fraud.
Speaker 2: Don't forget about that. I forget that.
Speaker 3: The originals he was ordered to pay the coast Guard
Speaker 3: more than thirty four thousand dollars in restitution, and Harley
Speaker 3: Davenston Credit Corporation, who held the lean on the plane
Speaker 3: more than eight hundred and seventy one thousand dollars then.
Speaker 2: Had he like leveraged the plane to get the motorcycle.
Speaker 3: On the idea. He had to pay restitution to the
Speaker 3: victim and is sentencing. He told the judge quote, I.
Speaker 2: Mean his family and friends, yeah.
Speaker 3: Quote. He wanted to repay investors and rebuild his relationship
Speaker 3: with the three children he's seen only once since his arrest.
Speaker 3: He said he has bipolar disorder and he got caught
Speaker 3: in a downward spiral of stress after becoming addicted to painkillers.
Speaker 3: Like he's an excuse factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just everything.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break. When we return, I have the
Speaker 3: other fraudster. I want to tell you about.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, zaren Yo.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I told you about Marcus Schrinker. Now meet
Speaker 3: Matthew cox Hi.
Speaker 2: Matthew Hehi alias.
Speaker 3: Joseph Carter, alias Gary Sullivan, alias Michael Eckert, alias Charles R.
Speaker 3: Bauer h Yeah, a lot of other names. He was
Speaker 3: born in Florida in nineteen sixty nine, one year before Shrinker. Interesting,
Speaker 3: he struggled.
Speaker 2: Something about the lead back, then the food.
Speaker 3: Well, he struggled with dyslexia as my kid. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: as a result, school was tough for him and he
Speaker 3: felt really alienated. So he got really bad grades, made
Speaker 3: him feel like a failure. But it's worth mentioning now
Speaker 3: that you're not your grades. We forced kids to put
Speaker 3: so much on grades and GPAs and it's all garbage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am my grades because i'm everybody else's good grades.
Speaker 3: But like, grades are a metric of your ability to
Speaker 3: take a test or like fit into an average yeah,
Speaker 3: or follow.
Speaker 2: Some weird protocols that are arbitrary.
Speaker 3: And it's not a measurement of intelligence or curiosity or
Speaker 3: like value as a human. I'm sorry for the rant.
Speaker 3: I've just seen a lot lately about kids suffering over
Speaker 3: grades and pressure. He's too short.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I unlike to take a real measure of intelligence,
Speaker 2: like magic the gathering.
Speaker 3: Yep, exactly, thank you, the real genius measurements. So dyslexia, right,
Speaker 3: that's in no way a roadblock. It's just something to
Speaker 3: work around, you know. It's like so he demonstrates that
Speaker 3: by getting a degree in art illustration from the University
Speaker 3: of South Florida. Guy's really smart. After he graduated, he
Speaker 3: worked for a little bit of time in the insurance
Speaker 3: industry and then later as a mortgage broker.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Cox.
Speaker 3: He saw this world, all the paperwork and the deals
Speaker 3: and like the really shaky regulation as prime hunting ground
Speaker 3: was ripe for fraud, and he figured he was just
Speaker 3: the person to pull this.
Speaker 2: Fraud, go to it.
Speaker 3: Like, while he's working as a mortgage broker, he wrote
Speaker 3: an unpublished three hundred and seventeen page book, The Associates
Speaker 3: and the novel's main character, who seemed a lot like him,
Speaker 3: goes all over the country committing mortgage fraud, and he
Speaker 3: would like regale his coworkers with details about the book,
Speaker 3: and like sometimes he would send the whole manuscript to
Speaker 3: people to see if they could like verify the details
Speaker 3: or whether or not the cons inside revival. This is
Speaker 3: like a nightmare coworker totally. You've got someone who writes
Speaker 3: themselves as the protagonist in the novel, which is so obnoxious,
Speaker 3: and then they won't shut up about it the pass
Speaker 3: and then it turns out, oh no, he's just outlining.
Speaker 2: The best part though, is that he is confessing on.
Speaker 3: Himself and he's getting a lot of witnesses to read it.
Speaker 3: And if you're just emailing it, okay, now you've got
Speaker 3: this digit. Anyway, his early cons were relatively small scale,
Speaker 3: so he like would falsify loan applications or inflate property values,
Speaker 3: forge documentation to get unqualified buyers into homes.
Speaker 2: He's on the scam and.
Speaker 3: He was early too. Yeah, he was, you know, a
Speaker 3: decade ahead of time, and all of this was to
Speaker 3: make big commissions. But he got caught and he lost
Speaker 3: his job. He got convicted of mortgage fraud in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two on early. He was early to the game,
Speaker 3: and had he waited that the banks would have taken
Speaker 3: the phone, he only got not a one. He got probation. Undeterred,
Speaker 3: he went harder. So after his conviction he got prohibited
Speaker 3: from working in the mortgage industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not going to get stopped.
Speaker 3: He just is expanding the craft. So first he faked
Speaker 3: up a good credit score, and then he created fake
Speaker 3: identities using fake social Security numbers and drivers like Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he'd like steal. He'd steal the identities of Toddler's
Speaker 3: homeless people, vulnerable women, and he would cook up top notch,
Speaker 3: cooked up phony W two's reference letters, bank statements like titles, heads.
Speaker 2: Appear, created a job for himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, employment records, he really did liberally. Then he bought
Speaker 3: a bunch of rundown houses and condos with fake appraisal
Speaker 3: values okay, sometimes like double or triple what they were
Speaker 3: actually worth. And then he'd go like sometimes four to
Speaker 3: five times the valume. He'd get loans, take the money,
Speaker 3: and then let the properties go into foreclosure. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it did this thing called shotgunning, where he'd get a
Speaker 3: bunch of different lenders to loan against the same property
Speaker 3: within a short timeframe, and none of them are aware
Speaker 3: of the others. And so he used forged satisfactions of
Speaker 3: mortgage to make it look like the property didn't have
Speaker 3: any leans when it did.
Speaker 2: So he worked in this industry just long enough to
Speaker 2: learn how exactly.
Speaker 3: He's like, I see the issues, I'm going to write
Speaker 3: a novel about it, and now I'm going to carry it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he pulled this fraud in a bunch of places
Speaker 3: at Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas. Yeah, and then he like
Speaker 3: it was through this he amassed millions in fraudulent loans
Speaker 3: from lenders who did not suspect a thing.
Speaker 2: The South is really about on like the keeping track
Speaker 2: of these million dollars scams like this, just ask Brett Farv.
Speaker 2: I mean, like it's very clear that if you're in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,
Speaker 2: they're just if you steal big, we applauded.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but you know what, you got a great arm.
Speaker 3: So Cox was something of a ladies man.
Speaker 2: He's a coxman.
Speaker 3: He's a Coxsman Coxswain. He'd been married to a woman
Speaker 3: named Kayla Burgos, Okay, and when they divorced. Then he
Speaker 3: dated a bunch of other women that he would include
Speaker 3: in his criming.
Speaker 2: What did they know that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one was Alison Arnold. She had she was married
Speaker 3: and had a kid. She didn't want to leave her
Speaker 3: life behind and join him on the criming, which he
Speaker 3: had discussed with her in detail and.
Speaker 2: In which she yea, so she's like his part time binding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she like he took her to like Ocean's
Speaker 3: Eleven and like other crime movies.
Speaker 2: It was like them, Yeah, we can do this, this
Speaker 2: is we're studying.
Speaker 3: So they split up. He started seeing Rebecca Hawk, a
Speaker 3: sing mom with one kid. A U C K.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're right, sorry becks.
Speaker 3: So she she had moved from Las Vegas to Tampajo
Speaker 3: after getting a bunch of debt and like going bankrupt
Speaker 3: in Vegas. She lost her job in Vegas because she
Speaker 3: forged her employer's name on checks. So they're like a
Speaker 3: you know, peace and a pods the checks.
Speaker 2: For like plastic surgery, really easy to try.
Speaker 3: But she's like, hey, look gruesome twosome. She hooked up
Speaker 3: with them on a dating app. They they're doing their
Speaker 3: fraud thing together, raking in the cash. But then they
Speaker 3: found out that Jeff Testament, a reporter for the Saint
Speaker 3: Petersburg Times.
Speaker 2: Was investigating both of them.
Speaker 3: Cox So how ditched her kid and went on the
Speaker 3: run with Cox.
Speaker 2: What Yeah, that was the move.
Speaker 3: That was the move. So the story that Testament's writing
Speaker 3: comes out in the paper. It explains how Cox started
Speaker 3: a company called Urban Equities Incorporated. Kayla Burgos, the ex wife,
Speaker 3: and this other business partner were the shareholders and over
Speaker 3: six years the company bought and sold nearly sixty homes.
Speaker 3: Kayla and the business partner, though, they couldn't keep the
Speaker 3: company going and it gets put into receivership. Cox pulled
Speaker 3: all the money out from underneath them and they lost everything.
Speaker 3: So around the same time, Tampa Pedee they're opening an
Speaker 3: investigation into Cocks and then the FBI gets involved. So
Speaker 3: basically we say zoins. And when they looked into the details,
Speaker 3: they saw that his houses seem to always be valued
Speaker 3: way above the comps in the neighborhood, Like his would
Speaker 3: be almost two hundred thousand dollars, but similar homes on
Speaker 3: the block were like fifty thousands.
Speaker 2: So do you have an appraiser on his side? Like,
Speaker 2: how is he about faking appraise.
Speaker 3: No one's even going out and doing.
Speaker 2: No one ever goes to check. He just has it
Speaker 2: on paper for me, where's the seals?
Speaker 3: And what's hilarious is that when the Feds looked into
Speaker 3: the paperwork on the homes, they saw a lot of
Speaker 3: the fake names and were like, aren't those the characters
Speaker 3: from Reservoir Dogs?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: It was like Pink Brown, Yeah, so Cox and how
Speaker 3: they skipped town. Don't forget he's still on probation and
Speaker 3: now he's missing his meetings with his probation officer. They
Speaker 3: first they went to Atlanta and they hit out, but
Speaker 3: like not really. He made a run to Mobile, Alabama
Speaker 3: and used the identity of a former coworker to get
Speaker 3: credit cards and establish a good credit history. Then back
Speaker 3: in Atlanta, he cooked up some phony documents like he'd
Speaker 3: done before, rented a house. Then he cooked up more
Speaker 3: phony documents and went to banks asking for loans on
Speaker 3: the house he was renting. He was saying he owned it.
Speaker 3: Hundreds and thousands of dollars in loans. The man loved
Speaker 3: pop cultures like Reservoir Dog stuff. One of the loans
Speaker 3: that he took out was in the name of Sea
Speaker 3: Montgomery Burns, the old guy from the Central God bless.
Speaker 3: So he did this a bunch of times, and then
Speaker 3: they picked up and they moved to Tallahassee, Florida.
Speaker 2: They're hitting spots, they really are.
Speaker 3: But the authorities in Atlanta they were onto him. So
Speaker 3: they tracked mister Burns and whatever other film and TV
Speaker 3: character names he'd used back to his real identity busted.
Speaker 3: So August sixth, two thousand and four, the Secret Service
Speaker 3: issued arrest warrants for Cox for conspiracy, identity, theft, mail
Speaker 3: and wire fraud, money laundering, and Social Security number fraud.
Speaker 3: But he's still a fugitive. They're like, I don't know
Speaker 3: where he is. I know he did it, but who
Speaker 3: knows where he is? Eighteen months after skipping town in
Speaker 3: Tampa and more than six months after the Secret Service
Speaker 3: warrant Alison Arnold were surfaced. She's married, right, Yeah, she'd
Speaker 3: been a part of these early fraud schemes. She always
Speaker 3: felt bad about it. And then she saw Cocks on
Speaker 3: TV in a plea for information about a fugitive with
Speaker 3: the reward, So she called the FBI and told them
Speaker 3: everything for a reward. Well, what did it? Get her right,
Speaker 3: I would hope a clean conscience. But it also got
Speaker 3: her two years in prison for identity theft and conspiracy
Speaker 3: to commit bank.
Speaker 2: Fraud because she called the FBI told on herself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she had to pay three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in restitution to her victims.
Speaker 2: Thank you for helping us find a criminal. The criminal
Speaker 2: is you?
Speaker 3: Thank you for the hot tip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to come over and bust you right now.
Speaker 3: Cox still on the road. So she did that. She
Speaker 3: couldn't tell where he was. Yeah, she couldn't be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I know where he is. She's like, I know him.
Speaker 3: I crimed with him. Here's what we did. They're like,
Speaker 3: that's fantastic. Where is he now? I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen him.
Speaker 2: He's not a new gut. We'll stick with you for
Speaker 2: a while.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's let's let's circle back then.
Speaker 2: So then the we of doing the crimes, you do
Speaker 2: you hear that you did the.
Speaker 3: Crimes, but you know what it was like confession? So, uh,
Speaker 3: he's still out there. He goes to Columbia, South Carolina. Wait, yeah,
Speaker 3: shotgun in two houses there racks up almost nine hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in phony mortgages in just a few days.
Speaker 3: A data analyst at one of the lenders, though, thought
Speaker 3: that was fishy.
Speaker 2: I saw that someone's analyzing this data seriously saw.
Speaker 3: The duplicate loans and that they happened in such short succession,
Speaker 3: So they flagged the accounts for fraud shut down the
Speaker 3: bank accounts Cox, once again undeterred, he goes to the
Speaker 3: bank to straighten things out. As soon as he got there,
Speaker 3: so did the cops. So they arrested him and they
Speaker 3: took him to the station and he identified himself as
Speaker 3: Gary Lee Sullivan. Gary Lee Sullivan didn't have any warrants,
Speaker 3: and he convinced the cops that this was all a
Speaker 3: clerical mix up the fraud flag. They let him go.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: No? So then Cox and Hawk they take off and
Speaker 3: go to Houston, and she.
Speaker 2: She's like a tour of like bands like Rat and Warrant,
Speaker 2: Like they were gonna go from town. Then he went
Speaker 2: to Houston, They're were gonna be in Mobile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a pretty amazing, pretty amazing. So how she's like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I can't do this anymore. She gets
Speaker 3: herself a fake name and is like I'm going to
Speaker 3: live under the radar. You go on without me. He's like, great,
Speaker 3: happy to do. So goes to Nashville. And she was
Speaker 3: not successful at staying under the radar and hiding out,
Speaker 3: because within a year the Secret Service found her and
Speaker 3: arrested her. So she got convicted of all manner of
Speaker 3: fraud theft. She gets sentenced to six years in prison
Speaker 3: with five years of supervisor release. Mane Cox, Well, he
Speaker 3: made it to the big time. He was now on
Speaker 3: the Secret Service Most Wanted Fugitives list. So Nashville living
Speaker 3: his best life as a guy named Joseph Carter. Has
Speaker 3: a new girlfriend, Amanda Gardner, another single mom. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: names single moms. She didn't know he was a fugitive
Speaker 3: or that his name wasn't really Joseph Carter. She thought
Speaker 3: that he was just a contractor who specialized in upscale
Speaker 3: renovations and he lived in a nice little house. He
Speaker 3: like drove an ice car. Said he came from money.
Speaker 3: They went on a cruise in Greece together then passport
Speaker 3: of course was fake, but the fun they had was
Speaker 3: reels there.
Speaker 2: I would never question that.
Speaker 3: Never back home. The babysitter Patsy Taylor thought something seemed
Speaker 3: off about Joseph Carter was a woman after my own heart.
Speaker 3: She was suspicious, she got bad vibes, so she did
Speaker 3: some research, got blessed. Blessed, so he mentioned that he
Speaker 3: was originally from Florida, So she's like, okay, that's my
Speaker 3: jumping off point. And eventually he was able to connect
Speaker 3: him to his true identity, Matthew Cox, major fugitive. Wow,
Speaker 3: could you imagine that moment. He's sharp though, like because
Speaker 3: she's she's worried about her safety and that of Amanda
Speaker 3: Gardner's son. Yeah, so she wasn't She wasn't sure the
Speaker 3: cops would take a sixty year old nosey babysitter seriously,
Speaker 3: so she went to the real source of power and justice,
Speaker 3: local press. So she got in touch with Jeff Testerman
Speaker 3: Petersburg Times.
Speaker 2: Got a fresh scoop, wrote the initials. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 2: to forget that name.
Speaker 3: It needs stayed on the case for three years, this
Speaker 3: on him. Determined to help catch the guy.
Speaker 2: We need local Germali.
Speaker 3: I love that. So Testament gave Patsy the babysitter the
Speaker 3: contact information for Rebecca Hawk's lawyer. Hawke's family paid Patsy
Speaker 3: for Cox's address. They wanted to use this as leverage
Speaker 3: to chip some time off her sentence, and it worked.
Speaker 3: The Feds reduced her sentence from seventy to forty two months.
Speaker 2: Wow, bad year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now the Feds have that address. November sixteenth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, Cox gets arrested. Finally. Prosecutors described him
Speaker 3: as a master manipulator who exploited loopholes in the mortgage
Speaker 3: industry and caused financial devastation for lenders innocent victims. He
Speaker 3: gets convicted and sentenced to twenty six years in federal
Speaker 3: prison for charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated
Speaker 3: identity theft, bank fraud, money.
Speaker 2: Laundering, wirefrog going to get you every time, every time.
Speaker 3: So off to prison, he went, let's pause here. When
Speaker 3: we return, I'm going to tell you about how Marcus
Speaker 3: Schrenker and Matthew Cox crosspaths.
Speaker 2: Zarin, I'm loving this, Elizabeth, and now I can't wait
Speaker 2: till they crossed.
Speaker 3: We got two guys with federal crimes on their on
Speaker 3: their backs.
Speaker 2: Were roughly the same agearage, rough crimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So after his two thousand and seven conviction, Cox
Speaker 3: he got sent to a couple different medium security federal
Speaker 3: prisons over the years Florida, Georgia. I can tell you
Speaker 3: that entertainment and educational materials are in short supply in
Speaker 3: the federal pen. Yes, inmates are super hungry for any distraction,
Speaker 3: and they read every single line in newspapers or magazines
Speaker 3: that they get. They analyze everything because there's so much
Speaker 3: time to think. I think I've mentioned to you that
Speaker 3: when we'd drop off their textbooks at the start of
Speaker 3: the semester, they'd have read them all at least once
Speaker 3: in their entirety before the first class met. Its awesome.
Speaker 3: I loved it. Oh yeah, they're like totally prepared. They
Speaker 3: have a question about chapter eleven when you're first like
Speaker 3: writing your name on the board. Oh okay, hold on.
Speaker 3: We'd have classroom discussions and if something came up that
Speaker 3: I didn't know an answer to in a regular classroom,
Speaker 3: I'd look it up on the computer there and we'd
Speaker 3: talk about it. There's no internet in a federal facility,
Speaker 3: and so one time this student asked me how exactly
Speaker 3: they were able to draw maps hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: years ago, Like how did they get the coastlines so exact?
Speaker 3: And it was a it was a non sequitor. It
Speaker 3: was just like a random question after seeing a map
Speaker 3: in the textbook. And I wasn't really sure, Like I mean,
Speaker 3: I had like an idea, but I was curious too.
Speaker 3: So when I got back to my office, I found
Speaker 3: a bunch of articles about the process, and I made
Speaker 3: little readers for the class, like twenty five pages or
Speaker 3: so of information, one for everybody. Yeah, well they lost.
Speaker 2: Their mind, if anyone ever.
Speaker 3: Did, because didn't have anything to do with with like
Speaker 3: what we were talking about in class. And I was like,
Speaker 3: just read these and now you know, we'll talk about
Speaker 3: it later after everyone's read it.
Speaker 2: It's rare someone takes your curiosity that serious. That's remarkable.
Speaker 3: But I mean, like I as a curious person, My god,
Speaker 3: I'm like stoked when anyone else.
Speaker 2: I mustay my curiosity recognizes your curiosity.
Speaker 3: Buy one. Get ones there. I could get this stuff
Speaker 3: into them as class materialsted you know where. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we had this thing where at the end of the week,
Speaker 3: they'd agree on one interesting like niche non controversial topic
Speaker 3: or like something I sometimes I'd get to pick, and
Speaker 3: then I'd make the little information packs for them for
Speaker 3: the next week. And so one of the times I
Speaker 3: got to pick, I brought them a pack that included
Speaker 3: your article about black cowboys and that love. It was
Speaker 3: a huge hit. FYI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's flattering.
Speaker 3: You're very well. Thank you anyway, Cox smart guy, and
Speaker 3: he had a lot of time I'm on his hands.
Speaker 3: So he had a college education, he had a background
Speaker 3: in art and communications, a flair for storytelling that he'd
Speaker 3: honed while creating fake identities and fabricating entire life stories.
Speaker 3: So once he's behind bars, he starts to channel that
Speaker 3: creative energy into something else, the written word.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought he started like, you know, a theater group.
Speaker 3: No, he starts writing, baby. So he said that there
Speaker 3: are a lot of reasons why he began writing in prison.
Speaker 3: For one, he said it's a matter of redemption in Catharsis.
Speaker 3: In interviews, he described writing as a way to process
Speaker 3: everything and then he'd done and like reflect on the consequences.
Speaker 3: It allowed him to explore themes of deceit, manipulation, moral collapse.
Speaker 2: See things from multiple perspectives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it gave him narrative control because like someone who
Speaker 3: lived by lies and false personas, writing is this way
Speaker 3: to regain control of the narrative, the authority. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a business opportunity. He knows how to make a buck,
Speaker 3: and he knows what people want. He saw that there's
Speaker 3: a market for true crime stories, especially insider perspectives, and
Speaker 3: he's sitting on a gold mine of material from his
Speaker 3: own life and from the inmates.
Speaker 2: Every run around him, everybody allers.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so he gets to writing. His first major
Speaker 3: manuscript wasn't about his own life. It was the biography
Speaker 3: of a fellow inmate, John Thomas Ambrose, a former gun trafficker.
Speaker 3: He called it Once a Gun Runner. And the book
Speaker 3: was ghost written by Cox and served as a pilot
Speaker 3: for a series of inmate biographies that he envisioned producing
Speaker 3: from prison. So the.
Speaker 2: Inmates exactly.
Speaker 3: And this is like how it showed how talented he
Speaker 3: was with the long form narrative that he had, like
Speaker 3: this really dramatic, engaging style. It was journalistic but literary.
Speaker 2: At some time, creative nonfiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so he gets that project going and then
Speaker 3: he turns the pen toward his own life. So he
Speaker 3: starts working on this like memoir like manuscript tentatively titled Bent,
Speaker 3: and he did a deep dive into his early forays
Speaker 3: into mortgage fraud, like he investigated the psychological dynamics of
Speaker 3: white collar crime, the mechanics of identity theft and forged documents.
Speaker 3: He talked about his years on.
Speaker 2: The run, so it's a kind of a guide book.
Speaker 3: And diary, and also like all the manipulative relationships that
Speaker 3: he fostered. I'm very honest about it. He wrote it
Speaker 3: like a novel, and he layered all this detail and
Speaker 3: dialogue and narrative arc. He said that he wanted a
Speaker 3: story to quote read like fiction, but be all true.
Speaker 3: But he didn't stop an autobiography. He started writing crime
Speaker 3: thrillers based on real life cases of other white collar
Speaker 3: criminals and scam artists that he met in prison. Some
Speaker 3: of those were later adapted or used for his post
Speaker 3: prison podcast Inside True Crime. So he wrote these works
Speaker 3: longhand on legal pads and then later type them on
Speaker 3: prison typewriters common obviously because like they don't have the Internet,
Speaker 3: so they had the computer uses what are you going
Speaker 3: to use it for? They had like word process. I
Speaker 3: had students who were writing books. They'd asked me to
Speaker 3: read their stuff and like workshop it. And there was
Speaker 3: one guy who was writing a real corker of a
Speaker 3: book is really really good about a Crooked Cop, which
Speaker 3: I later found out.
Speaker 4: He was there.
Speaker 3: You got what you good stuff. I had another student,
Speaker 3: Carlos Walker. He's an artist and a writer. He's out
Speaker 3: and he's doing great work. So Carlos Walker. There's incredible
Speaker 3: talent definitely, you know, out in the world, and that
Speaker 3: includes in the prison system. So Cox he's writing all
Speaker 3: these big books. Sometimes he'd have friends or supporters outside
Speaker 3: the prison transcribe his work for him, so he's just
Speaker 3: sending them a hand you know, they're they're typing it up.
Speaker 3: There are hurdles other than like no internet and technology
Speaker 3: in lock up, they can't really it's hard to get
Speaker 3: it's hard to get a true workshop. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 3: aggressive in the workshop is inmates can't really profit from
Speaker 3: work produced in prison.
Speaker 2: Of course, not because it's considered part of their crimes,
Speaker 2: because if they're writing about.
Speaker 3: What they know, right, And then also I think you
Speaker 3: just can't have like a venture that makes money. I
Speaker 3: don't know, you.
Speaker 2: Could have a cookbook. Somebody's clearly untied to the he can't.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm wrong, who knows.
Speaker 3: There are restrictions on contact though with like publishers or agents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I figured this, just sending.
Speaker 3: An email will cost them money. And a lot of
Speaker 3: times the emails don't make it through, but they still
Speaker 3: get charged. Yeah, I had. I had students. I'd come
Speaker 3: to come to class and they'd be like, I tried
Speaker 3: to send you an email, and like, don't ever ever
Speaker 3: do that because number one, I didn't get it. Number
Speaker 3: two it costs you like three bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to put money in their accounts sometimes
Speaker 2: if they want to email you.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's the whole thing.
Speaker 3: So to get around these challenges, Cox relied on third
Speaker 3: parties to help them submit the manuscripts or to post
Speaker 3: content to a website, and then at least one case,
Speaker 3: he had an outside contact start a blog or like
Speaker 3: would arrange media interviews. So in the summer of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: Marcus Schrenker came into the picture. So he was going
Speaker 3: to get out in about a year. When he sat
Speaker 3: down with Cox at a prison dining table at FCI Coleman, Florida,
Speaker 3: he tells Cox, boy, do I have a story for you?
Speaker 3: And so like, the thing is, it's like we've talked
Speaker 3: about this before. As a writer, people come up to
Speaker 3: you and like, I have a great story book. My
Speaker 3: life would make a great book. And I always want
Speaker 3: to say, no, it wouldn't. I love you to death,
Speaker 3: but no, it wouldn't anyway. So that's like this poor
Speaker 3: like Cox is like he's got to take people's offers
Speaker 3: because he's sitting there in like just incredible material.
Speaker 2: Oh and you never know what gold is underneath the rock.
Speaker 2: You may have read, I could.
Speaker 3: Just feel it, like have I got a story for
Speaker 3: you to know?
Speaker 2: You don't most of the time.
Speaker 3: So Shranker he didn't like how his story was being
Speaker 3: told out in the world. He wanted someone to set
Speaker 3: the record Street.
Speaker 2: He wanted narrative control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Cox, he's the writer, storyteller, the one to
Speaker 3: set the record. Cox said, quote, the guy told me
Speaker 3: that he shouldn't even be in prison. And Cox, you know,
Speaker 3: wonders if that's true, Honey, you're going to hear that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Schrenker tells Cox that he hadn't built anyone, that
Speaker 3: the investments just didn't land. And he told Cox, quote,
Speaker 3: I'd sold a bunch of index annuities that ended up
Speaker 3: underperforming and that wasn't my fault. I can't be blamed
Speaker 3: for the market. So Shanker said that while he was
Speaker 3: trying to get the insurance companies to refund his clients,
Speaker 3: his wife found out about his affair, and that she
Speaker 3: got her revenge by opening up an offshore currency account,
Speaker 3: committing all sorts of fraud and pinning it on him.
Speaker 3: So she's a woman scoring he's a patsy, my baby.
Speaker 3: So in order to avoid prison, Shranker said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to fake my own death with the plane thing. Cox
Speaker 3: told Forbes magazine quote, it was obviously a very sensational story,
Speaker 3: but still I want to believe it. I wondered if
Speaker 3: there was an angle to the story that the media
Speaker 3: had missed. So remember, no Internet in the clink, so
Speaker 3: Cox he couldn't do it deep bead. He could, though,
Speaker 3: ask his literary agent, who was not in prison, to
Speaker 3: do the digging for him. I don't like, Hey, give
Speaker 3: me some dossier's basically, so the agent mailed him newspaper articles,
Speaker 3: court transcripts, and those sources did not match up at
Speaker 3: all with what Schranker was trying to tell him. So,
Speaker 3: determined to get to the truth, Cox filed a Freedom
Speaker 3: of Information Act request. H huh, and that confirmed that
Speaker 3: Schenker's ex wife wasn't in on any of it. Fraud,
Speaker 3: not the plane crash. That's all him. Cox told Forbes
Speaker 3: quote What was clear was that everyone from the prosecutors
Speaker 3: to his victims were calling Shrinker an habitual liar. He
Speaker 3: alone had built multiple clients and companies out of millions.
Speaker 3: So it turns out that Schranker had approached a bunch
Speaker 3: of writers outside of prison, like shopping his story about
Speaker 3: being framed by his ex, and each one had looked
Speaker 3: into this history and found him to be totally lying
Speaker 3: in his version of things, like, no one's going to
Speaker 3: sink time into something that will be blown up before
Speaker 3: it's even published.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, especially with just a little bit of research,
Speaker 2: you can confirm that.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing thoughs Aaron Cox is a storyteller, and
Speaker 3: he knew there was actually a story in all this
Speaker 3: after all, He told Forbes again, quote, I saw Shrinker
Speaker 3: as a puzzle. Unlike an author on the street. Outside
Speaker 3: of prison, I had plenty of time, unfettered access to Shrinker, and,
Speaker 3: according to my prosecutor, an uncannyability to discover a Marx
Speaker 3: of vulnerability. Oh, it's like spy versus biogra Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: tables are being turned Zaren. So Cox is like, you
Speaker 3: know what, Shrinker, Yeah, let's do this. I'm going to
Speaker 3: interview you for your book. And he's like getting him
Speaker 3: to go deep dive on the details of his story
Speaker 3: and then like on his life outside of the fraud,
Speaker 3: like he's inner working. He wasn't writing an expos about
Speaker 3: a man done wrong by society and serving time for
Speaker 3: a crime he didn't commit. He was writing a profile
Speaker 3: of a pathological liar. Yes, And so at last, finally
Speaker 3: the book Bailout the Life and Lies of Marcus Schrenker.
Speaker 3: So Schranker reads it loses it. He's so mad. Is
Speaker 3: not how he saw this going. And that's a brave
Speaker 3: thing for Cox to have done show it to them
Speaker 3: while they're still in lock up together, because like Schranker
Speaker 3: had what a year left hold off, but not long
Speaker 3: after Schranker got out. And the thing is, though, when
Speaker 3: you think about it, it's like, based on what I've
Speaker 3: read about their personalities, I feel like Shrinker probably irritated
Speaker 3: the ever loving issues out of everybody and if he
Speaker 3: threw pitches a fit, and Cox probably arrowed himself with
Speaker 3: everyone because he's entertained, so I'm sure that he was.
Speaker 3: You know, Schranker's just and everyone's ignoring him. So he
Speaker 3: gets out. He goes to a halfway house. The manuscript
Speaker 3: stayed with Cox in prison, but when Cox got out
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen, he had like this tight, thrilling manuscript
Speaker 3: that was just ready for him to publish. So he
Speaker 3: had all of his true crime writing. He wanted to
Speaker 3: get it out there, so he started an online magazine
Speaker 3: inside truecrime dot com, and there's also the podcast inside
Speaker 3: true Crime. There's YouTube stuff. He self published his books
Speaker 3: and he posted what I think is an abridged version
Speaker 3: of Bailout on the website. Schranker found it, lost it again.
Speaker 3: He filed a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
Speaker 3: and then he reached out to the DJ the Department. Yeah,
Speaker 3: tells the Department of Justice that he had not participated
Speaker 3: in the story and the story is a complete fabrication,
Speaker 3: that Cox is harassing him. My dude, this is all
Speaker 3: carefully researched like story. Your story makes you look like crap,
Speaker 3: But that was your life choice.
Speaker 2: Maybe you shouldn't have lived it.
Speaker 3: Maybe don't do that. Let this be a lesson to
Speaker 3: all of those who meet a writer and say I
Speaker 3: have a great story for you, or like my life
Speaker 3: would make a great book. Be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it will be a great book, but you
Speaker 2: hate so.
Speaker 3: Cox he was able to back everything up that he had.
Speaker 3: Everything that was thrown in him was just dropped, and
Speaker 3: then Cox he's now a fixture in the true crime
Speaker 3: storytelling space for him as Zaren, what's your takeaway.
Speaker 2: Oh man, but you kind of already said it, which
Speaker 2: is the be careful what you wish for with a writer? Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like people always think like, oh, could you tell my story?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I can.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you want.
Speaker 2: Their audience and may like it, you may hate it or.
Speaker 3: People who I don't know. I used to think like
Speaker 3: people who cross you and you're.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, you're a screwed the writer.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna light you and.
Speaker 2: If I got strong enough, lawyer, I'll put your own
Speaker 2: name on it, right.
Speaker 3: But like you can light someone up so bad and
Speaker 3: like it's you know, name is not the same, but
Speaker 3: like little things, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there I think that would be mine? Is that
Speaker 2: like never go to a writer with the idea that
Speaker 2: you can control that process.
Speaker 3: Very true, Very true, my ridiculous takeaway. Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: I guess I want to hear it. I guess.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about how we've had the authorities tell
Speaker 3: these criminals a bunch of times it's like, you're so
Speaker 3: talented if you just put your efforts toward. But then
Speaker 3: and I was thinking, oh, yeah, like Matthew Cox is
Speaker 3: so talented, but like it's so hard to make a
Speaker 3: living as a writer. Yeah, exactly, And so it's kind
Speaker 3: of like, you know, I don't blame.
Speaker 2: Him, no crime is always tempting.
Speaker 3: Do the crimes. And then like that was that. Now
Speaker 3: it's the springboard. Now he can run with it.
Speaker 2: He's an expert in a field.
Speaker 3: There. It is so good. I Dave, I think I
Speaker 3: need a talk back.
Speaker 2: I think we both do. Oh my god, I.
Speaker 5: Hey, ridiculous crime. This is art in San Antonio, and
Speaker 5: I wanted to share my ridiculous sea monkey story. When
Speaker 5: I was younger, I went to a summer day camp
Speaker 5: and one time they had a bring your pet day.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately I didn't have a pet, so my quit thinking
Speaker 5: mom got me some sea monkeys and the good news
Speaker 5: is they won the camp Award for most Unique Pet.
Speaker 5: The bad news is that on the way home they
Speaker 5: spilled in the back of my mom's wood paneled station wagon.
Speaker 5: And yes, Elizabeth, sea monkeys do smell awful, especially when
Speaker 5: they're in a car's interior.
Speaker 2: That was awesome.
Speaker 3: It is so good. The wood paneled station wagon is
Speaker 3: how many dead sea monkeys do you think you're in
Speaker 3: the interior of wood But that's rad you got their ward. Awesome.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's it for today. You can find
Speaker 3: us online at ridiculous Crime dot com, which is on
Speaker 3: the most wanted list as a fugitive. Did you know that? Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't tell you, buddy. We're at Ridiculous Crime on blue
Speaker 3: Sky and Instagram. You can email ridiculous Crime at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com. You can go to YouTube We're Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: pod and you can check us out there, leave a
Speaker 3: talkback on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarren Burnett, produced and edited
Speaker 3: by Jailhouse Publishing Magnet Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith.
Speaker 3: Research is by Aircraft windshield salesperson Maurice Brown. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by war Fighters Thomas Lee and Travis Dutt.
Speaker 3: Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair
Speaker 3: and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: literary agents to the stars and those behind bars, Ben
Speaker 3: Boleen and Noel Brown. Well say It one more Time.
Speaker 2: Riudiquious Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.