Digital Social Hour
Ex-Scammer Reveals Shocking Fraud Tactics | Matthew Cox DSHH #1311
Wed, 09 Apr 2025
Ex-scammer Matthew Cox joins Sean Kelly on the Digital Social Hour to reveal shocking fraud tactics that will leave you speechless! 😱 From synthetic identities to elaborate real estate scams, Matthew shares how he masterminded operations that fooled banks, corporations, and even law enforcement. 🚨 This episode is packed with valuable insights into the mind of a fraudster, his unbelievable journey through the criminal underworld, and the hard lessons he learned along the way. Matthew talks about life after prison, adjusting to a changed world, and how he reinvented himself. Whether it’s fake IDs, synthetic identities, or secret systems, this is one story you don’t want to miss! 🎙️ Tune in now to hear one of the craziest stories ever shared on the podcast. Don’t miss out—watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments below! CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:27 - Matthew Cox’s Life Before Prison 01:24 - Adjusting to Life After 13 Years in Prison 04:46 - Problems Faced in Prison 07:36 - Race Relations and Dynamics in Prison 14:01 - Mortgage Fraud Techniques Today 18:02 - Real Estate Fraud Strategies Today 22:10 - Purchasing Fake W2s and Pay Stubs 25:25 - Long-Term Planning in Fraud Schemes 26:14 - Obtaining a Fake Social Security Number 30:10 - Creating a $40 Million Mortgage Fraud Scheme 33:10 - Developing a $200 Million Mortgage Fraud Scheme 38:53 - Getting Caught by the FBI 40:59 - The Wire Fraud Scam Explained 46:12 - Running a Second Scam After the First 49:09 - Creating Fake Bank Statements for Fraud 56:07 - Consequences of Getting Caught 56:58 - Helping Friends Commit Fraud 1:02:42 - Tree Trimming Business Venture 1:06:08 - The FBI Finally Tracks Down Josh 1:09:10 - Escape with a Bipolar Girlfriend 1:18:15 - Government Seizure of Assets 1:20:14 - The Secret Service Arrests Matt 1:24:55 - Matthew's Arrest and Guilty Plea 1:26:20 - Matthew's 26-Year Sentence 1:30:04 - Reducing His Sentence by 7 Years 1:33:17 - Matthew's Last Con: Early Release from Prison 1:36:13 - Matthew's Final Legal Battles 1:36:24 - Matthew's Sentence Reduction Process 1:36:30 - Life in the Halfway House 1:36:39 - Launching the Podcast 1:36:49 - Matthew's True Crime Book Series 1:37:19 - Current Relationships with Co-Conspirators 1:37:50 - Where to Find Matthew's Podcast APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: jenna@digitalsocialhour.com GUEST: Matthew Cox https://www.youtube.com/@InsideTrueCrime https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ #truecrime #crime #realestate #matthewcox #softwhiteunderbelly
Chapter 1: Who is Matthew Cox and what is his story?
I've got original bank statements. What am I supposed to do? How else do I do this? And that's really as simple as it is. So the point is, is that I would get calls from banks every once in a while and say, hey, this is fucked up. This is what's going on. And I sat there and just said, look, I don't know what you want me to tell you. You know, I can give you the money back.
Let me just cut you a check. And they go, oh, that's too late for that. All right, guys, we got Matthew Cox here today. One of the craziest stories I've ever heard, man. Thanks for coming on today. No problem. You've been busy podcasting these days, huh? Yeah. That's my full-time gig. Yeah. You made that switch four years ago, you said? Yeah. Well, it wasn't my full-time gig four years ago.
Chapter 2: How did Matthew Cox adjust to life after prison?
It takes some time. Probably by the last couple of years, it's been full-time. It's been paying all my bills. You know when you start off and it takes a while. Was that adjustment really hard when you got out of prison to adjust back to the real world? Yeah, I lived in someone's spare room. Well, I lived in a rooming house essentially for about 18 months. And then I got a one bedroom.
In the one bedroom, I basically started the podcast. So I was probably a year out. But yeah, it was definitely an adjustment. First of all, I'd never been on... Look, I'd never held an iPhone. I'd never been on YouTube. So all the things that you take for granted that you just can know, imagine having to learn all of that like... I had no idea how anything worked.
It was, everything was like magic. So yeah, you got out of there. It was a whole new world, right? Social media. Yeah. 13 years, like everything changed. Keep in mind, when I got locked up, Facebook had been out about a year. I mean, I'd never been on it. MySpace was a thing. Wow.
So you can imagine how, you know, I had when my phone went, you know, it had just come out maybe a year before I got locked up texting. It was a big deal, bro. Keyboard phones, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can text people. I didn't even know what that was. So, yeah, I was. Did you have one in prison, a phone? No, no. I was a good inmate. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like these guys get in there and they're.
You know, they're doing, you know, drugs and they're hustling and they're sneaking cell phones. And like, you know, I don't have the energy for that. I mean, you got out early, so. Yeah, I got out of my time cut by 12 years, which is crazy. Yeah. That's really impressive, actually, because you were supposed to serve 26, right? Yeah. I'm supposed to be in prison right now. Yeah.
And you got out at 13? Yeah. That's nuts, man. Was that the plan when you got in to kind of reduce it as much as possible? Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, the plan, there wasn't much of a plan because I never thought I was going to end up with getting 26 years.
Like, you know, and then everybody says like, well, when you got 26 years, did you, so man, did you think you were going to do 26 years? I actually had this conversation yesterday with a friend of mine and I thought I never really let it kind of sink in, maybe a little bit here or there, but I always thought to myself that at some point they'll send me to a camp and I'll escape.
I'll leave the camp. Wow. But, you know, the BOP, they know what they're doing. Like, they don't... Even though when I came into the system, I had... I had like two points for your security level. Well, so a camp's like under 10. So I had two. I should have gone to a camp. But because I had so much time, they sent me to a medium. And until you get below 20 years, they can't send you to a low.
So then I go to a low. After three years, I go to a low. And it's like, okay, so now I'm in a low, but they won't send you to a camp until you're under 10 years. So I'm gonna do a significant amount of time before I get to have the ability to go to a camp.
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Chapter 3: What are the techniques used in mortgage and real estate fraud today?
He looks like a tank. tattoos all over his body. And these guys who typically wouldn't talk to me, right? Not a gang member. I'm some soft cracker. No reason to talk to me. But you got black guys going, yo, Cock, that was good class. Hey, Cock, what kind of book do you think I should order so I read about real estate? And it's You see what I'm saying? Like, you know what it reminds me of?
Did you ever see Shawshank Redemption? Yeah. So Andy Dufresne, when he starts doing all the guards' taxes, suddenly he becomes important in prison. I become important in prison. I'm either teaching you GED or I'm teaching real estate classes and I've got a waiting list. So I got a year and a half waiting list for guys to get into these classes. Yeah, that's impressive. Yeah. Wow.
So, yeah, so that was three years. And then I went to the low. And in the low, there's more white collar criminals. It's probably, the mix is probably 60% black. 30% Mexican, and then maybe 10% white. Okay. No Asians? Very few. I mean, there might be maybe a large Asian group at any given time, and there was 2,000 people in the low, might be... three or four at a time. Wow. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
We stay out of trouble. Well, here's what I think happens is the Asians that are in Asian gangs, they don't go to, they don't go to typically end up in lows or mediums. They typically end up in pins and they stay there because Asians commit crimes that are extremely serious and violent, and they're not afraid to be violent.
And when they go into prison, they're concerned about gang activities, they're being respectful and getting respect. And so they commit violent crimes in prison. And the other thing about Asians is they'll fight their cases. So you're fighting your case and then you lose. You're getting a lot of time. You know, it's very much like the old mob where you fight the entire time.
And that's, you know, they're serious. There's not a lot of them. And the ones that are, like, they're serious. Everyone I've met, I haven't met any Asians that weren't like, well, I'm in the low, a couple of guys, but they were there for just stupidity. Most of the guys are super serious. Yeah, there's a big Asian gang, right? Yeah, there's a few. I think Johnny Chang was in it.
I forget the name of it. And there's the... They're triads. And they do stuff like... I actually was working on a book. I don't know if I'll ever get back to it, where the Asian gangs were robbing factories in the United States that were making computer chips and shipping them to China. Wow. So they're going in hardcore. They're going in and they're zip-tying everybody. Holy crap.
And then they're loading up... 10,000 or 100,000 chips into a van driving off. And then they basically meet some guy in a parking lot who gives them $3 million for $12 million in chips. And that guy then puts them on a boat and they ship them back to China. Like, these are not the mob crimes. These are serious crimes. They're bringing in
They're bringing in their traffic in and, you know, people like we're shipping containers full of people. This is a serious that's a serious issue. Like, you know, you're going to end up in a low. You're going to go to a pen. Yeah. Like that's a serious issue. Human trafficking. Not one. 30 guys in a container. God knows if something goes wrong there.
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Chapter 4: How can synthetic identities be created for scams?
So obviously you have to have a phone number that they can call. And so he says, yeah, hi, who? Oh, yeah. No, no. Yeah, Matt, he's not here right now. Did you want to talk to him? Oh, you just want to verify he's employed? Oh, no, no. He's been here for, oh, gosh, at least two, three. He's been here longer than I have. I've been here for three years. Okay. Anything else? Oh, okay. Thank you.
And they hang up the phone. Very casual. What do they care? They could do a, there's a form they can fill out, which is an 8821 form, which verifies your employment with the government. But they don't always do that. So if you just have to make sure wherever you go, they don't do that.
And keep in mind, if I'm trying to borrow money in somebody else's name, I don't care if they do that because that form's probably not going to catch up with me for a few months. Right. So I close the loan. I get the money. And maybe three months later, they realize this guy doesn't even work here. This isn't even a corporation. Hmm. That's if they figure out it's not a corporation.
If you're smart, you do it with like a shell company. Yeah. You buy a shell company that's been around for 10 years. That's impressive, man. How far out were you thinking during this? Were you thinking month by month, like, oh, I'm going to move here next month? Or were you kind of just living in the moment?
Well, I mean, initially I owned a mortgage company, so I was thinking I was just doing like little fraud, right? Like I'd change a W-2, a pay sub, just so that my clients could get a loan. Yeah. And we probably did that for, I think the FBI estimated like $40 million over the course of several years. Like we did that much fraud, which isn't that much fraud.
Like to me, that wasn't that, because these loans were going to clients that were getting the mortgages and they were paying, they were, getting a mortgage, buying a house with the mortgage, and they were making the payments. That's fraud. If I get you a $300,000 loan using fake W-2s and pay subs, that's a $300,000 fraud. Now, people think, oh, you made $300,000. No, I didn't.
I made a $6,000 broker fee. Right. But it is still fraud. So the FBI said that was about $40 million. But then eventually I get in trouble and I lose my license and I sell the mortgage company. And then I start... Then I started... a synthetic identity scam where I figured out how to get social security to issue me social security numbers that were going to children.
So I'd make a fake W-2 and a fake, I'm sorry, I would make a fake birth certificate and I'd make a fake shot record and I'd go into the social security office And I'd say, hey, I had a son that was born. He's seven months old or 10 months old, and he never had a social security number issued. And they'd go, okay, what's your name? Can I see your ID? Okay.
And they'd pull me up and they'd go, because your social security number is paired to your parents. So they pull up me and they go, huh. And they pull up his birth certificate and they go, huh, yeah, you're right. He's never had a social security issue. That's weird. And they go, okay, hold on.
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Chapter 5: What lessons did Matthew Cox learn from his criminal activities?
We're scrapping that. We're just driving away. No, nothing pointed to me or her. So we can drive away. They'll never catch us. And I've read the entire investigation, by the way, that they did. They never put it together. Wow. Here's how they put it together. She eventually talks to my buddy that I'd opened up the other scam in Orlando. He'd already borrowed about $400,000 doing the same scam.
And he was Mr. White. And he was, I think it was David Silver and Mr. White. So two different identities go and borrow multiple mortgages on the same properties. Got about 400,000. He's still going to closing. She goes to him and says, look, let me sign the check over to you. You deposit it in your bank account. And, you know, give us the money. I tell him not to do it.
He says, nah, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. So he does it. He gets arrested in the bank. Like the bank officer, the manager calls him up and says, hey, I know you endorsed this check and you were depositing it. He's like, right. He goes, but it's over $100,000. And we need any checks over $100,000. A bank employee has to be there to witness the signature and they need to sign.
We didn't see you sign this. Or we didn't see the person sign it or you endorse it. And so could you come back by? No, I hate to ask you to do that. And he's like, yeah, no problem. Well, the cops are waiting for him. So he pulls in. The cops arrest him. So he gets arrested. I get him out on bond. I pay for his attorney. And it wasn't even a federal case. It was a state case.
So his state attorney isn't like 50 grand or something. It's $15,000. I pay 15 grand. And then here's what's so funny about this guy. Um, God bless him. Uh, cause I still see him to this day. He, uh, I give him 15 grand. And by the way, he's immediately already working with them right away. He works. He starts. Absolutely. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Just look at me out of jail.
He gets out of jail. I buy, I get him an attorney and he, how hard is it for him to prove? I can tell you what's really going on. It's much bigger than me. He goes, Hillsborough County property appraiser's website. And they go, okay. He goes, look up the name Lee Black. They look it up. They're like, oh yeah, this guy had five houses.
Yeah, all of them are in foreclosure or they've been foreclosed on. They're like, huh, that's weird. Yeah, look up the name Brandon Green. Okay. Yeah. Oh, he's got six houses. Okay. Oh, gee. All in our foreclosure. Look up the name James Redd. And they're like green, red, black, silver. And he's like, yeah, he's like, this guy's borrowed 10, $20 million.
You know, it wasn't, but he's like 10, $20 million. He was, and that's the guy running this whole thing and I can give them to you. And he's all, by the way, and he's already on federal probation. They look him up. Yeah, he's on federal probation, wire fraud, mortgage company, mortgage fraud, mortgage fraud. Absolutely, we'll have you out of here. We're going to get you out of here right now.
You're going to work with the task force. So he comes to me. I don't know he's working with the task force. And what happens is I pay for an attorney, 15 grand. Then he comes back a month later. He's like, look, I'm not making any money. I'm broke. I don't know what to do. I don't want to lose my house, my daughter. They're going to turn off the lights. I need money. Absolutely. What do you need?
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Chapter 6: How does Matthew Cox describe the inside workings of scams?
So what happens is I borrow this money. Dateline's about to come out with a show on me. And what I do is I decide I'm gonna go to Australia because Australia at the time was allowing you to come there. Like you didn't have to get fingerprints anymore. Like you could, and keep in mind, I've got, I've had, just to let you know, I've had 27 driver's licenses
in seven different, issued by seven different states, I've had two dozen passports in different people's names issued by the State Department. Wow. So I've traveled, I've, on fake passports, I've been to, you know, I've been to Bermuda, I've been to Mexico, I've been to Jamaica, I've been to Italy, I've been to Greece, I've been to Croatia. Like I've been all around on these passports. Yeah.
So I'm going to Australia. I already had a clean passport. And what I was gonna do was go there because at that time, if you showed up in Australia with like, you only needed to have a couple hundred thousand in a business plan and they would allow you to stay as a permanent resident alien. You could not take a job But you could open a business.
Keep in mind, I'm going to go there with a few million. Yeah. And a business plan. So I'm going to not have a problem. The problem is, Dateline's coming out. We're planning on leaving. We're pulling out cash. And at one, we end up getting robbed. Oh, wow. So we get robbed. And... Randomly or was it targeted?
I mean, I have a feeling it was one of the general one of the contractors that was building houses like one of his guys or something. Right. People saw me was living in a shitty neighborhood because I had I owned all the houses around me. So instead of I moved out of I was living in an area called in Nashville called Green Hills, which is really nice.
And I moved right in the middle of the ghetto because I owned all these houses and we're doing these renovations. And I renovated a house really cool, had tons of security cameras, but we ended up getting robbed. So what happened was my girlfriend, we're cashing checks. We're asking laborers like, hey, bro, if I give you a check for five grand, I'll give you 500 bucks to go cash the check.
And they're like, yeah, cool. No problem. they give me 4,500 bucks. So I'm doing this constantly. So we get a little pile of money and we get robbed. Did somebody know the money was there? I don't know. But we lose a bunch of money. And they didn't get all of it, but they got a bunch of it. So what happens is, We are now staying at another place, but I'm at the office a couple of days later.
I got a phone call from the police department and they said, can you meet us at your house? So what had happened was my girlfriend had asked a friend of hers to cash like $30,000 worth of checks. Like she gave him a bunch of them for like five grand a piece, right? And during that conversation, she ended up saying, what's going on? And she said, look, This Carter's real name is Matthew Cox.
He's wanted. And we're going to Australia. We need to pull out a bunch of cash. Now, obviously she didn't realize her friend was gonna, you know, she's a young girl, stupid. It was stupid for me to have not left when she found out who I was. But point is, is that, you know, I was in love, you know, you're stupid when you're in love.
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