(Remy Ma) On this episode of 'My True Crime Story...'
(Matthew) I'd never been this good at anything in my life.
I knew these loans were illegal and I was okay with it.
Things got excessive.
I felt invincible.
This is a cautionary tale about how a dyslexic kid from Tampa,
who was just trying to gain his father's love.
(Matthew) My father was judgmental,
I was not the son that he wanted.
Ended up scamming the biggest banks out of their money
in 5 different states to the tune of $11.5 million dollars.
(Matthew) I knew I could create fictitious people.
(Alison) He's definitely a mastermind.
Everything that he would do to close these transactions
is just mind blowing.
And became one of America's most wanted.
(Matthew) I'm standing there where all the wanted posters are
and I'm staring right at myself.
So we decide to get plastic surgery.
And nobody's ever gonna recognize me.
Until the miles he accumulated on the run,
eventually emptied his tank.
(Matthew) And all of a sudden I hear him screaming...
"He's right here! He's right here!"
I punch it and I shoot into traffic.
And I shoot down the road.
♪ I'm the one chosen, I'm the one destined ♪
How far would you go to come-up
within a system built to hold you down?
♪ It's time to push it up a level high ♪
These are the true stories of real people
who had good intentions but got caught up by bad decisions.
It's a wild ride: from all the way up
to all the way down, and back around again.
I'm Remy Ma and I am proof that even a wrong turn
can still lead to redemption.
This is: 'My True Crime Story.'
In the 1970's, Tampa Florida was the land of opportunity for
those who already had a little somethin' to start with.
And in the suburbs like Temple Terrace where Matthew Cox
grew up, it was that "Brady Bunch" life aspiration...
A clean, safe place to raise your kids
with metaphorical white picket fences.
But also the kind of place that looks one way to the eye
but so much more was going on underneath the surface...
Just look at the Cox household...
(Matthew) I grew up in an all-American
dysfunctional family.
My mother was a strict catholic
my father was a manager with a large insurance company.
He was a great salesman...
He made a lot of money.
But he was a harsh person.
He had an alcohol problem, my entire family,
revolved around my father and his behavior.
(Matthew) My father was judgmental.
I had never felt good enough around him.
I was not particularly tall, I wasn't particularly athletic.
I mean...
I made an effort, I, I definitely, I played soccer
but I got tired of my father showing up drunk
at my soccer games.
It was, it was humiliating so I stopped playing soccer.
I was not excelling in school.
I always felt that I was disappointing him.
I failed the second grade.
I wasn't grasping, you know, reading or writing
was a major issue for me.
And so, they found out I had dyslexia, a learning disability
(Matthew) I felt embarrassed, and I was ashamed
that I wasn't living up to his expectations.
I wanted my father to be proud of me.
Matt's girlfriend, Jessica,
recalls just how complicated their relationship was.
His father did tell him that
you're never going to be anybody because he didn't read.
That was a defining moment for Matt I think.
Matt was trying to win his father's approval
and his father was just a very hard individual.
And even though Matt overcame the odds and ended up graduating
from college with a fine arts degree, by his early 20's Matt was
back to being a disappointment to his father.
(Matthew) I worked construction because I couldn't get a job,
I was barely paying my bills.
I just didn't see me getting anywhere.
And pause.
Cause what Matthew doesn't know
is that soon he will become a multi-millionaire fraudster,
with his face will be plastered on
most wanted posters across the country.
But right now, he's just trying to keep any job.
(Matthew) I just didn't see me getting anywhere
working construction. I had to try something.
I was living with a, a girl at the time.
And she was working as a mortgage broker,
one day she said, listen, you were born for this.
You should be doing something in sales.
And I was like, are you serious?
All that paperwork?
And she said, no, it's all automated.
You just have to get customers, and get them qualified,
that's all you have to do, it's perfect.
With his dyslexia, processing paperwork
wasn't Matthew's thing,
but like his salesman dad, dealing with people was.
(Matthew) I got licensed in the state of Florida.
Matt was on his official come up and his charm
easily landed him his first client.
(Matthew) I remember walking into my manager's office,
placing the file on her desk,
she looked through the entire file, page by page
and I remember she put one page to the side...
And I kept looking at the one piece
and I said, what's up with that?
And she said, your borrower was 30 days late on her rent
in the last 24 months and that's a deal killer.
That loans not gonna close.
Because getting a loan is all about how you look on paper.
So much for that first client...
or is it?
I said, what do I do?
And she pulled out a white out,
and she hand it to me and she goes, white it out,
make a copy of the document, stick it back in the file,
it'll close, there shouldn't be any problems.
Wow... white out? That's it?
Doesn't happen like this for borrowers with more melanin....
(Matthew) She goes, worse that happens
is underwriting might catch it and the loan won't close.
I was concerned, I was nervous, like,
I wasn't someone who broke the law, but
she was my manager, I trusted her, so I did what she said.
and you have to keep in mind,
I'm a couple of months behind on my car payment.
I'm-- my credit cards are getting shut off.
I mean, I'm having issues...
so I did it.
Bill collectors callin'
can definitely trigger criminal minded behavior.
(Matthew) Couple of days later it closed,
I got a check for 3,500 dollars.
3,500 dollars! That was a ton of money.
For a little white out lie? Easy money.
Something clicked that said this was the way to go.
I became emboldened by it.
I whited out one thing, they didn't catch it.
So, the next person that walked in the door,
they got an issue, I take care of it.
I was gonna get you a loan.
The loan commissions were adding up.
And soon, Matthew decided to go solo
and set up his own shop.
So when I opened up my own mortgage company
there was even more pressure on me
to make sure the loans closed.
To get the loans to go through...
I figured out what the proper numbers should be.
And once Matt figured out how much money
you needed to qualify for the loan,
to expedite the process it was out with the white out
and onto creating fully falsified originals.
(Matthew) Now I'm making fake W2s.
I'm verifying people's employment.
Sometimes I would make fake bank statements.
All of the things that I was doing
in order to get the loans for these borrowers was illegal.
If I'm saying you work somewhere, where you don't work
and I'm providing w2s and pay stubs that are fraudulent,
that's fraud.
If I'm verifying that you have money in your bank account that
you don't actually have, and I'm providing fake bank statements,
that's fraud.
After working there a month, his office assistant, Alison,
started to notice things...
(Alison) Working with Matt,
he always had information immediately.
He'd have perfect files each and every time.
Of course he did.
(Matthew) It's just across the spectrum
I would do whatever had to do
for my borrowers to get the loan.
If they get the loan, I get a commission.
I actually started a property management company
specifically so that I could verify people's rental history.
Damn Matt doing everything but making up the people.
But wait, don't worry, he'll start doing that soon enough.
Within a year of opening my own place,
I've got 12 guys working for me.
(Alison) Matt could talk you into anything for sure.
Everybody loved him. He was a charmer.
He charmed everybody that he worked with,
whether you were a realtor or mortgage person or politician.
It was like, whatever he touches turns to gold.
(Matthew) I was getting positive feedback from, from everyone.
That was my goal.
I wanted my father to think that I was successful.
You know, that was what I, I pushed for and what I wanted.
Things got excessive.
It got to the point where if you walked into
that mortgage company and you had a pulse,
I was getting you a loan.
And we would get a commission check.
(Alison) The higher the volume, the more clients,
the more loans that are closing per month.
It raises how much income they're producing.
And with all the money everyone was making including the banks,
Matt had pretty much nothing to worry about...
I felt invincible.
I was making a living that I never really thought
I was gonna be able to make.
And I was excelling at it, I was exceptionally good at it.
I'd never been this good at anything in my life.
(Jessica) He thought like, that's how I impress my father.
I need to make money and I need to drive nice cars.
This is how I win my father's love.
(Matthew) My father was finally proud of me,
I was making great money.
I worked for myself,
at 30 years old, I bought a house that was
a mile away from his house.
Everything was coming together, never mind how...
(Matthew) I was probably making between
a 150 to 200,000 a year at that time
for a couple of years.
But that's, what, 20 years ago and in Florida.
That's a lot of money.
After a few years of successfully
running his company, Matt got an unexpected call
from some clients.
So this couple, I had just refinanced their house
using fake W-2s and pay stubs that they'd provided me.
They invited me to have lunch at a pizza place.
I wasn't concerned we were friends.
Seems innocent enough...
(Matthew) And they start asking me
very specific questions about... fraud.
But that doesn't-- Red flags flying yet?
(Matthew) They basically said,
"the FBI is asking us questions about you."
"Oh my god." "You didn't tell 'em this?"
"You didn't tell 'em the W-2s were fake?"
I'm in the middle of the conversation,
I notice that there's a guy sitting at the table next to us
something's not right with this guy...
And at that moment I realize, they're wired.
(Remy Ma) Matthew Cox has been living the high life.
Cashing in commissions from his mortgage company
by forging the paperwork, but no one seems the wiser.
Until one day when two of his clients start fishin'....
(Matthew) They basically said, "you know the FBI is asking us
questions about you.
What do you want us to tell them?"
They kept looking around, which I thought was weird.
And so I asked them... are you wired?
And you know...
they admit they're wired.
I realize that that was the FBI agent actually sitting there,
while I was implicating myself.
I knew I was done, right then I knew.
Yeah, you're done.
But he was able to walk out of the restaurant so that meant...
the feds were still building a case.
(Matthew) I was burning up inside.
I was nervous and sick to my stomach and
all of my feelings of being untouchable
and being bulletproof just completely went out the window.
I drove straight to the ofice.
I contacted several criminal defense attorneys, I picked one.
Gave him $75,000
and he talked to the FBI and arranged for me to
plead guilty to one count of wire fraud.
Well, when you got that kind of money to drop,
justice has a different kind of way of working out.
(Matthew) I got three years probation,
and I had to surrender my license,
I can't be a mortgage broker.
No license meant no business.
(Matthew) I didn't want to have to claim bankruptcy
and move into my parents' spare room
and you know, listen to my father tell me I was a loser.
I just refused to step backwards.
Refused to make the right choice and instead I chose to...
Commit a much, much larger fraud.
Sounds about right for a true crime story.
(Matthew) So I decided I was gonna start
buying and selling houses.
But Matt's plan has a twist...
(Matthew) I don't want to deal with borrowers.
And I knew, if I put different parts together,
I could create fictitious people on paper
and that I could start getting them loans.
Wait... creating fictitious people to buy houses?
I told y'all he'd start making up people...
That's definitely mad levels up from white out.
(Matthew) I manufactured a fake birth certificate
using fake names, I got the government seal.
I beat it up, I stepped on it a few times.
I cooked it in the oven, made it look a little bit beat up.
I was able to take my game to the next level.
Well, damn...
Armed with a fake birth certificate,
Matt only has one last hurdle.
He needs a valid social security number.
(Matthew) So, I'd go to the social security administration
and convince them to issue social security numbers to
to people that don't exist.
Gave them the paperwork, told them my son, he's 11 months old
he never had one.
And, they issued a social security number.
For a non-existent son?
Nah, it's not supposed to be that easy...
People, for some reason, naturally trust me.
And Matt knew he had hit the jackpot
making up fake birth certificates.
His plan was to take out hundreds of thousands
of dollars in home loan money that he could pocket.
I then used those social security numbers and
secured credit cards in those individual's names.
I would make the payments for a few months,
and that creates a real credit profile.
So I now have an individual that has a 700 credit score.
And I would buy about five houses, in each person's name,
get the property appraised
and have them refinance the property.
(Alison) The banks back then did not require an appraiser.
And with no appraiser to put a realistic value on your house...
that meant you could take out a refinance loan bigger than
what your house was actually worth.
Pay off the first smaller mortgage
and then pocket the difference.
I know that may be a lot, so let me break it down
in every day terms...
It's like if you told your mom
it costs 100 dollars to fill up your gas tank,
but it really only costs 50 dollars.
She lends you the hundred then you fill up your tank
and you put the extra $50 in your pocket.
It's technically stealing and Matt was on a mad come up.
(Matthew) So each fictitious person
would get about a million dollars worth of mortgages.
I'd make about 600,000 from each one,
by refinancing the houses.
And then I would get personal loans from the banks
with the fake names.
And I would run up the credit cards.
After I got the money, then I would let the houses
go into foreclosure.
Which sounds like it would be a problem
but Matthew had a good exit strategy.
Once I got the collection letters from the bank,
I would print out a newspaper article
about someone being in a car crash,
and I would just insert my synthetic borrower's name
in that article.
And I'd mail it to the mortgage company.
And they would take the house,
and I'd never hear from the again.
Wait, first he was fake makin' people
now he fake killin' people?
Matt was doin' the most.
Matt is creative.
He's definitely a mastermind.
Everything that he would do
to close some of these transactions,
is just, it's just mind blowing.
How does somebody figure that out?
I don't know.
(Matthew) And I did this for roughly two years
to the tune of $11.5 million dollars.
11.5 million dollars?
He went from middle class to a one percenter real quick.
(Matthew) My father was definitely proud of me,
I was making great money. I worked for myself.
I think I owned ten houses.
I was buying vehicles for people.
I bought my brother a Harley Davidson,
I bought a friend of mine a $50,000 truck.
I'd meet a girl at
a friend's wedding and two days later,
we were flying first class to Acapulco for a week.
11.5 M's, yeah I can see how that can happen.
(Matthew) So, at this point, I meet a girl named Rebecca...
We go on a few dates...
she's nice, like, I like her, she was great.
Matt found his new sidekick.
(Matthew) I had a lot of money, I drove a nice car.
My life was perfect.
(Alison) But in reality,
a reporter in Saint Pete, the Saint Pete Times
started a story, and that story was getting leaked
and information came out that they were investigating
multiple properties and Matt was going to be exposed.
And the truth was knocking at his door... literally.
(Matthew) One day, a friend of mine, who's a sheriff's deputy,
who I had done some loans for shows up at my office,
and he says, "the FBI is coming to arrest you.
They're gonna arrest you in a couple of days."
I remembered the heat shot up
through my stomach to my chest, and I thought, "oh my god.
Like, I'm already on federal probation,
this ain't gonna be good for me."
Especially since the fraud he's doing now is even bigger than
when he first got busted...
(Matthew) I just felt this overwhelming sense of just doom.
"This is it.
I'm not gonna stick around to go to prison."
(Remy Ma) Matthew Cox has stolen over 11.5 million dollars
buying houses using identities he created out of thin air...
But he's just learned the FBI is after him,
and his solution is to make a run for it.
(Matthew) I'm packing my bags and I'm about to leave
and Rebecca shows up at my house...
So in that moment, Matt decided to spill the beans...
I'm on federal probation, I've been running a scam,
the FBI knows it, they're coming to arrest me.
I'm leaving." And Rebecca said, "I wanna come with you."
Keep in mind that I've been dating her a month and a half.
I don't even know this woman.
It's terrifying leave everything you know,
I was gonna do it but I didn't have to do it alone.
And just like that,
they were two partners on the run from the law.
Within a day I'd pulled about $80,000 out in cash.
We run up my credit cards.
We buy as much stuff as we can.
Matt fantasized about going on the run
like, that movie 'Catch Me If You Can',
he fantasized about being like a Bonnie and Clyde.
I would never think that he would really do it.
Then, I got a phone call that Matt had left town,
and he brought his girlfriend with him.
(Matthew) Becky and I drive straight to Atlanta.
The plan is lay low, maybe run a scam or two.
(Matthew) And I rented a house using a fake name.
But they ain't in the clear...
(Matthew) Within a couple of months,
there were newspaper articles
in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
the Chicago Tribune, it was everywhere.
I didn't steal some bubblegum from the 7/11,
they were looking for me.
Well, that's going to be a problem...
(Matthew) I can't stay in Atlanta, I've just pulled off
another scam, and the best course of action for me was
to get the money and vanish again.
We immediately leave and we go to Charlotte, North Carolina.
But to truly vanish, once they got there,
Matt decided on an ever bolder solution...
Did you ever see the movie 'Face Off'?
(Matthew) Our faces are everywhere,
so we decide to get...
Plastic surgery.
Wait...what?
You're not Nicolas Cage.
(Matthew) I wanted to change my appearance.
I end up getting a nose job, I get a mini face lift,
I get two hair grafts.
I get my teeth done, have a liposuction.
Becky gets a bunch of stuff done.
That's some wild (bleep).
Matthew has a new face and body
so no one is going to recognize him,
but to stay in the game and truly off the radar
his scam was also going to need a facelift.
(Matthew) By this point I've decided that,
creating identities is an issue.
Truth be told, the articles about him
didn't spell out exactly what the FBI knew about his system,
so going into a government office
for his social security card scam was too risky.
(Matthew) So I decide I need to steal identities that...
People aren't really using.
But who is he going to find that's not using their
birth certificate or their social security number?
(Matthew) I end up seeing a guy on the side of the road
holding a sign that says, "will work for food."
Bingo!
I go, and I talk to him, I ask him a bunch of questions.
And for $20 bucks, these homeless guys told him
everything he needed to know...
social security numbers, where they were born...
Matt, you the GOAT.
Then I order their birth certificates,
their social security cards, all the documents I needed
in order to get a driver's license and a passport
in their name.
And just as easy as it was telling a clerk
he had a fictitious baby in Brazil...
Matthew assumed the identity of a homeless man...
And he has all the proper paperwork.
His original hustle was back.
(Matthew) I would then open up bank accounts
and buying houses in their names.
Gotta give it to you Matt,
this is yet a level up in identity theft
I didn't see coming.
Did I tell you you the GOAT?
Yeah, it's a scumbag thing to do.
And I realize that now, but at the time it,
it didn't affect me.
Oooh, and he's just warming up...
(Matthew) And I start going out and I start surveying
homeless people, stealing their identities.
Technically you bought it for 20 cash.
(Matthew) And pulling out cash out of the bank.
And with endless homeless people to survey,
Matt's latest scam started to bring in millions...
We're going on like vacations.
Mexico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Vegas, New Orleans.
Becky's blowing a ton of money on clothes, on jewelry.
It's an expensive lifestyle.
While Matt was traveling the world on his
identity theft dollars, former colleagues were wrapped up in
the drama of his disappearance.
I think that was a question on everybody's mind.
Would Matt ever get caught?
Was Matt in the U.S.?
Did he flee the country living a lavish life?
(Matthew) At this point it's been about a year, and
Rebecca and I are still on the run in Charlotte.
Ummm...everyone watching knows that's too long in one place.
It was time for them to make a move to remain undetected.
(Matthew) There was a ton of pressure and our relationship
at this point it's breaking down very quickly...
Matt needed a break, so he sent Rebecca ahead...
(Matthew) I was wrapping up in Charlotte, North Carolina...
Rebecca relocated to Houston, Texas,
because once I got all the money,
out of the multiple bank accounts,
that's where we were going to be living.
I had already pulled out like six or 700,000 out of the bank.
I only had another two weeks and I would've had all the money.
One day I go into Wachovia in the name of Gary,
the homeless guy that I met.
I had multiple bank accounts in his name.
I'm trying to cash a check for like $8,000 or something.
I always stay below $10,000 dollars because I don't want the
transaction to be reported to the government.
The woman says, give me a second.
She walks in the back.
I'm waiting, I'm waiting...
I had a real ID and I wasn't that concerned.
But you might wanna be...
And suddenly two sheriff's deputies walk in behind me...
(Remy Ma) Matthew Cox and his girlfriend have been on the run
for over a year wanted for fraud.
And after successfully evading the feds,
Matt's day of reckoning had come over a measly $8,000 check
as he posed as one of the identities that he stole--
a homeless guy named Gary.
(Matthew) I know things are bad.
The detective shows up
[suspenseful music]
and he says, hey Gary,
the head of Wachovia's fraud department
contacted us and he said that you're running a scam.
And he said that you've got
three mortgages on the same house.
He's calling me Gary and then he pulls up
the true Gary's driver's license.
I don't know if the picture's gonna come up or not.
So he comes back in, says to the detective, I ran it.
The detective says, is everything good?
And he goes, yeah, it's good, it's valid.
Well, it says he's 5'10".
Homeless Gary may be 5'10 but Matthew Cox is a shorty,
about 5'6 on a good day...
And they all look at me and I go, well, fellas,
with a good pair of shoes!
I am absolutely trembling inside...
I'm freaking out, but I,
I know outwardly I looked perfectly calm.
The detective ends up saying I'm gonna take him downtown,
have him fill out a police report.
A police report?
And that's when I realized that they didn't know
what was really happening.
And this could be a problem...
cause fast talking can only do so much once
they got you down at the station and they got plenty
of time to scrutinize.
The detective tells me, can you wait in the hallway.
I go in the hallway and I'm standing there where all
the wanted posters are.
There's all these black and white wanted posters.
There's murderers they're looking for, there's burglars.
And there's one poster that's in color.
(Alison) It was him and Rebecca.
Secret Service, most wanted.
(Matthew) I didn't look like those photos
and I'm staring right at myself as the
detective walks up behind me.
Hey Gary, you're ready to go...
He just gets released.
Doesn't get caught.
(Matthew) I remember feeling absolutely ecstatic...
I felt so good, I went to two more banks
and removed more cash.
Imma just start sayin' maaah.
(Matthew) It was just an amazing feeling.
Maaah.
What's the name of that plastic surgeon?
Asking for a friend 'cause, um, yeah, I love my face...
(Matthew) Then I got on the interstate and I took off.
Matt drove straight to Rebecca and even though Matt got away,
the walls were starting to close in everywhere he looked.
At one point Rebecca and I had gotten into an argument that was
she was so loud and so erratic,
she'd actually had the cops called.
And, you know, I can't be with someone who's going to be
behaving in a way that the police get called.
We're both wanted!
That's common sense, c'mon Beck-sy!
(Matthew) I end up saying, look,
it's not gonna work out,
I wanna split up the money and leave.
And there's about six or $700,000 dollars
and she says she wants to keep all the money.
She said, you can go somewhere else and run another scam,
you can take $100,000.
Oh, hell nah.
Look, she had a legitimate argument,
she wasn't going to run a scam, she had to live off that money.
And you give me $100,000 and I'll have
a million dollars in a few months.
Matt was about avoiding the police
so he cut his losses grabbed the money
and dipped back to his old crib in North Carolina.
(Matthew) When I get back to Charlotte I remember thinking,
there are 20 or 30 articles that have been published about me.
And the FBI had probably tracked me back
to the apartment complex in Charlotte.
Always one step ahead,
Matt decided to stake it out to see if the coast was clear.
So, I drive kind of caddy corner to the apartment complex
and I go to this coffee place.
And while I'm inside ordering, I noticed there's two guys
standing there waiting for their orders.
He's staring at me...
And all of a sudden I hear him screaming...
"He's right here! He's right here!"
And I see two guys running towards the back of my car.
(Remy Ma) Low on cash after a very expensive breakup,
fugitive Matthew Cox finds himself back in
Charlotte, North Carolina caught up in his own takedown.
All of a sudden I see two guys run toward the back of my car.
I punch it and I shoot into traffic
and I leave them standing in the middle of the road,
screaming into their cellphones.
They were seconds away from grabbing me.
And it turns out that that was the US marshals.
I was freaked out about the fact that they'd come so close,
yet I drove about a mile down the street,
and as I was driving, I saw three homeless guys
that were about my age.
And, I immediately pulled over and surveyed 'em.
I get it, you're low on funds but come on, Matt!
You just barely escaped.
(Matthew) 17 questions. It'll take all of five minutes.
I gave 'em 20 bucks and boom,
they gave me all their information.
I'm good, I thought, where am I gonna go?
I'm gonna go to Nashville, Tennessee
because I like country music.
That was mad random but it was a new state
and when Matt arrived the first landlord he met
just handed over the keys.
(Matthew) I remember thinking I'm gonna like Nashville.
They're very trusting here.
And with three fresh 20 dollar identities
Matt hit the ground running...
(Matthew) I borrowed $3.5 million from banks in Nashville.
I mean, it was a great lick.
And all of it was from those three homeless guys
that I surveyed when I got chased out of Charlotte.
Like they say... if it ain't broke don't fix it.
And Matt was back in his fugitive comfort zone.
I was going by the name Carter,
and I met Amanda six months after I'd been in Nashville.
We just really clicked,
and it was probably within a month or so, she moved in.
And, I didn't wanna lie to her but I'm so arrogant
that I didn't think I was going to get caught.
I just didn't think the authorities
were sharp enough to catch me.
And since he felt the local authorities weren't on to him,
Matt settled into his new city like
he didn't have a care in the world...
(Matthew) We were together for over a year.
Eventually she found out who I was...
So you were together for a year and she had no clue?
Damn, Matt was good!
(Matthew) She kind of innocently came across the letter
that I'd written my parents, and my real name.
She looked me up and she figured out that I was on the
secret services most wanted list
and the FBI was looking for me.
There was a confrontation at that point,
and, I told her I was gonna leave,
and she cried and, promised she wouldn't tell anybody
and I could trust her and so I stayed.
Then we had a pretty good life.
And then the other shoe dropped...
Amanda found out that Dateline NBC
was gonna do a program on me.
And his face being on a national TV show
was much more dangerous than being in random
local newspapers.
(Matthew) So I decide I'm gonna take off.
My plan was, Amanda and I were going to go to Australia.
I was panicked.
It's kind of a mad dash at this point.
Matt and Amanda checked into a hotel
while he prepared their get a way.
(Matthew) I had security footage, at the house.
So, I go back to get it.
On my way to the house, Amanda calls me.
She says, Matt, I'm sorry, I think I messed up.
Amanda, A.K.A 'Chatty Patty' had slipped up
and told her friend about Matt's identity.
Yeah, that was smart.
[tires screeching]
[yelling indistinctly]
I just went numb.
(Remy Ma) Con man Matthew Cox has been on the run
for almst three years.
But it looks like his days on the Secret Service most
wanted list, are over.
(Matthew) They pull out a clipboard
with my wanted poster on it...
One of the agents is like, man, I don't think that's him.
I don't think that's him.
Another one said, no, that's him, that's him.
And he goes, now you are Matthew Cox, right?
You are Matthew Cox...
And I went, yeah, yeah I'm Matthew Cox.
And he goes we've been looking for you...
That so called friend of Amanda's had ratted him out.
Matthew was charged with wire fraud, bank fraud,
money laundering, government document fraud,
social security fraud, aggravated identity theft
and a few other charges.
Yeah, they threw the whole book at him.
I plead guilty because I'm extremely guilty.
I get 26 years and four months.
26 years?!
Damn...
You've never seen a grown man cry the way I cried.
It was pathetic.
My father's reaction was extreme disappointment in me.
He just looked disgusted by me, you know, and my mom cried.
It was bad.
Matt was processed into a medium level security prison in
Florida for his damn near life sentence.
Getting to prison and sleeping that first night and
realizing that this is it for me...
It is extremely humbling.
But once he got used to his reality, he found purpose.
I end up meeting all of these inmates with great
stories and I start writing their stories.
Suddenly my dyslexia wasn't the hindrance
that I had always felt it was.
Years into his sentence,
Matthew's dad showed up to visit him alone.
He goes, "you're smart and you're clever
and you're gonna figure out a way out of here."
And he said, "you know, I'm not proud of where you're at,
but I'm proud of you."
He said, "you've done amazing things
that I couldn't even imagine doing."
And, it was, like, the only time he ever said that.
As he had done since a child,
Matt took his father's words as a new life goal.
I agreed to be interviewed by Dateline
by American Greed.
And I wrote an ethics and fraud course, which is used to help
train the nation's mortgage brokers.
And for those things I ended up doing 13 years
on a 26-year sentence.
A half sentence for basically snitchin' on yourself
after you're already convicted?
Damn, my man Matt was still on his come up even behind bars.
And in 2019 was released into a different looking world.
My father died while I was in prison.
I got lucky...
and I got out, in time to be there for my mom.
So, I was able to spend about two years with my mother.
Now, I've got several books that are out.
I have optioned several true crime stories.
I paint pop art.
And he's still in the mortgage game
I speak at mortgage conventions, real estate offices,
at colleges.
That's how I make a living.
He wants to succeed in the right way.
I think Matt's future has great possibilities...
it'll be interesting to see what he does.
Jessica and I have been dating for about 2,5 years now.
And there's not a day that goes by that I don't wanna
commit fraud...
But the truth is, I just have too much to lose.
Jess wouldn't put up with it, I can tell you that.
She would--she wouldn't have it at all.
It's a cliché for me to say,
money doesn't buy happiness but that's the truth.
I have people that depend on me
and I don't wanna let those people down...
I mean, I've let too many people down.
And Matt's got some parting words you shouldn't sleep on...
Every day is a blessing that I'm out.
People just have no idea how good you have it.
This is, like, a, it's like a big theme park out here.
So use Matthew's story as a life lesson learned.
Be careful what you chase,
because in the blink of an eye anyone can get caught up.
And you don't want that.
Trust.