Bad Boy Book Buddies: Marcus Schrenker and Matthew Cox

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zeren How you doing.

You're doing pretty good? Fun to see you, I know it.

It's so fun to see me too.

I know everybody says it. I love to see Elizabeth. Do you know what's articulous? I do my jazz album collection, not that because I start that wrong, not the album collection itself, but I was going through it, and I don't mean like, well, I'll put it this way. The covers, yeah, And I was like, these covers are amazing. Some of these covers are. I mean I'm not just like the cool ones. I mean some of have iconic photography, Blue Note records. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking like

Is in the street.

That's his broken saxophone case he smashed down. He just got his saxophone left and he's like coming at the camera like sures.

You've got to make sure we put all of this on Instagram. They put the what's ridiculous stuff in the stories. It's not on the regular posts. So that's why you got to check the posts and the stories on inst.

There you go the hard way. Yeah, so boom, isn't that ridiculous? I was like this album collect I should put these on my wall facing each other.

The freak flex open it up exactly. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?

Please?

Going to jail and writing about other people's crimes.

Oh, that's a spin.

This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Yeah, oh that was good.

Did that hurt a little?

No? No, I felt good. I was releasing something nice.

I have two Volgo financial scammers for you today.

Okay.

Yeah, they have somewhat parallel storylines that then intersect. Wow, look at you, I know, look at me, so creative and along the ways erin Yes, ridiculousness.

Oh my god, the adventure awaits.

So I'm going to start us off with Marcus Schrenker.

Okay.

And he was born in nineteen seventy in Warsaw, Indiana.

Yay, nice, a little fake out.

I amost threw me.

He's a good Midwestern boy, thank you so much. Good one Midwestern by, very ambitious and driven. He went to Purdue he got a uh business degree. Yeah, and then while he was there he added another interest to his retinue, aviation light.

Yeah. Yeah.

So like he gets out of college, he marries a former cheerleader. They get they live in this suburb of Indianapolis. He's this successful business like investment consultant guy, all the trappings of that lifestyle. So this is giant house, fancy cars, expensive suits. He's got boats, planes, a plane he can fly all by himself.

Are you kidding me? And this is all like Indiana late nineties percent?

Yeah. So, according to CBS News quote, at thirty eight, he controlled an impressive slate of business through his Heritage Wealth Management Incorporated, Heritage Insurance Services Incorporated, and Icon Wealth Management. He was responsible for providing financial advice and managing portfolios worth millions. Look at him, Look at him. He told his clients that he would take the standard one percent management fee and he would only make money if they made money.

Is that the standard? I don't have the money manager.

Who knows? Perhaps I don't know.

My money manager is gravity.

My money manage. My money manager is my wallet in my pocket book. There you go, and the ATM card. So here's here's what he really did.

Though.

He put their money into annuities and he took huge commissions from that. So then if they wanted to cash out and get their money back, they owed these massive surrender fees on the annuities. Or if Schranker took the money out as the broker, they'd still be on the hook for the surrender fees and for cashing that policy out. Early, because this is this is how annuities work, right.

I don't quite know.

It's a neither do I. It's a contract that's issued and distributed by an insurance company, so the insurance company pays out income to the purchaser of the contract. So it's like life insurance, but the payout isn't after you die, So annuities they're generally used for retirement income. Like you pay in and then you get the payments regularly when you retire, and that makes sure you don't run out of money.

Yeah, okay, I've heard of these.

I'm not entirely sure.

They advertise these on my old radio shows like for Back in the Day like I've started in nineteen twenty eight.

There are two things I need to say about my complete ignorance surance. One, I would like for my mother not to call and berate me on the fact that I have financial illiteracy and she teaches business law. She's a formidable business lawyer. Yeah, sorry, mom, I don't know what an annuity is. And also, anyone listening in on this conversation, I honestly don't care, so don't try and explain the.

Know lottery winners they try to like flip them to get them to take the annuity, right. And then also people who get big settlements, they try to take their settlements and get them like we'll give you ye scheme.

It seems like you get this lump sum like that you hand over and you're basically investing it. It's locked in.

Yeah, they're taking that those payments at whatever rate they get up.

When people explained financial stuff to me, it's like when they explain board game directions or card game, I'm like, okay, whatever.

Well you ever heard like when things just like flat out, like on the sound thing, it just turns into white noise, Like, yes, that's what happens. People start talking about money.

I don't know. So most of his clients, though, right, they're like us, They have no idea what they're buying.

Good suckers like us.

Yeah, they thought they were doing straight up market investments, which I understand that foreign currency investments. Sometimes he called them insurance products. It was vague enough so it to sound good to like those like me.

You don't that term out there. I don't really know. It's not that I know that derived from other.

I think you're like betting, got a bet basically.

Or we're gonna give you a PI that mom.

I'm so sorry. Sorry, You're not the failure. I'm the failure. Okay, so Shrinker he picked up most of his clients via word of mouth. Okay, this one guy, Joe Mazzone from Alabama. He told CNN quote, when you're a pilot, you trust, that's what you do and what you're used to doing. His modus operendi is he flies into your city dressed up in a thousand dollars suit and sits down with you, buys you lunch, and the next thing you know, he has you on his side and you move your money

Another enclassic con artist.

Yeah yeah, Charles Kinney he befriended Shranker in nineteen ninety six, and then he bought in with him in like two thousand and three, and then he got his parents to buy in to the tune of two million dollars.

I know.

He told CNN quote, this guy was family to me. He's a fantastic nice guy. He's well spoken. His customer service was impeccable. You call the guy on the phone, you would get him. He told my parents that they were investing in various insurance products, but they didn't really know what that meant.

I didn't really know either.

We trusted him. He said, this is a safe place to put money to avoid all the world's dangers like terrorism and impending doom and gloom associated with it in that climate. Back then, you bought it. You believed him that he would protect your money.

You think it's also leaving out tax shelters.

Two thousand and three, He's like, look after the towers phone to protect your money.

I thought they were going to hit banks with planes and.

To just quickly give me everything.

Planes get it.

Yeah, there's this Delta pilot and investor Dave Smith. He told CNBC quote, there's nothing more scary than having seven figures of money and not knowing what to do with it. Like, okay, I'll be scared. What kind There's so many, so many more than that, Like I come here, I'll show you.

Like like it's literally that there are fewer things scarier than.

That seven figures. So much the other side, like, yeah, he's new here.

I could take up a billionaires giving him. They're scarier than that. It's like a bubba gump ship thing or just naming things.

He goes on. So I started asking around, Hey, do you guys have a guy that's doing your money? Like, let's let's ask.

Our friends that's doing your money. They're like printing it.

And one of my favorite co pilots said, I would trust him with my kids. That's how much I trust this guy. And I said, who was that guy? It was Marcus Shrinker?

What that mask?

Because the man that you trust with your kids, I feel sorry for your kids. The kids are all as a measure of your trust. So Smith he put all of his savings into to investment with Shrinker, but then he found out that he was locked into a twenty five year annuity and that Schranker had withdrawn thirty percent of his money twenty year. Yeah, so he gets charged. Smith gets charged a sixty six thousand dollars surrender fee

Oh my god.

Yeah, he got nine clients, including a friend of ten years and his own aunt, out of about one point five million. And that's just a fraction of the scheme.

Everything.

Yeah, everything starts to fall apart when the economy tanks. Though. Investors were like, look, I want to put my money somewhere safer. Hey, pal, I trust you with my kids. Watch my kids while I'll get my money back. So in two thousand and eight, Shrinker he lost five hundred thousand dollars in judgment against one of his companies. That was against one of his companies when he missed a

Oh ca see do we believe her?

Well? Yeah, because when their house was being searched, he wasn't home, but she was. And then she found out that where was he. Oh he's in Florida with his girlfriend. Oh girl, She's like yeah, hold, what a devastation for her.

I know, this is everything all around.

So he had to get out of this, and as a true coward, he couldn't own up to what he'd done. He crafted a plan. Saren close as.

Picture.

It's January eleventh, two thousand and nine. You are an Air Force pilot. You fly an F fifteen fighter jet and your call sign is Dizzy. You and a fellow pilot, Viper, have been scrambled into action. Seems there's a Piper PA forty six near Birmingham, Alabama that's in distress, causing a danger. You are scurrying across the runway to your jet, fastening your helmet, saying a silent prayer to Saint Christopher for

To Range Control.

Entering Point Alpha Range. You tell them about what you've seen, and the craft appears to be on autopilot. They advise you to continue following the Piper until the fuel runs out and you side. Then near the Blackwater River in East Milk, Florida, the plane crashes just shore to some houses by seventy five yards. You and Viper look down at the wreckage, then turn back and head for bait. Let's go play some dog site football. Vicker Roger bed, Yes,

I've bend to Deston and Milton, Florida. I know these towns. I know, I know Florabama.

You do well? Do you have you have you crashed a plane there?

Not yet, I'm waiting, give me time.

So the authorities they show up, They check out the wreckage. Plane smashed up, but the windshield and the wind screens were not damaged and there was no blood inside. Inside the wreckage of the plane, though, they found handwritten notes on the inside back cover of a campground book, and it said stuff like windshield is spider cracking, doors open, bleeding very bad and graying out. They're like script notes.

So was he planning unlike that, not getting caught That wasn't supposed to be like his notes of like, oh I'm leaving what notes I can going down his notes for the radio.

Yeah, they start to piece everything together. See obviously he jumped from the plane.

Yeah, and he expected the plane to crash, no doubt, exactly, and it's landed.

And he bag exactly so near Childersburg, Alabama Coast Guard Investigative Service, they recovered cut parachute lines from tree branches and then the actual parachute with a serial number they get traced a shrinker. He later admits to dumping a bag containing more than fourteen hundred ounces of gold worth around two million dollars in the Kusa River when he floated down to earth.

Wait by mistake, No, like on purpose.

Oh, and it looks like he was hoping he thought the plane would make it to the Gulf of Mexico. Oh man, and that they would be surprised that they wouldn't find a body like Oh, he's claimed by Davy Jones's locker.

But he should have had a plan to bail from the plane over the Gulf of Mexico and someone pick him up in a go fast boat.

Otherwise and want someone he's got to do it alone.

Yeah.

Well, well, so he lands in Alabama. Yeah, walks across this river.

There's a lot of bad places of land there so many.

Bad places, goes into a house and tells them that he's had a canoe accident, and so the cops. The cops come take them to a nearby hotel. And then the cops they hear about the crash investigation, and so they scooted back to the hotel. Sorry, dudes, he was long gone. He paid for his room in cash and then ran off into the woods. Next Yeah, so he had parked a motorcycle with saddle bags that were like fully packed in a storage unit seven miles away from the hotel, and so so he wasn't bad in his

So he takes the motors, some details and others.

He rides to a campground in Florida, and he pays for a night at the campground. Caudah gathers up some firewood, buys a six pack of bud light.

Good place to hide up by the way.

I guess. According to the New York Times, not really a quote. In the midst of the manhunt, mister Shrinker had sent an email message to a friend Tom Britt back in Indiana, asking him to straighten out the facts being reported nationwide about the case. In the message, which mister Britt turned over to the authorities, mister Shrinker insisted that the windshield had really shattered, causing a loss of cabin pressure and a condition known as hypoxia, which can quote cause people to.

Make terrible decisions lack of oxygen.

Yeah, so federal marshalls, they took only one day to catch him thanks to a tip. Two dozen officers showed up and found that he'd cut himself at the campground. So they patch him up. He's airlifted to the nearest hospital, and so they search his computer. They take him the hospital's fine, he's like I said, he's not good at it. When they search his computer, they found Google searches for stuff like how to jump from airplanes and how to open a pair of food. Can I just say, Can

Oh not only that, they would just be they have so many leads to be so confused. Impossible.

Yeah. June two thousand and nine, Strand.

Now your shopping history.

Oh, that's a big problem to shrinker. He pleads guilty to charges of destruction of an aircraft and causing the coast Guard to respond when no help was needed. For that, he gets sentenced.

To the crime of hassling the coast Guard. Total.

Yeah, and it's the coast Guard in there, but it was like a air force anyway. He gets sentenced to fifty one months in prison. Then he got another ten years for all the securities fraud.

Don't forget about that. I forget that.

The originals he was ordered to pay the coast Guard more than thirty four thousand dollars in restitution, and Harley Davenston Credit Corporation, who held the lean on the plane more than eight hundred and seventy one thousand dollars then.

Had he like leveraged the plane to get the motorcycle.

On the idea. He had to pay restitution to the victim and is sentencing. He told the judge quote, I.

Mean his family and friends, yeah.

Quote. He wanted to repay investors and rebuild his relationship with the three children he's seen only once since his arrest. He said he has bipolar disorder and he got caught in a downward spiral of stress after becoming addicted to painkillers. Like he's an excuse factory.

Yeah, he's just everything.

Let's take a break. When we return, I have the other fraudster. I want to tell you about.

Oh yeah, zaren Yo.

Okay, so I told you about Marcus Schrinker. Now meet Matthew cox Hi.

Matthew Hehi alias.

Joseph Carter, alias Gary Sullivan, alias Michael Eckert, alias Charles R. Bauer h Yeah, a lot of other names. He was born in Florida in nineteen sixty nine, one year before Shrinker. Interesting, he struggled.

Something about the lead back, then the food.

Well, he struggled with dyslexia as my kid. Yeah, and as a result, school was tough for him and he felt really alienated. So he got really bad grades, made him feel like a failure. But it's worth mentioning now that you're not your grades. We forced kids to put so much on grades and GPAs and it's all garbage.

Yeah, I am my grades because i'm everybody else's good grades.

But like, grades are a metric of your ability to take a test or like fit into an average yeah, or follow.

Some weird protocols that are arbitrary.

And it's not a measurement of intelligence or curiosity or like value as a human. I'm sorry for the rant. I've just seen a lot lately about kids suffering over grades and pressure. He's too short.

Yeah, and I unlike to take a real measure of intelligence, like magic the gathering.

Yep, exactly, thank you, the real genius measurements. So dyslexia, right, that's in no way a roadblock. It's just something to work around, you know. It's like so he demonstrates that by getting a degree in art illustration from the University of South Florida. Guy's really smart. After he graduated, he worked for a little bit of time in the insurance industry and then later as a mortgage broker.

Okay, so Cox.

He saw this world, all the paperwork and the deals and like the really shaky regulation as prime hunting ground was ripe for fraud, and he figured he was just the person to pull this.

Fraud, go to it.

Like, while he's working as a mortgage broker, he wrote an unpublished three hundred and seventeen page book, The Associates and the novel's main character, who seemed a lot like him, goes all over the country committing mortgage fraud, and he would like regale his coworkers with details about the book, and like sometimes he would send the whole manuscript to people to see if they could like verify the details or whether or not the cons inside revival. This is

The best part though, is that he is confessing on.

Himself and he's getting a lot of witnesses to read it. And if you're just emailing it, okay, now you've got this digit. Anyway, his early cons were relatively small scale, so he like would falsify loan applications or inflate property values, forge documentation to get unqualified buyers into homes.

He's on the scam and.

He was early too. Yeah, he was, you know, a decade ahead of time, and all of this was to make big commissions. But he got caught and he lost his job. He got convicted of mortgage fraud in two thousand and two on early. He was early to the game, and had he waited that the banks would have taken the phone, he only got not a one. He got probation. Undeterred, he went harder. So after his conviction he got prohibited from working in the mortgage industry.

Yeah, not going to get stopped.

He just is expanding the craft. So first he faked up a good credit score, and then he created fake identities using fake social Security numbers and drivers like Yeah, and he'd like steal. He'd steal the identities of Toddler's homeless people, vulnerable women, and he would cook up top notch, cooked up phony W two's reference letters, bank statements like titles, heads.

Appear, created a job for himself.

Yeah, employment records, he really did liberally. Then he bought a bunch of rundown houses and condos with fake appraisal values okay, sometimes like double or triple what they were actually worth. And then he'd go like sometimes four to five times the valume. He'd get loans, take the money,

So he worked in this industry just long enough to learn how exactly.

He's like, I see the issues, I'm going to write a novel about it, and now I'm going to carry it. Yeah. So he pulled this fraud in a bunch of places at Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas. Yeah, and then he like it was through this he amassed millions in fraudulent loans from lenders who did not suspect a thing.

The South is really about on like the keeping track of these million dollars scams like this, just ask Brett Farv. I mean, like it's very clear that if you're in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, they're just if you steal big, we applauded.

Yeah, yeah, but you know what, you got a great arm. So Cox was something of a ladies man.

He's a coxman.

He's a Coxsman Coxswain. He'd been married to a woman named Kayla Burgos, Okay, and when they divorced. Then he dated a bunch of other women that he would include in his criming.

What did they know that?

Yeah, one was Alison Arnold. She had she was married and had a kid. She didn't want to leave her life behind and join him on the criming, which he had discussed with her in detail and.

In which she yea, so she's like his part time binding.

Yeah, but she like he took her to like Ocean's Eleven and like other crime movies.

It was like them, Yeah, we can do this, this is we're studying.

So they split up. He started seeing Rebecca Hawk, a sing mom with one kid. A U C K.

I'm sure you're right, sorry becks.

So she she had moved from Las Vegas to Tampajo after getting a bunch of debt and like going bankrupt in Vegas. She lost her job in Vegas because she forged her employer's name on checks. So they're like a you know, peace and a pods the checks.

For like plastic surgery, really easy to try.

But she's like, hey, look gruesome twosome. She hooked up with them on a dating app. They they're doing their fraud thing together, raking in the cash. But then they found out that Jeff Testament, a reporter for the Saint Petersburg Times.

Was investigating both of them.

Cox So how ditched her kid and went on the run with Cox.

What Yeah, that was the move.

That was the move. So the story that Testament's writing comes out in the paper. It explains how Cox started a company called Urban Equities Incorporated. Kayla Burgos, the ex wife, and this other business partner were the shareholders and over six years the company bought and sold nearly sixty homes. Kayla and the business partner, though, they couldn't keep the company going and it gets put into receivership. Cox pulled all the money out from underneath them and they lost everything.

So do you have an appraiser on his side? Like, how is he about faking appraise.

No one's even going out and doing.

No one ever goes to check. He just has it on paper for me, where's the seals?

And what's hilarious is that when the Feds looked into the paperwork on the homes, they saw a lot of the fake names and were like, aren't those the characters from Reservoir Dogs?

Are you kidding?

It was like Pink Brown, Yeah, so Cox and how they skipped town. Don't forget he's still on probation and now he's missing his meetings with his probation officer. They first they went to Atlanta and they hit out, but like not really. He made a run to Mobile, Alabama and used the identity of a former coworker to get credit cards and establish a good credit history. Then back in Atlanta, he cooked up some phony documents like he'd

They're hitting spots, they really are.

But the authorities in Atlanta they were onto him. So they tracked mister Burns and whatever other film and TV character names he'd used back to his real identity busted. So August sixth, two thousand and four, the Secret Service issued arrest warrants for Cox for conspiracy, identity, theft, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, and Social Security number fraud. But he's still a fugitive. They're like, I don't know where he is. I know he did it, but who

Fraud because she called the FBI told on herself.

Yeah, and she had to pay three hundred thousand dollars in restitution to her victims.

Thank you for helping us find a criminal. The criminal is you?

Thank you for the hot tip.

Yeah, we're going to come over and bust you right now.

Cox still on the road. So she did that. She couldn't tell where he was. Yeah, she couldn't be like, oh, I know where he is. She's like, I know him. I crimed with him. Here's what we did. They're like, that's fantastic. Where is he now? I have no idea. I haven't seen him.

He's not a new gut. We'll stick with you for a while.

Okay, let's let's let's circle back then.

So then the we of doing the crimes, you do you hear that you did the.

Crimes, but you know what it was like confession? So, uh, he's still out there. He goes to Columbia, South Carolina. Wait, yeah, shotgun in two houses there racks up almost nine hundred thousand dollars in phony mortgages in just a few days. A data analyst at one of the lenders, though, thought that was fishy.

I saw that someone's analyzing this data seriously saw.

The duplicate loans and that they happened in such short succession, So they flagged the accounts for fraud shut down the bank accounts Cox, once again undeterred, he goes to the bank to straighten things out. As soon as he got there, so did the cops. So they arrested him and they took him to the station and he identified himself as Gary Lee Sullivan. Gary Lee Sullivan didn't have any warrants, and he convinced the cops that this was all a clerical mix up the fraud flag. They let him go.

Are you kidding?

No? So then Cox and Hawk they take off and go to Houston, and she.

She's like a tour of like bands like Rat and Warrant, Like they were gonna go from town. Then he went to Houston, They're were gonna be in Mobile.

Yeah, it's a pretty amazing, pretty amazing. So how she's like, you know what, I can't do this anymore. She gets herself a fake name and is like I'm going to live under the radar. You go on without me. He's like, great, happy to do. So goes to Nashville. And she was not successful at staying under the radar and hiding out, because within a year the Secret Service found her and arrested her. So she got convicted of all manner of fraud theft. She gets sentenced to six years in prison

I would never question that.

Never back home. The babysitter Patsy Taylor thought something seemed off about Joseph Carter was a woman after my own heart. She was suspicious, she got bad vibes, so she did some research, got blessed. Blessed, so he mentioned that he was originally from Florida, So she's like, okay, that's my jumping off point. And eventually he was able to connect him to his true identity, Matthew Cox, major fugitive. Wow,

Got a fresh scoop, wrote the initials. Yeah, I'm going to forget that name.

It needs stayed on the case for three years, this on him. Determined to help catch the guy.

We need local Germali.

I love that. So Testament gave Patsy the babysitter the contact information for Rebecca Hawk's lawyer. Hawke's family paid Patsy for Cox's address. They wanted to use this as leverage to chip some time off her sentence, and it worked. The Feds reduced her sentence from seventy to forty two months.

Wow, bad year.

Yeah, now the Feds have that address. November sixteenth, two thousand and six, Cox gets arrested. Finally. Prosecutors described him as a master manipulator who exploited loopholes in the mortgage industry and caused financial devastation for lenders innocent victims. He gets convicted and sentenced to twenty six years in federal prison for charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, bank fraud, money.

Laundering, wirefrog going to get you every time, every time.

So off to prison, he went, let's pause here. When we return, I'm going to tell you about how Marcus Schrenker and Matthew Cox crosspaths.

Zarin, I'm loving this, Elizabeth, and now I can't wait till they crossed.

We got two guys with federal crimes on their on their backs.

Were roughly the same agearage, rough crimes.

Yeah. So after his two thousand and seven conviction, Cox he got sent to a couple different medium security federal prisons over the years Florida, Georgia. I can tell you that entertainment and educational materials are in short supply in the federal pen. Yes, inmates are super hungry for any distraction, and they read every single line in newspapers or magazines that they get. They analyze everything because there's so much

Their mind, if anyone ever.

Did, because didn't have anything to do with with like what we were talking about in class. And I was like, just read these and now you know, we'll talk about it later after everyone's read it.

It's rare someone takes your curiosity that serious. That's remarkable.

But I mean, like I as a curious person, My god, I'm like stoked when anyone else.

I mustay my curiosity recognizes your curiosity.

Buy one. Get ones there. I could get this stuff into them as class materialsted you know where. Yeah, so we had this thing where at the end of the week, they'd agree on one interesting like niche non controversial topic or like something I sometimes I'd get to pick, and then I'd make the little information packs for them for the next week. And so one of the times I got to pick, I brought them a pack that included your article about black cowboys and that love. It was a huge hit. FYI.

Yeah, that's flattering.

You're very well. Thank you anyway, Cox smart guy, and he had a lot of time I'm on his hands. So he had a college education, he had a background in art and communications, a flair for storytelling that he'd honed while creating fake identities and fabricating entire life stories. So once he's behind bars, he starts to channel that creative energy into something else, the written word.

Oh I thought he started like, you know, a theater group.

No, he starts writing, baby. So he said that there are a lot of reasons why he began writing in prison. For one, he said it's a matter of redemption in Catharsis. In interviews, he described writing as a way to process everything and then he'd done and like reflect on the consequences. It allowed him to explore themes of deceit, manipulation, moral collapse.

See things from multiple perspectives.

Yeah, it gave him narrative control because like someone who lived by lies and false personas, writing is this way to regain control of the narrative, the authority. Yeah, it's a business opportunity. He knows how to make a buck, and he knows what people want. He saw that there's a market for true crime stories, especially insider perspectives, and he's sitting on a gold mine of material from his own life and from the inmates.

Every run around him, everybody allers.

So yeah, so he gets to writing. His first major manuscript wasn't about his own life. It was the biography of a fellow inmate, John Thomas Ambrose, a former gun trafficker. He called it Once a Gun Runner. And the book was ghost written by Cox and served as a pilot for a series of inmate biographies that he envisioned producing from prison. So the.

Inmates exactly.

And this is like how it showed how talented he was with the long form narrative that he had, like this really dramatic, engaging style. It was journalistic but literary.

At some time, creative nonfiction.

Yeah, and so he gets that project going and then he turns the pen toward his own life. So he starts working on this like memoir like manuscript tentatively titled Bent, and he did a deep dive into his early forays into mortgage fraud, like he investigated the psychological dynamics of white collar crime, the mechanics of identity theft and forged documents. He talked about his years on.

The run, so it's a kind of a guide book.

And diary, and also like all the manipulative relationships that he fostered. I'm very honest about it. He wrote it like a novel, and he layered all this detail and dialogue and narrative arc. He said that he wanted a story to quote read like fiction, but be all true. But he didn't stop an autobiography. He started writing crime thrillers based on real life cases of other white collar criminals and scam artists that he met in prison. Some of those were later adapted or used for his post

He was there.

You got what you good stuff. I had another student, Carlos Walker. He's an artist and a writer. He's out and he's doing great work. So Carlos Walker. There's incredible talent definitely, you know, out in the world, and that includes in the prison system. So Cox he's writing all these big books. Sometimes he'd have friends or supporters outside the prison transcribe his work for him, so he's just sending them a hand you know, they're they're typing it up.

Of course, not because it's considered part of their crimes, because if they're writing about.

What they know, right, And then also I think you just can't have like a venture that makes money. I don't know, you.

Could have a cookbook. Somebody's clearly untied to the he can't. Maybe I'm wrong, who knows.

There are restrictions on contact though with like publishers or agents.

Yeah, I figured this, just sending.

An email will cost them money. And a lot of times the emails don't make it through, but they still get charged. Yeah, I had. I had students. I'd come to come to class and they'd be like, I tried to send you an email, and like, don't ever ever do that because number one, I didn't get it. Number two it costs you like three bucks.

Yeah, you have to put money in their accounts sometimes if they want to email you.

Ridiculous.

It's the whole thing.

So to get around these challenges, Cox relied on third parties to help them submit the manuscripts or to post content to a website, and then at least one case, he had an outside contact start a blog or like would arrange media interviews. So in the summer of twenty thirteen, Marcus Schrenker came into the picture. So he was going to get out in about a year. When he sat down with Cox at a prison dining table at FCI Coleman, Florida, he tells Cox, boy, do I have a story for you?

Oh and you never know what gold is underneath the rock. You may have read, I could.

Just feel it, like have I got a story for you to know?

You don't most of the time.

So Shranker he didn't like how his story was being told out in the world. He wanted someone to set the record Street.

He wanted narrative control.

Yeah, and Cox, he's the writer, storyteller, the one to set the record. Cox said, quote, the guy told me that he shouldn't even be in prison. And Cox, you know, wonders if that's true, Honey, you're going to hear that.

Yeah.

So Schrenker tells Cox that he hadn't built anyone, that the investments just didn't land. And he told Cox, quote, I'd sold a bunch of index annuities that ended up underperforming and that wasn't my fault. I can't be blamed for the market. So Shanker said that while he was trying to get the insurance companies to refund his clients, his wife found out about his affair, and that she got her revenge by opening up an offshore currency account, committing all sorts of fraud and pinning it on him.

Yeah, you know, especially with just a little bit of research, you can confirm that.

Here's the thing thoughs Aaron Cox is a storyteller, and he knew there was actually a story in all this after all, He told Forbes again, quote, I saw Shrinker as a puzzle. Unlike an author on the street. Outside of prison, I had plenty of time, unfettered access to Shrinker, and, according to my prosecutor, an uncannyability to discover a Marx of vulnerability. Oh, it's like spy versus biogra Yeah, it's tables are being turned Zaren. So Cox is like, you

Maybe you shouldn't have lived it.

Maybe don't do that. Let this be a lesson to all of those who meet a writer and say I have a great story for you, or like my life would make a great book. Be careful what you wish for.

Yeah, maybe it will be a great book, but you hate so.

Cox he was able to back everything up that he had. Everything that was thrown in him was just dropped, and then Cox he's now a fixture in the true crime storytelling space for him as Zaren, what's your takeaway.

Oh man, but you kind of already said it, which is the be careful what you wish for with a writer? Yeah, Like people always think like, oh, could you tell my story? And I'm like, I can.

I don't know if you want.

Their audience and may like it, you may hate it or.

People who I don't know. I used to think like people who cross you and you're.

Like, oh, you're a screwed the writer.

I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna light you and.

If I got strong enough, lawyer, I'll put your own name on it, right.

But like you can light someone up so bad and like it's you know, name is not the same, but like little things, Yeah.

So there I think that would be mine? Is that like never go to a writer with the idea that you can control that process.

Very true, Very true, my ridiculous takeaway. Thank you for asking.

I guess I want to hear it. I guess.

I was thinking about how we've had the authorities tell these criminals a bunch of times it's like, you're so talented if you just put your efforts toward. But then and I was thinking, oh, yeah, like Matthew Cox is so talented, but like it's so hard to make a living as a writer. Yeah, exactly, And so it's kind of like, you know, I don't blame.

Him, no crime is always tempting.

Do the crimes. And then like that was that. Now it's the springboard. Now he can run with it.

He's an expert in a field.

There. It is so good. I Dave, I think I need a talk back.

I think we both do. Oh my god, I.

Hey, ridiculous crime. This is art in San Antonio, and I wanted to share my ridiculous sea monkey story. When I was younger, I went to a summer day camp and one time they had a bring your pet day. Unfortunately I didn't have a pet, so my quit thinking mom got me some sea monkeys and the good news is they won the camp Award for most Unique Pet. The bad news is that on the way home they spilled in the back of my mom's wood paneled station wagon.

That was awesome.

It is so good. The wood paneled station wagon is how many dead sea monkeys do you think you're in the interior of wood But that's rad you got their ward. Awesome. I love that. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com, which is on the most wanted list as a fugitive. Did you know that? Yeah, don't tell you, buddy. We're at Ridiculous Crime on blue Sky and Instagram. You can email ridiculous Crime at gmail

Riudiquious Crime.

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