Crime Novel
If you're trying to commit a crime, it's not like you can pick up a "how-to" book on Amazon.
But Matthew Cox wasn't going to let that stop him.
The Florida-born fraudster wrote his very own "how-to" guide on mortgage fraud in the
form of a crime novel.
With the help of a female companion—the Bonnie to his Clyde—Cox followed the formula
laid out in his book to swindle $25 million from banks on a wild cross-country scamming
spree.
Cox Background Before he blazed across the United States,
making millions off his elaborate frauds, Matthew Cox was a simple Florida boy with
modest aspirations.
Dyslexia caused him to struggle in school, and many of his teachers urged him to pursue
a career that involved working with his hands.
They didn't think he had the brain for anything beyond blue-collar work.
Cox got into sculpting while studying art at the University of South Florida.
It was something he could do with his hands while still engaging the intensely creative
side of his brain.
He had a real knack for sculpting; painting became something of a passion for him.
While his dream of being an artist was backed up by undeniable skill, it just wasn't in
the cards for Mr. Cox.
He traded in his paintbrushes for a boring office job at an insurance agency.
Not exactly the extravagant life he painted in his head.
But paying the bills wasn't enough for the ambitious Floridian.
He wanted more.
He decided to dive headlong into the exciting world of...mortgage brokering.
No, it's not the job every little kid dreams about, but it was a step in the right direction.
He was chasing after the wealth and success his teachers insisted he would never achieve.
He started as a mortgage broker at a local firm in Tampa, Florida, and soon started his
own company as the 2000s began.
He quickly earned a reputation within the brokerage community for his shady business
practices.
Initial Scams As a broker, Cox served as the middleman between
banks and individuals seeking loans.
He and the other brokers he worked with received payment for the deals they provided.
It seems like a pretty cut-and-dry transaction, right?
Well, even in the infancy of his career in the mortgage business, Cox was finding ways
to cut corners and fudge numbers to make sure he pocketed as much cash as he could.
His initial scams were simple compared to the high-level financial frauds you read about
online, and the ones Cox would eventually be involved.
But every con man has to start somewhere.
Cox began testing the scamming waters at his own Tampa mortgage firm, where he would routinely
falsify documents to secure loans for his clients.
The lies were pretty straightforward to start.
He would forge tax forms and pay stubs to make it look like his clients made more money
than they did, making it more likely for a bank to give them loans.
They were small-time scams, but scams nonetheless.
Many of Cox's colleagues within the mortgage industry knew what he was doing; no one was
fooled.
But why didn't anyone rat him out?
Well, the answer to that question is quite simple: nearly everyone in and around the
mortgage business had skeletons in their closets.
Some companies hatched schemes that were a little more outlandish than others, but if
you were at all involved in mortgage brokering at this time, chances are you, or someone
you worked with, were engaging in some form of fraud.
For example, Cox's firm was caught siphoning millions of dollars from a Chicago bank in
the early 2000s.
One of Cox's brokers used the same forged paperwork and checks to secure loans for his
clients.
For a while, it worked, and he was able to steal millions worth of bad loans from the
Chicago bank.
The bank discovered the fraud and brought it to Cox's attention.
However, they made it clear that they did not want to get the authorities involved.
If the FBI started digging, they would have uncovered fraud on the part of the bank as
well.
So instead of handling matters through the legal system, the bank wanted Cox's word that
he would help them out if anything blew up in their face.
Sleazy business all around, but that was just the world they were living in, and it's a
world Matthew Cox seemed tailor-made.
Unfortunately, his scams were about to catch up with him.
Two former associates of his were caught in their own fraud.
The FBI sent them to speak with Cox while wearing a wire, having already proven he'd
lied on an appraisal application.
He was caught red-handed and had nowhere left to turn.
In 2001, he pled guilty to mortgage fraud, lost his brokerage license, and was put on
3 years probation.
Out of a job, and seemingly out of any future prospects in the mortgage business, the walls
were closing in on Matthew Cox.
In addition to all of his various legal and professional troubles, Cox's personal life
was also in shambles.
He was in the midst of a divorce that resulted in him paying thousands of dollars in child
support every single month.
For someone who just lost their job, that is a heavy financial burden to carry.
How did Cox cope with all of this?
He threw himself into fictional stories.
The Associates He devoured piles of crime novels and watched
his favorite heist films over and over again.
He couldn't get enough of them.
He became so enthralled by crime fiction that he decided to write some of his own.
His novel was called "The Associates."
To anyone paying attention, it was basically his life story tale.
The story followed a young mortgage broker from Tampa, Florida, who carried himself with
the confidence and swagger Cox used in his business dealings to charm clients and get
what he wanted.
Things get very interesting as "The Associates" progresses, however.
The protagonist of Cox's story slowly devolves into a life of rampant crime, using tax evasion
and various forms of financial fraud to earn himself lots and lots of money as he traveled
across the United States.
Interesting character development for his protagonist or a subtle admission to his own
future plans?
It was hard not to speculate that Cox might be planning something similar to what he was
writing in his book, especially considering his long history of fraud.
Spoiler alert, the book concludes with the main character eluding the pursuit of both
the feds and the mob by stowing away on a cruise ship with his cunning love interest.
After finishing the manuscript, Cox gave it to friends and family to gauge their opinions
on the quality of the story itself and the viability of the scams he outlined.
Was he playtesting the schemes he wanted to enact himself?
It certainly seems that way, as it wasn't long before Cox started to dabble in the very
behavior he detailed in "The Associates".
His options were running out, you see.
He had no job, no way of getting back into mortgage brokering without his license, and
the bills were piling up more and more each week.
He was serving as a consultant for his mortgage business, which he had sold to a friend following
his conviction, but the income simply wasn't enough to sustain himself.
With the cost of child support weighing on his shoulders, Cox decided his best choice
was to follow the criminal playbook he had written himself.
Life Imitates Art He began doing exactly what the protagonist
of his book did.
First off, he had to fabricate a clean personal history.
No one with his track record would be allowed to step foot anywhere close to a bank or mortgage
office without red flags popping up.
To successfully carry out this fraud, he had to invent new identities.
To do this, he lied to the Social Security office, claiming he was the father of an infant
child who had never gotten their paperwork properly filled out.
He used forged birth certificates and vaccination records to legalize those fresh identities.
With the social security numbers in hand, he had everything he needed to start signing
up for credit cards using the fake identities he created.
The fraud was elaborate.
It had to be to ensure it wouldn't be discovered.
He used his many credit cards to buy dozens of properties to carry out massive mortgage
scams.
He made up fake companies and banks; he fabricated pay stubs, and other financial records, all
to cover up his tracks and make it look like his phony identities were legitimate people
with lives and jobs of their own.
In reality, it was all just Matthew Cox with a bag full of burner phones and fake social
security cards.
How did he keep track of it all?
According to Cox, he kept a color-coding system.
All his fake names were Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Black, Mr. Brown.
He compared it to Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs.
His schemes gradually grew into a sizable criminal operation with multiple co-conspirators
helping him out.
The formula was pretty simple.
Cox and his associates would buy homes and other real estate using fake names and financial
records he had personally forged.
He would often decorate the walls of these houses with beautiful murals that he painted
himself, making the properties appear to be more high-class than they actually were.
Next, he would fabricate documents that said he had purchased the properties for much more
than he actually did.
With these phony papers in hand, he could take the house to an actual appraiser who
would value the property for a whole heck of a lot more than Cox originally paid for
it.
Cox takes out a loan for the inflated value, pays off the fees for the original amount
he paid, and pockets the remaining cash for himself.
Since he and his partners would buy up several homes each, they manipulated the area's property
value.
Because the surrounding houses appeared to be going for a ton of money, the banks and
appraisers easily fell for it.
How did he get away with not paying back the loans?
He would find newspaper clippings about car crashes or other accidents, altering them
ever so slightly so that the victims' names matched the aliases he had created.
"Mr. Green" was his favorite moniker, for instance.
He would send a letter with the news clippings to the bank claiming to be a close relative
of Mr. Green's.
After explaining that Mr. Green was in a coma and unable to make payments on the loan, the
bank would foreclose the property, and Cox was free to continue his scam elsewhere, having
already collected the money on that particular piece of real estate.
Cox was the perfect person to carry it out, too.
Not only did he already have a grasp of every detail of the con after writing his book,
his artistic talent allowed him to forge all of the necessary documents.
It seems he was finally putting his art degree to good use and simultaneously proving all
the people who told him he would never be smart enough to make it in the world very,
very wrong.
Partner Search Cox was a real-life character in a crime novel
of his own creation.
But there was still one aspect of his book that had not yet taken shape.
The protagonist of "The Associates" always had a trusty female companion by his side.
A Bonnie to his Clyde, if you will.
Something was missing in Cox's life until then, but that was about to change.
Cox first set his eyes on a young married woman from Tampa named Alison Arnold.
She was swept off her feet by Cox's confident persona and the grand schemes he detailed
to her during their relationship.
It seemed he finally had the right-hand woman...or so he thought.
It turns out Arnold wasn't so keen on leaving her life in Tampa to run a criminal empire
alongside Cox, so the two grew apart.
Clyde wasn't going to give up looking for Bonnie that easily.
In 2003, Cox began a relationship with a woman named Rebecca Hauke, a divorced mother who
had committed several financial crimes of her own.
She had forged checks to pay off her credit card debt and was fired from her job in Las
Vegas.
She moved down to Tampa, looking to start a new life.
There, she met the perfect partner: Matthew Cox, a financial fraudster himself who was
on the lookout for a lady friend to call his own.
The pair grew close and started working together on the mortgage scamming business Cox had
grown.
Not long after the start of their relationship, a nosey journalist forced them to go on the
run.
A local reporter named Jeff Testerman was hot on Cox's trail, having launched an investigation
into his dubious business practices.
Rather than risk capture, Cox and his new gal pal hightailed out of town, settling down
nearly 500 miles away in Atlanta, Georgia.
On the Run The lovebird scammers weren't long for Atlanta,
though.
After failing to report to his probation officers, Cox officially became a fugitive of the state,
and they were forced to stay on the run to avoid getting caught.
But he didn't let being on the run stop him from conducting his mortgage scams.
If anything, the constant moving made it easier for him to remain undetected as he defrauded
his various victims.
Moving from place to place also made it easier for Cox to find identities to carry out the
frauds.
Rather than go through the hassle of creating fake identities, Cox would simply steal real
people's information and use it to take out fraudulent loans.
He used all kinds of trickery and deception to get his hands on his victims' social security
numbers and birth certificates.
He put ads in the paper promising home loans in exchange for people's sensitive info, which
surprisingly worked on many occasions.
It seems people aren't quite as careful with their personal details as they should be.
Cox even went as far as to pose as a Red Cross worker to steal homeless people's identities.
He was a con man without a conscience.
His only concern was completing the next scam and getting out of town before anyone caught
on.
While the couple was still in Atlanta, they started renting a house from a man whose identity
Cox would eventually steal.
He forged personal documents and assumed his landlord's identity to take out hundreds of
thousands of dollars in loans on the house.
He deposited that loan money into their bank account and disappeared into the wind.
You can understand why it was quite difficult for the authorities to catch on to their well-planned
frauds when their location was constantly changing.
They repeated this formula time and time again as they traveled from state to state.
They were among the most wanted fugitives in America.
Wanted posters were put up in loan offices and banks across the country, cementing the
star-crossed scammers as the bonafide Bonnie and Clyde of mortgage fraud.
Things didn't always go smoothly for Cox and his accomplice, though.
On multiple occasions, Cox was caught by authorities, but he was able to slip through their fingers
every time, thanks to his meticulously crafted aliases and fake identities.
In South Carolina, police arrested Cox after a bank employee flagged his bank account for
fraud.
However, before spending any time behind bars, Cox was released from custody after telling
the police his name was "Gary Lee Sullivan," one of about 30 fake names he kept in rotation.
Because this Gary Lee Sullivan character had no outstanding warrants, Cox was released.
He and Hauke immediately fled to Houston, out of the grasp of the authorities.
The couple constantly slipped through the cracks as they ran rampant all over the American
mortgage business.
In all, he scammed something in the ballpark of $25 million from all of his victims.
While in Houston, the couple's relationship met its end.
They split up, and Hauke went into hiding under a fake name.
A year later, she was arrested and sentenced to 6 years in prison, followed by 5 years
of supervised release.
But where was the other half of the prolific scamming duo?
Most Wanted In 2006, Cox had been placed on the Secret
Service's Most Wanted Fugitives List.
The authorities' three-year search for the slippery mortgage fraudster was heating up,
but his whereabouts were still unknown at this point.
After his breakup with Rebecca Hauke, Cox moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
He was trying his best to lead a normal life under the name Joseph Carter.
He had sparked a relationship with a single mother named Amanda Gardner, who did not know
about his criminal history or current notoriety.
He pretended to own a home restoration business and explained away his luxury car and fancy
home by claiming to be from a wealthy family.
Things were going relatively well for the new couple.
They even went on a cruise through the Greek Isles together, a trip Cox had to fabricate
a clean passport to go on.
But what's another falsified document, right?
While Cox grew closer to his latest love interest, the 60-year old babysitter for Gardner's child
wasn't so keen on her new boyfriend.
She sensed that something was off about Cox, though she couldn't quite put her finger on
what.
After some Internet digging, the babysitter discovered that Joseph Carter was the wanted
fugitive, Matthew Cox.
She got in touch with Cox's old pal Jeff Testerman, the journalist who originally ran the fraudster
out of Tampa.
Testerman was able to get the babysitter connected with Rebecca Hauke's lawyer, who presented
the information to the authorities.
After all the carefully thought-out lies and diligently created aliases, the thing that
ultimately busted Matthew Cox was his girlfriend's 60-year old babysitter.
Arrest In November of 2006, Cox was arrested at his
Nashville home.
The con was finally up.
Hauke's sentence was reduced from 70 months down to 42 months for her part in her ex-boyfriend's
capture.
Cox's story didn't end like the one he wrote in his book.
He dreamed of escaping the feds and fleeing to a foreign country where he could live out
the remainder of his life in peace with the woman of his dreams.
In reality, lovers had become traitors, babysitters became trusted informants, and Matthew Cox
faced many years behind bars for his crimes.
He was charged with 42 total counts of fraud and was facing a felony charge for fleeing
while on probation.
It looked like Cox would never see the outside of a jail cell again, as he was staring down
a maximum sentence of 400 years for all of the charges against him.
He and his attorneys were able to negotiate the sentence down to a maximum of 54 years.
The fraudster-turned-fugitive-turned-felon pleaded guilty to bank fraud, passport fraud,
identity theft, conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud, and violating his probation in April
of 2007.
Later that year, he was sentenced to 26 years in jail and ordered to pay nearly $6 million
in restitution to the victims of his crimes.
After Prison While in prison, Cox returned to the thing
that had set him on his life path in the first place: writing crime novels.
He became a true crime author, penning the life stories of the various criminals he met
while serving out his sentence.
One such book was about the life and crimes of notorious arms dealer Efraim Diveroli.
Cox sat with Diveroli and wrote out the details of his crazy past, turning them into a true-crime
memoir.
When Diveroli left Cox's facility, he took the manuscript Cox had written and turned
it into a memoir of his own called "Once a Gunner."
This book was adapted into the 2016 film "War Dogs," starring Jonah Hill as Diveroli.
Now Cox was being ripped off, as Diveroli took his jailmate's work for himself.
Cox claims he was never compensated for the book sales or subsequent film royalties, but
the two are still in the process of settling the dispute.
Cox got an early release from prison in July of 2019.
Today he still runs his very own YouTube channel, where he continues to upload content to this
day.
Click to watch one of these next videos!