Matthew Cox

My father was a New Jersey state trooper.

And while going through a divorce in 1981, my mother committed suicide.

And yeah, that kind of threw us all for a loop.

So my father ended up quitting the state police and starting a private investigative firm.

And that was when I first started seeing my father work for the private sector.

And of course, because of my mother's suicide, you had four people in one house with PTSD that didn't know how to handle it.

So it was, you know, it was very rough 1980s teen years for me.

But, you know, we made it through.

My dad started doing the regular kind of stuff that people you would expect would be doing in Atlantic City as sort of a mob city, casino town.

And this was the high time for the casinos in Atlantic City.

The first casino license wasn't issued in Atlantic City until I want to say around 75, 76.

So the casinos were just being built.

And my father provided security for the Playboy Casino that eventually was one of the first casinos in Atlantic City to be built.

And he was working for the casinos, staffing the security and also doing some anti-fraud, anti-corruption cases and things like that.

And then one day in the early 80s, he got a call from a PI who was in New York City, big time PI doing work for Rolex and all the other brands.

And then they asked him to start doing undercover buys and cease and desist letters and raids down on the Jersey Shore and eventually Pennsylvania and all that.

And I grew up with him doing that.

And I never really wanted to be a part of the family business.

I actually wanted to be a stand-up comic.

I decided after high school to go into youth ministries and I went to Bible college.