Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Convicted Banker Exposes The Largest Tax Fraud In US History
05 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What is the largest tax fraud case in U.S. history?
Biggest tax fraud case in U.S. history. There were jets and yachts and fancy cars and millions and millions of dollars and offshore and secret debit cards. I started one of the first cellular phone operations in Portland in 1986. Built that up to five stores, and then the market changed. I was not stronger than the market and ended up broke.
And a guy that went to—I grew up in the Mormon church, and so he wasn't in my congregation, but he was in another nearby congregation. He knew about me. I knew about him. We were not friends. He asked me out to lunch one day, and he offered me a job. He said he's heard me on the radio and the newspaper. He's like, would you be even open to a job? And I'm like, who would hire me?
Like, I got no education. I've been making this stuff up for the last seven or eight, nine years. But he said, well, tell me about the company. He said, well, we're in financial services. We have offices all around the world, almost 350 offices around the world. And I said, what's the job? He said, vice president of sales. And I said, for the Portland location? He goes, no, for the whole world.
I'm like, what are you? I didn't say that in my mind. I thought, this guy's not very smart. Do I want to work for a guy that would hire me? Right. I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I took the job. And was very successful with it. And this is important to the story. What are you doing? You're saying financial services?
That's pretty broad.
The official name for what we were doing is called counter trade.
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Chapter 2: What job offer changed Aaron Young's life?
But really, it's barter. It was so like we had American Airlines and Marriott Hotels and all the magazines. And so if there's empty rooms in the hotel, it's worth nothing. So it's better to trade that room night for ads in the national magazine or seats on the airplane and so on. So we had just, I mean, many, many hundreds of thousands of clients.
that were everything from the carpet cleaner to big enterprise-level companies. And so I was a VP of sales, and my job was to increase the message so that we can increase sales. Generally, we quadrupled sales while I was VP of sales for three and a half years. So I started there at 29 and was out at 32. I saw the CEO coming in from the parking lot, and I grabbed him and I said, let's talk.
And I said, I need to resign. And he's like, what's the problem? Why are you resigning? Everything's going great. And by this time, we'd gone public on NASDAQ, too. So there was stock and stock options. And I started building up a reasonable estate, so I had runway to get out of that job and figure out my next business. Did you not like the job? No, it just wasn't my thing.
I was doing something somebody else came up with. I just wasn't that interested in it. And I was good at it. the message and I was good at sales and I was good at speaking and teaching, but I didn't really care about what the company was doing that much.
So anyway, he said, well, if you resign, first of all, I said, can we keep you on for a year as, as a consultant at your same pay, same benefits while you help us find somebody else? And I'm like, yeah, I'll do that. And, and he said, you know, as soon as we announced that you resigned, you're going to get a call from the founder of this company and,
The original guy who was not a part of anything, wasn't on the board, wasn't an obvious shareholder, and was, you know, rarely came into the office. Like I'd seen him. We're all supposed to not talk to him if he came in. He was like, you know, super special. Only his protege, the CEO. Don't look him in the face. Don't look him in the eye. You don't know him.
So anyway, so sure enough, the next day I get a call from his personal assistant saying, can you have lunch with Terry Neal like right away in the next couple of days? So I'm like, sure. Because I thought, okay, this guy's started multiple public companies. He's written all these books. He speaks all over the world. What a cool guy. You know, and I knew he traveled extensively.
He'd studied archaeology. He'd just done a lot of cool stuff. I thought, yeah, I'd love to meet him and get to know him. So I go to lunch. And he says, after the niceties, he goes, okay, here's the deal.
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Chapter 3: What was the role of financial services in Aaron's career?
several years ago. So yeah, it says I have a bad back and the Portland, Oregon winters are tough on me. So my wife and I bought a place in the Caribbean and it's beautiful. It's a place called St. Kitts and it's a wonderful place. And he said, but you can only walk the beach for so long before you kind of get bored. It's tiny. St. Kitts and Nevis? And Nevis. So he said St.
Kitts and Nevis are a two-state country, kind of like California and Nevada. And he said, like those two, California, very regimented, lots of rules, lots of taxes, that's where the government kind of controls everything. And he said, then like Nevada... Nevis has privacy for banking. It has all this asset protection stuff built into it.
And so he said, I went ahead and I went through Interpol and went through the FBI and applied for a banking license, an insurance license, and a trust company license. And I had to put up several million dollars in bond and had to get a and we put all these things together.
So he said, now I have licenses and permission and money on deposit and a correspondent bank, but I have no employees, no customers, no operations, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. I said, okay, so what do you want? And he said, would you write a business plan for this, for the trust company and how we would find customers for the trust company?
And, of course, I just quit my job, so I was available. And he paid me a lot of money to write the plan, and I wrote a business plan for him.
Did this also feel like another position where you're like, I am not – did you feel like this is another one of those things where you're like, I'm not the person that should be doing this? Or did you feel like, no, this is within my wheelhouse?
Yeah, I knew how to do what he was asking me to do. And I – I never lacked for confidence. I just thought it was interesting. Somebody would want to hire me because without a resume, without job history, without education, but I did very well in the job. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, the word on the street was that everybody, including the CEO assumed I would be his successor being CEO of this public company. So anyway, so I wrote the business plan for Terry Neal and, um, And he didn't really agree with my premise because my premise was everything needs to come through law firms. He's like, there's no reason for that. This was in the 90s.
OK, so there was no offshore banking, you know, watch list for the IRS. There's nothing negative there. But I had just read John Grisham. Was it John Grisham's book, The Firm? Was it Grisham who wrote The Firm? Absolutely. And then later Tom Cruise made the movie.
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Chapter 4: How did Aaron Young's relationship with Terry Neal develop?
weren't going to work with him anymore. And I told his son-in-law, I said, why don't you come work with me? By this time we'd acquired our first couple of Nevada incorporation services. So I said, come work with me. We'll be partners and it'll be great. And we'll do, we won't do this offshore stuff.
What does that mean, Nevada, that you – Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't even know what you just said. Nevada something.
So Nevada has the most business-friendly legislation in the United States. And then Wyoming is a very close second because they basically just mirror a lot of what Nevada does, and they're less expensive. And so Wyoming and Nevada are what we call privacy jurisdictions. In Nevada, nobody knows who owns the company.
You can use a nominee officer as your director, so nobody even knows who's really pulling the strings. And in certain circumstances for asset protection... Call me.
Sorry, call me.
So for asset protection... there are appropriate times to use Nevada as like a holding company to own shares or own intellectual property or something. So we'd already gotten our first couple of Nevada incorporation companies, one in Wyoming as well. And we said, we don't need the offshore stuff anymore. Let's just focus on domestic incorporations. So do you have a question?
Look like you're going to ask me a question.
So what are the companies that you do? You're just opening other corporations for individuals?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just like if you wanted to set up a company here in Florida or in Texas or in Delaware, whatever. Right. We just were focused on Nevada and Wyoming. And it was all strategic. There were reasons why we were using those companies for what we were doing. And then in 2001, so a year and a half later –
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Chapter 5: What experiences did Aaron have during his time in the detention center?
I went to a camp, right? Don't talk to anybody. both times. So same script, just do your own time. Don't tell anybody because they could go or get somebody to go rob your house, do something terrible to you. So, okay. So, and by the way, there's no bed at the camp. So you're going to go into the detention center.
So I go in there, which is like, you know, what you see on TV, it's like real prison. And, um, They were on lockdown. It was a 19-and-a-half-hour lockdown at the detention center. We go in, and I get to the door and open the door, and there are two guys already in the cell, 7-and-a-half-by-12-foot cell, two guys in there. I step in. The door closes behind me. You know that crazy sound.
The first time that happens, that's just devastating.
Yeah, that concrete and steel door, it's just like, shit. This is serious. That and the sound of the keys is like you don't ever get over it. You don't forget those sounds. Those big long keys. So anyway, um, these two guys are in there and, uh, And one of them said – they both sat up on their – so there's a bunk bed and a cot in a toilet. And, of course, I was going to be on the cot.
And so they both said, where are you coming in from? Because for people that may not know, a detention center is like a bus stop, you know, for criminals. Yeah, they're being moved around the country. They're being moved around, yeah. And so – and I ended up being there for 30 days.
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Chapter 6: How did Aaron's interactions with fellow inmates shape his perspective?
So they said, where are you coming in from? I said, no, I just got here right now. So do you own any property? So I just heard from two different people, don't talk about anything you own. I said, do you own any property? I said, you mean like real estate? And they're like, no, like stuff. Like do you have any shampoo or anything? I said, no, I don't have anything.
And like on cue, they both got down under the bed and pulled out their little Rubbermaid tub and said, you know, here's some Starbursts. Here's a couple of postage stamps. Here's an empty teabag container you can use for a cup until you get a cup on commissary. Here's a pair of shower shoes to use until you can buy your own. Can't be barefoot in the showers, you know, uh,
And I said, I'll pay you guys back as soon as we get commissary, as soon as I can. Like, don't worry about it. You got to look out for each other in here. And I was like, well, and these guys were both going behind the wall to the medium high. They were both on the way there. And one of them had been waiting for his trial for two years.
He'd been kidnapped, basically, by federales in Mexico, a big pot grower. And he'd gotten away. He'd gotten married, had kids. He moved out of the country, changed his life, started a real business. And somebody kind of ratted him out. And so the federales picked him up in the middle of the night at his house, and they'd moved him from place to place.
And he'd ended up at Sheridan Prison Detention Center. They'd been waiting for a trial for two years. Two years.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 7: What lessons did Aaron learn about the prison system and personal responsibility?
I knew a guy who, like, three, three and a half years he'd been in the... Just waiting. Yeah, U.S. Marshals holdover for, like, three and a half years.
Yeah. It's just... The thing you realize pretty quick, you're just inventory. Like, they don't give a damn about you. Yeah, you're cattle. Yeah, you're just... And they can put you in any box they want. It doesn't matter if you're a nice person, if you did anything wrong or right. It doesn't matter. They can do anything you want, ship you away, put you on diesel therapy, do any of it. Right?
You know... Which I saw happened to a couple of guys. Got transferred all around the country. Then ended up back six, eight weeks later. So anyway, teach them a lesson. So anyway, these guys, I thought, okay, well, that's an interesting thing. That gave me at least a little comfort that maybe I'm not going to get shanked. Because I didn't know. I didn't know.
And there you are in when you go out for meals.
Yeah.
It was a 19 and a half hour day lockdown. So we had four and a half hours a day to get a haircut, make a phone call, eat food. If you wanted to go out, you know, on the blacktop with two and a half story tall concrete walls, you know, with guys pointing guns at you, you could go outside and And, uh, uh, so anyway, anyway, I did that. I did my time there.
Then, um, they, uh, one day, you know how it is three in the morning or wherever they roll you up and they're young roll up and get you out new paperwork, new jumpsuit. And, uh,
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Chapter 8: How did Aaron prepare for life after prison?
Now, at the detention center, everything had been completely controlled, even how they gave out mail. I mean, how you moved around the floor. You almost had to have permission to go someplace the way it was when I was there. And so the process is all out. We're in the lobby again where my wife had dropped me off a month before.
And they said, see that building about a quarter mile away over there? Just go out there across the parking lot, go down the road, walk into the front doors. There were like eight of us. And that's where you're going to be. That's the camp. That's the camp. Yeah. And we're all looking at like, are we going to get shot? I mean, what? Because they get in your head really fast.
Yeah, yeah. They get in your head really fast. The difference between the security level, one, you've got... Like an outside security where they can give you a bus ticket and say – and ship you across like my wife when she got moved from one camp to the next camp. It was her and a couple of girls. They gave them bus tickets and said, dude, we're going to drop you off.
Get on that bus, and then you'll get off here, and somebody will pick you up and bring you to the camp. And you're like, if I have this much freedom, the fuck am I doing in prison?
Yeah, really. I mean the thing about the camp was there was a chain link fence, but it wasn't closed off.
Anybody could drive in there. But you could easily jump it, right?
Well, you could just walk away. Anybody that could drive to the main prison, to the medium high –
um they drove right through the camp right so theoretically you can have a friend drive in you jump in the car and they drive out right that would be good for you know a few hours and then you'd be done but uh and i i had one guy that did that right uh and uh he was out for about two months and then they caught him and he went behind the wall yeah so anyway anyway went in there did that and uh
I don't know, just from a weird standpoint, I'll just tell you. So we got into there where they give us this orientation, a little talk, and then we all got these little slips of paper that were like fortune cookie size, you know, fortune cookie message size, these little dinky pieces of paper with letters and numbers on them. And they said, that's your address. Go find your spot.
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