Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Credit Card Scammer Beats The Banks! ($3.6M Stolen)
14 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What does comfort mean to Flame?
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I'm an identity thief. If you can produce the paperwork, you can produce the paper. When they hit me on that one, I'm like, man, how can it not? I was a bad kid, Matt. I'm telling you, like... I used to cut up. Like, I was one of those folks that did not believe in... I was not a rule guy, right? I was... I grew up in that family where they would hit you. Like, you can't hit people now.
And the statute of limitations is up on my family from getting in trouble from hitting me. But... They used to hit me, right? They had a problem with hitting me, right? They would go to like a tree and then just grab whatever they seen on the tree, whether it was a limb or something. The switch, right? And they would hit me.
But it got to a point that I was so bad that even with other family members and stuff like that, they would do something, like my little cousins and all them. Everybody else would do something. But no matter what, If I was in the vicinity of it, it was me that influenced them. It was me that did it. So that's pretty much how that pretty much came about with that.
So it just kind of escalated to it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission kind of thing? You know what's crazy?
That's it, 100%. That's the way that I like to follow it, that whole concept of, man, if I ask, I always say this concept is weird, and I know a lot of people can't follow this, but I know if I ask somebody something, it was always a 50-50 chance, right? It's either you could say yes or you could say no, right? And I don't like the word no.
So if I just did it, that means it was already done and I never had to ask. But if you didn't like what I did, I always had the opportunity to say to you, well, I won't do it next time, right?
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Chapter 2: How did Flame's childhood influence his actions?
I'm going to the office. I'm going upstairs watching film. Even if I'm in class, I don't want to stay in class. So... Were they just passing you because – They giving me low GPAs, right? So that's what happened for me with school is because I left that school with like a low GPA, like a 2.0, 2.2. Right. But you got to have a 2.5 in order to play college ball.
But my college offers ended up with me going to Mississippi State, but going to Mississippi State down in Starkville. But the thing about it was I wasn't eligible – Because of my grades. As I'm in school, going to school with these guys, I ran into one thing that led me to another, which was the cell phone. They used to have these things called, what's it called?
Bell South and singular phones, Sprint phones. And back then when you had long distance charges. So your long distance charges on your cell phone, you could run your bills sky high. Except for you can use your phone free after a certain time at night. They don't even have any of that anymore. Old school.
We were talking to somebody the other day about the phone cards.
Yeah.
Phone cards. I still don't even know what that is.
So now you're talking about where you got free nights and weekends that are starting at 9 o'clock. And then it moved from being free nights and weekends to 7 o'clock. But as you know, I'm in school, and these folks, they're running up school bills on their cell phone, like whether they're calling home, and they're running up bills. Bills might be $150, $200 for a bill. Well...
I've seen this one thing where you can actually have like one of my, I call it, what's the best word for it, Matt? It's almost like a stepping stone to this white collar world, right? Like your first introductory to it, even if you don't even know that you're doing it, right? And because I don't think I was calling it white collar then.
I don't even know if it was, I don't even know what the hell it was calling it. It was just doing a crime for that matter, right?
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Chapter 3: What led Flame to start using identity theft?
Now I got to get somebody to actually do some taxes. I gave her the taxes. She said, no, we don't want you to bring me in no taxes. What we want you to do is sign off on this paper. I said, what is this paper? She said the paper at the top of the paper, it read 4506. And I had a dash and a T. I said, ma'am, what is this? She said, this is a tax transcript. We will pull your taxes for you.
I said, damn it. I said, so what? What are you, I mean, what does this mean? Just sign your name and we'll pull your taxes. I said, oh, they're going directly to the IRS. And that's what triggered me because I said, now, I said, whoa, if they're going to the IRS, there's no way that you can beat it, right?
There's no way that you can beat if they go to the IRS. Yeah, but if you've stolen the correct person's information, they're going to get his and he may be making $300,000 a year.
He may be making $300,000 a year, Matt, or maybe what you can do is you can file taxes in a person's name already that's never had taxes before and put it in the system anyway, right? And that's what I was saying about creating the paperwork for a person because once I realized – Then when I realized that I said, well, they need a W-2 form. I got to find somebody that can make me a W-2.
They said, well, Flame, you got a hundred bucks? I said, yeah. We can make a, I can get you, I can make you a W-2. I said, shit. Oh, you can make me a W-2? I said, yeah. I said, wow. Then I started realizing that as you keep getting this paperwork and you keep going up in the genre, right, now I got to do the opposite end.
And that is when you start to figure out everything and walk inside banking institutions, right? Because now you got to get a loan. That's why I said that unique qualification of you're sitting in front of somebody like this. Matt, look, I'm looking dead at you in your eye, right? But while I'm looking at you dead in your eyes, around you, I can see that picture on the wall right there.
That picture is you and your daughter at a soccer event. Behind you is your graduation when you graduated college. Over here is that. And I'm looking over here all while still looking straight. And this is the stuff that... that got that rushing to me. Because now I'm being, I'm actually entering into a world where I am, see when I'm doing the paperwork, that's an identity theft too it is.
But when you're actually sitting in front of somebody and you're somebody else, that's totally, that's a totally different feel. Right. Because now they're talking to you as Jonathan Martin. They're talking to you as Gregory Hines. They're talking to you as these people. And you've got to be here to answer all those questions about that person if it came up, if they went to do identity.
So these are the type of things that I'm talking about pertaining to that. You get what I'm saying now?
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Chapter 4: How did Flame learn to manipulate the credit system?
No, I'm saying credit cards itself. No, I know.
But I'm saying what do you like?
Oh, I love loans.
I love loans, business loans.
Because once the check goes through, it's done. Yeah. Once they put that money in that account and you retrieve that money out of the account, it's a wrap. They can't do nothing for it. It's a gone deal. They got to bargain and negotiate with you.
Well, if you don't pay, they can ruin your credit. But what do you give a shit?
I don't give a shit. It's not my credit. I don't give a damn about that credit. That's the least of my concern. You know what I mean?
That's a good one for the hook.
You know what I mean? I wouldn't give a damn about that. But when it comes to it is, and then we got into the business side of things, the business side is where things change completely is because they will give you business loans. But the business, the way that I did this business side was a little different. I love regular names, right? Regular names I would adore, right?
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Chapter 5: What are the consequences of driving a stolen vehicle?
And the inquiry is showing on the credit report, so they know that this car was just bought today from one of their buddies one city up the road, right? Right. Because, you know, when you're in that market, they know that whole market. They know everything. Yeah, they know all the scams.
They know what's going on.
They know all the scams. They see what's going on.
What's he doing with the vehicle? Is he just driving around? He thinks this is my vehicle from now on? Or do you think you're going to try and sell it?
That's always, but you know how people are. They try to get a vehicle. They say they're trying to sell it.
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Chapter 6: How does a scammer exploit the credit system?
Then they start driving around in the vehicle. Right. And that's what usually kind of gets them jammed up when they start trying to drive around in a vehicle acting like it's their own vehicle. When they when they're trying to find out when the whole thing is not to purchase a vehicle, but to purchase a vehicle for a buyer.
Sometimes they will just purchase a random vehicle and then they try to get the vehicle off, which doesn't make any sense.
And you don't have a real driver's license. Like if you get pulled over in this vehicle with that, that ID might be OK for the finance guy or the bank. Exactly. That cop's going to be like, oh. I'll be right back. You're done. It's over. You might as well start making your phone calls now. Hey, baby, they're probably going to bring me to the Hillsborough County lockup. Call the bail bondsman.
Chapter 7: What happens during a police encounter for fraud?
Put some money on my books. I'm going to be there a little bit. I'm still out on probation for that other thing. I mean, you're done because he's going to cut. We've got about two minutes before the other police cars start showing up. No, and that's exactly how it happens, right? I have a question for you. Talk to me. I have a question. I'm going to tell you. Mighty Mouse? Yeah, this is the cars.
Yeah, yeah. You're like this. I'll go through it quick. Okay. So I met a guy when I was locked up in Atlanta in the U.S. Marshals holdover. His name was Mighty Mouse. Black guy, 5'3", shorter than me. I mean, he looked like Mighty Mouse. He had a tattoo of Mighty Mouse on his arm. So that's why I started calling him- No, he looked, in general, everybody called him Mighty Mouse. You looked at him.
He was like freakish. He had such a tiny, you know, and he was tiny. Listen, super cool. I would love, if anybody out there knows, he was in Atlanta. If anybody knows this guy, I would love to talk to this guy. You would be able to talk to this guy for hours.
Chapter 8: What charges did the scammer face and why?
And you're going to love what he did. This is the only time I've ever thought that this was sharp, bro. This was sharp. He'd been locked up for fraud before in the feds. He was on probation when I met him. Was you in Atlanta or was you in the holdover? No, no, no. I was in the U.S. I was in the ACDC. Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah, got it, got it. But it's the U.S. Marshals.
You know, they have like a floor.
Yeah.
So I'm in there. He's in there. You're going to love this. So he's already on paper for fraud. He's already been to the feds. He's out on paper, gets jammed up on this scam. I'll explain why. It is his fault. So we're sitting there. I had just been on like Dateline, had just did a one-hour special. So we're watching my Dateline special in the holdover. So everybody thinks I'm the coolest, right?
And so I'm talking to him. So he comes. He says – and I say, so what are you here for? He's like, listen. He said, here's what I did. Or I'm going to tell you what I did. He was – Do you remember the pre-approval checks they used to mail out for your cars?
Yeah, used to mail out for your cars, yeah.
He had a guy, he would get a fake ID and somebody's name. He doesn't have to have any, just a fake ID, just bullshit fake ID. He didn't have anything connected, no social security, nothing. He doesn't know anything about it. Just a fake ID could be made up. He goes into – but it looks good. So he goes in and says, hey, I want to rent this – or I want to drive this car.
We're talking about like $100,000 Mercedes. Now it's probably worth $200,000. So $200,000 Mercedes, whatever. He said, you drive it around real quick. You come back. And the guy says, okay, what do you think? He's like, I like it. You argue a little bit, see if you can get some floor mats, whatever.
You make it seem legit because if you don't argue a little bit and bicker a little bit, they think something's wrong. You can't just say, I'll take it. So he walks in. He knows all the right things to say. They say, okay, well, let's go talk to the finance guy. He said, I'm already approved. He said, I got, and he opens up the envelope.
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