Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
FBI Most Wanted Con Woman - $80 Million in Bank Fraud | Portia Louder
Mon, 26 May 2025
Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches. Go to my sponsor https://aura.com/matt to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposedPortia Louder became entangled in a massive real estate fraud scheme involving inflated appraisals and hard money loans, eventually leading to an $11 million restitution order and a seven-year federal prison sentence. Connect with PortiaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/portialouder/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/portialouderYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/chlouderWebsite: https://portialouder.com/Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you extra clips and behind the scenes content?Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What was Portia Louder's involvement in bank fraud?
I had $60 million in real estate. This is arbitrage. I'll pay you the million five, but we're going to close it at three. You'll get like the half a million or the million back.
You just committed fraud. They don't know that.
How could I have committed a fraud against a bank that's fully aware of all the details of the transaction? When they say United States of America versus Porsche Lauder, that's when you're like, oh, how could I have been so foolish? I started building a photography company and my business just really grew. So we have these two kids. We buy a house. I start my own company. Chad's working.
And for about four and a half years, life is going pretty good. About that time, the real estate market's going crazy. And I decide that I need to build a home to put my studio in. It's in Utah.
What year is this?
It's 2003, 2004. So I'm building a home, and the lots in my neighborhood are just going up, up, up, up. And I told my husband, I said, I'm going to go lock up a couple of those lots. I'm going to put them under contract. And I think I gave him $2,500, and he flipped. I came home, and he's like, what are you doing? How are we going to close those? What are you thinking?
So I went and asked for the $2,500 back, and... And then the lots doubled in value. I was so pissed off. I was like, don't ever tell me what to do again. But about that time, my back went out too. So I ended up having a pretty good injury with my back and had to have back surgery. Now, I know this about myself, the kind of drug addict that I am.
If I use like one half of a pain pill, I'm right back at it. At that point, I didn't know that about myself. I still thought, oh, I'm doing good. I'm living legit. And so when I had the back surgery, I didn't tell the doctor, and he prescribed the pain pills again.
And I kept thinking, I got this under control, I'm not on the street, I'm doing everything right, but my addiction... The thing about me is when I use drugs, I like to hustle. They go together. And so I started using pills again, and...
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Chapter 2: How did Portia's addiction affect her business decisions?
decided that i would put some more lots under contract but this time i ended up putting a whole subdivision under contract and i used hard money so i borrowed a couple hundred grand well more than that i think i had about half a million and i had all of our equity line i took an equity line on our house so everything's locked up and i'm thinking well i'm just going to build you know
I'll get construction loans. Well, you can't get like 10 construction loans all at once. So my family, my parents, other people, I'm getting construction loans in everybody's name. Well, construction loans were hard to get. Yeah.
That's a construction department loan. Yeah. Right. Very difficult.
It's a lot harder than just getting, you know, refining your house or whatever. Well, I didn't know that I'm pretty new in it. And. Now I'm paying this hard money every month, like 50 grand a month. Like, how do you come up with that? I have to buy a lot and flip it and I make 30 grand. And so now I'm upside down.
Plus I have my photography business, which is going, like I'm doing about 200 weddings a year. I mean, that's, I have employees. I've got a studio now. So life is crazy. I have nannies taking care of my kids. And... My name's Portia, which is pretty unusual. Well, there was another Portia. Her name was Portia Bunker in the real estate game in Utah, which is, again, unusual.
And I had a couple guys reach out to me and say, hey, can we borrow some money? She was a hard money lender. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not a hard money lender. They said, well, let's go to lunch. So we go to lunch, and they explain to me what is called an equity deal. They're like, hey, we've got this house.
It appraises for $5 million, but you can pick it up for $3 million and pull the cash out of it.
An equity deal.
That's great. That's so much better than a straw man or cash out refi or cash it out. I know, I know. Yeah. Have you ever Googled your name? With one quick search, I can find all of your information.
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Chapter 3: What were the key factors leading to Portia's indictment?
Yeah, so now I'm really upside down.
And I can think of a way to get the money, but... But it's a little more fraudulent than what you've currently done.
Well, so now I'm pretty upside down. So now I'm learning, too. I'm learning that I've got to lock up houses that are under $3 million. And now I've got people hearing, oh, Portia does these equity deals. Actually, at the time, they're advertising them on billboards in Utah. Use your credit. Get cash back. Boy, that was blatant. It was crazy, right?
So what was the $3 million house that will appraise at $5 million? Is it because there's a couple other comparables close by? That's what it is, but they weren't really comparable?
Well, what it was was that it was just, yeah, it had a lot of square footage. It was in a nice neighborhood, but it was dumbed down compared to that comps.
It wasn't really comparable, but on paper.
It's all square footage. You've got to have the right square footage in the right location. So I'm learning this stuff, right?
If you're lending money, if you're a lending institution in California or New York, it looks like a good deal. But if you were a bank down the street, they'd be like, yeah, no. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, Washington Mutual and ABC thought it was a good deal. So they're not local. They're not local. And then I'm also finding out through mortgage brokers that there's companies like Washington Mutual that will lend 90%, but they got to get a little kickback under the table, which is on top of the three points that they're getting.
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Chapter 4: How did the real estate market crash impact Portia's case?
I am freaking juggling.
I was going to say I'm I was I always felt like they're like, well, how much money you were making? Oh, how much you make a month? And I hate that question. It's like, listen, I'm not. I am. Selling drugs here. No. I might have a million dollars in the bank, but it's tied up in five different places. Right. So my account's doing this. Right. It's absolutely what was happening.
I can do what I want, but at no time do I ever feel like I made $4 million.
No, no, no. Yeah. At any time, I was thinking how... Freedom would be living in a home that was worth 300 grand and I owned it free and clear.
I wish I had just been a middle-class, average American welder. The dream, the American dream. That could watch my kids play soccer on the weekends and vacation two weeks a month and had a retirement. That would be an amazing life to me. Correct. During that time, especially. Yeah.
It was so heavy and I'm trying to manage all of this and I'm just, the weight of it, it was awful. Yeah, I've got everything tied up, everything.
Does your husband feel sick to his stomach or does he think you're a rainmaker?
No, he does not think I'm a rainmaker. Now maybe, but not then, no. We had some rough years because he's a pretty conservative guy. So he has a normal job. He went to college, he did all the right things. And I told him, hey, you need to quit your job and stay home and take care of the kids.
I bet you've heard that thrown in your, brought up a few times.
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Chapter 5: What were the consequences of Portia's fraudulent activities?
Yeah. It's a nauseating feeling. So my thinking is, well, I'll just go talk to a real estate attorney and I'll just lay it all out for him.
Can you go through one of the transactions that like, for instance, like you're saying, like, I know because I've had. Once you get about 10 mortgages in your, in your name, they really don't want to give you any more mortgages, no matter what documentation, what you bring. So, um, and obviously you don't want your name.
On these other transactions where you're building, helping to build the comparable sales. So I'm saying, what do you do? You go to your, you know, your cousin and say like, like, how does that work? Like I saw it. So, you know, like I had a deal, there was a deal, there was a house. So I went to my cousin. I convince him this and like, how does the money come back out?
Like, can you break one down?
So for me, there's two parts to the deal. There's the hard money part. So let's say that I go to a builder and I lock a house up that he's selling. I make a deal with him. Sell me the house for 1.2 or 1.4. And I've already closed enough houses in cash. Is that what you're asking?
Right. So how did I close those? So you know those houses will, those are.
They're going to appraise at $3 million. I've already got the appraises.
But you didn't buy it for $3 million.
I bought it for $1.4 million.
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Chapter 6: How did Portia feel about her prison sentence?
They thought that I was, I don't even remember exactly what they thought, but it wasn't what I had done.
They started off with Ms. Louder. Oh, yeah, Ms.
Louder. Ms. Louder. I didn't really love that. I was like, like, I thought, yeah, it wasn't good.
Get them on a one name, first name basis. Get them on your team. Like, yeah.
I tried that. I showed him a family picture.
I was like, yeah, we need to fix this. I think these people are doing something illegal.
It's exactly how it was. I was like, oh, you're talking about that. Oh, yeah, I'm not doing that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't like that. And eventually, I mean, they got pissed. In fact, I remember the FBI agent, he's like, Portia. No, he didn't say Portia. But he said louder, listen, people have lost money. People have lost a lot of money. People with handicapped kids have lost money. And I was like, what? Like, wait a second. It was like, the market has crashed. And I felt like- What year is this?
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Chapter 7: What was the impact of Portia's actions on her family?
You don't see it every day. They come running through the courtroom. My attorney, the judge goes, uh, something's going on. Let's lock down the courthouse. So my husband and his attorney, now he has an attorney. Everyone has an attorney and they're walking down the front steps.
Somehow I sneak out and go down the back steps and I walk out the front of the courthouse with the paramedics and the man that's been shot. And when I walk out, the press is all there and they want to hear what happened. Yeah.
And they ask you.
Yeah. And so they come up and I said, well, the U S Marshall shot a guy five times and killed him that had a pencil in his hand. My husband walks out and he's like, what is wrong with you? He's like, get, come on. And he like grabs me and we walk away. And before I'm even to the car, my attorney calls and says, you're on the 12 o'clock news. What were you thinking?
Do you have any idea how mad everybody is? The ATF wanted to come out and present. Why would you do that? She goes, they are so mad. And I go, I am mad too. We're almost. We're all mad. She's like, you'll be at the courthouse tomorrow morning. And I went to the courthouse the next morning and they revoked my pretrial release and locked me up. They were so done with me.
And then they take me to the county jail and take my clothes and throw me into a cell. And I spent a week, you know, locked up like that. Pretty much had a nervous breakdown at this point. I've really never been in jail. Right. So it's like.
You were, what, have you even been processed? You've been processed. Oh, yeah.
They just called me and told me to come down and do my fingerprints. Yeah, but that's very... Yeah, minimal. And I still had an attorney that I was paying to tell me I was innocent at that point anyway. So, you know, I'm going to walk out of this. But anyway, so I'm at the county jail. I have a full-on mental breakdown. I just saw a guy get shot on his first day.
I'm three weeks out on my own trial, and my husband... I mean, if we both end up convicted, my kids are going to be without parents. So I got the weight of the world. I'm broke. Everything is going just, I have a full-on mental breakdown. I can't even speak. When they ask me my name, I can't even say my name. I'm just completely not well.
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Chapter 8: How did Portia cope during her time in prison?
And it's like, hey, this is retaliation. Yeah, we don't really care about that. We don't care.
Right, right, right. So, yeah. So anyway, he puts me in the shoe. They keep me there three weeks and then they ship me to Minnesota and I got to go through all the chains and shackles. You know, the U.S. Marshals show up with their big shotguns. I'm like, Oh my gosh.
It's serious. It's so serious. You're like, this is real. I filled out some paperwork.
Yeah. I'm like chained and shackled to another girl, Diamond, this time. She's doing 30. I'm like, what? Diamond. Chained to Diamond. And Diamond's looking at me like, here's the crazy thing. So they put you on the plane. They give you that nasty bologna sandwich, that green stuff that's all greasy. Everybody says that.
Oh. I loved the bologna sandwich. I had no problem with it. Everybody's always, it was great.
It was fine. No, no, no. When I sit down, luckily the girl next to me, she's like, don't eat the bologna. She goes, here's the thing. If you get sick, they ain't going to let you use the bathroom. So don't be eating that bologna. I was like, okay, okay. I'm going to listen. I didn't eat the bologna. So I got shipped to Pahrump. There were a bunch of us.
By this time, I haven't had any water or anything. I honestly think I ended up passing out at some point. It was bad because everyone's telling me what to do. I'm nervous. It's taken hours. I don't dare ask to go use the bathroom. I'm chained and shackled. Finally, we get out to Prump, and then they put you in a holding cell for hours, too.
One girl wraps toilet paper around herself because she's so cold. It's miserable, the whole transport thing. Three weeks later, they call my name again. They ship me to Grady County, Oklahoma. Which is like, we walk in and we hear a guy being tased in one of the rooms. And Diamond says, you can't treat us like this. We're the feds. And by this time, I know way better.
I said, unchain me from Diamond, okay?
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