Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Inside the Ruthless World of Mexico’s Cartel Empire | The Unlikely Narco
05 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What does comfort mean to the speaker?
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I would strap 20,000 at a time on my waist, up and down, all the way around. And whatever couldn't fit, I would put on her. I told her, I said, hey, look, just let me go first. And if something happens with me, turn around and run. I'm going to be interviewing Jacob Diaz. I wrote a story about him when I was in prison. It's called The Unlikely Narco. It's going to be super cool.
I appreciate you guys watching. Check out the story. Single mom, four kids. You know, you really don't know that if you don't have nothing until you start getting older and going to school and seeing kids with stuff and just being innocent. My thing was I'm going to help my mom any way possible. So I would find myself going into gas stations and stealing packs of gums, the dollar packs. Right.
I would take the whole rack out and go to school and sell them for a dollar, come back, give it to my mom. And it was 10, 15, 20 bucks, but it wasn't anything crazy. But it made me feel good. And I was able to help my mom and she'd smile. And a couple months after that, that's when my mother left. And I ended up, I got kicked out.
From the landlord, which is crazy because it was a friend of my mom's. So she knocked on the door one day. I come home from school. She knocks on the door. And your mom hadn't been home in a few days? She hadn't been home in like probably almost a week. And it was around the time we had to pay rent. So the landlord, the landlady, whatever, comes by. Hey, where's your mom?
And I know this lady, too, since I was little. So I'm like, I don't know where my mom is. I was going to ask you where's my mom.
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Chapter 2: How does the speaker describe their early experiences with crime?
She goes, oh, no, you got to pay rent. If you don't have rent, you got to leave. I said, leave? Where am I going to go? She's like, I don't know. So I was like, man, that's fucked up. How old were you? Like 13, 14. I'm thinking, I said, I mean, I can't live with you until my mom comes back. At this point, I don't think my mom had left me.
I think my mom's just out for, because she would do that around this time. She would go out for the weekend, come back on Sunday and go to work Monday. So around this time, it was odd when she didn't come back Sunday. She didn't come back Monday, Tuesday. And I'm thinking, okay, this is weird. It's the first time she's done this. Something happened.
So I'm going around the neighborhood asking her friends that she goes out with on the weekends. They're all back but her. So I'm thinking, okay, but nobody's going to tell me anything. I don't know. And they're shying away from the question and beating behind the bush. I just got tired of it. I gave up asking. I just said, you never think in a million years your mom would leave you. So...
And that's the last thing on my mind. Oh, she left me. And when I get a knock on the door from the landlady, I'm thinking, you know, oh, she knows where my mom's at, but it's not. It's where's the rent at? Where's the rent money? If you don't have the rent money, you got to leave. I was in my mind, where am I going to go? So I just, I had... A garbage bag full of stuff that I wanted to keep.
I left a lot of shit behind. And at this time, my younger brother's in a juvenile detention center. My older brother had moved out of the house. And my sister was adopted by my mom's friend temporarily. So I was the only kid in the house. And I'm like, okay. So I left. I went to Mike's. I said, hey, Mike, can I stay here? Obviously, yes. Like on the weekends, we would go out to parties as kids.
I don't know why. We would go to these rolling parties. Ecstasy was a big deal back then in 2000. I started meeting people who were buying and selling drugs. And that's kind of the first time I actually seen transactions like that. I would see the potential of not being poor, right? Again, right.
So it is like a light bulb happened and body put too much attention into it until Mike's sister's friend was arrested and her husband and Bobby were working. They were selling. They were had a girl house in Ocala. And when they got busted, they needed money for lawyers. So they had some weed buried.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the speaker face after their mother left?
But they're locked up. But they're locked up. She's like, hey, you guys, you guys, can you give me a hand? Can you help me clean out the house? You know, help me get some stuff. And I seen the girl house for the first time. I'm going, there's big tubs everywhere with water hoses and filters and the shit that the DEAs are ripped up. And they're leaving left behind.
There's weed on the floor everywhere. So I'm scraping the weed up, putting it in my pocket. You know, for me, that's my tip for working. And she goes to us. She goes, hey, can you guys get rid of some weed for me? I was like, I don't know, like, how much. I'm thinking half ounce, ounce. She's like, no, we can give you. We have, like, 40 pounds buried. And can you help me?
We'll just give you a quarter pound at a time. And just give me 200 bucks back. And at this time, it was called Hydro. And Hydro was... I guess a big deal, more expensive quality. It wasn't everywhere then. Yeah. It was higher quality. So whatever I made, I just smoked as a kid. I really didn't see anything going on there and just helping someone out.
I didn't think it was going to be like a life lifelong deal.
Um,
And I'd sell a little bit. And around that time, that was when Mike left. And then I was by myself and I couldn't stay at his sister's house by myself unless Mike was there. So then that's when I became homeless. And I was in the streets trying to do whatever I can to get something to eat. But you're still going to school.
I am going to school, but then I ended up not going to school like a few months after because I didn't have no clothes. I didn't know where to go and these things. So, and, you know, once I got to the point to where I had nowhere to go, no nothing, then all day I'd be out by myself running the streets and... I met this girl that's a pizza delivery girl. She's like the same age as us.
And an idea came up. I said, hey, if you give me pizza, I'll give you wheat, you know, because she would buy wheat. And I just clicked from there. I was like, okay, I can eat like this. So I'll just give her a quarter ounce of weed, and I'll get two pizzas. And she'd just say, oh, the delivery, the guy was in there. It was an abandoned house. Nobody was home. I couldn't leave it there.
Nobody answered the door. So I guess they would write it off.
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Chapter 4: How did the speaker's life change after meeting their co-defendant?
He would distribute everything that came in to everybody and would just go in a few days and collect, you know, give them little by little and just do that. Do people not pay? They would always pay. It was always good business. That was the last thing we, or I worked about was not getting paid.
It was, I was gonna say, it's funny, you know, Pete, like Pete always says, he's like, you watch these movies and everybody shows up with guns. He's like, but at the higher levels, he said, nobody's got a gun. You know why nobody has a gun? Because these ref, these people are referred by higher people to say, I don't want this customer no more. I'm gonna give it to you. I'm done. Yeah.
And he'll pay you and he's good. You don't have to worry about it. And it was true. You can go up there with $100,000 worth of drugs and know in three days that you'll get every single dollar back. If anything, you'll get a little bit more because you miscounted. But there's never short, ever. Never, never had an issue. And it was always by the rules. You come by yourself.
But we'd have a car full of Mexicans. But you got to come by yourself. And I would have never done that. I'm like, man, I'm getting set up. But they would come and boom, we meet in someone's yard in a country park with no neighbors. Drop off. And three days later, meet the same place and pick up. And how long did this go on? Shit. Until I get arrested. Well, I mean. Like seven years.
Yeah, but you went to Mexico. Yeah, I went back and forth to Mexico. My first time going to Mexico was, I was 19. This is six months after moving in. That was another culture shock. I couldn't take it. It was, I was like homesick. It was weird. I wanted. What happened? Like, why did you go to Mexico? Like, why? He invited me, and I've always wanted to go as a kid.
I said, well, I'd like to go to Mexico. You always want to know where you come from and your roots, whatever. So I was like, yeah, I'll go. And of course, all expenses paid, and you don't have to worry about nothing. And when I went there, it was... That's where you play. You work in the United States, go to Mexico and play. And it was true freedom.
Like, you really don't experience true freedom until you leave the United States. You see these, I mean, the hospitality is through the roof. There's morals, principles, people still, you know. It's like almost living in like the old days where they trust you and they see a stranger walking, hey, did you eat? Come inside and you can eat in my house. And it's like, what?
Like they don't do that here. So going over there is, I was able to see a lot of things, a lot of things for my first time. you know, seeing where, where he came from and met his family. And they took me in because at this point, there's like six, seven months in whatever.
I just kind of took on, I took him on as a father figure, like a father role, role model, I guess you want to say, you know, never having a dad. And here's a man that's treating me like his son. And,
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Chapter 5: What was the co-defendant's advice during the arrest?
I just looked down. I was like, oh, God, man. I can't believe I did that. Well, so... Didn't you say that your co-defendant had even said—because they arrested your co-defendant, too. The same day, yeah. Didn't he basically say, tell them what to tell them? Just tell them and take the time off or something, and you just wouldn't do it? Yeah.
Chapter 6: How did the speaker respond to pressure to cooperate?
When I got bonded out— He he was he didn't because he's illegal. Right. So they didn't give him no option. But I got a message saying that for me to blame everything on him. Right. For me to tell on him. And that would be my way of getting a reduced sentence. And it will be OK. And I told him, I said, remember what I told you on day one? I said, I don't care if they give me 100 years.
I'm not going to I'm not going to tell on nobody. And I was not just what I stuck. I just stuck to that to that code. And I didn't I was hard headed, just the kind of kind of person that I didn't like to be. I didn't like to play both sides. And if I was going to be something, I'm going to be it to the fullest. And if not, then I'm not. So there was no in between with me.
And I just went all the way. And so then so the the. governments come into you with deals, right? They're trying to get you to take a deal, right? Like, even once you say, look, I'm not going to cooperate. Yeah. They still come to you with a deal. They still don't want to go to trial if they don't have to. No, they never want to go to trial.
Chapter 7: What was the outcome of the trial?
So the first deal I got was my attorney got the prosecutor on the phone. He put him on speakerphone, and the prosecutor says, okay, what do you want in order for you to sign the plea deal? And I was... And I didn't want to sign a plea deal. So I was making shit up, see what I can get away with. I said, take the gun off. Done. I was like, man, that's so easy.
Can I reduce the charge from five kilos to 500? Was it 500 grams to five kilos? And that was a five year mandatory minimum. And he's like, no, we can't do that. We have too much evidence, but don't think I can take off as the gun. He goes, just put an X on, on, on the gun charge and initial it. And then you're good.
Yeah.
I said, okay, I'm not going to do it.
Chapter 8: What happened after the plea deal was rejected?
And I just went along with stringing them along, just playing a game. And even one time when I told my attorney that I was going to plead guilty, I said, I want to have a change of plea. And And in a way, deep down inside, I wanted to get it over with. I was like, I'm going to do a change of plea. But on the way to do the change of plea, I had a change of heart.
And I got to the courtroom and I didn't tell nobody. what I was going to say. I was, I wasn't going to change my plea. I didn't tell nobody. So I went up to the judge and judge says, did anybody promise you anything? Or, you know, why do you understand you are pleading guilty? Is this something you want to do? You're ready, whatever. And I said, yes, your honor.
He goes, okay, you want to enter your plea right now? I said, yeah. And I leaned into the microphone and I looked him dead in his pupils. And I said, not guilty. And then I looked back and see my attorney's reaction. And he just had his head down shaking like this.
He's like,
Like, what are you doing, man? I was like, what? Fuck these people. But I just... So then you went to trial. You ended up going to trial. Yeah. They moved the trial out of Ocala to Orlando. And man, that was the fastest trial. It was the fastest open shot case. How many days was it? Four or five. Four or five days, yeah.
And the DEA agent gets on the stand, and he talks, and everybody... Okay, so it's four or five days. Well, four days. I forget, because I mean, I know, I remember we got the... Did we get all the transcripts, or we just got some of the transcripts? No, I still got them. Oh, did we get them all? No, we only have day... We only have one day of transcripts. Okay.
But the transcripts that we did get was both of the brothers, the Shuler brothers, testifying. So I got their testimony. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So the Shuler brothers, they testify. You're found guilty. Yeah. Your judge was a newly appointed female judge. Yep. That was her first case. She came out of Fort Myers. Listen to this. And what happened when she sentenced you?
She started to cry. She started to tear up.
Aww.
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