Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Teen CEO Built an Empire… Then Lost It All Overnight
31 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: How did Greg become a teen CEO?
Now I'm driving a BMW, Rolls Royce, a Lamborghini, 10 other cars, and I know it's wrong. I know now it's wrong, okay?
I'm not judging you.
I know you're not, but real people... He basically shows me more cash than I've ever seen in my entire life. This is when I start having altercations with the police. Before the lights even came on, I knew it was all over. And he goes, well, how much money? And I said... Honestly, I have no idea. So I went to University of Central Florida.
Before I even picked a major, I picked what fraternity I wanted to be in. Because that's obviously priorities. And so I'm up there partying. My parents said, this isn't what we're paying for. If you're going to complete three classes a year, we're going to have to cut you off. And so first... they took away the emergency Amex because that's what I would go out.
There was actually a bar at UCF called the library. And the reason for that was you could go there.
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Chapter 2: What led to Greg's altercations with the police?
I don't know if it's still there, but then you swipe your $40 tab or whatever. And then you could tell your parents you had some overdue books at the library. So,
Where were you last night? At the library.
At the library. I forgot to turn my books in on time, so I owed $30 to the library. So they took away the emergency Amex first. And, I mean, I don't know. Whatever. Does everybody not have that? And I... Kept partying, but in order to get that money to go to the bar at night, what I started doing was I was valet parking cars for some of my fraternity brothers.
A couple of guys that had graduated before me started a little valet business. And it was perfect for me because, you know, if I wanted to go to class in the morning, I could. You got these fine dining restaurants where you set up at 4.30 in the afternoon, you know, for a dinner shift. They start cutting people by, you know, 9, 9.30 p.m.
You leave, you got $100 to $200 in cash in your pocket and you could go right over to the bar. So, I mean, it was perfect.
All right.
And I kept floundering with my grades. So eventually my parents were like, all right, now it's full adult time. Take your little valet money. You pay your rent. You pay your insurance. You pay your this. You pay your that. And I made it all of like one month as being an adult. So now I have to move out of college.
my college life and back into my mom and dad's house they said if you're only going to go to a couple classes a week you can commute the 40 50 miles to school so well your parents really they would put the pressure on you like they were like they were like this is they weren't they were not and i mean rightfully so i i've lost scholarships i mean it's expensive to go to school right
You know, and pay fraternity dues and just for me to be partying. So, you know, I basically went from living in a fraternity house to back to my mom and dad's house at, like, 19 years old. Right. So my number one thought is, like, I got to get out of here. Like, you hear people talk about FOMO. Like... I know what day it is. I know what the specials are.
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Chapter 3: How did Greg transition from college life to adulthood?
oxy cotton oxycodone roxy's blues 30 milligrams whatever you know all the street names and that was the first time because i said well give me the other half you know and just from a financial standpoint i could pay eight bucks for a pill split it in half with somebody and now i don't run up a hundred dollar bar tab so i'm a bargain hunter you know what i mean that was right around the time that the painkillers started to become really prevalent what year was this
This is probably between 2008 and 2010. The pill mills, all that stuff hasn't quite started yet. Eventually one opens up by us and I'll get to that. I'm running my business. I'm taking pills. I mean, I'm losing any humility that I have because now I've been in all these magazines.
now all my friends work for me they're kind of gassing me up you know i whatever i said i just had like a bunch of i like to surround myself with a bunch of yes men who are just great idea yeah you're you're the man greg greg's the man and i'm picking up you know we're going out we're buying bottle service and i'm picking up the tab and doing all that kind of stuff yeah i have a lot of a lot of friends when you have money yeah it's weird how that works so weird so
And I mean, at this time, like, again, I started off this business with the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Now I'm driving a BMW M3. I'd like to have a two-door and a four-door pretty much at all times. A car to go out in, like a big four-door, whether it was a Navigator or like an S-Class Mercedes. And then I'd have a little sports car, a coupe, that I'd drive around all the time. And that was my BMW M3.
And... the back license plates of my cars always said par king, you know, like it's funny because I lived on a golf course and nobody could figure out who this like 23, 24 year old was with all these like ridiculous cars. So they thought I was a professional golfer. Right. Cause I was a, I was the par king. I never swung a golf club in my life, but you know, so yeah,
Oh, and then I'd also have to, I mean, it wasn't enough that I'd just get the car, but I'd have to, you know, make it custom so that everybody knew it was mine. Um, you know, I'd take it in. I, I had the Snavely Euro plate on the front, you know, those European plates, the, I'd have that with my last name on the front parking on the back.
I do a couple of modifications to it so that, I mean, it was, it was very apparent that's Greg's car and yeah, so super humble.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
And yeah, this is when I start like running into problems.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Greg face while running his valet business?
Right.
And I, about 20 miles from where I lived, there was a doctor who said, was prescribing, according to Florida Today, more Oxycontin than the entire state of California combined. Um, so yeah, great guy. And, you know, my friends basically said, you know, why, why pay for this stuff? Everybody I knew was going in there.
You get the, you get the MRI and I don't know if he even cared about the MRI, but they taught you how to, how to scrunch up in the MRI and wait for 20 minutes in an uncomfortable position. And the doctor had like a saying, he'd go, I don't even know how you've been getting through the day lately. You know,
I was going to say, it's funny. I've talked to doctors and pain clinic doctors. They're like, the problem is the average person, they said, doesn't even have pain. If you take an MRI, he's like, everybody has some issue with their spine. Like there's always some kind of narrowing of the disc. There's some, it's like the average person. There's no, I've never seen a perfect fucking spinal MRI.
It doesn't exist. And so if you say, I have pain here, well, pain is also phantom pain in your spine. So it's like, it doesn't have to be the exact spot. So if you're saying, I don't know where my pain is, like, I don't know where my issue is in my spine because it doesn't bother me. But if you're five or six inches close, he's like, we're going to note he's got pain. Yeah.
He has narrowing of the discs or narrowing of the joint or whatever. It's like, they're going to put down that he's got an issue here with radiating pain He's like, you're getting oxys. You're getting issued something. Something. Because everybody, look, even if you have no problem, you don't feel anything. So there's something there.
He had a couple of things he liked to say. Because you could hear him. He was getting people in and out of the waiting rooms. At some point... He told me that he saw 60 to 80 people a day, five days a week, 300 to $360 cash, depending on if you had a drug test or not. I don't know what the drug test was for to make sure you're taking your oxy.
20 grand a day, right?
Yeah, he made about $100,000 a week, cash only, no credit cards, no insurance, no anything. And now... i mean once you give me that i i was prescribed eight oxys a day as a healthy 24 25 year old that is like when the gasoline got on the fire you know the business starts to when you're running a business as as a full-fledged addict and
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Chapter 5: How did addiction impact Greg's life and business?
And I said, yeah. And he said, well, you know, I was really hoping maybe you could like put me on the payroll. I can't buy a house. I've been spending money. So here I think he wants to borrow money. you know, a little bit of money from me or something. Right.
And instead he wants me to wash his money through my, through my legitimate business, which I politely declined because, you know, I didn't, I already had enough headaches in my life. So yeah.
Plus at some point, you never know. He gets caught in the first. I know plenty of guys that have been drug dealers that have been caught and then they're like, They get caught, but the government says, yeah, but you're getting a check every two weeks. And they're like, yeah, well, I got this place I go and I give them this restaurant I give.
And now the restaurant, now they're indicted for money laundering. Yeah, exactly. I actually did a loan for a guy one time. God, what was his name? I remember his name. Tony Zucco. And I'm not, I'm horrible with names. He was, he was Eric, Eric Tamargo's best friend. Eric Tamargo is the guy that I had go in the bank as James red.
I paid him like 1500 bucks to sign for like, was that the guy who you underpaid? Yeah. Oh yeah. I gave him like 500 bucks and complained. And then he, next time he wanted like a thousand. And you're like, you're going to give me like 50. Yeah. We're making like 80 grand on the deal. Um, But his best friend was Tony Zuko. We did a loan for him.
And I remembered when Tony Zuko came in to get the loan on a house that was a couple hundred thousand dollars. But that was 20 years ago. That's probably like a $450,000 house now. And he came in and I already knew he was a drug dealer. So I pulled his credit. He actually had good credit. I was like, yeah, bro, you don't have income. That's an issue. And I'm already going to solve the problem.
But before I can even say anything, he goes, no, no, no, I have income. I make about $50,000 a year. And I went, really? He said, yeah, yeah. He said, I have W-2s, pay stubs, everything. He said, I'm a manager at a sandwich shop. And what happened was one of his ex-girlfriend's mothers made sandwiches and sold them in one of those trucks or something.
Or she had, I don't know, a business or something. Yeah. And he would go to her. He'd give her a couple thousand every two weeks. And he'd get the checks. She'd write him a fucking check back, take a little bit. She'd pay the thing. And he was like, holy shit. Well, when he gets busted, what do you think happens to her? Like, I don't know what happened to her.
He's cutting a deal. And he's like, I'm sure she was fucked. I'm sure she got it almost as bad as him. And she was getting a small slice.
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