(waves crashing)
(tense music)
Narrator: What happens in the mind of con artists?
What makes their brain so well-equipped
for psychological trickery?
Is it greed?
A lack of empathy?
Loose morals?
Whatever it is, we are fascinated by con artists.
(tense music)
News Reporter: American Matthew Cox was arrested
and charged for bank fraud, identity theft,
passport fraud, mortgage fraud, and probation violation.
Journalist: Matthew Cox created fake companies,
fake identities with fake Social Security numbers
through which he started signing up for credit cards.
Narrator: Cox even invented his own banks,
The Bank of Ebor, the Southern Exchange Bank of Clarksville.
This all helped him to make millions
in the real estate market.
News Reporter: Cox is accomplices were mainly women
who helped him run real estate scams in various states.
Narrator: Cox even used plastic surgery
to alter his appearance.
But it all ended when the Secret Service arrested him
and he was sentenced to 26 years in prison.
(tense music)
We've all been lied to.
We've all been offered something
that is just too good to be true,
and still, we fell for it.
Although we love a good con,
we hate it when it happens to us.
To find out how to resist the manipulation,
we invited some of the greatest con artists
to our institute.
Together with a team of experts,
we are going to analyze their stories, pick their brains,
and reveal what their body language tells us.
Welcome to the Institute.
-: Hello, Mr. Cox. -: Hello.
-: How are you doing? -: Fine.
-: Shall we? -: Sure.
(tense music)
-: Hello, Matthew, welcome.
We're really pleased to have you with us.
So let me start with the introductions.
I'm Kerry Daynes and I'm a Consultant Forensic Psychologist.
And here we've got Mark Frank,
and he is a Professor of Behavioral Science.
-: So Matthew, as a behavioral scientist,
I'm going to be interested in your behaviors,
and not just simply on behaviors that you show,
but your ability to recognize behaviors in other people
and how attuned you are to those.
So we'll put you through a variety of tests
to look at things like how well you can judge people,
how well you can judge little things like how they feel,
and using that to try to help us get a better sense
of what's going on inside here
through what is manifested out here.
But as far as going deep inside,
that's where I turn it over to my colleague, Moran Cerf.
-: I'm a Neuroscientist.
I want to understand the psychology.
So what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to do interviews with you,
I'm going to play games with you,
and all the while I'm gonna look at your answers
as well as your brain's answers.
Ultimately, what we're gonna do is
we're gonna have you strapped to a machine called EEG.
It's a little swim cap that we put on your head.
-: Yeah, that's it, I'm done.
Just get up and leave. (chuckles)
But, fine--
-: What in your brain makes you say that?
-: It's just my fight or flight response kicked in,
and I thought, "Listen, you need to go.
This isn't what you thought."
No, this is, it's fine.
-: So I will be talking to you in depth in a couple of hours,
but for now, make yourself at home.
So settle into the Institute.
Take a little bit of time for rest maybe.
And we'll start a little later on.
-: All right. -: Okay.
-: Cool. -: See you soon.
-: All right, thanks. -: Bye-bye.
(tense music)
Hey, how are you? -: Great.
-: You ready for this? -: Absolutely.
-: Good, good.
I'm interested in your journey to becoming a con-artist.
The development of it.
So you started to create fake identities
from forging documents to actually face-to-face deception.
You would walk into a bank
or you would walk into a Social Security office.
Tell me about that.
Tell me about the face-to-face deceptions.
-: Look, what I did initially was call Social Security.
I told him I never had one issued.
They said if you've had a bank account
or a driver's license,
you've had you have a Social Security card.
So I hung up.
I called back.
I said, I'm 33-years-old, never had one.
She was like, "That's just not possible."
They're like, "You need to come down here
and talk to somebody.
Bring your birth certificate."
Hang up the phone.
And they kept saying,
"If you were born in a hospital, it was issued."
So then I was like, "okay."
I started thinking about that.
So then I called back and I said,
"Look, I have a son he's three-years-old
and doesn't have a Social Security card.
I need one issued to him."
They said, "Was he born in a hospital?"
"No, he wasn't.
He was born with a midwife."
"Oh, okay, bring him down here."
(scoffs)
I called back.
Then I say my wife left with my son,
he's in Brazil right now with her.
This time, the person said, "Oh, that's too bad,
any children over the age of 12-months-old have to show up."
So I called back and I said,
"He's 10 months old.
Was born with a midwife.
He's not in the country.
What do I need to get him a Social Security number issued?"
And she said, "I need his birth certificate
and a shot record with his name and date of birth on it."
No problem.
I made it for a girl.
I'd surveyed a woman who was homeless
and her name was Rebecca Hickey.
And I made a birth certificate for a child
that was 10-months-old.
Put it together, walked in.
It was perfect.
Social Security gave it to her.
She looked it over.
But as she was talking I remember thinking,
"Rebecca doesn't sound like a baby."
Like the name, Rebecca doesn't sound like a baby.
And I thought, "What's a baby name for Rebecca?"
She said, "Where's the mother?"
I'd like to think that she's in a drug rehab somewhere,
but she may be in jail.
All I know is that baby Becca and I haven't seen her
in six months.
And as soon as I said, baby Becca,
I remember thinking, "What did you come up with?
Baby Becca?"
And I started to laugh and I went,
I remember sitting there going,
and she thought I was crying.
And I remember telling myself, pull yourself together, bro.
What are you doing?
There's like a sheriff in the back.
It's Social Security.
What are you doing?
And so I remember going, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
And she goes, "No, no, it's okay, it's okay.
I have to ask."
And I said, "Okay, I'm sorry."
She goes, "It's fine, hold on."
She went on the computer, she looked.
"You're right, she's never had
a Social Security number issued.
Hold on...
Okay, done.
You'll have it in 10 days."
She gave me my documents, I left.
10 days later, I got a Social Security number
for a Rebecca Hickey.
I had the real Rebecca Hickey's birth certificate.
So I combine those two together.
I order her certified copy of her high school transcripts,
plus registered a vote in her name.
I get a voter's registration card
and I send my girlfriend into the DMV, driver's license.
-: How did you feel as you walked out
of the Social Security office?
-: Oh I felt great!
It felt great.
Listen, it's like there's no better feeling
in the world than walking into like Bank of America,
handing them a fake W-2, fake canceled checks,
fake driver's license.
Have them pull your credit on some guy
that is a complete synthetic identity
and then sign the papers for a loan,
have them hand you a check for $250,000,
and thank you for ripping them off.
"You've been one of the best customers
I've ever worked with.
Thank you very much."
And walk straight out of the bank.
I mean, you feel like 007, you feel like James Bond.
-: So you were able,
because you're being so successful in this industry
with your all of your fraudulent applications
to have your own company.
-: Yeah, I employed about 12 guys.
-: Did your employees know that they were fraudulent?
-: Absolutely.
-: Why were they prepared to get involved
with something like this?
-: Because I was driving an Audi
and they were driving 10-year-old Fords.
-: Did some people say, "Well, actually I'm out."
-: I actually did have brokers do that.
-: They selected themselves in a way.
The honest people went through the door.
The dishonest people stayed with you.
-: Yes.
-: But it did collapse eventually, didn't it?
-: I was living with a girl at the time.
Her name was Amanda.
And Amanda had gone onto my computer one day
to pull something up for me and she saw a letter
that I'd written to my parents.
She thought my name was Joseph Carter.
I was Joseph Marion Carter Jr.--
-: Joseph Carter.
-: So I was going by Carter.
She had clicked on that, she looked at it, she read it,
and it was to George and Margaret Cox
and it was signed Matthew.
So she put in Matthew Cox
and my Secret Services Most Wanted poster showed up.
She contacted the Secret Service.
I get out of my vehicle, cars pull up,
locking up their brakes. (mimics tires screeching)
They jump out with guns.
So I immediately thought, "I'm getting robbed."
But then I realized when I saw Secret Service,
I realized that they told me to get on the ground.
They handcuffed me.
-: And did you realize at that point that this was it,
the game was up? -: I did.
My Secret Services Most Wanted poster showed up.
She contacted the Secret Service.
-: Once you slow it down and freeze it,
all right, somebody is making this face at you, right.
Particularly now looking at you like this,
then enhances the anger face.
The brows are down, they're a little tense.
The upper eyelid is up a little bit.
He's glaring at you.
And the lips are narrowed.
Darwin said that, you know,
the lips curl in is part of an anger face
because it's sort of some primitive biting reflex.
Like your dog will grow and get the lips out of the way
to facilitate a bite.
-: If this expression were any longer you would back away,
wouldn't you?
Because it's pretty aggressive, right?
-: But the thing that's also interesting is
just how quick it was.
And you go on and listen, half a second.
This whole thing is on...
and then he gets back control.
It's caused by the fact that as he's thinking about it,
an emotion is generated.
Emotions are involuntary, they happen.
And this pulse of anger shoots through his body.
It hits his face.
He gets it under control,
but not before some of that leaks out.
-: Why do you think he's here?
-: Let's go back to James Bond.
-: There's no better feeling in the world
than walking into like Bank of America,
have them hand you a check for $250,000.
And thank you for ripping them off.
I mean, you feel like 007, you feel like James Bond.
-: The James Bond villain cannot help telling James Bond
what his plan was 'cause he's so proud of the plan.
-: Exactly. -: Right!
And so James Bond is strapped up
and there's a laser about to cut him in two.
So let's go tell Bond the plan because,
"It's so good, I can't wait to tell somebody."
And then of course James Bond escapes and well in this case,
Secret Service got him.
But nonetheless, I think there's some pride in that
and this is what we're seeing.
-: Yeah, I think he's here not
to learn anything about himself.
I think he's here to sell himself
as the con-artist extraordinaire in the hope
that he can achieve a level of fame and fortune from this.
-: Crime that will pay.
(gentle music)
-: EEG is a tool to measure brain activity.
It looks like a swim cap.
It has electrodes on it
that you put on your surface of the head
and it listens to brain cells deep inside.
Does it feel comfortable, first of all, to you?
-: No!
-: I know why it's not comfortable,
You put it reversed. -: I what?
-: That the back of it.
In the brain you have billions of small cells
and they all, so to speak, makes little sound
that in itself is too weak for us to understand.
If enough of them speak together,
the EEG will pick up on that.
So it will register that something happened in this part
or in this part or this part.
And now we're gonna start getting your brain data.
And we got it.
If I get a coronal test
that has unique characteristic to him.
Let's say they feel no emotions at all when they see images,
then after I showed them enough pictures,
then I see that those pictures don't change anything.
There would be results there.
One part has to remember, one part has to do with emotion,
one part has to do with attention, and so on.
-: Okay.
-: So for typical subject in a study,
this person maybe doesn't feel emotion
in a similar way to the control subjects,
and that would be a result.
Maybe they feel more,
maybe they're feeling emotional all the time.
And so the changes has been not just
when I showed them bad words or good words,
but every time I talk, it happens.
Also result.
So everything that will be deviating from what I have
as data from a lot of people that behave in one way
would be interesting for me.
And that's what I hope, expect, and look forward to.
You're gonna give me a number from one to 10,
Where one is very negative.
10, very positive.
-: Five.
One. (chuckles)
You know, nine. (gentle music)
Five. (gentle music)
Hmm, two. (gentle music)
Five. (gentle music)
Jesus, one. (gentle music)
Five. (gentle music)
Nine. (gentle music)
Three. -: Done.
Excellent.
How do you think you did?
Was it hard for you or easy?
Did you think you did a good job or?
-: I would say better than average.
-: Any pictures stood out to you saying, "Oh my God."
-: Well, I mean, I didn't expect to see my family's pictures.
But it didn't strike me one way or the other.
I kind of have a neutral feeling about that.
-: You give them a five every time so it's neutral.
-: Yeah, there was nothing.
It didn't shake me or anything.
(tense music)
-: So did you also measure brainwave activity?
-: Yeah.
-: And what was happening there?
-: It seems that his responses are all over the place,
they cover from one to 10.
The brain activity was a lot narrower.
So he says 10, but the level of what we call approach is
like a six it's a little bit making him feel.
And when he says a one, it's usually a negative picture,
but it makes the move to like a four.
So he hovers around the five and he moves a little bit.
The brain reflects the answer.
But verbally he's a lot more wider
in the range than in brainwave.
-: I'm just curious, as far as any measure
on the specifics of those images.
-: It wasn't the picture of the family got a five
on the ranking, but actually in his mind
it was extremely negative.
It's close enough, four to five.
So I can't really say, "It evokes negative feelings in him,
but he suppresses them."
I wouldn't go that far.
-: So could this be a case of somebody
who is very practiced blocking out those emotions
because they're distressing?
-: You have to have some kind of level of control
of your emotions if you're dealing with it all the time.
-: You know, what are the tools that he uses
to be able to execute the cons, right?
So when you look at it from that point of view,
your ability to turn it on and turn it off
to manipulate and control the interaction,
that becomes one of these requisite skills.
(gentle music)
-: I think that the childhoods of our con artists tell us
so much about the con itself.
So why did they choose that particular one?
And I don't know whether they are consciously aware
themselves of why they've taken that route,
but it all seems to make sense
when you learn more about their childhood.
People often don't have any awareness of the unmet needs
that they bring with them from childhood,
because it's just part and parcel of their life.
It's part and parcel of their makeup.
So let's start at the beginning.
You were born in Tampa, Florida.
Tell me about your family life.
-: Our father and son time was going to the movies.
Most of the time, it wasn't going to movies.
He would pick me up and he'd drive me there
and he'd give me a $20 bill.
And he'd wait and see me go buy the ticket, walk in there,
and then he'd leave.
That was our father-son time.
-: Tell me more about your father,
because I understand that he had some problems.
-: He was an alcoholic.
So he struggled with alcoholism
and addiction to prescription painkillers.
-: So what was his pattern of behavior?
-: He was never physically abusive,
but he was mentally abusive.
He was just,
my mom used to call it "tongue lashings," she would say.
He would call my sisters whores.
My brother and I were useless and stupid.
We'd never be anything.
-: And did you take that to heart?
-: Oh, definitely.
I had dyslexia, I'm already failing in school.
I could barely read and write.
And I got this guy that I really admire telling me
that I'm going to be nothing.
(tense music)
He was a functioning alcoholic, binge drinker.
So he might go, he might go a month or two without drinking.
He'd go on a binge for a week.
He'd sober up for sometimes a year
and then he'd go on a binge for a week or two.
So they put them in a rehab.
-: I'm George, I'm an alcoholic.
-: He'd be okay for a year or two.
And maybe he'd get drunk three or four times in a year.
He was an asshole.
The bottom line is he was just an asshole.
I never felt safe.
-: And how did you survive those as a child?
-: I just became extremely quick-witted,
was able to talk my way out.
You become funny, you focus on getting people to like you.
(tense music)
-: You do see in people who are brought up
in homes where there's alcoholism or violence
or other sorts of things, is they become fairly vigilant.
In fact, hypervigilant is the word that we would use.
Kerry: Well, he's looking around the room all the time.
He seems to be monitoring his environment constantly.
-: Right, and when you seem under threat,
so it's clear, it initiates the emotion of fear.
And with fear, your eyes get a little bit wider.
Now you're looking around a little bit more.
And when you widen your eyes,
you're sort of expanding your visual field.
And then moving your eyes, you're expanding it even further.
And it often becomes sort of subconscious at this level.
He knows you're not going to go take a swing at him.
-: Yeah, but he didn't know that when he was a child, did he?
He didn't know that his father wasn't going
to take a swing at him.
And let's not forget,
this is a man who's just out of federal prison.
He was on the run for how many years?
Where he had to be aware of his environment
because he could have been apprehended at any time.
So that hypervigilance,
do you think that that will impact on his test results?
-: He would be better than average for sure.
As far as reading the subtle emotions,
children raised in abused environment.
So you would definitely predict that he would be better
than the average person at reading other people.
We're gonna start out by looking at your judgment,
your ability to read other people.
So there's going to be two tests.
This first one is going to feature 10 people
and they are going to either lie or tell the truth
about their opinion on one of two topics.
One topic was worded
should convicted cold-blooded murderers be executed?
So some people say yes, some say no.
Are they telling the truth when they say yes,
or are they lying when they say yes?
Or same with the no.
-: Okay? -: Okay.
-: All right, so. -: Go ahead?
-: Yes, go ahead. -: All right.
Interviewer: What is your position on execution?
-: I don't believe that they should be executed.
Interviewer: Why do you believe that?
-: I don't see how the state can justify itself
and I should kill another person to justify what they,
what the other person's done.
You know?
(tense music)
-: Smoking and non-smoking sections,
I mean, that's seems fair enough to me.
Interviewer: How long have you had this?
-: Ever since they brought it up,
ever since it was in the news and stuff like that.
-: Is this your true belief? -: Yes.
-: You didn't just make this up?
-: No. (chuckles)
-: Are you lying to me? -: No.
-: Liar, I could see you look completely uncomfortable.
-: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
And I feel that it's justice.
There's always a chance that it could be the wrong person
or something like that.
(tense music)
-: Boy, I believed him til the end.
-: There were a couple of times where you said, "you know,
I've heard enough time to move on."
Why was that?
-: One of the guys was he had no reason...
for why he felt the way he felt.
I think that the majority of people I basically trust.
If you have a motivation to lie
or you're trying to convince me of something
then I automatically don't trust you.
You need something from me.
You want something from me.
So I immediately just distrust you.
But if I just bumped into some guy and he says,
"Hey, what's up?
I like your shirt," or whatever, I believe him.
There's no reason for you to lie about that.
There's no benefit.
If there's a benefit for you
then I question everything you say.
Big believer in Ronald Reagan, "trust, but verify."
(tense music)
-: He gets about 70% on the deception test.
That is high.
The group who we've tested has done the best on this
is the US Secret Service and they average 73%.
So he is right on the cusp of where they as a group will do.
And that's the best group we've ever tested on.
-: So the headline is Matthew Cox,
better than the Secret Service in detecting deception.
-: Not better, but close. -: Close.
-: And I think he probably be very happy to hear that.
Talked about the Secret Service chasing him down
on more than one occasion.
It suggests though that he's very good at reading people
and judging and assessing them.
-: And this makes sense because he's spending
all of time reading people, right?
Like you kind of constantly,
you talk to him and he's busy playing a chess game
with entire room. -: Right.
And he has this ability to learn from it.
'Cause you know, in everything he does,
it's almost this sort of blunt force learning.
-: The positive version of ADHD.
You're constantly running around doing other things,
but it's all in the service of understanding the room.
-: You started working 1998 with Eagle Finance Service?
-: It was Eagle Lending.
The first loan I ever did had fraud.
Before you sent off a package to the home office
to be underwritten, you're to bring it to your manager.
She said, "Your borrower has a 30 day late
on her verification of rent."
And that was it, your deal is done, it's over.
She pulled out a bottle of White Out.
Do you remember the old White Out, you could (swishing)?
-: Do you have problems in your life
that you want to get rid of?
-: She started going, she goes here's what I'd do.
-: Seriously, White Out will solve all your problems.
-: She said, "I would white it out,
make a copy of it, and stick that back in the file,
send it to underwriting."
And I was like, "That's fraud.
Like I could go to jail."
And she said, "You're not gonna get caught."
And so I whited it out.
I made a copy, stuck it in the file,
sent it to underwriting.
The loan came back, it was approved.
I got a check for 3,500 bucks.
I was thrilled, thrilled.
Next guy that came in,
three days later, I got a loan to close.
Next guy, same thing.
Next guy, listen, after a couple of months,
if you walked into my office with a pulse,
you were getting alone.
-: Matt has the ability to kind of turn off any feelings
that he might have about who else might get hurt
in the process.
It didn't bother him to charge somebody a lot of money,
you know, more than what was fair.
I still feel a little uncomfortable, you know,
not disclosing all that to those people.
(tense music)
Kerry: What do you make of Mr. Matthew Cox?
-: He basically said that he's a psychopath.
I mean, he has psychopathy.
And he said that it's on a scale,
because I was a bit like, "Ooh."
-: So how long had you been speaking to him
before he told you that he was a psychopath?
-: I think in that first 10 minutes, I would say.
-: Within the first 10 minutes of meeting you,
he announces that he's a psychopath?
-: But it almost felt like a bit threat.
Because he said like, "Be careful what you say about me."
-: I was wondering,
because I've heard that you're quite upfront with people
when you first meet them.
"Hi, I'm Matt Cox, and oh, I'm a psychopath."
Has it become--
-: (chuckles) I don't think I've said that.
My into is, my catchphrase is,
"Hi, my name's Matt Cox and I'm a con man."
-: Right, okay.
-: I think if the psychopath comes up,
if somebody says, "Well, you know, you feel bad about that?"
Or I've had numerous people ask me,
"Do you feel bad about that?"
No, no, and if they say "Why?"
Then I typically say, "'Cause I'm a psychopath."
-: I want to know whether he's as big a psychopath
as he wants us to believe or whether actually,
we're being conned a little bit there as well.
-: If you were to kind of give it a intuitive answer,
do you think that those are applicable to him
or it's just a good show?
-: Of course it works nicely for him.
It means that nobody can have any expectations
of reasonable behavior from him,
because, "Hey, I'm a psychopath."
-: One of the observations that Kerry and I sort of came
to a conclusion watching him was
he was an adrenaline junkie, it looked like.
-: Well, it seems that being a con artist
is his own extreme sport.
He just absolutely loves it.
And he's very comfortable talking about it,
which is brilliant.
It's brilliant for us because he's giving us a master class
in how to pull off a con.
-: I'd seen the movie "Reservoir Dogs" by Tarantino.
In the movie they'd given all the bad guys
these color coded names.
So what I decided on was
I was gonna start using color-coded names.
So I went with Michael White, David Silver,
Lee Black, Brandon Green, James Red, Glen Pink.
At the time I thought I was being cute.
The judge didn't think it was cute.
And I would go online and I would apply
for secured credit cards in the name, Brandon Green.
Only this time, I wouldn't use the date of birth
of a 10-month-old child,
I would use the date of birth for the same date of birth,
but the year I would change for a 32-year-old man.
There's Brandon Green works here, has three credit cards.
All of them are paid well.
Now I've got a perfect synthetic identity.
-: Do you think he is smart?
Above average? -: Yeah.
-: He says that he has an IQ of around 130, 140,
which is way above average.
Undoubtedly, he's a smart guy.
-: And he has this ability to iteratively learn, right?
So one step, but the keep in mind with each of these steps,
you have to remember all these steps.
So they build on each other
and he doesn't seem to lose the previous step.
-: Can you imagine the confusion for most people
in having a range of different identities?
-: One time I was running up a bunch of credit cards
for like 50,000 or $100,000.
I remember walking in,
randomly gave the person the credit card
and they went, "Huh, it says to call."
This was back when they would call.
And the woman turns to me and she says,
"They want your date of birth."
And I go, "Huh?
Hold on a second, let me see who I am today."
And I open up the wallet, I said,
"I'm so-and-so and my date of birth is July 7th, 1970.
There it is right there."
And she went (chuckles) "Oh, it's 1970."
-: That wasn't it a huge red flag?
-: I could just be some jerk who's being cute.
My name is Matt Cox and I'm a con man.
What are you concerned about doing one?
I've never seen 55 million dollars.
Anyway, being on the run was
the most alive times of my life.
(tense music)
-: Was it a stressful way to live?
-: I mean, yes, but at that point
I was taking a drug called Paxil.
(tense music)
Everything's perfectly okay and everything went fine
and everything is great.
And you're walking through the supermarket
and suddenly I would get this overwhelming sensation
that God was about to just kill me.
I was about to die.
And my heart starts pumping, you know,
banging in my chest, and I stop and I can't catch my breath.
And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I'm dying, I'm dying."
Like, "I'm about to die and you have this coming."
My rational thought is thinking,
"What are you doing?
You're like 32-years-old.
You're in great shape.
You're not gonna die.
You're fine, this is just anxiety.
Take a Xanax."
(gentle music)
-: And were there any particular incidents
that proceeded those panic attacks?
-: No, because by that point I was closing loans
with that contained fraud so regularly.
It was every few days.
This loans closing, there's bad W-2's.
This loans closing, that company doesn't exist.
You know, this loans closing
and this guy's getting $60,000 back
that he's not supposed to.
And you know, there was always something going wrong with,
not going wrong, but some fraudulent thing happening
in all of these transactions all the time.
So the stress level is up there.
It's being mitigated by drugs,
and periodically, there's a panic attack in there,
and you take a Xanax and just keep on going.
-: From all of my experience with people who do bad things,
there are a lot of moments where they kind of feel remorse
and they feel regret or they expend,
but there's one thing that's common to all of them.
And that is when you ask them to reflect on it,
they say, "I felt alive."
-: And he mentioned this, right?
When he's immersed in the moment,
he has panic attacks later,
but never in the moment, never while it's going on.
It's always sort of a delayed reaction
at some random point afterwards.
So while he's in it though,
it' engages, I think, all of his senses,
all of his mind, everything is tied up.
He's alive. -: He's in flow.
He's in creative flow, but on steroids.
-: His fear of insignificance is so strong
that it overrides the social norms that you would have.
He's jovial on the outside,
but I don't think he ever, ever experiences
any true peace or satisfaction.
(gentle music)
-: What you're going to see is
like a neutral face will pop up.
-: Right.
-: And then about three seconds later,
you'll see the same person,
but this time showing an expression,
maybe like happy or fear or whatever,
but only for one fifteenth of a second.
And then it goes back to the neutral face.
So it'll be a flash.
So once that image appears, don't blink.
Then make your judgment,
circle what emotion you thought you saw.
Okay? (tense music)
It is a very quick flash.
Use your best judgment.
(tense music)
The term we use for these are called micro expressions.
A little artificial because in daily day-to-day life,
people don't go, with a neutral face.
They're talking, their heads are moving,
but you might get little expressions.
Sometimes they fit what the person is saying
and sometimes they don't.
How good are you at perceiving that?
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Is that the last one?
-: That's it. -: Okay.
(tense music)
Let's look at his ability to judge
very subtle emotions shown one fifteenth of the second,
these micro expressions.
He gets 64% correct on this.
The average person gets 55 or so.
So he's scoring higher than average there.
Now he's not scoring like super high,
so it shows he is perceptive, but again,
not off the charts perceptive, but yet perceptive.
-: I had him take the effective test where, you know,
asked him about emotions in response of things.
And I noticed that his response,
when he gives you the answer are not aligned
with what I think his brain tells me.
So he sees a picture of something
and he gives a correct answer.
He says, "That's a bad picture,"
but he doesn't respond in disgust to a bad picture.
He kind of knows the correct answer,
but it doesn't seem to show in the way I would expect.
-: Maybe he's just playing it close to the vest.
-: He fell right where the average person falls,
in the middle of the bell curve.
Maybe he just learned to become kind of blend in
because that's a good con artist skill
to look like everyone else.
-: Yeah, it's funny, you know,
I was just thinking exactly that when you were saying that.
You know, we worry about tests,
people faking good or faking bad, but people faking average.
Is that (chuckles) actually a thing, right?
-: That is the result, just the center.
-: Maybe that's the con man skillset, right?
Faking average, looking, blending in, all the other stuff.
-: That actually would make sense.
Like you go to a room,
you check all the 20 people in the room
and kind of figure out what's the average,
what's the bell curve.
And you say, "Okay, I'm gonna pivot
to be like everyone else.
So no, one's going to tell that I am the outlier."
-: And when he shows up at the bank,
you want to look average.
You don't want to look really poor.
You don't want to look really rich.
You don't want to do things
that are gonna draw attention to yourself.
"I'm an average guy taking out $26,000 in cash."
(tense music)
-: I noticed when we were chatting in the kitchen,
you mirror body language.
Do you do that deliberately
or is that just something that you do naturally?
So when I change-- -: I didn't notice it.
-: You don't notice that? -: No.
-: So when I was like this in the kitchen.
-: I wasn't feeling defensive.
-: Yeah, so that was just a natural--
-: Or maybe I was.
-: Oh, I don't know that.
But you--
-: Little bit, told my girlfriend,
I said, "I don't think this chick likes me.
She's a little bit hard on me."
-: I'm a little bit hard on everybody.
That's my job, that's my job.
But it's not been too bad, has it?
-: It hasn't been super comfortable.
(tense music)
-: He's a marvelous liar.
Like he had me convinced about his ex-wife,
when her and I got together after he took off
and we started comparing notes, it was amazing.
Just the intricate lies that he told
to keep the two of us from talking.
To keep lies like that going, and that's five years,
he was married and then divorced
the whole time I was around.
Like, it was fantastic.
He's a fantastic liar.
(tense music)
-: These are women that I was dating
that saw that I had money
that were interested in getting involved
and making some money.
Now I'm not running a charity.
If you say, "Hey, you know, what can I do
so I can make some money?"
Well, then I'm gonna say,
"Well, look, if you want to do this and this and this,
I'll give you this percentage of whatever we end up making."
What happens is then when they get caught,
it turned into, "He targeted me.
He knew I was broke.
He knew I was a single mother struggling.
He coerced me into getting involved in his scams."
(tense music)
And all of that was done and orchestrated by this attorney
so that when they got in front of the judge,
they could try and mitigate their role.
The media picked up on it because that's great.
This guy's a complete scumbag!
What I did is bad enough, I don't need you to make it worse!
-: Everybody paid a price that associated
with Matt somehow some way.
Some people did jail time.
Some of them are on probation.
Some of them lost lots of money,
recognition, all that stuff.
And I just think, "You can sit there and say,
"Well, Matt's manipulative,"
and Matt's this and that and everything,
but we're all adults.
We're all adults and responsible
for the choices that we make.
-: But then how you met your current girlfriend?
-: I met in the halfway house.
-: What is a halfway house?
-: So when you're released from prison,
they release you to a halfway house.
She had been in prison for five years on a meth conspiracy.
So she was a drug dealer.
I met her in the halfway house.
I targeted her.
She's a single mother and I targeted her.
And I thought, "I'm making her my girlfriend
and she has no choice."
So I worked on over the next six months
and we started dating and we're still dating to this day.
(gentle music)
-: It seems to me that you are a fast learner.
So when you got caught for the first time,
why didn't you stop?
-: Well, so after getting caught, I had two choices.
It's either claim bankruptcy and get a job at McDonald's
and start my whole life over as a felon,
or I thought I could just go deeper into the fraud.
I'd done a bunch of fraudulent loans for my ex-wife.
She borrowed like half a million dollars on some houses.
She then called me and asked me
to meet her and her husband for lunch.
She tells me the FBI raided her office,
took a bunch of her files, and took some of my files
that proved that were fraudulent.
And she said, "The FBI is asking me questions about you."
I immediately start saying,
"Oh my God, you didn't tell him this, did you?
You didn't tell him the W-2's are fake?
You didn't tell him this?"
You just start, I mean, I laid out their case for them
within about 30 seconds.
And then as I'm talking, I realize,
"Oh man, she and her husband are wired."
(tense music)
-: You got set up and you got played.
So how did you feel?
-: Oh, that was horrible, horrible!
And I was just like, just shocked.
And the truth is it was, you know, pride.
My pride has gotten me into so much trouble.
Every bad decision I've ever made in my life
was all based on my pride.
(gentle music)
Kerry: And you eventually were on the most wanted list.
-: Right. -: How did your family,
I'm thinking of your father in particular,
how did he react?
-: When I was in prison,
I think he came once or twice with my mom
and then he came one time by himself.
-: Right, and how did that go?
-: I mean, it didn't...
I would say it went well.
When he walked in, I immediately thought my mom had died.
He'd never come by himself.
So why would you come by yourself?
Like my mother dragged him down there before.
So he walked in and he sat down
and he said, "Oh, it's okay.
Your mom's fine, she's fine."
He said, "I just wanted to come down and talk to you."
And he just said...
We just talked.
He said...
I mean, we just talked
-: Did you feel that you made peace with him then
before he died?
-: I had my outdate for prison,
I was gonna be released in 2030,
and I didn't have any chance
that I was gonna get it reduced.
He said, "You're going to be okay.
You'll get out of here."
I was like, "Yeah, in 2030,"
I said, "I'll probably die in here."
And he said, "No, no."
He said, "You're smart and you're clever,
and you're going to figure a way out."
And I just remember thinking, "You're fucking delusional."
He just said he was proud of me.
And that-- -: Had he said that before?
-: I don't know if he's ever said it before,
but it was it just felt like a slap in the face.
-: It felt like a slap in the face?
-: Because I had done so many things
and I had seen it and felt like he was proud of me,
but this time, you know, I was in federal prison.
Like I'm in federal prison doing 26 years
for something that I'm 100% guilty of,
and now you're proud of me.
Like, you know--
-: Why couldn't you be that back in the day
when I needed you to be that. -: Right!
When I wanted to be an artist,
wasn't fucking proud of me.
When I wanted to, you know,
there were so many things along the way
that he could have showed some interest
or pride in and he never did.
I end up in fucking prison, now you're proud of me.
I mean the guy, he was just a dick.
-: That drive to impress his father
and to be able to so singularly focus
and be able to work systematically down the line
and keep it all in his head at the same time,
I think was really impressive.
And then trying to appeal to his father.
-: If he were this huge psychopath
that he's been portrayed as,
and actually he portrays himself as on occasions,
you would have expected
to find something unusual, wouldn't you?
And you didn't.
-: At least to find him not at the center would be a start.
And even that didn't happen.
-: So there was nothing that was going psychopath brain,
psychopath brain, psychopath brain?
-: Neither in his brain, nor in his behavior.
(gentle music)
-: Hi. (gentle music)
-: So I ran tons of tests with you.
We spent hours running through enough tests.
There was nothing that kind of was separated
between what your brain does and what your behavior does.
There was a perfect alignment
between what you said about your brain, so to speak, said.
-: I mean, I'm okay with that.
I don't think anything's gonna change my behavior
or alter, you know, my perception of myself.
-: No, I don't think so either.
And we noticed that you don't fully appreciate
the impact that you've had on other people
and the havoc that you've wrecked in other people's lives
in terms of your fraudulent behavior.
You conned institutions, banks,
so you don't really think about individual victims.
-: There are more and more stories
about what's called the brain defense.
People who do something bad and then they go to court
and their defense is "it's not me, it's my brain."
Would you characterize yourself in any way
as like someone who--
-: I wouldn't try and use that as a defense.
-: It's interesting that nothing has come back
that says, "Wow, this guy has a psychopathic brain."
Yes, you love cons.
It's easy isn't it,
to go with the mega psycho responses
because you get a reaction out of people.
-: It's a shock value and it's what you know,
and people want to hear that and I'm good with it.
-: So you'd rather hear that, psychopath,
than really smart guy who cut some corners and fraudulent,
and got some money.
-: Yeah, there's lots of those guys, yeah.
-: So psychopath has gotten panache to you?
-: Yeah. (gentle music)
-: I think that you've got some incredible skills.
You're incredibly creative.
When they're mixed with more pleasant characteristics,
such as humility, put you in a sweet spot for success.
Does that make sense? -: Right.
(gentle music)
-: It was a pleasure. -: All right, nice meeting you.
-: Take care, nice to meet you.
(gentle music)
-: This was interesting. (gentle music)
-: Safe journey back. -: Thanks, you too.
(gentle music)
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