Tampa, Florida murals in several of the Tampa apartments he fraudulently obtained. Cox left his job as an insurance agent to work as a
mortgage broker for a local company. While there he developed a reputation for unscrupulousness, which was heightened by his authorship of an unpublished 317-page
manuscript entitled
The Associates. The novel's protagonist, who shares many traits in common with Cox, travels the country committing mortgage fraud. Cox told co-workers about the book, and elaborated its details to them. According to a former co-worker: "He sent it to a lot of people to see if they thought it worked." In one instance he used the social security number of a toddler, and all of his documents—references, bank letters, rent receipts,
W-2s from nonexistent employers—were counterfeit. Cox took advantage of the
Hillsborough County school district by selling it a property for much more than its appraised value, and arranged financing on a $90,000 house for future
Florida Representative Janet Cruz. He recorded that sale for $233,000, and hired Cruz to do some rezoning research. Cruz claims she was unaware he inflated the sale price, and that she was never paid for her research. When a female accomplice rented a house in
Pinellas County as part of Cox's schemes, then faked ownership of the property, the owner found out about the fraud. A
title company manager had become suspicious of a loan Cox's accomplice was applying for on the house and called the property's real owner. The
Clearwater Police department was contacted, and they began an investigation. Cox and Arnold grew apart and eventually Cox began courting another woman. She had already committed criminal offenses before meeting Cox, and was fired from a job in Las Vegas for forging her employer's name on checks that she used to pay her debts. After finding out that Jeff Testerman, a reporter for the
St. Petersburg Times, was investigating him, Cox and Hauck left town. Two days later, on December 14, 2003, the newspaper published Testerman's story, "Dubious Housing Deals Line Avenue". The story detailed Urban Equities Inc., an investment company started by Cox. Despite her involvement in the purchase or sale of 58 properties in six years, she claimed that she and the other remaining shareholder were "incapable of operating or managing Urban Equity", so the company was put into
receivership. His partners claimed to be unaware of Cox's dealings, and they were financially ruined by the collapse of the company.
Crime spree across the southern states Cox and Hauck fled to
Atlanta and settled there. During this period, he traveled to
Mobile,
Alabama, and using the identity of a former co-worker, acquired credit cards and the credit needed to rent a home. After filing false documents that indicated he owned the house, Cox took out mortgages on the property for several hundred thousand dollars. He took out one mortgage under the name of
The Simpsons character "
C. Montgomery Burns". News broadcasts showed photos of Cox and Hauck and requested that viewers provide any information pertaining to their whereabouts. By spring 2005, the couple had eluded authorities for eighteen months, using dozens of identities, including ones stolen from former co-workers and acquaintances. Cox also stole identities from the homeless by posing as a survey–taking
Red Cross worker to acquire their
social security numbers. At this point, due to remorse and anxiety, Arnold called the FBI and confessed. She was sentenced to two years in prison for numerous offenses, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud and
identity theft. Arnold was also ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution to her victims. Shortly thereafter, Cox filed multiple mortgages on two houses for $886,318 in
Columbia,
South Carolina in less than a week. An abstractor noticed this, and a fraud alert was issued on one of Cox's money-laundering bank accounts. He was arrested when he returned to the bank to make a transaction, but he told authorities his name was "Gary Lee Sullivan", one of about thirty
aliases Cox had at the time; because "Sullivan" had no open warrants, the police released him. Shortly afterwards, Cox and Hauck moved to Houston, but they separated and she remained there in hiding under an assumed name. A year later the Secret Service found Hauck and arrested her. In May 2006, after being on the run from authorities for two and a half years, Cox was placed on the Secret Service's Most Wanted Fugitives List. He was dating a single mother, Amanda Gardner, who was unaware of his criminal past, and posing as the owner of a home restoration business. Cox used a falsified passport to travel to Europe on a cruise of the
Greek Isles with Gardner. He did not spend much time in Italy or Greece due to his intense fear of
Interpol. He temporarily escaped capture due to a chance series of events. Cox and Gardner's home was
burglarized, and they checked into a hotel. On November 16, 2006, Cox was arrested by a half dozen
Secret Service agents—who had been pursuing him for more than two years—when he and Gardner returned from the hotel.
Prison Cox faced 42 counts of fraud, in addition to felony charges for fleeing while on probation from a previous conviction. he negotiated a plea bargain agreement that gave him a maximum of 54 years, and a $2 million fine. On April 10, 2007; Cox formally pleaded guilty to six counts of bank fraud, identity theft,
passport fraud, conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud, and violating the terms of his probation from his 2002 mortgage fraud conviction. On November 17, 2007, federal judge
Timothy Batten sentenced Cox to 26 years in prison. He also ordered Cox to pay $5.97 million in restitution. and possibly more than $25 million. He is believed to have fraudulently mortgaged more than 100 properties. Cox was ordered to serve a 26-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), a low-security facility in Coleman, Florida. He was ordered to pay $5.97 million in restitution and required to testify against his co-conspirators. As of 2010, the
United States Attorney's office has not brought charges against any of his 13 Tampa-area cohorts, even though Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Mosakowski informed a judge in 2005 that he planned to bring charges against up to 13 accomplices. While in prison, Cox mailed several letters to the
St. Petersburg Times in 2008 in which he accused politician Kevin White of taking bribes from him during Cox's criminal career. He claims he made payoffs to White, an ultimately successful candidate for the
Tampa City Council, in 2002 and 2003. Cox said White told him he could not receive the money directly, and suggested that Cox have friends donate $500 each, and then reimburse them. Records and statements from those who donated show that Cox did in fact make numerous contributions to White's campaign, and reimbursed others who did so as well. White, he claims, agreed to vote to rezone vacant properties in Tampa and
Ybor City. When Cox was first arrested, the FBI talked to him about White, whom they were also investigating, and he told them the same information. He claimed to have paid him $7,000 in cash in addition to the recorded contributions he arranged. White has denied that he knew these contributions were reimbursed, and called Cox's accusations "the jailhouse ramblings of a reputed con man." Cox had fled the Tampa area before White cast any rezoning votes, so there is no voting record which could help confirm the validity of his accusations. In 2012, White, who had gone on to serve as Hillsborough County Commissioner, was convicted of unrelated federal bribery and corruption charges and sentenced to three years in federal prison. During his time in prison, Cox introduced himself to arms trader
Efraim Diveroli after reading a
Rolling Stone article on him, and encouraged him to write a memoir. Diveroli agreed to let Cox write the memoir, as he had "boxes of evidence" under his bed while fighting his own trial. When Diveroli left the complex, he took the manuscript with him and Cox claims to not have been compensated for it since; the two are in a mediated settlement process. After writing this memoir, other inmates approached Cox to write their stories, resulting in a number of true crime manuscripts being written by Cox in prison. He was released from federal prison on July 19, 2019. == Unpublished novel ==