Fraud by the book

By the spring of 2005, Rebecca Hauck and the mortgage fraud mastermind Matthew Cox hadbeen on the run for 18 months, weaving their way north from Tampa.

They were suspected of juggling dozens of identities, including those stolen from former acquaintances.

Scott Cugno: I believe he’s a genius.

Forging documents, taking money out of homes, they left homeowners and lenders fighting over the chaos.

Sam Dobrow: It’s a chess game, and every time he walks out of closing it’s checkmate…

And remember, Cox had also left behind the woman who’d become his first accomplice. And while Cox and his new partner ran, Alison Arnold was increasingly haunted by the crimes she helped commit—just like a character in that novel Cox has written years before.

Excerpt from the novel: This poor girl was trapped in a spot Houdini couldn’t have gotten out of. It was very possible she may spend the next 15 to 20 years in federal prison.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. And so she picked up the phone, and called the FBI, before the bureau came to her.

Alison Arnold: They would have knocked on my door. And I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to get it over with. I knew that what goes up must come down.

But Matthew Cox had no such fear. The step-by-step schemes that investigators said he’d laid out years earlier in a novel of all things, had worked out perfectly. His take? Authorities estimated some $5 million.

Morrison: Does he think other people are stupid?

Rebecca Hauck: Yeah, he thinks he’s smarter than everybody. Like, he would make comments, ‘we’re not commoners’.

Morrison: “We’re not commoners”?

Hauck: He would say stuff like that. I truly believe he believes it, that he’s better than people.

And then one day, in the spring of 2005, Rebecca was briefly alone and her phone rang.

Hauck: He called me and said, “You may have to be on your own. I’ve just been picked up.” I was distraught, I could not even fathom what would happen to me if he wasn’t there.

Morrison: How would you live?

Hauck: Exactly!

Finally, it had happened. A sharp-eyed court clerk in Columbia, South Carolina had noticed Cox had put several mortgages on two houses, in a matter of days. A fraud alert was issued on one of his money-laundering bank accounts. And so, there were photos of Cox inside the very bank, where his luck was about to run out. He was taken into custody just outside.

Hauck: He actually got taken to the police department. And they had him in custody.

They brought him to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department in Columbia, South Carolina. It was the end of one audacious crime spree.

Or...was it?

The man deputies were questioning told them his name was Gary Lee Sullivan. Which was, in fact, one of his 30 or so fake IDs. And since there was no warrant for any Gary Lee Sullivan, they let him go. Matthew Cox simply walked away.

Morrison: How frustrating was that for you?

Gale McKenzie, assistant U.S. attorney: Extremely frustrating.

Morrison: So close!

McKenzie: So very close.

Cox had slipped away, and he soon re-joined Rebecca.

But she knew something was changing. Her face, she knew, had shown up on wanted posters.

And she’d recently caught Cox trolling the very spot where he’d found her: Match.com.

That could mean only one thing: he was looking for a new accomplice.

She was finished.

Hauck: As we’re driving, he’s like, “We need to do this again.” I’m like, “No, I am not gonna do this again.” I go, “I can’t do this. Enough’s enough. It’s over.” And I think that’s when it clicked with him that i wasn’t gonna do it any more. We got into an argument. I went and got in the bath, and he left. Left everything.

Morrison: You came out of the bathroom and he was gone…

Hauck: He left me enough probably to live for about six, seven months.

Once, he’d swept her off her feet—showered her with clothes, and cash and diamonds. And, she says, he made her his partner in crime. And now he was, simply, gone.

Morrison: Would you have stayed with him right through to the end?

Hauck: I had every intention when I left with him, yeah. To the end.

Morrison: “Stick it out no matter what.” Go down in a blaze of glory?

Hauck: Yeah.

Morrison: Really be Bonnie and Clyde. That was a romantic image in a way, wasn’t it?

Hauck: I wanted to be loved unconditionally. I wanted… yes, I think so.

Rebecca found herself alone, now in Houston, where they had come to find new victims.

Instead, Rebecca settled into a quiet life on the lam. She made new friends, changed her hair color, and once again, picked a new name.

Morrison: What do they know you as?

Hauck: Rebecca Sue Hickey.

And as Rebecca Sue Hickey, in Houston, she says she went straight. She worked as a bartender and attended cosmetology school.

But beyond that, she says, she spent nearly every waking moment missing the son she’d left at the Tampa airport.  Bryce was 15 now. She hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in two years.

Morrison: Were you holding back those tears all those months you were away from him?

Hauck: I cried a lot about him. I’d look at his pictures. He had a MySpace page and I typed in his name and his thing came up.  And I was floored.

Morrison: How often did you check MySpace?

Hauck: Probably four or five times a day.

For nearly a year, she says, she lived and worked and pined for her son… and waited.

Then one day, in March 2006, the Secret Service came walking into that cosmetology school.

What would happen now that Rebecca Hauck a.k.a. Rebecca Sue Hickey, a.k.a. Grace Hudson was finally caught?

Hauck: When they came and picked me up, i just felt like, I was scared but I felt this big relief.

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