‘Friends in Low Places.’ NC couple stopped in Garth Brooks’ hometown with almost $400K
It sounded like a country song.
In late November, when Charlotte-area resident Jonathan Reed Mozeak was pulled over at the intersection of Interstate 40 and — get this — Garth Brooks Boulevard in the singer’s hometown of Yukon, Okla., he had a mysterious woman by his side, almost $400,000 stowed in his rental car, and a pre-dawn story for state troopers that was as long and winding as the road.
About how Mozeak had just sold a club back in Charlotte that he was tired of running, and was now driving through the night from North Carolina to California to visit an old military buddy who was sick with COVID-19, a buddy who Mozeak had to admit didn’t know he was coming.
Money? What money? At least that’s what Mozeak said early into his 2 a.m. roadside chat with a trooper on Nov. 30.
But as these things are apt to do, Mozeak’s story soon changed. After the trooper called in a drug dog, two backpacks carrying $383,590 in rubber-banded and Ziploc-bagged currency turned up, including a whole mess of $20s — 14,124 of them to be exact, court documents show.
Faced with this new information, Mozeak now said the cash was part of the $1.5 million sale of his former club in Charlotte, and that while he was out in California, he might spend it on a house.
His companion, identified in court documents as Tina Davis, said she did not know anything about any money. Only that Mozeak had invited her to ride along to see West Coast friends and help him look at homes. Davis told the trooper she was a real estate agent. But Davis admitted she wasn’t licensed in California. Nor had she set up any appointments to tour property in Los Angeles.
When initially asked by the trooper where she and Mozeak were headed, Davis, according to court documents, replied: “We’re on a mission to Arizona.”
Which sounds more like the Blues Brothers than Garth Brooks. But it does bring to a Garth line to mind:
“Why ain’t I running. Why ain’t I gone. Something’s not right. If there ain’t nothing wrong.”
Feds stake claim on cash
Mozeak, 41, who appears to be a resident of York County, S.C., could not be reached for comment at the phone numbers or emails linked to him in public records.
While neither he nor Davis appear to have been charged with any crimes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte and the Drug Enforcement Administration called dibs last month on the cash. In a June 21 filing, the feds said the currency is tied to crime and issued a warrant for its arrest.
“Many aspects of Mozeak and Davis’ initial stories to law enforcement regarding their travel and transportation of the currency made little sense on their face,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Johnson wrote.
Not exactly how Garth might have put it, true. But in the end, Mozeak and Davis’ version of events was undermined by one of those “Friends in Low Places” that Brooks still sings about.
Gary Lee Davis, who was arrested in February in Charlotte and faces six counts of firearms and cocaine- and fentanyl-related trafficking charges, told federal authorities that Mozeak and Tina Davis were indeed on a mission. A mission for him.
Gary Davis, who prosecutors describe as a major Charlotte-area drug dealer, said the couple was couriering his money to California to settle his tab with his drug suppliers. And, he said, Mozeak and Tina Davis had made the same drive for the same purpose before.
Other details in the couple’s account also have crumbled, according to a court document.
For example, Mozeak said he owned Scorpio, a venerable LGBTQ club on Freedom Drive in Charlotte, for more than a year before he sold it two weeks before his eventful drive west.
Except, when the Observer sent a question through the club’s Facebook page on whether anyone had heard of Mozeak, it drew a one-word response.
“No.”
Carrying cash nothing new, files show
In a footnote to his lawsuit to seize the money, prosecutor Johnson said Mozeak ultimately produced documents for the sale of the club, but that they showed that another entity — and not Mozeak — was the seller. According to Johnson, the notion that Mozeak was carrying “clean money” from a club sale at the time of the Oklahoma traffic stop “is not credible.”
Under questioning from state troopers at the time of the stop, Mozeak also acknowledged that he had extensive experience at being pulled over while carrying large amounts of cash. Five times in all, according to the court filing, including $500,000 during a traffic stop in Charlotte; $200,000 in Atlanta, $125,000 in Columbia, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in LA two years earlier, court documents show.
Mozeak claimed that he was often carting around that much cash because he worked security “for a large number of rappers” and that “he was always asked to carry the rappers’ money since he was a large, imposing male and it was believed the money would be safe.” The court filings don’t indicate what happened to all that cash.
There was also this: The Oklahoma troopers were curious why Mozeak and Davis paid for a one-way car rental to California, which prosecutors say is a popular way to move drug money across the country instead of risking detection in airports. The couple really didn’t provide an answer.
Except, if Tina Davis and Mozeak truly intended to visit sick friends and check out houses during their stay in Los Angeles, they would be moving rapidly. Davis told the troopers she could spend only a day in California because she needed to be back at work in North Carolina.
Mozeak, on the other hand, claimed the couple intended to fly back in two or three days instead of driving because of his hemorrhoids.
Put that in a song, Garth Brooks.
