Julian Dorey Podcast - 🫢 #106 - The COLLAPSE Of My Drug Empire | Tim McBride

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

(***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Tim McBride is one of the biggest weed smugglers in American history. In the 1980s he rose to the top of the ranks of the legendary Chokoloskee, Florida illegal import conspiracy. His story has been featured on VICE and he wrote a book about his experiences called “Saltwater Cowboy.” Tim’s Book, “Saltwater Cowboy”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NKFX3Y2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Tim tells a wild story about hiding from the initial Operation Peacemaker Raid 21:43 - How the arrest went down; The case against Tim; Captain Billy got away; Tim’s “no names” standoff with the government; The Polygraph 53:19 - Tim’s sentencing; The initial adjustment to prison; The most unfortunate bank robber ever; How Tim got his sentence reduced 1:05:58 - Tim’s cellmate was Carlo Gambino’s brother; The peacocks in prison; “Doing time” 1:24:25 - Was Tim tempted to go back to drug smuggling?; The 2 things Tim learned in prison; The state of Marijuana legalization; Tim breaks down today’s weed black market; The epidemic of drug-lacing 1:41:10 - Why Tim waited so long to tell the story of the Saltwater Cowboys; How the book came together; The potential for a miniseries about the story ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier   PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I waited three hours or so in line to get on the phone that night and when I finally got a hold of my brother I said come on man I said you know what happened tell me about it and he first thing out of his mouth was he says were you fucking that prosecutor or something yeah because she talked pretty good about you man what's cooking everybody i am joined in the bunker today by my friend mr tim mcbride who is back with some more phenomenal stories and once again if you have not already purchased his book saltwater cowboy from amazon or wherever you get your books make sure you do that it is fantastic there's a lot of stories in there that he doesn't even have time to get to in podcasts, but you will love every second. Total page turner. And look, this guy was one of the biggest smugglers of pot in US history. He's lived a hell of a life. This was years ago, but it's pretty wild how it all went down. We've heard about some of it on the previous podcast with him. We're going to hear all about the downfall today, the things that happened in prison, just a bunch of more good stories from a great guy here. So thoroughly

enjoyed it. And I know you guys will too. If you're on Apple or Spotify right now, please make sure you give a five-star review if you haven't already. That's a huge, huge help. And follow the show if you haven't done that. And if you are on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to the channel, like the video, and would love to hear from you down in the comment section as well. And to all of you, whether you're on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, please continue to share around the links to the show. It's a huge, huge help. The word of mouth is the best thing we can get, be it in text messages to friends or on social media, wherever you're most comfortable doing it. It's all a huge help. And I appreciate every single one of you who has done it already.

Let's keep it rolling and grow this baby. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Trendfire. Let's go.. I mean, the the stories the number of stories you have from this is beyond comprehension obviously i again i encourage people to actually get your book because there's a million in there and i'm still like halfway through it i got more to go but like when did this actually start coming down you said you were doing it for about 10 years before you got arrested. Like, did you see it coming when it happened? And if not, like, how did the whole case happen? Right.

Yeah. No, actually, none of us saw it coming. One of the biggest shockers of it all, other than having the feds knocking on my door one day, was the fact that they had changed the federal sentencing guidelines after the first two generations had been sentenced. And they realized that the sentences that they were giving weren't garnering the desired effect, coupled with the fact that they didn't realize the magnitude by which all this was happening and that the the people they took out left the infrastructure in place which was us as kids and i say kids were 20 years old but i'm 64 they're kids um we continued operating on the assumption that we're just going to get a smack and go away for 8, 10, 12 months and come back home and that.

But when it finally all came down and it was just a simple matter of having one of the crew, a local guy who had been there and born and raised in the area, working and potholing. And his part in all of this was running one of those chase boats that i that i alluded to running alongside the bigger boats offshore he had a nice boat that was perfectly designed for that sort of thing so he was hired a lot of times to do that well when when the guys aren't potholing or doing their thing even myself you know i don't care what they do i don't give a fuck you know but just you know be there when you're you're needed you know and show up do the work and then go off and do whatever well that being said um this particular gentleman had been in columbia farting around with uh cocaine and wound up getting himself fucked up and thrown in

prison in columbia and the federal government knew that he was part of uh it was from everglades and part of that you know little clique that was going on there. They went down there and offered him a deal saying, we'll get you out of here. Here's what we need you to do for us. A lot worse down there. He jumped on the thing. That's how they wound up following me around and following some other people around.

Some of the guys that were working under me and, under me and next to me and partnering with me and on occasion. Hey guys, at the end of this episode, when the conversation with Tim and me finishes, there's an extra three, four minutes. It's an announcement. I have announcement conversation with fans, whatever you want to call it about the show. I didn't want to include it in the intro because it was too long.

So for all the fans out there, I'd really appreciate it if you stuck around and heard that. Thanks. So they were surveilling you for a while. Yeah, yeah, for a little while. I don't know exactly how long, but long enough to where

the whole thing that left us in place was a simple fact that, you know, because they had changed the guidelines, because it wasn't getting their desired effect, they changed them to mandatory minimums. And they didn't realize until after they started, this thing broke open with the help of this one kid, this one gentleman, he was running chase boat for one of my jobs that I was doing, 47,000 pounds, 57,000 pounds, and I split the load two ways. I was sent half to north of Naples to a place called Pine Island, and the other half to the Everglades City guys, the Everglades City crew, so I split the load up like that. I hadn't necessarily worked any great deal of time with this other crew from pine island so i chose to go up there and you know

and and sit with those guys and do that end of it and let let the guys that i grew up with they knew what they were doing i didn't have to babysit that shit so um you know we're up there and, you know, the job is on. And prior to going out, we were on a back road out in bum-fuck-nowhere land on Pine Island. And an old dirt— Where's Pine Island again? Pine Island is just north of Sanibel and Captiva Island, just north of Cape Coral. I'll put that in the corner so people can see. Okay. And a whole grown-up kind of a roadway, if you want to call it that,

back into the woods led to an old dock that was broken and falling apart and just neglected and just hadn't been built. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions,

and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Been used and one of the Pine Island guys saw that would be a great place to unload or load. So we backed a U-Haul truck down into the woods up next to the dock. So the job is on and the little boats are doing their thing. They're bringing their stuff ashore and they're throwing it to the guys on the dock and they're throwing a bang, bang, bang into the truck. Right. And so five or six or so boats or whatever showed up and we unloaded them and then they just quit coming. It was nothing after that point. I'm thinking, you know, what the fuck's going on, man? You know,

nobody's on the radio, nobody's talking. And then, uh, it wasn't too long after that i had a spotter out by the road and you know sitting in the bushes and he says um he gets on the radio and goes tim he says a car just pulled up in here and backed out and went back the other direction and i'm thinking you know we're out in the middle of nowhere that guy's got no business being out here you know so they got i around and started walking through the woods back up to the entrance, you know, off the main road. And I had him tell me exactly what took place.

And while he's telling me this, I turn around. Everybody that was back at the dock and the truck was standing behind me too. You know, they were going to stand back there, right? So where's the truck? The truck's just chilling. The truck's back there. We still got shit in it you know whatever they're taking pictures and everything that thing man but

no um so we're standing there and and um all of a sudden i hear this caravan of cars roaring down the fucking road man you know and it and just as soon as i could see there you know was some trees here and then and to my right was a field of palmettos palmetto bushes and palmetto bushes don't get more than maybe four feet high like this and it was whole maybe three four acres of the shit this way and to the left of me was a pine tree forest that you could run off through the forest and go right as soon as i saw the first set of headlights on the road up here i heard them slowing down like that everybody scattered like fucking somebody turn the light on a bunch of cockroaches right and me i everybody

else runs this way into the pinewood forest i start dancing through the palm meadows going this direction i didn't get maybe 25 feet, and here that car was visible, and I squatted down. I didn't get on my butt, and I was like, I'm squatted down on my feet and my knees, and I'm bent down like this with my head down so they can't see me. On occasion, there would be a, they call them illegal aliens now, but this Colombian dude came in with the load,

and he was just going to get a ride into town, and he's in the States. Right. Well, he runs the same way as I did, only he keeps running. And I crunch down there, and this tan Bronco pulls in. A bunch of them, I hear him stop,

and I still hear him crunching through the floor. I said, dude, I'm saying to myself, you got to stop, man. This fucker hears you, and he starts running. He's going to run over and trip over me going after you because I'm right there. You know, so he stops, and that, you know. But, I mean, here they come. I mean, they were all over the place. And I can hear them, and it's still dark out.

You know, and it's like, there's some over there. They're running over there. Let's go over there. They're running over there Let's go over there You know always forget that all this like any story like this is always happening in the middle of the night It's sometimes when I'm first picturing it. I'm just picturing like daytime like no, it's not it. Yeah. No, it's makes even harder this is yeah, this is all nighttime shit and and So I hear him, you know, they're chasing after those guys over there. But ultimately, they wound up not catching anyone red-handed. So here I am.

I got nowhere to go because they're all around me. The truck was a U-Haul, you said, right? Yeah. So it was like rented or something? Rented U-Haul truck. Yeah, so you just burned the truck. Big box truck. Piss on it, man.

Leave it. It was probably rented. I didn't have any part in renting it. The Pine Island crew did, and they probably put a bogus name under it or some shit anyways. But I can hear all this goings on, and I can't get up and move. And I'm not sitting down yet. I'm still hunched on my haunches, and are going numb and they're fucking i can't feel them and every time somebody slammed a door or made some kind of noise i'd shuffle and move my feet because i'm crunching on these dry like dry leaves and shit and finally so i could get sit down

and get the blood in my legs so if i did have a chance to go i'm fucking gone man but i'm sitting there and i'm listening to this whole thing take place. And before I know it, the sun's starting to come up. It's starting to get light out. Uh-oh. And I'm thinking, oh, fuck, here we go, man. I mean, because if the sun comes up, dude, there I am right there. Because I can see through the bushes. I can see their feet like this, getting in and out of that fucking bronco well as it's starting to get light out um the

bronco the guy in the bronco gets in he backs out and goes down the road and he comes back and the time he gets in and stops and and i could hear another car pull up outside on the on the main road and he gets the guy in the bronco gets out and the guy that was in the car, evidently out in the street, says, What are you doing, man? Where are you going? The guy in the Bronco says, I'm going to walk down in there and see what we got back there. And the guy on the street goes, Hang on, I'll go with you. And I'm thinking, Is this my opportunity to fucking split

with these guys, get out of view of me? But the car in the street was still running. And I didn't know maybe there's somebody still in the car. Because if I put my head up and look and he sees me, I mean, I got two choices. Is the guy in the Bronco a cop? Is that the assumption? He wound up being the head of the entire Operation Peacemaker is what they called it. He was Florida Department of Law Enforcement, FDLE.

Wait, they called this Operation Peacemaker? Called it Operation Peacemaker. Who was called it. He was Florida Department of Law Enforcement, FDLE. Wait, they called this Operation Peacemaker? Called it Operation Peacemaker. Who was involved with this? Like every agency? Everybody who was anybody, man, was involved in this. It was FBI, CIA, DEA. CIA? CIA.

I mean, yeah, because we were working internationally. And this is coming on the heels of the Iran-Contra shit. Oh, yeah. CIA is trying to cover their tracks so they're trying to figure out what the fuck maybe they've got some loose ends going on here for whatever reasons but everybody who was anybody in law enforcement was involved in this thing it was over 280 plus federal agents from all over the country got involved in this thing and it just turns out that this gentleman in the bronco is it turns out his name is David Waller.

He was the resident agent for Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is a quasi-branch of the federal government, only state-bound. That's not the U.S. Customs guy you were talking about, right? No, no, no. That's a whole different thing. That's a different guy. Okay, yeah. This is David, who I wound up being friends with that with with me after you know as they all did you know but um that's that's another story but um you weren't the most dangerous man that they were going after put it that way no exactly and then they knew this too you know so um like i said i hear the car running i think you know now the sun's like full blown up you know

i got no choice i I got to look. So I look up. There was nobody in the car. Whew. I took off running, man. I went off to the ditch, across the street, through the other ditch, and I took off running to the woods, man. I thought you were going to say I took the car. I was like, damn, it's escalated quickly. Yeah, no.

No. And I ran my ass off until I couldn't breathe. I couldn't run anymore. And I dove under some bushes and covered myself up with leaves. And I just laid there all day. Because this is just early morning hours. In the woods in fucking Florida. In Florida.

Mosquitoes everywhere. Rattlesnakes. Oh, fuck, dude. That was the least of my concerns. And I'm laying out there. And the sun's coming up. And I hear the helicopters but I don't see them and I hear them pulling my

box truck out of the trees bang bang bang through the branches and shit I know they got that fucker so I had no choice but stay there all day I gotta wait for this shit to stop somehow or whatever so after a while I, nobody was chasing me. So I got away clean. They didn't see me, so I'm cool. If I can just hang out and wait out, wait them out and see what the fuck goes on.

So I'm laying there, and it's been all night into the next day, and I've got to take a mean shit big time. So I bugged this, and I got nothing to wipe my ass know I got to take a mean shit big time so I bugged this and I got out you know and I got nothing to wipe my ass with but you got a few leaves I got a pocket full of hundred dollar bills so I take a nice you know a nice relaxing you know dump right there in the bushes and I wipe my ass with about 600 bucks I just left it there that's the most expensive ass wipe of all time that's the most expensive asswipe of all time. That's the most expensive shit anybody really ever took. So I get back out of the bush, and I lay down.

I cover myself back up with leaves and shit up in my face like that, and I kind of dozed off a little bit. Could you see how many were still around? I must have ran a mile, two miles. I don't know how far I ran back. I could just hear them. I could hear the box truck. I couldn't hear any of the cars and any of the people. I could hear the helicopters and that kind of shit, but I was pretty distanced.

So how long did it take before you were like, I'm clear to walk out of here? That next night. I waited until nightfall again. And you couldn't hear anything? No, they had probably, by that time, I eased my way back that way and there was nobody left you know there um but up until that um you know that time as such time as i had walked out of there what year is this by the way this is um 1988 okay and um yeah i'm laying there all covered up in this shit and i'm dozing off and all of a sudden i hear the some twigs and branches and leaves crunching and i open my eye like this and i

close my eyes like this and i look like this and there was a bobcat oh nice probably about a good size cat probably about 60 pounds and he's creeping up on me like this and i opened one i just barely opened him i seen this he's about two arms lengths away from me counts down because he's not really sure what he's looking at and i'm thinking to myself oh i just escaped all that and i'm gonna get my asshole tore off by this thing right and would have been nice to have a gun yeah yeah so here i am and i, and I'm thinking, this just can't happen. And it just occurred to me, and I didn't give it a second thought. I just busted out of the leaves like this, and that thing jumped up in the air, did like three flips in the air, and took off.

You scared away a bobcat. I scared him out of his fucking wits, dude. He took off running through the bushes like he was shot out of a cannon. And I got past that, you know. And so here comes nightfall, and I make my way out of the bushes, and I'm walking off the side of the road in the trees, trying to make my way back down Pine Island Road and get to some semblance of civilization

and get my ass the fuck out of there. Now, here I am the next night after this whole scenario takes place, and I came across the pine island fish house and it's like two or three in the morning and the lights are still on but there's nobody in the parking lot the lights are on inside the the fish house and i'm standing just out of the and there's lights on in the parking lot and i'm standing just out of in the shade of the trees and i'm staring at this one this is before cell phones i'm staring at this parking lot with this one telephone booth sitting right there in the parking lot under all these lights and there's nobody around and i can't just walk up to that fucking thing you know because who knows who's

around yeah so as i'm contemplating what my next move is a couple of boats a long liner and a shrimp patroller come pulling in and that's what they were waiting for in the fish house evidently for these boats to come in so they can unload their catch well they unload the catch and the crew from both boats wind up single file in the line to use the phone booth the phone to call somebody to come and pick them up and i said well this is my this is fuck jackpot you know this is my way out so i'm out i slinked i picked all this fucking shit off me i slinked down there and just got in line with everybody else i'm gonna go you look like you had just been in the woods in vietnam yeah but and they didn't ask any questions there were no words for where either they just got off a fucking shrimp i guess

the last three weeks or some shit, you know? I guess that makes sense, yeah. So I take my turn in the phone booth, and I open the phone book up to taxis, and I call the first fucking one I looked at, and the guy picks the phone up, and he's like, I must have woke him up from a dead sleep or some shit. And I said, I need to hire you to come to Pine Island Fish House and pick me up and take me into Punta Gorda or someplace and take me to a motel.

And he said, did you happen to realize I'm hell and gone from where the fuck you're at, man? And I said, because he was like, I don't know, probably 40 miles away or some shit like that. And I said, I don't really give a shit. I got a lot of money. I said, if you're willing, just pull up. I'll throw 600 fucking dollars and hundreds in your fucking lap and plus I'll pay for your cab fare if you show the fuck up dude I mean I just come on now and he said you promise you know nobody on the phone I'm a nobody

on the phone he's asking me to give me his give me his word he's yeah dude yeah yeah yeah no you didn't have to power wash the shit okay just making sure no that would have been so as i'm on the phone talking to this fucking guy here comes the sheriff's car pulls in the parking lot drives right in front of me goes over here around the circles around the parking lot around behind me goes out the entrance and turns and goes back down the road like that were you shitting i'm sweating fucking bullets man i'm thinking come on man you gotta do this for me and i he's okay i'll be there in like 40 minutes or whatever i hung the phone up i hung out with these guys you know for a little while and here he come after a bit and i first thing i did when i got in the bag

and i threw 600 600 bills in his lap and i said let's go man i slunk down in that seat and he took me to a motel room where I spent the rest of the night and the next day I called a buddy I said come and get me man and I got out of there with you know and so you didn't get caught none of us got caught nobody got caught did you shut down operations no I worked for a little while after I still had some shit that need to be done all right back to business I had to finish up you know I already had you know commitments but beyond those those you beyond those commitments that I had made, no, that was the end of it. So I was into the next year by that time.

Okay, so you obviously took care of those commitments, and then you took a chill pill. So did you start back up, and then you got arrested? No, no. How'd it go down the uh the investigation continued you know not from just that oper from that one job but from the you know everything prior prior to that and it was probably about maybe two three months when i got a knock on the front door and opened up and there's this little guy little little chubby bald-headed dude, sweating through his white shirt and black tie and hands me a subpoena to the grand jury.

And I went cold, man, like that. I didn't say anything to him. I just slammed the fucking door and I turned around and called my lawyer, called my attorney. All right, wait a second. So they didn't arrest you? They summoned me to the grand jury. Wait, I've never actually heard of this. Like, the target of an investigation doesn't get arrested and they summon you to testify?

Yep. So you had an attorney on payroll at this point? Mm-hmm. Was that the only attorney or you had a few? Yeah, no, just him. Okay. So what'd you do on that phone call? What happened was, when I was finally arrested, when they came to my house, it wasn't too long after that.

So you hadn't even been to the grand jury yet? No. Well, we showed up, but he had told them that I was going to take the Fifth. Okay. Any questioning was going to result in my taking the Fifth Amendment right, which I have every right to do. Where was the grand jury? At the federal building in fort myers okay so you show up at this building i show up with my attorney and we're waiting for my

shit to go in the grand jury and they dismissed me i didn't even go in because two things at that time we suspected that first of all that they had probably got enough information when they didn't really need my testimony plus i was giving the fifth and it was a waste of everybody's time anyways for me to even attempt it so we took off and went back and the night they came to my house um i had a friend of mine that was um staying in one of my spare rooms because his house that he was renting was being sold and uh we get i get this knock on my door like i don't know must have been like two in the morning or something shit i don't remember exactly but um my dog started barking i had a couple of maltese my girlfriend and i at that time she'd left you know we were breeding them you know like

that and i went to the front in the window and i looked out the blinds like that and i saw this one sheriff's deputy standing on the front porch knocking on the door just one just one and i told my buddy don don i said you know just just tell the fucking guy i'm not home you know and i thought maybe the neighbors called because the dogs were barking or some stupid shit you know he opened the door and he no sooner got that door open that guy grabbed him threw him out in the front lawn and these guys come out of nowhere like ninjas with black everything and black on their faces and they duck all kinds of guns in his face and and i'm in the bedroom i'm back in the bedroom and i can hear this and i hear him say tim mcbride in that house he goes yeah he's in there and i'm thinking thanks don man you're just so i'm laying on the bed and all of a sudden i'm looking i look

out my bedroom window and i see those you know the flashlights going up and down the walls in the hallway. You start waving? I stuck my head out like this, and one of them shined a light right in my face and said, get that fucking light out of my eyes. And the guy goes, get on the ground, hit the knees, lay down like that. I went, doom, boom, like this. The next thing I could feel was cold steel pushing against me like this. They tackled me.

Oh, man. Cuffed me and dragged me into the living room i got my fucking underwear on and they check in the house and and um did you have anything in that house i had um i had uh six pretty good size safes no weed i mean i had stashed you know personal personal smoke i had yeah it's reasonable sum of cash at the house couple you know four or five million or very very good days at the casino yeah and um so i'm sitting there and uh all they did was clear the house of any other individuals that you know that might have been there and um i said they were going to pick me up and walk me out i'm in my underwear and i said wait a minute can i get some fucking clothes i said they were going to pick me up and walk me out i'm in my underwear and i said wait a minute can i get some fucking clothes i said you know escort me if you want if you know this is

you know you're you guys this thing to that room to that room down the hall where you tackled me and let me get some clothes and he said this one guy goes now he said you just sit your ass right there tell me where your clothes are i'll go get them and i said okay like He said, you just sit your ass right there. Tell me where your clothes are. I'll go get them. And I said, okay. Like I said, the room just where you tackled me, there's two closets. The one closest to the wall. Shelves with my jeans and a shirt. I have jeans and a shirt and socks and a pair of shoes. And, you know, we're out of here.

He gets back. He's not back there five seconds. He goes, holy shit. And I yelled, wrong closet. He opened the closet up and he comes back out there and he goes what do you got in them safes back there more money than you've ever seen no I know I didn't I didn't give him anything I said if you are looking to have as much energy as I do I'm telling you you have to get yourself an eight sleep pod pro cover because even if it's not all of it it's

a lot of the energy I have because I sleep phenomenally every night. The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover comes in queen or king sizes. It goes right on top of your current mattress, and it is wired directly into Eight Sleep's proprietary app, which measures your sleep stages throughout the night to optimize your sleep around you. The best way to put it is you will sleep six hours and feel like you slept eight. I love it. I love looking at my statistics and seeing when I had a good healthy sleep, when I had a less healthy sleep, why there's some stuff I don't even understand, but other stuff is very simple to digest like tosses and turns. The fact that maybe I didn't have a good resting heart rate throughout the night, which suggests maybe I had caffeine a little bit too early before bed or a little bit too late before bed, things like that. It's awesome. You're going to love it. So

you have to check this out. Use that link in my description, get yourself an eight sleep pod pro cover. Once again, comes in queen or king sizes and make sure it check out. This is very, very important. Use the code trend to fire. That's T R E N D I F I E R. If you use that code, you will get $150 off your order and you will start sleeping the best you've ever slept today or the day it gets there, which is usually within a few days or about a week you're gonna love it check it out and it supports the show show me the warrant that says that you can go through my shit and i'll be glad to open every one of them for you well that's not something they had at that time they only had a warrant for my arrest they didn't have a warrant to seize or take anything from me all they could do was clear the house of anybody that might have been in there other than myself. That was an oversight.

And they took me out of there. And from there, I went to every one of these branches of law enforcement's office. They all wanted a piece of me. They were all wanting a pat on the back for having done what they did. I went to the DEA, to the Customs, to the FDLE, to the Sheriff's, you know, the Naples Sheriff's Trident Force Task Force Office. They're just walking you through the hallway? No, they're walking me into each one of these buildings, and they're fingerprinting me and shit and getting their piece of me before they haul me off to the federal building in Fort Myers. That seems a little excessive.

I mean, can't you just fingerprint once? Well, if you want to call yeah i would call excessive i would call 280 plus federal agents who had a little excessive but um that's just how it turned out and that's what happened and i wound up you know what they did was one of my cuban buddies that i had done some work with or for some of his friends in Miami on occasion. They put us in the United States Customs headquarters in Naples. They put me in a holding room with Carlos. Oh, you were with Carlos?

No, not Carlito. Oh, different. Carlos. This is Carlos, my Cuban buddy, who I was working with, occasionally doing some stuff for his friends and a hall and pop for his friends and shit like that.

Put us in the same room, chained us down to the same bench together thinking that we're going to talk to one another like this, and we didn't fucking even look at one another. Because we're not stupid. I wasn't fucking born yesterday. This is all new to me, of course,

because I'd never been arrested for anything in my life. This is the first time ever being arrested and I'm you know and i'm going through this shit so they haul me up to the federal building and we're there all day and there were so many of us that being arrested at that time that they didn't have time to go through the you know holding us all in jail and in lieu of a huge bond or something like that so they gave everybody a surety bond mine was a million dollar surety bond so you're out and they let me go that night at 11 o'clock i finally got out and got a ride home but now what's going they had me yeah you know it was over it was fucking game over your lawyer immediately is like let's yeah well it turned

out that it was too high profile of a case for him he's just a you know small-time fucking naples attorney oh you had a shitty lawyer i had to hire his father-in-law who was a who was a big-time criminal attorney in baltimore i had to pay huge dollars to get this guy to to get on the case he wasn't doing rather well for me you know were you able i mean if they hadn't had the warrant at the house did you get those safes out there oh yeah the minute they got me to a phone to make my one phone call i didn't call dennis i called my brother and he got the money i said dude you need to get to the house and get that shit out of there before they come and slap a seal on that this is where you buried the money that's where my brother took the money out of the

house okay i see i see right through you here. But anyway, so you start paying that lawyer. Does he immediately say, like, okay, this indictment's pretty fucked, do you need to make a deal? Yeah, he flew down there. And my first meeting with him, one of my first few meetings with him and his son-in-law, who was my attorney all those years, I sat down in front of his desk, and he shoves over at me a stack of papers this deep,

which was the discovery that they had gained from all these agencies. It was about almost three inches thick. Everybody that had said, Tim, anybody that knew anything. Oh, that's just the Tim files. This is their discovery discovery this is the evidence of what they have against me and they're not allowed to hold anything back they have to give you everything so there's no surprises and i started looking at this shit and i went holy fucking hell man this is uh this is insurmountable really so this is this is 1989 this is now this is

still verging on 89. This is still 88 because the whole thing came down. The bust took place on October 19th. I was arrested in October 1988. And you were arrested with 300 or some other people, like all Chokoloski. Ultimately, but at that time, it was the first 38 of us. Okay, so either way, like a lot. And then after that, everybody started going down like dominoes.

Right. And what was taking place was, purely and simply, was that when they started effecting these arrests, they realized that there was no really adults of any significant age involved in what it was they were doing by way of operation peacemaker because they were gone they were already gotten they were down down the road and don't doing their own thing and got out of it and shit what about the people quickly though what about the people when you once the brothers went to prison in 84 and then you said you went and connected with all the people that they used to like the senior people in flor, who connected you with Venezuela and Colombia? What about all those senior people? A lot of them were passed over.

They didn't know them. Because it was, you know, we were operating on such a level of sophistication. And throughout this whole time period, I'm explaining these scenarios to you and you're you can glean from all of that You know just how sophisticated this had become right and it was as such where like I said majority of the people didn't know who the bosses were didn't care and those that remained Silent and then in pretty much in the background like like Billy he was never captain Billy Captain Red right right he was never indicted he was

never taken because no whatever no one ever said his name I never said anybody's name I mean it's just the way it was they had you though because you're but that's they followed me they followed, but he's your captain. No, no, no. This is afterwards. 84 was when he quit. Oh, he left the game completely. After Operation Everglades 2 took place.

He left. He didn't leave. He just quit. He opened up a restaurant in town and started being a restaurateur and quit stone crabbing and running a boat and that kind of stuff. And just kind of ease and backed his way into the darkness and none of that investigation happened till after so no one knew who this is two years later three years four years later is when all this other shit took you know this operation peacemaker took place and by that time like i said two years had gone by which is

that that time was the statute of limitations so some of these older guys just you know they didn't give a fuck two years statutes of limitations on millions of tons of which yeah go figure they changed the laws but didn't change the statutes of limitations that's incredible so here now we're we're not looking at you know minor slap on the wrist is now we're all looking at life sentences and now they were facing life yeah i, I was given four indictments. What did they say? And on each indictment, there was four counts. There's conspiracy, conspiracy to possess, conspiracy to import, and conspiracy to import more than 2,000 kilograms. Oh, you ran through that in an hour.

So there's four indictments. There's a million-dollar fine for each one of those. That's $16 million on four indictments. There's a mandatory 10 years to life on every count. That's 160 years mandatory to life. So they do it consecutively, not concurrently. Well, that's yet to be determined. But only the magistrate can determine whether they're concurrent or consecutive.

So they still have discretion over that? They still have discretion as far as concurrent and consecutive. Got it. but if you're given 40 years to life dude i mean what the fuck you know it's federal time 85 i'd still be there yeah or i'd just be getting out yep you know if that were the case but um plainly and simply the fact that you know once the first 38 of us went down and some of the other some of the other smaller guys you know the bail handlers and things like that and i had younger guys in their 20s and 20 21 like i was when i was a kid you know when i first started running boats through the islands for me and hauling pot and shit like that you get one of these smaller guys and you pull them aside and you say look dude they they got you you know they know you are. They're telling you. And what happened was the United States government

had done by design rather than accident given us the opportunity to cooperate. Now, based upon your substantial cooperation, they now have the ability to impart your cooperation to the magistrate. Now she can sentence you below that mandatory. Oh, really? That was a rule? Yeah. It's called a Title 18 Rule 35. That's giving your government substantial cooperation on the case that you're involved in. So your lawyer immediately started this conversation no this is something we picked up on ourselves as you know as a matter of course as we're going

through this it turned out that you know they they knew that 38 of us weren't the whole thing you know none of this could all be happening with 38 people well you were the middleman plus the guy that was involved in it said that you know dude let's open this pandora's box which guy the the the rat on the that was found in columbia and they brought him back and said did i tell you that yes yeah yeah yeah so so he was he was still telling them like you can get way more yeah he said you're just getting started you know he was a real good employee they started you know picking on these younger guys, and they're saying, they're talking, I'm your name, they're coming for you, man. But as the arrests started taking place and these offers to cooperate were given them, Within that cooperation agreement was immunity clause saying that we'll give you immunity from prosecution from anything that you've ever done so you can open up and tell us without fear of reprisal. Tell us everything you know.

But we'll hold one count back so that when everything is said and and done with we'll review your cooperation and we'll give you a you know whatever we can let you go home if we so choose to the magistrate so chooses to so now you're not bound by that mandatory 40 years to life so when they gave him that immunity clause for cooperation what that did was now they're talking your name and they're talking jimmy's name they're talking teddy's name said and these guys would go back and say look they're going to offer you a deal this cooperation thing take it and tell on us who have already been busted because you can't hurt us we have immunity from you see oh so you're not you're not it became like a pyramid scheme of immunity exactly you're not hurting us so to get out of that life sentence tell them tell them tell them my name and it didn't matter and it didn't matter how many people were being picked

up on these charges it didn't matter if a lot of them were saying the same name all that told the government was that they're getting all the right people because you did you did you sign something i signed nothing you had signed nothing i couldn't cooperate i couldn't give them what they wanted they wanted to know who's who's this people in miami you're always seeing who you flying out of the country and where are you going so you know you might be really fucked yeah you know i mean even though but you're telling all these other guys to say your name. No, no, no. The guys that have already been busted and whatnot are telling them.

I'm out of that loop. Oh, you're... The crew guys and everybody else working are saying, look, here's how you dodged this thing. Tell on us, because we've already got immunity. And don't tell on Tim. Well, none of that was spoken. If it was, i wasn't privy to it i was kind of you know i didn't want to know i was too consumed with my own fucking what

was going on dude i had 160 fucking years i you know everybody's on their own and why did you feel like you couldn't give them information well for the simple fact that you know although throughout all the years of doing this and and and being raised in this industry um there was no violence like i really really you know explain explained that um but if you go and throw one of these fucking guys like a cuban in miami carlito leo or jamaican dudes that i work with or the boss boss in Columbia. I go saying that shit, dude. They're going to forget about the friend thing and all that nonviolent thing. You go throw them under the bus, they're going to come back at you and do what they're very fucking good at.

Is kill you and everybody in your family and kill the dog and cat too. That's just who they are. And you knew this. I'm fucking right I knew that. And I told them, look, I can't do this. Because what you're asking for me is a death sentence. You either give me life in prison or let this fucking guy shoot me in the fucking head. Who were you talking with?

Was there one agency in particular? Like U.S. Customs guy? At first it was the Investigators for the United States prosecutors office okay they were the ones who were doing the initial interrogation of me and that didn't begin until after I was of course I had gotten out on that surety yeah you're out of jail right but I fucked it up by giving them a dirty urine I'm smoking bug and weed and they wound up popping me in drug tests and they fucking threw my ass in jail and i didn't get back out where were you in i was in fort myers county jail they

had designated an entire cell block on the fourth floor for federal prisoners because there was so fucking many of us they couldn't you know so um i sat up there for god it must have been i think it was eight or eight or ten months or so before I was finally, you know, run through the paces and got my sentence and all that. So how did that, if you couldn't give up anybody, like how did you, how did this go down? What happened was, and again, you know, very serendipitous. And another one of those awesome sequence of events taking place whereby I couldn't give them names, you know. But there was a period of time there for several months while I was in federal lockdown in Fort Myers where these investigators would come and take me out, handcuff me, shackle my legs, belly chain me,

and chain me up, put my legs in my feet, and take me out of the jail and walk me around the building on the sidewalk outside. I'm doing this convict shuffle. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, how you doing? Like this. They take me to a federal building around the corner down this dark corridor and put me in a room and shut the door. And it was like a little tiny, just a little tiny space with a big glass window on one of those little bank talk to things like this and in walks these two this man and this woman with identical brown

vested suits and they walk up to the window and they slap their little gold treasury baggage up against the window and i went fuck just like that and susan del tuva the united states prosecutor who was prosecuting me on this case, she was in the next room listening. She comes balding through the door and she goes, Timmy, look. She says, Timmy. She goes, this is, yeah, everybody calls me Timmy. You're facing life, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy. Yeah, and she says, this is not what you think it is, Timmy.

And I go, well, Susan, why don't you tell me what exactly is it? Because if it's cooperation, you know, you just open the door and take me home, back to my cell, you know, because that ain't happening. She goes, no, no, no. What we'd like to know is how you were able to do this, you guys were able to do this all these years and get away with it, and we couldn't catch you. And I said, well, bingo, game over. I can tell you all that, you know. But I won't give you any names. If you can glean from anything that I'm going to describe to you a name, more power to you. But names are out of the question because of that simple, you know, I wouldn't.

They would have found me in debt. I've been erased. So the only thing they really knew was what they had seen on land of possession and clearly then putting together that you guys were importing it they didn't know how it happened the only thing they had at that time was no visible evidence of us ever having touched anything what they did was the only link they had between us was telephone conversations and telephone records and the i called this guy this guy called him this guy then this guy called this guy and that's how they linked us all together through telephone conversations that's all they had and the guy who cooperated and the guy who was telling on

everybody right so when it came down to that point and they wanted to know how the fuck i did this i said well i can tell you that you dumb motherfuckers you know and i the first couple questions out of my mouth to these two treasury agents was, do you understand the geography of Everglades City? Take some notes. And they're like, yeah. And I said, well, okay, how many roads in there and how many roads out of there are there?

Well, there's one. Well, yeah, there's fucking one. Now, how many direct links to Miami from that little island to Miami are there? There's one. US-41. There's only one fucking road. Did you sign something before you said this?

No. You just started talking. Well, yeah. But they might be like, oh, thanks for all that information. You're fucked. Well, you know what? I was fucked anyways. Yeah, but you could say, say all right call my lawyer but they

wanted they wanted cooperation this was my cooperation to them i'm saying but you need to have a contract i mean you obviously it worked out for you but i'm saying like they could have said it was verbally agreed upon between my attorneys my attorney and and the u.s prosecutor that you know he knew ahead of time that i was going to be questioned and this and that and whatever he didn't coach me on you know what to do or what not to say or anything like that he said you can cooperate if you want don't if you don't and i chose not to simply because you know i'd have been erased you know there was no doubt about that um um so what made you nervous that these were two treasury agents in particularly treasury is pretty high up on the list when it comes to

law enforcement agencies yeah you know and they pull a lot of government weight behind them and um the type of thing that they wanted to know led directly to the it went from them straight to united states prosecutor's office there was nobody in between they didn't have to go up a chain of you know of uh priority if you will with regards to law enforcement and i knew that you know i could go ahead and tell you this you know because it's no skin off of my ass you know the game's over you know fuck it um and i said um you know once i told them that yeah there's one fucking way to get there and that's down in fields 41 and 99 out of 100, we're probably waving at your ass while there's hundreds of tons of shits going down the fucking road right in front of you.

And I said, besides that, how do you think I got that shit to Miami? I said, I didn't get it over there on the backs of fucking pelicans and porpoises, dude. It went down that one fucking road you know millions of pounds over the years you know so i start you know they could they make this a habit of every other day or so they take me out and take me in this room and they ask me questions and shit like this and it got to the point where i i guess they weren't believing what i was telling them it was so fantastic for them to to to grasp you know because they were just they had no fucking clue dude i mean it was just

they were that stupid. At one point, did you say, you ever see any cows wash up on the shore? Yeah, you know, that's what we told that boat captain, you know, the second time we went out to unload the boat, he did that same fucking thing. Oh, with the cows? Yeah, but this time he had not only cows, he had goats and pigs and chickens and there were monkeys, these little fucking squirrely ass fucking spider monkey looking fuckers. It turns out that if the boat manages to get ashore and get loaded, because a lot of times they have just as much problem in South America getting loaded as we do getting unloaded.

Yeah. I mean, it's no free ride down there, no matter what. But if the boat manages to get to shore and not offshore where they're bringing small boats out and loading it every night, little bits at a time like that, the monkeys will get on board and start eating the seeds. Then they get all fucked up and fall asleep among these fucking bales of shit, and then they get offshore and they're trapped. So they didn't drown. They found their way over the other boat.

So we get up there and open the gates, and now come these fucking cows are falling in the water again, and all those monkeys went straight to the fucking light mast and the radio antennas like they knew what was happening. And it was a hysterical sight to see. I'm just trying to picture like 30 cows washing up on the shore and people being like, what the fuck? You know that's going to be in a government investigation right away.

That's why we stopped it dead. We said, look, this is the second time. We said, don't come back. No more animals. This won't happen ever again for two reasons. First of all, you know, the poor fucking cows, man. Second of all, it's one thing to be walking down the beach and, you know, and shelling and you trip over a dead fish,

but it's very much another to be walking down the beach shelling and trip over a dead fucking cow, you know. That's going to raise some fucking eyebrows, right? So we just, we dumped his ass and we never saw him again you know beyond that but um so you know i i go to telling them this and this is my version of cooperation with them but um you know they ultimately didn't decided that it wasn't substantial enough because they wanted to meet they wanted to they wanted the big dudes they wanted the names and that well that wasn't going to fucking happen for sure like i said but you helped yourself yeah in a matter of speaking but um all that did it didn't get me

out of any you know it got me out of a lot of significant time but what it wound up doing was they capped my sentence with regards to that bit of cooperation they capped my sentence at 20 years so they capped it they capped it i couldn't get more than 20 but i couldn't get less than 10 because the mandatory still stood they narrowed it down to one count and then your attorney could argue in front of the judge and say look he did all this this and this she knew that at sentencing and she praised me in her own way by giving them information that was invaluable to law enforcement at that time by explaining to them exactly how this inner workings, this mechanism worked. And how ridiculously stupid they all were of it all, and ignorant of the whole thing. You know, once I opened that can of worms and started telling them how dumb they were, like I said, they kept taking me out and questioning me and asking me questions and that.

And then one day they took me out, and I thought I was going back to the same fucking place where they went right past that door. They took me in the next door down. It was this little room about the size of this one we're in. One guy in there in a polygraph. Oh, because they wanted to know if it was real. They wanted to know if what I was telling them was the truth, because they didn't believe me.

All this money and all the pot and the millions of fucking pounds of shit you know they're you know they wanted to make sure that i wasn't just giving them a story i walked out of that room with a big ass fucking grin on my face and i look back at them and they're all scratching their fucking head going you passed imagine being a polygrapher like wait i'm sorry is this question correct did you watch 150 cows drown in the gulf Mexico? Am I really asking that? Well, see, on the front page of the Naval's Daily News that day I was arrested, it said under the headlines, big front page news, area part of U.S. pot dragnet said in letters about this big.

And then in the subheading beneath that, it said, agents say 38 helped import over 150 tons well what they ultimately began to realize or i explained to them and they found out was the truth of that 150 tons was only about a week's work between all the all of us crews that were working so that's when they went oh wait a minute that's fuck oh that can't be well that's when they hooked me to the polygraph and i think yeah that's how much we move it can be you know that's just a week's work man if you're pulling about 28 nights in a row like i said earlier and i get a rough calculation for my book to the to the tune of about 1.6 million pounds in 28 nights went across that well on and off that little island

and people still to you know when i when i tell that, and I know, I know what I'm going to get, you know, as far as comments, Harry, about, you know, the ridiculousness of how that sounds. And I get it. Trust me, I understand, dude. If anybody understands how ridiculous that sounds, it's me. I wasn't the subject of a federal operation involving over 280 federal agents from all over the country for nothing, for a boatload of weed or shit like that. That's it. It was significant. No weapons. It was significant beyond their wildest imagination.

They had no fucking clue the depth at which we were waiting. One thing. That's all in it. That's what's crazy. It's literally one thing. We that's all in it that's what's crazy it's literally one thing we're just moving backs that's it just middleman stuff yeah wow so they at least gave you they capped it you go you go in front of the magistrate how much time did she end up giving you she gave me the mandatory 10 okay so she liked you she she acknowledged the fact that i was willing to give this information,

but they didn't deem it substantial enough because they wanted to go beyond me. Right. But she wound up giving me that 10 mandatory. With time served? Well, only the time served in county lockup. Because you've been there for almost a year. It was eight months or so. Okay, so you got that.

And then you go to prison. How long did you end up serving? I wound up doing a full four flat. Wow, you got out in four? Yeah. One of the reasons for that is, quite simply, as we were talking earlier, when you get sentenced to federal prison, you have to work. You don't just sit around. You're either mopping floors, you're working the kitchen,

or you're doing some kind of work that you're making three cents a fucking hour for. And then the second year, you get maybe four or five cents an hour, some shit like that. But they – did I lose track of this sometimes? You were saying you did a full four right so as we'll talk i get to prison and they um you know they assigned me work in construction and you know building and keeping up the prison and there's no fucking way i don't want to do this shit right you know so i did that job for about three weeks or so and i had met a met a guy out

in the in the rec yard at the weight pile. His name was Rolando, Raleigh, I call him. You'll meet him in the book. He was a law clerk in the education building for the legal library. And every federal or state institution is required by law to have prisoners to have access to legal material. Right. by law to have prisoners to have access to legal material right so we have a full-blown federal legal library for at the at the prisoners disposal to work on their own cases or you know whatever that being me being a clerk learning how to shepherd eyes and research cases to find them

the particular case law incentives that they can use to back up their you know um their um pleas for whatever it is they're getting. So Rolando got you that job. Raleigh takes me down and introduces me to a guy named Dennis Lehman, who was a head of the head law clerk. He was also an inmate. He was a bank robber who had been in for 28 years before I had met him that day. He was, he had a 52 yearyear sentence federal sentence bank robbery right well

just the uh the uh sad part about that was that he didn't even rob the bank he was the pilot the getaway pilot for the two guys that actually robbed the bank one guy they got them too but one of those one guy got six years and one guy got 12. Dennis got 52. Why? Jesus Christ. Dennis was flying cocaine from Mexico to Nevada for a number of years and they couldn't catch him. Oh.

So they thought when they nailed him with something, they nailed him, screwed him to the fucking wall. They gave him, which I don't know if he might even be today, the most time given to a person for that particular crime. Wow. He's in a Guinness book for that. Jesus Christ. So he liked me right off the bat. Started calling me Timmy like everybody else does right away, you know. So I okayed it through all the powers that be, and I wound up transferring my job down to the law clerk.

And I did a, you know, as a matter of course, you know, having to learn that job and wanting to be, obviously, as I was through every part of my life, you know, the best at whatever it was I was doing. I had taken a course, a correspondence course at the University of Honolulu and got a degree in law. No shit. Yeah. You have a law degree. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I use that to my own advantage by writing my own plea to the Middle District Courts in Florida for reduction of sentence, citing cooperation.

Because I just, out of nowhere, I'm sitting at my desk one day and I'm just flipping pages through this dictionary. It's called Black's Legal Dictionary. And it's a dictionary from which all defense or prosecuting attorneys in the country define their legalese out of this book. So I'm flipping through it, and I just come to where it said cooperation. And I read it, and basically what it says, as far as definition, is that if you ask me for something and I give it to you I have essentially cooperated with you and I went being fucking light went on and I go to typing and I break my own brief for reduction of sentence based on cooperation and I cited a lot blacks legal dictionary as precedent for that definition and submitted it to the court and you got in a a month later, they wanted to rip me out of prison

to send me back for a review in front of the judge for her take on my plea for reduction of sentence. But I chose not to go because here now we're almost three and a half years in now, and it took me almost that much time to get from the bunk from the center of the room to the edge of the wall by the window all right let's let's let's talk about coming in though because like it's you had you were a midwestern kid who obviously got caught up in your 20s with some wild shit and it happened so fast and like you're young and you're just getting after it and whatever and now suddenly you're 28 29 years old whatever it comes crashing down and

for the first is the first time you're ever arrested as you said so you've never it's never been like and i've kind of asked you this throughout to get your feel for like well when were you thinking there was going to be a problem or something like that it's never really been like a thought for you like prison like you only ever, oh, maybe I'll get eight months if somehow I get caught. So now you're caught, you cooperate, you go to prison and your face, when you walk in there, your face in 10 years, like how shocking is that? Like what's going through your mind? Well, first of all, when it involved that extraordinary amount of time, even one life sentence, well, you got to stick 16 of them on there, man. That's just stupid.

You know, but those were the guidelines as they were written in that day. And they were written that way because the old guidelines weren't having the desired effect that they really wanted. So they had to do something about that. And we wound up being given that opportunity. A lot of guys given that opportunity to cooperate and get themselves out of that thing. And I was ultimately given that 10 years and submitting that reduction of sentence from that 10

based upon the notion that they honestly, and the U.S. prosecutor told me this one day herself, out of her own mouth, she said, Timmy, we just want to stop this and be done with it. We don't want to continue this for another decade of this goings on, you know. And I said, well, I can understand that. And basically out of that came a simple fact that a year earlier, they were sending a second and first generation to prison for 14 months, 12 months, 36 months and shit like that. So they honestly really weren't willing to put kids in prison for the rest of their lives for what guys were getting only 30 months for a year before. Wow. So they gave them that open window, that opportunity.

It didn't tell us that this was an opportunity we figured it out you know hey do this tell them tell them tell them you know and you know you're cooperating but you're not hurting anybody kind of a deal so i submitted my uh brief reduction of sentence and i asked my brother i don't know called him one night i said i asked him to go to that you know the hearing that day and you know i'll call you later that evening and you tell me what you know what happened with the judge you know figured out for me so i'm sweating bulls man you know i'm like you know if it didn't work i'm i'm you know i've got you know six more because if it's mandatory i've got uh yeah you're gonna do you're gonna do than 87% of that time because they did away with parole.

They did away with good time except for after the first year you have 57 days a year good time. That's it. Where before that under the old law. Now, they wound up sentencing me under the old law, but the judge found a section in the old law that didn't provide for parole. She snuck me, man. She got me. But I sent my brother there to hear her take on my reduction of sentence brief. And I waited three hours or so in line to get on the phone that night.

And when I finally got a hold of my brother, I said, come on, man. I said, you know, what happened? Tell me about it. And the first thing out of his mouth was, he says, were you fucking that prosecutor or something? Yeah, because she talked pretty good about you, man. No, dude. No, fuck no. I said, come on.

Stop fucking around. What happened? He says, she gave you four years. And I said, no, come on. Stop fucking with me. Tell me the truth. He said, she gave you four fucking years, dude. And here I'm three and a half years in now.

I'm short by six months. And I screamed. I fell over and about pulled the phone off the fucking wall. It would have pissed everybody off back there. Fuck all of you. I'm getting out of here. And here I am am now i'm six months short that's amazing you know so it just you know one thing after another led led to that you know and my my getting into prison my my falling in line with dennis and those guys in the legal library and learning my shit and and how to

manipulate my way through the law books and shepherding and producing backup scenario cases. Because every case in the federal judicial system or system of jurisprudence is based on precedent. And what you do when you research and shepherding and find case law to support your argument, you find throughout all of these, if you've seen on movies in a lawyer's office, they've got all these books, rows and rows and shelves of all what looks like the same book. Well, those are the case law. That's the precedent. That's the case law. They cannot, by law, give you more time for the same type of crime than they've given anybody else. It has to be

uniform. It has to be some semblance of uniformity and equalization to it. So if I say I robbed a bank for 10 grand and I got 25 years and this guy only got five, and his case is identical to mine, they can't do that. What about Dennis? Dennis is different. Dennis's case is, there was no, there were no case law, no precedent to back up that law, to back up that maneuver that they pulled on him. Really? Yeah. So they can still fuck you. They can do whatever they want.

They make the fucking laws. Yeah, that's true. You know, they couldn't argue the simple fact that their own definition blacks legal dictionary defines what they did to me regarding cooperation as Wrong and not just they gave me more and I cited cases You know regarding cooperation and other cases that went similar to mine and that's what citing case law is all about you Find out through all of those books That are updated almost every week and that was part of my job was inserting addendums to the back of all these books of new

case law that's coming in you know to the courts and that is at your disposal to find cases that parallel yours that allow them to say okay well this is not fair it should be treated as this was. That's how they wound up giving me the four years below the mandatory minimum that they did. So you end up getting out at four. And I always think about this, though. Four years is still four years, man. The eight to ten months before that, it's kind of like you're in limbo every day. You're not really thinking about the time so much as you're figuring out your case. It's too much time to to grasp yeah the reality of it like i even when they were talking live sentences i never i never got that cold chill and you know

i wanted to shit myself you know because it was just it was too unreal to fathom right even 10 years is hard to fathom you know when you're standing in the midst of it until you get in there and you hear that steel door go clang and it all becomes fucking real. Now, you know, in prison, I was sent to Tallahassee FCI Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee. And prior to that, my release from from county jail as a transfer point, I was taken to Metropolitan Correctional in Miami, MCC. There were some serious people in there. Yeah, they were all bundled into the same group because that's a transportation hub for the marshals. Because Homestead Air Force Base is right down the street and that's the airport in which the federal marshals

operated their Conair out of the jet that they for all the prisoners around that's the federal marshals job is to do that you meet anyone cool in there? yeah well actually yeah I did actually I was

I wound up being a bunkmate of a gentleman by the name of Salvador Gambino. Carlo's brother. Old man, Papa Gambino. No shit. Carlo Gambino, for people out there, was basically the Capo di Tutti Capi of the Italian-American mafia for years. So his brother was in MCC. He was in there. He had to be old as hell. He was an old man. He was a pretty old dude.

He was pretty cool. He had a really heavy Italian accent in his English. And I had no idea who the guy was, even when I first... I was taken there, and when you're taken from one prison to another, they put you in lockdown for about three days. They put you in the hole. So they can review your file and your case to see that maybe there's something in there

that they shouldn't release you to general population for. Like if I had anything to do with women or children or stupid shit like that, it was a Chester or some shit, they could literally kill you. Because they'll find out who, what you're in there for eventually. I don't know how it works and how it happens, but, you know, eventually they'll find out what your case is all about, you know.

So I did my three days, but I was in there with a guy named Jimmy Papadopoulos. And he was part of the crew that worked the deal that got Gambino and his nephew busted, a 2,700-pound cocaine deal. That'll do it. Yeah. So they were in the midst of going to do their time so jimmy was in the day before me so he got out a day before me and when i three out of the three day holding period so when i finally was released to general population into what they called the glass house in in mcc that's where all the newbies come the fresh the fresh fish come and from there

they're either designated and taken off by con Air to their designated point of sentencing, or prison of sentencing, or they're sentenced to stay there. So I get out, and I get my bedroll, and I'm assigned a bunk by the cop who's sitting in there at a desk, and he's got the bed book, they call it, with your picture and your name and your your number mine's on oh nine four nine eight oh and eight that's my number my federal prison number i'll never forget that fucking number and my bunk just happened to be right next to the television and that television is on there's people sit guys sitting around watching tv all day long i said i went back to the to the dorm cop and i said look i mean i said to you know can i please have a different bunk assignment

you know away from the tv you know because it's just too noisy right there and he said he was he was okay it didn't give me any shit about he said go find a bunk somewhere that's that you know suits you and come back and tell me where it is and i'll i'll move your you know your shit to that that spot so immediately now this is a two-level um dormitory style open i mean the bunks are all over the floor and the down below and there's a place to walk through between them and up above and they call it glass house because it's glass pane windows from the floor almost to the ceiling on three walls and um you go up the stairs there's a tier upstairs like a balcony and that

that circumference that that wraps the entire bottom floor. So I go up the stairs, and I pass the bathroom, and the wall cuts back in, and that's where the bunks start. And as I was walking past that, I hear, hey, Timmy! And I look over, and there's Jimmy, the guy I was in the hall with. And he's sitting there, two guys on this side on the bottom bunk, and this little old man sitting on the bunk you know opposite them and he says what are you doing man i said dude i'm looking for a new bunk i'm looking for a place to hang out he says right there and he points the bunk on top of this old man over the top of this old guy gambino yeah i didn't know that i didn't know who he was at the time and uh so i went down and told the dude like dorm hack and he changed my i went up there

and put my out there and and i sat down and we start dude, the dorm hack, and he changed my shit. I went up there and put my shit out there. And I sat down, and we start bullshitting. And this little old man sitting next to me, he goes, and he's sitting there with his blanket over him. He says, man, it's a fucking cold in this place, isn't it? And he's sitting there shivering. And I put my hand on his shoulder and I says, hang on a minute, I got you. So I climbed up on my bunk, and I had learned, having been locked down for this amount of time already, that the vents that the air conditioning came out of were two levers, two sets of louvered vents,

one this way and one this way, with a space in between. Well, I just folded up a newspaper and slipped it in there and shut the air off from blowing down on top of everybody. And it was about five minutes or so ago by he takes his blanket off. He goes, you're a smart guy. He says, puts his hand on my shoulder. He says,

you're pretty smart guy. He says, I like you, man. He says, I tell you what. And, um,

it was a Saturday and the next morning was Sunday morning and they make, um, homemade, the guys in the kitchen, it was a prison prisoners. They're the cooks and the chefs and all this kind of shit. And they make homemade donuts on Sunday morning and, you know, a nice breakfast, you know, whatever you want, you know, kind of a thing. And surprisingly, the meals were really very good.

In prison? Yeah, in federal prison. You're the first person that's ever said that to me. I was surprised at that, you know. Really? Yeah. And that compound, the prison itself was almost butted right up next to the Metropolitan Zoo, the Miami Zoo. Right?

So consequently, being that close, they had peacocks walking around the compound inside the fucking prison. Oh, come on. That came over from the zoo next door. Just chilling. Just chilling, man. And they let them stay in there because, you know, if anybody gets out, you get near these fucking things, they start screaming like little girls. Have you ever heard of peacocks?

Oh, so they're like security. Yeah. Have you ever heard of a peacock scream? Oh, yeah. It sounds like a little girl screaming. Like that, right? So, but they had a little walkway around a small pond that was in the middle of the compound and like that,

and a bench and shit. So he says, you know what? He says, Timmy, tomorrow morning, we're going to go to the chow hall. We're going to get some nice donuts and a coffee. He says, and then we're going to take a walk around the lake. He says, does that sound okay to you? And I said, yeah, sure, why not? And the whole time we were having this conversation and whatnot, the guys were walking past paying respects.

Hello, Papa. How you doing, Papa? Like this. And I'm thinking, what the fuck, you know? So he gets up to go around the corner of the bathroom to take a piss. And I lean over and say, Jimmy, who the fuck is this guy? He says, that's Papa. Papa fucking who?

Papa Gambino. Oh, my God. My bunkmate wound up being Salvadori. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And he, you know, we got to chatting, and he took a shining to me, you know. He called me Timmy, just like everybody else. And, you know, he and his nephew and Jimmy were involved in the same cocaine deal.

And they all got a significant amount of time. And he was impressed by the way, you know, they knew that I had 10 years mandatory. And he was impressed, I guess, by the way I was able to be as relaxed as I was knowing I had this much ahead of me. And he wanted to know if I would, you know, maybe have a conversation with his nephew about it. Because he's having a real hard time dealing with the amount of time that he's got. And ultimately, I said, you know, I wound up telling him. If you are looking to search the web privately and not have all these websites track you when you leave,

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It gives you the same utility all around. It's easy to use. We love that. So if you use the link in my description, you will go to my landing page with the site and you will see a plan there for $4.99 a month. It's the same one I use. Like I said, it's very, very easy to use. You get used to it right away. It's clicking one button and boom, it's on. You got your privacy, your internet surfing. It's wonderful. So check it out. It supports the show and you're going to love it. I'd be happy to talk to him. I'd be glad to talk with him. But in the end of it all, he's going to have to learn how to do this time himself.

I can't tell him how to do it because everybody does their time differently. And we talked about this earlier too. After being in there, I can't remember how many guys i've seen just get crazy and run for the fence you know thinking they're going to get out of there but it you know it never happens it's one of those things that like if if you haven't been in that position i don't think you could possibly understand you can't like you know as i was telling you it's just like we talk about this stuff like it's nothing like oh life in, life in prison, 25 years, 5 years, 10. This is time, man.

Yeah. You have to understand that, you know, even still, my trying to explain it to you, to anybody, even you guys, you know, about doing time and having to understand how to do it on your own because you take, say, the past 10 years of your life and you try to recall how old you were and what you were doing and where you might have been and what you were into 10 years ago and how much time and how many days have passed. Individual days and individual happenings and circumstances and things taking place every single day is a happening of its own for 10 fucking years. And when you watch a movie, a prison movie or anything like that, you know, you're just

getting glimpses of a person's life in prison and you think, oh, I can, oh fuck, I could do that. But what you're not getting and you're not grasping in reality is the day-to-day goings on, the politics, the shit you have to put up with with inmates that so deserve to be there you know and then some that really don't you know right and i say that only because i'll cite two specific incidences regarding people that absolutely didn't deserve to be in prison one guy i met got 14 months for destruction of federal property. He was in a 7-Eleven buying stamps in a machine like that, and the stamp didn't come out.

So he's banging on this motherfucker. He backs up, and he gives it a kick. And while he's doing that, the woman behind the counter is calling the cops. Come on. Guy's in here beating up on the stamp machine. The cops pull up. Destruction of federal property. Don't they have it on camera?

They didn't have CT at that time. Oh, my God. 14 months for kicking a stamp machine. Destruction of federal property. It's a felony. It's a federal crime now he's committing in a 7-Eleven. Another guy. Check this out.

He's doing 13 months, this guy's doing, for assaulting a federal employee. He's walking his dog down the sidewalk on a leash, mind you. Here comes the mailman walking with his cart with the mail the other direction. He gets up close to him, and his dog starts barking, like this. First thing this fucking mailman does is pull out his mace and gives the dog a squirt this guy goes off he pommels the shit out of that fucking mailman assault on a federal employee come on assaulting a federal employee you get 13 fucking months 13 months for beating up a mailman beating the mailman up because he maced his dog now that's why i say some people absolutely do not deserve to be there but there are others that sure they're home that's why i say some people absolutely do not deserve to be there but there are others that

sure they're home that's where they need to fucking be yes because i've seen them wrote the revolving door hey dude i'm back yeah brother you know this kind of shit you know back for another round uh you know who the fuck wants another round of this shit you know anybody with any you know intelligence whatsoever has to spend one night in fucking jail that's enough you don't want to go back to that fucker again let alone for 10 fucking years or more yeah you know so it is what it is prison is what it is and then in those days it wasn't like like you hear now like in state prisons and stuff with the with the you know the gangs and the cliques and all that fucking stupid shit going on that sort of stuff didn't really come into existence as full-blown

as it appears to be on television in those days there were there were separations between the the the black inmates and the hispanic inmates being cuban mostly you know we kind of kept our distance a little bit and the whites of course you like that with some little mingling going on because of the you know based on your level of intelligence and your ability to you know to get along with people in a scenario such as that and a place that you're being put in um but um in my case there was you know um fortunately for for a lot of us ultimately there were so many of us that had gotten sentenced and sent to jail. Over 280 ultimately out of Southwest Florida and Florida in itself through Operation Peacemaker alone. There were 250 plus burning the first two Operation Everglades.

But those were under other guidelines. Now, us third-generation guys, there were just so many of us that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is obligated, if they can, to keep you as close to your home area as possible to allow you to get visits from family, make it easier on family to get you a visit now tallahassee federal prison being one of only three prisons in florida at that time in northern florida federal institutions that um and there being so many of us hell at one point there was i think 23 of us all together in the same prison so we kind of kept to ourselves you know and some were some of the old generation you know other generation was just getting out and us kids are coming in you know but at at that at that time there was always a buddy around somewhere you know like that it's interesting how that happens and like how they you know you even see it though with like dangerous cliques and stuff like they'll have some of the mobsters together or like put and then again like even the people who don't know each other prisons are can be such a because they're not correctional facilities, obviously. There's no correcting going on.

That's the furthest thing from their mind is trying to... There's no such thing as rehabilitation. That's bullshit. Only if you want it to be. These people, they go to... They're from interesting environments where obviously crime was going on around them.

And then if they go to prison young it's like college for them right you know i i have my friend dan thayer in here i was telling you a little bit about this earlier but you know he's amazing because he's an exception to the rule he got thrown in jail for seven years at age 15 because some cop came up behind him and he was a big kid and he turned around like kind of defended himself and hit the guy right and never mind you then 12 cops beat the shit out of him right but they still gave none of this surprised me right and so you know he was molded by the system right right and then he was life of crime for 20 years and it took him his last bid he went in for two years and the state of florida declared

him incorrigible the judge wanted to put him in jail for life for like possessing like a pill or something but he couldn't so he said i'm giving you two years and i'm making you do it at i forget which prison it was but the prison in florida that has death row so he'd be in stark maybe i don't know i forget but like he'd be an orderly on death row right and he figured it out himself in there he like had his coming to jesus epiphany yes i don't this is not me and he turned his entire life around like this unbelievable guy owns a couple businesses whole people love him and mentors a lot of people but like not a lot of people get the chance to do that no you know like i said rehabilitation takes place only if you want it to take place yes you take it upon yourself. The resources are put in front of you to take advantage of.

Whether or not you do or don't is up to you. Right. And there are a lot of avenues of rehabilitation, if that's what you choose to call it, available to you in those scenarios, in those prison scenarios. And in my case, you know, being a law clerk, I take advantage of that, you know. Clearly. Any opportunity that I can to learn better that place in which I was put. case you know being a law clerk and i take advantage of that you know clearly any opportunity

that i can to to learn better that place in which i was put um nothing i could do about being in prison and after a while you learn to look to to to not look beyond the fences because that world out there doesn't mean anything to you anymore all it does is bring heartache and resentment and and you know it can turn you inside out, and it can eat at your brain. And like I said, I've seen guys literally run to the fence and start climbing that fucker. In their state of mind, not knowing full well they're not going to get over that bugging fence. As soon as they touch it, they know where they're at. The light goes on in the fucking monitoring room inside the main gates in the prison

and the control room because on the interior fence is a wire strung, real thin wire strung above the top of it called the snitch wire. When you touch that fence, a light will go on in the control room and tell them exactly where you touched the fence.

And it's a 24-hour, two trucks and guns and guard towers and guns and rifles and shit 365 days a year 24 7 circle in that prison there's a short 10 foot fence inside with razor wire there's a killing field of about 15 20 feet inside covered in razor wire and an even taller fence outside you got to get over with razor wire on top of them now you're not going to get through that no but it's just that state of mind in which they find themselves that they just go running and being a law clerk as i was at that time my entire time being a law clerk i probably did while i was in there 40 divorces i wrote for guys that weren't going to get out you know in any short time at all and decided that they should split from their wives and allow them to go on and have their life.

Wow. And I got really very good at doing divorce. I did my own, as a matter of fact, after I got home and got married and got married. Oh, later. Later on, after I got home. Yeah, because that's the other thing here. This all happened. You got out of jail.

You were young. You were what, like 34, 35 when you got out of jail? Yeah, 32, I think, something like that. So you got your whole life in front of you and everything. This is back in 93. I was very fortunate to get my life back. And what did you, I mean, did you have any temptation to go back to it? No, God, no.

No, no, no, no. That's good. You know, the federal magistrate at my time of sentencing looked me dead in the eye, and she was quite serious. Her position as a federal magistrate was given her by Reagan. And federal magistrates have that position for life. And it can't be taken away from them. She was very serious and very diligent in what she was doing. She even wrote, she was quoted in the newspaper saying, I have a mission.

I have a mission to do what I'm doing. And she looked me dead in the eye and she said, Mr. McBride, that time of sentence, she said, after she sentenced me to the mandatory 10, I had the sentence capped at 20 in lieu of everything that I told them about how stupid they were and all this kind of shit, giving them that invaluable law enforcement, you know, vaccines look. whatever circumstances ever hear of you in any courtroom in this united states being brought before a magistrate for these type of crimes i will warehouse you for the rest of your life and that's when i went yes ma'am you won't see no more you that was all i needed to hear and that resonates inside my brain every time this topic comes up i can hear her i can see her looking right at me telling me that look at me i mean a dead cold stare look at me right in the eye i will warehouse you for the rest of your life and she was fucking serious well good for you for going back to that shit man there's no fucking way it's just you know so what did you do i learned you know i got two things out of that you know and um i uh i picked up on this from a from a guy i know his name is brian o'day he was a smuggler back in back in the days and his claim to fame was uh as um i don't know

maybe a hundred thousand or so pounds of asian weed that was brought into the gulf of alaska from asia and they put it aboard a fishing processing boat, and they packaged it and froze it in fish boxes. And they brought it ashore in Washington and right at the dock, and they're unloading into the tractor-trailer trucks, and they would have an actual box of fish with frozen fish in it sitting different places on the boat, and a guy every now and then would knock one of them over, and fish would spill out on the deck to kind of distract from you know maybe there's something nefarious going on if you will rather like well but um um i came to terms

with this and and i got two things out of this whole lifestyle or if that's you know for the lack of a better way of putting it i learned what a house full of money looks like, but I also learned at the same time what very little difference in my life it made. So I have no compunction whatsoever to ever go back to that because I had reached the pinnacle in sentencing and in smuggling. I couldn't top that.

Yeah, you're never going to get above that. And now that they know the whole workings and how it happens, there's just no fucking way it could ever happen like that. And it didn't happen even at the time it was going on. That was the only place in the world that this sort of thing could have happened at the degree in which it was happening. Wow. Because of the geographical location in which we were bringing all this stuff

plus being family in a in a you know a town of you know close-knit people it's crazy it's just like like it's so long ago now that i feel like the fact that you waited so long until 2012, 2013 to start looking at actually writing this story, you've kind of lived a whole other generation of your life. I think it makes it a lot more powerful because not only did you go through the whole system and reflect on it there and then get out of prison, but then you had a whole life in front of you. You got married. You had kids. You had all this perspective. I was blessed to be able to have my kids. Yeah.

The two most important things, people in my life. That's awesome. And I get choked up when I think about that because had these sequences of events not have taken place the way they did, I wouldn't be having this conversation with you right now. And dropping back a bit, a few paces on, you know, ultimately writing and educating people on how actually this was done, you know, and how it can be done nonviolently, not like you see what's giving people a level of comfort now that it's it's fucking quasi legal in every state in the united states it's medically and and uh

recreationally legal in you know at least 32 of these united states right now which by the way i'm thinking i should get some fucking credit back or something, you know, because I can go down the street and buy the fucking shit now, you know? Yeah, how do you feel about that? You know what? It was bound to happen, you know, because you know, having talked to some of these

agents who were in charge of my case, like David Waller, the... And you're friends with these guys now, too. Yeah. One of my dearest friends is, you know, John was the supervising customs agent that was involved in my case. That's awesome. And two of his interdiction specialists that were running interdiction vessels

chasing my ass out there a number of times. You know, they even said out of their own fucking mouth what a waste of time it was for them. All the billions and billions of dollars over the years trying to you know stop something that was virtually unstoppable because it was um a war of attrition right you just keep throwing this shit and it's gonna get through you know lose one who cares lose one who cares you know like that but you know when you you started talking earlier in our conversation about how the Mexican cartels wound up, warning of the cocaine and that, well, here's a bit of information regarding that.

I had a meeting, it's probably gone about seven years or so now, seven or eight years now, that I had the opportunity to visit in his office the supervisor for Homeland Security for South Florida. He invited me to his office to meet a legend, he said. I started laughing. I said, what the fuck are you talking about? God damn, this world got backwards. He says, now come and talk to me, he says. I'll explain to you.

It turns out that we, by association, we had the same family doctor, same family physician. Is he allowed, he's not allowed to tell them that though, HIPAA? Well, he was telling them about me. The doctor was telling you about? Yeah, telling, you know, this Homeland Security guy. Because I'm always in there talking to him, you know, about, you know, this know this was before medical uh cannabis came about i'm you know giving him a little history he was you know everybody is engrossed in this right here you know um and um so he felt it you know that um he said do you want to happen but no it just came in a conversation i don't know how exactly but you

know my name come up and then he said oh give him a number have him call me or you know give me i will reach out to him so i don't remember the um precise details about how that came about but we wound up talking that day and that's when he said come in i want to meet a legend you know like what did he want to know um he just kind of wanted to kind of sit back and get from himself you know from the mouth of the guy you you know, how this was taking place. And he was eager to tell me what took place and eventually happened to that industry once they took it out of our hands. Now, he said, and this was something that I wasn't privy to, you know, I needed him to explain this to me. I would have not known this. And quite simply, he said that when they ended the cocaine importation into South Florida,

and then there shortly after ended the marijuana importation in Southwest Florida, and the degree in which it was being done as far as taking my crew out of the picture, that ended Caribbean weed from coming into this country in the late 80s, early 90s. That ended Caribbean weed. No, it didn't happen in texas either really yeah there was a huge paradigm shift in those two industries and what took place was this the sinaloa who've been around forever there's nothing new about this fucking guys okay mexico in mexico they um they didn't want the they didn't want the caribbean weed or the colombian colombian weed they They had their own.

Yes. And they had the opium poppy to make the brown tar heroin and whatnot. They could grow that poppy in Mexico. They couldn't grow the coca plant. So they wanted the cocaine. So now, not coming into South Florida anymore, cocaine is going into the Sinaloa, going into Mexico. That's how they got their hands

on it the caribbean weed they didn't want the mexico colombian weed they didn't want where does it go now to north africa and europe really that's the market for caribbean and colombian weed now since they took us out of the picture that's where it all turned to is this do they do that through used cars? I have no idea how they did it. I didn't really get into that with them, the particulars of how that bit of organization was designed. He was just giving to me the paradigm shift in those two industries and how it all happened, how it took place, and how Mexico wound up becoming the killing ground that it is because they wound up and i said well look how do you how does it feel taking all this out of the hands of people that never fired a fucking shot at you and look what's happened to it now over 35 000 deaths a year because of this little

fucking plant and that's not even counting what happens with the cocaine and meth and you know all that shit that's happening now you know that's where it was already that's the thing like the cocaine was obviously very violent you know grizelda all that always had that violent streak in it but the pot you guys were just running through west gulf chilling yeah yeah exactly and when they stopped us and the the significance of what it was we were doing literally ended caribbean weed coming into this country. That's when it shifted in the late 80s, early 90s. When was this meeting again with him? This was, I think, probably in 2015, 14, the year before I published.

I think something like that. It wasn't that long ago. But I was given this bit of information and and because i had no clue sure so when i asked the guy i said look tell me tell me honestly please would you in percentages wise what you think your success in in in um interdicting marijuana coming into this country is what do you think is your percentage of success he looked me dead in the eye and said maybe one percent i said thank you thank you they're only catching maybe one percent of it wow and i said that's exactly right because in our day for every one pound that was confiscated or busted

400 got through 500 got through you know it bet. Or maybe it got a second chance with Noriega. But that's how it all shifted, and our southern border became what it is because of them taking it out of the hands of a bunch of South Florida people that never fired one motherfucking shot at anybody. Yeah, I mentioned it a little earlier, but that Narcos Mexico. See, like when Narcos came out and it was all about escobar for the first three seasons that had all the fanfares with pablo escobar and everything everyone knows him right but narcos mexico which is the second half of the series had a lot less

fanfare because people it doesn't have like the escobar name but it was excellent and it was actually very historically accurate and when you see how fucking fast this moved from weed to coke and the violence that came with it i mean we all know about it now but it's like you know it does make you think every time you take out an el chapo there's just fucking 10 of them to replace them you know what i mean and it's so crazy and and it seems like the war on drugs, we all rip it as we should. But it's never ending. If people want products, someone's going to always take the risk to get it to them. Well, that being said, he turned right around and looked back at me and asked me, he said,

okay, now, how would you stop it? And I didn't skip a beat. I said, legalize that shit. Yeah. Knock the fucking sales out of it. Take the demand out of it. And then it's over with. Well, look what's happened.

32 states now, like I said, have legalized cannabis in recreational or medical. And every other state in the United States has it somewhat quasi-legal in some fashion or another. And you don't hear about the brick weed anymore coming out of mexico very little of it do you ever hear about because it's it's who wants that shit and i told that supervisor the homeland security guy i said look if you snap a picture of some poor bastard some poor mexican fucker that's got a bail strap to his back walking through the sonora desert you know half dead and in lieu of getting that bail to here the united states his family is being held hostage in mexico show him that picture and then show him a picture of a beautiful glistening in the sun medically grade fucking cannabis bud and ask the people of the united

states which would you rather smoke and you know what the fuck one you think are going to be pointing at it's easy this one and you know where it's coming from too exactly you know that's the other thing with drugs that there's so much shit coming in and obviously weed has a lot less problems with this but you know this drugs all over the place are getting laced with shit and you don't know it and then you know the fentanyl is the common one and it's so fucking scary but like weed is, weed is the one that, all right, you want to have arguments over the other ones because it's different health consequences, stuff like that?

Okay, fine. I hear you. But, like, weed is the one, it's just never, I've never seen a good argument for it. I'm like, why? No. This is so stupid. The only way that you can OD on marijuana

is if you can smoke 1, 1200 pounds of it in about an hour that or have that same 1200 pounds fall off a shelf on you fucking squash that's the only way it can happen you know and it has been proven throughout the years now that it does have a medicinal value to it it's very striking in its in its uh it does you know and its efficiency in doing such a thing and you know once that paradigm shift took place in the early 90s, it wasn't too long after that was the advent of the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, the Trinity Mendocino in Humboldt County. I'm actually not familiar with that.

The three counties, the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, where all the old-timer mom and pups were growing homegrown weed. I'm actually not familiar with that. afterwards i don't know if it's the same thing i was looking at something else maybe that is because it's easily grown it can grow cannabis can grow anywhere in the world and it grows quickly because it was you know if you have a greenhouse this just reminded me of this too you know as you know as kids doing our thing as we were doing it with the with the adults and we wouldn't always unload at the same guy's house it was all over the island this and that but it was always one of us guys or two of us kids job to go around to all these spots where we offload and clip down the plants that are starting to grow because, I mean, they're just littered with buds and seeds when the load comes through and the shit starts growing.

If I wanted to smoke a joint, I'm standing on the hill getting the traps ready for next season in the summertime, that's hot fucking work. If I wanted to roll a doobie, I'll just go down to the seawall and pick some buds up off the ground and go roll a fucking joint. It's all right there.

Product's right there. It's awesome. So that being said, that's how, you know, Humboldt County, Mendocino, and Trinity

and that came into, you know, came into what they wound up being today as the Emerald Triangle. Wow. And what are you doing

these days i'm uh this i'm talking people telling the story yeah i had a bit of unfortunate accident take place a few years back which which um i'm i'm uh i'm drawing a disability for through my social security now you know nothing really um devastating to the point of you know me losing my health or my life you know and after a number of years but enough enough to where i you know i i can't um i don't function as properly as i should you know as i as i would have had i not had that accident but um besides that it allowed me the opportunity and gave me the opportunity to focus on writing this book. And what prompted it was, like you mentioned earlier, why it takes so long to tell a story like this.

Well, a lot of us for a lot of years really didn't see what the big interest would have been. And a lot of my friends even today, or even when I was researching and going down and talking to the old timers and getting their story to put this together, who would want to hear about this? I mean, because to us, it was just 40 ton loads were just, that was another night of fucking busting our ass. There was no second thought of it. But now thinking about it, I said, well, you'd be surprised. I was always one capable of thinking outside the box. And I thought, well, you'd be surprised. I was always one capable of thinking outside the box. And I thought, well, you'd be surprised. And when I went back there to get some of the backstory from the older generations,

from prior to my even coming onto the scene, this shit was happening for 20 years before I showed up. And I'm getting these old-timer stories in order to round out the story to give you the full glimpse of what was taking place. The older generations agreed, or whoever I was talking to agreed, that the story should be told. And it should be told in our lifetime by somebody who was there. Somebody who can tell it honestly and without embellishment. And I've been asked that about embellishing on the story because because the ridiculousness of what it is you're going to read.

And I said, well, look, two things would have come of that. If I had embellished on what I had written, it first of all would have come off sounding just so fucking stupid and outrageously ridiculous. Nobody would have believed it. And second of all, we were already operating on the limits of reality. What do you mean? At the – we were already – I would have put it over the top of what was capable of happening. Right.

Okay. Gotcha. You know, we were right on the edge of the possibilities of it being done any more than it could possibly be fucking done. Yeah, it was a last-minute thing. To go beyond that, it would have been been that would have been ridiculous as well so i kept it just as i just as you read it and you know without any embellishment whatsoever and it's up to you you know to you know buy the book it's on amazon now it's in its second edition and printing it's um um they were selling it's uh i think it's a paperback version of it now.

I haven't got my copies yet because it's so new. You can get an electronic version too. You can get a, there's an e-book. There's an Audible version of it that is told by a very cool guy by the name of Wes Talbot. Wes Talbot. When I was on pre-production for the Audible, you know, I got a call. I got a, my agent got a message from Audible saying that we're in pre-production. If you have any questions that you want to query the voice that we've casted for this, feel free to contact him and get a hold of him.

So I told my agent, I said, well, hook it up. He said, no, just call the guy. Call him. So I call this guy, Wes. He didn't answer the phone. I said, well, hook it up. He said, no, just call the guy. Call him. So I call this guy, Wes. He didn't answer the phone. No. I said, is this Wes? He goes, yeah.

Wes Talbot? Yeah, this is Wes Talbot. I said, well, this is your next project, Saltwater Cowboy with Tim McBride. Oh, man, he said. He said, I've been waiting. I've been looking online or whatever, trying to hear something about how you sound and your voice and this and that. He said, this is perfect. And I said, well, I'm kind of doing the same thing in reverse because you

know i had you answer the phone and said hi my name's watch tommy i don't have that fucker up and call the agent he ain't the guy man you know but through the conversation he's he had told me this is the 32nd book that he's done as a voice for audible prior to my book he had done mostly stephen king's books no shit so you got a good one so i got a good guy you know and and you know i kind of a little bit because you know it's my baby you know it's and now that you hear my voice and you hear how i speak and and in my tones and my inflection my you know and that stuff it's all revealed to you in the book you hear my voice come through the pages. I agree a thousand percent.

Because I wrote every single word that you write, that you read. This guy here, Ralph, was guiding me through the publishing process. He was a St. Martin's Press author as well. He was in the stable of authors with my literary agent, and he tagged him on to me to kind of help me, you know, guide me through the publishing process. Because when you publish a book, particularly with somebody like St. Martin's Press, who has a stable of authors that include Jackie Collins, Robert Ludlam, George Grisham, you know, these are some huge authors, huge names. And I needed to be somewhat worthy of being put in that pool. And because when you offer a book just to a publisher like that you give them a complete work you give them page numbered paragraphed um everything except for the printing of the book

in itself you have to offer them they you know my um it's a whole nother business my editor um my first editor i had two editors um when i, I got a guy named Yanev Poha was his name. And the first 48,000 words or so of the book that I had written was only edited twice by Yanev because it was written in such a way that there was really nothing you could do to it, you know? And being a historical tale as it is, you can't fuck with that. No, it doesn't... I knew reading the prologue, forget the fact that it was a crazy story,

like, the voice, because I had seen some of your stuff online, it's not... How do I explain this? It's almost like it's not written like a book. It's not – how do I explain this? It's almost like it's not written like a book. It's written like you're talking to me. And there's a reason for that. There are three styles of writing.

There's an English and American style of literature. And there's a style of writing called the Chicago Manual of Style. And it allowed me, the Chicago Manual of Style allowed me to be more grammatically forgiven and being able to tell the story in my voice to be more accurately portrayed. It's fun. And that's how you're able to hear my voice come through the pages. Now, when Yonav ditched, I say ditched me, but took a better deal, and God bless him, you know, I mean, he wound up exiting from the middle of

doing this book to become the senior executive editor at Doubleday, Random House, rather. Wow. And Mark Resnick, who was the senior editor, chief editor for St. Martin's Press, who championed my book to the publisher, Susan Robinson, at that time. And they agreed to publish and take my work on. He wanted so very much to be a part of the editing process from the beginning, but he couldn't. He was finishing up a book called American Sniper. Oh, that was a big one.

Yeah, that's a cool story. So when American Sniper finally went out of copy edit, Yanov took off, Mark jumped in. Oh, wow. And helped me, worked with me on the second half of the book, which is another 44,000 words. Wow. It's the second half of the book.

And we only did one edit together one amazing because you know he's and i had sent at that time he took over i had already had this a lot of this written out you know all the way to the end it wasn't really honed and fine-tuned and um um and um put together as it is as it is now um and he um he only said uh i'd like to hear a little more about the smuggling stuff and a little bit less about the prison kind of stuff you know if you can do that you know then we're cool but at that time a lot of smuggling stuff but at that time my my literary agent who was um peter migan at Foundry Literary and Media in Manhattan, and he said, why did you send that all to him? And I said, well, the guy's got to kind of know where I'm going with this thing.

I said, don't worry about it. I get one or two edits, I'll know exactly what he wants. Well, I knew exactly what he wanted after the first edit. And once that went by and I wrote the rest of the book, it went straight into copy edit. Oh, wow. And that means copy edit, I mean, you get the punctuation where it needs to be. You get the T's crossed and the I's dotted and all that kind of stuff. And that's the editing process before it goes into type print.

That's the last step in the process. And Mark was really very gracious in knowing that this is a historical accounting, and you just can't fuck with that. And that being said, it was the in-house favorite at St. Martin's Press enough where they sent out advanced reader's copies prior to the copy edit. They sent out a paperback copy of it with all the little flaws and stuff in it to celebrities and newspapers and things like that to get feedback and review. And one of the persons who insisted on having a copy of the book was a gentleman by the name of bruce porter he wrote the book blow oh like the movie george young story yeah wow from which they got the movie out of and he offered one of the two reviews that appear on the back of the book oh yeah he's

right here i'm looking at right now have read of it. A wild and entertaining true story by one of the biggest pothallers in American history, speedboat chases, women, Colombian mansions, Tim McBride's tale of excesses, a thrill to read. That guy's a legend, because that blows one of my favorite movies. It's fucking incredible. And how awesome to have a guy like that

put some words out that describe me in that way. Are we going to get a miniseries one day um i'm really hopeful about that you know i had i've had opportunities throughout the years i even optioned it to fx television for 18 months years ago and i had gotten as far as um them getting ready to attach a director to it but as these options dictate through the comp through the contracts that we drew up that if you're not into financing for any type of production by the time the last month rolls around then i have the ability to take that option back well for 18 months i'm passing up people that are you know that are they're you know chiming in like um executives from longshore

entertainment new wave entertainment in la um frank marshall who founded amblin entertainment executives from Longshore Entertainment, New Wave Entertainment in LA, Frank Marshall, who founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg, even got word of this. The problem is with options, they do so many of these, and then they build in that they're going to shelve a bunch of them. It's really sad. Depending on the length of the option and the wording that you put you put in place you can you can dance around subjects such as that you know you have so much time to get this done you can't shelve this thing and if you're not into financing by the time the last month rolls around i'm not going to renew this fucking thing or i have the ability and the option to to or not to well they were duking around and it just so happens at the same time fx was in pre-production of a show that's run now for like seven years i think um snowfall i'm not familiar with crack

cocaine kind of a scenario and what they didn't want to have at that time was a conflict of genre on their own network yep but they weren't willing to let the story go because it was such an awesome story so they had kind of thought that they were going to go ahead and and produce the the series and have another network air it for them and i thought well okay this is a two network deal this is awesome but they dicked around again and like i said when somebody holds your option i can't do anything with it but now my hands are tied but now it's out i got it back and i own all that man so we got to figure that out because it's a hell of a story the next step in the process is to create a treatment in a in a in a first draft of a screenplay and i'm a writer okay clearly but i'm not that guy i'm not that kind of writer i'm not

a screenwriter i just i don't know the i don't know it how i can read screenplays but i mean it's way different it is way absolutely way different. You have to give them, you know, everything you can give them so they can feel where they're at. That's why a lot of these amazing authors who write books and then have the time, per se, don't adapt their screenplay. And you would be surprised how many cult classic feature films that came this close to not being made because of stupid shit like a script. Yeah. or financing. Forrest Gump. Awesome fucking movie. I mean, just incredible fucking movie.

Came this close to not being made. Why? Because first of all, they went through script after script after script and turned it down until they finally found the one they did. Once they got into production of the movie, it kind of, you know,

lost its push with regards to financing and went over budget like a lot of movies do. Tom Hanks actually had to support in financing the last half of the movie himself. I didn't know that. In order to get it made. And now that it's gotten made and it's gotten out, look what it turned into.

Good bet. Jeez. It's crazy the number of things that happened by it. It's a happen or not happen just like you said there's there's there are authors out there that i i bow graciously to you know oliver stone being one he wrote scarface for christ's sake he's he's mentioned my name he's heard of me you know that'd be cool in a book that he says it you know i absolutely love this shit he says you know and i'm humbled to death death and privileged enough to hear that come out of a man's mouth that wrote Scarface, for Christ's sake. Fucking A, man. You know, and...

Well, I hope we get it, man. I mean, if people can't hear it, this is probably going to be two podcasts because it was just too good to stop. Well, I'm not giving up, man. No, no. This is my life story here. This is awesome. I mean, your perspective is really cool too because it was a long time ago as well and you waited a while to do it but

listen man i really appreciate you coming down here and doing this it was absolutely awesome not at all man and and one caveat to what you just said regarding having written the book and the reason why it was written and and um getting back together with the older generations and some of the guys that i grew up with and you you know, to round out the story. It was important for us not only to have people who understand exactly how this took place in a nonviolent atmosphere, a family-oriented atmosphere. But it was also important to allow the story to be told by someone who was there that could actually tell them from the start to the end and worked almost every position there was to work in that little bitty industry and how we were doing that to tell it correctly where if we just you know let it sit and rest without having told the story the way we need it told honestly and truthfully and allow 30 or 40 years to go by

and we're all dead and have some half-assed journalist or historian patch quilt together from all these articles a story that they think took place. We weren't willing to allow that to happen. So that's why they gave me the nod on the head and said, write this fucker, Timmy, and tell them all about it. You fucking did, man. So thank you for doing it. Oh, my pleasure, my man. And thank you for coming down here.

Oh, thank you so much for letting me be here and indulge myself. I always say that. I don't know why. When I bring Florida people up here, I always say, thanks for coming down here. I have no idea why. Anyway, I've got to get you out of here on this flight, but this is probably going to be two. That's cool, man. Hey, get me back and we'll go another four hours, dude.

I bet we could. There's a lot I didn't touch today. This is 40 years and three generations and being storytelling to get up. What a life. What a life. But I thank you and I thank you all for sticking around if you have stuck around to the end of this thing and have a listen. Hey, guys. I wanted to take a second to speak to the loyal listeners and viewers of this show who have been rocking with me for a while or even people who have just joined just to give a little state of the union here as far as the growth of this show goes i do often get the question

from many of you about well why do your episodes not have hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands of views every time why are they so low i don't understand it this is crazy your shorts have such high views it is because youtube with their algorithm the the way it works is like the shorts channels they all have a problem with long form getting viewed i don't need to get into details right now but i know youtube is working on it for now this is what we have to deal with so even when i do episodes that do insane watch time like i'm thinking of episodes where i'm doing numbers that like you know the industry standard for long form podcasts is like 11 minutes average watch time i'm talking about episodes where i do

like 40 45 things like that it does not get pushed into feeds because youtube has basically separated out the shorts from the long form so what i've really relied on is going viral on shorts and when that happens enough people clicking the link that I provide in the comments and the description to come to the episode. That's why you see episodes that have some high views. We have like, I don't know, five or six of them that have over 100 or close to 100,000, something like that. But in the meantime, in order to grow this thing, what I really need is people sharing around the show a lot sharing it with your friends sharing it on social media sharing the clips i mean when those clips spread we're in business so every time i have a clip if it's something decent or shareable if it's not don't

share it like it's not good enough don't please don't share it but when i have a good one that share button's huge sending that around putting it on your stories, whatever. I'm awful at asking for help. I literally never do. I say the same shit in every intro, just about like, oh, subscribe, like, love the comment. That's the most you're going to hear me ask for help. So I understand I actually have to step out of my shell a little bit with that and discuss it. So this is me doing that. And I'm blown away with where it's gotten. I would like to be at a point where I'm actually making money so I can invest in this thing and have people helping me and have a producer here more than anything. To this point, for those of you who don't know, because I do get this question a lot, so I assume a lot of people don't know this. I have never employed a single person on this.

I have never paid a dime to someone else. I've never put a dime of marketing behind this. Any money that I have made, which is very little, goes right back into investing in this show, paying the bills of the show, paying my healthcare bill, and paying for people to fly in when I've done that possible. It still has a cap on it while I'm not making enough money. So basically growing it is the key to success here. And it also can unlock some serious partnerships. So I really, really appreciate everyone who has rocked with this thing to this point. You guys are incredible. Like I said, this thing started on zero. I'm blown away with where it's at, but I do always want to be honest about, you know, what's needed to be able to get it to that next level. And so any help I can get there with sharing it around and getting the word out is huge. I will continue to say that in some comment replies. You'll hear me say like, keep spreading the word. It's corny, but I'll say it. Repetition is important. I understand that. And so let's get it rolling but i'll be talking about this sporadically now sometimes it may get boring for people hearing it many times but it is important that i do it and i want to be open about that so thank you to all of you guys who have been so supportive of this show

and other than that you know what it is give it a thought get back to me. Peace.