Locked In with Ian Bick - Confessions of a College Ponzi Scheme Mastermind: My Shocking Path to a Supermax Prison | Syed Arbab

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Listen to the astonishing true story of Syed Arbab, a college student who sought to escape his normal and religious upbringing by attending a notorious party school. What started as a way to reinvent himself soon spiraled out of control when his legitimate business began to crumble, leading him to mastermind a Ponzi scheme. But Syed's troubles didn't end with his arrest. Even in federal prison, his actions continued to draw attention, ultimately leading to his transfer to a Supermax facility where he spent time with some of the most prolific inmates in United States History.. In this candid confession, Syed Arbab reveals the shocking details of his rise and fall, the critical mistakes that led to his downfall, and the harsh realities of life behind bars in one of the toughest prisons in the world. #PonziScheme #SupermaxPrison #TrueCrime #WhiteCollarCrime #PrisonLife #CrimeStory #Fraud #FinancialScam Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Thank you to our sponsors this week: My Bookie: Go to https://www.mybookie.ag/ and use promo code LOCKEDIN to claim a bonus up to $1,000 on your first deposit. Connect with Syed Arbab: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syed-arbab-ab5656326?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app https://www.instagram.com/saa90285/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Connecting with a Fellow Indictee 00:08:28 - Changing Mindsets After Incarceration 00:16:34 - Boundaries and Cultural Differences 00:24:22 - Differences in Cultural Upbringing 00:32:59 - From College to Investment Fund 00:41:57 - The Beginning of the Downfall 00:50:23 - Financial Devastation and Legal Consequences 00:58:23 - Stalling Tactics and Manipulation in Financial Fraud 01:06:22 - The Consequences of Messing Everything Up 01:14:27 - The Breakup and the Prison Phone 01:22:23 - Getting Caught and Facing Consequences 01:30:22 - Investigation and Designation 01:38:27 - Incarceration and Life in Prison 01:46:37 - Life in Prison, Education, and First Step Act 01:54:57 - Adjusting to Life After Incarceration 02:02:49 - Focusing on Education During Incarceration 02:10:50 - Farewell from the City Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by lead bank member FDIC. Sayyad, welcome to Lockton. This has been like, what, five years, I think, in the making. We can, well, you tell the people the story how we connect it. In, I think 2018, 2019, when I originally got indicted, right, I had just Google searched, like, cases where 20-year-old indicted of securities fraud and shit like that and see what they went through. And there were, like, two searches that came up. One dude in New York, right?

He got, like, three months and a slap on the wrist. and then I had read about this dude named Ian Bick, you, who had inevitably gotten three years in prison. And then I saw that you had already came home, and I had reached out to you. I think it was on Facebook or Instagram. I was like, bro, my name is Syed. I know you don't know me, but I'm about to go to prison.

Could you please help me out? Like, what did you do when you got indicted? And I think you were like kind of wary of the text at the time because I think you were still on probation. So I don't think you responded, but I was like pleading. I was like, bro, I just need some fucking advice. Could you please give it to me? And then you had actually given me retrospectively, probably the best advice I could

have gone. Look, bro, what you need to do is you need to first get yourself situated and not like rush into like buying an attorney or whatever, right? and then also bring the case to trial. And, you know, at that time I had already got an attorney, right, defense attorney. And he had actually told me that it was probably the worst thing I could do was taking to trial. And I agreed with him for a second because, you know, the charges that I was facing, right,

ran up to 20 years of imprisonment because they could have got me on wire, fraud, check fraud, mail fraud, and securities fraud. So I was just scared. So I had dished out over $150,000 for attorney expenses with the same result I probably would have gotten by just not doing that and just going to get a public defender due to the fact that this was my first offense, right? They gave me the maximum amount of time I could have gotten on the sentence. And, you know, I did four and a half years out of the five. So yeah, it was it was super interesting Even more so because I remember giving you that advice

We talked here and there I was following you on Instagram I was like watching your life unfold between you know court looking you up Because I'm always interested in cases of people that talk to me And then saw you at a girlfriend this and that And then randomly I see you post that you're doing Generation Hustle Yeah Which was the show I was doing I was like holy shit what are the odds of that

And you, I think, were you the only one on the show that, um, hadn't gone to prison yet? Yeah. Yeah. So I was one of the last episodes on Generation Hustle. And, um, yeah, I remember in the end, they were like, yeah, Syed faces five years in prison. And he's reported to go on this date or et cetera, et cetera. Um, but yeah, you were on the show and then a few other people that I reached out to some, I mean, what's her name, finding, searching for Anna? Yeah, Anna Delvey.

Anna Delvey. She was on the show as well. It was pretty cool. I was kind of sad that they had taken it off of HBO Max, but it is what it is. You know, it gives a better perspective post-incarceration to retell the story, I guess.

Yeah, well, I think it's actually, I was bummed about it too, but I think it's beneficial that it's off for you, for me, for all of us, because, one, you can tell your story to a larger audience now, because HBO Max back then was just beginning. Yeah.

Now it's way bigger than what it is now, but you could tell it with it coming full circle about your successes, prison, which would turn out to be a crazier experience than you ever thought it would be before, which is another crazy aspect of your story. And you can have that redemption arc where a lot of the stories on there, like it showed me just saying, I worked at Whole Foods and that was it walking into the sunset.

So that's how the story ended, you know? And you know in these documentaries, and we'll get into this later, that they leave out so much stuff. So it's good to, like, do something like this. This episode is sponsored by MyBooky, an online sportsbook with live betting. Get started today by going to mybooky.ag and using promo code locked in to claim a bonus up to $1,000 on your first deposit.

I can't wait to tell you more about my bookie later in this episode. Yeah, and that was like one of the craziest things about the documentary is they're like filming the entire documentary, right? and when I see the actual episode, they just like cut and paste so many different like ad libs in it that have no sequential like motive through the actual story of what I said, right? I mean, I remember this one part where my ex business partner, right, he was interviewed, right? And they had just cut and paste something that he had said and I had said to make it seem like, you know, I had, I don't know, the investor deck. had a misspelling, right? And I think it misspelled like the word,

I don't know, I don't even remember what the word was, but it was just a very elementary word, and they made it seem like I was just this idiot that was just rushing and putting this forth. But in reality, I never even made the investor deck, you know, and he actually said it on the interview originally that he was the one that was in charge of doing all this. But, you know, they just like to purport this image

that, you know, you have to have to make the documentary seem a little bit more conspicuous to audiences. And I get it, right? To be honest, one thing that I will say about Generation Hustle is that I am thankful for the fact that it was a little bit less biased in how they portrayed the story. So they had a balancing of, you know, they interviewed you, they interviewed you, they interviewed your story and your side of it, and then they also interviewed the victims, which there were a few victims on the episode itself, and then a lot of my classmates, too, So the audience was able to gather a little bit more detail than what the feds, obviously, put out, you know, the doc, excuse me, the headlines for my story were Fat Boy Ponzi purports a Ponzi scheme to lure investors on gathers funds for the expenditures of gambling trips, strippers, and booze. I'm like, where the fuck did that even come from?

Like, I think I went to Vegas twice, right? One was for an investor meeting and then one was for my winter break, right? None of the funds that I actually expended when I went to Vegas were out of investor funds at that point. Because at that point, you know, the investor, the investment fund was actually in a pretty decent shape and it had a large amount of profit in it. But just like how they went about it, right? Because they need to paint a picture of you, right? So they need to paint a picture that you're just this like complete degenerate to the public. You know, you're going to be taking advantage of these helpless victims and whatnot.

And to be completely honest, right, I will take ownership of the fact that towards the end, right, I did a lot of wrong by not being fully transparent to my victims, by, you know, taking advantage of the fact that they were at losses on their accounts. And I was just not transparent about the fact that they were lost, right? how they again you know because I took a plea deal and I didn't go to trial right that gives them the right to paint you as whatever you can or whatever they want to and you just have to sign off on it and they had purported me as this like degenerate gambler they used investor funds to fund my lavish lifestyle right like yeah yeah it was yeah we both had the same director george and i i thought

he did a great job depicting both sides because it our key factors to our cases was the age aspect of how young we were. I mean, you were in college. I was in high school, and that was kind of like one of the hooks to the story. And it kind of makes you think, like, were we making decisions based on our age, based on our environment and the people we surrounded ourselves with? And before we dive into your story, I do have a question I want to kind of like put on the front of this episode is how different is your mindset from when you did that documentary and it got released and you got the press and the publicity? of it versus now because I know for me personally when I did it like I was all gunho selling my

movie rights this is my story this is what's going to make it and this is four years ago now and I thought that was everything and I was like I hadn't really necessary learned even after prison but now four years later my mindset's really different and when I talk to like I don't know if you've heard of Ray Tripini he has a Netflix special called BitCon he was in a similar position as us but he got probation. He ended up like ratting on his friends and got probation. And his mindset now, because he just got sentenced and it just came out, is the same mindset I had four years ago. And I'm thinking it's the same mindset you had. So I'm curious of what it was. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone, for him, for example, right, the fact that he didn't go to prison, right? It's just a

complete configuration of your mind that you have after you get sentenced after you go to prison after you actually do the time, right? That affects how you perceive life at that point, right? Because before we both got incarcerated, right, we were both excited because we just want to make something out of nothing, right? When you are facing an indictment, when you are facing all these charges, and then when you're facing a huge change in your life, you're literally at a nothing point, right? So you're going to try to make the best out of it. For me, that was, you know, getting excited about this series. You know, I can't wait. You know, people are going to be so interested in all this shit, right?

And then when I get out, right, the thing about prison is it puts you in a delusional point of view, right? Because when you're incarcerated, you're so disconnected with reality because you're taken away from actual life. So you think, oh, people are just wondering what I'm doing. I can't wait to show them like all my progress, you know, and whatnot. But when I came home, right, no one really gave a shit. And that's something that a lot of people really need to get in tune with, because no one really cares about your story as much as you think you do, unless you have something to actually show, right, for them to affect their lives.

Like, for example, how you're doing this podcast, right, affects a lot of people that are coming home, and it's such a positive influence because they get to hear other people speak about their own story. But a lot of people, right, come into that mindset when they come home, that they need to tell their story immediately because there's going to be so much caring about them, right? And that's something that I had to get myself attuned to, right? Because before I got incarcerated, right? I was just like, it's all about me, me, me, right? I'm so excited to share my story. I'm so excited to make money off the series. Like, there was no money involved anyways. Like, I don't think we either, neither of us got paid from it. But the movie rights and whatnot, but

I was so ignorant to the fact that it was one, pissing off my victims, right? That I was just like lavishing this entire like life that I was like you know one it seemed like I was proud of my crime right that that probably pissed them off too and then two I was just trying to you know it seemed like I was trying to have that crime be my image right so that was just something that I worked on while I was incarcerated you know I still had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to you know when I got out that I wanted to do something still with like my life rights and everything like that, but, you know, at this point in time, like I said, no one really cares as much as people perceive it to be after they get incarcerated. And I think that time of incarceration allows for people to really self-reflect on what

truly matters to them in life. And for me, that was obviously reconnecting with my family ties, reconnecting with my education, and furthering myself as a spiritual individual, right? So, all all, right? When your question was, you know, in terms of maturity, how has these years affected me? I would say that from when I was interviewing for Generation Hustle, right, and to now, the perspective that I have is like completely different when it comes to, you know, portraying my story as something glorious, right? Instead, I want to be clear to the audience that I would like to be very humiliified in what I did. And also, so humble, but at the same time, just how I've been progressing is just something that I can maybe

inspire. Are there individuals that are incarcerated or maybe going through similar things that we have done to know that there is a brighter side at the end? Yeah, and I think, I mean, very well said, and I think it's so important for people to note, like, how people can genuinely change. I mean, I'm not the same person that the generation hustle like you are, and I'm not the same person that I was before I started the podcast because you learn through so much. And even talking to you now, like you're entirely different than Generation Hustle you, but even entirely different from when you got out because I remember when you messaged me.

And I had been following you on Instagram and you went dark for a while, which I'm sure you'll share later on in this episode, but you were in a different position than me because you were promoting the show from prison. From prison. Yeah, and you were gaining followers and people were into you. I think, you know, out of mine and yours episodes,

we were like the most relatable because of our age to the crowd. The other people were from like different countries or this and that. But I remember watching you promote it. And then all of a sudden you just went dark and no one heard anything from you for like two years. And then you resurfaced. You were like, hey, bro, I'm out, which will get into that.

But what state are you from? Where did you grow up? So I was actually born in Japan, right? My dad was doing his PhD at the time. And then my mother was living with him. And then we had moved to the United States in 2001 where I grew up in Maryland for about three years and then moved to the state of Michigan, where I graduated high school from,

and then finally moved to Georgia for my undergrad, where I graduated from the University of Georgia, and then got my master's at Georgia State. And then, you know, technically before I went to Georgia State, I was planning on going to MCG in medical college of Georgia, but I got incarcerated. So, I mean, I got indicted, so, you know, you can't be a doctor as a felon, unfortunately. So I had to veer off there.

Yeah, you finished college. I remember you had like a graduation picture, right, before you got sentenced? Wow, that's pretty incredible that the school still let you stay there in this day and age. You know, normally when there's like scandals or something like that, you're kicked out. Yeah, so that's actually what happened with my admissions to the medical college, right? They would not allow anyone that was indicted to be admitted. right so even when I applied to Georgia State for the master's program right I initially got admitted but then they came back they're like hey wait what happened here right because this is

all over the news you got to explain yourself so you know I had right I had written a entire page about like what I did and everything you know remorseful and this and you know looking back at it four years ago four and a half years ago it was just a bunch of bullshit I didn't feel remorse right But at the end of the day, I was very grateful that the university had let me in and finished my master's. And the crazy coincidental part about that, right? I wasn't intending to finish my master's degree because I was supposed to be getting sentenced three months after I got into the program, right? But guess what happened? COVID.

So COVID allowed me to stay out for almost a year because the, um, conditions of being sentenced in court were undefined, right? They, they didn't know when people were going to get sentenced. So on top of that, right, I was still on bail, right? Luckily, and we'll get into craziness about that in a second too. But, you know, even though COVID was so catastrophic for the human species, right? It's just, it was actually kind of like a blessing in disguise for me in a sense because I was able to finish that degree right before I went in. And then, you know, I continued my education while I was incarcerated as well. I ended up getting my MBA done through Adam State University, excellent correspondence program, right? I'm very grateful

for them as well. Um, because they actually allowed me to help myself get a scholarship through that, but yeah. Now, share with us how you, how you grew up in your family. Was it a strict family? Were you guys religious? What was like the dynamic? Yeah, so I come from a house. I come from a pretty conservative Muslim household, right? My mother and father are both practicing. So it was a little bit confined in terms of, you know, diaspora. So like my parents are both first generation immigrants, right? They had migrated from Bangladesh to Japan where my dad was doing his education and then finally to the United States. And that's where he had raised their children, right? The cultural differences between Southeast Asia and America are just significantly unbalanced, right? So

a lot of Southeast Asian parents and a lot of like, you know, immigrant parents in general have a hard time raising their children in this socioeconomic environment because of just the cultural differences, right? Especially coming from a conservative household, right? My mother didn't know how to raise her daughter in this environment. So what they do is they get in defensive mode. Like, no, you can't do that, right? Like, for example, I was not allowed to go to, like, school dances.

I was not allowed to go to prom. I was not allowed to go hang out with my friends after a certain time point. Like, even as I was getting older, like 16, 17, 18, right? They had made strict boundaries, and I would always ask why, right? A lot of Southeast Asian kids face this diaspora and just a lot of immigrant kids in general because they don't understand why they have these boundaries because it seems like it's a punishment in their heads. but in reality parents think that it's a protective mechanism that they're enforcing right but this inevitably amplifies like the disobedience of the children like as you see for myself i fucking went to

prison right um but you know it just it just makes me push against what they used to say to me because they would never explain why i had to do this and this and this right it would just always point to the religion and say, no, you can't do this because of X, Y, and Z. For example, I was not allowed to ever have any female acquaintances, right? Not even girlfriends in general, like female acquaintances growing up because they thought it was dirty, right? They didn't, because they didn't know the relations, because, you know, immigrants in general, like, what they conceive of the reality in the United States are just abroad is just whatever they see in movies, right? So, whenever they see girl and guys together,

they just think they're going to fuck, right? Like, we could literally just be going to the library, just chill and studying. Oh, what were you doing with that girl, right? I remember one time in summer school, right? I had come out, and this is like when I was like 14, right? I had come out with my friend Autumn, and my mom had seen me because she was picking me up. She's like, what were you doing with that girl? I was like, we just got done with class.

Like, we're just literally walking out. She's like, are you guys hooking up? Like, why are you guys so close? I'm like, what are you talking about? we're literally just talking about physics. Like, what are you doing? And it's just that starts to ingrain your head because you start to feel like you're doing something wrong no matter what you're doing. Right.

And with that type of pressure, you inevitably end up doing more wrong than right because you don't know the difference between right and wrong. You don't know those boundaries because they're not established early on. So you have to find out for yourself. And unfortunately, right, I started finding out through the most wrong pathways possible, right? I started hanging out with people that didn't give a damn about school when I was in high school, right? Because I did care a lot about school, right? From middle school all the way to college, right? I was very forceful in my education.

That came from my household as well. That's one very good aspect about my household is they cared a lot about education. But at the end of the day, right, I wanted to see what the other side was all about, right? I didn't understand why there were so many boundaries against them. and I wanted to figure out for myself what was right and wrong. So as a freshman high school, you know, I started smoking weed, hanging out with all these people, you know, trying to see if I could fit in because I thought that was the type of crowd I wanted to be around, right? Funny story.

After I came home, right, I started looking up all my friends that I grew up with in high school. Almost half of them are dead, right? And that's just the scary reality, but it is what it is. that was just the type of people that I was hang out with, right? Because I didn't know the difference between right and wrong. And inevitably, one decision just butterflyed to the next and just expanded. And, you know, it came to the point, like, for example, my dad was the one that actually forced me to kind of go to the University of Georgia.

Because, one, he was moving down to the South anyways, right? But I had originally wanted to go to the University of Michigan because I was from Michigan. But because all my friends were still in Michigan, right, he wanted me to move out of that state and just go with him, right? This is another type of forceful boundary setting, right? I didn't know at that point what I was doing wrong, but they wanted to set these boundaries for me. And that just keeps me wanting to keep pushing and pushing. And then what happened? When I went to the University of Georgia, joined a fraternity right off the bat, right?

Didn't know anyone. You know, I had just started doing all this fuckery, all this degenerate shit, just kept. going worse and worse on my pathway. Instead of being this little good Southeast Asian kid I focused on his studies was either going to be a doctor and engineer and lived a very sedentary life, right? But now retrospectively, right, all these decisions that I made, right, I can now say what was right and wrong because I went through so many wrongs and I saw the consequences of these actions, right? Unfortunately, people like us, immigrants that have to deal with these strong and religious and conservative household, strict, especially, don't have the experience from someone else

older, right, especially first generation immigrants, to let them know what's right and wrong. So we usually have to find out for ourselves. And a lot of people can't come out to the other side, right? A lot of people end up failing because I'm not the only one in my own, in my shoes, right? there are a lot of kids just like me that, you know, got pushed against the boundaries, just kept doing wrong and wrong and wrong and they just got stuck there, right? And to be honest, at some point in my time, right, I thought I was also going to get stuck, especially when I went to prison, right? When I went to prison, I just also kept fucking up, right?

And just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, right, until I finally was forced, literally by the government to just sit down, shut up, and reflect. I went to that 100%. Yeah. Because that was me. Like, I literally walked your life just before you did. And that's why it's so interesting how the stories collide. Do you feel like if you didn't grow up in the culture you grew up and the way you grew up,

your life would have been, ended up different because I wouldn't have given you that, you know, want and need to do all of these different things? Listen up, everyone. I know we've got a lot of former inmates tuning in. And if there's one thing we all remember about doing time, it's how sports betting made those long days a little more exciting, especially when college football and the NFL season kicked off. Back then, we were hustling for packets of ramen or mackerel, scribbling our bets on scrap paper and praying the guards wouldn't catch on. But guess what, everyone, now that we're on

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talk about this all the time, right? Because we come from very distinct and similar culture, a little background, right? And we went through the similar things as we grew up. If we had some guidance in our life and how to actually distinguish the difference between right and wrong, instead of being just told that everything that we're doing is wrong, right? There would probably be a a lot more understanding and prosper and proliferation early on in life instead of having to waste so much time figuring out for ourselves, right? Like, for example, I compare my life to a good friend of mine that I grew up with, right? He also came from a Muslim household, but his parents were second generation, right? Because his parents already had experience living in the United States,

they know how to go about things. They know the cultural, you know, assimilation between immigrants and the people that are already living. So they know how to distinguish right and wrong and they teach their kids that from our early stage. He is living a great life now, right? And early on, you know,

it's not like he just stayed confined by himself, but he was able to balance the American life with the Southeast Asian life and now he's, you know, doing excellent. right like and I just look at that as a contrast of my life and his life because when we both grew up right we were we were you know performing in the same academic skill you know the same academic acumen and coming from like similar you know background as well so I contrast my life with his because we inevitably could have had the same pathway we're originally going to be you know he's a doctor now

doing extremely well and I have just now gotten out of prison right and I look at those differences and I try to understand where those differences arose from and one of them that I could probably point to is the cultural uprising right and just understanding the differences in how we were brought up

and it's not to say that it's it's my parents's fault it's not anything to do with them because they are excellent they are the most loving people that I have in my life I owe them everything, right? Because they were the only ones that took care of me while I was incarcerated. But at the end of the day, right, because of their lack of education and how to go about raising immigrant children in this culture, right? They lacked that effort and where we probably were left behind in that sense. And that's why I had faltered, right, because they were not able to give me that type of education.

because they just kept trying to teach and raise us in a very defensive and confined mode where we shouldn't have been and there was no reason to be, right? Have you seen the TV show Under the Bridge? No, I haven't. I think you should. I think it gives a great what you're describing. Ultimately, the purse and the subject in it dies in it, which is, you know, shown in the beginning and in the trailer. but that she grew up in a very strict cultural setting and it caused her to hang out with the wrong crowd,

which would ultimately lead to her death. And, you know, in your case, it would ultimately lead to prison just growing up in those, you know, tight and environmental constraints. And it kind of makes you want to, you know, branch out and do new things and get curious and it makes sense that you joined a fraternity as soon as you can because I'm sure college was like your first taste of freedom. Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, right, another reason why my parents didn't want to let me go to a school in Michigan, right, the University of Michigan or the Michigan State University, was because they were known to be party schools, right? But then they wanted me to go to the University of Georgia, which was known to be the number one party school in the nation. And I was like, okay. They thought it was because I didn't know anyone at the school that I would just, you know, be kind of stagnant and I would come back to just focusing on my education, just being this good little brown boy, right?

No, that was that was not what happened. Well, anyone that's listening should also go look up Syed's college day photos. Because like yourself, I mean, like myself, I was very overweight and chubby and I lost weight in prison and you look, you know, incredible now. I saw your transformation before, and I remember the old pictures. I remember that video during the BLM protest where it was the police that like beat the crap out of you. Yeah. And I remember you just look totally different than how you do now in a great way. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, I remember that as well. You know, that was actually with my ex at the time. Just, you know, at that point I was just going through some mania phase. I was facing incarceration, obviously, but I was still out on bail at that time. I was just doing whatever I wanted, right? We went to BLM protest. For some reason, I decided to get in the way of this dude that was running away from the cops, right? And again, the way of the cop had grabbed me, beat these shit out of me.

Three other cops joined him, tackled me to the ground, kicked me and stopped me in, you know, got this cut from there, you know, opened up my forehead, you know, gave me contusions all over my body. He was crazy. Went to jail. This is also while I was on bail, by the way. Yeah, they were trying to, like, revoke your bail or something because of that, right? Yeah, yeah. But it was just, I think it was a very awkward disposition for my prosecutor and the judge because, you know, they're both deep south.

So it would look weird if they revoked my bail because I got arrested at a BLM protest, right? It would probably not look politically well for them. Yeah. And I think that's probably the reason why. still was able to be out. Tell us about college and what exactly you did in college that would ultimately end up getting you arrested. Because this all pretty much stem from college, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.

So, you know, freshman year I had went in with the intention of studying cell biology to inevitably get my medical degree. Oh, well, go to medical school, right? So I did throughout my entire performance in college, I did extremely well, right? But I wanted to fit in, right? This was just a deep, deep desire that I've had since I was a kid because I was that immigrant. I was that person in isolation. I wanted to be a part of the crowd, right? So I noticed that in the South, right, especially in Southern universities, it's imperative that you join a fraternity because that's how you get attention.

That's how you assimilate, right? So my second semester of my freshman year, I had went ahead and joined a fraternity, right? um notice right at this point i because of my like religious background and my conservative background right i actually didn't drink until that point so after i joined a fraternity everything just went out the window you know i started getting fucked up every weekend you know actually almost every day you know it first started with just turning up on like friday and saturday but then it was turn up tuesday thursdays friday saturday and then sunday fun day you know it's just it just didn't stop.

But that type of, you know, environment allowed me to, you know, conglomerate and congregate with people that also, you know, had connections, right? Because in the deep south, right, the best way to socialize is through partying, is through, like, social settings, like, where you're drinking. And especially interfaternity connections, right? So a lot of my investors inevitably arose from members of other fraternities and, you know, their parents and then their other connections. Like how I got my first big investor, right, was, okay, so just back up a little bit. So how my, like, how my passion for investing actually started was when I was 15 years old, right?

my dad allowed me to trade on his e-trade account, right? Because I said that I had wanted to understand the patternization of the market and see how I could perform based off of identifying different methods or different types of patterns that would allow me to make money off just investing in different stocks. So I went ahead and tested one of my methods. One of my methods was actually identifying patterns in social settings and understanding like different trends that were becoming popularized. of the first investments I ever made was Lulu Lemon, right? And the reason I made an investment

in Lulu Lemon was because this is the time I was in high school and all these girls started wearing Louis Lemon leggings. I was like, oh my God, that looks crazy. Like their ass looks fat. So, you know, I had told my dad to put like two grand in Lulu Lemon and after their earnings call that Q3, they ended up increasing by 40%. So that was my first big investment and my first big return. Fast forward a little bit, right? So from the entirety of high school, I had saved up about five grand. I had put it into the market to start investing.

So it was me and my buddy. We, you know, we both downloaded our Robin Hood accounts and we're just trading on there. And, you know, people became interested in how we were doing it because we had gotten a head start on investing because it felt like we were the first people to actually, you know, in our age group, to start actually becoming focused on trading and not only trading stocks,

but also trading financial derivatives such as options, which is now extremely popularized, right, because of the medium Wall Street bets and other groups. But, you know, from there I had actually started an organization on campus called Artis Proficio Investing, right? is this was actually originated as a club that I started at the school, right? The club was geared towards people that didn't have a finance background, like from, as for myself, right? I came from a medical background and was still focused on investing as a side hobby. So a lot of the people

that joined were also same, right? A lot of engineering backgrounds, even art majors, right? They came to the club, and inevitably the club grew from having like a membership of like 20 people to over 250. And we actually ended up opening a separate chapter at Michigan State University, right? From there, a few of my friends were like, hey, what if we gave you like a couple grand? Like, would you invested for us? I was like, nah, no, I'm good. Like, I would rather teach, et cetera, et cetera. But then, you know, I had, the reason I wanted to start raising funds was because, you know, this is around the time where little side history, right, this is around the time that Donald Trump was under presidency, right? He had cut the NIH budget by a couple billion dollars, right?

And a lot of laboratories around the nation were having a hard time getting funding. At that time, I was an apprentice or, you know, a lab assistant at a laboratory at the University of Georgia, and we're having a hard time getting a grant money, right? that usually stems from the NIH. So what I wanted to do was create a fund, right, investment fund that could inevitably give grant scholarship or grant money to laboratories that could not otherwise get funding, right? As long as they had established ideas and perspectives that were novel, right? So I try to bridge the gap between finance and investment funds and laboratory research

because a lot of people don't know the fact that science usually gets held up because of lack of funding, right? People usually invest in things that are going to make money. Unfortunately, a lot of labs that have like novel ideas don't get funding because it's just so many years behind some idea that could potentially make money. But inevitably, right, that's what allowed me to get interest in starting a fund. So at that stage, I had started receiving investment funds. my first big investment that really tracked funds were after, I think this is, after my freshman year, right, starting my sophomore year in college, I had at this point around like 30K, it was like 25K saved up, right, from other side hustles as well. And I had put it into the

market on a call that was essentially betting against. gold because the Federal Reserve that was supposed to increase interest rates that was going to strengthen the dollar, the U.S. dollar, inevitably weakening in gold. And this option allowed me to leverage the position and whatnot. Anyways, the $25,000 ended up turning into about $130,000, right? So this flip really enticed a lot of people to continue to invest, right? And at the peak of my fund, right, by my junior year, I had amassed around. around $4 million, right? And I had reached a high net worth around 1.3, right?

That was my highest net worth that I had. But, you know, I don't have a finance background, right? I was just identifying patterns and actually getting more and more aggressive. So, as you know, markets aren't always sustainable, right? They go up and down. So when things started going south because interest rates were getting tighter and tighter, right? I didn't have a hedge on the downside. And the market kept slipping and slipping and slipping.

And at this point, right, my fund that was worth around $4 million had inevitably fell drastically. Right. And when I was bleeding out, a lot of investors were like, hey, with the market going down, like, are we taking any losses, right? due to my arrogance, right, because I don't want to be proven wrong because I don't want to be made, to be felt like to be made to look dumb, right? I would tell these investors that we're doing completely fine, right? We're still hedge, we're X, Y, and Z, you know, the money is still there, right? But in reality, the money was getting tighter and tighter and ultimately at a loss, right?

And this is illegal. You can't tell people that you're making money when you're not actually making money and actually purporting funds from another source to fill those gaps. For me, the source where I was purporting funds from were the distribution and the selling of cocaine and other types of narcotics, right? I was also working at the bar. I was doing so many different odd jobs just to like fill the gap just to make sure that the funds was still there. investors were still kept intact, right? And this actually went on for a couple months, right? Before, I had one of my largest investors asked me to pull out, and he tried to pull out $150,000. And at that time, the fund was only valued, you know, from a peak of around $4 million to around

$300,000. So he was asking to pull out half the cash flow. And I had told him, yeah, absolutely, no problem right so I had gone to other means to get these funds at that point right I had actually gone to like loan sharks you know and just it just it just kept spiraling out of control like you know um there were also times where I was you know you know my life was at stake because of the things that I was doing to get the money to fill these gaps instead of just being honest with my investors and clients that hey unfortunately you know because the market has fallen, you have lost a fuck ton of money. Unfortunately, you know, I was dumb. I didn't hedge. I mean, at that point, I was 20 years old. A lot of people probably would have understood.

They would have been pissed, but they would have understood. But because of my arrogance, I did not want people to think that I let that happen, right? And eventually, right, people were getting suspicious, as you probably saw in my original documentary, right? You know, I was asking X person to send money directly to Y person, and I had labeled X person as my FinTech manager, and then they had communicated with each other. They're like, dude, I thought I was investing money. Who the fuck are you? Right? So yeah, they ended up taking that and going to the Securities and exchange commission. And then just to put the icing on the cake, when the Securities Exchange commission originally interviewed me, right? They had asked me candidly, because they already

knew, right? Candidly, are you purporting funds in your firm? And I had said, no, I actually received all these funds as gifts from my family and friends. Oh, so you weren't even a registered firm with the SEC? No. No, no, right? Did you know you had to be, or you weren't? Yes and no. So, we actually got a securities attorney to do that. One, I never followed up with the security's attorney, right? We just paid a 10 grand retainer for absolutely nothing, right? The dude has, had just shown us a pitch deck. And then he was like, hey, I'm not getting to work, but you got to understand, at that point,

my firm was absolutely fucked. So if the dude was involved in my firm, he would be like, he would probably report me to the SEC himself, right? So you tell them it's gifts, and then what happens? It's gifts, right? So I tell the SEC that it's gifts, and if you were to read the transcripts of my interview,

they audibly laughed, right? Because they knew that it was just complete bullshit. Right? Like they just kept asking me. They got so pissed in the middle of the interview. They're like, okay, you know what? We're done. Right.

Because they just knew I wouldn't tell the truth. Right. They was just so irritated at the fact that I was just lying through my teeth. And they let me go. Um, and then another one of my big investors, this is actually my boss of the bar that I worked at, right? A really good mentor of mine, you know, that actually allowed me to tap into his connections with his other investors, right? that are extremely connected in the Buckhead area in Atlanta, right?

He had invested around $40,000, and he had actually asked, hey, like, in a joking way, hey, this isn't like a Ponzi scheme or anything, right? I was like, absolutely not, bud, like, you're good. Yeah, so he was actually the first one to go to the SEC when the case unfolded, right? And I don't blame him, right, because he felt completely. betrayed. But it was just shocking to me at that time that someone that I trusted so much,

you know, that I looked up to a mentor could hurt me in that way. But at the end of the day, right, just me being so dishonest at the fact that he actually asked in a joking way and I had said absolutely not, you know, it probably pissed him off to the core. But, you know, at that point in time, he had asked me if he could pull some funds out, right? And this is where everything just started collapsing, right? When he tried to ask me to pull out five grand, just five grand at this point, right? I couldn't because I checked my online banking, right? And my account was frozen, right? At this point, the SEC had put in a temporary injunction. They filed a temporary injunction with the court, and they had froze all my money. At this point, that investor had gone to

all the people that were investing with me, the big dudes and buckhead, like, yeah, I think this guy's full shit. Try to pull out your money. All of them, try to pull out their money. And it just started, and I had investors in Georgia, in Michigan, and in California. They all just tried to pull out their money.

None of them could. And it just started panicking. A lot of people showed up at my house, right? The front door. Looking for me, you know, and they're like talking to my parents at that point. Like, hey, call my dad at work. hey, your son owes me money, what's happening, and stuff like that. It is just such a terrible

situation to put my family through. Just embarrassing, first of all, that's the first thing. But it was just crazy just how out of control it went. But at that point, right, I was just so taken aback from reality that I still convinced myself, yeah, it's going to get better. Like, things will be completely fine. You know, I'll get out of it. I just need to raise more money from somewhere. Even when I was being sued by the SEC, they had put it. temporary injunction, I was still reaching out to people to invest in this fund. Right. That was just so, that was just the epitome of my disassociation with reality, right? And that had pissed off the DOJ so much, right? Because at that point, the SEC was just done with me. They were,

they were not even going to talk to me. They had handed my case over to the DOJ, right? And the, the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, ended up coming to my fraternity. And they were, house and looking for me. At that time, you know, just everything and how it worked out was just so coincidental because to be completely honest, right, if I was at the fraternity house at the time, I probably would have gotten arrested, right? The GBI showed up at the fraternity house. I was not there. I was already in Augusta, Georgia with my parents, right? I had already left after I graduated, you know, they had taken me home, you know, whatever. The GBI probably just said, fuck it, right? We're just going to let Augusta, no, Southern District handle this, right? So at that point, you know,

the SEC had filed their indictment, right, the civil side. And it broke the news, right? It was all over, like, the AJC, the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It was on Fox News and all this other stuff. And it was just so embarrassing because all the people that I grew up with, especially from the cultural dynamic that I grew up with, right, these very neat kept people, right, were looking at me, like the Southeast Asian, that was supposed to be like them, right? Do the same things that they were doing, you know, kept in a very tight spot, you know, to be a doctor or an engineer. And they're like, looking at me like, oh my God, like, because the first headlines were obviously this dude spent all the money on, you know, clothes, booze, strippers, gambling, right? They're like, who the hell is this guy? You know,

because I grew up with them, you know, I grew up as a conservative Muslim just like they did. And it was extremely embarrassing for my parents. Like, they were just shocked, right? And, and To make matters worse, right? I remember on our holiday, Eid, right? The FBI at this point had shown up to my house, to our, my house in Augusta. And then they also sent the FBI to my apartment in Athens, Georgia, right? They had seized all my assets, right? They had gone through my apartment, got my cars, got my watches and all this stuff, right? And they had also shown up to our house on our holiday, right? And my mom, You know, she's this cultural mother. You know, she has absolutely no idea how the justice system works in the United States. She was just like, she got on her knees, started crying, you know, begging them, please, don't arrest my son. Don't let him go to jail. I mean, at this point, they were just handing me a warrant for my phone, right?

Like, they were not, like, they had to calm her down. Like, hey, it's okay. Like, you're fine, which is very nice of them, you know, coming from someone that was incarcerated by the government, right? It was extremely nice of them to, like, calm this Asian woman down. but, you know, nonetheless, at that point, you know, they had sent agents to my Athens apartment and then agents to my Augusta house with my parents, took everything that I had, and, you know, at that point, I was just completely numb. I didn't know what to think. So, the first thing that came to mind was hiring an attorney, right?

At this point, I should have hired an attorney almost six months ago when I was being interviewed by the SEC. but I was like, no, I'm too smart. I can handle this myself. You know, just the arrogance. And I probably, if I had done that in the initial stages of this, I probably would never have gotten a criminal indictment. But because of my arrogance, it just kept going worse and worse. And this comes back to, you know, not understanding the boundaries between right and wrong, right? When you think you got it all figured out, especially when you're 20 years old, right? You think you just know everything about life. It just gets worse and worse, especially when you make irrational decisions. And this is the peak of rationality where, you're getting probably sent to prison, right? And every single decision you make going forth will determine how much time you get or, you know, how your life is going to be impacted in the future. And I just kept making the worst and worse decisions to just inevitably, you know, just fuck my life, right? So we had hired a pretty good defense attorney. He was known to be, um,

decent in reducing the amount of time that people get for their sentences. And so he had done extremely well in his job. He is not at fault any of the things because he had just told me to do specific things to keep me away from trouble. One of them was to not post on social media, right? But what do I do? You know, while I'm being incarcerated or while I'm being in the process of indicted and arraigned and then inevitably sentenced, I still continue to post on social media, like I'm having

the best time in my life, like, whoa, I'm living my life, look at me, you know, posting on TikToks and shit like that, like people are pissed. People are pissed. They lost their money. They think I'm getting punished as I should be, and I'm just living my best life. And my attorney's like, dude, why? Can you please stop? So then, um, I sat down with a government, right? Because my attorney had offered a plea deal, right, to sit down and just explain my crime to them, right? At this point, my business partners had ratted on me, right? So they were just off the hook. So the government already probably knew what they were going to give me, right? So we had negotiated one count of securities fraud, which carries maximum incarceration time of five years, right? And it gave me a

breath of relief, right? Because originally when they served me with the original indictment, right oh by the way the indictment was extremely funny right looking back it was not funny at the time but how the indictment happened right i was just freaking out at home right this is after the warrant came two days later this super hot girl comes to my door right and she brings this paper well no she comes to the door she knocks and i opened and she's a hey are you siad i was like yes i am she's like hey here's your paperwork you're indicted i'm like what the fuck wait they didn't arrest you Right that I'm there. No.

Dude, they kicked my damn dear, kicked my door down with, like, you know, 30 federal agents. That's crazy. Holy cow, that's all they. They set the hot girl just to serve you paperwork. Yeah, they sent a hot girl to serve me paperwork, and it was just extremely crushing. Was she an agent or? No, no, no, they probably hired, like, you know how people hire, like, service to go serve papers and stuff like that. So I think she was just part of that.

You got off easy, man. I know. Hey. Well, you got more time, so I don't know. I'd rather have my door almost kicked out and get less time than. But, you know, to be completely honest with you, right? I just made my situation so much worse. Because at that point in time, they probably didn't even want to send me to prison.

They probably didn't even want to give me an indictment. But I just, I just force their hand. Because at that point in time, you know, with the social media postings, with me getting arrested three times while I was on probation, right? I got arrested three times. One for super speeding. sorry, four times, excuse me. One for super speeding.

Two for drunken disorders, right? One of the drunken disorders, excuse me, was getting a fight with my ex-boss, right? At his bar, right? Because I was going there to catch a drink. He had smashed a drink on my head, and we ended up getting a fight. I kept taunting him and be like,

yeah, you're never going to get your fucking money. How do you feel about that and all this shit, right? Went to the feds, you know. And then finally I got arrested at the Black Lives Matter protest. Um, even with all this, they still let me out on bail because my attorney was just like begging him, please, like he's just a kid, he's smart. Like, don't, don't think about these. Like, look at his other attributes. And the prosecutor was just like, okay, we're going to let this go one last time. We're going to let this go one last time. And even though the prosecutor was eventually the one

that was sending me to prison, right? She was extremely lenient with me because she could have revoked my bond immediately, like after the first time, right? But she just kept going, kept going and allowed me to finish my master's degree. And, uh, you know, even, even at sentencing, right, it was funny because she had told the judge, we know that this is probably a very harsh penalty given the circumstances, but we deem it to be fair that he gets a full time because of X, Y, and Z, right? Um, I mean, at that point, you know, I knew that the, I knew that the, um, prosecution didn't even want to give me the time that they gave, but I had forced their hand. I left them no choice because of my arrogance, because of my stupidity, because of my ignorance, right?

And that was just me, just living in my own delusion, right? Because I had painted as reality that people still cared about me, that I was just this hot shot. I need to post on social media. I needed to do X, Y, and Z to attract attention, right? I needed to keep redeeming myself. Because remember, I was at that nothing point, right? I needed to do something to make up for that. And it was just, I needed that feeling of euphoria.

And I was still chasing that. And it was just crazy. So, you know, I remember when I was sitting at the negotiation table with the government, right, I was with my attorney. And the accountant, the SEC accountant, was just going through my charges and, like, looking at where I was raising income from. And I never told my attorney that some of the money that I used to, you know, you know, prop the fund up was from sales of narcotics, right? So the attorney was like, there's like Venmo charges of like 50, 50, 50, 50. Why are there so many $50 charges? Why are there so many $50 transfers? Like, who's paying you $50 constantly? Were you selling

drugs? And you can't lie. So I was like, yes, yes. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let me talk to my client for a second. And everyone just like erupted. Like it was like crazy. Yeah, I mean, I was just like my attorney's worst nightmare, you know? Just one thing after another, like it just kept happening, you know. I got arrested four times. The thing about the drugs came out, I wouldn't stop posting on social media. Like, I just wouldn't leave him the fuck alone. Did they use the HBO doc against you at sentencing?

Yes, they did. And I want to bring that up because I got so many people that are going through or haven't been sentenced yet or going through their situation that reach out wanting to come on the show. and I always tell them don't. Don't. Do it after. And if you want to share your experience. Yeah, because I had originally done that podcast with Clara, I forgot, Jigsaw.

And Jigsaw was the company that did our thing, right? They had had me on a podcast as well. They had played the podcast at my sentencing where I said that I don't think I did anything wrong, right? And you know how people cut and paste things to portray what they need to about you, right? this pissed off the judge so much and they also played clips from the HBO episode as well they took a bunch of pictures

from my social media one of them was when I was getting arrested with my hands behind my back smiling at the camera right and the caption on the picture was but your honor I was simply cap'n right like the judge mind you he's like this 85 year old like

senior judge super deep south you know he was also in the same fraternity as a bunch of my investors right conflict of interest, I'm not going to go into that, but it is what it is. You know, he was, he was extremely disappointed, right? The thing about it is I did research on my judge, right? He used to be a defense attorney for medical malpractice. So he had a soft side for the medical field, right?

And he actually knew my father in a sense, right? So even with all the variables that I was given, right, the, the grace per se, right? I still managed to just royally screw everything up, right? The judge should have been lenient, right? The prosecutor didn't want to prosecute me. I was given the lowest sentencing charge that I could have gotten out of everything that I did, right? Even they excused me selling drugs, right?

Just everything. I had gotten arrested four times. I had still just done everything to fuck myself up. You went from very profitable and making a bunch of money to losing everything very quickly. Were you still spending as if you had the money by doing like the lavish type things that the government always has to throw into the indictment and on the news? Absolutely. So the lifestyle was still kept intact because of the image that I portrayed myself to have. Because, you know, I had put myself in a situation where I had all these people around me that were, you know, enticed by this lifestyle that I was. living, you know, all the cars that I had, you know, I was going out every night, you know,

living a very fast life, everyone like that. So when I started losing money, right, if I started changing my lifestyle, one thing is, you know, my friends, who I called friends, would be like, whoa, what's happening? But also my investors would be like, what's happening? You know, why are you not partying? Why are you not happy? Because if you're not happy, then something must be wrong, right? So I was still living that lavish lifestyle financed through other means, drugs, you know, working at the bar late night, stuff like that. But also it was just, it was just a complete mess. Well, we're some of the crazy stalling tactics you used when investors asked for their money because I remember what some of the crazy things I did, like sending myself

Venmo bank transfers because at the time if you did like a Venmo transfer from your bank account, it would send the money and then it would deduct it and it wasn't really there and you could actually pull it out. Fake wire receipts. Yeah. Well, we're like a couple of the ones you did. Fake wire receipts were very prominent, right? I would just tell my investor, hey, I'm sending you this wire right now. It's sent.

Excuse me. And I copy and pasted a, and I just, I use like Microsoft paint at all the things I had, right? I used Microsoft paint. I took one of the wire receipts. I edited the Fed number. on it and I edited the recipient and I just went ahead and copied and pasted a new Fed number random digits and their name right and the date was transferred and they're like okay how long is it supposed to take and I'd be like you know sometimes it might take up to three days and they're like

okay yeah three days later what happened the wire failed for some reason that's so weird is it your bank make sure that your bank is okay like did you send me the right information and be like damn you know what I might have sent the wrong information because you know people that are not to don't really understand how easy wires are because they have, you know, two wire numbers. One is the electronic wire number and then they have, that's, that's for checks and other types of direct deposits and then one is the direct wire number, right? There's technically no difference between them. But I would convince investors that because you were sending me this wire number, you know, that I was just, it was just the wrong one. And then, you know, other stalling tactics were like,

when they would send me money on Venmo, right? It would get to me immediately, but then when I sent them money on Venmo, it just never got there. And I would just use a screenshot from online, right, that says your Venmo transaction was canceled. I was like, dude, is something going on with your Venmo? Like, are you having high frequency in your transactions? Like, that's probably why, right? Like, dude, you just got, you gotta send me another method. but I don't have any other methods

like okay well download cash app or something right and then they would download cash app dude the limit on cash up is only $500 like I can't send you all your money because it's only $500 and PayPal e-checks at the time they got rid of it but you could e-check someone so it would show is pending

so you screenshot the pending and you could change that to send and then also with the wire transfer thing I had Bank of America so what would happen is and one wire transfers back then would could take up to 24 hours now it's instant. You know, now you send a wire transfer, the person has it right away, but back then it wasn't. Bank of America would send you a receipt saying it was sent or like whatever,

you were receiving funds. I would forward that. And when you forward an email, you could change the below email that you're forwarding. So I would forward it to someone and just change out the information. And that's what I would use as a stalling tactic. You didn't even have to use Microsoft paint or anything. You could do it all in email and just change the numbers. and it looked legit like it was coming from Bank of America. It's crazy. And again, that wasn't out to, you know, to, it was just a method of stalling. Like, I just, I was trying to come up with the money, but I couldn't.

And I couldn't be honest and say I fucked up, which is the root of both of our problems. And it just comes with the age, to be honest, like when you're, you were 19, when you got indicted, right? I was 20. You don't want to be wrong because you're at this such, you're at this such, a primitive stage in your life, and you had this much success, right? It feels crazy. And you look like a god to people. Like, oh my God, look at this guy, right?

And when you mess everything up, which statistically you are because you have absolutely no experience, right? You don't want that to go away. You just can't handle that, right? And unfortunately, a lot of those times, right? because people like us, you know, that ended up going to jail because of it, right? Because we didn't have the moxie or because we didn't have the humility to just admit that we were wrong, right? It just gets worse and worse because we just dig ourselves into a deeper and deeper situation where, you know, if we just came out in the beginning and just told these guys, hey, you know, unfortunately, because of X, Y, and Z, right, the funds are now gone.

You know, unfortunately, I had lost the money, which happens all the time. That's just a part of life, right? Like, the one, your investors can't really do anything to you, right? Because at the end of the day, because a business law, once you invest money into someone, right, there is no guarantee, right? That's just another mistake that I had was guaranteeing the funds, right? Whenever there's any guarantees of funds, that is a Ponzi scheme, right? There is no such thing as a guaranteed investment return in life, in life, other than the risk-free rate, you know, with the U.S. bonds was. Still, that's not guaranteed.

Yeah, unless you're doing like a loan. And even then, unless it's secured, it's not really a guarantee. Exactly. Now, I remember when, you know, you got sentenced, we were messaging again, asking you were asking about prison, what you were facing, this and that. I think you sent me some information. And you ended up getting five years, I think. Yeah.

And then I was saying you were either going to go to a low or a camp. And did you end up going to a camp, I think? Yeah, so I ended up going to a camp. Now, how you ended up that I never could have predicted in a million years But if you want to walk through What happened at the camp What the camp was like where you went

And then what ended up, you know, ultimately transpiring Which is, you know, I thought was insane Oh my God So I started at a minimum security camp, right? And even at this point, mind you, right? After I got sentenced, right? I should have been taken away to jail, right? I mean, the marshals were there,

they were getting ready to cuff me up, right? And the marshals were actually approaching me after I got sentenced, and my mom's like, no, what's happening? You know, she's like, you know, a Southeast Asian parent. And my attorney's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, hold up. The prosecutors are allowing us to self-surrender. And prosecutors are like, yeah, that's fine, right?

And judge gave me 45 days to self-surrender. In these 45 days, instead of handling relations with my parents, getting closer to my family, right? I ended up just staying in Atlanta with my ex, right? And just having the time of my life, right? Still going to, like, Malibu, taking trips all over and just, like, having a great time. And I was just so deluded, right? And at this point, right, even after the 45 days had passed, right, I remember two days before I was supposed to self-srender, I had, um, I had asked my attorney, hey, I think I need to.

heart surgery because at that point I had this condition called SVT, right? Superventricular tachycardia. It's not really anything serious, right? It's just tecocardia, you know, your heart rate just increases. It's similar to murmurs, but whatever, I'm not going to go into the medical aspect of it. It was nothing serious, but I had, because of the ignorance that people have the medical aspect, right, I had convinced my attorney and then inevitably convincing the judge that I needed to get surgery done to prevent myself from dying of COVID when I was going to go to jail, right? So I used my surgery to get an ablation. Ablation is when they have a catheter from your formal vein all the way to your heart and they buzz off the extra pathway that causes the

tachycardia, right? I had gotten all this medical procedure done just so I could get an additional 45 days before I had to go. And then instead of taking these 45 days to one, recover, or even go back to my family's house, right? I do. Still stay with my ex-girlfriend, just parting it up, you know, drinking like every day, just doing whatever, right? You guys were living together, right? We were. We were living together at that time, right? And she ended up leaving me three days after I got incarcerated. Did you think she was going to stay for the long? Yeah, no, the funniest part. The funniest part was, I remember, like, a couple days before I was supposed to go to jail, right? I was like,

you know, the statistics are against our relationship. Like, most likely. we're not going to last and she got so mad she's like fuck your statistics i'm gonna be with you forever like are you seriously saying that i'm just gonna leave you you think i'm just gonna use you and just like leave you like a piece of shit like you are so wrong for that like what is wrong with you and she was like bashing me and getting super defensive and i'm like okay okay i'm sorry i'm just letting you know like if you need to leave like you can and she's like are you trying to use this excuse to get get rid of me like is that like do you have someone else you know gaslighting type shit so um um

I was like, I was pretty, I was pretty set, you know. One, I had just completely disregarded my family's feelings, right? That was just crazy. And after I self-reported, right? You know, the first person I had gotten in contact with was not my parents. It was actually her. Hey, what are you doing? I miss you so much.

Crazy thing about it, right? I didn't go to the camp at first, right? When I got to the prison, they had put me. me in the can for literally an hour and then they came um two CEOs came and they're like hey you test a positive for COVID you got to go quarantine in the shoe it was like what the fuck is the shoe right so they took me to the medium and they put me in a cell by myself on a range that had no one else I was the only person there I was freaking out bro like and you know when the COs do rounds they only do it like every three hours right so every time they would come I'd be like hey let me out what am I

here for, what am I being, why am I being punished? Is this like where I'm going to do my entire bid? And they would not answer. Like, you know, COs are just dicks, right? They'd start laughing, just keep going. You had one nice CO, like, I would write notes and shit, right? Hey, please let me out. Like, I miss my family. How do I talk to my parents? How do I talk to anyone? Because they didn't have a phone call, right? It was like three days before I got my first phone call, right? Three days is one that happened. Um, because the crazy thing is after I went to the shoe, right? That was January 5th. Do you remember what happened January 6th of 2020? The Capitol Hill.

Yes. And that was just insane. Being in prison at that time because they had shut down the entire prison. And they had handed this note, like, hey, because the capital of the United States was raided, right, we will be indefinitely locked down. I had no idea what the fuck that even meant, right? I was like, what is going on? Right. I was just going through psychosis at that time, right?

I was like in the cell, you know, very cold, you know, the first few days of going to prison, right, is just like the worst days of your life, right? You don't have a pillow. You just have this like really smelly pink sheet and you're like, what is going on? I was like writing on tissue paper and I was just so like demoralized at this time and just so like, you know, dissociated with reality. I was still like writing poetry to my ex-girlfriend and stuff, like just a past time. Like not even paying attention to what I need to do in prison, which is, you know, penitents, you know, to reflect. But first, after three days, I got my first phone call, right? You know, I was talking to her for a little bit, right, throughout the day and everything.

And then I remember during, like, the evening, right, she wouldn't really answer my phone call, right? And I was like, what happened, right? And the next morning, I call her, she doesn't even pick up. I was like, that's weird. And then I call her again. She's like, hey. I was like, hey, what's up, Brooke? Excuse me, what's up?

She's like, what's up? And I was like, you sound kind of weird. She, like, took this long pause. I'm like, so how's your day? Like, what are you doing? She's like, I can't do this. I was like, can't do what? Like, I'm just saying, like, good morning.

And she's like, no, I just can't do this. Hung up. And I call her back. I was like, do, do, do, do, hey, what's up? like what do you mean you can't do this she's like i can't be with you stop calling me like i can't do this relationship anymore like this is just too much please stop calling me hangs up call her back this number has now been permanently blocked from like you haven't talked to her since no that's the crazy part is right um after that she still would like email me sometimes right but she had

blocked my number off my prison wall phone right and then so i started calling her brother and called her dad, who I was close to, and then they had inevitably blocked me as well. And then I had called my parents at this time, right? I was just so not even worried about their feelings, right? The first thing I asked my parents to do and my sister to do it was, hey, would you mind reaching out to my ex? Like, would you mind reaching out to my ex? Like, she hasn't been responding.

I wouldn't tell them that she blocked me or anything because it was just super embarrassing because they had predicted it, like she's just going to leave you. And so then they reached out to her, and then she was like, Please don't contact me. Like, I'm not with your son anymore. And they're like, this is what you said. But, blah, blah, blah, how are you doing, though? I'm like, I'm doing fine.

What is she doing? What, what is she going through? And stuff like that. It was just crazy. That's one of the worst feelings, like being out of control like that, you know, not, you know, when life's going on around you, you don't know what that person's doing and whatnot. It's just that that is the worst part of being locked up, aside from the dangers and whatnot of it all. and, you know, watching your story unfold, I very quickly realized that you found the world

the prison cell phones at the camp. So when I went to the camp, right, the first thing that I did was look for a cell phone because I was in the shoe for about two weeks, right? After I did my quarantine, you know, I felt like heaven. I was like, oh, my God, I'm finally going here. You know, I was just so excited.

And then, you know, the camp is the camp. You know, you have everything is free game. So the first thing I did was get a cell phone. How much did you pay for it? I paid $150 for the cell phone. What kind of phone? It was, I think, it was like this LG Android phone. I don't even remember what it was, right?

It was just because, you know, the LG phones are the cheapest. You can get them for like $20, $25 at the store and then just upsell them at the camp for $100. 50. These same phones would eventually sell at the place that I was going to for thousands of dollars, which I would also buy when I was over there. But so I got this phone initially, right? The first thing I did was going social media. Yeah, you know, posting on my Instagram. I'm, I'm lit. You know, I'm at this camp, you know, like nothing, nothing was a concern, you know, and I tried to reach out to her. She had blocked me on social media, by the way, right? And just like still so

pre-occupied with that, right? And then, you know, I was still like trading and I was trying to do whatever I could just make myself feel like I was still living in reality and started trying to be connected with everyone on the outside. Still not taking the prison factor into concern. Like, I was not yet in prison. So when that happened, right, I had gotten caught with the phone within a week. Mind you, my parents were so concerned about trying to visit me, right? And they tried to visit me every day. I was just so disregarding of their feelings and everything, right? It's just so selfish. And I remember they had tried to come visit me after I got caught with the phone. At this point, right, the first time I got caught, they actually let it go. Right, they're like,

just don't do it again. Like, stop being dumb, right? That's literally what the case manager said, right? Because he's like, you know, like, this is, you just got here, like, you know what the camp is about, just stop, just don't be dumb with it, right? I still continue to be dumb with it. I still continue to be dumb with it. I got a new phone and I was just still like, especially through like count time like usually you have to put everything away by count time. I had my charger out my phone was literally my pocket. You're one of those people blowing up the spot. I know dude it was just

absurd. It was absurd. The camps are so laid back that whenever there was count or something we would just literally have it in our pocket because the camp is that chill. That's why they call it club fed. Oh my God and then you know I got caught again because at this point I had gotten a job at Unicorn. right? Because this is when the First Step Act was just coming out. One of the conditions of going to get your time reduced from First Step Act was being a part of Unicor was one of them and then also another type of trade job. Like I think you could work for the district office or something like that. I forget. I try to black everything out. But I worked at Unicorn and I would bring my phone up with me every time I went to Unicorn. had two phones at this time. One in my pocket and then I had an office phone, which I kept at the fucking Unicorn facility, right? And so I was just so not concerned with actually doing the

labor that is required at Unicor because I was still investing, right? I was still watching the market. I was still trading. And what I would do is I would just go to the bathroom every 15 minutes at Unicorn and just call, you know, just to see how my account was doing, hey, what positions are we in, everything like that, right? And I was just so adamant. And I was just so adamant and like so open about I was I was so arrogant too I was like telling the CEOs hey you know I could help you invest if you want so the CEOs are pretty cool and some of the CEOs were like dude get the fuck away from me like stop um but you know they went through metal detectors um and they caught me with the second phone and then this time I went to the shoe right and I already knew what the shoe was

a little bit because I was in quarantine right and you know I was I was like please don't pull me back in the shoe, please. This is like week two of me being at the camp, mind you, right? I lasted two weeks, right? Then I was in the shoe again, but before they put me in, right, because Atlanta has a very small amount of space in the medium, and then they had, this was during COVID as well, so a lot of transits were getting backed up. Because there were so many people in the shoe, they had put me in the transit unit, right? And once I went to the shoe, right, I got taken out again because I I had convinced the lieutenant, right, that I could help him manage his portfolio. And a lieutenant was extremely interested in learning how to invest.

So I remember they took me out of the shoe and put me in the transit unit so I can teach the lieutenant and other COs how to make investments, like investment tips and just investment choices, right? So I was helping them manage like their retirement portfolies and whatnot, right? At this point, I had gotten another phone, right? The same, probably probably the same phone that I had the camp, right? Because how they moved the phone, you know, is actually through Unicorn, right? The same phone that you buy for $150 at the camp is going to be resold at a medium for $2,500

and in the shoe for around $5,000, right? So I had re-bought the same cell phone that I had at the camp for $2,000, right? So at this point, you know, I was still doing my thing. I was still trading, right? I'd actually bought another phone, right? while I was in the transit unit and called the shoe, right? I had bought another phone just to rent out to people and collect around $100 to $300 overnight for people that are in transit and whatnot.

And I was making income that way as well. You know, just getting so cocky with it. Bring in cigarettes and bringing in all these other types of like illicit substances. And I was at this point, right? Generation Hustle had come out, promoting it on social media, taking a picture in prison at the rec yard, right? Yo, I'm chilling in Atlanta camp, right? I literally had a picture in the wreckyard,

just throwing up the deuses. And my investors were pissed. Like, they went to the government. And they're like, yo, what the hell is going on? Like, where is this guy? Is he even in prison? Like, you guys got to do something, and what did they do? Next day they had brought SIS in, right?

Rated myself. They had found nothing the first time, right? Because we had put everything up, boom, boom, boom. Um, because luckily for me, I was sold up with someone that was experienced, right? He had two life sentences. Um, uh, and he had told me how to kind of move, right? And I was also helping him invest, right? Because he was the one, you know, doing all the other stuff while I was helping him, you know,

invest that money and whatnot. Um, so he was the head orderly and he got a lot of privileges that way. So the first time they came through and raided myself, nothing happened. I did not learn my lesson at that point. I still went on social media was still posting stories every day, posting a picture of this book that I was reading, Malcolm X,

like biography, yeah, the Malcolm X biography by Alex Haley, you know, just stupid shit. And then they came through again, the second time they rated myself was actually the day

I was being transited to Yazoo because, you know, I was no longer camp status, right, because I had gone caught with a 100-series shot. And they had rated, my points up to a low. So I was going to be transited to Yazoo. And what did I do? Instead of focusing on myself, instead of telling my parents on the phone, at this point my parents didn't even know

I was being transited, right? They thought I was still at the camp. I was just telling them that they couldn't come visit me because I was still locked down for COVID. They had no idea I had gone and called with the phone. I was being transited to fucking Mississippi. Right? So when all that happened instead of just fixing everything up with myself, I was so concerned about posting on social media and I had tweeted, about to go to Yazu, Mississippi, see you guys in two weeks, LOL. That was the last tweet I had in. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road. Tread confidently with new tires from tire rack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, tire rack makes it easy.

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No. They sidetracked you to somewhere else. This is what happened, right? as soon as I was getting on the bus to transit SIS comes in. Hey, are you side at R Bob? I was like, yeah, what's up? Cuff up, turn around. What? What's going on? They pulled me off the bus, cuff me up, and put me back in the shoe. This time, I had no Selly. I was like, what the fuck is going on? And this dude brings over

the sign that says HRA. HRA means housed alone and recalone, right? That means that you are now designated to be a security threat to the well-being of the institution of the BOP. And at this point, I had no idea, right? So I was just, at this point, I was just, like, pacing around. Like, I had no idea what was going on. And I was just, you know, doing the knocking, hey, hey, hey, why am I here? COs just passed me by.

No idea. Lieutenant would just be, hey, can I go out to wreck? What? Why can't I go out to wreck? Let me go. Let me out. Let me see some fucking sunlight. Two weeks go by.

I'm just sitting there pulling out my hair, you know? I'm literally going crazy. And they finally give me my shot. They serve me and tell me that when they searched my cell, right, when they, because when SIS pulled me off the bus, they had actually raided my cell, right, that I had actually left. They found three different knives. They found Suboxin, weed, methamphetamine, a carton of cigarettes, four cell phones. And, yeah.

So I was given three 100 series shots and a 300 series shot, right? So at this point, within the first month of my incarceration, I had gotten four 100 series shots. That, mind you, each can possibly carry a term of six to one, six months to one year of continual incarceration on top of your original bid. And then also just keep you in the shoe for up to 12 months per each shot, right? no idea what a 100 series shot was, right, at that time. What the fuck is this? Who cares? Right. They kept me, they pulled me off Yazoo. They kept me in the Atlanta shoe for about six weeks, right?

I was still HR, and then they still let my designation go through because at this point, the lieutenant's finally talking to me, hey, is my designation still going through? I'm not going to Yazoo? Yeah, you're still fine. It looks like your paper was still fine. But then I remember, there was a CEO I was cool with, right, that I had gotten to know when I was in DCU on the transit unit. And his name was Cardona. And he was like, bro, you know, your paperwork is kind of weird. It says that you're, like, under investigation. Like, you have a hold.

Like, I don't know what's going to happen with you. Like, you know, they can't really tell you everything, but they'll tell you to tell you something. I'm like, yeah, I think it's because, you know, I just got served the shots. You know, I didn't see D.H.O. Yeah, and whatnot. I was just trying to convince myself about other shit

because I had no idea what's actually going on the background, right? So I go to Yazoo. get quarantine again two weeks. They fuck up the first quarantine, so they had to quarantine us again in another two weeks, right? And we're in this, mind you, it's like in the middle of summer, it's like June or July, I forgot the months at this point, right? I had a completely lost track of the months. And we're just in this tight cell, the air conditioning is not working.

It's hot as fuck. It's like 95 degrees inside, right? And the shower only has the hot button working, right? So in order to shower, you've got to like stand back and waft the air just a little bit just to get a shower. Oh my God. And that lasted for eight weeks, right? So eight weeks of what they call quarantine. And then so they let out everyone that I was incarcerated, excuse me, that I was in transit with, right? Everyone was good to go. Everyone's going back on the compound, except for me. They're like, yeah, you're not on the list. Just kept going. Like everything was casual.

They let my cellie out, right? My cellic cuffed up. He's like, hey, bro, peace out. I don't know what's going on, but I hope you're doing well. Because at the end of the day, right, when you're incarcerated, there's nothing more important in life than you, right? So no one really gives a shit, right? So I was just freaking out. I was the last man on that range, and I was there for a week just by myself. They had forgotten to feed me three times, right? I was just like, again, going through psychosis. I had no idea what was going through, what was going on, and just was pacing back and forth. And finally, after a week, they moved me to the maximum shoe, right? No idea why.

And then finally, I sat down with a lieutenant. They were like, hey, so Arbob, you got a phone call, right? And I thought it was maybe my attorney or something, right? I got an attorney call. Nope. It's SIA, right? SIA is different than SIS. SIS is the in-house special investigative services.

SIA is the administration of SIS. Right? They are in Washington, D.C. They are responsible for further indictments. And so when I got a phone call from SIA, I was like, you mean SIS? we are SIA, we are located in Washington, D.C. I was like, what is going on? And they were just asking me about what I did while I was in Atlanta, you know, all these

things that I had gotten caught with, the things I was doing on social media, even the things I was doing my phone because, you know, I had logged into the dark web and shit, too, like just doing whatever, just going crazy, right? So they had just told me, yeah, you're just kind of under investigation. I was like, okay, well, I'm glad that kind of sheds light on what's happening, but what am I going to be done with being investigated? They're like, I don't know. And like, they just how casual they were with it. Like, because, you know, I had to find out things through inmate.com.

Inmate.com, if you know, as you should, right, is just information that's subsidized by other inmates on the range that you're on in the shoe. So at this point, I had understood that investigations typically last from three months to one year, right? Every three months, they have to renew the reason why you're being investigated, right? So at this point, I was in the shoe for six months, right? Still no update. I was asking a lieutenant every single week, hey, am I being designated? Nope. Still says no status.

No status. And finally, I remember, right, it was like month, month seven or month. eight, right? They finally tell me I'm being designated to Mariana. Mariana is a low facility. Sorry, they're a medium and a camp facility, right? Medium and camp facility in Florida, right? And then I was like, okay, that makes sense because it's close to Georgia, right? Because technically the BOP is not supposed to move you around your area of residence for more than 500 miles, right? Okay, that makes sense. I'm going to Mariana and I'm probably going to go low, right? But it didn't really click because my point status was not a low status, right? It was actually, at that point,

I think I had like 21 points, which was on the borderline of medium to high, right? So I was supposed to be going to a medium or a max, right? So it didn't really make sense why I was going to go to a low, right? So they kept saying I was going to go to Mariana. I was like, okay, whatever. Whatever, I'm going to Mariana. So at this point, I was in the shoe by myself for nine months, right? There's still HRA designated, right? So nine months goes by. And when I go to Oklahoma transit, right, they tell me that I'm being designated to Marion, Illinois. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to Mariana, Florida.

What are you talking about Illinois? They're like, no, you're going to Marion, Illinois. Next, wait, wait, what are you talking about? Where am I going? What the fuck is Marion, Illinois? They're like, it just says you're going to marry in Illinois. Like, you need to move or else we're going to lock you up. And instead of taking me to Gen Pop, because remember, the first time I went through transit, right?

You still have to go to Oklahoma in transit. I was in Gen Pop, right? By the way, Oklahoma facilities are so nice. I was there. So nice. You thought it was nice? Yeah, dude. You went on Con Air and everything?

Yeah, con air, you know. So, funny thing about Con Air. The first time went on Con Air, you know, it was a good time. You got fed like your PBMJ, nice. You know, and then when you go to Oklahoma, food is the best. Right, the food in Oklahoma is the best versus any other prison you'll go to, right? And then they actually have pillows, right? That was the best part about Oklahoma is you actually had pillows to sleep on.

This time, though, I was not in Gen Pop. I was upstairs in the shoe by myself again. And I was trying, you know, got to search up inmate.com, what's going on? Why is everyone else here, right? everyone else is either going to the SMU gang affiliated or going to this place called the CMU right I was like damn I've heard of the SMU

like I you know when I was in the DCU1 a lot of people were also going to the SMU because Atlanta used to have a SMU program if you I mean you know what the SMU is yeah like that coming off the gang yards type thing yeah so it's people that have high disciplinary sanctions while they're incarcerated they have a very high chance of recidivism they send to the SMU which is called the special management unit.

That's usually the most violent inmates, right? They actually have recently shut down the smoo, right? Like the last year I was incarcerated because of the fact that it was just so violent. Every single year they had an average death of like 50 inmates, right? Because everyone's just locked down. I think it's 24. And no, no, excuse me, it's 23 and 1, but most people don't go to wreck because when you go to wreck, you're going to get stabbed up, right?

But at that point, I didn't really know what the first. smoo was so I'm like okay I'm going to the smoo whatever no big deal right this little this little Southeast Asian kid you know at that point I was um how old was I was 23 at that time right this is the this is going into the second year of my bid I thought I was just going to the smoo you know no gang affiliation whatsoever and I was just going to have this good old time at the smoo just being locked down you know whatever it's okay I got I got maybe two more years left as if it's no big deal be locked down 23 and one um so they tell me I'm not going to smoo I'm going to this place called the CMU but they didn't even know what

the CMU was right they kept telling me I was going to smoo and then they kept changing it up and I was going to go to the CMU or the smoo and I was like yo you know what I'm just going to wait for a captain to come because at the end of the day right in terms of levels you have the COs right and then you have associate lieutenants and you have lieutenants and then you have captains right captains are usually the most administrative people in charge of the, in charge of the prison, right, next to the warden. Right? So the captain was the one that came, because I had written a cop out, I had told him that I wanted to know what the fuck was going on.

Where was I going? He told me that I was going to the communications management unit, which was known as a terrorist unit. And that's all he said. And he's like, yeah, the name checks out. What are you talking about? Why am I going to a terrorist unit? My charge is securities fraud. Well, you probably did someone with security, right? He just had no idea of what he was even talking about, right? He just, it was just, you know, stereotyping at the end of the day. So I was going to a terrorist unit, right? So there are two CMUs. One is in Terre Hut, Indiana, and one is in Marion, Illinois, right? The one in Marion is now actually being transferred to Maryland. I forgot the facility in Maryland. Anyways, it's not important, but the CMU is also

a lockdown compound. It's considered to be a superman. and there were only 33 inmates in the unit when I went there. So at this point, I was still in the shoe. This was going on to month 10 of being in the shoe, right? Just by myself. So when I got there, there were 33 people in the unit. And, you know, most of them were Muslim, right? I'm Muslim myself.

So Islam al-Aqum, brother, how are you doing? What not. So it felt nice. It felt nice because, you know, just a breath of fresh air from finally just being by myself. Right? During this time, I did a lot of self-reflection, focusing back on my education, focusing back on my studies and whatnot. But, you know, that kind of just like, you know, subsided when it came to when I went here because, you know, I was just trying to figure myself out or figure who I was around with, right? So when I got there, I was just, you know, just taken

it back by, you know, just the populace. Like, who was I being incarcerated with? Because I started at a camp, right? Most people had just like petty charges being caught with a K2 at gas station, you know, or being caught with, you know, fraud, check fraud, wire, for a lot of them, or medical malpractice as well, right? Or securities fraud by myself, like myself. But now you have double triple murders, you have attempted genocide, you have starting a cult, right, that was organized crime where they were going to create mass murder terrorism, obviously arms dealing, and we'll get to that in a second. And it's just, you know, what do you call it, support of terrorist organizations and whatnot,

material support. So it was just a crazy experience because, you know, people hear about these types of charges and think they're so dehumanizing and think that the people that do these things are just so, you know, vile, inhumane, and to an extent, right, they are. But you kind of see that later. But one thing is, like, at the end of the day, people that get charged with these crimes and crimes in general,

they're still human, right? So it was a very revealing moment in my life where you're literally going from one spectrum to another, and the people are still the same. People are always going to be people. You are getting friendly, cordial with these people, right? politics get involved like prison politics you probably know all about right political politically right there are the conditions changed drastically from the supermax versus the camp right and you had to be on point right

I had gotten a lot of fights when I was there because of the way that I was moving at first right and I had to get back into shape right um but we we weren't allowed sellies at the time every single person had their individual cell which is pretty nice right um It was not like a regular mattress or anything either. They had what, you probably know what four points is. So on your, on your mattress, right, especially at these like designated supermaxes, they have mattresses that are just concrete, right? You don't have actual mattress or like a bunk. You have concrete slabs, which they put a mattress on. And then they have these like pegs, one, two, three, four for disciplinary sanctions.

So you can get disciplinary sanctioned at these places. is and what they do is just tie a rope around your hands and your feet to these pegs for 24 to 72 hours where you just piss and shit on yourself and they feed you, right? They're supposed to spoon feed you, but they just put a P.B&J on your chin, and you're supposed to eat it like that, right? So I've only gotten four-pointed once. A lot of people there got forward-pointed a bunch of times, but they just got used to it. You know, they also do force feeding there where they literally pin you down to it. a chair, stick a tube up your nose, and put PDA light or insurer, you know, like the protein

shakes and shit, down your stomach like that. And it was just so normalized. I didn't, like, now just thinking back about it, like, because I just try to like block these memories away, right? It was just so normalized, like, oh, there goes Mohammed. He's getting, he's getting, he's got, he's getting teamed again. So by the way, teamed, the verb to describe teamed is when you are refusing to come out of yourself or wreck, you are refusing to, um, you know, obey the conditions or the orders of your CO. And they go ahead and, um, or fights, you know, in general, they go ahead and call in lieutenants. They go ahead and call in other COs from the facility. Usually about 10 to 15 deep, have a little camcorder like it's a fucking world star. And they beat the shit out of you,

pepper spray you, cuff you up, and then they put you either in four points or they put you in the chair to force for you. For example, Muhammad was, what? Muhammad Salome, he was responsible for the first organized terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He's been incarcerated for 33 years now. One thing that he's famous for is his hunger strikes, right? So one thing about hunger strikes is they'll put a sticker on your little door that says you're on a hunger strike. They don't give a fuck. If you want to starve yourself, you can starve yourself.

But after 30 days of being on hunger strike, they are by law forced to weigh you in and give you people. idiot light and insure to make sure that you don't die because at the end of the day you're now when you're incarcerated you're a piece of government property and they have to make sure that they take care of their property right um so mohammed was notorious for hunger strikes so he had just come from um adx you know adx is that is the utmost supermax right CMU is a step down program from adX so he had just gotten done with doing 17 years at ADX right he was doing hunger strikes there and then when he came to the CMU, he was also doing hunger strikes. And what they would do is they would team because he would refuse to eat chow.

And he was just sit in his cell all day. And they would bring him in. And they'd be like, oh, man, they're getting teamed again. Lock down, lock down. Oh, there goes Mohammed. And come down the range, team him, you know, cuff him up. You know, at this point, they're dragging him out the cell because they've, at this point, beat the shit out of him. He's pepper sprayed.

Going to go into the shoe, and we don't see him for like two months, right? they pin him down in the chair or the four points and they put a tube up his nose for us feed him but um yeah it was just so normalized because it's just like that along with a violence right you had uh while i was there we had four people kill themselves right um two people murdered right and it's just because at this point like the people that i was locked up with at the seymu and it's just it's just crazy because of just how I got there. It was like Alice in Wonderland, right? Like, how did I end up at this spot?

It was the Twilight Zone, Alice in Wonderland, whatever type of metaphor you want to describe it as. Like, I come from the camp and I'm all the way over here now, you know, where people are never going home one thing. Like the average time that people had was probably 30 years plus and me having only five years, which was actually a detriment to me because I couldn't talk about how much time that I had

because a lot of people that I was friends with, you know, friends, whatever you want to call when you're incarcerated, they would never go home, right? So it was, it was painful sometimes just thinking about that because, you know, what, at the end of the day, you know, when you get to humanize other individuals that are incarcerated, right, there's no difference in the human attributes between you and I, right? We still have the same types of emotions like anger, sadness, humor, happiness, right? And when you share these types of connections, right? And when you share these types of connections, connections with a human, you don't really notice the differences in how they live, unless sometimes the attributes come out where you can kind of be like, okay, that makes sense. I know why you did that crime because you're a fucking psycho, right? But it was, um... Were you in there with Victor Bout, too? Yeah, so he was, um, so my cell was over here, and, uh, on C range, and then he was one cell down, right? I remember the first thing he offered when I came was, uh, these, like... He offered me some flowers that he picked up from the yard.

He's like, you should drink tea with this. This is good. Like, this, this dude that's known as a notorious arms dealer, dubbed the name, the Merchant of Death, is out here doing yoga in the rec yard, picking flowers up to drink tea with on make kombucha, and then just fucking, like, chilling, right? He's just straight chilling.

At this point, I think he was incarcerated for 15 years, right? we had talked one thing about him is he is a very enlightened visual in terms of intelligence like one thing that I really appreciate about the CMU is there are a lot of psychos in there right just people that have just gone completely nuts but a lot of them are very very intelligent like um I had sat down with um a mentor of mine when I was in there he got locked up for material support he got in 25 years right but he was um he used to be a project manager of Slumberjay, which is one of the biggest oil companies in the world, right? Excellent in life, right? He was an engineering phenomenon, right? He actually got his PhD in chemical engineering and he actually taught me

electrical engineering while I was there, right? Literally a college course while I was in there. We had I was also locked up with Daniel Hale, which was he was locked up for espionage and he had taught me Chinese, right? I had taught individuals in their introduction to biology, introduction to economics and finance, and that's kind of where I started to focus back on education a lot. And then I also learned from Victor. He had taught me introductions class like in Russia,

like understand the history of Russia, understanding the language itself, and also airline finance, right? He had taught me a lot about airline finance, actually gave me a ton of books because while he was incarcerated, he also had fans that would send him a bunch of money and books. And, I mean, he's a fucking billionaire, right? He doesn't give a shit about like a couple thousand that people send him, but he would always request these people to send him books. And he would send, he ended up giving a bunch of books because, I don't know if you know, but he ended up leaving prison because of a prisoner swap.

So I remember in December at one year after I got to the CMU right The night where he was swapped out right they had locked down the facility right I remember there was like 10 COs that came down with the lieutenant the warden and the captain and they're coming towards Victor sell And I'm like oh shit and we're and at this point like Victor kind of knew that he was going home because Putin was talking to his attorney and everything like that and they had escorted Victor out and at this point Victor was just kind of like handing his stuff out right and it didn't break the news until the next morning I was trying to email my parents and talk on the phone to tell him hey you know Victor Boot just got released you guys should like you know as if again because I thought it was just so cool that was probably the most exciting thing that

happened in like years for me right my my ex ex cellie is now getting prisoner swapped by what this WMBA player is is making worldwide news, right? They had locked down our email privileges and our phone privileges for a week because they thought it was a security compromise if we had let this news out while he was being transited to Dubai is where they ended up doing the exchange, right? So it was pretty cool. After I had left, right? after he had left, right,

he started getting back into politics, right? I think now he's a representative or an ambassador of the ultra-conservative party in Russia or something like that. So he's chilling. He's living the best life. Did you do the whole rush here sentence there? Like, did you leave from there?

Yeah, I left straight from the CMU. That is literally the craziest story I've ever heard. Yeah. So they wouldn't drop me down. and at this point, right? I had obviously lost a lot of good time credit from my sentence because of the fact that I was fucking up so much when I just first got there,

and they had gotten extremely mad, and obviously my point levels went up to a max, right? But first step back was now still being developed and developed, and it was a lot easier for you to get that time credit onto your sentence. and a lot of incarcerated individuals and people that are going to prison right now should know that you have to be extremely punctual, extremely adamant about getting that time credit because when you are in prison,

your case manager does not give a damn about you, right? Unless you know your case, like the back of your hand, right? You are not going home a day sooner than what that report says on the BOP website. So I was actually the biggest advocate for First Step Act and the assistant warden at the time, sweetheart, absolutely sweetheart, Miss Sosa, if she ever sees this, you know, thank you so much for all your help, right? Ms. Sosa loved me because I was the education coordinator

at the time. I was the tutor for the prison, so she thought I was this great influence or whatever, right? And I had helped a lot of people and get their time credit because a lot of people didn't understand the mathematics behind the first step back logistics, right? What you needed to get to do, what you needed to do to get your point credits reduced, what your, excuse me, your point levels reduced, right, to be eligible for First Step Act, right?

You have to either be at a minimum or low level, and there are certain things that you need to do. And unfortunately, a lot of people that are recidivists that have specific crimes like gun charges and violence and terrorism and Chomo, you cannot be excused from, excuse me, you cannot get First Step Act applied, right? And that's heartbreaking to tell some people, but, you know, that's just reality. But I focused a lot on the people that were first-up eligible, but they couldn't understand how to get that time applied. Because the case manager is not going to do anything. I mean, at the place that we're at, right, because we're such a secluded area, right, because we are under constant lockdown, our case manager would show up twice a week and we would only see the warden through walk-through, right? and he would only be there for like five minutes, right?

Ms. Sosa was probably the only reason I came home a year earlier than I could. Then I should have, excuse me. Because her and I had worked through understanding the first step back. I had taught her how to apply the time credit to inmates, right? You know, kind of inflated at some times and how they could get the time. But because of her, I was able to drop my points level down significantly and also get the full, I think I got. seven or eight months of halfway house time when I should have only gotten maybe three months,

right? And because of that, you know, I was able to also help a lot of dudes that were near the door come home sooner as well. And that was life changing because of the first step back. But yeah, it was, it was a very flustering time because a lot of people, you know, because I was locked up at that unit, they were never going home. So first step back didn't apply to them. So they would kind of get mad sometimes where I would spend time talking to the AW about how to apply first step back to individuals, right? Because, you know, it didn't mean anything to them. So a lot of my, a lot of my close friends that I was incarcerated with, you know, um, they were just stuck there, right? I mean, one of my good friends, he had two life sentences, you know, that he committed

murder in 1991, he's still going to be there until he dies, unfortunately. I had another buddy, Ethan Melzer. He had organized a terrorist attack on his platoon in Turkey, right? He was part of the U.S. Army. He had organized a terrorist attack on his own platoon when he was 20 years old, and he's going to be there until he's 60 years old, right? these other I mean once again like you you humanize people for who they are because at the end of the day humans had the same emotions as other humans right these guys were at the same age as me right they were in their 20s so I hung out with that crowd right they were in the 20s or 30s because I was the youngest one in my unit first of all right um but it was just it was just a crazy experience just understanding like day by day passing by you know all you could do to pass it

time was, you know, I would watch the market, right? Be very in tune with the economy, be very intoed with the world news, understand, like, what's happening because I would try to be as in touch with reality as it possible, right, because you're just so secluded from life. We only got two phone calls a week, by the way, and you had to organize and put in the time slots, too. So every Tuesday and Thursday, I would have phone calls. But because of my sanctions, I actually got my phone call, Purgled, just taken away

for a year and a half. I had no visitations for a year and a half as well and no commissary, but commissary restrictions don't follow you. So that was painful, just being always,

just having to write my family, you know, especially when I was in the shoe, right? It would take a turnaround of just one letter to get to them and get a response. It would take almost a month.

Wow. So that was very painful to go through. But yeah, I remember, the first time I had seen my parents on a visitation, you know, we had both, you know, started crying because it was just, it was just painful experience because I couldn't touch them still, you know, because I was in the Supermax, everything was through the glass, right? So, um, I had those type of

visitations until I was released from incarceration. The first time I was able to give my mother a hug was at the airport where, um, my flight, because fortunately, right, the BOP allowed me to take a plane out of Marion, Illinois, to Atlanta, Georgia, where my RRM was a residential house. So that was where I first met my parents. But it was just like, when you're incarcerated, you're just so immersed in prison life and you just think that that's your life for such a long period of time that you kind of forget what reality is. And that's what allows people that are incarcerated to get diluted into four.

forming their own reality. Like, for example, like people that I was locked up with, right, they were obviously mass manipulators, right? They were psychotic, a lot of them, right? They had a lot of psychological issues, which is probably a big reason why they ended up doing the crimes that they did, right? But nonetheless, society won't fix these types of issues because they don't address the underlying concern of why people are doing the crimes that they're doing. they have psychological problems instead of deem instead it's a lot easier for them to just deem them as vile humans and doing all these heinous acts right um so what they do instead is once they get incarcerated right they have psych come down put them on like lithium or put them on like any type of

rim-r-ron type shit, you know, just to calm them down, just to shut them up, just mute them, right? But sometimes when they get off their meds, you know, that's when the violence happens. Because a lot of these people had psychotropic defects, right? They would literally have, like, bipolar disorder, psychosis, schizophrenia, like, all the people that I was locked up with were just very angry, very, very, very angry, right? Because obviously a lot of them weren't ever coming home. and it's just painful to see now because, you know, I'm able to enjoy my life, right? But at that time, I had deluded myself into thinking that was just how life should be. And that's also how they convinced me that life should be because that's what their life is now, right?

And these mass manipulators also delude what their lifestyle was on the street just to make themselves a little propped up. Like, I had people tell me they were millionaires on the street. When I go home, you should contact my wife. You should contact my mother. And it's just sad stories because, you know, when I did go home out of, out of respect for these people, right, I had contacted their family members, right? The most heartbreaking phone call that I got was from a good friend of mine when I was incarcerated. He would always, we'd always cook together and, you know, watch TV and shit like that. I had contacted his wife to ask her if she was doing well and if she needed anything.

And she was like, I have not talked to Steve in six years. We are not together. We broke up when he went to jail. And I was just like, oh, wow. Well, he told me that you guys were having a kid soon. And he had, like, you know, froze your eggs and, like, inseminated you some way. Like, weird shit, right? She's like, no, please don't contact me again, hung up the phone.

Right. Called his mother. Hey, Mr. Sherrick. Like, what's happening? How are you doing? this is a good friend of Steve's. I just wanted to reach out to you because, you know, he just wanted to have me ask, like, how you're doing?

She's like, I haven't talked to Steve in years. Like, and I actually have disowned him. Like, please do not reach out to me again. So it's just a delusion because people have to find, like, this comfort in their life that they, you know, prop up what the reality is on the outside to just make themselves sane, right? And it's just sad because that's inevitably what makes people go crazier and crazier inside. And then eventually that's also what increased the recidivism levels of when people get released

because they just don't know how to adjust well from being institutionalized. And then when they come out, they're still doing the same things of what they were doing in prison, right? Talking to people disrespectfully, talking like they're still in prison, like as if like the only way to solve problems is violence. Oh no, bro, you can't do that. You got to check yourself. You want to catch a cell? Like you can't talk to someone like that.

Like I think like I had to snap out of it because, you know, in life, you know, especially in the real world, right, there's not really immediate discipline, right? And I remember when I was the airport, one, it was such a culture shock because it's extremely loud, right? When I was in the CMU, it was very muted. You know, we only had 33 individuals. and if you talk past 10 p.m., right, next morning, people are pulling up to your cell, suited and booed, yo, bro, you was making noise last night?

What the fuck is up? Shit like that. Like, it was very, very political and very strict. So when I got to the airport, right, people were bumping into me. People were extremely loud. I didn't know how to react. Especially when I got to the halfway house, right?

People were staying up all night. I had to ask my parents if I could please get, like, special industrial grade earplugs because I just couldn't deal with the noise, right? I felt like I was going to go crazy. So that's just like behavioral traits that I had to get used about, like emotional concepts, right, that I had to change from the people that was dealing with in prison. Like, it still bleeds into people that get released,

especially from like higher levels, right? You have to really take time to adjust. And unfortunately, the system that we live in fails people that get released from incarceration because the halfway house is used to be, it's supposed to be a medium for individuals to adjust. but no one really gives a shit about incarcerated individuals. So when they get released, right, they're still doing the same things at the halfway house. This summer, AGE jeans looks to California wine country for inspiration,

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So, you know, fortunately for myself, right, I had a very loving and caring family that looked out for me every single time. I needed them to, and they were so selfless in how they responded for me, right? So the first thing that my dad had told me to do was focus back on my education, right? I had discarded that when I first got locked up because I was like, yeah, I'm still trading, you know, I'm still doing my thing, whatever. Time goes by, right? Now when I'm in the shoe for nine months, I have to be forced to focus back on myself and really pen-intense, really think about what I did wrong, right?

I highlighted the aspects of my life and where things went wrong in terms of binary decision making. And then I highlighted where the mistakes could have been fixed and what I could have done right. So that was one big process of understanding how to fix my life. The second thing is understanding what really means the most to me in life. And the things that mean a lot other than focusing on yourself is focusing on the people that give you the most love. And that is family. That is family. reliving and replenishing the family ties was something that I want to focus on a lot.

And then also things that I was extremely good at was education, right? Instead of focusing on education when I was, you know, before I was incarcerated, I was focused on partying and trying to replenish these social aspects, you know, trying to progress that. So what I did while I was incarcerated was, you know, become a tutor. And then I took this correspondence program through Adam State University that allowed me to get my master's and business administration. Because a lot of people that are incarcerated

don't have the privileges that I had to make the decisions to reach out and focus on education, right? Because they've never had someone push them to go into education, right? The administration was, you know, very helpful in that aspect, right? I had the education coordinator, Ms. Owen, right?

she allowed me to reach out to scholarship foundations that were specifically geared for individuals that are incarcerated and ended up getting a pretty good scholarship to go and get my MBA done while I was incarcerated. So that was something that kept me grounded, you know, focusing on that degree program. The degree program was actually a four-year program by ended up getting it done in one year because of the fact that I was only able to, you know, be in myself for such a long period of time. and then there was nothing at the CMU by the way no phones or anything because it's literally a supermax right all you can do is just either watch TV workout be in politics right um fuck other dudes or like focus on education right so i chose to focus on education and workout try to keep my brain as healthy as possible right so that is really what passed the most time for me and inevitably after i finished my MBA right i wanted to further my education even more. So I focused on taking it one step further because before I was incarcerated, I always wanted to be a doctor, right? I wanted to go into medical field and be a doctor.

There was another way to be a doctorate, and that was through, you know, the PhD route, right? So I ended up applying to PhD programs while I was incarcerated towards the end of my bid. I applied to a few schools in the state of Georgia and in the state of Virginia in the DMV area, D.C., because, you know, I have family that stays up there. So fortunately with the grace of God, I was able to get into a few economic programs, right, because I want to study economics. And, you know, get into those schools while I was incarcerated. So I was studying for the GRE while I was in there and just really trying to, you know, line everything. It was just so crazy how everything lined up because I was supposed to be released in December.

and that was also when my admissions to turn in your application was ending, right? So I had just lined everything up, rushed through studying for the GRE. I ended up scoring in the 99th percentile for the math part that allowed me to really outstanding in my applications to apply to these schools and economics. Because most of the time, right, if you have any type of background, right, they're going to immediately dismiss your application. And I got dismissed by a lot of universities because of that aspect. But in my essay, I was extremely candid when I reached out to these universities.

And I explained what I did wrong, where I knew what I did was wrong, and how I have grown from that, and why I'm interested in the subject now, right? And a lot of universities really like that. And, you know, getting support letters, you know, letters of recommendation from one, the people that I was, you know, studying under Adam State University, right, that helped. and then a few of my previous professors before I got incarcerated really helped. But it's just I was extremely fortunate to have a very supportive family that looked out for my needs, even when I didn't look at for them myself, that allowed me to really stand upright. And I think one big piece of advice I can give to anyone that's being incarcerated or going through the process is focus on education and focus on your family. You can't focus on anything else in there because it's just really a big distraction, right?

And I don't mean you don't have to go to the school because some people just can't afford it. Some people don't have the privilege to reach out or the means to reach out. But education can be through a means of anything, you know, reading, writing, like taking their time to actually learn a different trade or different trade skill, right? These are just things that you should immerse yourself with because once you get released, right, you have the temptations of going back to the criminal route that you had originally got incarcerated for. and the education serves as a defense mechanism or as a shield for you to focus on things that will propagate you more in life. And that's something that I can thank my parents and God for is that, you know, I was given the opportunity to focus on education while I was in there and then now use it as a means to propagate myself.

When you look at your entire story and what you went through as a whole, what would you say is the biggest takeaway you want someone to take away from it and to learn from it? So I would say the biggest takeaway is really avoid any type of lures in prison. So they have three things in prison that you should always stay away from. The three Gs, gangs, gays, and gambling, right? The first week I got to prison, right? This was the first thing that someone had told me is going to be the biggest lures in prison, right? And obviously, you know, I thought it was kind of funny at first, but the crazy thing is, like, you know, these things, not just selectively these things, but there are just so many distractions in prison because you are now living in a diluted society, right?

You're now living in a different reality than you were on the street, right? So, like, for example, how I was moving, how I was talking on the street is not any way you can talk while you're in prison, right? politics play a very heavy influence. You cannot just talk or be around certain people because of the politics, right? And just taking your time to not really focus on that is just the biggest piece of advice that I can give anyone. Focus on yourself. Focus on things that you know will help you advance in life, right? Don't focus on the things that will help you advance in prison, right?

Prison is just such a temporary time in your life for the people that have a privilege and fortunate, fortunate, life to be able to come back out, right? It's such a short time that you can take to really advance yourself because here's the thing, right? When I was in prison, I had read over 600 books, right? Since I've gone home, I've probably read like one, right? And that sucks because reading is really what allowed me to advance my literature skills, advance my love for education again, and just being able to really immerse myself in that aspect, right? Instead of focusing on books or focusing on, like, things that will advance you, right? A lot of people in prison focus on other things such as, you know, gang time, politics, you know, even just watching nonsense on the TV all day.

Like, people will be watching HD TV, MTV all day. Like, dude, at least turn on the news, be educated. Like, think about things that will actually influence your life. And I get it because these types of things that they watch on TV is like a numbing agent, right? It's something that they can laugh about. Oh, yeah, look at these girls on MTV. oh my god you see that ass like dude because a lot of these people never see ass in their life again right i get it but at the end of the day right your life is what you make it and education is something

that could really help any individual that's incarcerated awesome well saya thank you so much for coming on the show today your story is absolutely amazing and and it's so crazy to think how like you thought the beginning of your story like myself was incredible and amazing and and and entertaining only to find out that the worst thing that could happen to us ends up being the real juicy, you know, entertaining part of the story, which, you know, you're telling for the first time. And it's just so, it's unbelievable, honestly. It's just, wow, man, you did an really awesome job at telling that.

I appreciate your time. Yeah, I appreciate you coming here and, you know, safe travels back and enjoy the rest of time in the city.