Locked In with Ian Bick - Ex Con Man On Stealing From His Employer & Getting Sent To Prison | Craig Stanland

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Committing fraud against the major tech corporation that employs you doesn’t seem like an entry-level crime. But Craig Stanland had lived a relatively normal life until he was tempted by the prospect of “easy” money. Now known as a “reinvention architect,” Craig tells Ian how he lost it all, spent time at the infamous Otisville Federal Prison Camp, and found his sense of purpose after re-entry. Connect with Craig Stanland: https://www.craigstanland.com Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 10% off your order Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com 00:00 Intro 01:28 New Merch discount 03:03 Childhood 06:34 Comparing his childhood to other kids 09:10 Drinking at an early age 11:23 Looking for help internally 14:00 Getting kicked out of college 20:18 You don’t need college 23:20 Getting into corporate 31:18 Life as he was working way up in company 33:15 The start of the fraud 46:12 Almost getting caught 47:39 How he was spending the money 50:50 Getting caught 55:13 Approached by postal inspectors 57:58 Arrested by the FBI 1:04:10 What he did after getting the fbi call 1:05:34 First conversation with wife 1:10:07 Sam Bankmanfreid 1:13:17 always have a lawyer present 1:14:50 Sentenced to prison 1:17:55 Otisville Federal Prison Camp 1:22:45 Contraband Phones 1:24:22 Are prison Camps neccessary 1:27:24 Seeing medical at the camp 1:32:59 Wearing the ankle bracelet 1:34:12 Challenges as a felon 1:39:27 Lessons Produced by: https://www.instagram.com/shanedanahy https://www.shanedanahy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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give or take, that are sitting down enjoying all this. And he goes, that doesn't look like anything you can get on commissary. Here's your plate. Thank you very much. On today's episode, we have Craig Stanlin, the author of Blank Canvas, how I reinvented my life after prison. Craig defrauded a tech giant. Lost everything, spent two years in federal prison, and then went on a mission to reinvent himself from scratch. Thank you guys, the viewers, the listeners, week after week for supporting the show. We would not be here without you. If you guys could give us a like, a comment, a subscribe on YouTube, or if you're listening to us on audio streaming platforms, please leave us a review and rate the show.

It does us wonders and help getting the show out to more people. Remember, we have new merch just in time for the holiday season at Ian Bick.com. You use code locked in at checkout. You could get 10% off your order. Thank you again, everyone, the viewers and the listeners for tuning into this week's episode. And I hope you guys sit back, relax, and get ready to get locked in with Craig Stanlin. Comfortable? Very comfortable.

Awesome. Well, Craig, thank you so much for coming today, man. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. James's producer, James Alter's producer, connected us. Before I even went on the show, he said, hey, here's my friend Craig. You've got to get him on the show.

So here we are today, a couple months later. It's unbelievable how it all came together, and I can't thank you enough for having me here. I've been really looking forward to this. And a huge thanks to Jay for connecting us. Absolutely. And you just got married recently, right? I got married on September 21st, a couple weeks ago.

Congratulations. How was a wedding? It was absolutely incredible. It was about 10 minutes from our house on the beach in Connecticut. We only had family for the ceremony. So there was about 19 people, including my wife and I. So it was really small, really intimate. The weather was outstanding because that weekend it turned into just a shit show.

It was just rain, just terrible. But the wedding itself went off without a hitch beyond all of our expectations. And this is your second marriage, correct? It is, correct. And we're about to dive into that. Yeah, we'll, I'm sure we'll cover all of that. Awesome. So let's jump into it. Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? What's like that early childhood life like for Craig? Absolutely. So what's funny is I grew up not far from here, probably 15 minutes away. I grew up in a small town called Waka Buc, which is near South Salem, Ketona, Golden's Bridge, any of those ring a bell.

I've heard of those, but I've never heard a Waka Buck. Nobody's ever heard of Waka Buck. I mean, it's the size of a postage stamp. It's got a post office and a country club. One church. and a lake. That's the extent of it. There's no commercial business there. But that's where I grew up. And it was really a cool place to grow up because it was such a small town. Our house was on the golf course, which is a super fun place to grow up to be able to go out on the golf course and just mess around, you know, play with everybody. And like we actually, I'd go out and play eight holes after work. I'd go and just, you know, play. It could only do eight holes. Can't do nine because the 18, brings you back to the country club, and we weren't members. So we were sneaking on to the course.

That's funny. When I was a kid, I was selling golf balls. The pro called up my mom one time and said, your son is selling golf balls. He has to stop. And she goes, well, stop making your golf balls so expensive. I can't help that he's undercutting your price. She's like, he's going to keep doing it. That's great.

How would your friends, like, describe you during that time period? Definitely entrepreneurial, but were you like a loaner? Were you popular? That's a great question. How would my friends describe me when I was a little kid? You know what? They would say that I was a happy kid and that I was always smiling. And that was true.

I was always, always smiling when I was a little kid. I think they would also describe me as very smart. Also one of the shortest kids in class. You know, we'd stand up like, you know, from tallest to shortest. I always knew where I had to go, where my place in line was. but I think they would say, yeah, just smile, just always smiling and smart. And good storyteller. Good storyteller.

Well, you wrote a book, so I guess they were right about that. You know, it's funny, I totally forgot that I was a decent storyteller. And still I started, like, writing the book when I was in prison. And, you know, my friend Sean reminded me. He goes, you loved writing because you absolutely loved it. Remember, you wrote a draft of the high school play. You wrote the script for Frank Stryver's Ed video. You did that thing for Mr. Voss's English class.

And it's just all blanked on all of that. You were in theater? No. Oh, you never did theater. Never did theater. I was a theater kid. Were you? Yeah, I was a theater kid throughout high school.

Nice. Didn't do sports. I was always, I was in the play every single year. Really? In each musical, yeah. Do you miss it? I don't know. I feel like this is theater now.

It is what I do now. This is theater. This is acting. This is, you know, social media is this. You have that stage presence and you have this platform. So it's interesting how life kind of came full circle. And I always did like summer theater camps and whatnot. And it really, you know, the more I dive into it, the more I realize how all that shaped me into the person I would end up becoming, which is really interesting.

Well, I think that it's a great point. I mean, our life, we sometimes forget it of this is it's an aggregation of every single thing that has occurred to us. Every single thing. And has brought us to where we are right now. having this conversation. Absolutely, yeah. You know, it's just kind of like we could get really deep and philosophical, which we don't need to do.

It's kind of insane when you think about it. How would you compare your childhood to other kids? Do you think it was normal? Do you think it was abnormal? I would say that it was normal. I would say it was absolutely normal. But I think what's interesting about that is every single family that maybe would say that they're normal, when you peel back one layer of that onion, doesn't take much.

you see all the weird intricacies that go on behind the scenes. There's no such thing as a normal family. True. You know, there's not. And anybody who puts on that guise or pretends that they are is just lying to themselves. Yeah, I think normal in comparison to some of the individuals we have on the show where, you know, both parents are, you know, struggling addicts or one's in prison and things like that. Of course, we all each as individuals have abnormalities in our child. But like when it's that level and we see how that shapes the individual to carry on a path.

Of course, absolutely. I mean, that just, especially during those formative years, when you have all of that going on, just the influences from that, again, the aggregation of all the things that we go through that lead us to where we are. Absolutely. And you graduate high school, go to college? I graduated high school. I went to college. I went to the University of Delaware. And I only did one year.

I got a letter over the summer. Mr. Stanland, you are not invited back to the University of Delaware for the fall semester. I had a 1.6. Wow. What was your major? I picked economics, and I didn't really want that, but I thought it had, I wanted to do something with business, and I just kind of grabbed it because it was something to choose. But it really wasn't what I wanted to do. The funny thing about college, yeah, I failed out, but I didn't fail out for the reasons a lot of people are probably thinking. Like, I just partied too much, and I dream. drank too much. I just didn't do the work. Because I had, I'll rewind a little bit. My parents got divorced when I was 13. And my mom still lived in the house. They were still living in the same house. I grew up in a fairly large home. And my mom moved into my sister's bedroom because my sister had moved out. So I've got my parents who are getting a divorce living together,

which is really uncomfortable. But I figured out really quickly something that they would do. my father would call home and say, is your mom coming home to cook you dinner? And then my mom would call and say, is your dad coming home to cook you dinner? They would always call. So I figured out real quick, yes, he is. Yes, she is. So nobody would come home. So I had the house all to myself.

Yeah. And so I just start, I mean, I started drinking at a really early age. I got drunk for the first time in the sixth grade and just kind of like hit the ground running with that. So I'm 13 years old. living on the golf course in a big house on a private road. You know, my friend Sean would come over. We would just raid the liquor cabinet and just get completely drunk. So I partied all throughout high school, and I had all of that at my disposal.

So going to college wasn't this large shock to the system by any stretch. It was just, you know, honestly, I had a paddleball court right outside. I could see it from my window, and I could see if the courts were empty. And I would yell down to one of my friends who also like playing. I'm like, court's empty, you want to go? And it would be like, yeah, and he would do the same thing. So I was like, well, I should be studying. And he's like, oh, come on, the court's open.

So I'm going out and playing paddleball. I mean, I almost failed out in part because of that. I wish I had something more dramatic. I did party, but that's not why I didn't, you know, that's not why I failed out. Yeah. Now, when you say drinking, were you like an alcoholic or just doing it for fun? I would say it was absolutely an alcoholic. At that young age.

I'd say the alcoholism probably kicked in more towards like, 10th grade, you know. And your parents weren't stepping in at all? Nobody knew. Nobody knew. Nobody knew. Because I was just a smiley kid who still did okay in school. I had a job doing landscaping, but nobody knew.

You know, I would party a tremendous amount on the weekends. You know, I was more like a weekend warrior, if you will. But then there were times where my friends and I, I house sat for somebody in my neighborhood who lived in the city. So it was a weekend home. So the house was empty. Gorgeous, gorgeous house. On the other side of the golf course,

house was empty all throughout the week. So we would actually get up at about 4.30 in the morning. High school kids. You know there's a problem when high school kids are voluntarily getting up at 4.30 in the morning. And we'd meet at this house and we would just have little mini parties in the morning before going to school.

So we'd show up at school, wasted. And then just kind of continued the party throughout the day. I always had beer in my car. You know, always had a cooler, always had beer, like literally always had a minimum of a six-pack in the back of my car. Were you looking for help internally, or do you think you were just going with the flow and you didn't even acknowledge that you had a problem? I think that's a really insightful question and didn't even think that I had a problem whatsoever. All of my friends drank a tremendous amount, and it supplied an escape.

And that's all I really cared about was just it gave me that escape. And I lived for it. First time I got drunk in the sixth grade. I'll share the story really quickly because it's kind of funny. I was at my grandparents' house. I was down in the basement, a ranch house, down in the basement. They had a horseshoe bar. And my uncle, Sal, is sitting on the couch.

And he goes, go behind the bar. And he's like, I want to try some stuff that's back there. But don't let them know that you're pouring for me. So I said, do you want me to duck down underneath the bar? He said, yeah, do that. So I'm taking Sambuca, just terrible things. And I'm pouring shots for him, but I'm doing one. One for myself, one for him, one for me.

And nobody knows. And I show up at dinner. And I'm just glowing. I just got this big smile on my face. I just feel so wonderful. And I loved the escape. Because that just wasn't me anymore. Because that smile that I always had was not real.

You know, it was just like it was pure phoniness. Yeah. You know? And so, no, I was not thinking there was a problem. it got worse later in life when I really had more access to things. Then it became, you know, the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday drinking. Then it turned into, you know, the six days a week, the seven days a week. And that all stem from that first drink in sixth grade.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It doesn't take much. No, it really doesn't. That's why I refuse to do any type of drugs because I have an addictive personality. So I don't want to jump into that and start using. So in like ninth grade, you know, my friends were doing. when they were dipping. You know, they started like dipping.

And they're like, do you want to try? And I was like, yeah, let me try it. And I got a little buzz from it. Next thing you know, I'm dipping for years. Like it took it was impossible to quit. And then I went to smoking. I quit that a long time ago. But talking about like addictive personalities,

first time I got high smoking pot, my friend was dealing. And I just said, what's the largest quantity that I can buy from you? And he's like, well, you can get a quarter pound. And I was like, I'm going to do that. He's like, you're going to buy. a quarter of pound after getting high for the first time.

I was like, yeah, I don't ever want to be without it. You know, same thing with like ecstasy, took ecstasy. It was the next morning. Where can we get more? Same thing, that addictive personality. Wow. Now, when you got kicked out of college that first year, what's your interaction with your parents? What are they saying to you?

My mom was totally okay with it. My dad was definitely disappointed. You know, he was really disappointed. And, you know, he always kind of, he demanded perfection. when I was a kid. And that's, you know, a big part of where that, like, where that smile and the unwillingness to put in the work into college came from was just that demand for perfection. Like when I was a little kid, if I brought home a 99 on a test, my father would take that test and he would go to the one question that I got wrong. And he would say, why didn't you get that one

question right. It wasn't, hey, 99's a good score, right? I mean, what would you say to you? I would say, that's great. But it was always like, why didn't you get that right? You know the answer to this. You made a careless mistake. You made a stupid mistake. And so that like perfectionism, just kind of, you know, well, I'm sure we're heading in that direction, but we'll get to it, led to so many of the later decisions. So all of that to say that my father was really, disappointed. But I was able to, I was able to talk to him and say that, you know, I don't test well because I was so damn afraid of not getting 100. That's really what it came down to. But I could study, I could know the material. And the second the test was put in front of me, I would just go blank.

It would all just disappear. Yeah. You know. Do you think that, looking back on it now, that pressure that he put on to you and those big shoes you kind of had to fill that had an impact on the trouble you would get in later on. Oh, hands down, without a doubt. So when I was, you know, let's say, you know, about seven years old, I kind of remember as being like the, like the inflection point, if you will. I just started dawning on me. I'd study really hard for a test.

And again, a 97, a 98, a 99. I'd always fall short. He would do what he did, you know, asking why I made a careless and stupid mistake. And I started internalizing that as my best. is never going to be good enough. And if my best isn't good enough, well, aren't I my best? So if my best isn't good enough, then I'm not good enough. Then enough and worth are two sides of the same coin. So now I'm not enough. Now I'm not worthy. And I don't have that approval from one of my primary caregivers. The person who I want to impress the most, if you will, is my father. I

looked up to him very much. And so I wouldn't be able to get his approval. And I just always felt so empty inside. You know, never felt enough, never felt worthy. So that absolutely drove later decisions. Yeah. It's crazy when you look back on it. And you see that something that we didn't see as significant back then had the outmost significance. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd, but too often life gets busy, or the price holds you back. Price Line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live.

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Outcomes vary. Investment management and advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used. Task performance does not guarantee future results. To how things would play out. Absolutely. And, you know, I do not fault him whatsoever.

He was looking out for me and he was doing the best that he can. He had no idea the ramifications that that would have. Because I think we all are really just doing the best that we can at any given moment. And he was. And I had to, you know, internally I forgave him for that. But all of these little things, they add up in a big, big way. Absolutely. Do you go back to college after that first semester or that first year?

No, I did not. I went to, I went back to landscaping. It's something I had started when I was like 11, 12 years old. My best friend's father owns a nursery in Bedford, New York. And that's where I worked before college. And that's where I worked after college. It was great. You know, I'm out there working with my best friend, planting trees.

you know, being outside. It was like such a fun, fun job, but it's also a go nowhere job. And my father's starting to put a little bit of pressure on me. You know, like, you got to figure something out. This is not, I was probably making $750 an hour. You know, something like that. Busting my ass, making nothing. Yeah, it was a great job. But there was no, there was literally no future in it. You may be a little surprised to know with my small frame sitting in front of you. I was a competitive powerlifter. You were a powerlifter. I was a bench presser.

Really? Yeah. That's a professional bench pressing? I was amateur level. It was the associate, what was it? The ADFPA American Drug Free Powerlifting Association. So that's who I competed with. And when I was 150, I weighed 115, I was doing 260.

When I weighed 129, I was doing 285. And so I was ranked third in the country. I had six New York State records. I had the unofficial New Jersey record. I had the unofficial Virginia record. And I say all of that because all my friends were like, I was always the strongest pound for pound, any gym that I went into, literally Gold's Gym, Powerhouse Gym,

whatever it was, I was the strongest person in there, pound for pound. And everybody said to me, like, you should be a personal trainer. I was like, no, I shouldn't do that. I don't have the education. I said, all you have to do is take a test. Really? And I said, yeah, you just take a test. You get certified.

So I did that. And then I stopped landscaping and I started a personal training business, which went really, really well. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. So you never had to go back to college. I didn't. I didn't.

But you know what? I'll share this. It was something that the fact that I didn't finish college was something that stayed with me for years as a source of shame. I would be even when I had massive corporate success and it came up that I didn't have a college degree. So much shame. So embarrassed if somebody mentioned that. It just was like, it was within the probably past 10 years that I let that go. It was a different time period too. Yes. I think it's looked at way more differently. Now it's normal to not have a college degree and to do things. I mean, I've been preaching about it for years since I was in high school.

You don't need a college degree to be successful. But I'm sure back year older than me and in your time period, that was a way different case. You went to college and you got a good job. That's what you did. That was the path that you took. And if you did anything that delineated from that, you were kind of an oddball. And that's definitely how I felt. But I mean, just talking about like James Altoucher, he's a huge proponent of not going to school. And Shane and I were talking about it before we were recording. Like, why can't go to school? Get that experiential wisdom. That is something you can't get in college. Yeah, you can't get that on the job training. Like I've learned. way more about podcasting and YouTube than I would ever learn in a media class or film production or anything. Because you're doing it. You're doing it.

You're doing it really well, too. Like, how do you, I mean, you can't teach that stuff. I'll share really quickly. I think it's a funny story that ties in. There was a chef, and I can't remember his name, but he is now, like, one of the world's best chefs. And when he started off, he went to one of his local restaurants, which was a really good restaurant, you know, like fairly, fairly highly ranked. And he asked the chef, he said, I really want to

want to work for you or I want to go to CIA and learn how to cook. And he goes, well, I'll tell you what's going to happen. He goes, if you go to CIA, you're going to put four years in, you're going to spend a lot of money, you're going to come here and you're going to peel potatoes. He goes, or you can start tomorrow and you're going to peel potatoes. What do you want to do? Yeah. That was literally me when I went to Johnson, Wales, for a weekend for hospitality in high school going into senior year. My parents said, okay, if you don't want to go to college, at least look at the program. And I went there, spent the whole weekend. They showed us around all the cool, like, on the job, like workrooms or whatever. And they're like, but you won't use this side of the

building the first two years. You're going to be in the classroom. And then they brought us the Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami. And they're like, you'll get an internship here. And the intern that that they had us meet with was folding and polishing napkins and silverware. That's what you're spending $100,000, and that was back then. Imagine now. It's just, you don't need that. I would say anyone going in the restaurant business, anything that's not like medical or, you know, legal or anything that doesn't need a college degree. It's a waste of time. Absolutely. Plus, you're also asking an 18-year-old to pick a degree, to pick a major that has a chance of dictating the remainder of their lives. 18-year-old should be out there experimenting and trying different

things and learning about themselves, you know. Like I was in my one year, like I said, I chose economics. I don't know what the heck that is. And what am I going to do with that? If I got, if I did finish that degree, I would feel like trapped by that degree. And I just don't think that's something that an 18 year old necessarily has the faculties to make a decision like that, obviously. No offense against the 18 years. I'm actually, I'm looking out for you. Yeah. No, Absolutely. I think that's great advice. So how do you get into corporate then? If you just have your own business, no college degree, how does it travel down to that road? So training was an amazing, amazing job. Absolutely loved it. Trained some of the most interesting people you could imagine. And we became really good friends. Not all of them, but some of them really good friends. And there was one woman. Her name was Nina. And she and I became really, really close to the point where I would hang out with her and her. her husband Sandy on the weekends. We'd go to the local bar and we'd have dinner and we'd get drunk

together and we'd just hang out. Well, one night over drinks at the tap house, Sandy just looks at me. And he goes, let me ask you something. How much money you make? And I told him. And he goes, wow, that's pretty good. It's more than I expected. You shocked me. I said, well, thanks. Because I knew he worked for a big technology company. So I was like, wow, I just, I impressed guy who at the time I think was making about 700k. I was like, wow, I impressed the 700k guy. He goes, but Craig, let me ask you a question. So what's that, Sandy? He goes, how would you like to make four times that? My 20-something-year-old brain, you know, woke up real quick and I said, I'd be really

interested in making four times what I make right now. I was making about 70, 75,000. So we're looking at like 280, you know. Great money. Great money. And I was like, yeah, I want to do that. My friend Rick owns this technology company. I want you to contact him and set up an interview. And I'm going to let him know that you're doing this and that you're a personal friend of mine. And so I call up this guy, Rick, who owns this technology company in Stanford, Connecticut, and we set an appointment.

And the day comes and I drive to this corporate office park, park my car, walk into this big building. I don't even have a suit because I don't need to have a suit. I'm a personal trainer, so I'm wearing the, I'm almost wearing the equivalent of what I'm wearing now, which is like the nicest clothes that I owned at the time. And the receptionist brings me to this back corner office, really stunning, stunning office. And behind the desk, this big desk, big oak, gorgeous desk is this guy dressed all in black. Looks like a corporate Johnny Cash. He stands up. He's like 6-2.

He's 2-something. Big giant dude. Big bear paw hands. And he's like, I'm Rick. He said, I'm Craig. He said, have a seat. And so he sit down, and he leans back in his chair, and he says, you're a friend to Sandy's. Why don't you tell me about yourself?

I said, well, Rick, I got to be really honest. He said, I don't know what you do here. I have no idea what your company does. I know it's something in technology, but I'm going to be very honest with you, Rick. I can barely turn on my own laptop, let alone use it. I am technologically inept, and he starts chuckling a little bit. And I said, but there's two things I really want. want you to know about me. He said, tell me, what are they? So number one, I'm extremely

intelligent. Number two, I will work my fucking ass off for you. He just gets this big Cheshire cat smile on his face, leans back in his chair. And he leans forward and he goes, you're hired. Wow. That's how I got into corporate. And that was the beginning of the end. What a great way of putting that. That was the beginning of the end. It was, so I started at the bottom of the company because I had no experience. I mean, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I barely, I could barely use the mouse. Do you remember the laptops that had that little nub in the middle of the keys? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for the mouse. For the mouse. Like, I didn't have the coordination to use that thing well. That's how bad I was. So I started as an inside sales

account manager and I was assigned to one of the enterprise account managers. And as luck would have it, I was assigned to the number one guy in the company. And I wasn't lucky because he was the number one guy, which didn't suck. But he was really generous with his wisdom and his knowledge. And he took me under his wing. And just we made a great, great team. What did this company do in what were like your day-to-day operations? Absolutely. So we were a gold partner of Cisco systems. We were what was called a VAR, a value-added reseller. So Cisco makes all the routers, switches, firewalls. all the things that make the internet work, they produce those components. And then they have VARs who will sell the equipment for them.

Cisco has, they don't have a huge direct sales model. They like having other companies sell their products for them. So that's basically what we, you know, that's what we did. So my senior enterprise account manager that I was supporting, his name was Bill. He had a set account list and was always trying to get. new accounts, he would go meet with people and tell them about the new technology that was out and why they need to buy it. He would, you know, as they were expanding and moving into different locations, he would make sure they were set up with everything. And I'm on the back end doing all the

quotes, answering the phone calls, taking, you know, really a lot of admin work. But, and this informs the crime, if you will, by starting at the bottom and working with him, I learned every single processes and system inside and out. Wow. And then I'll jump ahead. Bill, after four years, we worked together for four years. Great, great team. He decided he wanted a different challenge,

and he wanted to change industries and companies. So he left. The number one guy in the sales company leaves and leaves a giant, giant vacuum. Well, at this point, since I've been four years in this role of supporting these accounts, I'd started going on site. So I'd actually have a cube on site at some of these banks, at some of these hedge funds. And I'd spend the day there working with people, getting to know them. There was only one person who could fill that vacuum. So I got promoted instantaneous.

My salary tripled. I got commissions. I got a car allowance. I got an expense account. Like, life changing. Did you enjoy the job? Were you passionate about it? You know, I have to say when I started, I was because there was such a steep learning curve.

And I really enjoyed the challenge of learning. I enjoyed doing well. You know, I'll give a quick example. I was two months into the job, still having difficulty with that little nub mouse thing. I mean, you know, I didn't master that for a long time. But the CFO and Bill pull me into the CFO's office. And they said, we cannot figure this out. can you tell us how much money we're making on this deal?

And they hand me the paperwork. And I go to my, it didn't even have a desk. I actually had a folding table that was next to the printer. And I go there and I sit through. And I keep coming to the same figure. And I do the math over and over again. I'm like, finally sheepishly, I walk back into the CFO's office and I said, you know, I know I'm new.

And I hope I'm not really making a mistake here. But we're losing $400,000 on this. and they go, get the fuck out of here. I said, no, we're losing 400,000. And then they looked and I showed them and CFO was like, you just saved us $400,000. And stuff like that, I loved. I was passionate about that, the puzzles, figuring things out.

Later, even when I was making a lot of money, it was unfulfilling. There was no meaning. There was no purpose. It was very, it was just empty. and I didn't like that aspect of it. Yeah. Now, on the, I mean, talking of what the environment was like at that point in time, are you married?

Do you have kids? What's your life like while you're building this business, or while you're working your way up in this company? So I was dating somebody. And I was living with her. And how old were you? I was, let's see, I got hired when I was about 26. Yeah, I was hired when I was 26. So I got promoted when I was 30. That's when I hit the six figure mark was when I was 30. Was it weird to work for yourself and then go into this company? Because you did like five or six years working for yourself on your own.

Great question. Absolutely. That was the other thing. Thank you for that. That's something else I was missing. Yeah, I know I would feel weird if I did that. I mean, it felt weird, you know, after prison going to work for someone else too. It was, it was so strange. What was kind of nice. about it, though, was you mentioned earlier was I kind of like a lone wolf. And I don't think I was when I was a kid, but later in life definitely became more of a lone wolf. Like I was the number one sales guy in the company and I did it all on my own because I didn't actually have the need to have somebody to do my quotes for me because I knew how to do them. You know, I knew how to do everything. And I was able to kind of in a sense run my own franchise. So I did have a little bit of that

autonomy, but every Friday I had to report somebody on our weekly sales call. And I really did. That was annoying. That annoyed you a little bit. That annoyed me. Well, then, so I had to report to my regional sales manager. And then we had to have larger meetings with the director of sales. That was even more annoying. Then you get the vice president of sales who's so disconnected with what's actually happening on a day-to-day level but thinks that they know, that drove me frigging nuts. I hated that. I couldn't stand that. I know what you make. You pretend like you you're dialed in, and you have no fucking clue what's going on. All new drinks are now at McDonald's, with refreshers like the strawberry watermelon

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Why? Because real matters. So whether you're pouring milk, melting cheese, or just grabbing one more spoonful of yogurt, Keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk by real California farm families. A day-to-day basis. Yeah. So 30 years old, you're making six figures.

You got your life together. Anything you could have possibly wanted you're getting now. Where does it go south? How does this lead to fraud charges? This is where it starts getting interesting. So 30 years old, getting that six figures. And then I started building that business even more. It was, you know, first it was just over 100,000, then it was the 150, then it was the 200, then it was the 250, then it was the 250, then it was 300, then it was 300, then it just, you know, it climbed even higher than that.

And I spent every single dollar that came in, like a drunken sailor. I had VIP status at some of the finest restaurants in Greenwich, Connecticut. I had the BMWs. I owned four homes. I wore five-figure watches. you know, I would buy nice clothes. I had all of these, all of this status-seeking materialism because I still felt empty,

and I still didn't feel like I was enough and still didn't feel like I was worthy. And so I started chasing all of that materialism to be who I thought I needed to be, to be somebody in this world. And my identity became so inextricably interwoven with my things, that I didn't know where they started and where I ended. You know, it was just such a convoluted mess that I felt like I really had to buy all these things.

And so I was with the girl that I was dating when I first started at this company. She and I were together for about 10 years, and I ended up breaking up with her and dating somebody new. And when we were first starting to date, I never, I really, you know what it is, I put her on a pedestal. I put her up really, really high on a pedestal. Just thought she was like one of the most beautiful women in town. You know, everybody wanted her. And so I just had her way up on a pedestal. And I wouldn't flat out lie, but I would use semantics to make it sound like I made more money than I actually did make.

and by the way I was making a lot of money so I did not need to do that and she was a waitress at one of the local things you know one of the local restaurants not making a ton of money and here I am really promising her this like amazing incredible life and we started dating I showed her that life walking up and down Greenwich avenue buying the Christian Louis batons the Jimmy Chuse I bought her a car you know doing all of these things I set the bar really really really high. And it's such a fear of being seen as less than. You know, that bar, and the bar just kept going, just keeps rising. That bar doesn't ever lower. Yeah. You know, it always just keeps going up. Well, a couple of things started happening. The products I was selling were becoming more commoditized. So it was much harder to get deals. And the margins on the deals were shrinking. I got paid on the margin. I got paid on the gross profit on the deal. So my paycheck starts shrinking. Well, she and I live in this fantastic lifestyle. You know, you might think I'm doing that on the weekends, like normal people, you know, going out to like $400 lunches and shopping up and down Greenwich Avenue

and getting massages at the, you know, at the hotel, the luxury hotel at the end of the avenue. No, I was doing that on a Wednesday. I was doing that on a Tuesday. In the middle of the week, she and I are partying our brains out when I should have been working. I dealt with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, some of the largest hedge funds in the world, premier names. You can't fuck around when you're dealing with clients like that. And so what do you think happened? My paycheck starts shrinking. So now I've got the shrinking paycheck issue and my identity is being threatened.

And that fear of being seen as less than was so prevalent and so strong. While I started thinking about it, I was like, I got a problem. I got a problem and I got to fix it really quickly. And I think about it. I said, what do I know better than anything else? I know our partner company's warranty policy inside and out. And I'll tell you about it real quick because I think it speaks to like the details of the fraud. Yeah, absolutely.

So Cisco Systems, you can buy a service contract on one of their pieces of equipment. and their equipment kind of looks like just a big metal box, and you can slide cards into that box, and the cards all have different functionality, and you plug wires into them and stuff like that. Well, when you buy a service contract on that box, everything in the box is covered. So if one of those cards fails,

Cisco sends you a brand new one. Brand spanking new, in the box, completely sealed. They want the broken one back, right? So when I was working with Bill on that inside sales role, our clients hated calling Cisco. You ever call your service provider, like if your Wi-Fi router at home goes down? They're worst. It's terrible, right? You get stuck there for a long time.

You're stuck there for a long time, the same when you call into Cisco. So our clients hated it. It would just like eat up their day. It was really frustrating. So I took that over. I took all of that off of their shoulders. and I learned how to, what used to take like a 40-minute phone call, I could get down to like three minutes

and get a brand new piece of equipment shipped to me the next day or the client in the beginning. And so I thought about it when I've got this paycheck problem and my identity being threatened. I was like, I know that thing inside and out. So I started thinking, I said, Cisco sends me a brand new piece of equipment, but I owe them a piece of equipment back.

How do I, because otherwise they charge you the full invoice, amount, right? How do I, how do I figure this out? It took about four months. I look like, I look like Russell Crow in a beautiful mind. You know, he's got post-it notes written all over the place. Did you ever see that movie? I think years ago in like a psychology class in high school. It would make sense. Yeah, that's when they had us watch that. I had post-it notes all over the place. I had scribbles all over the place. It wasn't quite as like crazy as he was, but it took about four months to come together and I finally figured out how I could manipulate that system to my financial gain. And I just said one day I just sat at the dining room table and I was like,

I'm going to do it. What do you think triggered you to do that though, to actually like commit a crime? Because you were a good person, you know, you're a good kid, you had good upbringing. Regardless of whether you're bleeding money and you needed more money, you could have maybe gotten a better job, You could have looked elsewhere, gone, I don't know, there could have been options. Why did it trigger in your mind a result to cut a corner? Because you hadn't cut corners in your life up until this point. I will correct that. I will actually say I was, I cheated on like every single test after a while.

That doesn't count. It doesn't count. It doesn't count. But it was like finding the shortcut, if you will, you know. So you wanted to find a shortcut for this? It was finding a shortcut. And I'll tell you that I felt like I had blinders on. looking back, it's very easy to see that I could have just gone and got another job.

I could have actually, you know what the easiest thing would have been? Having a conversation with my now wife, I ended up marrying the person that I was partying all up and down Greenwich Avenue. Really? Yeah, so we ended up getting married. I could have just sat down and had a conversation and said, I can't afford this lifestyle anymore. It's crushing us.

And like, I need to do something else and I want to do something else. I want to do something that has that purpose, that meaning, and that fulfillment. But I was terrified of being seen as less than. And I felt like I had blinders on. And I'll tell you, all of those things mixed with what I'm about to say just made this, like, ultimate cocktail. I really, and took me years to come to this conclusion, I self-sabotaged in the grandest fashion that I could because I wasn't happy with the direction of my life and what I was. was doing and I was too afraid to give it all up and start over and so I just blew it all to pieces. And we've all been there before too. Yeah. You know, it was just like the biggest self-sabotage

that I could think of. So I'll tell you, you know, when I, after that four months of putting the fraud together, right, you know, posted notes everywhere, sitting at the dining room table, because I worked from home before, this is 2013, I worked from home before everybody was working from home. And I, I sitting there, I said, this thing can work. This thing's got legs. And I sat. And I just had to hit, hit the mouse button, hit the send button to initiate the fraud.

My finger's just hovering over the mouse. It's like, it's like millimeters over it. And my heart is actually sitting there saying, stop, don't do this. This is not the way. There's a better way for you. and I lifted my finger off and I took kind of a breath and I was like yeah this isn't I know this isn't right and then I thought about having that honest conversation and I thought about being seen as less than and I thought about the fact that I found this treasure map that I thought nobody else knew the

that knew existed and that excitement the fear and the excitement outweighed my heart saying stop don't do this this is not the way. And boom, I hit the send button. And damned if the new piece of equipment didn't show up the next day, I figured out that I could buy used equipment from eBay for less than I could sell the new equipment for. So I had already secured the piece of equipment that I need to send back to Cisco. I already had a buyer for the new piece of equipment. So next day, new equipment comes in.

I ship the other one out. Three days later, I got to check. in the mail. How much do you clear on that transaction? It was probably, you know, the funny thing was it was probably only probably like two grand. On just that one item? Yeah. So how many fraudulent transactions are you doing

in a week, say? So I know in the course of, we could do the math, but I know in the course of the fraud lasted for about 10 and a half months I did over 600 TAC cases. They were called TAC as Technical Assistance Center. So 600 times 2000? It was, not all of them were

2,000, somewhere 500, somewhere a little bit more than 2,000. All told, all told that came out to about 130,000 in profit. Profit, 130. And that's what I'm assuming your restitution would be later on? No, it would not be. It would be higher? Yes, because Cisco, it's what they could have sold that equipment for. So my restitution was 834,000. Oh, man, because they lost out on all that. Even though I wasn't there, you were getting used equipment? No, I was getting the new equipment from them. Oh, okay. I was getting the brand new equipment directly from Cisco. Because what I did was, sorry, I should have included this. I actually bought a Cisco router, and I bought a Cisco service contract. And when I realized that first one worked, then I bought

another one, then I bought another one. Next thing, you know, I'm running 18 different service contracts on 18 different devices across four different shipping locations using multiple aliases. Wow. Yeah. So this was bringing in a lot of money. Are you still working your day-to-day job for Cisco too? Like are they catching wind or are you able to just go about your business while doing this like, I guess, side hustle kind of? So I was still able to, it was a total side hustle. And, you know, because I had missed that like entrepreneurial spirit, I actually, in my kind of twisted self-sabotaging mind saw it as like a business venture. And I did. I saw it as a side hustle. So yeah, I kept my regular job. How are you feeling with all the lies building up, though? Because your life was

slowly becoming one big lie with what you were doing. It was, I was lying to myself. I was lying to my wife. I was lying to my family. I was lying to work. Some people who I was really close friends with. You know, I'd been there at this point 13 years. So you developed some really good relationships. I felt friggin' terrible. Absolutely terrible. I had so many balls up in the air that I had to keep spinning, to keep this fraud going. It was utterly exhausting. Were there close calls where you almost got caught from associates or bosses or anything like that?

The interesting thing about my fraud was, so I was working for, like I said, like a partner of Cisco. So it wasn't even working for them directly, and I was defrauding Cisco. So I was, and because I bought my own service contracts, bought my own routers, doing it on my personal devices, I was really separate from everybody that I was working with. Like, I could do it and nobody was the wiser. You know, it was really an inch. So I wasn't defrauding the company I was working for, just the partner company. So the company I was working for would have no clue. So you were getting this extra money from the sales plus your salary then?

Correct. So how much do you say you were making a year? Or I guess it wasn't even a year because you didn't last a year. So how much were you making a month with the fraudulent money and your regular salary? So I will tell you when I was at sentencing, you know, and the prosecutor like goes up and they got to do their piece and stuff like that. I'd already pled guilty and, you know, because I was. But he goes, in his dramatic tone to set, you know, you know what they do when they're there. In one month alone, Mr. Stanlin cleared 29.

thousand dollars. So that was one of my good months. And that's with your, your regular salary. That was, that was just the fraud. Oh, just the fraud. So you're getting a whole other salary on top of that. Yeah. So you're doing good. I was doing well. What are you doing with the money? I read some articles where, you know, they got you for high-end dinners or lavish dinners. Pretty much. That's it. That was, that was one of the things. I mean, we would go out six nights a week. To nice restaurants. Nice restaurants. You know, I mean, $300. bottles of wine. It adds up. Now, you knew exactly what you were doing. You knew you were committing fraud. This is really interesting. I'm glad that you brought this up because you had mentioned it

earlier. When I was sitting at the dining room table and my fingers hovering over the mouse thinking about doing it, I had no idea what mail fraud was. I never even heard that term. So I didn't think in the beginning that I was breaking a law. I knew I was doing something wrong against Cisco. I knew I was doing something blatantly wrong against Cisco, and I thought, if I get caught, I'm just going to figure it out with Cisco. And that's all it is. Having said that, I'll never forget the day. I was probably six months into the front, give or take, right? When I was taking clothes out of the dryer, and I all of a sudden never had a heart attack, thank God. But I feel like what might have been a heart attack just like my heart just clenched up so tight stop me

dead in my tracks I'm holding my clothes and my my arms and I'm like and I'm kind of taking these shallow breasts and it hit me that list price was I had broken the million dollar mark oh wow that's when I knew that I was for some reason in the beginning it was that gray area I was like oh I'm just doing something against Cisco and you know we'll figure it out if need be. But when I realized that I had list price-wise, broken the million-dollar mark, then I knew I was doing something wrong. But you still didn't stop when you figured that out? Not even a little bit. Why do you think you didn't stop? I think it was that self-sabotage. This was a train that was on a track that the brake had been removed. It was going to,

it was going to go down like in a ball of flames. Do you think you also wanted to show your father how well you were doing and you didn't want to admit, like defeat that sales were taking? too. Absolutely. You need to say, hey, dad, I'm making all this money. I'm going to dinners. I got the lifestyle. You know, I did this on my own. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'll never forget one day, maybe, you know, Christmas or Thanksgiving. I always sit next to my dad. I always sit to, you know, to his right. And we're sitting there and the rest of the family is chatting and stuff like that. And I said to him, I said, Dad, you know, I didn't really, I think it was Christmas because we were at the end of the year. It's a really good year. I said, you know, I did 21 million in sales. And he was

like, I managed $2 billion in a patent portfolio. It was, again, not like, good job. It just crushed my $21 million with $2 billion. Yeah. And so to your point, absolutely, trying to like always prove that. Now, you thought the system was so bulletproof. You planned it for months. You had a great structure. How does it come crashing down after 10 months? It comes. They were on to. They were on to. me it's about six months. Because the numbers were too high maybe. So a couple of interesting things.

So if anybody ever wants to commit fraud against one of the world's largest technology companies, don't because they're smarter than you are. I got late. A couple things. I'll go through like how I got caught. Yeah. First one, I got lazy. I started to, instead of, I figured out the magic language that I had to use to be able to get replacement equipment from Cisco as quickly. as possible. And instead of changing that verbiage, I use the same exact language for over 600 technical assistance center cases.

I have multiple aliases, four different shipping locations, fake company names, and all of them, lo and behold, are using the same exact language. Their AI, like even primitive AI,

like in 2013, 2014, picked up on that really quickly. You know, why is company ABC and company XYZ using the same exact language? You know, so that was red flag number one. Red flag number two was I found products that I could sell easily and that had a decent profit margin on them. So let's say Cisco's sending out, and these are made up numbers just for example sake. Let's say Cisco's sending out like 10 widgets, you know, 10 widgets a week. Well, along comes Craig and all of a sudden there's.

sending out 50. So their number spiked. But they have to look at it and go, do we have a manufacturing issue? Why is this part being called in so many times? Why is this part failing so much? So that was red flag number two. And red flag number three was, I'll share it in this form of a story. After I get out of prison, the girl I was with for 10 years that I broke up with, she found out what happened to me. And she extended one of the kindest olive branches in the world and said, hey, you know, do you want to meet up for coffee? And I said, I'd love that because she lived in Brooklyn and I was in the Brooklyn halfway house. And so it was just nice to like meet up with somebody over coffee. She's in tech, has been her entire life. We sit down for coffee. I haven't

seen her in years. It wasn't the greatest breakup in the world. She doesn't say, hi, how are you? She doesn't say anything. We sit down and she goes, you use the same fucking IP address for every single thing. Didn't I teach you anything? So that's red flag number three. That was probably the biggest one. That was easily the biggest one. Yeah. But yeah, so, I mean, it was just, it was a recipe for disaster. Did they confront you or they tossed it right off to law enforcement? So I think this is really interesting. There was, there were multiple red flags and I'll share one of them now. when I actually online submitted my tack case, and they made me call in, and which they'd never done.

And the engineer on the other end of the line was like, you've called in a lot of stuff. You're having a lot of problems. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what's going on. The pieces are just breaking. Meanwhile, my heart's racing because I was like, this is not good. This is not good whatsoever. But I ended up, you know what I ended up down? and I'm kind of embarrassed and like,

I doubt this guy even knows that I exist. But if he does, I want to apologize to him. I did the, because I was scared at what was happening, I was a dick to him. I just pulled the anger route and just pulled like the kind of entitled route. And I was like, the piece is fucking broken. Get it here immediately.

I can't be dicking around with you, you know, because I was scared. Yeah. So if he's listening, I apologize. Yeah. I mean, our personalities change when we're under pressure. Yes. And you can feel the lies building up on you.

And it's starting to crumble right there. Oh, it was my world was crumbling around me. I mean, I knew it. But you still kept going, even after that phone call, you're still pushing. Still pushing. Still pushing. I had stuff getting sent to my house. I had stuff getting sent to my now ex-wife's business in Brooklyn.

And I had two UPS boxes in Greenwich. And one of the UPS guys, you're going to like, and people watching this are going to just be like, what an idiot. And I admit this fully and wholeheartedly so you can save your comments. He said the postal inspector was here asking questions about you. Oh, he told you that? He told me that. Didn't tell me any other details, but he told me that.

And I was using aliases. So my, like I said, self-sabotaging brain was like, well, I'll just stop using aliases. So you put it under your name? Put it under my name. But like the damage is already. done. And I should have, and that really, that scared me so much. And that wasn't enough to get me to stop. You know, I just, I didn't even, I didn't even slow down. What was your reaction when you heard about postal inspectors? Because I had the same experience. I didn't even know we had postal

inspectors. I knew they existed, but they didn't exist in my world until the guy told me that they were asking about my world. And so my heart just like, look. leapt out of my chest. I just was freaking out. I'm like, this is bad. This is really bad. And this was after I had broken the million dollar mark. So, you know, I really knew that I was doing something wrong. And now people are asking questions. And that was terrifying. So did the company report it to the government then? I later found out that they were on to me six months into the fraud and they filed the formal complaint. Did they know what was you or did they know someone was doing it? They just didn't know who? I believe they knew it was me. Okay. Yeah, I believe they already knew that it was

me. And then, you know, the FBI, you know, it's actually interesting. It was the FBI, but the lead investigator on it was actually a Greenwich cop who was a liaison to the FBI. And he pushed it all the way up? He pushed it all the way up. This was, so I've done a lot of presentations for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which is exactly as it sounds. They train people to detect fraud. And I sat down with the vice president of their education. And he said, Craig, he goes, not diminishing what you did by any stretch, but, you know, I've done this a very long time. I've interviewed a lot of people like you. I got to tell you. Because your numbers aren't that big. What you did wasn't that big. And I explained to him that it was a Greenwich cop who was a liaison.

He goes, oh, that's why you went to prison. Because he pushed you all the way up. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that was a. same experience as mine. My numbers weren't millions of dollars. It was a few hundred thousand dollars. Yep. And I think they thought it was bigger than what it was and it got pushed all the way up the chain. It's amazing, isn't it? Did they call you in for like an interview or does it just go straight to them showing up and arresting you one day? So it was October 1st, just had the 10 year anniversary of getting arrested. Just passed it. Congratulations. Thank you. You know, I want to share something really quick on that because I think it's kind of important. That day for a lot of people, can be a challenging day. I think it's a kind of a traumatic thing to get arrested by the FBI. And

for years after that arrest, I would get, I'd feel sick two weeks before the first and two weeks after the first. And I would sometimes, I would forget that it was the anniversary. Like, I would just feel anxiety. I would just feel like a mess for like the two weeks leading up. And then when the first came, I go, oh, that's what it is. So I think it's just like that trauma that gets stored in the body was just getting released in advance of that. So one year, a couple of years ago, I just said, you know what, I'm changing the narrative on this day. And I went up to, I was living in Brooklyn at the time, I took the train up to Greenwich. This is before I quit drinking, but I went and had a champagne lunch on Greenwich Avenue. I was like, I'm going to celebrate this day going

forward. I'm changing the narrative. I'm not going to allow that to dictate how I feel on a physical level. So now when October first comes and you say congratulations, it's kind of funny because I celebrate that day. Wow. You know, I think that's really important for anybody who has something that comes up is, you know, it's the meaning that we attribute to something. And you never forget about it either. And you never forget about it. And if we can, you know, the meaning that we make up is just that. It's made up. So we can change the narrative on things. It does not change the facts of the story. That's really important. But we can change our perspective and we can change the meaning we get to it. And that's what I did with October 1st. But yeah, I had to just interject that.

So tell us about that day. What goes down? What happens? October 1st, 2013, I had actually started a brand new job. Our biggest competitor had, in fact, wooed me away with a larger pay package. They just didn't know you were a fraudster. They had no idea it was a fraudster. And believe it or not, I actually, even though I said there was a train that was destined to go off the tracks, I had actually stopped when I started the new job. I actually had stopped the fraudulent activity. So I'm two weeks into this brand new job. I wasn't working out of the house because I was brand new. So I had to like report to the office. So I drive from our place in Connecticut to my office in Manhattan right next to Madison Square

Garden. Our conference room overlooked the garden. It was awesome. It was really cool. And so I am setting up my desk for the day. You know, I got my laptop bag and I put my laptop on the desk. I put my notebook on the desk, take my pen out, put that there, and I put my phone on the desk. And I noticed there's one missed call and a voicemail. And I was like, who's calling me at Tuesday at 845 in the morning? So I did what we would all do. I put the phone to my ear, and this is what I heard. Mr. Stanlin, this is Special Agent McTiernan with the FBI. We are at your residence and have a warrant for your arrest. You need to call us and come home immediately, or we will issue a warrant with the federal Marshalls. Wow. That's scary. And you've never been questioned before this or anything. No. No, there was no.

So they must have had a lot on you that they didn't even need to question you to begin with. Oh, dude, they like, I'll fast forward just a smidge, you know, when I was in the back of the car with the handcuffs on. I said to, I started, my brain started scrambling, you know, and I thought back to when I was in high school and me and my buddies would get a parking ticket, a $5 parking ticket. We would scan the ticket to see if they got the color of the car wrong, if they made a typo on the license plate because you get it thrown out and you didn't have to pay the five bucks. I actually thought of that when I'm in the back of the car with handcuffs on and I said, can I see the arrest warrant? That's what you ask? Yeah, I said, can I see it? And the guy's what do you want to see it for? I said, I would like to see it. And I know it's my right to see it

because you're not going to understand it. And I said, well, I'd still like to see it. I was hoping there was going to be a typo that somehow would magically get me out of the cuffs. But I tell all this because when he pulls it out, he pulls out a chunk of paper that made me realize how much work they had done to arrest me. It was insane. I was thinking that's all about me. I'm just surprised they never even questioned you before, like just to ask you. Nope. Interesting.

No, not at all. They just dropped the hammer. Was your wife home when they went to the house? So she's the one who opened the door at 8.30 in the morning. She said there were about 15 of them with pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles all pointed at her head in her face. For a fraud guy. For a fraud guy.

You know, I think this is important to say, and I catch heat for this sometimes when I say this, I actually don't fault them for that. And I'll tell you why. If I knew they were coming, if I knew something, they don't know. know what they're walking into, even though I'm a fraud guy. What if I was coked out of my mind and I owned a gun that they were not aware of? They don't know what they're walking into. They have oftentimes a wife and children at home. They have lives of their own. They have to look out for themselves. So I know part of it is they get their rocks off showing up with that much force. That I don't

think is right. But at the same time, they have to protect themselves. I actually do believe that. I totally get it, but I guess also on the other end of it, it's that they were investigating you for so long. They knew everything about you. They knew your routine. You know, they knew that you weren't sitting there on drugs, you know? So it just, that's the other side to it. True. But they didn't know that I had started a new job and that I wasn't home. True. So they dropped the ball there. They dropped the ball big time. But I get both perspectives. Like in my situation, I don't know if they needed to do that with an 18, 19 year old kid. Drew was living with his parents.

who they knew was not involved in anything remotely dangerous, but I get both sides of it 100%. Yeah. So they show up at the house. Do you go right over? Do you try to run? No. So I call them a meet. Well, so no, I got to get out of the office that I just walked into. You know, I've been in my brand new, with my brand new colleagues, half of whom I don't remember their names. And so I start scrambling for excuses. I think that that voicemail was broadcast for the entire office to hear. I feel like there's a giant neon sign pointing out. me saying wanted by the FBI. And I'm sitting there like, do I say that I'm sick? Do I say that I

don't know. I have a client appointment that I forgot about. And I was like, oh my God, I have a client appointment that I forgot about. Nobody gave a shit anyway. And so I have to, you know, I get out. I get my, collect my car from the garage. I think the guy who picks up my car knows that I'm wanted by the FBI. I think everybody knows. Like the moment I walked out of my office and onto the busy New York City Street, there's an ambulance in the distance or there's a siren. probably was an ambulance. I think they're coming to get me. Like, I was completely paranoid about all of this. And so the second I get, like, solitude in my car driving home on the West Side Highway, I call them. You know, I call them immediately. Say, I am on my way home. And then I call my wife

just to see, like, what, what I'm driving into. But she was, they were, you know, 15 plus agents in the house executing a search warrant. And she didn't, obviously. wasn't comfortable saying anything. Yeah. What was your first conversation with your wife after this? It was one of lots of anger because she knew I was doing something and she would ask repeatedly, are you sure what you're doing is okay? And I had that fear response that we talked about just moments ago and I'd get angry with her.

I'd say it's fine. You don't understand. There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. stop asking. And I just lied over and over again. So that first conversation was a tremendous amount of anger and betrayal and hurt and still recovering from having 15 guns pointed out of her face. And you guys had no kids or anything at that point? No kids, no.

So what about your parents? How did they get when to this? So while I was driving home, I was actually, in a sense, really fortunate that I had that. It's about an hour from Stanford to or from the city to Stanford. So I was able to call my dad, let him know something. My dad's an attorney. Oh, he's an attorney. He's an attorney, patent attorney.

So he doesn't have anything in this. But I was able to call him just to give him a heads up. And I was still so delusional on the drive home that I was like, you know what? We're going to sit down. We're going to have some coffee. We're going to sort this whole thing out. And I was even kind of telling my dad that. And I'm like, this is just some kind of misunderstanding.

This is just a misunderstanding. obviously it wasn't. But later when I got off of, what is it, arraignment when they posted bail and everything like that and I go home, I had to make all those calls and say that it is a big deal. Was your case blown out into the news and whatnot? Funny, funny question. So October 1st, 2013, the government was in a shutdown. So it never got published?

It didn't get published until my wife and I were working on her business. She sold vintage furniture. And so we were sitting there at our storage unit, like loading up the truck to bring stuff somewhere, whatever. And her phone dings. And it is from a mutual friend of ours. And it's a newspaper article that somebody else had forwarded to her.

And it was local Stanford man charged in fraud. when the government reopened, it hit the news. Wow. I thought I had gotten away, at least with the news not knowing about it. So I had like a two-week reprieve. But the second they reopened, it hit all the papers. Wow. How about you?

Yours was in, right? Yes, it was in from day one. Yeah. There's so many articles. It's hard to get a positive article written. They're all negative. Oh, they're all, yeah. I mean, some of the things that they say were...

It's so pro-government. You know, they literally take whatever they say, and then they'll call you to get a statement, or if they can't get you on the first phone call, they'll say it wasn't available for comment. They run it, and it's literally everything that was filed in the... They're copy and pasting. It's not even reporting. You're right. It's copying and pasting.

And that just shows the government side. It doesn't show anything else. It's crazy. It's just the same way they post like so-and-so, social. facing 120 years in prison. Not actually facing, I was 19, I wasn't facing 120 years in prison. They love doing that.

They love, I mean, it sells. And they don't come out and do, I think in every case, there should be a follow-up article when the person leaves prison, gets it together and figures it out. And it's a clean slate to get, hey, if this person's doing good,

follow-up article. If they're doing bad, then sure, follow-up article on that too. I love that. I think that's a brilliant idea. What I would love to see is, the government, when they do their criminal complaint, it's sensationalized. And maybe it was true that I was spending all that money on outrageous dinners.

I mean, it was true, absolutely. But Mr. Stanley used the fraudulent proceeds to fuel his extravagant lifestyle. They write it as if, and they do this for everybody, they write it as if the person is guilty. And this is only the initial criminal complaint. Yeah. And before the person has pleaded. And I don't think that they should be allowed to do that. I think it should be John Smith was arrested for one count of mail fraud for doing X, Y, and Z.

That's it. Not this big convoluted, blown out thing where they're trying to sell it to the media. I mean, the world's changed so much because now you have everything's digital. So the days of them publishing in the newspaper and a jury may or may not see it. Now, how could you say, like, you look at Sam Bankman, Fried, and everyone, every single person. And let's say live under a rock at a remote island has heard of the case and has already formed an opinion. Yep. How could they be impartial?

It's not possible. All these major cases and stuff, whether the person's guilty or not. Just not the concept of a fair trial doesn't exist in regards to that jury area. Because jurors could lie too. They could say, oh, I don't know this person. I've never seen an article before, too. I've never heard of the case. Yeah, they might love to be sitting on a jury.

They've got nothing else to do or they want to stick it to the person. Yeah, and you can't prove that that person lied at the time or not. Right. Only unless you said, like, a blatant lie, I don't have a family member that was in prison. You come to find out they do. Right. Something like that. But it just, the whole aspect of the criminal justice system needs to get fixed.

It really does. And I think that the notion of innocent until proven guilty is such a, and I accept full responsibility for what I did. I was guilty as sin. No, our fans are butts. But you see how. it runs and it's not that way. And I think so many people, and you know, I'm going to give you some props right now. Having the show, having people on, sharing these stories is one of the avenues to educate people as to what is actually real. And I think it's such a, my father was one

of them, innocent until proven guilty. And I'm like, that's not the way it works. No, it's the way it should work. Yeah, key word should, but it doesn't. It's the reality of it. I mean, my whole thing is giving people a chance to tell their side of the story. And now this platform's more powerful than a local newspaper. Like, I don't care if the Danbury News Times doesn't or refuses to write a follow-up article on me because now my website, my platform takes precedent over their old articles of saying Danbury teen fraudster goes to prison. So to be able to create that and share my side of the story, like I could go on here

and say whatever and hundreds of thousands of people listening. to that and we'll take that in, then they can form that opinion. So I had to go out and create that. No one was giving me a chance to kind of share my side until I did like the HBO documentary, which I thought did a great job sharing my side of the story that I, that was the only thing I ever wanted out there was my side of the story and I never got a chance to do it. Every time the news reporter would call me, it always gets twisted. Always.

They would take one statement and that was it. It's, it makes me think of something that Tim Ferriss mentioned one time. in doing any kind of press was, are you okay? You know, if it's going to be over the phone, are you okay if I record on my end? A lot of reporters might say no, because they want to record it on their end and alter what was said or edit what was said

to make it sound whoever they want to twist on it. And he's like, I'm not doing this unless I have a recording on my end. So if you twist my words, I can come back and be like, this is what I said. Yeah. That's why I won't meet with any type of government. an official or anything without a lawyer present because I learned that the first time and that's what got me into trouble.

Yep. Because I gave them all the information in an innocent, harmless way and they just used it all against me. I wasn't even trying to cover anything up, you know? I've just, nothing I did was intentional. You know, it was a unique situation and I was trying to show that I wasn't guilty by not bringing a lawyer and just explaining everything and that just, you know, the system's designed for failure in that sense. It really is. I mean, it really, really is. And the fact that,

you know, 98% of cases go to a plea, and, you know, you've got some prosecutors who can spend the majority of their career having never gone to court. Yeah, that's why I went to trial. I find that so interesting. Yeah. You know, I find that so, so interesting. When I was going through mine, I asked my attorney, you know, again, I'm like looking for like semantics and typos. And I was like, no, that's not right. I did do that. That's no, no, you know, that's. And he's like, he's like, You're guilty. But I said, can we take it to trial? And he goes, and he just told me flat out, and you know this. And I'm sure tons of people on the show have said the same thing. You take it to trial, they'll hammer you. They don't like trials, and they will hammer you. I think that's wrong, that you want to actually take advantage of a constitutional right. One of the things that does make our country amazing. And they want to hammer you for taking advantage, not even advantage, what's readily available. or supposedly readily available to all. Absolutely.

So you end up pleading guilty. Yeah. Right off the bat. How much time do they give you? So I got 24 months. Was there any option to avoid prison or no? Or did they want prison time from you? They, my pretrial probation officer was like, oh, man, this is nothing you're going to get probation.

My attorney is like, you're going to prison. Wow. A little bit flip-flop of roles in a sense. Yeah, as opposed to like, I'm going to really push for, you know, supervise. release for you. He's like, now you're, he's like, I would bank on your going. You know, I really think that, and I'm curious your opinion on this, oftentimes if it's not a significant enough of a case, an attorney, a defense attorney, is more interested in their relationship with the prosecutor than he is with, you know, securing the best deal that he can for his client.

I think, yeah, I think it depends. I really do. I know. I chose my lawyer because he wanted to win. Like he did not, like he had a relationship with the prosecutor, but he wanted to see the look on that guy's face losing. So I think you need someone. It's a mixture of someone to believe in you and what you're fighting for. And, you know, in your lines, you pled guilty. So at that point, like, that's not necessarily a win or whatever way he looks at it.

But in my eyes, it was just me and my lawyer fighting up against the big guys. Yeah. And I think that he was passionate. about it and that's what drove him. He liked a good challenge, you know, because people like that, lawyers like that. It's the underdogs. And so I, it really is a case by case basis. I think the thing that's messed up relationship wise is that the prosecutors are at Christmas parties with the judges and they're golfing with the judges, just like you see on TV and suits and everything like that, that happens. I mean, my lawyer used to tell me that he would go to the Christmas parties with the judges. And great, that helps the

defendants, you know, in a way, but not the prosecutor who's supposed to be a neutral party should not be associating with the judge. How is that? I don't see it. We could have an entirely separate show of just the small intricacies of things that need to be fixed in the system, and that's one of them. Yeah. If a jury's impartial, why is the prosecutor and the judge not? Why should they have a relationship? Yeah, because, I mean, let's be honest, you share a couple cocktails with somebody and you do that a couple of times. You have a bond. I'm sorry, you do. You just, you get drunk a couple of times with somebody. There is that little something there.

And I know, like, that if you have a good lawyer, he could call and get things done. Like, my lawyer was able to set up a meeting with the U.S. attorney. They have those backdoor channels. They all, they move and groove, you know. They have their ways. My guy, what annoyed me about my guy, was when the prosecutor was assigned, he was like, oh, I haven't worked with him yet. This is a good opportunity for me. I mean, literally, was excited that he had an opportunity to create a relationship with a new.

You had a public defender? Nope. Paid lawyer. Okay. So you get two years. Where do they send you? Otisville. You went to Otisville, the camp?

Yep. Lucky, son of a god, man. The nicest federal prison camp in the country you went to. It was, I know, was introduced as a result of, you know, the arrest and everything like that. It was introduced to a guy who runs a white collar support group, who knows a writer for Forbes. And so I was put in touch with this writer from Walt Pavlo is the writer for Forbes. He covers white-collar crime. It does a really, really great job on it.

And Walt and I talked a couple of times. Walt went away as well. He was part of the WorldCom blow up in early 2000s. And he just said, he's like, when I told him I went to, got assigned to Otisville. He's like, you hit the prison lottery. You definitely did. What celebrities were there with you at that time? Were there any?

Because that's like where all the celebrities go? None when I was there. None when you were there. Yeah, none when I was there. Nothing exciting. Nothing. Because in the last couple of years, they had Mike, the situation for Jersey Shore. They had Billy McFarlane, like a lot of powerful people.

Yep, a lot of powerful people. I had powerful people, but just not famous. Now, describe Otisville and what a prison camp is for the listeners and viewers and how it's so not like anything you could ever expect. Well, I'm just going to throw it out there right off the bat. There's no fence. So that probably throws a lot of people off. There is literally no fence.

There is a boundary that you can't see. that you're not supposed to cross, but there's no fence, there's no barbed wire. There is free movement. And for what everybody doesn't know what that is, you know, you have in a low or different ones, you have that controlled movement where you can go between buildings from 10 to 10, 15, or whatever it may be. Camp, I could just walk from building to building. I can go to the gym. I can walk wherever I want, whenever I want. It was really, I was very fortunate to go there. I do not underestimate how fortunate I was that I went to Otisville. You know, when I first arrived, I'm looking at it.

And there's picnic tables outside up on the hill. It's kind of landscaped. You know, I mean, prison like budget, so it's not gorgeous or anything. But I just couldn't get over like how nice it actually looked. Yeah. But it was, it's two single story buildings. One is kind of the education building. The other one is the kitchen and mess hall and dorms.

and although there are some dorms or some beds in the educational building as well. It was a Kwanza Hut gym. We had a, and before everybody goes, oh, we went to a country club, I did. But we had a tennis court. The tennis court was also a crappy net that was on a busted-up parking lot. You know, you had to be careful not to twist your ankle. It was not like, you know, it was not a clay tennis court. I mean, it was like a really crappy parking lot.

There was a soccer pitch. But again, soccer pitch was filled with holes and it was on like, angle like this, which was really ridiculous. But softball field, you know, and we were next door to the, we were, because I think most camps are adjacent to a medium security facility. Yeah. So that was always kind of in the distance looming over us. Now, what are some like the crazy things you would see at the camp where guys like running

through the woods to like meet up with their wives or they bring in contraband? What are some of the things you witnessed? So I heard about people going into the woods, but I never actually witnessed it firsthand. but I was really, really fortunate that I got invited to Saturday sitdowns. And Saturday sit downs were people who were Italian, and I also worked in the kitchen, which was a huge deal. But we would have linguine with clam sauce. We would have this guy would have stuff brought in. You'd have the clams brought in because you're not getting that on commissary or anything like that.

But he would have different things brought in. and he would do the pasta in the microwave. He prepared everything in the microwave and did such a phenomenal job on it. We had bread from Arthur Avenue. I never forget. I was in for about 10 or 11 months when that bread came in,

and it had real butter. Could you imagine how good that was? And the COs come over, and they're just looking at this feast. It's about 10 of us, give or take, that are sitting down enjoying all this. And he goes, that doesn't

look like anything you can get on commissary here's your plate thank you very much wow so the guards just go along with it the guards for the most part went along with a tremendous

amount of things we had a lot of contraband movies I'll never forget when I was on the phone what was the movie unbroken great movie even better book

but I was talking to my mom Saturday morning and she's sitting there she's like oh we went last night we went to the premiere of Unbroken. It was really good. And I wanted to be like, we watched it last night. We had the bootlegged version. Yeah. Did you have contraband cell phone at all in there? I saw one poorly

hidden in a rock wall. That was it? That was the whole time. Yeah, I only saw the one. I didn't see anybody using one. I feel like a lot of the contraband that was there was a lot of the DVDs. You know, we had sons of anarchy. We had Orange is the New Black, which we started watching. And this is really fine. We're watching it. And finally, somebody in the TV room's like, why the fuck are we watching this? Like, we're in prison. I used to watch it on a contraband phone in my bunk at the camp, too. It was funny as hell. Yeah, we made it like through two or three episodes. Finally, somebody was just like, what are we doing? And that didn't clear it. One time we were watching Sons of Anarchy. So we had this guy, Ed, who was in charge of our television programming. And Ed were like, his timing. was impeccable. It was amazing. He would know when to start the movie to get us out for the 10 o'clock count and all of us would always kind of with peripheral, keep an eye

for the COs and just kind of make a little sound, a little noise. It was so fast with the remote. We could pause the DVD and go to regular TV really quickly, but we all missed the CO one time. We all missed it and we just all of some look and he's standing there with his arms

folded and he's staring at the TV and he's like, gentlemen, I'm pretty sure our sons of anarchy went off air a long time ago. Anybody know

how it happens to be on our television screen right now? Of course, nobody says a word and we just keep everybody staring straight ahead.

He says, continue, enjoy. Do you think prison camps are necessary? Like, is there any purpose to a prison camp? Oh, shit, that's a big.

That's like a, in a sense, almost like a political and philosophical conversation. And it's going to be be controversial, I do. I do think there are some financial crimes that are so egregious and cause such damage. Bernie Madoff is a great example. There were suicides as a result of

the money that he took. That can't go unpunished to me. And, you know, I know, I know, like I'm a member of that white collar support group and a lot of the guys, might actually not like me saying this, but I really do think that there is a place for it. What I don't think is appropriate is the destruction of somebody's career. You know, particularly when they owe restitution. It's like, if you want your money back, don't have the guy working at home, don't have the doctor working at Home Depot. Let him keep his license. Keep maybe a better eye on them. In a sense, do that like you're saying with the papers, do a follow-up article. Just, you know, a little bit of,

extra like, I don't know, monitoring over them, but taking a lawyer's license away, taking a doctor's license away, if the crime had nothing to do with some kind of malpractice, you know, if it was just fraudulent, I don't think the destruction of somebody's career, it doesn't help society. Yeah. You know, I think everybody, it is human nature to want our lives to mean something and to do work that is commensurate with our skill level is a part of finding that meaning and fulfillment. And when you take that away from somebody, the person lost it, but you can give it back to them.

I think a person has to take full responsibility that they lost it, but you can give it back to them. I think that benefits society as a whole. What do you think about prison camps should they exist? I mean, I think it, I don't know, it really depends on the person's charge and stuff. I just like when you think prison, you don't associate it with like a camp. Yeah. So I think if you have to pick and choose which cases deserve prison time. But in that sense, like a lot of the individuals at the camp are not people that should be in a prison to begin with.

You know, maybe there could have been like a house arrest or a probation or if they needed to send them to a low security prison. But the camp itself, it just, I don't know. I don't think that people can live comfortably there. You can absolutely live comfortably there. I mean, there's no if-hands or butts. I think something important to note, though, it is still prison. You know, you have some people who, some of the CEOs are nice. Some of the CEOs are not so nice.

And there is still, I'll share a story. I mean, there's, you know, a loss of humanity. When I was, when I was checking in, because you self-surrender to a camp, you know, most, most of the times. You get to, you know, you're assigned a date and, you know, it's like, okay, April, or what and I go in? August 13th, you know, you got to show up and check in before noon. So I'm checking in. I check in at the medium security facility. So I get carried through the catacombs of this place, you know, door after door, after door, get locked in a cell.

And they say, Stanlon, it's time for your medical. Okay, and they unlock the door. And I go into this tiny little room. And there's this woman filling out some paperwork, probably about my age, give or take. Doesn't even acknowledge my presence. And then, you know, when she's done with her paperwork, she looks up and she says, we're going to run you through. I forget what she called it, but it was whatever little mini-physical they do, you know, weighs me, does my height, does my blood pressure, does all that stuff.

And then explains that I'm going to be given a TB test or they're going to inject tuberculine underneath my skin. makes a little lump under the skin, makes a little bump under the skin. So she prepares the area in my arm, unpacks the syringe. She puts the syringe on her desk. And I watch as it rolls off and falls on the floor and bounces around several times and rolls underneath her desk. And she bends down, she picks it up, puts it on the desk as if nothing happened.

And I said, I'm sorry, but are you going to clean that or get a new one because it fell on the floor. And she looked at me as if I had shot her dog. And at that point I realized that I was nothing but a number and I wasn't even human anymore. She didn't answer me and takes a dirty needle and shoves it right in my arm. That's a loss of humanity,

and that does not serve anybody. I think, yeah, there's a lot of aspects to it. There's a lot of things that need to be changed. I mean, my focus now is like the re-entry aspect of it, because I think if you help people that are reentering and setting them up for success, then you start to, you know, alleviate some of the people that go back in the system to begin with. But there's so many things inside the system that needs to be fixed, too. So many things. It's kind of like where do you pick your battle,

but I think reentry is a really great place because we have such high recidivism in this country. You look at other countries and it's not nearly the same recidivism rate. And that's an absolute shame. So when we focus on reentry, you know, we give people tools to be actually to be able to make a life for themselves. And that's important. You know, I know when I was at Otisville, there was a guy who was one of the nonviolent drug offenders. He wanted to get his GED. The people at Otisville who ran education did nothing for him.

Two inmates helped Jeff get his GED. prison didn't do a damn thing. Thank God he was able to get it and that people stepped up to help. But again, it might sound like a broken record. How does that help society? Do you think that prison rehabilitated you or did you have to figure that out on your own when you got out? Figured out on my own when I got out. I don't think prison does squat for that.

And, you know, this almost in a sense speaks to your question earlier. Do you think like camps are even necessary? I should have actually caveated it, which I will now. Yeah, if they do. something that rehabilitates as opposed to just having people spend time in a place like you said that's quite livable yeah well i think then that that's the thing maybe the camps aren't necessary and it needs to be a low with better programming right that you know if you're going to send someone to a camp you can might as well it's house arrest just at a different location where you're not

having sex and and even the inmates are able to have sex at that point some people will figure it out yeah they figure it out so that's my whole if you could have cell phones you could have good food if you could have everything that you could have at home, what's the purpose of the camp? Yeah. You know, I guess it's a mine thing, but even so, it's just too laid back and there's no good programs in those camps too. No good programs. You know, I had to, because on my PSR, I had admitted to, you know, drug and alcohol

use, but I also had stopped, like, you know, at that point, it had been 20 years since I touched any kind of drug, still drinking and everything, but 20 plus years. And they still had to go to that 15. our program, whatever it was. The first class woman is gung-ho. She is like, let's go. She's hammering all of us. And I'm like, I haven't had, I haven't smoked pot in over 20 years.

You're an addict. You need help. She was like so balls to the wall. By the end of the program, she's like, we had three hours left or so. She goes, what do you say? We just round this thing up and call it done. That's like speaks to the programming that is available.

Nobody gives a crap. How much time do you end up doing? So I did a total of 21 months. It was 15 months in Otisville, six months at the Brooklyn Halfway House. And the Brooklyn Halfway House was actually four months living in the house and two months on home confinement. Halfway houses are the worst. Terrible. Now for the home confinement, you weren't on an ankle monitor.

It was the phone call thing? No, no. I was on the ankle monitor. Oh, they put you on that? I don't think the phone thing existed. The phone thing's the biggest load of shit ever. It doesn't make any sense. But yeah, you're calling.

They're calling you. You could do call forwarding. It's just so many holes in it. I had that big chunky bracelet, which by the way, I hope nobody. People going through the system, if you have to wear a bracelet, which maybe they replaced, wear two pair of socks. Yeah, I had to wear a bracelet for a year. Yeah, it sucks.

Am I right, though? It was the worst. I was very self-conscious about it, that's for sure. So I got put on the bracelet in spring. And so I was like, oh, thank God, I don't have to wear a short. because it's not that hot, but I was worried about having that day where it's really hot and I have to wear shorts. It was one time I got a job at a gym after prison in the lower east side of Manhattan, make it $12 an hour, work in the front desk. But this woman asked for help with the leg press.

I was like, yeah, sure, I got it. And as I'm walking over, I said, walk, what do I do? And I was like, if she stands on the left side of me, I'm okay. I just have to hope she stands on the left side of me so she doesn't see it. Of course, she stands on the right side. I put my legs up on the leg press to, you know, adjust the setting. My pants come up and this thing's just sitting there and she just, her eyes didn't say a word, but her just totally wide open, like what is happening? Wow. The guy at the desk is wearing an ankle bracelet. Did you have trouble finding work coming out? Like, what were some challenges being now labeled as a felon? I was so wickedly fortunate that a friend in prison, the guy who ran Saturday sit downs, he watched me. He was kind of in and out of prison his entire life.

He was probably about 65. He'd probably spent 30 of them on different bids throughout his, you know, throughout his life. So he was, he knew how prison worked very well. But one day he just came up to me and he was like, you know, I watch you. And he's like, I like, I like the way that you operate. in here. He's like, you don't fuck around with anybody. He's like, you're respectful to every person.

Do you need a job when you get out? And I was like, yeah, I absolutely do. Buddy of mine owns a gym in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He goes, he's coming to visit me in a couple of weeks. When he comes in, we'll ask the CEO if you can sit in on my visit. And the CEO did,

which you know you're not allowed to do, but at camp. You can get away with a ton of stuff. So I had like a five-minute interview in the prison visiting room with this owner of a him. And he said, when you get out, email me, and I will hook you up with the job. And I thought it was a complete fairy tale. But when I got out, I got to the halfway house, get access to my email again. I email him. And he goes, let's do it. You're hired. Wow. So it was not a problem at all. And what was this eight years ago now about when you got out? I got out. Let's see. Yeah,

2015. So yeah, eight years ago. Was it hard to rebuild your life from what you had before? extremely challenging. I mean, it was so unbelievably challenging. Getting that job, and you know this from just, you know, having been through it yourself and doing this show, having a job, I think, is one of the biggest challenges that people face who go through the justice system. You know, how else are you going to make money? How are you going to keep a roof over? You had you start having all of these concerns. So I had that taken care of, which was great, but I was also making 12 bucks an hour. and I lucked out on an apartment. My ex-girlfriend who I sat down with coffee who yelled at me for using the same IP address. She was living in Seattle and had a place in Brooklyn, gorgeous place in Brooklyn. And she said, I can't tell you how lucky I was. She said, do you want to live in my place? I said, I can't afford your place.

She goes, what can you afford? And I told her. She goes, yeah, I'll eat the rent so you can stay there. I don't want to lose the apartment and I don't trust anybody else to live there. I end up living there for six years. Wow, that's great. Yeah, so I had a job and I had a really nice apartment. I had views of the Statue of Liberty from my balcony.

I had a washer and dryer in unit and a dishwasher. Yeah. I mean, in the city, that's huge. I had rooftop access. There was nothing up there. What's your life like now today? My life today is absolutely incredible. It's absolutely I wouldn't exchange anything for the world because of the life that I live today.

I am happier than I've ever been. I'm comfortable in my own skin. I do work that's meaningful to me. I have purpose. I have mission. I have fulfillment. I have everything that I think that we desire and need in life. What do you do for work now?

I am. I call myself a reinvention architect. So I actually help people reinvent their lives. whether that be somebody who's gone through the justice system or somebody like me who is working a corporate job who has no purpose meaning or fulfillment and really wants that in their life. I help them figure out what their purposes and take meaningful steps to start creating that in their lives. So that's one aspect of what I do. I am a speaker like heading to Charlotte next week and I've got two in Denver next week as well.

That's great. So I just, you know, I travel around and I do speaking and I'm an author. And now this is all because you went to prison. All because I went to prison. And that amazing. It's unbelievably amazing. The thing that was supposed to break you turned out to be your purpose, what you're able to create from it. Absolutely. And I mean, to your first question, like that rebuilding process was, it was really, really hard.

I mean, it's, yeah, I was so thankful to have that job and to have that apartment. But I felt a lot of shame for what I did to the point where I was planning on killing. myself, you know, because I was just so consumed because I knew what I was doing was wrong and I hurt the people that I love. And that just really, really messed with me in a terrible way. So I had to do a lot of inner work. I did, I mean, a tremendous amount of inner work. My aunt used to say, just like you're living like a monk. I spent like three and a half years. I was focused on writing the book. I didn't watch TV. I didn't, I barely went out. I barely spoke to people, like, I just worked on myself and went in. And it was one of the most valuable experiences

I've ever had. Do you feel like you need to do that, take that time for you to be the person you are now? Absolutely. Hands down. I needed to reconcile why I made the choices that I made in the face of all of those red flags screaming at me. What do you think is the biggest takeaway from your story that you want people to learn? I think the biggest takeaway is, is that your past cannot define you without your consent. Because we think we have this label. And I'm speaking specifically to people who have been arrested, have gone to prison, or been arrested and haven't gone to prison.

You still have the moniker of felon. And others can try to put us in that box as much as they want. And although that box is true, we don't have to go into it. we can create you're a great example of it and I'm a great example of it. We can create something out of this. And I think our greatest pains and struggles, hands down can be our greatest strengths and achievements. Well said. And your whole story is detailed in a book that you wrote as well, right? Yeah, blank canvas, how I reinvented my life after prison. Awesome. We'll have it plugged in and the description for everyone so they could go check it out. And yeah, Craig, thank you.

you so much for coming on today. It was great chatting with you and having this conversation and you know, wish you continued success. Ian, thank you so much for having me on and for having everybody that you do have on because, again, we learn from other stories and you have a platform here that allows people to share those stories. So thank you. Thank you.