Locked In with Ian Bick - How I Built a Motorcycle Club, Gained Outcast Approval & Faced a Wild Law Enforcement Raid | Matt Wagner

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Matt Wagner shares his journey of founding his own motorcycle club, gaining recognition from the Outcast MC, and facing an intense law enforcement raid. In this episode, Matt talks about building his club, the steps he took to earn respect in the biker world, and the events that led to a high-stakes raid. He offers insights into the biker lifestyle, the rules of the road, and his encounters with law enforcement #MotorcycleClub #OutcastsMC #LawEnforcementRaid #BikerLifestyle #StripClubOwner #TrueCrimeStory #MCFounder #BikerCommunity Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Matt Wagner: IG: https://www.instagram.com/industrydisruptor https://www.instagram.com/disrup7 Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mindofmduba FB: https://www.facebook.com/afterdarkclass Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Welcome and Podcast Background 00:07:57 Transition from High School Sports to Academics 00:16:49 Entering the Entrepreneurial World 00:24:54 Fire Emergency Call: Dispatch Challenges 00:33:16 Sports Betting and the Paper Chasers 00:42:04 Taking Over a Military-Adjacent Club 00:50:34 Unique Revenue Streams of Club Operations 00:59:54 Formation of Uncommon Brotherhood Bike Club 01:07:37 Tense Meeting with Rival Clubs 01:16:19 The Start of the Investigation and Raid 01:24:47 Police Raid on the Club 01:33:09 Arrest at the Club: A First-hand Account 01:41:33 Legal Struggles and Charges 01:50:08 The Industry in Houston 01:58:35 Life in the Paya Area: An Unconventional Path 02:07:46 Venturing into Farming 02:16:52 Conclusion and Farewell Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Matt, welcome to Lockton, man, all the way from California. Yes, sir. To be on the show today. No, it's truly a pleasure and an honor, man. I've been following your story for years. And, you know, I've been watching your podcasts, you know, super engaging, you know, the, you know, just the way you help these people, just you bring things out of people. And it's fun to watch. It's really intriguing.

And thank you. Yeah. And you came a little bit from the nightclub business as well. So we're going to see a little crossover there today. Oh, yeah. That's one reason I admired your story because I was like, this kid, geez, you know, like I listened to all of it, you know, I related to a lot of it too, you know, at some point. But I mean, you did it on a different level. Well, you probably did it professionally. Yeah. Well, I never did the acts. Never did the music. And that's a whole other beast. I mean, we threw on, we threw a lot of events. We threw an event every two weeks. We threw an event in accordance with the military payday. You know, we were right next to a military base.

So it was like every two weeks, they get paid, and, you know, we have something. We had to have something. So we would get in the room, we'd brainstorm. And it could be anything, you know, anything I could create an event out of, you know, Friday the 13th, like a new movie came, Friday the 13th and Jason came out. You know, we gave away everyone masks. That was kind of a bad idea. We had every guy in the club with a Jason mask on. It kind of brings the, doesn't bring the best out of people.

I mean, that's how I just started doing the same thing when I did little raves for high school kids. We did themes, Halloween rave, Christmas rave, paint party raves. Yeah, those were the things. And I wish I didn't have to pay for the big acts as I got older, but we're not like, Danvers not like a New York City or a Massachusetts. You can't support it without it. So it was a blessing and a curse. Yeah, that's what makes your story so impressive is that you did it here.

you brought that to this community to, you know, the experiences that you handed out. Like, you know, they'll never know that it was at the hand of Ian Bick, but, you know, they've got memories they're going to keep it the rest of their life. And it's not like New York. You know, you go to L.A., it's like, who's playing today?

You know, it's all these bands are, you know, they're doing little shows here and there, and it's like, eh. Yeah, and it's funny. I'll post, like, a TikTok now about, like, owning the club, and then people were, like, no way, like, my childhood was there. And this is, because Tuxitos is now, over 10 years old, more than that, 12 years. So people find it crazy that I'm like the one that did that years ago

and now I'm recreating this. Still in Dan, I mean, this is a Richfield, but I consider it Danbury, it's around the border. So like we're building this and bringing all these cool people to Danbury again. Oh, yeah. I really like the town. Everybody was super friendly. You know, I mean, I just, I conversated with every single person I ran into.

Did they ask what you were doing in town? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got a lot of looks, too. you know, they're like, this guy, you know, because I walk a little, little shake of the shoulder, you know. Did they know about the podcast at all? Not the hotel I was at, but they asked a lot of questions. I was telling them all about it.

I think everybody came out of the back just to listen to it. That's so funny. Yeah, it's a very nice area. And the hills, the trees, everything. I went jogging this morning. I went, you know, about three or four miles and, you know, went up through the neighborhoods. It's beautiful. It seems like a great community.

Did you grow up in California? No, actually. So my dad was an oil business. So I was born in Chicago. He was working for Standard Oil. We went to Oklahoma for a little bit, short stint, Oklahoma, short stint, Dallas. Finally, we thought we were selling Houston,

which is a super blessing. My dad kind of got some kind of, you know, promoted as an executive and ended up. They shipped us off to England. Yeah, so from the time I was about seven years old to about nine, I was in England. Wow, that must have been an experience. It was an experience, but you know what I remember about the most is that I was able to do whatever I wanted. So, like, I was allowed to leave the house.

And you know, you look back in the, this is the late 80s. And you look back then, and you know there was children being abducted. There was all these crimes happening. We didn't have the internet. We didn't have any way of communicating and sharing information like that. So you think it was probably even more rampant than it is today. But in that community, it was Sear Green for anybody listening. Beckinsfield.

The entire neighborhood was BP. My dad was working for BP at the time. They got what he was working for in Sarat Oil. He's worked for the same team for 30-plus years. He ended up, anyway, we won't get that later. You know, my dad's my hero. I'm glad I got to say that. But yeah, so we're in England.

You know, everyone, I got all the, the whole neighborhood's American kids, you know, that work for BP. Their dad's worked for BP. So we were just menaces, you know, we were outrunning around. Was it just you and your dad or was your mom? No, no, my whole family. I have a sister. I have a little sister. You know, she's married kids, you know, doing very well.

And both my parents are alive. Both my parents are still married. I think they, oh, I want to say 48 years, and it was recent, that they had their anniversary. That's awesome. Yeah, it's, I'm super blessed. I mean, at the end, you know, we go through this story today, and that was always the underlining factor is that my parents were there. So, you know, I could do things that sometimes didn't make a lot of sense to other people, but, you know, as long as my parents were okay with it.

You know, it's like, you know, that was my validation. And then on top of that, you know, my dad was very, my dad was extremely hard worker, you know, 6 a.m., 6 p.m., worked at home. You know, but he constantly drilled my head. He's like, Matt, you're a winner. You know, Wagner's are winners. That's what he just say all the time. Wagner's are winners. Wagner's are winners.

And I decided that I was going to be a winner, you know. not to say that I want it I just don't really remember my loss is too much I forget about them easily How would kids describe you from back in the day? Like we had your high school best friend here How would I was all over the I went to private school

A small private school Through high school And you know It was you know we paid for it My parents paid for it You know so we just got away with just about anything You know, I played all the sports You know

I was just kind of a class clown A little bit You know, it was always causing Problems for the teachers You know Torturing the teachers You know I love making people laugh

That I always have gotten a kickdown That's That's really at the heart of everything I just love making people laugh You know And that's I did a lot of that And you look at the yearbook My junior year I was literally on every

I tried to get in every picture So it was like the math club You know, in the year, they freaked out because they're like, you're in almost every picture in the yearbook, you know. But I think that most people that know me from a childhood, they have a story. They have some that I don't even remember probably. Where were you back for high school? So, yeah, so sorry, we moved back to Houston, Texas, you know, so northwest Houston, Cypress area. You know, I went to public school and stuff, and then I end up going to.

to a school called Texas Christian until my senior year, Faith West, my senior year. I changed schools because I was just, I quit the, honestly, I played football in my senior year. It went into basketball. Once we went into the basketball, it was like, okay, half the basketball season was eaten up by football, and basketball was my passion. And I went in there, and I was at a new school, and the principal's son would play my position. And so I just stopped playing ball, and I focused on my studies.

I was like, I'm, I got to get ready for college. And I realized that, you know, I had goofed off a lot. And it was time to get serious. So, yeah, I graduated Katie, Texas, Faith West, year 2000. You know, and then I went straight into college. Where'd you go to college? I went to Houston Baptist University. At the time, I was, I had a girlfriend.

You know, we were very serious. we were together for four years we never had sex what no not a single time we did make out a few times but then you know it was like she was very very very religious

and in turn I started really going down that path as well her father was a deacon I at one point I asked for her hand in a marriage and her father said go home write me 10 reasons why you should have my daughter's hand of marriage so you know um i guess you couldn't come up with the 10 reasons no i did i did and uh she got a ring or a diamond i bought her

a loose diamond at the time but i'll tell you that uh you know i know she won't hear this you know her name was desiree and i was so in love with her and it was such a pure love I didn't I I my intentions were just so good I didn't I never I didn't even know what heartbreak was at the time

I didn't know what pain was at the time and I got fat that was I think a mitigating factor but she was you know she she was working at a at a church camp

for the summer It was seven hours away. So, of course, you know, every month I was driving seven hours up, seven hours down. I was bringing flowers. I was nervous about her talking to the guys and stuff, so I would pop in, you know, like, you know, hey, I'm here. But at the end, she came home and she was like, Matt, you know, I've been jogging with this guy every day. and I just want to see where it goes and I remember I just was like no

no no no no no like I just I had never felt what was happening it felt like my heart was just like tearing into I remember that day I got in my car and I was driving home I was driving a 95 C ring and I was just hitting the steering wheel I was just like how could this happen

I was devastated And You know At that point Was about the time That Halo came out You know I was in college

Living in the dorm Halo comes out And I devoted my life to it So I'm in college playing Halo And Please jump in I don't know

I just keep talking I'm listening And yeah. Yeah, so. When is this? Like early 2000? This is 2001. Yeah.

On the original Xbox. The original Xbox, the original Halo. Yeah. It was really the new, it was the new wave console. I mean, yeah, we had played other consoles and stuff like that. They didn't have the capabilities, the graphics and the depth, you know, we played Halo. Halo was, I don't think a lot of young people, it's like this big argument about Lincoln Park, you know, in the way.

you know, how they have a new, new lead singer. And you hear all these people giving opinions on Lincoln Park. And it's like, you know, I don't have a problem with the fact that they want to give and they're still relevant. I'm really excited that, you know, this is my childhood. Not even childhood because it was actually during, you know, it was 2000, 2003. So this is the time we're talking about. And the impact it had on culture, the impact it had on young guys at that time. And that's what Halo was.

You know, Halo, like, changed everything for the gamer. Yeah. And we devoted, you know, we were in the dorm. I figured out how to pass my college classes, you know, and still play, you know, seven, eight hours of Halo. I got really fat. I'm talking. And I was the kind of guy.

My friends were like, you know, let's, you know, I'm going on a date. And I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, you're going on a date. Oh, look at him. He's going on a date, you know. We're going to eat pizza, man. You know, we got the all you can eat dorm. you know, college

cafeteria, you know, and then we're going to play Halo all night. And that's what we did, man. I tell you, my couch smelled by some of my friends.

They slip on that couch. I don't know if they ever showered, you know. But what that turned into is we end up playing in those of you old gamers, you might remember Xbox Next. And we end up playing Xbox Next.

We were all all playing it. You got like a 90, Peeing, 100 Ping. I mean, you know, the guys over here, you got to shoot over here. But it was still gaming and online gaming. It was kind of the beginning of all that, first person shooter, you know, console online gaming. And there was a 4B4.

It was the World Championship. And it was probably, I don't know, there was really people from all that. They call it the World Championship. And we had our team of four and we dominated. We absolutely dominated. And the guys we beat in the end. They were called the Mick team. And they contacted our two, you know, contacted me and our two best players, me and a guy named TJ.

And they were like, well, my, my aunt is the vice president for Southwestern Bell. And she said that they'll sponsor us. If we write up a present, you know, basically a presentation, this is why you should sponsor us. And she said, she'll just push it through. And sure enough, that's what she did. And, you know, $7,500. quarter. You got paid to play Halo back then. Yeah. It was, well, they paid for more of our our expenses. You know, we were going all over the country. And at the time, we were the very first,

in my knowledge, I don't think there was another corporate sponsored consult team. Because at the time, sponsored console teams just did not exist. So this is like the original influencer. Like in today's world, like these streamers and stuff, that was you back then. Yeah, I mean, we weren't making content, you know, that didn't exist yet. But, you know, we were, I mean, at that point, you know, if you know anything about pro gaming, you know, the, this is where we were at. We were playing, they called the AGP, Halo 50K. I mean, people dreamed up these big monster tournaments. One was Halo 50K, the winner's supposed to get $50,000.

Bro, the hype was unreal. Like, everyone from around the world are signing up online, you know, Halo $50,000, you know, and we end up, we put together a team, we go out. out there and we end up facing a team called the Dream Team. And I'll tell you what, they were, they were far ahead of us. You know, and that was the trick. You know, we ran to them, a couple tournaments. You know, they were probably, I would say we were probably the second to third best team in the country at the time.

We just, we, and then later on I ended up teaming up with them with a couple of those guys. Zios, for one, Matt Lido, shout to Matt Lido. He's, he is the original. all these gamers, all these console gamers that are making money off con, they should be worshipping this motherfucker because he's paved the way. And he ended up winning the World Championship in Seoul, Korea. You know, he made $100,000 playing Halo in like 2002, you know,

which is, you know, that didn't exist. Nothing like that existed yet. We were traveling all the country and people were just, they were, you know, everyone's, all these people are driving around their own dime, getting these terms, Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston, you know, and it was, and that's what created the culture, really. That's what steamrolled it.

So was this like your first step you would say into the entrepreneurial world? No, no. Or were you always like that growing up? Well, I'm a rebel, man. I am a rebel. I don't want to conform to the societal norms. I've tried.

I'm not very good at it. And I end up, I was working for Zales, and Zales outlet in college at a mall at Katie Mills Mall. And I ended up meeting the jeweler. It was a Vietnamese guy. And he had a drawer store, and he couldn't sell his jewelry very well because he couldn't speak English very well. And so we got to talking. And the exchange was that he could get me loose diamonds.

Really fucking cheap. Like if you said, I wanted a half-carat diamond, I'd ask him for a half-cared diamond. He would literally have six half-carat diamonds. shipped. Nothing down. There's no money down, nothing. Six diamonds shipped. You come into my office.

I can show you six diamonds. I get them at such, like, literally, you know, a fifth of what you're going to buy them in the stores. I'll show you what I'm going to pay for them. And then I'm going to show you what I'm going to put on it. So you're my buddy. You know, you want a diamond ring. You're about to buy this $20,000 diamond ring, you know, blow your load on it. And I'm like, no, time out, bro.

We'll make that ring. And we'll make it for, like, four grand, you know, and I'll make 600 bucks on it, on it, you know, and that was my, I was selling diamonds to everyone at college, you know, anyone that got, got married at college, bought a diamond from me. This was after Halo or before? This was during, during the same time period. Yeah, same time period.

So even though you were putting on weight and kind of being lazy, you still had the drive to go out and do a hustle like that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn't, I mean, I'll tell you that it wasn't much of a hustle, you know, I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't, not like I do today, I'll tell you that. I really, everyone just knew that I get diamonds at the best price. I don't know any college kids that are doing that, so I think it's a hustle. You know, I had to wear a suit all the time, you know, and that was one of the things I hated about it.

But, you know, I look back and I think, man, if I had just continued that, I had a company called Strictly Diamonds. And my slogan was strictly diamonds, not strictly business. Yeah, hats made and cars made, you know. But I just, what happened is Halo, really. And on top of that, I kind of, I didn't know how to market myself. I didn't know how to get my name out there. And after I had sold diamonds to pretty much everyone that I had kind of knew and their friends, it was just kind of stalled.

And, you know, I was only working off, you know, referral and whenever they need me. So it just kind of, you know, if I knew what I knew today, you know, we didn't really have the means we had today. It was, you know, to get the name of a business out there in the same way you could do today very quickly. You know, but I look back at that. I think, man, I love the joy of business. I did enjoy it. I, you know, I ended up getting GIA certified. And I went through all that.

So did you end up graduating college? No, I did not. And I went to seven years of it. You went through seven years of college. Yeah. So three and a half years, Eustepts University. Christianity French major, Christianity Communications Major,

business communications major, is what I finally stopped there, and then I quit to play Halo. And I ran that for about a year and a half, two years. My dad is the one to stop me. And it's kind of, you know, there was on TV, there was I'm a pro gamer, T-squared. Back in the day, they did a big story on him.

When he was like 14, 15 years old, he tried to get on my team. And I played him online, and I whooped his ass, you know, and I'm thinking like, bro, you're just not good enough. Well, three months later, we play in a tournament and his team, what's my team? And it was my dream team. I had brought guys in from all over the country to play with me. What were you going to say?

No, no, I was coughing. Sorry. Yeah, I brought people in from all the country. I thought I had the best players in the country, and I got whooped by this kid. And I remember my dad just one day, he looks at me, he's like, you're done. you're done playing Halo and I was like yeah I think so too and really with Halo what I found

is that in gaming in general and really hand-eye coordination I don't know if there's a science I've just seen this 15 16 17 year old boys had the best hand-eye coordination it's down from there and these kids they don't have the

critical thinking skills that a 22 year old may have like in regards to strategy but the guys that I started facing in these pro game pro tournaments you know young guys that you did not miss they had tent sensitivity and they would swing their their rifle around and stop dead on your head and it you know they'd hit you with a headshot you know from the hip you know swinging it did make sense and that's you know I had you know that was that you know I didn't see myself like turning it around and starting to and getting that back you know I felt like my time had passed you know I guess so I retired um at that point you know both my parents I went to a Missouri State University and I wanted to be at the time I was a I was an EMT and an EMD so I did that as well I was you know I was working for a West I-10 Fire Department in Cade, Texas, and, you know, volunteer firefighter, emergency medical dispatcher. So I was answering 911 calls, which, you know, there's a lot of stories I could tell on that.

Why did you get into that? What made you want to go into that? My best friend, his dad was the fire district chief. So he kind of pulled me into it. And, you know, it gave me some validation, you know. I wasn't, you know, when I was playing Halo, you know, I was at home all the time. I was, you know, I had a beeper. I had a Chrysler LHS with 360 red-blue LEDs, you know.

And it was exciting, you know. It was volunteer firefighting, you know, that's, we're running into buildings. You know, we're getting phone calls that, you know, or beeped at three in the morning to go run to our neighbor's building. I got excited about that. That was a... And then the EMD just happened naturally. Like, they needed a dispatcher that paid like 20-something an hour. And so I went through the class, you know.

And it was a small department. So we were only taking... It would go to the big 911 dispatch. And it would, you know, fire medical or, you know, police. And, you know, they said fire medical. They would come to me. What's like a crazy... a call you've gotten.

You know, I tell you, or one you'll never forget. I'll tell you two. So my first one I got, it was the very first day and I had not been fully trained. And the lady comes in, and she's like,

I'm working the overnight shift and they just didn't have anyone to cover it. So it's 12-hour shift, you know, I come in as like eight to eight. And, you know, she's cleaning up,

stuff like that. She's like, all right, you know, because I had read the book and I had gone through the little class, but I hadn't been trained. She hadn't even really heard me on the microphone yet.

She was like, there's probably, there's probably the chance of you get in the fire very slim, you know. But if you do, you know, she gave me some pointers, whatever. So sure enough, about three, four in the morning, you know, you're sitting there by yourself in this little room. Like, it's about this size. You've got TV screens up here.

You're watching all the movie channels. You got your bathroom right there. I mean, there was times I was sitting on toilet and I get a 911 call, you know, you go over there. No, one emergency. But anyway, so I get the fire call. And the guy's freaking out. He's like, my garage is on fire.

My car's on fire. What do I do? What do I do? And I'm like, get a water hose. I'm telling him to put the fire, you know, spray the water on the, you know, water on the fire. And I'm trying to dispatch, you know, you hit all the alarms and you're dispatching all of them. And I hit too many of them. So I'm like waking up the entire fucking department at three in the morning.

And there's all these tones are going off. And I got the guy screaming. I'm telling them to put, you know, like to fight this fire, and you're not supposed to do that. That is a big no-no. Like, you're supposed to be like, get away from the fire, you know. And I'm telling the guy, they end up taking that call and it went in front of the board. And they all listened to the call. And they, like, you know, I didn't get in trouble or anything like that.

I was brand new. No one even talked to me really much about it. I just heard it went to the board. Another call that actually, you know, affected me for a long time was I got a phone call from a party. and it was a big family party and they had found their baby at the bottom of the pool. So, you know, I did very well on that call, but I got a panic guy on the phone and then he hands me to a panic woman. And I had to walk him through baby CPR and they ended up the baby actually, they were able to revive the baby. and they end up flying the baby.

Life light, that's what they call it out there. Life light the baby. And it ended up dying in transport, I believe. Or it was brain damaged, two brain damaged. You don't hear much what happens. You know, you got to really search to investigate, to find out what happens on the calls after you get off the phone. But that was such, I mean, you could just,

I could still hear it to this day. I can hear their voices. you know, looking at the baby, trying everyone just panic. So that, you know, that, it was a serious job, you know. It wasn't something to play around with, you know. People are calling you at the worst, you know, their worst moment in life, like the worst possible time that they're, and that's when they're getting you on the phone. So, yeah. So what happens after that?

Where do you transition to? How long did you, about how? long were you doing the EMT dispatching for? So I was a, at that time, when I was doing that, the nighttime paramedic was a sniper team leader for Harris County. So I'm not sure what his actual title. I think he was sniper team leader. So he was teaching active shooter airpack deployment, which is essentially you're teaching SWAT teams how to use an airpack. Because in chemical health environment.

So I did that for a while. And it was just something he would pay me $100 for the day. You know, I go in there and I was like his assistant and we'd do it in schools. So I would teach all the SWAT guys how to switch bottles, you know, which, you know, these guys have never had an SCBA. If you know what an SCBA is, that's what the firefighters use. You put it over your face. You got the bottle and you have to force breathe. You know, it doesn't like, you're not breathing like you normally are breathing.

And for most people when they first encounter force breathing, they, you know, It's a panic situation for some of them. So just teaching them and walking them through all that. And then they did their tactics. And so this was so fun. My job was to basically be either a hostile or a hostage. And obviously they weren't, you know, thank God now with all the, you know, Alex Baldwin and stuff. No, I got, you did get shot by an accident, you know.

But these guys, they got their guns out. They're not supposed to be, you know. And they're doing their tactics through the school with their mask on. And let's say I'm a hostile. Now, you got, I got like seven rooms, you know, I can do whatever I want. I'm allowed to do what I want. And their leaders, you know, they would always want me to just be a menace. They were like, try to get their guns.

See if you can take their guns. So I would take cups or bowls of water. And I would set them up, sorry, I would set them up down one in each room. And I was starting the first room and I could hear him just come down. They're like, clear, you know, and they're all trying to, you know, they can't see very well. They're all fogging up because they don't know what they're doing. And because they, there's a first time using the SBA. And all of a sudden, I just pop out of the room, bam, right in their face, boom, the second room, where to go?

Where to go? Where to go? You know, they're all of a sudden, I come out of the second room, boom, you know. And I'm just going up and down the hallway, being a minute, and eventually I set them up and I go to the ground. You know, I grab one of their guns off their hit, and we all go to the ground. and, you know, they would, I get some carpet burns, but it was a lot of fun. Or I was a hostage and, you know, they had to come find me. And they paid you for this.

Yeah, I got $100 a day for it. That's pretty good. Yeah, it was exciting. And it was fun working with those guys and it made me want to do it. Because at the time, remember the movie SWAT with an Ella Cool J? And now they have the TV series with the guy from Criminal Minds. Oh, really? I'll just check that out.

Yeah. Yeah, that first movie when it came out, watching SWAT, and then doing that was all happening at the same time. And I was like, you know what, I want to go in law enforcement. And I didn't want to be a B cop. And so I went to Missouri State University. They had a really good criminology apartment. In fact, the guy that, oh, man, what's his name? He wrote a book called Gang Phenomenon.

He went basically not undercover, but in a documentary. you know, you know, stance and then spent time with the bloods and crips and stuff in L.A. And I don't know what they still do this day, but for a long time, LAPD and all the big cities use gang phenomenon as basically their handbook on gangs. So I went out there and I was studying criminology as double major criminology, sociology, and, you know, I went hard to work, you know. I was also a K.A. at Houston Baptist University.

Cap Balfordor. What's that? It's a fraternity. Okay. So, you know. Imagine a room that feels calmer, warmer, more inviting. That's the quiet beauty of Serena and Lily. Every piece is designed in-house, crafted by expert hands and made to live effortlessly with what you treasure most.

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Secret Society, fraternity, you know, network, a very, you know, influential, powerful people, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we had a fraternity, we had made our own fraternity at University. We were called Cap Alpha Omicron, same colors. But we were a very mixed group of people. You know, we were, every race you could imagine was represented among us, you know, it was 20, 2020. 22, 25 of us, I think when we were chartered. There was 30 of us. And really, Cap Alpha approached us because they wanted to, like, at the time they had

really bad press where they had a dog, a pit bull or bully that had been wrapped in a Confederate flag was chasing down, you know, black students at University of Texas, or one of the Texas universities. and they had some other incident, hazing incident, blah, blah, blah. And they came to us and they were like, we want you guys to be kind of the new wave of Kappa Alpha. So, you know, we ended up joining, we ended up going through the whole process, and we got chartered there.

You know, we felt like we were really making, we won the basketball tournament every year with those. But then when I went to Yusville, when I went to Missouri State, I literally just walked up to the chaos, shook their hand, and before you knew it, I was living in the K house. You know, so that was a wild time. But I was also, you know, bound to tournament to finish college. And we started sports betting, like, religiously. And we had a group we called the paper chasers.

And we, every week, we all got together. We all shared our, you know, our bed of the week. You know, and we were doing really well. I was making money. I got a job at Victoria Secret. A male at Victoria Secret? I was the first guy that worked there. But they didn't last too long.

I got, I was really good friends with all the girls there. And they hired me because they thought I was gay, honestly. I don't know if I should admit that. But they, I was wearing a pink shirt when I came for the interview. And they were like, well, we just, we thought you're gay. I was like, a surprise. But they got a new manager, and she did not like men at all. And she kept me hidden.

I was, like, in the back. I couldn't be out there with the braw or, like, showing the bras. But my real job was a four-set manager. So I would come there at six in the morning, you know, dress the mannequins, set up the floor. Like, this would move over here. Like, they give us a floor set. So I ended up quitting that job and just focusing on sports betting. I'm like, shit, we're doing it.

And that didn't last too long either. So I ended up asking my buddy who was a bartender at a strip club. And I was like, what's up? You know, do you guys need anybody about bouncers or anything like that? And they ended up, you know, getting me a job as an uncalled bouncer. So this was your first step into like the nightclub world and the nightclub business? Yeah. So, you know, I still had very.

much a I still had you know I I I didn't mention that I had worked to the youth pastor and a college pastor as well for a couple years during the video game thing you know I should have got more into that but I still had this you know I still had that mentality you know I came in there very green super green you know I'd never been around strip clubs I've been in one strip club and I was 18 and honestly I thought it was bullshit you know I paid a girl $60 show me a vagina and I thought this is I can't believe that I just did that. And so I never, I had it in my head. I just never go to those things, you know, it was a waste. And I think that, you know, having that mentality and being so green, you know, really help me. I had a mentor there. The owner of that club, his name was John Wardia. And he came out of Detroit, you know, very well-connected guy.

I know, he had ran bars and strip clubs and brothels and all kinds of this, his whole life, you know, for a big conglomerate. And, you know, as soon as I came in there, he really took to me. I think he saw how innocent I was. And how genuine at the time, I really, all my relationships, I, you know, again, it's like with the heartbreak. You know, I had never really been burnt yet, never been through anything. And I'm just in there smiling.

He's like, you're the best, you're the burfratoast. So that's what he taught me, you know. You know, people get three steps in the, door and I've got to be on top of them and I'm taking them to their seat you know I'm checking on my job with a check on everybody you know every couple times an hour you know I walked through there you know I had a roll of drinks drink tickets I could I could give to the waitresses waitresses if I felt deemed it necessary and I dressed up for it you know suspenders hat whole nine you know it was uh but that club you have to understand this is

Springfield, Missouri, Missouri State is where we're going to Missouri State. This is Springfield, Missouri. And that strip club was, like, we played, um, Frank Sinatra. We had steak. Like, you buy a $15, one pound ribby in there was famous. They're famous for the ribbyes. And the place was ran by this guy who had ran all these clubs for a long time. They, the, the people he had around him, he had placed over the years, and it was a family. And still this day, that club in Springfield, Missouri, Centerfold, is basically a historical landmark for that man. He, every year people flock from all over the country to celebrate his life. He made a big impact on a lot of people, John Wardio.

And his father, Joe Wardio. And how old were you when you were at this one? So I'm a 20, we've, we're, this is so weird telling my whole life story. Yeah, I was 20, I think I was 26. Wow, and you were still in college? Yeah, I was, yeah, probably at the tail end. I was 20, yeah, it was a tail end of, yeah, 25, 26, I was working for Centerfold. And yeah, so, you know, I had seven years of, you know, I went to Liberty University, too, but I did that remotely in the middle of the two, in between.

So I didn't mention that. So I went to seven years of college and didn't graduate. Why do you finally decide to exit without the diploma? So I was really close. I think I have like 140-something hours. And that's that. So working for John, you know, I'm starting to do everything at the club. I start out as the all-call bouncer in the back.

I moved to the four-host, you know, now I'm the four-manager. Now, you know, I did a little DJing, you know, Now I'm managing, you know, basically everything in the club. But there was a woman there that was managing the manager that had been around for a long time. But she struggled with pills, you know, she struggled with alcohol and pills. And, you know, she, oh, I don't want to get too much into that. Sorry. But basically, you know, we had a moment where all of Springfield froze over.

It was a big freeze. 160,000 people without electricity. They called us a national disaster. And FEMA came in. And when FEMA came in, we had electricity. No other club had electricity. And these guys, the FEMA guys, dropped so much fucking money in our club. They were coming on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Sunglasses on. Oh, yeah. Like, hey guys, welcome back. Like, we're kicking ass. And at the time, you know, John's watching, you know, and come that summer, a club, the owner of a club called Big Daddy's. Big Daddy's is kind of a legendary club for that era. They sponsored big things in Vegas and stuff like that.

The guy that owned it, you know, he really took it to, it was an old wrestler that owned it. And he had sold it to an Albanian guy. And that Albanian guy, he was just absent. So he came to John. He's like, I need help. I need, you know, I need money. I need someone to help run the club, blah, blah, blah, I guess. That's how the conversation went down.

So we go out to this club and he doesn't tell me anything about it. He's like, we're going to check this club out. Well, I got lit. I got lit that night. And I went nuts. They gave me passes to pass out. So we go to the night. We go to the regular club because this club is a, this club is a juice bar.

You know, so we're, they're open to. five, six in the morning. Big days open until five, six in the morning, no alcohol. And so we have deals with all the area nightclubs around the fort where we can go promote at the club and drag them out for the after party. So

they take me out. And I'm lit. They give me a stack of passes and I go fucking nuts. You know, not a person got left without a pass. And we packed the club out. I mean, it's standing shoulder's shoulder in there. And I think that's when they decided that I was going to

go with that club. And it wasn't a week later, so he was like, you want that club? I was like, what? You know, it was shocking. It was shocking. I didn't expect it at all. And he was like, look, I really appreciate what you've done for me at this club, but I was a workhorse for people my whole life. And he's like, I don't want you to be that guy. I want to give you something that you, something of your own that you can build. And I took the opportunity. And this is 2007. So I was 26 years old.

And he just hands you the club. Well, yeah, essentially. When I walked in, mind you, the owner had been absent. You know, they've got managers. They've got, you know, bartenders, DJs, all this stuff. You know, the current owner, he still had 50% of it. So he stuck around. He showed me the ropes.

Shout out Ishmael. Albanian guy, crazy motherfucker. He's driving me out there. I remember he's driving me out there in an escalate. This is my first day. And I remember the moment like it was yesterday. The sun is coming down. And we're drooling in town.

Literally this town is only, it's a military fort. So the military fort's off the freeway. So all you really see when you drive through is this one section where there's like a Walmart and all. this stuff and I'm watching the sun, sun go down. And I'm thinking to my head, man, I'm going to run this down. I really was thinking that. We pulled up there and, uh, I remember him telling me, he's like, Matt, there's no rules. No rules, as we kept saying, no rules.

And he wasn't kidding you. Like, you know, we were in county. It was full nude, full contact. You know, there wasn't sex in the champagne or anything like that. You know, I never saw anything like that. But, you know, it was a wild club. And what made this club so special is that it was all military clientele. And it was all young military clientele.

I can't imagine another club. I don't know of any other club that had that catered to this type of clientele. And that enabled us to do push the envelope in so many different ways. In regards to entertainment. in regards to just engagement. You know. So when I got there, you know, they were known for jello wrestling. You know, they did jello wrestling, stuff like that.

But yeah. So he's showing me the ropes. 2007. Big Daddy's. And I remember I'm sitting outside of the club one day. and a guy rolls up and a taxi cab little skinny guy

and this will come into play later and he's got a stack of my passes and he turns out he's the owner of the nightclub across the street so his name is Big Louis Big Louis King and he owns what is now Uranus

on the side of the I-44 What a name. Yeah you know shout out Louis there's your promo but he comes up to me He has stacked my pass. He throws in my face.

He's like, don't you ever, you know, send these passes to my club or anything like that. I had no idea what he was talking. I didn't know who the guy was. You know, I walked into that town again. I'm super green. I'm just so naive. I still have this mentality of, you know, I came from, you know, private school, England, you know, youth pastor, college pastor, playing video games.

And now I'm taking over this strip club in the middle of the Ozarks next to this military fort. And I had had a little experience, you know, with Centerfold, but even there, you know, was a family. I was baby, you know, it was easy. I remember these guys, they had all this money. and I thought They just liked to flash their money The military guys had money But I didn't know

Everybody was running game You know there was drug dealers There was drug families And they were fed but you know There was two Chicago drug families there And so they had a steady flow Of just thugs coming through And you know

There'd be a new guy every couple weeks Coming through from Chicago This area was not was has always been known for it's a very interesting area you have a military fort during war time we got between 40 and 70,000 military there they're all on the base you have st robert which kind of encapsulate the front insurance but you have towns that are all surrounding this military fort they're all separate they all operate separately you know at the time when i got there the cops are making about ten dollars an hour um

you know, you have military money, you have small town infrastructure, small town services, small town, you know, thought process, mindset. So this town, let's put this way. Someone wrote an article about this town, you know, decades ago. They called it the Sodomacomac and more of the Midwest because it was just known for whorehouses, you know, race wars. You know, rampant prostitution. I think at one time they had 12 strip clubs there. And, you know, drugs run through the military way more than you'd ever expect. You know, they get off on the weekend.

They're buying drugs. You know, they can get out of their system by Monday, Tuesday. By the way, interrupt me at any time, man. You're good. You know, I don't always know what I'm going with it. Now, was the club ran legitimately? Like you guys weren't doing anything illegal? No.

So that's a great question. So in 2011, they changed the laws in Missouri. It was a big push. They had done it first. It was a big push religious from the churches. They had successfully pulled it off in Tennessee, I believe. And it was a law that basically made any nudity, any, you couldn't be topless. You had to wear pasties, full pasties. Your bottoms had to be wide-backed.

You couldn't wear a thong. You had to be closed at midnight. You can have, oh, you can have no contact between customers. They had a six-foot rule. A six-foot rule. Close at midnight. No alcohol. They essentially, you know, took away every avenue of revenue that you could possibly have, at least I thought. And I ran it legally. When that law went through, I fought it tooth and nail. I gave $5,000 to the, like, all the strip holders got together. We all fought it. You know, I think all together we spent, like, with everybody together, it was over a half million dollars in legal fees.

We lost. Wow. And, you know, first I started running, but I had given up on it. I'd just spent all this money in the club. I'd just put this big sign up, everything, and then the law went through. And I'd been fighting it. I got signatures. Tens of thousand signatures.

I delivered, like, I was driving up to the Capitol, dropping signatures off because I was just every customer signed. you know and they took my signatures and i never heard anything back and it obviously didn't do anything obviously you know you weren't like grandfathered in at all how is that how are they able to they grandfathered in our uh we could yeah we were grandfathered in as a strip club but we had to still abide by these rules you know they there could be no new strip clothes so that was a i guess a plus um for us owners but uh it was so basically my what i figured out is if my girls don't take their clothes off, they can do lap dances. They can do anything, actually.

They can get as lewd as they want as long as they have their clothes on, is what's kind of the loophole. And so we were watching, you know, you've got these rich guys that own these big clubs, like the guy owned a crazy horse down. He owned one of the clubs of Springfield, so he's pushing the bill, and he's got all these loopholes that he's exercising. And then there was a club in, like of the Ozarks, and their loophole, which I end up copying.

And he, you know, he made me copy him. he's like, why don't you fucking copy me? I'm like, okay, I will, I will. So I got an airport bus, and I can pull the airport bus right up against the back door. Like, literally, you step out of the back door onto the airport bus. I got a guy on there, you know, he's taking bus tickets. So you're buying your bus ticket at the register. $100, $100 for a bus ticket.

$100 get you three songs, fully nude dancing. But it's happening on the bus. The bus is on wheels. The bus is a limo. The limo law applies to it. The strip law does not. And I tell you in the end, they could not charge me with it. That was the, they even said they were angry, they were very angry about the fact that they could not charge me with full new dancing, with the full new live dances and stuff.

They did smash all my windows in that van, in that, in that, in that, um, that bus. Who smashed them? The police? Yeah, when they, when they raided me? They broke the windows. When did they raid you later on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, gotcha.

Yeah. So what, what happens next? next. You're owning this club. How long does that go on? This June, the world comes to Los Angeles. Kick off FIFA World Cup 2026 at the FIFA fan festival of the iconic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Watch matches live on Giant Scream. Feel every goal with thousands of fans. And celebrate with music, culture, and flavors from around the world.

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Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. On four before you're starting to run in the issues. You know, so, you know, right at the beginning. And I talk, you know, I bet you experienced something very similar to this.

You know, when you get into that arena, you know, it's not a child's game. You know, running clubs, running bars, you know, navigating your way, staff dynamics, all these things. You know, it's a learning experience. And so over the first few years, my. club, I would call my evolution. You know, I just, I was learning the landscape of the land. You know, I was committed to it. That was one thing that John taught me. He's like, Matt, don't build a business, build an institution. People have to believe that you are not going anywhere, that you will be the last man standing. And if they believe that and you believe it, then they will

follow you. And that's what, that was my mentality. It was like, I'm going to be here. I'm You're going to come and go. I'm going to be here. And it was an evolution. It was a process. You know, I started, you know, having people around me and that I started realizing what, you know, what was what. And I realized, you know, the guys that, and I started taking stands against these drug dealing crews and stuff like that, kicking them out. You know, they didn't like that. You know, one of them arguably stole a dog from me after I kicked them out, you know.

but that was their that was their big that was a big revenue that was their big spot you know we were open till six in the morning we were the only place open so you're a drug dealer in that town like where you want to be at three in the morning you know that's so they didn't like that I started cleaning the place up and I remember there was a girl that used to work for me her name and she was the number one girl that big daddy's had like she was their number one girl. and I was just like, you know what? We're just going to manifest. We're going to put our foot down. We're going to make some changes. And I told my partner at the time, I was like, I'm going to go fire her. And I was, honestly, I was nervous because, like, again, my only, you know, don't be wrong. I had a lot of pretty girls.

Those girls are going to kill me, you know. I did have a lot of pretty girls. But she was her biggest money maker. So when I fired her, man, it shook the club. You know, all the girls were just stunned. No one had ever think that she could be fired, you know. And I just started putting in work. I started traveling to St. Louis.

I started driving in Springfield. Started traveling to Columbia. And before you knew it, it didn't take long. I think I had about 20. I called it Rule 27. I was like, we go by, you know, did she follow on a rule 27? Rule 27 is 8 plus 9 plus 9 plus 9. Or no, sorry, 8 plus 9 plus 10.

Sorry. So 8, 9s and 10s. 8, 9s and 10s. only, you know, and so whenever I get an application, I would just turn it over. It was, it's a eight, nine, or ten, you know, and that was the, and within about two, three months, you know, we had about 30 girls in there. And are they getting paid a salary, or did they just make tips? No, the girls, they just make their tips.

And they give you a cut? No, so they do not give me a cut of their tips. I never touch her stage tips. You know, I'll tell you, my job as a strip club owner is to make the girls money. Or just in this industry in general, like, if I make my girls money and I make them money consistently, then they'll stick with me forever, you know, and they'll maintain my, you know, the integrity of the club. So I get, you know, they kept their stage tips on the, on the dances. We were $45 for a bed dance.

So we had bed dances where you lay down, you know, and the girls give you a loud dance. We had couch dances. Those are $28. And out of the bed dance, the girl got 30. Out of the couch dance, the girl got 20. DJ get one. I get the rest. We also had something that was very unique.

It was called, it was the bonus chamber. And to my knowledge, I don't know. I know there are clubs out there with Bonnest. chambers. I've never been to one. I've never seen it. Um, but when I got there and I, I took over that club, they had a bonus chamber. And I thought in my head, I was like, this is going to get a sued for sure. And essentially what it was is like a platform that was raised up. And it was actually really shitty when I took it over. It was just like a chain. We ended up redoing it because it became one of my biggest money makers. For years. So during the wartime, we were the Marine Bar.

We were the Marine Club. Like, I'll tell you that there's guys all over the world that can attest to this. I had guys tattooing my logo on their ass. You know, these are crazy motherfuckers. You know, I had them in there eating worms and stuff, you know, free lap dances. You know, like I said, these are young guys. It was wild, wild, and where was they even going with that? Oh, the Bonds Chamber.

So for a while there, the Marines started, like, being really proud of going to the bonus chamber. Like they, like, they looked like they were really tortured. Like, my girls would whip the shit out of them. Like, bleeding. Their backs are bleeding. And they would show it off. It was like a ride of passage.

And it really did become a ride of passage for the Marines. They were coming in from AIT. They were coming in from Pilton. Coming to AIT, you know, going through like three months of training and they shipped them out. So it would be three months. I got them for three months. I tell my girls, if you, a guy is not so in love with you.

you at the end of the three months that he is not buying lab dances to keep you away from his friends, then you didn't do your job. And that's what it became for a lot of these guys. They had fallen in love with these girls. And, you know, they're surrounded by, you know, 30 alpha males, you know, that are like, yeah, I'm going to buy a lap dance for his girlfriend. So where do you guys make the money off of getting the cut of those dances then plus the bar? It's all, well, the bar, we don't sell alcohol.

So is there enough money to be made then? Yeah, I mean, I do, you know, 300, 300 dances a night. You know, I mean, it wasn't gangbusters like some of these clubs in the big cities and stuff. But, you know, we'd have $7,000, $9,000 nights. My cost to operate was super low. You know, my employees were paid a shift fee, $50 a shift, you know. Everyone kind of, you know, the tips ran through the club. I didn't pay any of the girls.

You know, they all, and I'm not selling anything. You know, I'm not buying inventory. I'm selling time. I say I'm selling time. I sell three and a half minutes. And I would go in the dressing room and we'd do struper math. And I'd put a board up there and I'd be like, all right. So, you know, there's, you know, there's say this many minutes in the day, in the night.

You know, you can get this many dances, you know, this. That's stripper math. You know, we're selling three and a half minutes at time. You only have limited time. And, yeah, to answer your question, you know, I really, it was very, it was a, the amount of money I know of and I see right now in my life around L.A. and stuff like that, it was nothing like that. It was very humble.

I mean, I spent, I spent most my money on my friends. I took them, you know, I mean, on any given week, I might take seven, eight grand. and spend two nights in Springfield and make it rain on the clubs and then before you know it, I'd have three, four girls the next week and they would make me that money and back, that money, and then some.

Wow. So when did things start to go sour for you? No, things didn't go sour. In fact, we were steamrolling whenever I got raided. So I'll tell you that let's cut to the chase. So 2014, you know, me and my boys, we had a group of guys.

We were very close. And, you know, we used to joke around, you know, that all of us had fought against each other or with each other, you know, over the years. All the years I had those clubs. Those were like the guys that had, you know, come together. Several of them worked for me. And we decided that we were going to stand up a bike club. We all rode motorcycles. And we all rode together.

and we're like, let's make it official. Let's patch up. Let's patch up. Let's make our own clubs. So we started Uncommon Brotherhood. Uncommon brotherhood, and the reason it was uncommon, one, you know, a couple of reasons. First of all, we were mixed race. So we had a black member, a couple of Hispanic members.

It was seven of us. It was a mixed group. And then we also rode mixed bikes, which is not normal. Usually you're either riding the crotch rocket or you're riding the cruiser. And so we stand this club up. We put our patches together, our vest together. Man, we were all so proud of it. Those colors were green and black.

And we were trying to get sanctioned by the white dominant of Missouri, which was the Galloping Goose's. And when we went to them, they says no go. You know, we're mixed bike, but more so we're mixed race. and they can't sanction a bike club with mixed race. So without hesitation, we're like, man, well, we're, you know, they're not going to, you know, burst our bubble. They're not going to shatter our dreams. So we just go straight to the outcast out of St. Louis.

Now, I was telling you about this earlier. You know, bike clubs are segregated. It's less and less today, I think, that it was back then or even 10 years before. that or 20 years for that. But, you know, and then you have your states like the banditos are just, they run Texas, you know, uh, Mongols, you know, these are, these are clubs that do have mixed races, you know, they, you know, there are white guys and black guys and span guys in these clubs. But in the middle of Missouri, you had the whites and you had the blacks. So in order to stand up an MC, you have to go to a dominant. You have to go to, uh, and, you know, if you're a

white club, you go to the white dominant. You're a black club, you go to the black dominant. It's that simple. Now, when you're a mixed race, what do you do? You're not supposed to really be sanctioned at that point. Not in Missouri, not with protocol. So we go to Outcast, sure. They give us our stand. They give us the stamp of approval. We get our, we change up our cuts.

We, we change the logo. We had this Lion logo, Uncommon Brotherhood, yellow and gold. I mean, sorry, golden black. and we had our Outcast Patch. It was form... They looked really good. They looked formidable.

And the seven of us were very formidable. And did you guys look at yourself as like the one percenters, like outlaw biker type people? So I'll tell you that, you know, and I have a view of that, you know, 1%, and, you know, we saw ourselves as a crew. And, you know, we watched with confidence. I'll tell you what, we walk into a place. as we walk into a bar, seven deep with our cuts on, you know, you feel it. You know, I think anybody would admit that. You have this, you know, you're moving as a unit, you know.

But as far as 1%, no, not at all. In fact, you know, 1% means that you're a criminal. You're an open criminal. That's literally what the meaning is behind it. Now, you could argue that and say that with my strip club and, but no, I did not see myself as like, you know, we're not, I've been around one percenters. And, you know, there's different levels to it. So why do one percenters like being called one percent outlaw clubs when you talk to some of these individuals that say it's not a criminal organization?

Yeah, I think that it's just semantics. It's just etymology. They're just, you know, you have, you have emcees, then you have one percent or. and that came from, and I won't do the story justice, but it came from a long time ago. Somebody came out and said that 99% of bikers are law of buying citizens, which would mean 1% or not. So if you wear a 1% patch,

then you're saying that I am not a law of buying citizen. Okay. And that could mean a number of things. I mean, I don't want to peg all these guys, because there's different levels to it, you know. Like there's people that live outside of cultural norms. I guess that would put me, I could, I could relate to that. But then there's people that, there's some of these 1%, you know, one guy's pimping out underage girls.

And everybody has to be okay with it, you know, because they're a criminal organization. And my hustle has nothing to do with you. You just, you had to back me no matter what. Were the guys that you got sanctioned from one percenters? So, yeah, we were sanctioned by the outcast. They gave to the stamp approval You know I went up to St. Louis I went to their

You know, their annual You know, I'll tell you what Just class act They were really, you know Yeah, they were a little rough and around red edges You know, these guys are 1% You know, they They had the big missing bikes, you know

Like huge choppers You know, these are not small guys either You know, they got leather that goes to the ground You know, they knew how to dress up but yeah they i mean as far as my my uh we were men you know and we with mutual respect so i never had or saw any kind of like anything that gave me pause with those guys what would have happened if you didn't get their approval and you just went and did it on your own we would have so that kind of is the lead in so um so when we went and got outcast approval you know we're

the word starts getting out. And about a month later, so, you know, we get reached out to by a group of clubs. I might need to take that out, actually. There was a group clubs reached out, and they wanted to do a meet and greet with us. And we thought, you know, because we had heard, you know, that a lot of people were not happy about us becoming, sanctioned by the outcast. And they said, and they reached out, meet and greet,

thinking, oh, great, you know, this is awesome. Like, they have a clubhouse. We're going to go out of the clubhouse. They got an open bar. Like, they're hyping it up, and we're excited. So we roll out there. They were six, seven deep. And we walk in.

They got a bucket. Throw your cell phone in. Another bucket, throw your guns in. Now, I'll say guns. I don't get on too much tangent, but this is Middle Missouri. We all carry guns and lots of them. So we're throwing guns

in the bucket and we're walking in. I'm thinking, okay, all right, what am I going to get to drink? And one of the guys comes up to me and one of the other guys, and he's like, you two come with me. So we walk downstairs into the basement of this clubhouse. And as we turn in the corner, there's a huge table. I mean, probably 25-foot table, and it's full. And it's all guys from different clubs. and they're like take a seat

and the presidents of the clubs was six clubs represented and they went through one by one and I remember the guy looks at me the first guy and he looks me in the eye

and he goes what the niggas want with this town he didn't say exactly like that either what are the N-word what they want with this town and then he just goes into like you know you're going to bring an element here and blah, blah, and what are your plans, you know, and then it goes to the next guy,

and he's like, listen to me, you're going to take off those patches, blah, blah, blah, goes the next guy, and we're being threatened one after another. And I remember we get to the end, and I'm like, and they asked me, are you going to take your MC off? That's what it came down to. They wanted us to take the MC off. They did not sanction us. We do not give you approval.

You need to take it off. and it came down to if you don't take it off, you're not going to be safe. And I look at these guys, and mind you, I'm running the strip club over there. I got my own crew and everything, you know. These guys, like the first guy that I was talking about, he runs the karaoke at the local bar, him and his wife. You know, this guy works over a tracker.

You know, these guys all have wives and kids. I'm thinking, who's the real gangster at this table? Like, what are y'all, what just, you know, you guys aren't going to put a bull in my head, you know, but that's how it felt. You know, that's the way they're trying to portray it. So, you know, I remember I told them, I was like, you know, I got to talk to the guys. You know, I just kind of tried to defuse the situation. You know, upstairs, the guys really don't even know what's going on. They're just having drinks.

We get done with a meeting. I come up, I go up the stairs, and my guys get your shit, let's go. we hop in the whip we go back to the place go back to one of the guys's apartments and we get in there i'll never forget it because it was uh it was starting to get dark and we're all sitting in this living room and you know you got this warm light from this lamp and everybody's kind of freaking out a little bit you know they're like what we got to do we got to take our emcee off i mean these guys you know we got what are we going to do what are going to do you know and one my thought process was like you know what? I've never been told what to do my life.

And I'm for damsuring going to start the day. And we stood up. We were like, all right, you know, we're not going to bow down. We're not going to take these MC patches off. And they're going to have to just deal with it. So we had 24 hours to make our decision. The next day, 6 p.m. Now, the next day, I just so happened to be going to spring break.

So I'm about to jump in a car. the next day, I mean, it just so happened, and we go to Panama City. So I was leaving my guys, you know, I got two of my brothers there inside the club. They're running the club for me for the weekend. I still have the camera. In fact, I got the video on my phone right now from the CCTV video. But about 50 bikers pull up in front of my club. And it's kind of funny because they're all just going in, and then they saw the sign that says no firearms.

So they're all running towards the door, and then they see the sign. There's one of bibles and drops his gun. And they, anyway, they, so they go in there and my guys meet him like, you know, right in the entryway. And they, you know, my buddy's got a shotgun in his hand. My other buddy's got a nine millimeter of his hand because they heard the bikes pull up. And we knew, you know, 6 p.m's a deadline. You better take that MC patch off. They walk in the club.

They look at my guys. And they go, so that's a fuck you, huh? And my guy's like, yep. And so I'm in I'm in Panama City You know I'm watching this through my cameras and And I was just blown away It's like oh my God like this is heating up fast like all these bikers coming to my business And so we contacted Outcast

And Outcast is like fuck those motherfuckers We're not you don't answer them you answer to us And didn't these people know that you were sanctioned by Outcast? Yes But they didn't care They saw us as like the black, they saw us as like the black MC was coming in to start to run some kind of criminality in there. That's, I think, how they saw it.

That was there, and there was definitely prejudice involved. I mean, this is a small area of central Missouri where there's 22 white sanction clubs. And I think there was, there was like full-tilled stuff you had at the cross-rocket clubs and Dominant breed, but we were, it would have made two black Sanctuary clubs in the area. And the outcasts were willing to go to war on behalf of you guys? So, you know, telling the outcasts, you know, we didn't really, I'll tell you, from my perspective,

you know, I didn't really know what we were getting into, you know. I mean, I was, I wanted to be part of a bike club with my friends, you know, and I love, I love the lore of the MC and all that stuff. at the time You know So when they contacted Outcast We contacted Outcast

They came in town Four different states And I remember watching the CCTV CCTV video And they start piling in my club These guys And I remember I mean these guys

Huge guys Like 400 pound guys You know And the music in the background Is I'm on a highway Way to hell. Like that was literally the music going on in the background of my club on the CC

when I'm watching them walking my club. So they go up to the house, the place that I was at, that we were at when we got, we had the meeting, the meet and greet, where we're in the basement and everything. And I was not present at this. So this is all, you know, from what I've heard. And I'll tell you that a lot of it came at the beginning.

And then over time, I start piecing more and more together. So I guess they go in there and they tell them like, we're the one percenter, you're not. Nothing's off limits for us. So if you touch uncommon, we'll kill you, we'll kill your wife, we'll kill your kids. So at that point, that was definitely a power shift within the bike community in that small area. that small town, you know, like it sent shockwaves. They couldn't touch us on the street and they knew it. A month goes by. I get a call from my, from my landlord, who is a military MP. And he's like, I just sat through a 20-minute briefing on the new leader of the, on the leader of the new

outlaw organization in the area, Uncommon Brotherhood. And they basically, when they, through your Facebook for 20 minutes. I get on Facebook immediately. I write a long letter to, you know, I didn't say to the FBI or anything. I don't remember what I said exactly, but I was like, look, and this is what a lot of people don't know

about my club. I ran, I had never used hard drugs in my life. I had never been around it. You know, I didn't smoke marijuana. I drug testing my girls. I was so, I kicked out all the drug dealers, you know, I dealt, you know, we dealt with it, you know, some of the girls would go through addiction or problems and stuff like that, you know,

you know, we were there to help, but we were not a source of that. And we ran a very, very tight ship. And anybody would have tested that. And I was able to have hundreds of people attest to it. So I ride on there, I'm like, I need a witness. I need a testimony, you know, and I got the whole town on my, on my, Facebook at the time. So they blow it up. You know, my buddy who was a DOD agent, he, he told me that he had talked with the FBI and he, and they told him I got nothing to worry about that it was kind of blown

out of proportion, blah, blah, blah, you know, of course. So this is all kind of alleged. This is straight from a sheriff. And I found this out this week. So the first domino to fall in my raid Louis Keene apparently had a shed behind his club with what the police described as a bail of marijuana I imagine it was probably

full plant that he was just dried out he was pulling off or something like that he got caught with it by one of the sheriffs that's your competitor on the same street

that's my competitor we're within one mile of each other he was honestly if you ever seen he was like porkies like in that movie like he was like

the big He even had a pig as a symbol on the front of the club, Big Louis Cabaret. And, you know, so apparently he gets busted for marijuana, but they really wanted me. Now, mind you, all these white clubs, you know, these 22 clubs, they're just filled with military guys. And ex-law enforcement, friends of law enforcement, blah, blah, blah. So they can't really hit me on the street, you know, because. of what happened without cast. You know, they already, that, that avenue shut down.

So they have to give me another way. And at that point, they wanted me and they, they leveraged Louis' bust and the deal was made. They couldn't afford to investigate me. And they couldn't afford to investigate me. And they asked Louis, essentially, to hire private investigator, put together the case, presented to the prosecutor, and, uh, presented to the prosecuting attorney. and they would act on it. And that's what happened.

Big Louis, hires a private investigator. This is all of my discovery in detail. He asked the private investigator to document, you know, basically the private investigator went to the prosecuting attorney and asked the prosecutor attorney, what evidence is going to take to bring charges against Matt Wagner? That's a quote.

And, you know, he illegally obtained two hours of video inside my club, you know, video of lap dances, videos of all kind of, I'm even in the video one time, it's kind of funny. The guy walks up to me and he's like, man, it's really hot in there. And I was like, well, I keep it hot in there so the girls keep their clothes off. I was like, you know, a little known fact about strip clothes. If it's a little cold in there, you got to fight the girls to wear, they all want to wear their jacket.

So, you know, anyway, I thought that was. I said that to the guy on the camera. So they took it. They took that evidence. You know, it showed me open after midnight. It showed me, it showed that the girls are showing their tities, their nipples. They're showing their ass. They're showing their vagina, you know.

How did he get this? With a lapel cam. Oh, he patted on him in the ward. Okay. Yeah, he had a lapel cam. Okay. It was like a, I don't know. what exactly it was, but

yeah, he was getting lab dances with his camera on him. You know, kind of stuff. So, you know, another loophole I was taking advantage of that I couldn't get in trouble for was I was selling cups. I was selling $10 cups from the bar.

Like red, what they call? Solo cups. Selling solo cups. But they had a symbol on them in a number. And the guy outside who had bought the keg in his own name one or two kegs, sometimes three. And you could buy the cup and it was unlimited beard all night.

You know, 10 bucks. And that was legal or illegal? They couldn't charge me. They weren't able to charge me with it. They did charge, so I take the back. They charged me. But they were unable to prosecute me with it. It was dropped.

So did this all stem because you joined a motorcycle club and you were bringing that attention to it? Is that why the competitor was after you? Well, the competitor's been after me for years. So we had a long-standing, I'll tell you, just movie-esque, he's my nemesis. He's my nemesis for years. I mean, you know, we've gone head-to-head, and this is the emergence of Facebook. So, you know, we're going head-to-head online, you know, we're trolling each other, all kinds of stuff for years. We were only two strip clubs in town.

We were a juice bar. He was juice bar, and then he also had another bar there. He had a big complex. But the difference between my club and his club over the years was that I got rid of the trash and he picked up my trash. And so my club, you know, you go in my reviews online. They're still standing, you know, on my Facebook. The Facebook is still growing, you know, people still follow it. You know, it's got tons of reviews.

And, you know, we were known for our girls. We were known for having a higher class of girls. And essentially, we had the best, I'd say we had the best lineup in the middle. Midwest. You know, and to think that it's all a military town, but I'll tell you that it was easy to get girls to come out once they tasted the military money. You had young, and then they're dancing for 19-year-olds. They're dancing for 20-year-olds.

You know, Marines, they're in shape, and they're horny, and they've never seen a nipple in their life, and, you know, boom, boom, the girls are making thousands of dollars, you know, a night out of the mill in Missouri. So, you know, we're taking in every pretty girl that graduates from every, every small town high school around there. What do you do? At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light

and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows and they were all free. The truth is our scene. It's just so beautiful.

On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, fringe arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit card. larger alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. You going to college?

No, you can't afford that. You're going to work at a dental place, you know. But did the creation of the motorcycle club trigger him to escalate it to the next level? So that's what made the locals want me so bad. That's what made the police want me. I believe. You know, I had pissed off. They had taken all that shit, you know, from beginning.

getting the club and outcast and it had all been placed on me. I was the loudest one. I was the open one. I knew we're in trouble when, you know, literally the police started kicking people off of our property saying, this is uncommon brotherhood territory. Off my property, off my club property. I'm like, oh, man, they see my club as the clubhouse.

And so what comes with, you know, 1% bike clubs and strip clubs and girls, and, you know, they're like, oh, definitely drugs. and, you know, prostitution, and, you know, the list goes on. You know, obviously that, you know, this is sons of anarchy era. You know, they're watching it on TV. And then they see us. Yeah, you kind of put a target on your back. Big time.

Big time. And I'll tell you that I didn't give, at the time when I was doing it, I didn't give a fuck. Like, I really, I learned, you know, the braid and all that stuff in the end. You know, I knew that it was. kind of coming at one point, you know, because we had, we were breaking, so, you know, I get ahead of myself, but when we, um, when I was running the club legally, the girls were in full clothing, doing lab dances, blah, blah, blah, and I was doing the loopholes. I got to a point, I was friends with the local cops, really good friends. Um, the, the head of narcotics would come in my club,

He'd sit up upstairs with me all the time, you know. Like, I was a, it was really important. My relationship with the police was really important. You know, we were the only place open till after six, you know, until the late night. We had all kinds of problems. We were fighting off all kinds of stuff and I need their support. They were not involved in the raid at all. They went, it all went over their head.

So, you know, you have the Mid-Missouri Drug Task Force. You have the state police. You have a select members of the local police, and then you had Raleap PD, which was a town down the road. When they raided me, they had 30 SWAT in gear, and they were not wearing police gear. They were wearing Marine Corps full armor. They looked like Ninja Turtles. I'm sitting in my club. Now, the way in my place was, it was a two-story club.

It was a 70-by-40 pole barn that had been finished out. inside. You had an upstairs, a balcony. That's what the lap dances, you know, the couch and bed dances were, the girls' dressing rooms upstairs. I'm down, I'm in my office all the way from the other side of the entrance. I hear, police, police, I'm thinking, it's at my, I had one of my buddies comes in like that all the time, joking around. I'm like, ah, this motherfucker. I did not let the girls drink inside the club area, and I didn't let them drink up in the dressing room because they just couldn't control themselves. I'd, you know, I'd leave for an hour, come back, and I'd have two girls falling down the stairs, you know? So they had, I had a fridge and

everything, and they could keep their drinks, and they were allowed to come in, have a few drinks, and then they had to get back to work. So I got two girls back there, and they had, you know, I was hanging out. I was in my, in my desk, and I hear the police, please, I go and I had curtains. The door was open, but I had curtain. I opened the curtain, and they were coming in through where the bus was. The bus door was right there at right adjacent of my office door. And I see this guy. He's wearing full body armor. He's got his gun. And I'm just like stunned for a second. And then all of a sudden a flashbang grenade comes right over his shoulder. And it comes right. It's coming down right on top of me. I go to hit the ground. The thing goes off right next to me.

I hit the ground. I'm laying down. And I mean, the club was just popping, you know. And then it just goes dead silent because as soon as they start piling in, my DJs upstairs, he turns the music all the way down. And then you just hear flashbang grenades going off everywhere. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. My dog is going nuts. He's barking. I got a big pit bull behind the bar.

And, you know, he had been paralyzed and I had rehabbed him back to health. And he gets stressed out, you know, I was thinking, oh, my God. And I started screaming, don't chew my dog. Don't chew my dog! You know, I'm screaming it. And the officer, I can hear him. Are you Matt Wagner? Are you Matt Wagner?

Don't shoot my dog! And then finally I'm like, yes, I'm Matt Wagner. He had already zippedide me. He just, whoop, drag me up and took me out the back door. Now, at that time, my girls are upstairs, and the way one of the girls tell the story, she's walking around the corner to, like, go downstairs, and she hears the first flashbang grenade go off.

She thinks it's a gunshot. Then they hear, boom, boom, boom. And there's seven of them. They threw seven flashbangrenades in my business, bro. We found the rings. We only found seven of them. They might have thrown more. She thinks gunshots going off.

The other two girls in the dress room, they go running in. They're like, oh, my God, they're hiding in the closet. They call 911. They think that it's like a mass shooting. They're scared of death. They call 911. They're like, someone's shooting a club up? The cops are like, no, that's us.

Those are police. You know, go out and meet them. And, you know, I had a pregnant girl. They made her lay on her stomach with guns to, they had guns to their heads. They were not march as police. They did not wear any, nothing said police on them. But yeah, they dragged me out in the back. So I'm out by the bus.

I'm in the back area. And they're taking everyone out of my club. I had 93 people on my property. So out of that, you know, I had like 27 girls, maybe six, seven staff. and the rest were customers. And the wrecks were military. They're all military guys. Guys that just came back from war,

they're getting flashbanged in the strip club. Like, it was a big thing. I had guys in taxi cabs going home crying. Crying, not because they're scared or anything, just because PTSD. Like, these guys came back from war. They're getting flashbang in the strip, but you don't expect that.

Why are they going with such force? Well, so there was a guy named Darren Logue. Darren Logue was, I think he was a, a doctorate had a doctorate in criminology. He was at the college and I don't know where he came into play. This guy, they had an informant apparently, but they had they had fabricated an entire target board like, you know,

the boss is in the center. So they had me in the center. And they had every single one of my friends in my bike club had a different job. And they just made it up, you know. And none of my guys did drugs, not a single one. but, you know, they said, they said my DJ is, my DJ is selling heroin and my security guard is selling ecstasy and pimping the girls out. You know, I would never trust him to do that. You know, honestly?

And then another guy that apparently they said dope. He ran dope from, they had created this whole story on paper. You know, on one of the things that said it was one of my friends' wives. It said was seen with Wagner in random places. And I'm like, he comes to me. He's like, what the fuck, bro? Like, I was like, bro, it's not true. It's not, like, none of this stuff is true.

It said he was my assistant. I was like, are you my assistant? He was like, no. I was like, see, it's not true. And at the end, it says Wagner's outlaw or outlaw, more so gang, Uncommon Brotherhood. And then they had just pictures of us together. Just scrolls, pictures. One of the pictures, you know what the Kubrick's,

there is, Kubrick's tear. It's like, it's a horror movie thing, you know, it's like, you know, they, anyway, they had pictures of me just make me look as evil as possible. And so the night of the raid,

they were inside my club. Now, they had done one night investigation. The only night investigation they had done was the night before where my girls got topless and told them they could come back tomorrow for beer. So that's it. That's all they got. That's all the police have. My competitors got two hours of video, which really couldn't be used. It was just a means to an end.

They had, so that night, they had uncutting their covers inside my club all night. And the booth fighters showed up. Now, one of the boost fighters is literally a colonel in the army. Like, he's an active colonel in the army. One of the most well-respected guys, you can imagine. He shows up in my club. He, with respect, waits for me at the front door. I take his guns from him and put him in my safe. He comes in with his cut on, sits down, maybe in there for 30, 45 minutes. I got the guns in the safe.

He decided he's going to leave. I go get the guns hand to him. And that's all I could really think of because what they said in the discovery and in the news is that bikers were inside the club wearing bulletproof vests. They had guns, they had holsters on their hips. And they were the only ones that had holsters on their hips. So they were watching. They were sitting inside the club.

And they saw it as like the way they described the news. There was a real, an entire article came out from the sheriff that said, Plast County Sheriff Defends the Use of Grenades in Strip Club Raid. And it said it was a high. elevated risk, elevated high risk warrant at a place that was known to be a hangout for bikers and other criminality or something like that. What did your business partner say? Or did you buy them out?

I didn't have a business partner. So you had bought them out at that point? Yeah, I had had the club to myself for a good four years at that point. So do you ever think that had you never started your own motorcycle club, you could have avoided all this? 100%. I think about that time. I think I don't think I would have left.

I think I would still be doing it. So what happens next? What happens to the club? Do you get arrested? The legal process? Yeah. So they take me in the back of the club and they're like, they hold me back there.

Just hold me. And they take everybody out in the club and they line them all up around the building. And they zip tie everybody. And they got them at gunpoint. And then they take me and they parade me, you know, right in front of everybody. I had to walk the line. There was a walk in front of like, you know, 70, probably 70 people, you know, zip tied up against the building.

And they, they walk me in front of all of them. They set me down and they're like, where, what's, they go, where's your DVR? A little known fact that my DVR was not recording. It lit up my cameras and it broke on me, maybe six months to eight months before that, right. They were real, that's why they didn't do the investigation. They thought they would have 16 cameras of me breaking the line. when they put me in jail, they take me into, you know, this is the county jail. I still don't even know what I'm charged for.

I have no idea. I took my mugshot. I just got a haircut, too. It was a great picture. And, you know, they go on me through the paces. I'm charged with a class one control substance. Trinbolin. Steroid.

which is for animal use only. And that holds a felony, a Class C felony. So they got me on that at least. So $20,000 bond, I think it was. My parents posted bond. I was in there for 18 hours. From inside the club, or inside the jail,

well, let me rewind. So when they take me in there, they think of me as this drug kingpin. Like, that's really the premise that they had me under. All the police, they don't know anything about the paperwork. This guy is running a big operation. He might have enemies, high profile. They clear out three jail cells for me.

They have empty jail cells on both sides of me, and I'm by myself in the middle, and across, they're six to seven deep inside these jail cells. And all night. And finally in the morning, they come in there, and the guys in the other cell, they're like, please, man, we ain't going to touch that, man. We had no problem with that man. Like, please let us back at ourselves. So they let everybody back in their cell.

I'm in there for, you know, 18 hours. I'm making phone calls. I'm like, all right, you need to get this. You need to get this. We're opening the club. We are opening the club the next night. I don't give a fuck. And so we open up the club.

I get out, you know. You know, my girlfriend picked me up. The police had, they had searched my vehicle. They left me a joint. They never charged me with marijuana. I had personal marijuana all over the club. I also had 11 guns. I believe it was no.

Oh, they weren't. So I had one, and it's funny because I bought it from a friend, I told that motherfucker I was like, if this is a dirty gun, I'm telling them. I'm telling them exactly where I fucking got it. You know, like, that's the rule. Don't pass it as a clean gun. It turns out that it was a double barrel derringer.

It was my favorite gun, too. It's a pocket gun. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the little baby ones. Yeah. Okay. And so when I, so they end up announcing that he had a stolen gun. It was stolen from a DEA facility in Seattle.

So, you know, I'm telling the prosecutor, I'm like, you can't get me with that. I didn't, I never been to Seattle. Like, I bought it from this guy. So that didn't get, you know, I didn't even get charged with that. But I had, I had guns everywhere in that club. My DJ had gun, my bartender had gun. You know, they had guns at the front door. I'm in my office.

They said that I had a gun in my hand at the time of arrest, too. They put that in the news. But you didn't? No, I didn't have gun near me. I don't know where that came from. Did they go after any of the other club members in your motorcycle club? No, they didn't go after anybody in the motorcycle club at all. But they did charge the girls.

They charged like five or six of the girls with Topps dancing or new dancing. and at the end I was charged at the end when I got out I had been charged with 11 or no I had been charged with the

so they announced after they let me out jail I paid to get out bail ball ball ball I'm charged with the classy felony they announced in the news we expect

to charge Matt with 48 charges of breaking the adult thing it ended up being 11 charges at the time I was being very outspoken against what they had done I did a community

Newty Barbecue. I had 250 people show up to it in three days notice. You know, I invited, you know, I'm, I'm online. I'm calling them out, you know, making videos, all this stuff. And they didn't like that at all. Then I get the attention. Actually, my girls got the attention of the news. So the news comes out and they do a story on how the girls were mistreated during the raid. And they just really depicted these. I said, I said, it's almost as if the police officers. enjoyed what they were doing. You know, I was like, yes. Because they, you know, they paraded them around, their pains and braw for hours, for hours. And their pains and braw, they didn't even let them get dressed. Like, they just look like perverts. They look like perverts.

They, you know, I called them liars, basically called them liar and pervert on the news. You know, I was like, I didn't have a gun in my hand in my time of arrest. I have two witnesses, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I'm nervous. Like I'm thinking in my head, these guys may pull a bullet in my head. I know that might have been thinking, you know, they're the police. And I'm outwardly and openly attacking them online and stuff.

So I'm staying in hotels. And I got my boys bringing me food. I'm changing hotels, stuff like that. Because I don't know when the charges are coming in. Because when they were going to drop these charges, which took days for them to do. they could have theoretically came and got me if they had come up with like a felony charge or something like that they could have kicked in my door

I could have resisted you know that's my thought process I can't you know I want to turn myself in when they drop these charges I had my my uh my bell bond bell bonds lady she was watching the wire nonstop and as soon as they dropped as soon as they dropped she hits me up she's like

all right I'm coming to pick you up you know go in there bond out immediately so I'm not sitting in jail and I don't catch a bullet a stray bullet in like a you know a warrant you know a felony warrant

raid or something you know yeah um yeah so how does everything all get resolved what's the final outcome so because you're obviously not in prison right now right right well you know

they didn't come up with anything you know it was a big waste of resource uh in the end uh they had charged me with a bunch of with 11 charges of running a strip club illegally. So I had a charge for selling alcohol, charge for being open after midnight, a charge for allowing women to Nantopoulos. Now, I've always saw myself as like a freedom fighter.

You know, even with the strip club, you know, we're fighting for, you know, the right for women to show their fucking chest. It's so weird, isn't it? Like, we walk around, especially with now the blurring of genders, you know, it's like, you know, is a nipple really that? fucking serious?

But it is. It's so serious that they'll use the same force they would use on Paula Escobar to stop it, you know? But these were all misdemeanor charges. They're all misdemeanors. They're all $500 tickets. No prison time. No prison time. So in the end, you know, they had to throw out the steroids.

I had, you know, in the end with the steroids, they had put the wrong name on the paperwork. So when the paperwork came, it said I had a vial of testosterone. I'm like, hey, hey, where's the testosterone? Somebody's showing me a bottle of testosterone. And they were like, fuck. You know, and then they made me... So in the end, the case is decided inside the prosecuting attorney's office with my lawyer. And it came down to, I was like, you know, I'm speaking very candidly with him because, you know, I was the biggest donated to his campaign.

And so I'm sitting there. I'm like, he was apologizing. He's like, look, they put all this paperwork in front of me. They said that you were selling drugs. They said that you were doing this. I had to sign the paperwork for the raid because he had to sign off on it, right? And it was like, you guys can't really prosecute me on any of this stuff. You have no evidence.

You have nothing. And it came down to, look, I'll drop all the girls' charges. I'll drop all your charges except for you get to pick two. and I'll put you on two years probation and I'll even sign paperwork that says that you can leave the area and I made the deal and he goes what two charges do you want? I was like, give me two counts of allowing women to dance topless.

Which were misdemeanors. Which are misdemeanors. But, you know, I look back at that and my parents are like, why would you pick those charges? I was like, you know what? Because I allowed women to dance topless. And I think that's so, I mean, it's crazy that I'm being charged with allowing adult women to dance topless.

So do you close the club after that, or does the business dry up because of that? Do you leave the motorcycle club? What happens? Great question. So at the end of my strip club, you know, after the raid, the military didn't make it official that I was off limits. But, you know, they're dealing with young military guys, 18 through 25. and, you know, after a raid of that magnitude, it literally made every newspaper in the country. You know, it was everywhere.

You know, they didn't know what was going on. All they knew is that I did something that warranted that serious of a raid, and so no one was allowed to go to my club, basically. You know, I had stragglers. I had the older guys. They were allowed to do what they want, but, you know, another young military came back.

Not for a long time. Well, not at all, really. And we lasted for about two and a half months. I kept paying all the staff out. I kept everybody on. You know, my girls, I went from like 27 to 30 girls, the night of the raid. When I closed my club down, I think I had seven that stuck with me at the end. Wow.

So you pretty much lost everything, that whole business from that. Yeah, gone. Within two months, yeah. We had just bottomed out. And then what happens with the motorcycle club? So the motorcycle club, you know, I think that once I had lost the club, I'll tell you that the power dynamic changed within that club. You know, we were all based around the strip club, you know, as a home base, you know, many of them work for me, everything.

So when that all got taken away, you know, we shifted as a group. And I knew that it was a big source of everything that had happened to me. And I just, I stepped down from the club. And later on June, about eight months after the braid, I stepped down from the club publicly. And that club is still going strong. It's an all-black. It's not seen, like if you Google Uncommon Brotherhood, it's an all-black motorcycle club. It's in four states now.

You know, and they're still growing. They're in Alabama. They're in southern states. Georgia. And, you know, they kept going, you know. I think that there was a little bit of animosity that I had stepped away. You know, they felt like I had quit on them. I had given up on them.

But, you know, I, you know, at the time, I was a little, I had gone through so much, you know, like, I didn't really want to continue my life, you know. I didn't really want to be attached to all that stuff at that point. Like, it had all worn out as welcome at that point. I had lost everything. I was ready to move on. Do you miss a motorcycle club? Absolutely.

And the strip club? I miss my brothers, you know, the beginning. of that club, it was so pure. Like, we were all just, we were such a, we moved as one, we thought as one. We did life together. There was no fight for hierarchy, power structure or anything going on. Like, it was brotherhood, the way it was intended to be. And bringing in outcast and stuff like that, that definitely, you know, threw a wrench

all that over time. So, you know, I do miss the, the, I miss my brothers. When I'm, you know, being in LA, being in the cannabis industry now, you know, those, uh, the way the, the social hierarchy, I guess you could say is the social environment is everybody's kind of an on island in L.A. Everybody's doing their own thing. You know, I might be really close friends with you. I don't see you, but once a year. if we cross pass. But we're friends. We've been friends for years, right?

And that's what L.A. friendship is. You know, being out there in the Ozarks, doing life with these guys. Every day we're running together. I do miss that. So what's your life like now? What do you do now? What do you have going on? Yeah.

I'm knee-deep in the cannabis industry. I've been doing it. So I, after, you know, I left, how are we doing on time? Oh, you're good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're good. No rush.

I was thinking about should I cut it? But, um, so when I, after the club and everything, I went back to Houston, Texas. And I started running, you know, what do I know? I know strip clubs, you know, so I started running strip clubs. And I got a job with, uh, running a club called Joy. It was up in northwest Houston. I mean, this is a big 40,000 square foot club, you know, 70 girls, you know, it was a rock and place, you know, full, full kitchen.

totally different beach. You know, like we've got, you know, big money, big money gets spent in these clubs down in Houston. It's not like my club was, you know, lab dances, everything like that. They're selling bottles, champagne room, two, three thousand, four thousand dollar experiences, I guess you could say. Those guys, you know, I was with them for a little bit and I ended up getting a job at scores on Westheimer. And now this is about the time that Cuba had been opened up by Obama. I don't know if you remember that, but he had lifted restrictions on traveling from Cuba. It's 2015, I want to say.

In the strip club industry, it proved to be extremely disruptive. Because you had a flood of beautiful women from Cuba that just piled. into the clubs in Houston, probably the same Miami. And a lot of these girls, and I never met a Cuban, had blue eyes, blonde hair, Cubans. And in Houston, this is an oil country, you know, like, you know what sells out there is, for a long time, it was the blondes, big fake boobs and all that stuff,

the cliche, you know, Dallas Caboid cheerleader look, you know. All of a sudden you got all these Cuban girls coming in town and they don't want $500. to have sex. They want 60. And it just threw the whole industry for a loop out there. And that's when I was working in it. You know, we have like 10, 15 girls from Cuba.

They're coming, none of them speak English. And all they want to do is have sex for very little money. And we're having to train them. Like, no, no. And so basically my job, you know, was to negotiate these problems. for them because they couldn't speak English and if they did it on their own it didn't work out you know so you know that's what those clubs were there's so much money in Houston the strip club industry it's a whorehouse they're all whorehouses and that's eventually

what that's what it becomes that and there's no no no it's not like what I had in Missouri I didn't like it it wasn't the same so that was short-lived and At the time, I had a good friend that was a police officer, an old friend, and he was also a stripper. A male stripper. A male stripper on the weekends. So he ends up, he's like, Matt, I was in really good shape at the time. You know, he's like, dude, you're in really good shape, you know, like come out,

just hang out with us, see what you think. So I go out to the club and I hang out there for a little bit. And honestly, at the time of my life, the guys were all, you know, most of them are real, you know, just like me, you know, they work out every day. You know, a lot of them doing steroids, you know, and a lot of them are, you know, just regular, you know, regular dudes, you know, regular Alfa goods, you know, is it. And I got along with them great. So did that for a little bit. I ended up stripping for about four months down Houston. and I'll tell you that those stripper pictures

not all of them were the most were the best and I was very open see that's one thing about me is like throughout this whole time while I'm running these strip clubs like I don't have like people today when I'm in the Kansas Street they'll like talk about like oh did you know that he used to run strip clubs like bro yeah I tell everyone

that's what I did I'm not ashamed of anything I've done I'm not ashamed you know granted some of those pictures are not the most becoming pictures and they've been spread

everywhere in the cannabis industry I strip of pictures yeah who cares you know you did what you had to do to support yourself I wasn't making money

not much I wasn't making much money and it wasn't like you know it wasn't like at the time man this is I was living

my parents you know and I you know so I would and I was only working like a couple days a week a few days a week

at the time. It was a very short time. Now, during that time, I was working to get my visa to go to China. So, you know, I had a, the group that I had worked for with the strip club and stuff, they're building out a mining cloud. Warehouse, miners, ant miners. You know what ant miners are? Sorry, or explain, hardware for mining cryptocurrency. And at the time, there was a big price difference when China, the suppliers in China are selling to the United States, like 7,8 grand, but from the source, they were like 1,600, 800. So the big price discrepancy at the time, high demand, you know, and so I was waiting on a visa. And that's, so I didn't really care about making much money. I never cared about making money stripping. It was really, I would drink a fifth of tequila.

you know there was a guy out there that you know rest in peace he was selling ecstasy and he would just give us all stuff the owners of the owner of the club come through with cocaine the after after hours club ran until the sun came up and we were like rock stars you know it was fun it was just a fun little stint in my life i pray to god a video of me to strip it doesn't come out but you know i tell you what when i was learning the strip when i was before I was going to get up on that stage, that was probably the most stressful, scariest thing I've ever done in my life. Yeah, I could only imagine. I watched YouTube videos trying to figure out how to do it.

I probably looked so silly up there. But, you know, I'll tell you, it changed. When I finally got my visa to go to China, I had just come off stripping, you know, and I had zero fear. I had no fear of lot, of anything. I felt like I had conquered, you know, everything. I'd gone, I'd ran the strip clubs now. I proved that I could strip. And I proved that I could get them in front of, you know,

hundreds of people and take my clothes off. What else is there? Like, what I got to be scared of now? So I really dialed in in Asia. You know, I spent, I, I didn't turn down anything, any invite, any opportunity. I went to, met as many people as possible, shook as many hands as possible.

And I love China. Yeah, I lived in China for almost a year. And then you came back and moved to L.A.? No, so I got really depressed in China. You know, no one spoke English. The final, you know, I had to leave the country because of my visa. I had a business visa. I had to leave the country every 60 days.

So I would pick out a new country every time I had to leave. I'd be like, oh, what am I going to go this time? Like, I'm going to go to Cambodia, you know? I go to, so finally I go to Thailand. I end up in Phuket. And I had the time of my life. I mean, I can't tell that stories, those stories yet. You know, but, you know, the great thing about Thailand is that it's such a mixed group of guy, you know, especially in these beach towns, because, you know, they're known for the girls and everything like that.

So you have all these guys, all these guys from all over the world. You know, every country you can imagine. is represented there. And it's like we all have this like automatic camaraderie because we're men and most of us are all traveling alone and we're all on the other side of the world together. And so it was like super easy to make friends. Like I go to the bar. I'm like, oh, there's this Australian dude.

This is an English dude. You know, this guy's from Belgium. And, you know, we're talking about politics. You know, just right out the gate, you're making friends. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to Thailand. and I ended up getting a job as a teacher. I applied a bunch of places,

and within two weeks I had a job in Waheen, Thailand, which is a beach town about an hour and a half south of Bangkok. And I did that for a while. I love teaching those kids. It's third grade and fifth grade. Those kids were so, they were so smart. They knew three languages. Even the third graders, knew three languages, all of them.

You know, some of them, I had like one or two kids that struggled a little bit with English. I had to tell them, like, you're not allowed to speak anything with English in my classroom. Chinese, Thai, and English. And when I left there, I'll tell you, when I left there, those kids actually cried. And the principal said he's never seen kids react to anyone. But I was, you know, I didn't even go with the lesson plan. They gave me a lesson plan, you know, I didn't even go on it.

You know, I would teach them, you know, I was teaching grammar. You know, it was like third grade grammar, fifth grade grammar, you know. But when I left, I, you know, basically I was applying at jobs on the other side of Thailand. And I ended up applying at this school. And I get a phone call back from this American guy who was the owner of school. And he's like, I see your resume. He's like, what's this on your resume? It's a property management company.

And I'm like, well, honestly, that's a strip club in America. that I used to own and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh. He's like, well, would you like to do what you did over there? Would you like to do it over here? I was like, yeah, of course. Of course I would, but I don't think that that's possible. And he goes, no, it is.

I know the guy you need to talk to. So he ends up introducing me to the Nightwish Group out of Pataya. The Nightwish Group is an investment firm essentially, and they invest in these bars, and at the time, I believe they had 17 of them. Are you familiar with Pataya? No. Yeah, Pataya is known as the real Sin City.

Let's just say that. They say that out of the 140,000 people that are in the Pataya area, that about 30,000 to 40,000 of them are prostitutes. The bars, like the first, like maybe my a couple miles in every street everything is covered in these bars people come from all over the world every criminal like international criminal organization is represented there um they all coexist um you know the russians are there the the irish are there it's it's it's a

very unique place and so they tell me they're like you know we've never had anybody with your experience and can you be here in a couple weeks I'm like done deal so sure enough I get on a bus I tell the school that I'm leaving blah blah blah and I get on a bus and I head over to to Pataya and I remember getting off

and I had never seen Soy 6 now Soy 6 is known well known as one of the craziest it's not the craziest street in the world I think at the time there was about 55 bars on this street. You can see from one end to the other. The beach, it opens up to the beach.

55 bars, like a couple go-go. You know, it's just lined with madness. And each bar has 10 to 15 to 25 girls in it. They're not in the bar. They're in the street. And they're trying to grab me off the street. And I remember I got my big backpack on and I'm just rumbling down the street. And they're all yelling at, oh, tattoos, tattoos, sexy men.

I'm like, oh my God, I'd never see anything like this in my life. I don't even know what I'm getting into here. And I finally had to walk the entire street. I get to the bar. The bar is called Sex and the City. It looks just like the logo from Sex and the City, you know? All those bars had funny names. But they gave me a bedroom up there in the upstairs of the bar.

And I went into training. and essentially my job was to to host. I was a host. My job was not to manage the girls, even though, you know, there was a little bit here and there, but you don't manage the girls. They don't speak Thai.

You know, you start getting on to them or telling them what to do. They don't understand. They get frustrated. You have a mama son. Every bar has a mama son. They run, you know, the girls. Some bars, in one of the bars I ran, you know, we had five mamasons. on every shift.

So the mamasons, usually they're the ones that go out to the farms. You know, they recruit the girls. They put together the team. They're pimps. They're lady pimps. And they, when you hire them, you're paying a salary. In most cases, you're paying for the entire group altogether. So their salary might be, you know, 50,000 bot.

A month is the mamasans to have the mamasan in your bar. you know and you know my job was to find something in common with everybody you know I had people that would walk into the bar

and I would do the same thing I did from day one in the strip club I would greet them three steps in they're shaking my hand you know what are you looking for

you know what do you know where you're from you know oh you're from Belgium oh I love waffles you know like

and you just you know you meet people where they're at and you cater to him and every bar I touch turn to gold. You know, I went from, he moved me from bar to bar to bar. And then eventually I end up going out my own. I end up becoming a consultant, basically. I end up working for the windmill.

The windmill was a, I worked for them for four days. I came in and broke their record in four days. made the news, international news, because the way I told the story, you know, they kind of copied and pasted my story. It was a Bangkok news outlet, and it just went viral. And because of that, I'm in the bar, and the guy comes in, he's like, what are you making right now? He's like, blah, blah.

He goes, all right, I'll triple your pay. You work for me now. And now I'm running another bar. And that's kind of, that's how it went on for a while. and the last bars I was running. I was running two bars. It was touch and pulse. They were like go-go bars.

And I had, you know, the guy, the owner, oh, man, I want to tell that story. But, yeah, he gave me an open bar. I had an open bar. You know, I'm posting on Facebook. This is where I'm at now. And guess what? Through the roof.

Everyone's flooding in, you know, is that easy. And they end up legally. medical marijuana in Thailand. Everyone was shocked. It was December 2018. At the same time, the farm bill went through, which is the federal government legalized hemp. This happened the same month.

When those two things happened, I knew that my calling was cannabis. I knew it already, but I knew that that was the time that bell had it wrong. And within a few, days, I'm on a plane and I'm headed back to

Houston, Texas. You know, when I got off the plane, I'll tell you what, I felt as though I had escaped from prison or something. Like, I had just gotten away with it. Like, I was like, I can't believe that I had gone to Asia, the other side of the world,

done all this shit, and then I'm back home safe. I made it. You lived quite a life. well you know i i i just don't like doing normal shit i want to do epic i want to i want to i want to do legendary i want to do epic shit you know and uh now i'm to the point where i just feel like i'm a creator you know i feel like i've manifested so many things that i know what's possible now and it and it's it's kind of frees me up a little bit

because it's like what do i want to do but you know i I still deal with all the, you know, I still deal with a lot of the ramifications of my past, you know, of these strip clubs and people's perception of it, you know, my strip club, my stripper pictures being posted around, people making up narratives about this or that. I'm very proud of my past and all this stuff I've done. But whenever I left, whenever I got to Houston, I didn't have much money, you know, Even run those borrow, I was making $30 to $60 a day. You know, like at my highest, I was making about $90 a day.

My rent was $180. So it was like, man, I was living good there, but I wasn't bringing home money. And when I got to the United States, I put in about two weeks of concrete work, packed up my car, had a little under $1,000. I had two guns with me, an AR-15 shotgun, a bunch of clothes and I thought in my head like if I'm going to be in the cannabis industry

I have to pay my dues I want to learn this and I knew I couldn't just go the normal route I had to learn the industry from the ground up and I had to get the respect you know it's like Scarface you know

first you can so I go to the triangle I go straight to the triangle and drive this old beat up my aunt gave me a car because I sold my car before I went to Asia. Ant gives me this old like two-thun tube and wrecked from every angle, just beat up,

drive across the United States. I end up in the Northern Cali in what they call the Emerald Triangle. If you're familiar with the movie Murder Mountain, I was not far from there. That whole area is extremely secluded. You know, there's farms all through the mountains up there. And a lot of the weed that's gone all the way around the country, that's where it originates.

And I knew that if I could go up there and learn the industry from the ground up, earn the respect of the OGs, of the guys up there growing, and then I knew that it would take me on a path. And I end up in the triangle within a few months. You know, I started out driving a truck up and down the coast from Oregon. Oregon had an oversupply of weed, so they're freezing it. And I was driving it down to L.A. So I was getting paid to do that.

That was my first job. You know, thousands of pounds. Drive from Eugene, Oregon, down in L.A. They were making diamonds out of it. If you're familiar with diamonds? No. It's a form of concentrate. And then, shortly after that, my buddy's farm, he had a guy running it.

He ends up shooting a gun in his girlfriend. Goes to jail. So hits me up. He's like, Matt, looks like, you're... running my farm now. I was like, oh shit, you know, so I took over a farm. I had only been in the triangle maybe, you know, a month and a half. I ended up taking over a farm. And I didn't know much about the plant. I was studying like crazy. You know, I was reading everything I could. You know, learning about cannabinoids, turpines, you know, I had a handbook, you know, some of the, what,

Horace Vantes, uh, handbook, famous handbook, you know, how, I had a handbook, you know, how to grow. I had all that stuff and I just committed myself to learning about the plant and I was in the triangle through two harvests and at the end of the first harvest

I'm out of town and we end up getting the farm ends up getting robbed at gunpoint with all the workers there. I'm going to take a green of water. Yeah of course. So do you smoke weed?

I just do edibles. Okay. Yeah, Mike Tyson's edibles. Oh, yeah. I love those things. Dude, the ear bites. Yeah, I got some right there. Oh, it's classic.

I love the ear bites, man. I did 20 milligrams for the first time a few days ago. I was messed up. I normally just do 10. And he's got ones that are shaped like boxing gloves now, too, which is really cool. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, Mike Tyson's like my childhood hero.

He's a great guy, nicest guy ever. So cool. I ran to him. It was Champs. Champs is the convention I was talking about. And I ran to him at Champs. He was walking the other way. And I go, Iron Mike!

And he looked at me and smiled and I was like, yes! Yes! Like, Mike Tyson saw me, like, responded to me. Like, I got so excited. I have not got to meet him. That's so cool that you have. Yeah, really nice guy. The whole team is really nice.

The Tyson 2.0 team. Oh, yeah. Great people. Well, I tell you, when I was in America, he was uh he had just beaten bruno when i was in england sorry when i was in england he had just beaten bruno which was like their mike tyson wow and so like everyone i was i told my third grade teacher i told her that i was going to be a boxer like mike tight i really believed that at the time yeah incredible yeah he's a he's something else so you've been in the cannabis business now

yes sir you got back yep and that's what you currently do yep that's what i currently do i'm a i'm a workhorse, you know, I'm all over L.A. Taking care of accounts, you know, moving product around. Totally different from the strip club business. Yeah. You know, I mean, I tell you, the strip club business, it's not a whole lot of different because, I mean, we're building something. And the same with the strip club.

I mean, I had to do a lot of work, you know, during the day to build it. And with the cannabis industry right now, you know, I work with a brand that, you know, we're very, you know, we're growing fast. And, you know, the more we grow, the more work it takes. And the more we grow, the more I can start delegating things and stuff like that. And eventually, I pray to God, I'm not doing the things that I'm doing today next year. I really, six months from now, you know. In the Kansas industry in California, we have, the whole industry is,

they have screwed up the industry with regulation. and for anyone out there that lives in a state where they're voting on legalization, legalization is a scam. Okay, legalization is an opportunity for them to take, for corporate money to take over the industry. That's what it is. And so with what we have in California is we have a lot of retailers that don't pay their bills. We have products just flying all over the place.

are, you know, it's just a very difficult time. It's really becoming a bloodbath because the big guys are growing so much weed. These mega producers, these big corporate growths, I've been in one that had 6,000 lights. Okay, imagine 6,000 lights. It's a greenhouse with 6,000 lights.

So it's called light assist. The entire grow is 70% automated. They're able to pet, just pump out thousands and thousands of pounds. They're not the only facility. There's too many to count that pump out that many pounds. Where do you think that weed's going? It's going into the legal market, right?

Kind of. We're feeding the whole country. You know, and it's still enough weed to bottom out our pricing in California. Like, you know, we're in the middle of what we call crop tober. So we're about to see another industry bloodbath. And really what it is is just calculated. It's just it's consolidation. The big boys are taking over.

What would you say would be the biggest life lessons you've learned throughout all the various, you know, phases of your life you've been in and throughout your journey? What have you learned the most that you want to share on to others? That's a great question. You know, I'll say this. the life I've lived and the decisions I've made are not for everyone. So, having said that, it's just having a believing in yourself. Believing in yourself against all odds.

Believing yourself when people tell you that you're, that you're nothing. You know how many times people have tried to take away and reduce me and squash me and destroy me. I mean, I've had people go as far as trying to hire a hitman to get rid of me. And I'm still here. And I never stopped believing. And I've had my moments.

I never stopped believing. And as long as I keep believing, anything is possible. at this point, you know, I see these guys and they're small towns and they're doing the same thing that we're doing 15 years ago. And I, in a way, envy him a little bit. I'm like, man, how would that feel to be content like that? I don't know if it's possible for me. But a lot of them don't want to do that.

They want to chase their dreams. They want to get out. And they're afraid to because going into the unknown is a scary thing. but you have to go into the unknown to find out what you're made of, to find out who you are. And really my journey has been, you know, first of all, life is a journey. It's not a destination. And you have to learn and understand the process,

and you have to take the failures for what they are, and you have to learn your lessons, and then you discard those fucking failures. They don't exist anymore. You take the lessons and you leave them. behind. And I look back in my life and I can talk about all these cool things I've done. Man, but I've screwed up a lot, you know, I've dropped the ball a lot. You know, every day's a new day for me. You know, I think about that, you know, I don't allow, I don't allow my, you know,

I blind the roadblocks, you know, I just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep pursuing. And, yeah, I think I'd agree. encourage people out there to test themselves, get into the unknown, do something that you never thought was possible, you know, attempt something that you know you're going to fail at. I love that. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today and going through your life story. Yeah, I got a little, you know, dry mouth there for a little bit. You did great, man.

It's a very interesting story. You've been through so many phases and very entertaining. Yeah, I just went over. I just brief overview, you know, too. There's so much that I could talk about, you know. And I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me and having me here today. Of course, man. Safe travels back to Cali.

Yes, sir.