Locked In with Ian Bick - I Made Millions Selling K2 — Then Landed in Federal Prison | Roger Upchurch

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Roger Upchurch was a successful homebuilder in Indiana—until the 2008 market crash pushed him into the synthetic marijuana trade. He built a multi-million dollar K2 empire, making over $50,000 a week, until an undercover DEA agent brought it all down. At 69 years old, Roger was sentenced to 4 years in federal prison for drug trafficking and money laundering. In this jaw-dropping episode, he reveals how he went from building homes to building a drug empire—and what it cost him. #TrueCrimeStory #FederalPrison #DEAInvestigation #SyntheticMarijuana #K2DrugBust #RealCrimeRealPeople #PrisonTransformation #FromMillionsToPrison Connect with Roger Upchurch: Order his book: https://www.amazon.com/Guilty-Til-Proven-Innocent-Brilliant/dp/1649691327 Visit his website: https://rogerwupchurch.com/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00:00 From Home Builder to Prisoner: The Roger Upchurch Story 00:04:40 Journey to Home Building Career 00:08:21 Transition from Real Estate to K2 Business 00:12:59 DEA Raid and Financial Seizure 00:18:00 The Business of Selling K2 00:22:21 Managing a Business with Limited Capital 00:26:31 Setting Up a Makeshift Production Line 00:31:16 Concerts and Charity Events for Veterans 00:35:34 Entering a Business Partnership and Profit Sharing 00:39:48 Expectations vs. Reality: First Impressions of Prison 00:44:35 Unseen Side of Incarceration: Professional Underpinnings 00:48:55 Life as a Camp Driver in Prison 00:53:16 Life during Lockdown in a Prison Camp 00:57:09 Navigating Life with the "OG" Title in Prison 01:01:12 Life After Prison: Overcoming Obstacles with a Criminal Record 01:05:16 Charity Event Featuring Car Giveaway 01:09:52 Episode Conclusion 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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forced him to reinvent himself. What started as a hustle and synthetic marijuana turned into a multi-million dollar empire until an undercover DEA agent brought it all crashing down. At 69 years old, Roger was sentenced to federal prison for money laundering and selling a controlled substance. This is the story of how he lost everything and what he learned behind bars. Roger, welcome to Locked In, straight from Indianapolis. I drove all the way here. I drove all the way here, 11 hours and a half.

Well, we. Thank you. And I'm glad to be here. Yeah, we appreciate you coming. I want you to plug in your book at the top of this episode. if you want to tell the audience and show the audience right to the camera, your book right there. Yes, I've got two books, Guilty to Proven Innocent as one. It's about my life story.

This one is sort of growing up before I went to a federal prison camp, and it's pretty interesting. I've done a lot of different things. I made a lot of money, lost a lot of money. The other one is Brilliant Minds and Captivity. It's more about meeting Buriant Minds in a Prison Camp, and that's about it. Do a lot of people ever suspect you to have gone to federal prison? Not at all when I tell them that, you know, I don't know if you read my story or not,

but I'm a custom home builder. I built homes all my life. And then when 2009, the economy crashed, I quit building. And a friend of my introduced me to this business, and actually it was a synthetic marijuana. Which we know all about. And we know all about. We called it K2, you know. And I started that and I grew in a little, had a little website called K2 for YouTube.

dot com and it just like it built up i was doing like a hundred thousand dollars a week and in that business it was i would never got into it that it was illegal to begin with it was legal we were selling in grocery stores gas stations everything i did everything i thought legally yeah and uh but in 2013 14 i made like five million dollars each one of those years in this business i had a plant in new or uh indianapolis then i moved to phoenix and then i had one with a partner in L.A. Yeah, well, I'm so excited to hear all about it in today's episode, and you and I have a ton of similarities that we're talking about that the audience is going to understand.

You've lived such an insane life. Right. And you're getting back into the music industry, too, so you're not done yet. Did you grow up in Indiana? I grew up in a town, Newcastle, Indiana, about 40 miles north of Indianapolis, a basketball town. We're basketball crazy there. Largest high school gym in a world for high school basketball. Then I moved in 87 to Indianapolis because I want to build houses there around the northeast side of Indianapolis called Geis, which is a big lake, upscale homes.

And funny story, when I moved over in Annapolis, I had a friend, a wealthy friend that moved there. He lived across the street from in Newcastle named there, and his name was Seymour. We went out to dinner one night, and I said, Seymour, I'm getting ready to build a house here. I didn't know at the time I could get alone on my own. I said, would you co-sign for me? And he said, no, I don't think I will. Two seconds later, he pulled out of his checkbook and wrote me a check for $100,000, and he said, I'll be your banker.

And we built 20, 30 houses with him. Wow. That was cool. What was your upbringing like? I grew up with, my dad was a builder. So I was building houses. There's nothing I can't do physically building a house from foundation to finish. But now I'm just too old.

You can't do it. Was your mom in the picture growing up? Yeah. Oh, yeah. She was the boss. So they were in the business together? Yeah. Mom sort of took care of the bills and things like that, but dad was the builder. And I started working with him probably when I was 12, 13, something like that. What about siblings? I've got a sister, and she's two years younger me, and then I've got a brother that's like 18 years younger me.

My mom went to my high school graduation pregnant with him. Sort of weird, but... She had you young then. Yeah, yeah, very young. They migrated from Monticello, Kentucky to Newcastle, Indiana. Did you guys have money because of the, they own business? No, not really. I mean, you know, he made a good living, but nothing.

No, never built up any money. So did you know from a young age you wanted to go into home building? Actually, I did. I did not want to go to college because I knew exactly what I was going to do. I've really never had a job. I built houses all my life, and that's what I did. over here and I went through the ups and downs and I was a millionaire back when I was building houses and then another millionaire one they in the synthetic marijuana business and then the

government took it all. So when did you go off on your own note and your own business? I built my first house in 1973. It was a speck house in Newcastle. That's basically one of first started on my own. Was it hard to learn how to operate that business? your own without your dad that first time? Not really. Probably if I went to college, I probably should have took a business class because that's probably my downfall.

I can build anything, but I probably wasn't the best businessman. But no, it wasn't hard. I did it. I was actually president of the Inter County Home Builders Association for a while there and like that. So it just grew and that's all I ever did.

Then when I built and moved to Indianapolis, I got pretty big. 35 houses in one year. I had 22 under construction. And these were not small homes, bigger homes. And that was a nightmare. Was the economy good at that time? The economy was great at that time, yeah.

Do you have partners other than the guy that backed you that first one? No, no, just me. And at the time I was married, I was married for 39 years, and I got a divorce after I got out of the prison camp, which is pretty typical. She waited until after you got out? Yeah, she waited until after, you know. But that's fine with me. We're still actually good friends.

And now I've been dating a lot. And at my age, I'm dating a girl from Indonesia right now. She's 55 and I'm 76. You're 76, Roger? I'm 76. Wow, you don't look 76. Well, thank you. That's like my dad.

You know, he's turned 80 this year. Yeah. He doesn't look 80 either. Good for you. No, I'll be 80 in four years. That's cool. You're dating around and doing things and stuff. Oh, yeah.

I'm an extrovert, and I don't stop. I'm never going to retire from doing something. You know, even if I had still millions of dollars, which I had, my lifestyle never changed. Were you extroverted in high school, too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was more of a nerd, though, in high school.

But I was expert. I played baseball and basketball and all that stuff. Do you regret not going to college? No, except for, I wish I had went. like a business course because I'm still not the best financial business type of guy. I think that's

where I went wrong too. I needed to know more about business and the legal aspects of the business. Exactly. Exactly. I was always a go-getter to put things together. Me too. I was always putting things together and doing this. I know how to do it and hoping other people could do what

I'm telling them to. Did you end up having kids in the beginning of your career? I had Well, I was married, actually, the first time I was married, I married a girl from Newcastle, and we had a daughter. Her name was Misty. She lived with me some, her mother, but she went more of her mother's side, and therefore why her mother was always into drugs and stuff like that, and then she was a little bit, too.

She's always been like a little wild child, beautiful, beautiful girl. But it's in my book. She committed suicide about eight years ago. in Phoenix, Arizona. And, you know, I probably should have seen the writing on the wall, but I didn't. Were you ever into drugs or alcohol? Never. It didn't interest you?

No. I never did drugs. One way had the K2, I mean, I smoked a couple times. And just, I've smoked a little marijuana in my life, just, but nothing extreme. And while we manufactured K2 made you feel just like marijuana. Now, that's one reason it got a bad name because it got out there because other people were a manufacturer and who knows what they were putting in it and made it very bad for other people. Ours never did.

But, no, I've been alcohol, I've been drunk maybe four or five times in my life. I'm not a beer drinker either. I drink margaritas. How were you as a businessman? Did you follow the rules when you first started out, you know, everything like that on the straight and error? in the marijuana in the synthetic marijuana business? No, in the real estate.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did everything like you're supposed to do. So you're never in the gray area, never ever expected yourself to go to a federal prison? Oh, no. No.

And it's ironic because when I was doing the K2 and in the syntheticic, we changed our name a couple times to different products. I never expected to go to prison. And I was probably two months from retiring from that anyway. And it's bad timing. So tell us why you first switched from real estate. You had a successful business to getting into K2. Well, again, in 2009, I believe it was the economy sort of crashed.

I was actually a mortgage broker for 10 years as well as a builder at the time. And in 2009, when the economy crashed, at that time, there was no homes to be built or no mortgages are right. So I was actually I've always doing something So I started a networking company And I was just doing a networking company And it was starting to get pretty successful of that

And And it was called Professional Alliance Board And I called it Pab now And it was I sort of the networking is Say you're a small business owner But you don't have anybody answer to So we were just going to be like Your professional board of directors

So to help you to make decisions And things like that And that was going along real well. And then a friend of mine introduced me to this synthetic marijuana business. I researched it. It was illegal. And I thought, man, this sounds pretty interesting. I think I could do this.

And I built a website, like I said, a minute ago. And I started selling a little bit every day, a little bit more. And I'm growing. Then I got too big. Then I started manufacturing a big warehouse and then Annapolis. And we were selling to stores all over the country. country and we were making 50, 60,000 dollars a week. Share with the audience what K2 synthetic marijuana is.

Well, actually the ingredients, there's a powder and the first HR 11 was one, but there's different normalocatures for the number for the powder that we bought from China and we mixed that within herbs, local herbs, and made it look like the regular marijuana. And we did it. Our dose was pretty small because we didn't want to make it feel any worse than it does when you're smoking marijuana. Like I said before, other people started doing it and put a lot of stronger stuff in it that made people go crazy. And that's where the government stepped in and went a little harder on it. And that's how I know about K2, because in prison guys would get it smuggled in on strips.

that were sprayed like a K2 spray. And these guys, you'd have to put a chair in the bathroom for them because it would be slumped over. There was traces of PCP in it. Exactly. We never got that type. Ours was just smokable and we kept it at a level where it just made you feel like marijuana

and never got to the point that people went crazy eating other people and that kind of stuff, you know. So is that business legal then? Like on the onset of it, is that legal? Oh yeah, when we started, it was totally legal. There was no bans on anything. Eventually what they started doing, the synthetic powder, I'm not sure exactly, when we bought it from China, they would ban whatever normal glacier that is, and then we'd just go use another one, HR 11 or whatever. And then maybe they banned that, and then we'd use another one.

That's why I was getting ready to quit. And I sold, I was sold a guy in California, and we worked together. other, his name was Raymond. And right when, on February the 14th, or 12th, 2014, I was rated by the DA in my home. And very nice. I was cordial. They took every thing, I ever cleaned out my bank accounts. I had like two hundred and a half, three million dollars in my checking accounts. I had some stocks, IRAs. They took it all. I actually had $576,000 in cash. I'm not a very good criminal. I mean, I didn't bury anything or give anybody else. I'm stupid. I should have had some money buried, but I didn't. And, but they took about two and a half

million dollars from at that time, a couple cars, a boat. And they, they rated our plant in L.A. the exact same time. So the team in Indy and the team in L.A. rated us both at the exact same time. And Raymond out there was my partner in that one. Unfortunately, I don't know why he did it. After we were raided, he went back and started doing it again. They give him 25 years. And I was sentenced to four years, and I served two and a half. How did they come on your radar?

I have no idea. I have no idea. Do you think it had something to do with the website when you guys brought it to that? Yes, I think I do know how I did. I was, I had one customer, he was an Indian customer, had gas stations and many marks throughout Indianapolis. And like I said, he was from India. And I sold him quite a bit. One day in September, he came along with another guy, and this other guy is named Lewis.

Lewis said he had stores in Indiana and Kentucky. He wouldn't start using my products. But it was all alive. Lewis was the DEA agent. Okay. So that was in September. So evidently they went after this guy's name Singh. He must have did something wrong.

I don't know what, but they were probably after him. So he ratted on me to probably make it lesser on him. And even I remember that when they were there, I told him I was quitting at the time. And Lewis said he had stores in Kentucky and Indiana, and they wanted to buy my product again, which is all lies. And then the next thing I know on 2014 in February, Lewis came knocking on the door.

I was on the phone with my partner's wife in L.A., she was screaming because the DEA was at their place, and he was at my door at the same time. And I said, Lewis, I thought he was going to talk about the business. I said, I don't have time to talk right now. He said, yes, you do, and they pull out his badge. and then about 10 of his posse came in, raided my house, and found that money and took all the money on the banks. And again, one very good criminal or I would have buried some of it.

Had you been watching what was going on in the country with K2, like the raids, the gas stations, all the markets, especially in New York City, they were going down hard on that at the time. Exactly. And that's why I was quitting. I was a month or two away from quitting, but it's hard to quit when you got so many people wanting your product. to your service. So I was trying to wind down and Andrew, the guy in LA was going to take over the whole thing and I was going to be out of it. But again, it was just bad timing because they hit me about two minutes before I was actually going to completely retire from it. Now tell us about the business itself. Were you always just doing wholesale right off the bat or is this is it like weed dealing where you're doing hand-to-hand sales? Oh no, no, no. We only, when first we were selling to individuals. Like I said, I had the website. People call us and they'll buy a small

amount. They'll buy like one kilo or half a kilo or several bags. We had them in three grand bags and we were sold by piece or by bulk. As it got bigger, we quit selling to individuals and then we were just selling to distributors, bigger people. We had one big client in LA that was buying like $100,000 a week from us. And so then we quit selling the individuals. We just sold the distributors. But we never, it was nothing like a drug deal that we meet somewhere in a parking lot. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd.

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Tirerack.com, the way tire buying should be. Exchange drugs for money now. How did you find the customers, or how did the customers find you? I just think it just mustering from word to mouth to other people. We never did a lot of marketing and advertising. Raymond, the guy in L.A., once I got with him, he knew a lot of people. We just knew a lot of people. And when we was telling about our product, oh, it sounds interesting.

So we were selling them a kilo at a time. And some of them, like, again, some of the bigger ones, we'd sell 50 kilos at one time, you know. So a lot of money. How much does a kilo go for? That time is like maybe $1,000 somewhere along. I can't remember it's been so long. Which is way cheaper than regular marijuana. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And what does it look like? Just like we made it look just like marijuana. So it's taking up that much space. Yeah, kilos like that big. Wow. Yeah. And why would someone want that over the real stuff?

Well, it made you feel about the same, and then it doesn't show up on any P test. So you smoke hours, you couldn't tell it at that. time and that's probably the main reason I guess I'm not sure and had you guys heard that people started doing like uh meshing it with bad products like the PCP and and whatnot yeah and that that's one reason I was quitting because it was getting such a bad name it was on the news all the time and you know uh the calling it spice and whatever it was and and people going crazy and our product didn't do that to you but a lot of other people's did and I don't know why

anybody would want to try that or any product made you crazy like that. But no, that's one reason why I was going to quit. And, again, just bad timing when Lewis came along. How did it get the name K2? K2 is like the second largest mountain, I believe, and just so it's a high. And it was how it was. That's how it got the name? I was always curious why they call a K2 in prison.

And I've heard Spice before. Right. I know it's popular more in like the gas stations and stuff that would call it spice. Right. But K2 is what the terminology I'd hear in prison. Right, because it's a high mountain. It's high. What interested you in this business, aside from the money, because you were someone that never did drugs, wasn't into it?

You know, why would you be drawn to a business like that that's so different than real estate? The potential of making fast money. I mean, it was a potential there at that time. It was just amazing how much. people wanted it and pay for it. So, you know, again, I was making, you know, sometimes 50,000 a week. So it was just good fast money. If the market never crashed and you were presented this business, would you still have done it? Probably not. Probably not. I mean, you know, it's hard to say what I would have done then from now. But I'm always open to opportunities and things like that. You know, with, and I'm nonstop.

had all the money I was moving my plant from Indianapolis to Phoenix and that's my daughter Misty the one that admitted suicide she was going to run that for me and she did for a while then that's when I moved to LA with Raymond and made a deal with him but in the meantime we had the warehouse in Indianapolis and a friend of mine had a recording stool in his basement and he asked me what we're going to do with the warehouse and I said I you know he's well let's just record

make a recording studio if you look on YouTube you can still see a lot of I had a state of an art recording studio and I had a green screen probably one of the largest around I could have put all the Colts football players in front of the green screen

it was like 80 foot this way and 80 foot that way and and then we did concerts promotions we did the record label had a lot of good artists on the record label and two night clubs, a limousine service.

This was all during the same time period of the K2 business. Right. So you're using that money to fund these new businesses? Exactly. So that's why all that got taken away when the DEA rated you because it was businesses. Well, I still had the business. I just sort of let them go because I wasn't dused about running,

doing that as much as I was. I probably could have kept that. They didn't really take those businesses. They took all my money in the bank, which then it's hard to run a business with no money. And I think like your situation, he was trying to create money to keep another business afloat. You're taking good money and putting it with bad money,

and that's a recipe for disaster. Exactly. Taking good money and putting it to pay bad bills. It's just you can never get ahead. That's why my club was successful when I finally owned that second one to do the concerts. Right. But you can never get ahead because you had so much past debt.

And no capital. Like running a business now with, capital and cash flow is way better. Yeah, there's stress that comes with it, but it's so much easier than running a club or any type of business with no capital. If you're underfunded, you're in trouble. I mean, I remember times taking ticket money while customers were coming in and running next door to buy water, Red Bull and soda because we had nothing in the coolers and putting it in there, icing it down just to get through the night. I had nothing, you know. Right.

It was just crazy. Selling off refrigerators. to pay security and it was bad. Now, how did you guys run the business financially? Were you paying taxes? Did you have accounting? Oh, yeah. I had an accountant. His name is Kurt.

We had everything legit. I paid the taxes, except for in 2014 when they raided me, this was in February. I hadn't paid those taxes yet, but I had the money to pay the taxes. And this is where I didn't do a very good job with the attorney I selected. I had money to pay the taxes, and he should have seen the taxes were paid that time. So after they took all the money, then the IRS came back and says, you owe taxes on the money they took. So it seems like they're double dipping there, right?

You know, the government takes the money, but then the IRS wants to pay taxes on the money they took. So I've got a house in Inde that's right now there is a tax lien on it because of what they took. took, it's going to hopefully drop off soon. But that's sort of not right. My attorney and other attorneys advise me that they could have just easily got rid of that and not did that because they took all the money as well. But at the time, I wasn't thinking much about money. I was thinking how much time I'm going to spend in a prison camp.

And I didn't realize a prison camp was going to be so easy. I thought it was going to be like, hey, I'm in there with Bubba, you know. and it's not anything like what I thought it was going to be like. So this whole time you were operating this business up until people started getting busted, you thought it was completely legal because you were paying the taxes, the finances were good, and everything was on the up and up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the only thing that I was in the gray area was the powder that we were buying from China

once they started banning one specific part of a normal glacier or whatever it is, and we'll quit that and get another one, then they'd ban that one. So I was running out of those, so that's why I was getting ready to quit. But that other thing else was ran like a business and taxes and, you know, bookkeeping and everything else. When they banned a product, would you pull all the product that had that banned item in it? Yes, we would. So you never let it get to the streets?

Actually, I remember one time we had quite a... a bit and we burned it. So I didn't want to put anything. It was illegal out on the road. So you had the best legal intentions the whole time operating this business? Yep. What about permits? Did you need any permits licensing, anything like that, like normal dispensaries or plants would operate? No, we didn't need anything like that. Is that because there's a loophole with some... Evidently, I mean, there was never any mention of any permits or anything like that that I know of. Now, the factory you built, did that have, like, employees and yeah we had uh like in l.a we had uh I don't know 15 20 employees full time yeah and same way

within in Indy we had 15 20 full time we pay taxes and had payroll and everything just typically did everything business what does the factory look like and how do you even find people that know how to do this well it was you know it's like not really a factory it's just a warehouse a big empty space and we had tables set out and we had a line going down that you know you put the ingredients in and finally get the point that it mixes and dries and then we have another section over it where they're taking the scales and putting three grams in each bag or we had some six gram bags that kind of thing so just like a little simile line how do you make the perfect recipe or how do you even find the recipe to make it with um you're not right now i'm not really sure because

It's been such a while, but we had it down to how much grams of each product would be in each bag, where, again, you could take that powder that we use and put more in it to make it more of a feeling, but we didn't do that. We wanted to keep it at the same level all the time. Did you know if there was dangers if you guys messed up a batch or anything like that? Would someone get sick? I never heard of anybody getting sick in any of ours. So when you finally got raided, was that the first time you ever realized that this could be a crime?

What was going on? Well, again, I always thought lately at the end of that when they started banning the substance, you know, I was getting no, I'm in a gray area. And so that's why I was getting ready to quit. So when they actually raided me, you know, he came in. And again, they were very cordial. and I was very cordial, but he said, you know, they sort of scare you. You know, I'm going to get you,

and we're going to go after your family. We're going to go after your mom and your dad. You know, everybody's going to pay. But luckily, they never went after anybody with me. And they never even talked to my wife. My wife's never was never, she was at work that day. So from that point on, they never talked to my wife or anybody else, just me because I was very cooperative.

and um but i didn't you know i still didn't think i was doing anything legally actually they said i had a product called x rl 11 in my products which is another normal glature of the uh powder that we buy but i had never bought that i'd never even heard of it now i don't know if uh uh Andrew in L.A. had bought it and put it in there i don't know if he did he never towed me but that's what they said, but they convince you that, you know, and after that, I never heard from them again. I just got a letter one day, I said you're supposed to report to Ashland, Kentucky, federal prison camp on this day. I did go to sentencing, and I got to four years. But after that

point, the prison camp was pretty simple. So you didn't try to fight it at all. You knew you were going to plead guilty and you let it play out with through your lawyer? Correct. Why didn't you want to fight it? Typically, what I heard, that if you try to fight it, you're going to spend more time. You know, I just don't think it would have been worth it. I think it's the best to do a plea and take your chances to that way. How did your wife feel about your arrest and possible prison sentence at the time?

Well, she was definitely upset. I mean, she loved it when we were making all that money. But, you know, she was upset. And, you know, it's like there for a while we love each other, but don't really like each other, if you know what I mean. And so when I got out, you know, she moved out of the house, and I stayed in the house. And we're still good friends, but it was a cordial separation and divorce.

How are you feeling after that arrest? You're someone that's never been arrested before in his life. You know, this is a whole new experience for you. What's going through your mind? I'm always a positive person. I didn't let it bother me that much. I had like once I finally went to the sentencing and I said I had four years. And then I had like 30 days before they would call me and tell me to show up.

I was still just calm. The only thing I was worried about, like it says, I didn't know what to expect when I got to the prison camp. And now I do, and now I can share that with other people. That's why right now I have a charity called Rescue Success, and what we want to do is help other people that go into the justice system for during and after prison, let them know what to expect and things like that,

as well as help on other people. And I do that. We put on concert. I'm going to get back into the concert business and put it on concerts. At each concert, I work with another charity called Cars for Heroes, and we give cars that needy veterans at the concert.

I've given cars away with Gene Simmons, the mayor of Indianapolis, the governor of Indiana, Lady A, Larry the Cable Guy, Ted Nugent. We do concerts, and like I said, at the concert, we'll give a car. And it's very emotional, and I've always had TV stations there.

So I don't stop doing things. How much time passed from the day you got arrested to the day you got sentenced to prison? I'd never been arrested. I've never been a handcuffs. Wow. It's a weird situation. When they came to the door there in February 2014, he just said, I'm Lewis. You know, I thought he was going to talk about his buying business from me, but he showed his badge.

And it came in. we sat down the table. Again, I don't think I was ever arrested, and I've never been in handcuffs. When they left, they just said, well, we'll see you later, and you'll hear from the courts. So then I got the letter to go to courts and sentencing,

I mean, going to this with my attorney. But that was February 14th, and I went to the prison camp, 2014, I didn't surrender until October 2017. So three years passed? Three years passed. Were there a lot of court hearings? No.

No court hearings at all? One court, one sentencing. So you found this lawyer who just handled everything without you even being there? Right. Let me take that back. We did go shortly after we did go to a couple, what it is, hearings. I don't know what you, I can't remember what you call it, just telling the story and asking and answering questions.

But that was only for like a couple. And then we went to the sentencing. And then that was in 2017 July or something like that. And then I went into the prison camp October 2017, I believe it was. There must have been like a bail hearing, though, when you first got indicted when they actually, you know, when the grand jury indicted you? I had, I don't recall that. No bail hearing nothing? Nope.

Maybe you waived your right to indictment and they... I may have. Again, it's been a while and it was pretty low key. Again, my attorney was pretty good on that kind of thing, but he should have been thinking more about the money as well. And again, I was thinking about what I'm going to do in prison time, because I had all the money right there to pay my taxes at that time, which... And they took a lot of the money that had nothing to do with it.

And that's what it had nothing to do with the synthetic marijuana business. I had money before. They took all that too. Now, why didn't they give you any of the money back? Why did they just seize everything? Well, that's why I should have been either had that attorney or got another attorney to make sure, hey, why take all this? Why take my wife's money when she had nothing to do with this?

And they did. And that's something I just didn't pursue. How much money did you have before you even? started the synthetic marijuana or did you lose it all because of the real estate crash no i really never lost much because of the real estate crash i did have a spec house uh i don't know how much money i had and i mean not a lot maybe i think a hundred thousand or something like that not two and a half three and a half million like i had before which is some people it's not a lot of money but that's a lot of money to me so the millions came from the marijuana business correct what's the

um profit on that like what was uh your overhead versus income Was it expensive to operate? Not really. I mean, no. I mean, the overhead was very low compared to the income and profits. I would think the product, I can't remember maybe 70%. And how much were you getting like percentage-wise because you did have the partner? When I took on the partner, we split the net profits after that.

Before then it was all me. I took all the problems. I wanted to get the partner, then I was going to sell him out and I was going to get out and sell to him and I was going to get complete out of the business. So the profit was high enough that even splitting at 50-50, there was still enough revenue to go around. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Great business. Oh, yeah. I don't know. He bought a Lamborghini. He had all kinds of Rolexes. I think he had two Lamborghinis and some other cars. Were you living a fun, flashy lifestyle? I was not.

He was. my life style stayed about the same i'm always even after the day they took all the money and and we found out our bank accounts were all cleaned out i told peggy i said you know we can't change our lifestyle we went out to dinner that you know my daughter came over we our lifestyle never changed before or after and still hasn't so what's it like to just open your bank account you know a couple hours before you have millions of dollars, everything's good, and then you open it, and it's gone. It was very heart broken to see all that. But I just, you know, there's nothing you can do about it, so I didn't worry too much about it. You know, if I made it before, I can make it again.

What did you do for money between the time they seized it and the time you went to prison? How did you guys survive? Well, I still had a little bit of the, you know, the music business, and then I'm always good at construction and things like that. So I've been, even at that time, I flipped houses before and got loans to build a house or rehab a house and flip it. So I did that before I went to the prison camp. So you were still able to get loans and everything like that? Yes.

Was your name put through the mud at all in your community or was this pretty private? Well, it was. I mean, it was in the newspaper. I think it was on the table. TV. The thing of it is that no reporter ever talked to me, but when you read articles about me and other people, I'm associated with other people that I didn't even know. I was even associated with Jared the subway guy. Why? Because I guess he got involved in a little bit of this, some kind of trouble. And I don't know why I'm associated with him whatsoever, because I never

meant the guy. But he was in prison by the time this all happened. No, I think it was After. Oh, because didn't he go in like 2011 or 2012? 2010 maybe? Because he's getting out, like next year. Is it getting out next year? Yeah, I think next year the year after. I think it's 2026.

Yeah, maybe it was 2012. Yeah, I was still in high school when that scandal happened. You were? Yeah, I was in high school, yeah. My daughter got married and we had a big wedding, and he was doing a rehearsal right next door to us. And I guess one of the guys that was working with him was involved in. But anyway, I was never questioned, never saw a reporter from the newspaper, TV, or anything.

But they put things in there I associate with people I don't even know. Never met. Most articles, and the best part, what they do, this is how they really get you is they write these articles and they say they reached out to you. What they'll do is they'll try to call some random phone number. They hope you don't answer so then they could publish saying they denied to comment or requested not to comment. Right. So stupid. It is. Now, on the day you surrendered to prison, how old were you? 69. 69 years old. You had never been to prison your life. Oh, no. No, I've never been in trouble my life, never been to prison or jail, just, you know, you never, like one of my videos, like,

I've got out there that you never thought at 69 I would be in trouble the law. Never thought at 69, I'd be in trouble of the law. Never thought at 69. I'd be in a prison camp, but here I was. Now, you had mentioned before that you thought prison was going to be like, you know, seeing Bubba all of this. What was your expectation of prison? Where did you get that expectation from? Like the Bubba stuff? Well, I guess when you see TV shows or movies, you know, I never thought about a prison camp being something less than a regular prison. So, you know, that's the only thing that scares you. a little bit when you say you're going to prison, you know, what's going to happen when you're in prison. Now, Andrew, the guy, he went to a medium security prison.

So it's probably like that there. But in a prison camp, and you were in a camp as well, right? At the end, yeah. Yeah. I mean, for the last year in the prison camp, I had my own car there. I was a town driver. Oh, you were the town driver? I was a town driver.

That's probably the only one in there with the driver's license. I don't know. But I would go to take inmates to the doctor's office, eye doctors, or take them to home or where I was taking them. And I'd figure out a way to go to Wendy's and McDonald's about every day.

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That's funny. Well, I'm in a prison camp. So what were the final charges that you plet out? to that you were sentenced on. Controlled substance and money laundering. So the money laundering, they said, because of the new businesses you opened with it? I guess. I never could understand exactly what money laundering meant and how it is because I was doing everything.

I thought legal by the books, but that's how they charged me with a controlled substance and money laundering. Yeah, I was hit with money laundering too. I think everybody's going to hit with money laundering. Yeah, because it has to do with, like, ill-gotten gains just for purchases. If it's sake of bad money and you buy a Coke with that bad money, then, you know, it's money laundering. It's way different than what you'd expect with drug dealing and stuff. When I got charged with, I was like, I'm not selling drugs or anything like that.

Exactly. So tell us about your first day in prison. You show up there, you self-surrender. What's that like? Well, it was a little scary. My daughter and her husband. at the time and my wife we drove down from Indianapolis to Ashland we stopped in Cincinnati went to this big store I forget named Jungle Jims and we went to

Ashland in the Kentucky and spent the night the next day we drove over to the prison camp and and we all they all came in with me we met the guy is very nice and and and he was very cordial and then after they left and I stayed there. They stripped church me, which I guess they always do. And then from that point on, they had this guy come up and give me a tour of the camp.

You know, here's a commissary, here's the barbershop, and here's the tennis court, and here's the rec room, and here's a basketball court, and just sort of took me around everything. Here's the movie theater. And then back to where I'm going to, which is not a cell,

It was just two bunk beds in a little room, was blocked walls six foot high. Were you surprised with all the amenities there, like right off the bed? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think, well, I can live with this. That's not going to be too bad. What about the inmates? Who were you meeting at first, and what were they like?

There were, in where I was at, there's a lot of people in there that are professional people, doctors, attorneys, appraisers at that time. the appraiser business was that there was a lot of different professional guys and then there was your guys that's you know been in drugs and stuff like that or some people's came down from a median to the uh uh prison camp but that's why i wrote the book uh brilliant minds in captivity because i did meet a lot of interesting smart people there and i'm still friends with some of them today um and uh professional people and Some of them didn't even think they were doing anything illegal.

They just caught up in a conspiracy. What would you say is the most common trait or characteristic among all of these individuals that you were with, if there is one? I don't know if there is one. The ones that's in there for drugs or things like that, you know, they are doing something that might be illegal and they're in there to get rehab. but a lot of the professional people were probably like you and me that, you know, got into a position that they had to do what they had to do and didn't know there was really committing a crime. And some of them that gets caught up in the conspiracy.

Like when attorney, they took everybody in the whole office. It was like he said there was like 12 people they put into prison because if you're guilty, the guy next to you's got to be guilty. So they just take them all. Were the inmates in the guards treating you differently because you were older? No, most of the, no, I mean, I was pretty well respected, I think, maybe because I was older, and I'm, again, I'm an extrovert, but I'm not an out, you know, I sort of stayed calm and, and, uh, to myself quite a bit. And, uh, but I had a lot of friends in there. And the guards were all, they're all pretty nice. What would you say was the most interesting thing you, you witnessed, um, and saw in prison? Well, and I think we discussed this before, being in prison, there's probably not anything.

If you want something, you can still get it. One thing of a nighttime, the guards will come through and turn all the lights off and go after somebody that just got a whole bag of cookies and crackers and coax. And, you know, from outside somebody getting them in there. And so, you know, they'd have pizzas or hamburgers or whatever. that was pretty interesting, realize you're in a prison camp, and if you want to have beer, you can probably still get it. Yeah, I saw alcohol for the first time in a couple of years, and when I got to the camp, they weren't even making it.

They were just bringing in actual bottles. Oh, yeah. What was your daily routine like in the beginning before you became the camp driver? When I first got there, again, I was in construction business all my life, I, you take jobs and you get like 15 cents an hour or something like that. I can't remember what it is. But I took a construction job and they had houses outside the prison camp that the government was rehabbing.

So I took a job with doing that. But I had some leg problems and I had to quit that because it was just too hard on me. And eventually once I got out of there, I had both of my hips replaced. played a lot of basketball and tennis and all that kind of stuff. So after the construction job, I did that for like the first six, eight months, and then I took a job in the library, and that was just sitting in the library, pretty much doing nothing. And after that, they asked me if I wanted to be a town driver.

I said, sure, that sounds like fun. Well, actually, right before the timing, even when I was in the library, they wanted somebody to work at an animal clinic outside. And I did that for a little while too, going up and cleaning dogs, pens and stuff like that. But the town driver was the most fun part of it. Wait, they had an animal shelter, hire inmates to work there off the prison? Yes.

And was it a public one or a private one? No, it's a private, some guy owned it. I can't think of his name, but he had a dog shelter, and he got free help. Oh, so the inmates are free, and then just the prison system would pay you, like, the cents an hour. Right, right. And you would go there? And would a guard stay with you there? No.

You would just get dropped off? There was a time there. I was doing a little bit of that while I was still a town driver. So I'd go tell the guard, I'm going to go work at the dog pen, and I just drive the car over there. And you have to wear your khakis. I still wear my khakis and a t-shirt. Okay. And would you be able to get food, like, did the owner of the place

to hook you guys up at all? Oh, yeah. They brought in one time, a couple times he'd go get Mexican. And he's not really supposed to do that, but we did. Now, did they search you when you got back? Everything was very much. I'd never been searched. In the camp.

In the camp. Yeah, I noticed, like, even on visits, you just, they do a quick pat. There's no strip outs, whereas, like, in the last. low and higher. You get stripped out after your visit, but when you get to the camp, they don't strip you out. The only time I was ever stripped church was when I first got there, only time. So you had a pretty good prison experience? Yeah, not bad at all. So now tell us in more detail about the camp driver aspect of it when you got the job, what a day would be like and the food part. Well, as a camp driver, and you never know when they're going to have you go somewhere.

So it could be in the middle of the night. If somebody has an emergency or something like that, they'll disownounce over the PA. Town driver, report it up front. So I'd go up front and, okay, take Joe to the eye doctor. And I'd go from like Lexington, Kentucky is probably 100 miles away from Lexington. So I'd maybe sometime go to Lexington, or I'd go to Huntington, West Virginia, different places. or I'd take somebody to another city to halfway house. And they just call you in the middle of the night

or 2 o'clock in the afternoon, town driver reporter up front. And then one scary thing about it is, though, a couple times they'd give you a cell phone. But a lot of times they just say, here's a map quest, go. You know, I'm always wondering, okay, what I'm going to have? If I have a flat tire or car trouble, what do I do? You know, somebody think I'm going to escape from prison or something.

But nothing really ever happened, so I was lucky about that. But they just give you the keys and say, go. What kind of car was it? It was a Chevy, like a little van. I can't think of the name of it. It was a cheap car. Can't think of the name of it, but it was like a little van. And no GPS, just the MapQuest.

No GPS. The printout? Printout MapQuest. That's funny. Yeah. Did you ever get lost or? No. No, that would have been MapQuest worked pretty good.

And now would you have the people you're like say I know my camp driver when I got bringing the airport on the way out, I gave him the 30 bucks cash they gave me to bring my cell phone out that I had. Right. And because he would use that for the vending machine or to go stop somewhere where he was driving. Would you ask people for cash to hook you up? No, I never ask anybody, but they all all volunteer. That's a lot of times how I get the money. to do that because I'd take somebody to halfway house or somewhere else and they get their commissary money in cash like you did and first thing they say I want to go to McDonald's or Wendy's

or wherever and I said okay and I never ask them for it but they always bought me the sandwiches and then sometimes they'd just give me some cash as well so I had some cash to build up and when you're driving you're in your prison uniform too yes and you do you have to carry on your prison ID in in case you get pulled over or anything like that? I always had my driver's license with me. So I don't think about my prison ID, but I had driver's license. Were you ever afraid of getting caught? Like at a McDonald's?

I was. I was a little nervous about it, but. Never got caught. Never had issues. Never got. I mean, sometimes I get back, the guards are pretty nice. You know, they would sort of like joke, hey, how was Wendy's today? years. I'm like, I just saw, hey, great, and walk by them.

Wow. That's the best job, I think, in prison. Oh, it has to be the best job. Because you get out, you're doing things, you're always on call, and you're, it's a good job. How much would they pay you for that job? I don't really remember. I mean, it's very minimal. I said, what, 20, 30, 40 cents and out. I'm not sure. Not a whole lot. You know, it goes under your commissary. So. Out of the four years you got, how much? many you said two years you did i spent two and a half years and and i one reason it was cut

short because president trump uh did the uh cares act the cares act right so i got out short from the cares act and then uh about the last month is when covid hit and uh then i for the last month i couldn't drive because the covid hit and everybody was locked down pretty much and we had to wear the masks and everything. But then about a month into that's when I was released. What was COVID like at the camp? Because there's no cells, so it's kind of hard to lock people down. What was that? Yeah, what did that look like? They would come issue the mask, and every time we'd go out of our, I don't call it a cell, every time we'd go out of our room, we're just supposed to wear the mask, which was a pain.

So you were able to freely walk around the building still? Oh, yeah. And do rec and everything like that. Correct. So some people in hire facilities were actually locked in their cells and there was no movement. Right. Could be, yeah. But you guys couldn't have visits?

No visits. Did your family come visit you? Yes. Now, like I said, not during COVID. Because they didn't have any visits all during COVID. But my daughter and I had a couple other friends and my wife came often. It's interesting that your wife would end up divorcing you, but she still visited you in prison. Right. She probably knew she was going to divorce me all along, but she's still visiting me in prison.

It's about, I think it's like a four and a half hour drive from Indy to Ashland, Kentucky. So she must have had some love for you if she was doing that. She loves me, and I still love her. We just don't like each other. Wow. Do you think she was building resentment because you were in prison and she couldn't live the same lifestyle she once used to live? Could be. I don't know. It's it worked out for the best. I mean, I'm fine. I've got a lot younger girl now. You dog, man. Oh, I shouldn't say that. Did you, do you feel like those two and a half years won't buy fast? How would you describe it when you look back on it? Slow when I was there fast now. You know, it seems like it just, it went by so quick.

But when I'm sure when I was there, every day counted, you know, it was slow. But, um, I'm, I'm sure when I was there, every day counted in a slow, but, um, Um, it, looking back at it, I don't know where all the time goes at. Now it's been, what, five years since I've been out. Were guys doing K2 at the camp when you were there? Yes. Uh, this is interesting. Some of them, I didn't even tell them. Some of the guys knew. And they were so, wow, you did that. Yeah.

But were they smoking the K2 in the prison? Yeah. And how did you first find out about it? What was your reaction? I just hear other guys and talk about it. I didn't want to be any part of it being around them, but you'd hear about it. Were you surprised that it went on and that the guys were getting K2 in prison? Yeah, I was surprised of that or anything that they bring in prison, the beer or the whiskey or whatever.

I mean, I remember one night one guy was so drunk, you know, they came in and 3 o'clock in the morning and turned all the lights on and walked around and took him out and that's crazy. Yeah, and they would do the random breathalizers. too. Yeah. They would call people like I think every Friday and Saturday night they would call like four names randomly to do the breathalizers. They do that yeah. Yeah guys would get caught and then brought to the shoe and because there's nothing you could do in the moment once you're hit your hit. Yep. They would try to do mouthwash and stuff but it didn't always work. Right. Or do like a half blow or something depending what

would happen. I think the all time in there I think I'd had one little sip of a drink the whole time because the guy's a hair try this or something like that but i stay pretty clean i i never got any like a lot of the guys go to the shoe the hole for doing something stupid one guy had a hundred dollar bill sticking out of his pocket and he didn't realize it and the guard called him put him in the shoe so why do you need a hundred dollar bill in place i have no idea so stupid did you have any problems in there with anyone or did you get along with everyone i got along pretty much with They were one and I didn't have any problems. They probably looked at you like an OG and old had.

I was called that. OG. OG. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. All the older guys that would come in, they would call them old G. They were very respectful to them. Exactly. Never have any problems.

Uh-huh. Now, did you got supported financially from your family, or did you have to hustle to make money to survive in there? No, I didn't have to hustle. I mean, my wife, my daughter, they sent me commissary money when I needed it. and I didn't have any issues. Now when you get out, did you have probation at all? I did. When I got it, here's a funny story too.

When I got out, remember I told you I had hip problems in there, and I got out and I was on probation. And I went to the halfway house or whatever you call it, every week to report or two weeks what it was. But I was wearing an ankle bracelet. but I had problems with my hip. So I went to the doctor, and I forgot about my ankle brace and the surgery, and we go into the surgery. I really think we got to get this off. So we call him, he cut it off because he says, I'm not going to operate with that on there. I don't know why it makes a difference in everything.

And he took it off. But then after, and we told the people at halfway house or where I was in. probation officer I'm having surgery we got to take it off and it's okay take it off I'll put you new them back on when you get home so when I got home my leg was all swollen up from the surgery

but the girl come over and she put a new ankle bracelet on my leg she put it on the leg was all swollen up well after the swelling went down the ankle belt just falls off so I just lay it on my desk and go out wherever go places Luckily, I never got stopped or called, and I'd go back home.

It's like still laying on my desk. I didn't wear it for like a month. Was it a GPS one, or was it the one the ones where you put the box in it, and it's radar frequency or whatever? You know, I don't know. I think it's just a box because I've never, one time before that, I'd be out driving and it's been past my time, and they'd call me and says, you know, where are you at?

And I said, well, I'm on the way home right now or something like that. That's so funny. But my leg was swelling up so much that when the swelling went down, it was too loose. And I just pull it right off and lay it on my desk. You were playing with fire. You don't buy on hope. You study the label. At Azure, well, we support that.

Our commitment is simple. Tell the truth. Every ingredient listed, every amount disclosed. No proprietary blends, no guesswork. We go beyond organic and basic testing with comprehensive third-party verification. Take a look at what's in your cabinet. Then, visit Azure. Livingwell.com to shop and learn more. That's A-Z-U-R-E Livingwell.com. These products have not been

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Even the Jeep Grill or registered trademarks of XIAUS LLC. Because if you got pulled over, you would have went back to prison for escape. Yeah, you're right. I had one of my old bunkmates got out early during COVID and was put on the bracelet with still like two years left, and they jammed him up because I think he did something to it and it was off and he was able to get away with it. but he got caught outside. He got like stopped or something and he went back for like another year.

Wow. Luckily, that didn't happen. I didn't do it that often, but, you know. Did you have to like fill out a schedule or something with probation of what your day would be like? No. You were just, what was it certain times you were on home confinement for? Like you had to be. I had a work release.

I worked a couple of places for helping another friend and they'd let me go work for a few hours with him and then come back home. but I was called before and I'd call afterward and say, I'm home, and that's about it. And then basically, I never actually, once I got back out with, I never actually saw my probation officer. Talked to her on the phone. That was it. That was because it was probably COVID, right? And she said, I'm not worried about you, you know. Was it hard to readjust to life when you got home? Not for me. I'm sure it is for a lot of people.

So again, like I told you, my life still style didn't change and I didn't have any hard time to adjusting. Did people ask you a lot of questions about prison, friends, family? Oh, yeah. They were curious. Yeah, curious. And again, it's not like what I expected when I went there. But now if somebody asked me, you know, I know what to tell them, you know, especially

of a prison camp. Now, I don't know exactly what goes on in a medium or high security. charity but in the camps no big deal is it weird to now check off the box at your felon like whenever you're doing say you know loan applications business stuff because you are a businessman and you want your whole life without having to do that and now there's more obstacles not for me I think if somebody's younger doing a lot of things it would be obstacle in a way I haven't really had an issue with it I mean there's not too many places like when I get along for rehab or something like

that right now it's been long enough time and I haven't had an issue with that but you know I haven't been trying to get jobs and stuff like that and I know it's probably tough and some people younger guys when they get out and they want to go get a job or something and and they got this criminal record which to me if you serve your time then it should be done but you still got a criminal record and it probably makes it tough on a lot of people and I've heard even renting a house or buying a house or getting the jobs with a criminal record makes it tougher. What's your life like now? What do you do?

Well, I've still been flipping houses, but I'm getting back into the music business somewhat. I've got a concert coming up right now with Henry Lee Summer. He had some hits back in the 70s called I wish I had a girl that walked that way. If you look it up, Henry Lee's Summer. But I'm doing a concert at Harley-Davidson and Fisher's Indiana, and we're going to give a car away a needy veteran at 730 right before he goes on. And I'm going to do other concerts throughout the Midwest. Why do you like the concert industry? What attracts you to it?

You know, when I had all the money and I had the recording studio and the record label and putting on, it was just fun. I mean, I know a lot of national artists, and it's just fun meeting all of them and association with them. And it's fun and enjoy it. It's a risky business. and if you don't sell enough tickets or get enough sponsors, you might not have enough money to pay the venue an artist,

but we'll see. It's a very risky business. Exactly. People ask me all the time if I'd go back into it, and not unless I want to do it for free or like as a party. Not to make money, though. Right. Now, did you put on concerts and stuff like that?

Yeah, so I first started as a promoter at the club doing teen nights, made a bunch of money in there, like $15,000 a night cash once a month. From there, I went to the concert business, because I thought that was a natural next step, and that's where I lost everything. Doing it at different venues, because I think the other part of the problem with the concert business is you're not creating a brand.

Like, if you own a venue, you can, if the show loses money, you're still building up the venue. Like, it's still somewhere where people could go. You're taking emails. You're doing all of these things, and you're building a brand. Whereas unless you're forming a promotional company and really spend a lot on branding,

once you lose money on a show, you don't really have anything. You know, you don't have anything to show for it. It's just on to the next show. So we were going to different venues, colleges, these arenas cost so much money. And the artists for a one-off show, unless you're booking, that's why Live Nation makes money because they're able to book one act for a cheaper rate at, you know, 20 different venues. If you're doing a one-off show, when the artist isn't on tour, it's a lot of money. Exactly.

And we weren't dealing with any event insurance or anything. Right. It was really bad. One thing that I'm trying to incorporate is the charities, my rescue success charity. in Cars for Heroes. And I'm trying to make it an emotional event that we're going to give a car away to a veteran at this contract.

So I'm trying to make that the focal point of helping somebody else. So you're going to go there and listen, enjoy good music, and sometime we're going to have hamburgers and hot dogs at this event, and we're going to give a car away to an idiot veteran. So that's the cause that I'm trying to put forth with that. So what do you think is the learning lesson here?

Oh, I'm sorry. That's a good ringtone. Yeah. I like that. I'm so sorry. No, you're good. It happens all the time. I thought I had it off.

So what do you think is the learning lesson here from your story? What did you learn? What's the takeaway? I think you should be very cautious of anything that you do because there might be some other people watching. And there's a lot of people that want to see you fail. And I think no matter what, business you get into, just make sure you've got all your eyes and tees crossed and make sure

you do the right thing and check with attorneys, the counselors, or, uh, so. And, uh, Rogers got spunk. I'm so sorry. No, it's okay. Now it's off. Um, but, uh, you know, I think it's just being very cautious what you, what you're going to do and make sure you check all, everything to make sure you're doing it right and definitely don't want to do anything illegal. If you could do it all over again, would you go back into that business again? Probably. Well, and again, you're always hindsight. Would you do things differently? Probably would. You know, again, I wouldn't have got into it if it was illegal to begin with.

and I was getting out because it was a gray area. And I got raided before I actually got out. Of course, I was going to quit because I didn't want to do anything illegal. And the products I was buying was not illegal. But I knew the time was coming and I had to get out of there. But the thing of it is, like I said, not a very good criminal because I had all that money and I never hid any of it, never buried any of it. because I didn't think I was doing anything. It was in my banks.

And the government comes in and takes it. After going through this experience, do you look at people that went to prison differently? Like, I think before I went to prison, I would think that everyone that's in prison, aside from wrongfully convicted individuals, but like intentionally set out to commit a crime and that's why they're in prison.

And the system is so just that, you know, they're only going to put up the, at truly evil people into prison. What's your perspective on it before versus now? Well, actually before, I probably never had a lot of thought about it. But now that I was in there, I realize that the justice system is injustice. There's a lot of people, I don't even think they need prison camps. I mean, it's so stupid for somebody being in a prison camp that so petty crimes, if they're a crime,

They should be paying it in other ways. They can do community service. You know, the judges can give a lot of different sentencing as the community service and stuff like that for other people. Because putting somebody in a prison camp, taking them away from their families is just not good. But I understand why. Because every time there's a prison camp, there's a prison next door. They ought to have all those people to prison camp to maintain the prison next door and stuff like. That's why we're there.

That's why they work. So they need that. The judges and prosecutors, you know, they put a feather and a half to send somebody over there to make sure everything is taken care of. But it's very stupid, and I do feel like there's a lot of people that should go to prison and intentionally committing crimes. They should go to prison. But there's a lot of people that should not be in prison because of what they may or may have not done legal or less. illegally. Well, so Roger, I appreciate you coming on the show today, man. Well, thank you, Ian. I appreciate it. And again, my books, guilty to proven innocent, is on Amazon or anywhere. Books are sold. And look,

rescue success.org is my website. Another website is Cars for Heroes.org. And actually, a record label, deserrectors.com. And we'll have the links to your books and everything you have going on in the description in this episode. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Roger. and safe travels back. Appreciate it.