Locked In with Ian Bick - I Moved Kilos of Heroin for $30 Million+ a Year — Then the Feds Gave Me 10 Years in Federal Prison | Frankie Rosario

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

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Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-2194. Please play responsibly. My guest today is Frankie Rosario, a man who grew up in Florida in a good family, excelled academically and was heading toward a career in medicine, before his cousin offered him $15,000 a week to handle the logistics and money laundering for our family. a heroin operation, moving kilos and generating $30 to $40 million a year, using his father's flooring business as a front. Then, the feds caught up with everything and handed him 10 years in federal prison. I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and I basically spent the vast majority of my young adult life in West Palm Beach, Florida.

So I went to elementary, middle, and high school in West Palm Beach, Florida. Why do you guys move? Back to Connecticut? No, no. Or to Florida? Well, I moved when I was like two. So my parents made some sort of decision, whatever reason.

I think it was for my dad to have some sort of work. He was in the floor covering industry. That actually plays into my story later. So, yeah, he was down there and, you know, supporting a family. Floor covering is actually a great business. You can make some money there. If you stayed in Hartford, I bet you would have a totally different upbringing.

Yeah, I think a lot of Connecticut, you are subject to the winds of the weather. You know, Florida is great because you have sports or you have this or even if you don't have money. You can go outside. You can go to a park. You know, there's a lot of air and open spaces. And I think that people I grew up in those types of environments are generally just a little bit happier. Do you think you had a good upbringing? I would say that I did, yeah.

My parents were totally supportive. I don't have that story, you know, where I was abused or I had issues or my parents had addiction issues. You know, and I always feel strongly for those people that have had to endure that. My story is a little bit more, I want to say logical. I realize that I had certain opportunities. We'll get into that. But no, my beginning life was pretty good. I went to a normal middle school.

I went to some parochial schools. I graduated from Wesleyan. So my, you know, growing up was pretty average. What's a parochial school? Procule school is like a Catholic school. It's like a private education school. Was your family very religious? No.

But the school system in Florida is vastly, like, worse than Connecticut. Connecticut is actually extremely good public school system. In Florida, you really want to be in either a program, or you want to be in a private school. So I was classified as exceptionally gifted when I was in the second grade. So I was able to take some programs and certain schools with sports and things of that nature. I was able to get scholarships to go there because otherwise my parents wouldn't have been able to afford that. Did you know you were gifted yourself or was that something people just told you?

No, there's an actual psychological test that you can take. So I was put in front of a couple of psychologists. And then this was second grade. Yeah. And then every couple of years, they have you, you know, redo that. I know up through eighth grade that that was a thing. I was always like in separate classes and wasn't really a part of the general overall population of my schools, except for like eating, I want to say chow, like eating, wreck, you know, things of that nature.

But yeah, we were always kept separate for some strange reason. How'd that make you feel as a kid? It can be a bit isolationist. I'm naturally outgoing. I'm definitely an extrovert, and I love talking to people. So I made friends. I did sports. So sports was like a lifeline, and I think it is for a lot of people.

So I made a lot of friends, and I was personally okay with it. I did a lot of stuff outside of school, you know, with people that I was around my environment. So for me, it was pretty easy. But I know some of the other kids definitely had an issue with that. Yeah, it was odd to me that. you would take maybe six or eight kids and kind of isolate them. But maybe there's some experiment that I didn't know about. If we asked you as a kid what you saw your future being, what would that be?

I was very heavily invested in the medical field. So I had a family friend. He was my best friend's mother. She was a nurse anesthetist. And she had pushed me heavily towards like anesthesia. So for a long time, I felt like my path would be medicine, hopefully anesthesia if I matched it. But that was where I pretty much felt like my direction was going to go,

especially with the, you know, what I was being offered. Why did that make you passionate? Anesthesia? Yeah. Well, medicine itself, I'm a logical person. And like computers and people, things that have like logic functions, I don't know. To me, they just make sense.

That altering of consciousness with anesthesia always kind of like, you know, touched a little funny bone. It was just something that I was, I was interested in, and she made it seem very interesting. And, like, helping people was very worthwhile. I stopped talking to them, not talking to them, but, like, people move. We go to different schools and things like that,

probably around 6th, 7th grade. And that's kind of, like, when I stopped really thinking about medicine and more just thinking about schools in general. But that's where I was when I was younger, for sure. wish you spent your teenage years differently, maybe not as studious or focused on school? I definitely had fun. Growing up in, like, in West Palm, we definitely had, like, roller skating events. We had locked in events, you know, where you, like, stay in, you know, inside of a ice skating rink or things of that nature. So, you know, the public schools that I did go to for

the lower part of my schooling was, you know, they had activities. You know, we had a ton of sports. So it was studious in one respect, but definitely had a lot of fun activities. So I don't know. I honestly am appreciative of my parents and having the opportunity to grow up in Florida as a youth. I think it was a lot better. What do you think was the most important value they instilled the new as a kid? My parents? Yeah. That's a good one. You know, values change, and I mean, I'm 48 years old, so, you know, going back a perspective, maybe like four decades, I would want to say a lot of it would probably be loyalty with my dad. My dad was always like, you know, this is us, this is our, you know, we're together, like family,

that type of thing. So if I had to pick a solid one, I would say that for sure. Do you think young Frankie would have ever envisioned himself in prison later on in life? Possibly. I think that being someone who has an aberrant psychology, that I definitely, you know, saw a different path for myself. It wasn't something that I glorified necessarily or, you know, wanted to push my path towards. But, you know, I remember watching like, I don't know, I think New Jack City or something like that. And I was like, oh, that seems pretty cool.

I mean, but as a kid, you know, it's definitely not something I'd recommend doing. But, you know, I was smart enough to understand that life has myriad complexities that I wasn't sure exactly which path I'd end up on. Did you ever get into trouble as a kid? Yes, occasionally. I didn't have anything crazy, like, you know, harming animals or anything like that. But, yeah, or bedwetting. Not a serial killer.

But there's, yeah, I had, I definitely had some issues. See, I learned how to game the system. So here's the thing about Florida. Teachers receive bonuses based on test scores. I'm a gifted student. I'm skewing the scores. So if you piss me off, I'll just skip test day. That got coasted me through school.

So basically I could do whatever I wanted. So that was kind of a start maybe of some criminal thinking characteristics because I was learning how to game the system. But not to the point where you're ever getting arrested, say, as a kid. I got arrested as a juvenile one time. I got arrested as a juvenile, a couple of friends and I decided it was a good idea to throw a brick. at a bus, a moving bus. Yeah, placey glass exploded. That was not smart.

You know, kids, again, that's, you know, the stupidity of youth. But yeah, I did have some brushes with the law when I was young. I did some community service for some fights, things of that nature. So I was, yeah, it was there. It wasn't horrible. But it was kind of brushed under a little bit because I did so well in school. So. I feel like a lot of kids can relate to that, too.

even kids that later grow up to become cops have those types of moments in their childhood? Yeah, I think any, you know, in quotation marks, normal childhood is going to have some indications of, you know, good, bad, you know, breaking the law, you know, what's the average? They say every person commits three to five felonies a day. They just don't know it, something like that. But yeah, I don't, I wouldn't say that I thought like I want to be a criminal, but I also was okay. I was fluid with certain things. I knew that from a very young age. What were your thoughts on money as a kid? It was something that I felt was a tool. You know, I wanted things. I always

felt like, you know, in order to get these things that I had to have money. So what's the most expedient remedy to that? It wasn't working. I mean, You know, as a 15-year-old, I had like two jobs. I was a bus boy and I was a, you know, a food runner expediter. And, you know, I've had several, like, you know, minimum wage jobs. And I don't begrudge that for anybody. But, like, I was just like, this is not a direction that I want to move in for myself. It just wasn't going to work for me.

So was college always the game plan? It was. It was the game plan. I think that kids today are definitely pushed towards college. and I think we're learning a little bit more with the emergence of AI especially, that that may not be the best route. Trades are actually going to, you know, increase exponentially. But for me personally, bringing it back to me, yeah, college was definitely the route.

You know, work with my mind, not my hands. Why, Wesleyan? Good school. My mom liked it. She lived in Middletown, Connecticut as a youth. You know, it was a, you know, a liberal arts school, just something that she would. wanted. So I was like, okay, it didn't matter to me. It was more my mom's doing. And you majored in liberal arts? No, I was actually biology, psychology. So I had two, yeah, double mastered there.

But by that point, you were off looking to be in the medical field? Well, yeah. So the biology kind ran with that. And then psych was just, it's just an interesting concept. I mean, you deal with that all the time, just people's psychology. It's fun. Talk to people. That's what makes me an extrovert. I enjoy talking to people. I feel like each person is a puzzle and I got to put. them together. That's just how I think. Yeah. I think I'm more like introverted, but in this setting, I'm extroverted. Well, do you think that's why you enjoy doing this? So you're able to get that side of, well? Yeah, I think it's fascinating seeing how a person evolves. That's like the psychological point.

You know, you look at where they come from in their childhood and then where they are present day and that journey to getting there. To me, I think that's fascinating. That's exactly what psychology is. That's the puzzle. How did this circumstance or event change or affect this. So it's, you know, cause and effect. It's pretty interesting. How long did you do at Wesleyan? I was there for four years total. And then you graduated and did you go off to another school? No, no, I didn't attend graduate school. At that point, I was already kind of dipping and dabbing into the criminal aspect, the case that I eventually caught. So that was becoming, schooling was becoming less and less of a priority. I was just blessed that I was, I was just able to attend

school and it kind of came to me pretty easily. So I didn't really, um, um, exert myself. And, uh, I didn't put a lot of effort into it. So describe for us that transition into criminal dealings? So I was, I was, uh, going through something personally. I was going through my first divorce. Um, I had a cousin, uh, great guy, loved him to death. He somehow stumbled to this day, I'm not exactly sure how he progressed to this point. But he was, he had a pretty large heroin distribution network. This is all a part of my open case files. You know, I've been convicted of this. And he wanted someone that could handle that he, A, trusted, B, could handle logistics, you know, things of that nature. So I was kind of like a brainy guy. So, you know, it was a large

amount of money. And it was a lifestyle. It was, you know, Florida. It was Miami. It was, you know, there was a lot of aspects to it at that time. I was a young gentleman. So I was like, yeah, let's go. Like, this is great.

I thought, I don't know about you, but like for me, I knew about state time. I had, for me, the feds was like John Gotti. Yeah, like, you know, cartel stuff. I had no idea at any point in time that I would be a federal inmate. And now this was towards the end of your college days? Yes, yes. So you were married young too. Yes.

So I was married. I have a son. My son was born when I was 21. So yeah. So I was young at that point. So when he gives you this proposition, what's the first thing you think about? Well, I mean, it didn't take me long to put the numbers together. Like, you know, he was my cousin.

So, you know, I was like, just run the numbers by me. And I was like, oh, okay. And then I was like, you know, quickly like, you know, safety school, like, what's the deal here? Gave me the information and it, you know, the cost benefit for me was okay. So I ran with it. And how much are we talking? I don't. My personal cuts were somewhere around like $15,000 a week, somewhere in that range.

Insane amount of money. At that time especially, yeah. So this is like, you know, 99 to 2005. I think, yeah, we got busted in 2005. so for a long time, yeah. It was, it was, it's an extremely lucrative thing as far as money. What exactly has your role? What do you have to do? Oh, so basically, you know, import, distribute, like, you know, pick up things, bring them from point A to point B, way, distribute, you know, there's different workers that get different amounts,

packs, you know, that type of thing, collect money, make sure things are as they should be. you know, so more of like an administrative type role. Did you realize his operation was that big when you signed on? So it expanded. You know, that type of world, especially in South Florida, if something falls, there's something to prop it up immediately. So as there was issues that were occurring with others, we expanded. So initially it was it was something that was, you know, maybe him by himself and then it

turned into him and three people, him in five people, him and ten people, him and, you know, I think my conspiracy wound up being 108 co-defendants I had. So it became this huge, you know, a network of people running up and down the East Coast. When you signed on, are you weighing the pros and cons? I was absolutely weighing the pros. I don't think I was weighing the cons so much. It sounded good. Again, I'm thinking I've been in Florida. I'm educated. I'm thinking if I get busted for these things, what is it really going to run? I had no idea that this was going to be decades of time. And I had no idea.

There was one point where I saw somebody at a Walgreens and they were telling me that the feds had actually come and investigated them. And I was like, I looked at that person like they were totally crazy. 20 years later in Rush, I was like, wow, I should have probably took a look at that. But again, I'm thinking, you know, we're, you know, a family-operated organization. We're insulated. But no, yeah, they will come and get you.

Do you think if you were told at that time that, yeah, you can make 15 grand a week, but the penalty could be 10 years in prison, you still would have done it, or would you avoided it? You know, that's such a difficult thing, you know? You know, it's that, hey, you make all this money. You know, there's a lot that comes with that, too. It's not just the money. It's, you know, vehicles. it's jewelry, it's lifestyle, it's, you know, getting access to people, places, and things.

So there's a lot, there's that. I was also young, you know, frontal lobe not developed. So, I mean, not excusing anything. Maybe, maybe. That's something that I've thought about extensively, especially now that I'm nearing 50, would I have? I definitely don't want to do the time, but like, was it worth it? I don't know. I don't know.

I'm still in there on the air on that. that one. Now, is it just one type of drug you guys are moving or is it multiple? Yeah, no, we were moving heroin extensively. That's it. Just, just that. I mean, obviously, there was small quantities of other stuff. But yeah, it was our conspiracy was for heroin trafficking. And what was the market for heroin at this point in time? In South Florida. Or you're also moving it up here. Well, yeah. I mean, extensive. I mean, it's, it's, so it was an issue in like, the 60s, 70s, it kind of died out for a while. And then it made a huge comeback in like the 90s with the opioid crisis with the Oxycontin and all that. So all of a sudden it blew up. You have this

whole generation of soccer moms. You have lawyers, doctors because, you know, they're, you know, Pfizer's telling them, oh, Oxycontin, take an 80, you'll be great. Yeah, we'll do that for three months now you have a drug problem okay well your doctor titrate you and he's telling you i can't write you a script anymore and you're sick in bed shaking and your wife's like what the fuck's going on and you're like well what fixes this oh heroin so they kind of went hand in hand um so at that time it was it was huge it was a huge thing as curious as you were back then did you try the drugs at all yeah absolutely Yeah, I've tried a few different substances for sure. I don't recommend that either.

But yeah, I mean, I was younger. Can't blame everything on youth. But adventurous, in a lifestyle, doing a lot of things. You know, it was that type of thing. You know, we're making a lot of money. We're driving nice cars. We live in nice homes. You know, we're around a lot of people, affluent people,

celebrities, you know, sports stars. It's Palm Beach, Florida, basically. So you never know who you're going to run into. So it was definitely a lot of pressure for different things. Pressure to do this, pressure to do that, pressure to use substances, for sure. Do you think you understood the weight of what you were selling, the consequences of it for people? No. I did and I didn't.

I wasn't super involved with, you know, seeing people, you know, with the issue. I was, you know, more involved with distribution of it, so people that were distributing to others that were distributing people that used. But, I mean, obviously, I was aware of it. I do have a family member that had an issue with it. Apparently, the feds, the way they look at it is like every kilo that you sell is like two deaths or something. So that's why they take it so seriously. You know, I wasn't thinking about it like that. I wasn't thinking about trying to harm people.

I wasn't thinking about, to be completely honest, succinctly. Somebody was going to do it. May as well be us. And that was it. That's how I looked at it. That's how I slept at night. Now, where was the heroin coming from? Ooh.

So that's funny. I actually learned a lot of this when I caught my case because the feds are nothing but thorough. There was coming from Costa Rica. It was coming from Venezuela. It was coming from Panama. It was coming from over that way. Now, these are cartels. individuals?

There was definitely some individuals in that. I know that there was one, I obviously didn't know this guy. They lured him to Puerto Rico, like under some false pretense, kidnapped him, brought him to Miami. Like this was the type of case

that that was. I didn't even know they could do things like that, but I guess apparently he was on American soil that he was legal to like grab. So yeah. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. I mean, I felt very bad for him.

He's never set foot on American soil. They lure him over here, throw a black bag over his head, and bring him to Miami. So that's not good. Now, your parents, they must, you know, see your new lifestyle, see that you're not working a regular job. What are they saying? During that time? Yeah, when you first start. And you're fresh out of college.

You know, my mom is an amazing woman. She's a very strong woman. but she's also a very blind woman when it comes to her kids. Like, you know, people know, see, hear things. Like, I mean, obviously I wouldn't bring anything to her home or things of that nature. But I had a younger brother. He was involved. He passed away.

But, yeah, she wasn't, I don't, it wasn't talked about. It was just, it was just swept under the rug. I think as far as familial matters were concerned. And what about your dad? I don't think to this day, he may have, he may have mentioned it twice, maybe in my entire life. He doesn't, we just don't talk about it. That's, that's how he copes. But I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't define me. Like, you know, I, I choose not to be defined by the worst thing I ever did. I choose to be defined by what better things I can do. Do you think he's angry about it?

Um, no. I mean, I literally just saw him. So we're still, we're still close. My mom, my dad, um, they live like right by me. I don't think he was angry. No, I think he was, it was, well, at one point it was literally like my whole family. I had like 37 family members in federal prison at one point. So it's kind of like, you know, all, and we were all kind of cousins or one was like an uncle. So it was either his brothers or his brothers or sisters' children.

So it was like, you know, what are they going to say? It wasn't, oh, your son's the bad seed. Your son's the bad seed. We were all inside. So it was just, it was interesting the way that our structure kind of fleshed out and wound up being so many family members. What was the cover story to this operation? So that goes back to the floor covering operation. So my parents had moved back to Connecticut and they had a successful floor covering business in Lake Worth, Florida.

So we had taken that over because it was easier to funnel money through. So it was actually called discount flooring, something very simple. You know, and we were, you know, doing floors begrudgingly. Like, people would come in and it would be like give us 200 bucks. Like, we didn't even care. But our operation, our federal operation was actually called Operation Carpet Bagger. So that's, yeah, that was actually kind of funny. They came in there and took our floor covering operation.

My dad was kind of mad about that, I would say, because he built that business. He had a nice little reputation down there. And that kind of, we kind of ruined. that for him. So how do you wash the drug money through the business? Um, so that's the thing. Like when you're dealing with like large quantities of money, that's definitely the most difficult thing. Um, you know, you, you want to do like small transactions here and there, but you can't do too many small transactions because then they realize that you're trying to get around, you know, uh, you know, W9 laws, things of that nature. You can't, you know, like sometimes we'd buy cars

from like certain dealers that were cool. So we'd give them, you know, like I remember back then some of the C-class Mercedes is they were like 27,000. So we'd give them like 9,000 this week, 9,000 next week, 9,000. You learn to work with people that accept like large cash. We had, you know, some like some strip clubs that we dealt with. We had like small pieces of businesses, heavy cash businesses that we could like move money through.

but yeah gambling uh you know south florida south florida's not the most difficult place to launder money um if you're looking for different avenues now with the flooring business are you guys keeping materials there to make it look legit yeah it was just it was funny so like let's say you walked in right and you'd be like oh i went to home depo you know and what do they quote you because you know they give you this concise measurement and all that and uh you know and you'd be like oh it's like two grand or whatever and I'd look up the price of the flooring whatever and it'd be like 800 bucks or not be like give me a thousand like we were just you know so like actually the flooring business started to become pretty successful of its own right and we definitely didn't want that like people

would come in and be like oh god we got to sell a floor today but yeah I mean it served its purpose and I that's the only thing I do feel bad for my dad because he did spend some time really building that business did you have employees there that didn't know about the drug business no no it just would have been on it yeah I would have been too much and and uh Yeah, my mom, actually, that's a funny thing about my mom. She was like, yeah, there was the, she calls it the big tits period because we were like, you get a boob job, you get a boob job. Like, we were just throwing money around. Like, it was kind of funny.

Now, describe for us a typical day for you from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed in that time period. Okay, so like I was living in Lake Worth. I was living on like one of the alphabet streets. Pretty much just wake up, jump in a car, probably meet with. one of my cousins, see what's going on for the day. Depends on what would happen if this needed to move here, A, B, or C, meet with three to five people, you know, collect this, move this money from here to there, move this product from here to there, make sure everybody's cool, go to the carpet store, hang out.

Like we had a pool table, we had a vending machine, like it was like here, we had snacks, like it was a cool place to hang out. So we'd hang out there, we'd convened, we'd have lunch, we'd go, to the Palm Beach Kennel Club. We'd go over there, play poker. You know, just, you know, whatever, go to the beach, go to rapids, water parks, you know, whatever we felt like doing for the day. You know, and then it pretty much is a business that runs itself. You pretty much handle this. If you hand off what you need to hand off at 10 o'clock in the morning, you pretty much have the rest of the day free. There's not much to it. So it sounds very laid back.

It's super late back. I mean, it was organized, but it was all family. So it wasn't like, I'm giving money to John Doe and I'm worried about where I'm giving product to John Doe and I'm worried about him bringing me my 20,000 back. I was, you know, this was, we all lived, you know, within miles of each other. Like it was, we met, we saw each other daily. So it was like, okay, like I gave John, you know, whatever I gave him. Okay, he's going to bring me back, you know, six grand today. Okay, cool. And he always did.

So I remember in my paperwork specifically that it did say that they did try to infiltrate. and they couldn't get in because we were so tight. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result?

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diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. people. Visit loriel.com to learn more. With being family oriented. So no one got caught along the way during the run of this? Yes and no. So there was some state cases that, and see, that's another thing. Like now I would understand it.

So there was some heavy state cases. Like I had an armed trafficking case in the state that they dismissed. And looking back on that, I should have realized that they were picking it up federally. But they built a case on us over two and a half years. So they were surveilling the carpet store. They were, there was a, you know, once you get your discovery, then you start realizing all this stuff. And then, you know, back then they had CDs.

So I'm in court and I'm seeing a stack of CDs and I'm looking at my attorney. It's about this high. And I'm like, what is that? And he goes, oh, those are wiretaps. I go, oh, we're fucked. I go, like, I had no idea. That's what I'm trying to say. So as educated as I was, the feds, like, you know,

Like I had no idea. They took one of my cousin's cars, took it totally apart, found drugs, found money, found guns, put it back together, took pictures. He had no idea. That's how sophisticated the federal government is. That's like, yeah, it's insane. And this is in the early 2000s too. Yeah, this was early 2000s. But yeah.

And that's why like sometimes I look at things or I see things or they're like, oh, we're looking for this person or we're trying to investigate. And I'm like, I don't know about all that because if you want to find people, you'll find people. Like, you're reconstructing crime scenes. Like I have that in my paperwork and you can't find this person. Like it seems absurd to me, but. No, there was no threats or violent aspects to this. In my specific world. Yeah, like from other, you know, maybe other rivalries or competitors.

No, so South Florida as far as like, as far as like for what we were doing. Yeah. Pretty cool environment. Like we were all like, I don't want to say about that, but like certain other things, like I'll say cocaine, for example. I knew some guys that were like, we didn't touch that. I knew some guys that were heavy into that. We were cool, hung out, did clubs, you know, it was a pretty cool environment. It was pretty inclusive. There wasn't like this, you know, maybe New York, California, you know, whatever, where these guys are shooting each other over a turf territory. It was not like that at all. It was like a good old boys club as far as I would say, from my personal experience.

We did not have arguments or disagreements, but we also didn't step on other people's toes. Nobody stepped on our toes. We didn't step on their toes. So that probably prevented issues. But as far as I would say, other people that were in the lifestyle, I was cool with them. But did you stay armed and ready in case something would happen? Well, yeah. I was always, I mean, if you're going to have large quantities of drugs, large quantities of money,

there's always going to be some person or someone that hears something, or there's, you know, a crew. There's, you get it, the lifestyle. I don't know just because I'm hanging around with people that aren't threatening to me, even though they're in the same business, there might be someone that heard something about me or some girl told him, you know, I'm 22 years old, you know, I'm hanging around with strippers. Who knows, not that they're bad people, but, you know, they might have told their boyfriend,

oh, I was at this guy's house, he's got, you know, a Rolex, he's got, you know, a safe, he's got, I didn't know. So, of course, yeah, I was definitely armed constantly. That was definitely a huge facet of, like, waking up in the morning to put my sneakers on, grab a gun. Like, that was a thing for sure. And I'm not saying that to be a Billy badass or anything, but it's like I'm transporting large amounts of drugs and money. Like, of course I have a weapon. That's just, it seems logical.

How much heroin do you think you guys moved over the course of this run these five years or so? A lot, a lot. We became responsible for like, it depends on the, on the conspiracy, 10 to 30 keys, one to three keys, three to five keys. Depends on where you fell in the conspiracy. So if you look at it like that, I mean, from my personal information and what I know, you're talking keys a week. So 52 weeks in a year, you're talking, you know, hundreds to thousands of kilos. How much money do you think that equates to? Millions, for sure, absolutely.

Because if you look at, I mean, if you look at, I'm making this, I got, you know, 30 cousins that are making something similar. You're talking about hundreds of thousands a week. So what does that equivalent to? 365 days in a year? I mean, 30, 40 million a year probably or, of course, in five to six years. Now, you guys are strictly wholesale. So there was other people that, you know, it went down the hill. You know, I might go grab three keys from this person.

I never touched them, but like, you know, break them, boom, give this dude. to half key, this dude half key, that he might break it down. You know, as it went down to the thing, you know, I had cousins that were definitely doing street level transactions. My brother at one point, he was doing, you know, a lot of street level transactions. It just depended on where you fell into the organization. But yeah, I mean, obviously we were street level all the way up to importing internationally. Now, when you guys are running an operation of the scale, are you guys like bookkeeping, keeping records and everything? Yeah, actually. Yeah, you do. You do. because you want to, A, know things, you want to know where the money is going.

That was mostly, I had a cousin that handled a lot of that. He was a pretty meticulous, a little bit pedantic. But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a business. And if you're smart about it, you treat it like a business. And I think some of the larger organizations really, I mean, they have payroll for crying all right. Yeah, I mean, it's a thing. But it also, I guess, hurts on the law enforcement side because then it kind of

unfolds everything. In retrospect, like we thought we were cute by using like code words and things of that nature. But like I said, when they have this much data on you, and especially nowadays, I'm sure with AI, like I wouldn't say anything over a phone. Oh, you know else we thought we were slick? Was the next tell. So I'll bring you all the way back. We had the next tells. The chirp. Yeah. The chirp. Yeah, the chirp. We didn't think that the feds could tap that because it was a radio frequency. They can absolutely tap that. That was a big deal because we thought we were, with that and we definitely were not. They're probably able to get onto the frequency and hear it. I don't know, but we were led to believe that they couldn't. But they definitely can.

Wow. Yeah, I had no idea. How does your investigation start? That's a funny story, actually. That's an interesting story. I had a cousin. He was married to a woman. She had a paramour. that was known to my cousin, they had some beef. This guy was doing 20 or 25 years in Florida State Prison. Unbeknownst to my cousin, his wife had been cheating with this guy

before he went to prison. She was feeding him information. He was feeding it to the feds. So that's how they even, they had, no idea we existed. We were, we were pretty tight. We were keeping it low. We were mellow. I mean, we were moving shit, but the feds were not like, oh, who are the, what's this crew or who's, no, it was totally this moron wrote a letter trying to get out of state prison and he was

subsequently released. And my cousin's wife feeding him the information. That's, otherwise, we were gold, like not saying that it was a good idea, but yeah, they had no idea. And what was in it for her, like immunity? No, she wanted to be with this guy. That's all she wanted. She didn't want to save herself. She wanted him. No, she didn't even go to prison.

Wow. So, yeah, don't get me started on that. She didn't even go to prison. Like, and, hey, cool, good for her. And I bet you they didn't even end up together. No, no. So, no. No, he wound up going back inside.

Yeah, he wound up. So he beats a 20-year case. I forget what is new charges. He gets out. Scott Free. new lease on life live do something right you already put all of us in prison right your karma should be you know horrible but at least do something nope he goes right back in i want to say and i want to say he's doing life in a florida prison right now you mentioned you got arrested by the state

first so did they did the state start investigating you first when he tipped them off so that's my understanding is that like um there was a coordinated task force so it was legworth police department Palm Beach County Sheriff, DEA, FBI, ATF was also involved. So that's however that played out. But yeah, so like I lived in Lake Worth, so like day to day. Obviously, see, nowadays I'm more observant, you know, after having been inside such, like I see things or whatever. But at that time, I'd be like, oh, there's this cop.

Or that cop seems like he's on that corner a lot or whatever. We're like, oh, maybe they're, we didn't think about any of this stuff. We knew that we were committing crimes, but we didn't think that there was like a federal agency that was, you know, tapping our phones, you know, things of that nature. We just weren't. In retrospect, very naive, very naive. We just didn't think it. How much time passes from his tip to your actual arrest? So they investigated us for like two to two and a half years.

So I want to say. there was a there was what is that what's what's what's the word I'm thinking of um superseding I had a superseding indictment so there was several of us that had superseding indictments which means that a grand jury had heard terms or specifics of our case and had already allowed us to be placed under warrants and things so we were already being surveilled so we already had indictments that's a thing so I was walking around in south Florida living the fucking dream with the feds were already

all the way up my ass. Like I was already going to prison. I had no idea. So I didn't know the feds operated like that. Like I had people literally tell me that they've talked to federal agents and the federal agents were like, yeah, you could have killed somebody

and we would have just picked you up for it. Like this is how these people operate. So like I had no idea. Now no one was getting information and leaking it to you at all? Not not. That's a pretty tight case for two and a half years and no one gets wind. Not, not in.

Well, so we had inklings of things. So like the way that the flooring store was, right? Like there was like this road. And we kept seeing this car, seeing this car. And eventually it was in my discovery. That was an agent, an overzealous one. And they like pulled him. And they literally, it's in my paperwork.

They were like, if you blow this case, like you're fucking fired. Like, so there was little things. We would see cops here. we would get pulled over, we would get let go. You know, just weird, random things, like I said, now in retrospect, I would be like, nope, we're being investigated, fuck out of Dodge. But back then, I was like, oh, it didn't, I wasn't really thinking like that. If you had shut down operations, would it have made a difference, or did they have still a lot on it?

No, I was already under a superseding indictment. So, like, at that time, and I know this may or may not sound terrible, I would have done more shit because I was already in trouble. So like, why not? You know, I, there was a lot of things, a lot of opportunities, what I considered to be opportunities at the time that I passed up, because I was like, eh, it's a little hot. That's a little. And yeah, I was already in trouble. I did not know that you could be under an indictment and not be arrested. I had no idea that that that was a thing. My understanding of law enforcement is commit a crime, be arrested, go in front of a judge. I didn't understand that they could have you. You're already

in prison, you just don't know it yet. It's a very scary thing. Now, did you have an exit plan at all? I didn't personally because I was living the dream. I was like, this is great. I'm young. The invincibility thing, like we discussed earlier with these people that jumped up the Empire State Building. Like, you don't think anything of it. I'm like, I have all this money. I'm living. I'm, you know, I'm driving Mercedes's. I have a house. I'm 22 years old. I'm doing all this stuff. This is great. I thought it was going to last forever. I had no idea. I just had no idea at all.

I mean, you guys did have a great run. I mean, at that point, when you got arrested, how many years were you involved for? Ooh, long time, five, six years, I would say. Which is probably way above the average for a drug operation. And going back to what I said previous, they had no inkling. If we were not told on, we would have kept going. So I wasn't wrong in my fallacy.

of thinking, hey, like this could go on forever. I don't know how long it would have went on. But they were not actively investigating us. They were put on to us. But maybe it saves you from doing something worse that you don't know you were going to do. Absolutely. Absolutely. And like I said, I don't glorify it,

but I can also understand my psychological state now and having done things at my psychological state then. So I can say in that moment, this is what I was doing or this is what I probably would have done and understanding now that that's a horrible idea. You know, the benefit of hindsight, it's 2020. Tell us about the day you got arrested. Ooh, so I got arrested.

I was in my home. I was in my bedroom. Door kicks open. Four flashbang grenades. I don't know if you're familiar with those. I've heard of them, like, Call of Duty and stuff. Oh, yeah, it's a real thing. Like there was like marks, scorch marks on my walls.

Boom, boom, boom. flashbang grenades, my friend who was living with me at the time had a chihuahua. Fucking chihuahua goes out the door. Boom, they're chasing the fucking chihuahua. They come into the room, kick open the door. So I have obviously a pistol underneath. So they're like freeze, whatever, boom, boom, boom. So I do brandish.

I'm glad I didn't get a charge for that. I'm like, show me some proof that you're a cop. So then they start Velcro. I see D, EA, F, I was like, here we go, drop the shit. shit. They were like roll off the bed. I remember that because I had to roll off the bed. Rolled off the bed. They didn't handcuff us. They zip tied us. Zip tied. Picked us up like fucking pigs and threw us against the wall and then started. I'll never forget this either. I had a pool table about this size and in my in my living room and

they're just putting jewelry and money and things on top of it. And I was like, I'm looking at my friend and I was like, dude, we're totally fucked right now. We're just fucked. that's like there's no words you're just like I'm like DEA ATF like I mean back then we didn't have those types of but this is like movie shit I'm like what it what are they doing in my house like I just couldn't fathom do they take down everyone in the operation that same day I give them credit for that the coordination of it yeah I mean they coordinated from Fort Lauderdale Miami West Palm Beach like I said a hundred and eight people

they wound up taking us to an armory like that's how much space they needed for us. And then they started like doing whatever it is that they do, you know, the miniature processing and getting us and separating us out and putting us. Because we had, we were all under the same case, but we had three indictments, three different judges. So it was Miami, it was Fort Lauderdale and it was West Palm Beach. So there was a lot going on with our case. And it was, there was a large amount of people. I think at that time it was. This spring, Denham gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's Drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer.

Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. The largest heroin busted at that time. Where do they take you after the Sarmory? They took us to, some of us went to, oh, I went to Pompuy. County Jail. That's why I went. I did. I went to Palm Beach County Jail. I was there probably 30 days and then they took me to the federal detention center in Miami. And do you know the gravity of the situation at that time or not yet? Still not yet. So the issue with our case was because it's such a large case, they gave one person a federal public defender and then the rest of us got attorneys. They're technically paid attorneys, but they're paid by because you can't have the public defender's office represent everybody. So that's the way they do it. So you get a private attorney. So I had to wait to be assigned a private attorney to understand what was going on with,

like what I was charged with. Like they don't really give you a lot of information when you're like, did they give you a lot of information when you were busted? When I first got indicted, yeah. I mean, I read like the indictment, but mine was they had like a year investigation. They had I think probably fraud's a little bit different, especially with one person charged. Everything was pretty laid out. There was 15 charges and kind of open and close in the charges perspective. Oh, yeah, with us, maybe because there was such a large amount of people, the quantity, yeah, I don't recall being aware of the gravity of the situation really until I had a conversation.

was about 30 days after they transferred me from Palm Beach County Jail to the federal detention center what the gravity of the situation was, yeah. Now they keep everyone separated, or did you run in anyone? No, no. We were, there was, yeah, we were obviously on multiple floors because there were so many of us. The detention center in Miami is, I think five is women. So it goes five, six is the people that are designated there, like 79, 10, 11, 12. Yeah, so on five floors we were, yeah, they couldn't separate us all.

What about the county jail? So that was what was bad. So I wound up, that was a horrible time, actually. I wound up, my case wound up being out of Fort Lauderdale. So I was actually sent to the Broward County Jail, was it? Something, no, not Broward. Whatever the Fort Lauderdale, whatever that county jail is, that is probably the worst county jail that I've ever been to.

atrocious, atrocious, no hot meals, no hot water, like it was bad. I've, you know, I've been arrested in multiple states, sadly, and I've been to some county jails. That place was bad, heavy lockdown. The only good thing I'll say about that is it prepared me for some of my places in prison because it was, you know, we got locked down a lot. And that was your first time actually being in prisoner confined for that long? No, no.

I actually had a case when I was, it was right before my son was born, so I was like, 10, 28 of 98 to 11, 17, and 99. I could tell you that. I can't remember how old I was. I was incarcerated. What was that for? It was dealing in stolen property,

burglary, shit like that, little minor shit. I was just being a kid. Well, I was being a dumb kid. So, yeah, I did, that was county jail at time. That was before college or after college? That was before. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And that didn't affect going to Wesleyan. No, not at all, actually. No. Well, see, nowadays, so, okay, so this is what I like to tell people, though. See, like, you guys are all social media and all this. Instagram was not created when I went to prison. It was not a thing.

That was 2006. I was already in prison when that came out. So, like, all of this, I had sent exactly one text before I got arrested. There was this. I mean, obviously, there was, like, you know, the internet was new. Like, I remember seeing signs. You know, like, you know, Better Business Bureau.com. And we're all like, what is this dot-com shit?

Like, that was all new. Like, I remember bulletin board systems. If you go that far back, like, I had a BBS when I was a kid, a tandy computer. So, like, yeah, there was none of that. So there was no tech involved. Well, that's why there's so many people that I think, especially ones that have been on the show, that their family or friends or employers have no idea that they went to prison before. Because there's still such a big population of individuals that didn't get blasted out

on social media, but there'll become a point in time where that's all historic and everyone will have been, you know, found out on social media from new charges, people that are getting arrested now. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, everything is public information these days. Mugshots go viral. Yeah, everything. Yeah, there's no privacy. There's no expectation of privacy. I mean, I would say that I was lucky there was a Sun Sentinel article, a couple little blurbs. I mean, even for the size of the case that we had, it was very minimally covered. But that was the nature of the times. Like, smartphones didn't exist. There wasn't all this, oh, you jump on your phone. You know, you got people gambling. You got people, Instagram. You got people climbing the Empire State. But all this stuff's on Instagram, Facebook. It's the instant gratification model of life. That wasn't something that I dealt with until I got out of prison at 35 years old. I had no idea. What was that first conversation with the lawyer when he sits down and tells you everything

they have on you? So mine kind of went like this. So like I had he gave me a list and a highlighter and I had a list of my co-defendants. And he was like, highlight, you know, for lack of a better term, like who knows, like who knows where the bodies are buried. Like, you know. So I highlighted a couple names and he's like, we need to cop a plea. You're totally fucked.

because like at that point this was 30 days like three or four of them were already cooperating. So, you know, it was what it was. So I was like, okay, great. Like whatever. Your own family members were cooperating. Yeah. But I mean, you know, some of them had, I was young. And I say this, you know, I have a wife and she's younger.

I did easy time because at that time I didn't have a family. I didn't have children. I didn't have any of that. You know, a lot of these guys, while I don't, agree with what they did. I can understand why they did it. So, you know, they had families. That was their justification. My justification was, you know, we got in trouble. We did it. We wouldn't have been at that time. We wouldn't have stopped if we weren't caught. I mean, like, why? We were, you know, to us, it was just a business. That's what we were doing. So like now all of a sudden you're

penitent, you know, I, you're doing all of these speeches in front of the judge and you're crying and you're this reformed guy. And three months ago, you're selling kilos of heroin. Like, fuck off. Like, I just, I didn't make a comment at sentencing. I just was like, I'm not going to, I'm going to look like a hypocrite. Like, I don't get that when people are, like, very penitent at sentencing. Like, we all know what we did.

Like, I've never met a criminal alive that was like, oh, I didn't know this was a crime. Like, I mean. Did they press you to cooperate against anyone? Oh, yeah. They always do. The feds. I don't, well, you had a single person case, right? Yeah, so probably not, I don't know.

But yeah, when you're in a conspiracy, oh, yeah. But the thing about that was, from my understanding, like there was people I had never even met or heard of. They went pretty high on where the distribution network went. So I don't know. Like, I don't know how or like what you would want me to say. Like I don't, you know. But that's, yeah, it's always as far as I'm my understanding,

it's offered to everybody that's in a conspiracy. And it's up to you whether you want to be a false penitent and take it or not. What happened to your cousin? Which one? The one that got you into it. Oh, he got 15 years. He got 15 years. Where was he?

He was in Miami for a long time. I lost track of him. We don't speak anymore. He's spoken to my mom. So this is the weird thing about my family. So I don't really talk to them anymore because of the way shit went down. But yeah, he went to the University of Miami. He wound up doing less fucking time than me.

So he worked his way down from like 180 months or something like that to like, I don't know, eight years or something like that. I don't know. That's on him. That's how he chooses to live his life. It's none of my business. Was he considered the ringleader? So there was three conspiracies of one of the conspiracy. So there was the Rosario conspiracy.

Then there was two other conspiracies. I don't want to say their names. But in our conspiracy, he was, yeah, he was the top of our conspiracy. Now, do you take the first plea deal they offer you, or did you negotiate? I didn't really have an, I had two minimum mandatories. Like, what was I going to do? It really was just at that point, it's classification. It's where do you want to go?

Have you ever heard of like these people? They're like PSI, like, have you ever heard of that? Like at the probation office? No. So there's people that do your PSI, but there's like these people. that say that they can like help you get a better class. That's all bullshit. Okay, so my, yeah, so my mom was like, oh, well, you know,

we can't do anything for you, but like maybe we can get you a better class. Dada, da, da, da. I was like, yeah, no, that's all. I've already heard about all that, but yeah, no. So at my point, I was basically like, I was in South Florida. So Coleman, that's like a great place. So like, I, Coleman was my first facility. I hate to say a prison was a great place, but if you have to go to federal prison,

Coleman's great. compared to some of the other places I wound up at after Coleman was great. So how long does it take to get through the legal process for your case? My case went pretty fast. I was arrested in December. Yeah, I was arrested in December and I want to say June, July, I was in Coleman. So it wasn't long. And no bail.

Oh, God, no. No, God no. I would have posted it. Like, I had, we had bondsmen that we were friends with and so, you know, million dollar bond, whatever. They considered us a threat to society, especially myself because of the 924C. I had the possession of a weapon and furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. So I was considered armed and dangerous, basically. If you got bail, would you have ran? Absolutely.

110 percent. So they'd made the right decision? They made the right call. Yeah. No, there's no way. Yeah, I'm 22 years old. You're telling me I'm facing decades in prison. I'm out.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm not going to stay here and bullshit you. I would have been out. Where would you have went to? Mexico. Mexico, worked my way down. in Paraguay, Udeguay, somewhere in there. I had it worked out.

Just couldn't get bond. Now, did you have assets when you got taken? I had, yes. They took a lot. I had enough that if I got bond, that I could have, but no. They were like, no way. I went to, like, I went to an original bond hearing. They remanded me.

I went to another bond hearing, and that was considered a threat. How do they word that? A threat to society, imminent danger. you know, they make it sound like yours this serial killer, but apparently I get it. See, even to this day, I understand that drugs are a bad thing

and I understand that they harm people's lives. However, it's a conscious decision that they make to do the drug. That's not a popular, you know, statement. I'll probably catch some flack for that. Sorry. But like, to me, it's a victimist crime, like prostitution, like, my opinion. So I don't,

didn't consider myself to be like this dangerous threat to society. How much time do they end up giving you? I wound up doing 10 years total. But what was the actual plea deal? Oh, it's 120 months. So that's 10 years? Yeah. Oh, so you don't get any good time? Well, I, so you're supposed to get, you're supposed to do 85% of your time and then you're supposed to get if you have certain charges, you can get a year off for a drug program. And then you can do six months at a halfway house, I got none of that. And I had very little good time left. Because I started out on higher security levels. So like that type of environment does not predicate to you being a standard bid, I would say. You know, you're going to expect some shoe runs. You're going to expect

solitary. That's solitary confinement. That's an expectation. I mean, in certain prisons I was in, And we were expected to go to the shoe sometimes just so we could give contraband to guys that were there. Now, Coleman's a penitentiary. Coleman has two USPs. It's a complex. It has two USPs, a medium, a low, and a camp for females. Where'd they send you? So I started out in USP 1.

USP 2 is a dropout yard. I don't know if you're familiar with those. Yeah, for gang members. Yeah. So I was not there because I have an active gang affiliation. So I was in one. And then I went to the medium. And then I went to many institutions after that.

I passed through Oklahoma, the transfer center, so conair, which is actually my most frequently asked question. When people find out I went to federal prison, they're like, tell me about con air, con air, con air. Oklahoma sucks. Did you go to Oklahoma? Yeah, miserable. Oklahoma sucks. They're restricting showers there now. So you can't even shower like half the time.

I don't know, some weird stuff because I still talk to people. I actually spoke to a guy like two days ago. He's with Puffy on Fort Dix. He's with Puffy over there in the yard. Puffy's just walking around and, you know, whatever. I won't say how or why they have information, but I see pictures of him like, well, just walking around. I'm like, fucking Puff Daddy.

I'm walking around. He just has so much money, I think it is. There's just so many payoffs going on. You know, I had a conversation about this with the person that's with him on the yard. So from my understanding, Fort Dix is kind of like, it's like a kiddie camp. I was at Fort Dix, yeah. How is it? I mean, it's very laxed in the sense because it's a sex offender-friendly yard.

So many sex offenders, you can't hurt them. But it's very cliquey, very political in the sense where you have the cars like the New York car, you have the New England car. Jersey's big. Jersey and New York pretty much run the yard. So the politics are really big in that sense. How do you have politics on a yard with sex offenders? That does, that's, the whole thing's very strange. They gave me a hard time.

That's an interesting dichotomy. Why did they give you? Because they thought I was a sex offender and my car never came up and checked my paperwork or treated me well at all or anything like that. Well, who was you? What car were you in? I would have been in New England or Connecticut. I think Connecticut had a car at the time.

So like you had a zero one four number? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No one came up to me. It's sad that I still know all that. Yeah. No one came up to me nothing.

But yeah. But it's a low for my, well, from my understanding, Ford Dix was always. Well, back then they were checking paperwork. and I know it's stricter now with not getting your PSIs in the legal work, but it's also ran like the hood over there, too. It's like, that's weird to me. There's so much elements, you know, everyone's cooking or like cooking wine or running phones or it was like very contraband heavy yard.

Okay, so maybe, but, okay, so to me, I don't understand how you're in a car just saying, no offense to them and four dicks if you're watching. and you have sex offenders on your yard that doesn't, there's no way you can leave that yard, let's say you get in trouble and you go to a medium or USP and you're like, oh, I was in whatever car on Ford Dix and oh, you allowed sex,

you're going to get, have an issue with that at another yard. I think they make the excuse for it as like if they have a sex offender in their room they're not allowed to be in there during the day. They're the ones responsible for cleaning the floor. they have to go to the library and then chow hall they have their own tables and then um tv room they have to stand in the back so they make rules like that okay but they're allowed to live on the yard yeah that's

insane to me fort dix had that um the undercover sting with the fbi sent inmates there uh sex offenders were running a ring a child porn ring in there if you google it it's on there i was there during that time and i was in the shoe with those guys too in philly um but they were running a whole operation guys that had 15, 20, 10, 5 years on their sentence were all hustling child pornography. In federal prison? Out of the library on an iPad. Yeah. How did they get the iPad?

Well, none of my business. There's so much contraband. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone had phones. But you had an iPad. So you had sex offenders. See, this is the problem.

They had phones. This is the problem letting them on the yard. There's a sex offenders. I'm going on. I'm going on at the lows. Danbury was like that too. when I was in Danbury. Well, Danbury, so when I was inside, Danbury was women.

Yeah, so then it switched to, they divided it. It's a men's low, women's low, women's camp. So there's three yards over there now. Yeah, because women don't go above the low. Yeah. Yeah, which is weird. Yeah, and it can't be that many people there. But yeah, the men's low is a small low.

It's only got like, I think it was like 1,500 inmates or 1,000. But there's a good chunk. That's not that small. $1,500. Compared to Fort Dix with 5,000. or 6,000. Oh, that's a big yard. Yeah, I don't even know that.

It's two sides. Well, so is Hazleton. Yeah. I was, you know, but that's. But, yeah, Danbury is sex offender friendly too. It's very interesting. So are all the lows just sex offender friendly? I think for the most part, because where are you going to put them?

Are we allowed to say that's bullshit? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could swear. That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. I, look, I know soccer moms that would tell me, listen, if you're in prison and there's a sex offender, like, go ahead and fuck them. So like I don't understand that, but, you know.

I think that they just don't have anywhere to put them. And I think they need to create a yard for them. They're states that do that. I think California does that. And I think a lot of the problem, too, is that the guys that get to the low that work their way down from a medium or a pen don't want to then risk getting sent back to beat up a sex offender. Yeah, but what's the, you're already there. I mean, yeah. You're at the low.

It's sweet. You get a cell phone. You have better conditions. You're in a dorm. You know, some guys just don't want to do that. You know what? I guess I can understand the perspective, but it's definitely not a part of the environments where I was where I was at. So now why did they send you to a pen?

I mean, it's your first real prison sentence and you only got 10 years. Well, because I had the violence. I had the violence. I had been before I did the time for when I was younger. I had the burglary, things of that. nature. So I had criminal history. But you only had a gun charge, right? The 924C though. That's huge in the feds. But I would have figured like a medium or something. No, they, they still, well, first of all, age. So back, back when I was the thing, that's what, that's what happened to me. That's why I got all

those points. So I, what did I get 25 points just for my age? Yeah, it kicks you up. And then, then I got, exactly. I didn't stay long, but yeah. And then that, that was it. And then I moved to the medium. Yeah, but I think I got 25 points. So for people that don't know, the feds, they put you on a point system. Age is a huge indicator of that. The older you are, the less points you get, the lower custody you are. So my age jack me through the roof. And then I had a prior incarceration of more than a year.

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The Hawk, only on Netflix, July 16th. Jacked me up. I had like 40-something points, I think. What was the pen like at that age and at that time? Political. Very political. Everything is paperwork. Everything's, you know, your car.

things. It's super political. But it's, but it's also, it's also pretty easy as long as you don't piss anybody off. You're chill. Like you do your own thing. Um, there's definitely not cell phones and, you know, there's some cigarettes, things of that nature, but nothing crazy. Um, it's just politics. That's all. You're very much on. You're very much on. You're very much, uh, you know, wondering, you know, who's around you, you know, things of that nature. Um, um, you're, you're very much on. Um, you're, Definitely not somewhere you want to go. Definitely not. If you have to go to federal prison, go to a low, go to a camp.

From my understanding, they're great, you know, from what you're saying. Contraband heavy. Weren't you in, you were in a camp? I went to a low first. I was at Fort Dix and then Danbury. And then I went to Oxford, Wisconsin. Oh, Oxford. I heard a lot about Oxford.

And then they had the medium. The camp's closed now and now the mediums are low. Well, didn't they close the camp because, like, dudes were like going to hotels and shit? Yeah, I mean, that's at every camp, but guys were doing that. But I think it was because they moved Oxford medium to a low. So then I don't think they really needed the camp. It was always underpopulated to begin with. It held 200 guys and we were at like 80 or 90.

So how was that? Was there like, like since you had so so much under, overfunding, I would say, because if it held 200 people and you had 80 guys. It was very laid back. There's one guard and I was there. Four months out of the year I was there was a government shutdown. So the guards didn't care because they're not getting paid. I mean, they get paid eventually.

Yeah, but I had government shutdowns during, during, wait, wait, explain. Can you explain that? Yeah, so the guards were just laid back to begin with. You're in the middle of the country in Wisconsin, chill a lot nicer than, say, the guards in Brooklyn. So you have that element. Then they're not getting paid, like physically getting their paychecks. Yeah. So.

But that was happening throughout the Bureau. Well, at least at the camp, they were like, I'm not leaving the office. Forget it. And they just put their feet up on the desk and didn't bother us. Yeah, but wasn't their like paychecks retro? Well, they'd get it, but I'm saying physically, like the element of I'm not getting my check next week, you know, you get it eventually. But look at the latest shutdown that just happened. People literally did not have money if it goes on for two or three months. You know, you're maxing out credit cards. Even though you're going to get the money, you need it physically in that moment. The bills don't stop. That's true. So I think that deters people. Like if I didn't get paid from working for four months, even knowing that I'm going to get a big lump sum, it's a mental element to it. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes, well, plus they figure your minimum security, I guess. Yeah. That like, you know, what's the worst you're going to do? Those are the chillest, you know, COs I've ever experienced out there. I can imagine. Very chill. Yeah. Except for the guard that tried to get me.

What do you mean? He tried to rate me in the kitchen. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, there was a male guard that came on to me, He was rubbing up on my elbow and butt, and it was very crazy. Oh, wow. The audience has heard so many times. I'll tell you that after.

Yeah, I'm like, I've never, yeah, okay, that's interesting. They called me McLevin in prison. So we always say that, you know, he tried to get McLevin's buns because I worked in the bakery. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it was a... There was a bakery? Yeah, there was a scratch bakery, and Darren and Danbury had a bakery, too. Oh, really?

Mm-hmm. So what did you, and you provided what? We made fresh bagels, fresh pizza dough. we made everything fresh. So I would imagine all this was hitting the compound too. So you guys were just like... Well, they serve it, though, to the inmates. We'd get a fresh pastry at every meal.

Oh, wow. Some prisons, I think they're getting rid of a lot of them, but yeah. Yeah, well, that must be nice. And then they would have an extra kitchen cook who was like the head bakered that oversaw that aspect too, like culinary people. But it's probably harder now than ever to operate these. And now they're closing all these federal prisons too. Yeah, I know like the one in Florida, like Pensacola, that was like, you know, one of the supposedly like, you know, club fed places.

I know they close that down because it's just, I don't know, if they're getting tougher on crime or, is there still can't? I honestly, I don't. They're closing a lot of them. I was going to say they're closing a lot of the camps, right? Yeah, I think camps are unnecessary. I mean, you're going to have a guy sit at a camp for 10 years. It just, I don't know. It doesn't make sense.

I don't know. Do they allow people to go for that? I met some people that had nine or ten years that's self-surrendered to the camp, especially in Wisconsin, and they're stuck there for a while for years. But the camp is just so late. It's not prison. That's what I'm saying. The only thing you're missing is, you know, sleeping with a woman, but guys still find a way to do that anyways. Well, I was going to say, I've heard of, I've heard that.

You know, obviously you hear things. But, yeah, like guys were going to hotels and, you know, chilling, whatever, eating street food, things of that nature. Now, was Coleman violent back in your days there? Every spot is potentially violent. So, yeah, there was aspects of it. Yeah, absolutely. What did that teach you about the prison system on how to navigate it?

So the thing about being in the federal prison system is it's nothing like what they show you on television. It's a lot of people think that all of the federal prison system is club fed. A lot of them think, oh, you're in the feds. Like, oh, that's fine. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, higher security federal prisons are some of the worst in, in comparatively to any state,

not that it's a competition. But, you know, people don't understand that there's high, medium, low camp. Like, and the camps and the lows are supposedly great places. But when you're not in those institutions, you're 23 lockdown, your constant lockdowns, you're missing programming, you're missing, you know, you're being fed, you know, bag lunches for extended periods of time. months. You know, you're in the shoe, you're in the hole for eight, nine months at a time, trying to get reclassified and transferred to other locations and yards. You know, it's just

constant. It's constant. You're constant. Like, you know, we had a conversation before I walked in here, like, to this day, don't like lock doors. I don't like people being behind me, things of that nature. You know, you start to acclimate and you start to like things like that, but it's a constant readiness. You're just, you got to be aware of people all the time because you don't know, you know. Your own car, you're relatively safe, you know, as long as you don't violate the rules, but you never know.

Like, you could be playing basketball with an individual from another race or something like that, and next thing you know, boom, he punches you in the feet. You don't know why, because something went up in the library or something went up. You have no idea.

So you're just constant. It's constant anxiety, constant stress, constant awareness of your surroundings, even, you know, when you run with a car. Now, is that something that has to be or is taught to you by, say, other inmates? or even counselors or case managers, case managers,

or is it something you have to figure out on your own? So when you said the paperwork, like the JNC, your judgment and commitment order, when you're in higher security, you go to your counselor right away. I need my JNC, dude, or they're checking me in. And he's like, here you go, buddy. Like, go have fun, go, can you know? Or if you're hot, what we call hot,

then your paperwork's bad, then he'd be like, I don't know what you need to do about that, you know? But they will give you your JNC, and higher security. So do you think that's what's wrong with the system then? So the higher security, even though it's run with more rules and regulations, like per se, it's run, like people know their place, they know what they're supposed to do, they know what they're not supposed to do.

So if you act up or you're out of line, like you understand the consequences of your actions. From my understanding, like with the lower level institutions, like people do spit on the floor. Okay, spitting in the sink. Like, that's, we don't do that. You don't spit in the sink. Like, you know, it's just weird things. Or like the ice machine, there's a scoop. If you put your cup in that ice machine, somebody's going to stab you.

That's happening. There's just a lot of, like, little rules and regulations. You spit in the toilet. That's how you do. And even the toilet itself, you don't stand, you sit down, and you face the wall, and you urinate because it's dirty. And sometimes you're locked down for months at a time. And you're in this six by nine cell with another human being.

So you want to maintain cleanliness. That's a big thing. If you look at pictures of people in higher security, they're always very regulated, regimented. It's almost like being in the military, but you're in prison. Kind of. I don't know. I haven't been in the military, but it's highly structured is the point I would make with a chance of large amounts of violence. So there's that.

Why no spitting in the sink? Because I've encountered that too. Yeah, you can't spit in the sink. Because it's nasty. We all use the sink. It's communal. So you spit in the toilet because you're, you know, you urinate and defecate in the toilet. You spit in the toilet.

So, yeah, yeah, that's shocked. Yeah, you're like, it's a community thing. So, like, that's nasty. Spitting is nasty. Like, to this day, I don't spit. I don't do anything like that. But you know what's interesting is that they want you to spit in the toilet, but then they also want you to sit to pee. And your spit is technically going on the seat.

Well, you're supposed to wipe it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean still, you know. So the difference between what you're saying and the environment I was in, we had cells. So this is your personal cell with your cell main. So, you know, we were behind, you know, after

what time was it? It was 8 o'clock we got locked down. It's been a while. But like after after, so for 9 o'clock count was 9 o'clock count, right? Yeah, so we had 4 o'clock count and then 9 o'clock. So you got locked down. So you're locked down in this cell for at least,

you know, we got let out at 5.30 in the morning. So what, 12, you know, however many hours during the day, because you got locked down for 4 o'clock count two. You want to maintain a high level of cleanliness constantly. So it makes sense, logically, that like any communal items, they're not yours. So you can't treat them as they are. So you just don't spit in the sink. You spit in the toilet. I don't know. It's just the thing. But it makes sense cleanliness-wise. Did you have an issue with that inside? No, I just didn't, I mean.

You don't understand it? The sitting to pee being forced to do that. The courtesy flush. There was just a rule every other time. Oh, the courtesy flush, yeah. That was in the detention centers because you meet these guys that are in transit or whatever. Right. And they're enforcing those rules. Oh, the higher level, the guys that were passing through that were going to higher level security. And then I'd be passing through and go to their cell and they'd be, you know, waiting for transit. And you encounter these guys.

Oh, okay. Whereas like at Fort Dix, you know, it's the bathrooms are gross. It's huge. Oh, no. Like it's, you know, everyone's doing whatever. They're not private bathrooms. Okay. See, that's part of the cells.

it's different or in the shoe. Right. So that that's the difference. You're in close proximity to another human being all the time. So the level, the cleanliness aspect, yeah, obviously courtesy flush, like don't shit on me. Oh, count. So like four o'clock count, right? I had a new guy that that did that to me one time. You get locked down from 3.30 to like chow, whatever your unit got called for chow. You don't, you don't shit during like during that time. So like what we did, was we would take opposites. So we had control movement. So you guys didn't have that either.

Yeah, we did every at the hour, five minute move. Yeah, 10 minute move. So then you'd have rec or you'd have before chow. You could go to rec instead of going to chow, whatever. But we'd alternate. So like I would get mornings or like, you know, he would get after whatever, however you worked it out. But so you could have some privacy.

But yeah, no. Cleanliness, yeah. I'm trying to think of some other weird stuff. I don't, what struck you as weird. All this is routine to me, so. Yeah, just again, any of those rules, you know, because I wasn't used to that. I mean, I grew up my whole life, not 21 years at that point, spinning in a sink after you brush your teeth, you know?

Yeah. So, or even not wearing flip-flops. You actually have amazingly white teeth. You do. I notice that. Yeah. I'm just, yeah. But I don't know.

It's just a thing. I mean, to me, I didn't really, I was teachable, I guess, because, A, I didn't want to have any issues for something stupid just to draw attention to myself for any reason. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it makes sense to me. It's just a cleanliness thing. What happened to your kid when you went to prison? So my wife at the time, we had gotten divorced while I was in the middle of, no, before my case. So I had moved back to Florida. That was why I went with my cousin. That was what I was dealing with at the time was a divorce. So my son, who I'm close to now, he was raised by my ex-wife. We had no communication. She totally removed him from the environment. For the whole 10 years.

For the large portion of it, she started allowing my family to see him, but no contact with me, like towards the end of my incarceration. So she was mad. This all stems from being upset. I had a high, because I couldn't fight anything. I had a very high child support, but I had the money. So I was like, whatever, I'm not, you know, it's not like I can go in front of a judge and say, I can't afford this, whatever. So my attorney was like, hold on a second, like, you're not going to come out and owe, you know, whatever, $300,000. So he had an order sign that I, that, like, vacated that. So she got mad and just removed him from us, which I can understand her perspective. She was raising a child on her own. But,

Had she allowed him around my parents, they would have helped. Was that hard on you not having that communication? I got to be honest and say no. It didn't bother me at all. At that time, I was very emotionally, just distant. I regret it now because I actually, he has two daughters, and I'm very close to my granddaughters, love him to death. Yeah, I wish I had been able, but she was also keeping him for me as well.

So, I mean, I chose to just be like, cool, she's going to keep them away from me. Like, I don't have to worry about that. I can do easier time because I've seen stone cold killers. I'm talking about men that will go into your house and drown fish, like nothing's breathing, cry because their girl was at a club at 11 p.m. And they're in a federal penitentiary. Like, they lose in their mind. And I'm like, bro, what are you going to do?

Escape? Like, you got a letter breathe. Like, I don't know what to tell you, brother. Like, you know, because I would talk to these men. and I mean, but that, you know, I would see things or, you know, family would pass away. I was lucky. My parents are younger. I didn't deal with any of that.

So I didn't read. Did you like watch the news and stuff like that? I watched. I stayed up on the news. When I was in the shoe, I would read like the New York Times a lot. So that kind of, you know, keeps you involved in the outside. But I think it was always hard getting on a cell phone and going on Facebook and your friends are, you know, graduating college or going. to college or having a good time and holidays, that kind of gives that feeling you're describing

of seeing in others. But I would see all the time guys at the camp who just self-surrender and they plan on staying with their wives, you know, or girlfriends a whole time. And you kind of see that, you know, they go from visiting every day, every weekend to then once a week, then to every other week, then to once a month. And it just deteriorates. Yes. I've seen guys successfully do it that have a year or less. But I think anything over that, it's just. not possible. So, funny story. My cousin, the one that started my case, he's actually still with his wife to this day.

I don't know what she did. There's got to be some type of passes or something. I would imagine there was a don't ask, don't tell thing. I mean, I would imagine any red-blooded, warm-blooded woman is not going to go, you know, however long he was inside without. But then I've met some guys that are serving 20 years. They get married to some girl they met at like year 15. and then that girl does the whole rest of the bid with them.

Oh, yeah. And then they get out and have a happy life together. What is the, what is that? It's a, there's a pen pal service. Yeah, right, a prisoner. Right, a prisoner. I've seen so many guys. And then you got love after lockup,

but then you look at like Gypsy Rose that failed miserably for her with that guy Ryan or whatever. Was that the one that was, that killed her mother? The Munchausen's by proxy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, what happened to that? They broke up, like instantly.

Right. They were together for a little bit. They had the reality show. I think the fame didn't necessarily help, but it's just hard. I think when you're coming out of prison after that much time, you kind of need your space, too. You want to see what else is out there, experience life? I think it, I think it, so I actually got married, like almost immediately when I came out of prison. That's another.

What is that, a second wife? Yeah, I've been married three times. My wife's out there. She's going to kill me. Yeah. Yeah, I've been married. This is my third, third. Yeah. Wow. But only one kid? Yes. Okay. But maybe now. Yeah. I mean, my dad had me at 50. Wow. Okay. I like that. That's good. How's your relationship? No, we're great. He's here almost every day. He lives down the road, see him every day. Um, the only thing that sucks is that he's older when, you know, I'll have kids because he's turning 81, you know, this year. So say if he has kids, if I have kids in the next couple of years, um,

There's just that age aspect where you look at your situation, you already have grandkids. That's great because now the grandkids get you for, you know, 30 years. Right. Or even my mom. My mom's only 64. So, like, she's a great grandmother. And my mom's 66. So that works out well, too.

But even still, that's that element. Are you married? No, just have a girlfriend. Oh, okay. Leticia, you met her on the phone. I figured. Yeah. I wasn't sure.

She's part of the business now. Oh, good. Good. That's good. Yeah, my brother retired from guest booking. and now Letitia handles that, but she's very bubbly, so it's good. Oh, yeah, she's a, she was full of energy. She was very, yeah, very bubbly.

Where'd you go after the pen and how long did you do there? So I moved, they liked to transfer you within the complex. So I went to the medium and then after that, I stayed there for a while and then I moved around, I went to Oklahoma. I went to Beaumont. I was just in a bunch of different, you know, medium level security institutions. You know, most of them, Texas has its own crazy shit going on. Have you heard about Texas?

Yeah, I've interviewed multiple state and also federal inmates. There's some crazy shit going on over there. They have their own politics, their own gangs, their own, and they were super nice guys. Don't get me, PTB, I love them, Tango Blast, great dudes. But like, some shit I've never heard of. Yeah, that's interesting over there. Texas will definitely, they're very racial. I am not a racial person.

Race, creed, color religion doesn't. I'm a Latin king. So like we have Chinese, it doesn't matter. Black, it doesn't, whatever's in your heart. But like, hey, more power to them if that's her thing. But that was, those yards are very racial, very, very racial. And that to me was a stretch because I'm like, I don't, just because I'm Latin, and I'm not going to like this person because there are a certain race.

Like that didn't reconcile for me. So I didn't rotate well in those types of environments. But yeah, that's a huge. So that's a thing that you see in prison, you know, is the racial element. You know, very separatist. Did they have that in Dix? Not really. No.

I wasn't, I expected it to be racial. But then I realized that it wasn't, especially in the lows, I think the lows. and definitely not camps, but it's more just who your state you're from. It's not like, I thought it was going to be gangs racial, you know? Yeah. But it's not like that. Well, that's how it is in higher security for sure. Absolutely gangs racial.

But some gangs intermix racially. So then that, depending on where you're at, that that's an issue too. But like there's a lot of things. So like you have east of the Mississippi and west of the Mississippi. So you have a lot of, you know, serenios. They're huge. their cars. And I want to say Pennsylvania, like a lot of the, I want to say Allenwood, their USP there is a Serenio yard. So like you, it's weird, the feds, just because you're in, well,

where I was at, just because you're in Pennsylvania, you're in West Virginia, you're in Florida, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to be dominated by those individuals. I don't know if you experience that, but that was my experience. How did you stimulate your mind throughout prison, especially in your 20s and you're very smart and you were just very passionate about that. Yeah, I read. I read voraciously. I probably read 10,000 books, no bullshit. I was constantly reading, especially in the shoe.

They were super cool. They used to like put the book cart because I would just run through books. I wasn't really big on programming, but I definitely read a lot. So that was the opposite for me. I didn't watch the news. I didn't read newspapers. I didn't. The outside world didn't exist to me.

That's how I chose to do. my time because I would not have done well with that. So I read. You know, I immersed myself in books, things of that nature, you know, whatever, you know, for a time there, you could get college courses. So those were fun. They were allowing us to do that. I don't know what they're doing now because, like, do they, do they have tablets now? I think some of them do. Some of the prisons have like, I wasn't there for that. Yeah, I wasn't either. So they're changing a lot of things now. You know, my experience in the feds is vastly different from what somebody is experiencing now. I don't know.

I mean, there's just a lot of, I don't, I'm not exactly sure what's going on in some of these institutions nowadays, nor do I necessarily want to know. But, yeah, I availed myself of the library. Just try to keep myself going. What'd the time feel like for you while you were there? There was definitely times, depending on what yard you were in, a lot of lockdowns, time went by very slow, super slow. You know, you do nine months in the shoe. Like, you know, that feels like forever. People, I tell people this, you know, I have conversations with people and some people just want to be an asshole.

And they're like, oh, like nine months, that doesn't seem long. I go, give me your cell phone. Lock yourself in the bathroom for an hour. and then tell me nine months isn't a long time. Like, you know, just people are like that. So those chunks of time went by very slow waiting. So that's the other thing, too. Like, did you ever get in trouble?

Did they reclassify you? Not to a higher security now. Okay, well, when they're reclassifying you because you're a known asshole, is what they call us. They take forever. Grand Prairie. So when you're being reclassified,

so that was the other thing, too, like, oh, we have those guys that do the helping with the yards and stuff, which is all bullshit. Oh, we can put you in Fort ditch or we can put you, they want to put you in whatever yard you think you can go on, which doesn't help anyway. But Grand Prairie, Texas, God knows why, they're the ones that do all the classification for the entire bureau. And they have a system that is be known to no one except them and they put you where they put you, other than the points. But the points doesn't matter either because you could have a management variable, which God knows how that works.

It's the federal system is you're incarcerated and that's it. From my understanding, the Bureau gave up rehabilitation. That's my understanding. I don't know if that's factual or not, but it was told to me like, we're not here to rehabilitate you. We're here to incarcerate you and that's it. I don't know if that was your understanding. I mean, they still try to push, you know, rehabilitation, reentry now.

I just don't think you're ever going to have that when the politics exist, when the gangs exist, when you're sticking, say, a nonviolent offender with people that have killed people, people that have raped people, people that are extremely violent. I just don't think, how do you instill rehabilitation? Because then it becomes a fight for survival. Absolutely. Yeah. And how do you tell people when they're trying to figure out how to get through the next eight hours,

oh, we're going to help you with this when you're getting out of prison in 12 to 15 years. It just doesn't reconcile. Even the guys, I mean now that are just get out of 20, 25 years, they don't get help from them. If anything, it's worse. And they get kicked to the halfway house, which treats them like dog shit

and makes them want to go back to prison and then they're on their own. So that's the issue with recidivism. This is my main issue. And what I said earlier, I don't mind telling my story. I don't mind being honest. but I don't like being judged for the worst thing I've ever done

when I've done so many other things in my life. Society, it's like double jeopardy. You do your time, sometimes large amounts of time, decades, 25 years. You come out. You can't be employed because they run background checks. You can't get Pell Grants because you've been convicted of federal crimes. You can't be on a jury. You can't get a passport for some people,

depending on crimes, are you even a citizen? So what do we tell these people to do? We give them six months and a halfway house and we tell them to recreate their life when they can't get a job, when they can't avail themselves of government assistance programs, they can't get Section A. There's so many different things

that they can't do and they're being judged for a crime that they've paid their debt to society technically but now society says we still don't want any parts of you. That's my focus with people and talking to people and trying to make people understand that we push accountability, which is great. But once you've been held accountable and you've done what you have to do, can we not choose to look at these people for where they are now?

That's a focus for me. And then the problem is too is that they have individuals with no life experience trying to help those individuals, you know, that are working at the halfway house. I had people there that were in their 20s or they were 19 or, you know, younger than me, no life experience. And I was young too, but I had life experience and they're trying to help individuals. Well, you had run businesses. Yeah, but even just going to prison is you gain a lot of experience from that.

And you're going to have one of those people try to help someone that's in their 40s or 50s that just finished a 20-year sentence. You need trained psychologists to help these individuals. You don't need that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah. So I went to a halfway house in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And what year was this that you got out? 2014. And how old are you? 35. 35. 35. 35. We'll go with.

Somewhere in that range. There was no re-entry. There was nothing. It was minimum supervision. That's all it was. Which is our point, which is what you and I are saying. What is the point of the halfway house? I mean, I love that it's taking people out of prison, but like what is the purpose of it?

It doesn't do anything. I mean, oh, did you work when you were in the halfway house? Yeah, I worked for my friend's pizzeria. Okay. And how much of your check did they take? They actually didn't take any of it because I think I got to home confinement, like within two weeks or whatever. Okay. So that, but if I stayed there, then they would take 25%.

But I was able to get out quick by the time my check started coming, so I missed that. Okay. But what the hell is that? Yeah. And then they hold the money in their bank account too. They don't even let you have a bank account. Exactly. Well, you're not supposed to.

I mean, obviously any smart individual does. like why would I give them my check? But a lot of these halfway houses are privately ran facilities that I realized are making a killing off a government contracts. I mean, at the halfway house I went to, had a director, an assistant director, and an assistant to the assistant director in this house that house 70 people. Yeah. What do you need all those salaries for?

Unnecessary. But it's government contracts. That's the whole point. I want to say we had an upstairs and a downstairs. there was guys upstairs, girls downstairs, which was asinine because it's like we're literally we're leaving the halfway house together.

It's weird. The system makes, it doesn't make any sense. You would think that they would have this down pat from whenever the Bureau was created in what, 1918 or something, Al Capone was a federal emmaid or something like that. They have no idea. Like it seems very just roughshod

to me. But going back to recidivism, they have no programs for people. What are we doing to help people that have done large amounts of time? And the answer is that it's nothing. They're just not being helpful. Was it hard for you to rebuild after prison? Yes, it was. Absolutely. I came out of prison with like $3.47. I had a pair of boots that were the black boots issued that were probably a size too big. I had a thermal that was could probably hold it up to the sun and see right through it. You've seen people like that. I mean

like and gray sweatpants. I remember what I left in. I have a picture. I'll share it with you if you want. But like yeah, that was, you know, and that I'm coming out and I'm, I'm institutionalized. You know, I'm knocking on tables and people, yeah, you know, I'm spitting in the toilet. Like people are like,

what the fuck is going on with you? Like, what's going on, you know? Or like, oh, so when I came out, these guys, they have in their ear, because they had the cell phones in their pockets and they're talking. Oh, they're earbuds? Yeah. Yeah. Or whatever.

And I'm like, who the fuck? Like, who are you talking to you? Like, I was bugging out because they're walking through the hall. Yeah. And they're like talking. They're like, yo, what's up or whatever? And I'm like, yo, what the fuck? Who are you talking to?

I didn't realize. Yeah. It took me a minute. The technology. So when I first came out, I was like, I don't want a cell phone. Cell phones got me locked up. Obviously, I mean, you know, you got to roll with the times and understand. But like, yeah, I was very anti-technology when I first came out.

And like, I didn't want to do. I want to say I didn't get an Instagram for like a year or two. I'd have to look. But I definitely was out for some time before I set it up. I want to say two years. Like technology, I didn't like all that, all the sharing of information. Like I felt like that was, I didn't grow up like. that. What do you end up getting into for work? Initially, sales. Sales. Sales is probably

custom created for any person. I wound up doing, it was, it was, it was non-regulated, moving, very gray. I want to say this was probably not entirely legal in and of itself either, looking back on it and like four of us worked there because we were selling this guy he didn't own the trucks but he was selling like

he was brokering out your move I don't know and making money yeah so it was really weird because like you'd sign this contract with these people and you'd sell them this move and let's say the truck driver got a better truck

or a better load he'd totally not show and people'd be like I'm moving to Texas tomorrow and yeah they'd get totally screwed. So I don't know. Another thing that we did after that, which have you ever had those, and if you Google this, it's called First Choice Tech Support, have you ever had those like warning pop-ups on your computer? We did that. So you call that number and it was like 600 bucks to like clean your computer and do all that. So I did that for a while, which was they actually wound up

getting indicted. The company that I worked for, I almost got re-indicted by working at a tech support company in Florida. So if you look, that was a tech support companies in Florida, especially first choice tech support. Those guys are doing federal prison time right now off of that. So, you know, I basically get myself in trouble again. But these were approved. My probation officer went there. The people from the halfway house checked in. Meanwhile, the feds are investigating them. This is my point of one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. I'm working for a place that's under investigation by the feds, my federal probation officer shows up, checks everything out, and says, okay, you're good.

I like this place. You like this place. Cool. I'm working. I mean, I was making great money. Maybe they had a plant on you somewhere you didn't even know about it. No. I can't even say it.

Like, I'm stuttering because I was literally in a work environment that could have got me re-indicted while being monitored by the federal probation office. It was absurd. Absurd. Yeah. So luckily, they were like, no. he's good, like, you know, they shut the place down. But like, yeah, almost got, almost got reindicted working while I was on federal probation. How long did it take to feel like you were

actually, you know, in a good spot in life after you got out of prison? Years, years. Yeah, it takes a long time. The halfway house is like being incarcerated to an extent. You still have to, you know, all that stuff. Then I was on probation for three years. I was supposed to be on. there for five. They let me off early. So those, that's like, it's like you're half in half out, I say, because you have a tether, you know. It's like a dog in a yard. The dog can run up to the yard and bark at you, but there's a, there's a chain yanking him back. That's probation. I don't know if that was your experience with it, but my experience with probation was not pleasant. Yeah. It was, I had a very, very strict probation officer. She was very, very, like,

I'll send you back. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? I just want to work, do my shit. And like, I'll piss clean. Like, what do you want for me? And it's just like any little thing. The discretion of the federal probation officer, I think they have more authority than a judge.

They have a lot of power. They have an extreme amount of power over people's lives. And the judges defer to them because the judge isn't involved. Yeah. Literally. Like anything could, you know, guys get in trouble. like women. That was the main reason why I'd see people go back,

have a quick domestic or something stupid. Their girl calls like, police, boom, you're going back to prison, buddy. That was the main reason why I'd see people go back was domestics. I don't know about your experience. I didn't really have anyone close to me to me go back. There were guys that I was in prison with that would go back because they went back into drugs. I think there's a couple guys that did some fraud, but mostly drugs. Like they were selling them or they were using them? No, it starts selling again. They've gotten a lot less strict on using drugs. They'll get you back into rehab or they'll help you. They'll give you multiple chances. Oh, really? I see not when I was on probation. They were pretty, well, at least my pro. See, I think that all depends too on your charge is what you did, how they are with you. Because I've heard from others in the halfway house that I was in that she was pretty cool. She just wasn't cool with me. But they had like lesser

charges and stuff like that. And it depends on your probation officer too. Yeah. But I know that they have like, you'd be surprised the amount of power, well, people outside of the system. Federal probation officers have immense control over your life for the time that you're under probation. They can come into your house at any time without a warrant.

They can look into your vehicles at any time without a warrant. They can do whatever they want to you. They can call you. You could be at work. You could be sleeping. They can call you at midnight. come in, I want you to piss, whatever they want at any time. It's, it's, it's, that's, um, that was harder to deal with in prison. How do you feel today, you know, it's been 11 years since you got

out of prison? I feel great. I mean, I, I, I, I like being here. Um, you know, like I said, I'm very close to my granddaughter. I'm very family oriented these days. Um, my wife goes everywhere with me. She's here now. Um, you know, I'm, I'm very close to my parents again. I enjoy that. Um, I don't dwell on prison. It did help create and instill certain things in me, like you have said yourself. I would have liked to have learned those a different way, but I am glad that I did learn, you know, certain things. And that's probably my most commonly asked question. You know, did you, you know, would you have had to do it again, you know, you'll learn things in there. You do. Like you said, it instills a lot of experience. You know, be.

inside. It's not the best way to learn it, but you know, you do learn some things in there. But I don't, I don't really look back on prison all that much these days. I do get asked occasionally because I'm tatted and I have facial tattoos. So people will ask, you know, like I have tattoos on the back of my head, things of that nature. And I'm like, oh, I got them in prison, you know, so that inevitably starts a conversation. But I usually use it to be like, hey, this is not a great thing or like, don't do that. And, you know, everybody thinks it's like either like the coolest thing or the worst thing. There's no in between, you know?

I've actually had, you know what? It's funny. My wife will say it too. Like old women, like love me. So like, we'll have conversation. We'll be chatting. You know, I'm talking about white-haired women. They just, you know, and they'll be like, oh, my God.

You know, touching me or whatever. You know, and they think it's like the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I'm like, no, this was not a fun environment. Do you regret those tattoos because they associate you with the prison? No, no, I don't regret my tattoos. I have some bad ones, like we'll discuss later. I do have some identifying ones that is not always great because, you know, I'll be somewhere like whole food. You know, I don't really go, but like Costco or somewhere and there'll be, you know, somebody will be like, you know, they're very clearly law enforcement or something.

They'll be like, oh, hey, you, you know, da-da-da-da. and I'm like, you're a cop. You just tell. They talk a certain way. Or they'll be like, no, I'm a probation officer. I'm something. I'm like, yeah, but you're involved in the system. Because nobody just asked that specific type of like,

how do you affiliate or things of that nature. So some of those tattoos are probably not the best. I did have a bunch more teardrops on my face that I had removed. That was probably a really good idea. Yeah, that was a great idea because they were just there. And they were, you know, people would just write away. You know, those are biggies. You know, some of the main prison tattoos, they're very people,

even people that don't know anything about prison know what those tattoos mean. Do you think you had to do those whole 10 years to be the person you are today? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, that's the thing. You know, like you said in the beginning, if they had given me bond, what I have ran. Yeah, absolutely. They had given me less time, I wouldn't have learned, you know, a lot of the lessons.

So funny, so like you said, you know people that have gone back to prison. Were those people that had smaller amounts of time? Not. One guy actually recently went back for a fraud case. He got 20-year sentence. Obama pardoned him on his last day in office and got out at the 17-year mark. Now he's back in prison for fraud. See, okay.

My experience is people that have done a lot of time usually don't. try to go back. I agree with that. Yeah. There's one in one out of probably 20 or something might go back but yeah. So the most part it is the younger guys that do like a couple year or five year sentence right but I would meet guys in prison that are back on their second 20 year sentence for drugs. You come across those guys yeah yeah I I came across. Yeah I'm here on my second 20 piece holy shit that's that's what's 32 years of your life or 34 years 17. Because you got to do what yeah You do 85%. That's crazy.

Yeah. So you're doing what, 16? Yeah. 16 and a half. Yeah. I mean, less now with all the programs and stuff, but still 30 years of your life in prison. Yeah, but that does go back to how are we treating these people?

So we did 20 years in prison. What, you know, I'm not saying, I know a lot of guys that would be happy with simply a minimum wage job and they just can't get one. You know, so what, what do we get? What did we offer that person? What did we as society do? prevent that guy. I'm not saying we have to save the whole planet. I'm not a pacifist. But like, did we help that guy at all before he decided, before we, he decided, I have to sell large quantities of drugs again. Because 2 20 pieces, that's a significant amount of drugs.

So he decided that he couldn't at least nickel and dime it to get by, you know? I don't know, I'm not excusing it, but it's- The interview I dropped last night, the guy went and, you know, he had a kid and tried to to get a job at McDonald's and McDonald's wouldn't hire him because of the way he looked, which was based on the era in which he grew up in. And he was like, all right, forget it. I tried. I'm going to go start robbing banks and stores. And that's something that you'll hear from people that have done multiple bids. They weren't able to avail themselves of a clean and healthy lifestyle.

It wasn't offered to them. Like you have a guy that's willing to humble himself and say, hey, I'm willing to work somewhere that most people wouldn't want to work. No offense to McDonald's. Or whatever. I'll clean toilets. I'll do because I did this in prison. Why wouldn't I do it in the streets?

They don't want to even employ these people. So their next avenue is, well, I can rob a bank or I can do this. That's a bit extreme. I know a lot of guys go back to selling drugs because they can easily connect with people that will give them, you know, drugs to sell rather than give them a job. So that's an issue. If you go back in time to the day your cousin pitched you on this whole business, what advice would you give yourself before you made that decision?

You know, knowing me, I'm not, you know, I'm very self-aware. I wouldn't have listened. So it wouldn't have mattered. I'm not going to stay here and blow smoke up anybody's ass. I was very much immersed in lifestyle, sex, money, drugs, you know, all that shit. I would have been like, who's this old fuck, you know, like telling me what the fuck to do. I would have laughed at myself. Like, if I actually had a time machine, I know when I went and talked to my 22-year-old self,

I'd probably tell myself to fuck off. Yeah, I wouldn't have listened. There was just no, there was no telling me. And that's honest, you know. I enjoyed it. And I wasn't sorry at the time, you know. I was doing what I wanted to do. And I did it.

Well, Frankie, I appreciate you coming on the show today. I appreciate it, Ian. Thank you so much. You got great energy, great personality, and it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I appreciate it, you as well.