Locked In with Ian Bick - I Printed ONE MILLION Dollars Of FAKE Money | Jeff Turner

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

After counterfeiting over a million dollars, Jeffrey Turner is arrested and sent to federal prison. Law Enforcement thought his counterfeiting skills were so good, they gave him the name The Picasso of Counterfeit Money and enlisted his help to make training videos to help detect fake money. Listen to Jeff's crazy story unfold and find out how he was able to turn his life around. Connect with Jeff Turner:Instagram: j.turner727YouTube: JeffreypatrickturnerTikTok: Jeffreypatrickturner Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com/Subscribe to our membership program on YouTube to get early access to interviews, see behind the scenes photos & more:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/joinPowered by Q29 Productions, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Investment management and advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used. Task performance does not guarantee future results. My name is Ian Bick, and you're tuned in to Locked in with Ian Bick. On this week's episode, I interviewed the Bacaso of counterfeiting Jeff Turner. We all make mistakes, experience failure, and fall down in life. But if you decide to get back up and use it as fuel to your fire, you could choose to not let it define you.

You can make it through to the other side and turn it into an opportunity. Join me, Ian Bick, as I interview people from all over the country who have experienced. the rock bottom of the American justice system and find out what they did to overcome it. These are the stories that will motivate you and inspire you to change your life. Jeff Turner, welcome to Locked in. Thanks for having me. The Picasso of counterfeiting, as they like to call you online.

What a name. That's what they say. I'm interested to find out how you got that name on today's interview. In my interviews, I always like to start at the person's beginning. what was your childhood like growing up what's your family like where are you from i was born in sunrise florida just outside of fort lauderdale miami area um i grew up in like a suburb of tampa bay in clear water palm harbor um i had a pretty pretty normal childhood i think for the most part um i've got a brother and a sister, kind of like a regular middle class family. No, like, nothing traumatic,

nothing, you know, pretty good childhood, really played baseball, you know, graduated high school, went to college. I ended up dropping out of college. What do you go to college for? Well, the plan was psychology. But yeah, I only went for a couple years before. I think partying too much kind of just scratch that now during high school and college are you in drugs at all yeah yeah um it was pretty recreational uh when i was younger like just smoking weed partying kind of drinking um but you know the harder drugs uh like in florida back when i was in college um is when like the oxies really hit florida hard so you know i was involved in all that stuff like doctor shopping and uh sponsoring people to get pills and all that stuff and that that ended up

developing a habit uh to say the least and when you're growing up were you getting into any trouble at all in high school or college like with the law a little bit the first first time i got arrested i was 16 um which it was just like a possession of paraphernalia charged i was like skipping school we were at this little skate spot um and like the police ended up showing up and I had a little weed pipe in my pocket. So I got like a year, I think it was a year probation for that. And kind of because of that, I was holding this pipe for a friend of mine. And I got caught with it.

I took the charge. He kind of felt guilty that it was his pipe. And his mom had like percocets in her medicine cabinet. So, you know, I couldn't smoke weed anymore because I was on probation. so he'd bring me these little percocets and give him to me before class in high school. So that was kind of the start of taking pills. But you weren't getting involved in like any major crime or anything like that? I mean, not when I was younger.

I mean, I was selling a lot of weed. Started selling coke when I was probably 18 or 19. But nothing on like any major level. Like I wasn't moving kilos or anything. Now you drop out of college. What are you doing for? work? What's your mindset at the time you drop out? At that point, I didn't have a career really at all. I was basically just getting by selling drugs. That was kind of what I did until I was probably in my

like early to mid-20s. I was just working odd jobs, but selling weed and coke and pills to to make like supplemental income basically. Okay, so then the question is, how does like a low level drug dealer turn into this major counterfeiting operation? What brings you down that path? Well, so when I was probably 16, I started counterfeiting driver's licenses.

But it wasn't to like to sell them, wasn't to make money, it was just kind of, you know, to buy beer. I sold them to some friends of mine. but how legit were these licenses back then they they weren't very good but that uh it kind of made me realize the potential of like what you can counterfeit basically where do you even get the idea for this like at that age how do you just randomly have like a light bulb go off and say i want to make fake IDs for my friends well just like the you know wanting to buy alcohol as a minor really

which they didn't look very sophisticated, but they worked. So when I was 19, I had, because of like the driver's license thing, I had the idea to counterfeit money. Like I was selling drugs, doing all this crazy shit to make money. When I realized that if I could just figure out a way to print money, it would, I mean, that's the best way to do it, you know, really, if you're trying to make money. You just, you can print your own money.

But that's not an easy task to pull off for the average person. No. And when I first started when I was younger, they weren't, I mean, they looked good. I was able to sell them to a friend of mine. His dad was kind of like a connected guy in Tampa. And he was buying probably $10,000 worth of fake hundreds from me every couple weeks. but I mean looking back at it at the time I thought they looked amazing you know but looking back they didn't look as good as I probably thought back then and I only did that for like six months

I probably sold him maybe like 50 grand over the course of six months so it wasn't like a large sums of money but then you progress to a bigger level Well, I stopped. So, like, my friend, um, ended up overdosing and dying. So he was kind of my connection to sell him to his dad's friend. So when he overdosed, I just basically stopped and went back to, um, you know, selling drugs or whatever. Um, and then, like, fast forward, I ended up meeting this girl, um, she had a couple kids from a previous marriage. We got serious. Um, we ended up moving to Knoxville, Tennessee to kind of like just get away from Florida because Florida is kind of a crazy place, especially back in like the mid-2000s when all the pills were

everywhere and stuff. And how old are you at this time? Probably 23, 24 somewhere around there. Okay. So we moved to Knoxville and that's when I got into design industry. So I started like, you know, know, doing sign installs and service. And through that, I got into graphic design and kind of like, you know, the whole graphic design aspect. And that, that, I realized the potential of graphic design with the counterfeiting thing because I learned graphic design more. So you're able to bring it to like a professional level? Yeah, they ended up. I knew like I could do a lot more with it, but I was making good money in the sign industry. I was and I ended up marrying the girl. We had a couple kids of our own. So I stopped selling drugs. I lived a pretty normal life for a while.

But what changed? Like what triggered you to move on from like this normal lifestyle to getting into, you know, a life of counterfeiting? Well, I threw all that. I was still like addicted to drugs. I was doing pills. But I've always been like a functioning. addict. I, you know, raised my kids. A functioning addict. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I paid my rent, went to work, you know, raised my family, you know, but I ended up, like, wrecking a bucket truck. I had a newborn baby, so I wasn't getting any sleep. I ended up falling asleep at the wheel. I wasn't even on drugs at the time either. Like, I was just tired, fell asleep, and wrecked a truck. So my boss fired me for it. It was a company truck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a big bucket truck with like a million dollars worth of signed parts in it and all this crazy shit. But so like at that point I found myself in a situation to where the lease was up in my house. Like I had a newborn baby. I had other kids, you know, I was married at this point. Our lease was up. We were renting a house. Our lease was up in a couple months. And I got laid off from my job. So I basically was just like screwed financially. I was getting by pretty well, making decent money, but I was living paycheck to paycheck for the most part.

So at that point, I kind of, you know, thought back to the counterfeiting thing. Like I was in a bad financial situation. You go back to what your roots were. Yeah, I mean, I needed to make a lot of money quick. Do you think had you not been on drugs at the time, you would have maybe went a more legit route, and it wouldn't have popped in your mind to go back to something illegal?

Probably, probably. Because, I mean, at this point, you know, like I said, I lost my job. The lease was almost up in my house. I had probably a $200 a day habit just doing pills at that point. And, you know, so basically within those two months before the lease was up,

I started just like editing these images. So, like, you can't scan a picture of $100 bill. Like, the scanner will recognize it, and it, like, won't allow you to edit it or print it or anything like that. So I basically took, like, a photo of the bill, uploaded it, downloaded specific software that allowed me to edit it. And, you know, I broke down the images into multiple different layers. So the printer wouldn't recognize it when I printed it because it was printed in four, four different layers. And, you know, just experimenting with stuff, I found like that Bible paper was thin enough to sandwich two sheets together. And no one had ever thought of using Bible paper before?

Yeah, I mean, at the time, I've never heard of it. I just kind of stumbled across it and it worked significantly well. Now, how long does it take you to print the money? Is it like one piece of paper at a time, or are you printing like boatloads of money? No, it was basically one piece at a time. And this is just a $100 bill? Yeah. Well, I started printing 20s at first to just sell to this drug dealer friend of mine.

Like I was selling him 20s while I was kind of editing the images for the hundreds. But it didn't take long for me to finish all the images for the $100 bill and start printing those. But I printed one at a time, but you know, you can print them pretty quick because I had multiple printers. And I would print them in cycles. So like I'd print like just the background color on one printer. And while 10 of those were printing, I'd take the next 10 and print, you know, all the black work and Treasury Seals and serial not. numbers. How legit is this money? Like, does it hold up under all, like, scrutiny if you're going to the bank? Can you go to a bank teller and give them these $100 bills? So, I mean, they looked

pretty much perfect. You hold them up to the light. It passes it. Yeah. See, that's the good thing about the Bible paper is most, so like most paper is bleached in the manufacturing process. for some reason that the specific types of Bible paper I was using isn't so it when you put a black light on it it glows a dull purple just like money does and most paper has starch in it whereas money doesn't so the counterfeit detection pens react to most papers and turn black but I would coat after I printed the bills I'd spray a matte lacquer spray on it so the counterfeit pens wouldn't react with the starch and the paper. So, yeah, basically holding my bills up to the light, they had strips and watermarks,

it glowed properly in a black light, they marked with a pen. I used an iridescent green eye shadow to make, like, take the pigment from it to make my own color shifting ink. How long to take you to get to this level? Like you went from this small little, you know, operation, you printing $20 bills to moving on to hundreds that are very legitimate, how long to take? I'd say probably within six months, because they progressively got better and faster. So like the more you do it, you just get the system down and you can print them a lot faster.

So at first I was probably printing only like a few hundred dollars a day just to like kind of get by. But then as I would spend them and they all like worked. Because at first you're nervous to go break a bill or whatever. You know what I mean? But like every single one passed with no problem at all. Do you think if you had gotten caught with like those first couple bills that would have deterred you and you would have stopped? Or do you think that would have just motivated you to try to improve on your skill? If I did like get caught, I mean, yeah, it would probably deter me.

or I just sell them to drug dealers. But once I was able to spend them and they all worked so easily, like I just kind of went balls to the wall, spending them myself. You know, I was selling them to drug dealers too, but yeah, I was probably spending anywhere from a couple thousand to five thousand a day, just spending on myself. As a counterfeiter, the business aspect of it is you're both using the fake bill, and you're selling them to other people.

Yeah. Do you sell them at their face value or there's a cut and they know it's a fake bill? Well, I'd sell them for about 25% of their face value. So if I want a $100 bill from you, I'm a drug dealer, I come to you and say here's $25. Yeah, basically. Most people would buy anywhere from like $1,000 to $10,000 worth of fake bills. and how I like usually I'd rip off these heroin dealers with the fake money I'd go buy drugs from them with this fake money and when they eventually found out that the bills were fake they'd either be

pissed off and I'd just avoid their phone calls or they'd want to buy them from me you know what mean, because most of these dealers, like, I'd get them for 500 bucks a day. I'd buy $500 worth a dope from them a day. And after a few weeks or a month, you know, they found out that they were fake. But all the bills I had given them, they were able to spend and re-up with or, you know, whatever. So, like, they really weren't out any money. Well, on that topic, as someone that was a user yourself, and you're also a counterfeiter, and you're giving dealers and could be potentially dangerous people, fake bills, are there any dangerous situations you're put in because of that? I mean, definitely. I was pretty good about, like, I mean, when somebody found out that I was

ripping them off for thousands of dollars, I'd usually just avoid those people. So, like, nothing ever really came to a head. One of the, the guy that actually ended up setting me up, we did a lot of business with each other before. set me up but he found out that they were fake because I probably was ripping them off for like $10,000 worth over the course of a month and then I guess one of the bills was in his pocket and it was raining so the color shifting ink I used like got wet and smeared off so um basically I went home one day and he was like in my driveway yelling at my roommate pissed off about the bills um but eventually it basically I found out that he wasn't really mad he just wanted to know you know where

this girl was getting him um so I ended up basically just selling him to him and he was buying like ten thousand dollars every time he'd go up to Cleveland uh to pick up his like brick of heroin or whatever what's the biggest purchase you made for like goods or items with counterfeit money um not very much because so like my thing was you know I wouldn't go buy a car with all fake hundreds, but I, you know, you, I try to just spend, I think the most was probably like $500 worth of, like a money order for $500, but I'd hit up multiple places. So like, we'd go to, you know, say Atlanta for the week and just hit up every business in Atlanta, or at least every, there are certain stores that, you know, only like,

For instance, CBS pharmacies, they've got the counterfeit pen with a blacklight on it, whereas Walgreens just has a counterfeit pen. They just mark it. So, like, different stores have their own techniques of detecting counterfeit bills. So, like, you know, I would avoid certain stores that had, like, the bill validator machines, you know, and go to other, like, certain corporations that only marked it with the pen or had the blacklight or whatever. So we'd go to a city for, like, a week and hit up. up all dollar general Walmart you know supermarkets grocery stores types you know do you wear like a

disguise or anything not really i mean i would try to uh dress a little different i'd maybe like grow a beard for a little bit shave it off grow a goate kind of thing but it's got to be nerve wracking like going up to the counter and not knowing if that money's going to pass or not like were you ever in a situation where it didn't pass or did it just pass every single time There was a couple cases where there was an issue, but it was mainly because I would go to, like, in Knoxville where I was living at the time, I'd go to a store multiple times. And eventually they found out that the bills were fake and then were looking for them. And I, you know, if I went to a store 10 times over the course of, say, two weeks, the last, you know, a few times I went there would start to. get sketchy because they'd but like one grocery store I went to the cashier told me like I broke a

hundred dollar bill with this girl and then like a few days later a week later I went back and it was the same cashier and she like even said she was like marking it with the pen and then holding it up and looking for the strip and marking it again and all this and she said to me like oh I just received a counterfeit bill so I'm just double checking everything you know but she still accepted it but But after stuff like that, I just wouldn't go back to that store again. You know what I mean? At your peak, how much money are you breaking in yourself personally from this enterprise? It really depends because, like, I was probably spending myself at least $2,000 a day.

That's a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, it was all right. But it also depends because, like, these drugs, drug dealers I was dealing with, they're like from Detroit and Cleveland in Atlanta and Chicago, but they were selling dope in Knoxville. So like once a month, they'd go back to Detroit. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamaba's history. Club

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Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting the other. Price line. I'd say, and pick up like a kilo of heroin and then come back to Knoxville and sell it. So once a month, they'd want five grand of my fake bills to go re-up with. And they were ripping off their drug dealers. So, like, you know, I had probably 10 people I was doing that with. But whatever their schedule was like as far as re-upping, you know, that's when I've made another, you know, nice chunk of money. But I'd say on average I was spending like $2,500 a day. And then maybe once a week, one of the guys would want $10,000. So I'd get another $2,500 by selling them the $10.

How long is this going on for before you get caught? It was about two years. And how do you end up getting caught? So that dealer from Cleveland, Ohio, you know, he found out the bills were fake. He wanted to start buying them from me. So I was selling him $5,000, maybe once a month. And basically, one time he went up to Cleveland to re-up. And so he bought a car from him.

this some like junkie he was selling dope to he had the title for it so he didn't know it was stolen or anything but he went up to Cleveland to re-up in this car and it ended up being stolen so he got pulled over and

he had like 20,000 in real cash and 5,000 of my fake bills he hadn't re-uped yet but he had a bag full of money so you know obviously the police is this like young 25-year-old black kid that looks like a drug dealer and has a bag full of money in a stolen car.

So they obviously arrest him. They seize the money. They interrogate him. The police didn't even know the money was fake, but they seized it as drug money. So they deposited in the bank. And then like a couple days later, the bank comes back to the police and says that $5,000, this money's fake. So then the Secret Service get involved. How long are they investigating this whole thing?

Well, they didn't know who I was, but as soon as the first bills, you know, hit the bank and they discovered that they were fake, they were, they knew about me, but they just didn't know who I was. Is that like a decent amount of fake money for them to get on their radar? Oh, yeah. I'd say so. I don't even know the total number that I spent. Like last I heard from the Secret Service, it was like roughly around 400,000, but they said they were still. still finding like 10,000 a week at that point. And that's when I ended up making a plea deal. So I just stopped, you know.

And you're just doing this all in like your basement? No, well, I was traveling. They said in my paperwork it was a mobile, mobile counterfeiting lab or something fucking like that. But no, I was living at a hotel. So I had, you're just printing all this fake money out of the hotel. Yeah, basically. I mean, I'd rent a house for a couple months. and then, you know, just get rid of it and go travel again.

So it's mainly living out of hotels. I think we rented a couple houses a couple different times. How long does it take for the Secret Service to figure out that you're the Picasso counterfeiting? Well, until the guy told him my name in the interrogation. He folded pretty quick. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I've got the tapes of the interrogation and my discovery.

And so, like, he was up in Cleveland. and he basically told the Secret Service that he could come down to Knoxville and set me up. So the Cleveland branch of the Secret Service made a deal with him and said, okay, we'll take you down to Knoxville, you set up this counterfeiter, and we won't press charges on you for the counterfeit money. So he did that. The Secret Service from Cleveland, Ohio, came down to Knoxville. they set me up obviously the Knoxville branch of the Secret Service got involved

along with like the organized crime unit drug task force KPD the catchy red-handed yeah pretty much so he tried to set me up he asked me to get him 700 grams of heroin like I wasn't really selling that much drugs but I knew a lot of like big-time drug dealers so he was asking me to like middleman him almost the kilo to get it for him. And luckily I got like tipped off by one of his runners that he got arrested up in Cleveland. So I already knew pretty much I suspected that he was cooperating. But you still wanted to try it with the fake money? Well, I mean, no. At that point he was trying to. So like one of his runners warned me that he got arrested up in Cleveland. So I wasn't trying to talk with him over the phone or do

any business or anything, but after even answering his phone call, they GPS pinged my phone to my location and basically waited. They knew which hotel I was at, but they didn't know which room I was in. So I guess they, and they knew the make and model of my car. So they waited in the parking lot until my wife left the hotel room to go shopping, and then they pulled her over, you know, arrested her, found the hotel room key, kicked the door in. And I was in there making. I think it was like 6,400. So the Secret Service bounces in your hotel room and they just see this fake money in your whole operating system?

Yeah, pretty much. I was printing 6,400 for these Detroit drug dealers I knew at the time when they kicked the door in, yeah. Do you get arrested, do you get Bond? No. Well, I got pretrial release. Like they tried to fight it saying I was a flight risk because, you know, I was from Florida, but living in Knoxville, living at hotels.

I got set up by a drug dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. They knew I was dealing with dealers in Detroit and Atlanta. So, like, they were basically saying I was a flight risk, but, you know, my lawyer fought it and ended up getting pretrial. What's your family's reaction to your arrest? I don't think they were too surprised. But, I mean, maybe they're. were, I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I've been getting into trouble here and there for a long time.

Now, how long is the criminal justice process for you? And do you take a deal? Do you go to trial? What's going on post-arrest for you? So it took a long time because I got out on pretrial. And like they basically said, you got to go to rehab and you have to go to a halfway house until, you know, On pretrial release, you say you're going to take it to trial. You know, even though I wasn't, I had no intention of actually taking it to trial. I was just, you know, trying to get out on pretrial release. So, but they said, you know, go to rehab and stay in a halfway house. So I did that, but then COVID hit. So all the courts were closed.

So everything got prolonged, like an extra year. So I was out on pretrial release for like 18 months until I finally, you know, submitted the change of plea. you know, pled guilty. What did you plead guilty to? It was, the original indictment was, let's see, it was conspiracy to counterfeit U.S. obligations, like sale and manufacture of counterfeit U.S. obligations, and then like a couple counts of uttering counterfeit bills.

But the plea deal was basically they said, you know, if you plead guilty, we won't charge your wife with anything. We'll keep the amount, like restitution amount and like all that under $100,000, which avoids an enhancement. And they wanted me to make a training video for the, for Secret Service agents, like explaining my process. Did you make a Secret Service training? Yeah.

They gave me cooperation credit for basically going through my process. just telling them how I learned everything. So, like, I was counterfeiting the strips on the blue note bills. Like, I found that out from Google patents, actually. So, like, the company that is contracted by the government to make the paper and security features is called Crane and Company, Crane Currency. And they patented that blue strip. It's called Motion. It's called fly eye lenticular lens arrays.

It's like this specific type of lenticular technology that, yeah, basically by reading the patent, I learned how to replicate the 3D security ribbons. So I explained all that to the Secret Service on the video, you know, made a couple bills. They had all my printers and everything because they kicked in my hotel room door while I was making bills. so they had all the evidence out and I made a couple bills for him on camera explained how I learned everything and the whole process. But you didn't have to testify against anyone else. No.

Just make the video for them. The only co-conspirator on my case was the guy that set me up. And he got probably a sweet deal then? Well, actually, he probably would have, but once he set me up, they let him go as an informant. But then he disappeared on them and got another charge. and got caught with like a kilo of heroin, a kilo of meth and a handgun

after he was cooperating with them. So had you never gotten that tip, your life could be very different now if you got caught with those drugs? Oh, well, I mean, if I would have accepted his, like he was trying to get me to get him 700 grams of heroin.

If I would have agreed to that over the phone, yeah, I would. Heroin conspiracies at least five years in prison. and probably 10. How much time do you end up getting sentenced to because of this counterfeiting business? I got the range of my sentence was 10 to 16 months and they gave me the low end of 10 months.

And you had no really major criminal history going into this? No. The only charges I had as an adult were adjudication withheld before this. So my criminal history was a zero to one. Do you have any restitution that you have to pay back to maybe vendors or anything that you gave fake money to? Yeah, it's $100,000 I have to pay. How do they come up

with that figure? Like if you're putting fake money of $400,000 on the streets, why is it only $100,000? I think that was the Secret Service. That was part of their plea agreement. The enhancements, you know, you get an enhancement over $100,000 and an enhancement at over a million. So yeah, that was kind of like just their deal they gave me. If I pled guilty and showed them, you know, how I did everything, they'd keep it under 100,000. So the number ended up being like 96,800 or something. So for all the shit you were doing, you got a pretty good deal. Ten months in federal prison, I'm assuming you went to a camp?

Well, I was supposed to self-surrender to a camp, but I, ended up, like basically getting arrested again before I could self-surrender and it bumped my level up to a low. What did you get arrested before? It was possession of heroin. Now you were still addicted at this point? Well, no, actually. I mean, I was sober.

I think once they sentenced me, I just kind of had like a week or two of saying, fuck it. And I relapsed. But, yeah, I'm not. Now I'm too, I've been out of prison for over a year. And I've got two and a half years clean since then. That's awesome, man. Congratulations.

And how old are you now? I'm 36. 36. So you get out of prison. What was your prison experience like? It's only 10 months, so it wasn't too much time. But overall, how do you think prison was for you? Yeah.

I mean, it wasn't. I mean, for me personally, it was like a positive experience, I guess you could say. Just in the fact that it got me sober. You think it gave you like a new mindset, new outlook on life? Yeah, definitely. If I wouldn't have gotten caught and arrested and went to prison, I probably wouldn't have gotten sober. You know what I mean?

Were your parents supportive while you're in prison? I mean, they always support, like support what I do as long as it's positive. You know, they supported me for the most part. like and you know my whole family is pretty happy now that i'm you know doing better than i've than i have been in the past it's it's you know it's always interesting to think that it's our worst moments in life that have the ability to change us for the better i mean it doesn't always happen in every case but you do have those cases like in your case had you never counterfeited the money had you never went to prison you might not be clean to this day you could be dead to this day from

an overdose of drugs. For sure. It just puts life into perspective. Yeah, I mean, really everything worked out as best as it could. You know, like I was doing like three grams of fentany all a day, ripping off heroin dealers and, you know, living a pretty crazy life. What do you do when you get out of prison? What's your new game plan?

Is there any inclination to get back into what you were doing before? Oh, no, no. The opportunities I've gotten since I've been out are amazing, really. You know, I'm running production at a print shop. I'm writing a book telling my story. I've optioned the rights to my story to a film company. So they're trying to make that work. It's in development now.

I'm not sure, you know, what's going to happen with the movie thing, but it'd be pretty cool if they'd make a movie about it. Well, you got the story for it. Well, let's hope it works out. Do you ever get inclinations to use drugs or alcohol? No, not anymore. I really didn't even, when the last time I relapsed, like I didn't even, I don't even know what,

it was just a stupid, like, fluke. I didn't even necessarily want to. It was just kind of like they sentenced me, and I knew I was turning myself into prison in a couple weeks, so it was just kind of a, yeah, this is a stupid decision, but I'm, like, much happier now, being sober, really. And even when I was on drugs, I was, like, physically addicted, so I just was going, just kept going with this. You know, I've been wanting to get off opiates for 10 years, you know what I mean? but it was just hard with you know kids in a job like it's hard to go a month dope sick you know

when i had responsibilities and stuff do you feel like changes in your physical body in a way like going from being addicted the drugs now being completely clean um you see like some people that use drugs they go through severe physical changes um i mean i'd say i'm healthier now than i've been in a long time for sure um yeah like being physically addicted to heroin opiates all that stuff is really horrible for your body i never used needles or anything i just snorted snorted it but still like you know has horrible negative effects snorting that much heroin on a daily basis is not good what have you learned through this whole process like what are your takeaways from you know committing the crime getting caught, the post-trial or the pre-trial experience,

and then going to prison and now out of prison, what's your biggest learning lesson you've taken away from all of that? I mean, really, I feel like doing the right thing, like the karma is real, you know what I mean? Like, if you really just do the right thing and make positive choices, it seems that, you know, things are much better. things just work out if you do the right thing.

Because even when I was like, you know, I might make a lot of money doing this crazy shit I was doing, but obviously everything catches up with you. You know what I mean? Not only do I did I get arrested, but you have to pay back money. You know what I mean? It's just, you know, I don't know.

Making the right choice and just doing positive things with your life is always going to be better for sure. Was it hard to disassociate yourself with like the group of people you were hanging out with pre-prison. Like you had to create a whole new lifestyle essentially get away from the drug users, the drug dealers, anyone involved in crime. Yeah, for sure. I'm starting over from completely my whole life, really.

They seized all the money and cars, everything. You know, I got out of prison. My wife and I are separated, so, you know, I'm just starting everything over from scratch. basically are you more cautious about who you spend your time with like i know now for me i'm very careful of who i let into my life now especially as i'm like on the rise and doing things um that kind of resemble my past in a way and i'm very cautious of okay what are their intentions what can they bring to the table do you have those thoughts going through your mind um i mean yeah definitely like i don't at this point um in my life like i don't hang out with anybody really i'd go to work

and you know what I mean. I just do what needs to be done. You know what I mean? I don't do anything else. I don't like go hang out or go to bars or anything like that. So yeah, I'm just trying to start everything over. You know what I mean? I've got a good job, but I'm working like 65 hours a week.

I'm writing this book. I'm traveling for podcasts and stuff probably once a month. What's your message? Like what's your hope to get out by doing these podcasts, by doing a possible movie writing the book? What's your plan? Really, I don't have a plan. It's kind of just all fell into my lap, really.

I just did one podcast telling my story, and it got a lot of views, and a bunch of other people have reached out to me. So I'm just kind of going with the flow of things regarding that. I mean, I've got a goal to finish writing this book, which that's a long process, especially with like my schedule how it is now it's like i'm trying to squeeze in writing a couple

paragraphs a night type thing um if i'm lucky so you know i want to finish the book but everything else is just kind of going with the flow of it man that's great man i mean you really do have a cautionary tale for a lot of people too because like you lived a pretty you know crazy lifestyle uh printing fake money is definitely not the norm of crimes that people commit that when they're on drugs. And I'm sure there was like that thrilling part of it, like having all this money and being able to kind of like be on the top of your own world. I remember for me like doing the concerts and the nightclubs and stuff like that was a fuel and that, you know, led to other not so good decisions.

So now here you are post crime, post prison, post drug addiction. And you have a good story to tell. And, you know, I wish you the best with that. I hope they make it into the movie. I'll definitely watch the movie on that. I don't think I've ever seen like a counterfeiting movie. You see it on TV shows, but I haven't really seen a full movie. Yeah.

And I hope you just, you know, keep being that message to others about what can happen if they do get their life on track. So, you know, thanks for coming on locked in, Jeff. It's been a pleasure. And, you know, hope to see you again soon. Cool. Appreciate it, man.