Locked In with Ian Bick - I Scammed Casinos — Then Nevada Forced Me To Survive Prison | James Reda

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

James Reda grew up in Las Vegas being raised by his grandparents, but his life took a sharp turn when his father taught him how to scam slot machines at a young age. That early introduction to hustling led James into a world of check fraud, casino scams, and eventually time in both Nevada state prison and federal prison — including serving time in the same facility as his father. After his first release, James tried to rebuild his life working as a limo driver, but he became wrapped up in an FBI indictment connected to his job. While on pre-trial release, he slipped back into check fraud and landed in prison again — where he was even accidentally released before being taken back into custody. Ultimately sentenced to more time, James served in both systems before using his second chance on the outside to finally turn his life around. In this episode, he breaks down his entire journey: the early scams, the prison time, the FBI case, the accidental release, the relapse, and what it took to change his life for good. If you’re interested in Vegas crime stories, prison life, redemption arcs, and real interviews with people who’ve lived it, this conversation delivers honesty, insight, and wild twists from start to finish. #CasinoScam #PrisonStory #NevadaPrison #TrueCrimePodcast #LockedInWithIanBick #InmateStories #PrisonLife #crimeandconsequences Thanks to AURA FRAMES for sponsoring this episode: Aura Frames: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/LOCKEDIN. Promo Code LOCKEDIN Connect with James Reda: Instagram: @jimmybangbitch TikTok: @haulingrockstars Company: ontoursolutions.com Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction & Early Life Story 02:00 Growing Up in Las Vegas: Family Dynamics & Environment 07:30 School Years, College Choices & Early Adulthood 12:00 First Crimes, Influence at Home & Early Red Flags 24:00 How Crime Escalated: Entry Into Casino Schemes 40:00 Inside the Casino Scams & The Day Everything Unraveled 01:00:00 Federal Charges, Prison Time & Navigating Legal Battles 01:17:00 Life After Release: Rebuilding, Setbacks & A Second Federal Case 01:27:00 Reflections on His Journey, Life Lessons & Where He Is Today Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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handcuffs. He goes, I have no idea. I just know I'm here to apprehend you. So you and your dad are in a prison cell together. What's that conversation even like? Getting a hold of my attorney the next day. And I'm like, he's like, how are you about? He's tripping too. Like, and I tell him the story. And he Well, my advice as your attorney is, you know, go turn yourself in right now. Tell us about Nevada State Prison. What's that like? You would either check in or just get smashed off the line, you know? He scammed casinos for thousands, got indicted by the FBI, got released by accident, and served time

with his own father. This is James, welcome to Locked in. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah, I'm glad you reached out to us because we had reached out. I guess you got a new number. So we thought we didn't think the interview was happening.

Because some people were like when you could tell they're not coming. when they don't answer the text or the emails. And then we were surprised, but in a good way that you hit us up yesterday that you're coming. Yeah, you know my, it's a long story with the phone number thing, but it got hijacked basically.

And I couldn't get it back. But I remembered about that. And I was like, oh, my God, that's why I check my emails because I get so many emails that you don't really see them when they come in. Well, I'm glad you checked it. And it worked out because you happened to be in Connecticut for your work.

Yes, correct. Yep. You have a really cool job. Yeah, it's, interesting for sure. It's got us up and downs. And you're a tour bus driver, right? Correct. Yes, for just music tours, basically. So if anyone needs a tour bus driver, hit you up? Absolutely, absolutely. OnTor Solutions.com. We'll put that in the episode description, too. They can make you and check it out. Yeah. Where were you

raised? Where are you from? So I was born in Lexington, Kentucky, but when I was six months old or whatever, we moved to Vegas, my grandparents raised me. My mom was on drugs, I guess, when she was pregnant in Lexington. And the story is she was like seven months pregnant and went to, went to visit my dad at my grandparents' house and my grandma kind of just kidnapped her and kept her there until I was born because she was like, you know, doing drugs obviously. And it's weird, too. And then when I was born, like on my birth certificate, it has my parents as my grandkids. grandparents, which I don't even know how that's possible. It's like weird. Why do you guys move

from Kentucky? Um, my grandparents, my grandparents retired and just went to Las Vegas. That's where they picked. That's where they retired. Yeah, and they bought some land out there and developed some, he developed some homes out there when I was a lot younger, I remember, but. So did you have any relationship with your parents early on? Um, I mean, I, I seen my mom, sometimes, you know what I mean? Like maybe, you know, once every month or something like that. Because my mom ended up moving to Vegas, too. My father, my dad, who I, like, was really close with. He would, he was in and out of prison like his whole life. So when he would get out of prison, like he would go home basically to my grandparents' house. My grandparents had, you know,

they were, they were financially kind of well off. And so he would, you know, be home for a couple years and then gone again. How old are you when you realized or when they told you what the situation was with your parents? Um, probably like third grade, I'm going to say, because I remember in third grade, I kind of went to go live with my mom. Like, they tried it out. She was, like I said, she was in Vegas and it didn't work with them. Like, I wanted to go back to, like, get out of their fast. Why was it so bad? It just, my grandparents was like, you know, they spoiled me.

I kind of just, I couldn't run amok, you know what I'm saying? And my mom was, like, more strict, I think, I don't know. I just wasn't used to the, I don't know, the rules or the detention. So, yeah, I wanted to go back. And so it didn't last long. Do you think you would have been better off in the long run if you stayed with your mom? I know. I can't, no, I don't.

My mom has her own demons. she's uh coincidentally enough she's in connecticut like not far from here lives here yeah like so my sister lives out here my half sister and she's uh she's works in a morch she's like a funeralist or whatever they call mortician mortician yes mortician's the word yes and um so um my mom's out here like in a home like somewhere out here yeah are you gonna visit her at all i don't i'm like like said i'm not really close with her i don't i don't um you know talk to her much so at all what do you think was your happiest memory from childhood? That's a good question.

Probably when I was probably like 10 or 11, my dad, my dad was gone from when I was like five years old to like 11. But when he came home when I was 11, I think I was pretty happy times when he came home. What about your worst memory? 14 years old, Christmas Eve. I found my friend with his head blown off. That was pretty bad memory. What happened to him?

He committed suicide. Yeah. You guys are really close? Yeah, he was very close. He was my, um, he lived in the same neighborhood as me. And so I was like, I'll permit to live at his house with him, you know, like, when I was a little kid for years. How do you think that affected you in the future going forward? Strangely enough, it didn't really, I don't know, it didn't really fade me.

I don't think, I don't know. It sucked. I was sad, but I kind of blocked it. I didn't really let it. I think when you're at that age, you know what I mean? You know, you block a lot of things, you know what I'm saying? So, I don't know. What kind of kid were you at that age? have described yourself? I was like basically, I was an only child there at home, so, um, probably starving for

attention because, like I said, my grandparents were older, so, you know, they don't, um, have the energy to, you know, do what, like, I guess a younger parents could do. So I was kind of just, like, left alone, like, just by myself a lot. Were you noticeably older? Or were they noticeably older, where, like, kids might have teased you for that or? No, never. Nothing like that. Not like that.

But they were noticing, they were definitely, you could notice they weren't my parents. my grandparents for sure. Did anyone ever comment on that? No, I was never a bad thing. You know, it was never an issue. I don't ever remember it being anything weird. Like, oh, your grandparents raising you versus your parents. It never was like, yeah.

How are you as a student? Student, I was, I graduated high school, did some college. I went to Orange Coast College for a little bit, but I was a, I mean, I passed everything. I could have done better, though. Where's Orange Coast? Um, like orange. It's in, um, Newport Beach, like Orange, it's called, California. Yeah, California. Okay. I've spent from Vegas. I moved out there for probably five years and I lived in Huntington Beach. What were you interested in at college? Um, I didn't even know what, I went basic, you know, for your basic, you know, like AA and then see what it was going to go from there. But, um, I ended up getting, I ended up getting married and having kids at very young age, too, like around 21, 20 years old. I was going to have my first kid.

How'd that come about? So a girl I used to date, you know, off and on in Vegas. I went to Huntington Beach, I have my own place out there. And I came home for Christmas break. And I ran into her and she was doing bad or whatever, you know. And I was breaking up with her boyfriend or trying to know where to go. And I said, well, I got my own spot in Huntington Beach. I said, when you just come back with me for a week just to get away, you know, that type of thing.

So she said, cool. So she rode back with me in Huntington Beach and like, so goes to the story. Like, you know, it never. Yeah. It never, she never left. So what happens after that? You get married? We get married and then my, we end up, we go back to Vegas because I wasn't going to

school no more. So my grandparents were going to fork out the, you know, to pay for it anymore. So we go back to Vegas and I'm thinking, hold on, once a second, where were we going with this? Okay. After you get married. Okay, got you. So after we got married, I go back to Vegas.

And I just doing some odd jobs. you were living out there trying to make ends meet. Part-time job delivering pizza. I was doing some computer tech stuff, stuff like that. And then it didn't take long for me to really just start doing criminal stuff, honestly. Had you ever gotten in trouble before you're like? Okay, no. So to get into that, so like, let's go back in time a little bit.

So when I was like 16, my dad got out of prison. And I remember, like, he didn't have a car because he just, you know, got home. And I did. I was 16. I had a car, you know, so he's out a couple. a couple of weeks and he tells me to get him a ride. I said, cool. So we can give him a ride and we go to this grocery store. And he tells me to like go get some milk. There's, there's slot machines there, right? Like the old real machine. He tells me to go get some milk. Come back. When you come back,

come right to the right side of me and then sit down. Okay. And the cashiers over there. I'm like, okay, so I get milk, come around, sit down. Right as I sit down, I see him put something in the machine. And he's just playing it, boom. And then within, you know, 15 minutes he had emptied all the, the whole hopper was emptied of quarters. And he handed me two big buckets full, and he grabbed two big buckets full. We walked out and went and cashed him in. I dropped him back off at home. He gave me half the money.

It was like $600. And that was my first taste of like doing something illegal probably. And then it wasn't long after that. Like he got busted. Two good and co-coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk, and contain three grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the five grams per serving and leading traditional coffee creamers. for a rich, delicious experience.

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Watch the Four Seasons May 28th, only on Netflix. Went back to prison. Did he explain what he was doing at the time? Well, yeah, absolutely. So he had a, back then there was a, it was a light device. So it looked like kind of a shoehorn. And it had a little LED, it wasn't an LED, but a little light bulb on it with a little tiny battery. And then when you push the metal onto the metal, the battery would light up.

And it had like some gummy stuff around it so it could stick. And basically we would stick it up in the machine in between the hopper that's like light activated, which makes the coins come out in the machine. So he sticks it up in there. And every time he would push the, if he hits cash out and then he pushes on that light, the quarters won't stop coming out. The credits will stop moving. Like it'll say, like what's on there, but the quarters will keep coming out as long as he's holding that light on.

So it's just like he acts like he's just catching the quarters. And you know what I mean? But he's actually taking it like that way. Then he'd have to turn it off, you know, play a little bit. Put the quarters in a bucket. Just like he's playing and, you know, winning and losing. And until eventually he just would empty, you can empty the whole opera out in about 10 minutes. And the store owners wouldn't notice this going on?

It just looks like you're just playing. You know what I mean? Because people win and lose. So in those grocery stores, you know, it's, there's not a lot in there. There's just a few of them. So that's not the ideal place to go, but it's kind of a safe place to go because of security and stuff like that. But that's what he was doing.

But it wasn't long after that, he went, you get slack break up again and doesn't get out until I'm about 22. How many times did you do that with him? Just that one time on that, you know, that occasion. There was one other time, later. home when he got when he got out i did it with them the light there was only worked at the airport but by the time he when he went away and he got like so i was an adult when he got out that was the difference but i was doing other things when he got out i wasn't like doing any gambling stuff and he gets out i was uh doing a lot of fraud stuff checks um credit cards that that type stuff how does that make

you feel that he brought you along and kind of introduced you to that especially when he's you know out of prison and that could threaten him going back to prison. It's a good question. That's a good question. At the time, I never thought about it anyway, you know, until I had my own kids. And I think, I'd look back and I think, man, I can never, my kids are, you know, adults now to this day. But I can never, like, want to go do a crime with them. Like, I can't see getting them involved and anything like that.

But, like, he could. But, I mean, he was a cool dude. Like, he was a good dude. Like, like, the way he was, you know, what cloth he was cut from is, what it was, but it didn't, I kind of blamed him, but I don't. Do you think he was a bad father? In the traditional sense, yes, absolutely. But he was just, I still loved him and he was still a good, like he had no, he had no

ill intent in his towards, you know, he tried his best. And like, he just the way he was. He was just different. He was different. Tell us about your transition into crime. You said you were doing checks and those types of scams. Correct. How did that come about?

What's your first? one um this girl i met um had that had the check thing down you know i gave her a ride and i kind of seen what it was going on it wasn't really hard to figure out um we're doing a lot of drugs back then so you know you end up in these circles where you're just and that's what these people are doing and you're getting high and you're in there making IDs and you're you know going crazy bad shit crazy with it um that's kind of what happened and then um i think my first one was a actually for a while

the first six months doing it was never do it for cash it was always just easy like going in stores and buying stuff and I'm not really necessarily doing it because I have to like survive or to pay my bills

but to just get extra shit just to go in there and just get stuff that you might you know clothes or whatever you're going to get and not have to pay for it I guess it was um

I can't remember how many feel and just made me feel like there was you know when you're doing drugs and stuff at the time getting high, like, you don't really feel anything, I guess. How makes sense? Yeah, how much money were you making doing this?

Well, in the beginning of doing those, checking not much money at all, because, like I said, getting cash going in and getting money or cash is difficult versus just going in and buying something, like going to a cage at a bank or going to a cage at a casino to try to get cash. Like, I wasn't at that time trying to do anything at that level like that. Did your wife know you had addiction issues and you were, you know, essentially running scams? At the time, no, not really.

like she was like basically living with her family and I was living with mine. And so she didn't really know like that I was really like full-fledged in doing that like 100% no. Okay. So how does this progress? What happens? So what happens is is my dad, so my dad gets out and I'm about 20, you know, I'm 22 or whatever, 21, 22. He gets out of prison. And of course he at that point, I'm doing what I'm doing.

So he wanted nothing to do with it. All he wanted to do was what he does in the casino, what he knows how to do. and so he went back at it and they had switched the light thing he used to use they switched it they put a blocker on it so it didn't work no more so half the machines worked half to it and so he had to you know it was really limited

what he could do then some crew came in from Louisiana that my dad had known and they had a way to beat the the blocker part of it it was like just a wire but they wouldn't show them, you know, they wouldn't sell it to us, wouldn't show us what it look like. And you could be kind of seen it just from a glance at it and, um, went out and started doing machines and that was way easier way to do it. And so my dad was killing, like, so he's out there

with these guys making, you know, 10,000, 15,000 a week, like right out the rip. So that's kind of like what transitioned to me into just going to like, okay, that's where the money's at. Every single year, I convince myself, I'm going to be the guy who finds a perfect holiday gift. And every year I end up wandering around a store like a loss. inmate on commissary day. But aura frames, that's the one gift that actually saves me from myself. The truth is, finding something personal, but not weirdly too personal, is impossible. And that's why I love gifting aura frames. You hand someone in frame, and the moment it turns on with photos already loaded, it looks like you put real thought into it, even if you set it up 10 minutes before

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selling Carver matte frames named number one by wirecutter by using promo code locked in at checkout. That's a URA frames.com promo code locked in. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast. So order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. So does he bring you in on it or do you? actually bring him in on it because he when they leave back to louisiana he didn't have the device or whatever

i kind of remembered what it looked like so i bought a machine put it in my house got wires and started bending them and to figuring out what it was doing and how it did it and i you know built prototype got one working inside my house and then went out and it worked you know i mean so tell us that first time you do it the first time uh i was at this small casino um san remo in Vegas it's really small and it had like a corner of it, there was like really no cameras on it. You could go by yourself. You didn't need a blocker to block the cameras when you're putting it in. I went in there and it was just almost too easy, I guess.

You know, within 30 minutes I went out, came out with thousands, basically. Thousands, yeah. And then it was just on and cracking from them. But the problem is, is I had a huge gambling problem myself. So I'm stealing them from one place and giving it right back to the next place, which is just crazy. Would you gamble at the same place? you steal from?

Sometimes I would, yeah, sometimes I would, yeah. Sometimes I would be at, like, say, circus, circus playing. I'd be on some blackjack, you know, bin drum, just like playing blackjack for hours, you know, days almost. And I would go broke, you know, and I'd literally inside the same casino. I mean, I'd just get up and go to the machine. I'd have to keep $1. As long as I had a dollar on me, I could put it in the machine and get four credits,

get my device in there and get cash out and empty the whole, all the hoppers. What year is this to put in perspective? This is 2003. How is casino? security. The keynote security was still high tech at the time. You know, a lot of cameras, you know, eyes in the sky, like the whole bit, the whole thing. Not like it is today with facial recognition and stuff like that, but it was, you know, still

high tech. And that was another thing about going in there and doing that was walking out, you know, knowing that you, you made millions of dollars of surveillance equipment worth pennies. You know, that that was like, that was a rush in itself and an addiction in itself. Were you nervous going in there? At first, yes, but once I got more comfortable doing it, like, no. I became cocky about it. Like I would put my device in there, you know what I mean?

Empty it all the way down to where it's completely empty and there's a little coat. You know, it's the lights are blinking because it's calling for the slot guys to come refill it. Now back then, is it just vouchers that there would print out? No, it was coins. There was no vouchers. So that came later on. That came, that's what killed that hustle is because you're dropping out coins with it. Is that why they moved to vouchers?

I don't, I would think they moved to vouchers. because it's just easier. You don't have to all those coins you've got to deal with. You know what I mean? You don't have to keep refilling the machines. I just think they went to a voucher just because it was an easier method to do it.

I don't think it was necessarily for cheaters. Now, are the coins casino type coins? Like it'll say the amounts on them? Well, no, they're just like 25 cent quarters is what you'd go. So like they did have like the bigger, the dollar machines and those kind of machines, but believe it or not, a bucket full of quarters

is more than a bucket full of dollars in coin because the dollars are so big, so much bigger. And then the dollar machine seemed to jam up a lot when you try to do the dollars or like the higher limit ones. Those bigger coins seem to jam up. So you would get more, it was just the quarters were the way to go. And the quarters were come out smooth and fast. So what are you walking out of there with like a pillowcase or a bag?

No, you would just basically the buckets that they give you to put your quarters in if you win or lose. Oh, they'd give you buckets? Yeah. If you win or lose, everyone's got their bucket full of quarters, you know. I'm young, so I've never seen this before. Yeah, I would never, I would never, we'd usually the rule of thumb was don't cash out in the same place that you're taking it from. we would take them out with this, put them in the car or something, and then cash them out at a grocery store or later or something like that.

Could you cash out in the casino? Absolutely, he could, yeah. We got to the point, like, you know, we had these, like, strict rules at first that we and him would do, but then we'd go on our own and do it. And so it's like, sometimes I'd show up certain spots, and, you know, the machines would be empty already. Like, I knew he already cleaned them out. Like, there's no, he's already got this whole row that, of this casino.

It's empty. You'd be like, damn, you know, or stuff like that. And so we burnt out, Vegas got burnt out. pretty fast and so I used to start going to like Loughlin outside of Vegas with me and my girlfriend would go she was doing a lot of the fraud and the checks and stuff still she liked it she was brazen enough now to go cash it at the cage she had it down so girlfriend meaning wife or just my girlfriend at the time that a side piece from no no well me me and my wife had split up at this point okay we were split up like but at that at that by this time so it was a I met this girl and

who was doing the fraud stuff and so she was do that and I would do what I was doing and we were killing it like we couldn't we couldn't miss i mean now do you hit multiple machines in the same casino yes yes we have every casino had certain ones that would go and you know they were in the perfect spot and that that's what we do now you mentioned camera blockers have you ever use those before yeah so so when in most of the spots you want to have a blocker because you don't want them to that that camera to have you putting in that device number one like you know a recording of that for sure so when i go to put this thing into the into the into the machine if you're blocking the camera you're review you know i mean they they they don't see you don't want them to see that obviously but if you was ever

something was it ever happen they can you could never be like convicted of it or because they didn't have you putting it in there i learned that from my dad from back when he was first started doing that light device there was three different times he got arrested and all three times he beat it because the camera didn't have him putting it in there even though they knew what he was doing but he beat him all three times yeah what was your biggest tall oh god doing that it's hard to say like because i would put it back, you know what I mean? Like I, sometimes I'd go a couple of days just doing that and then put in, you know, I'd steal some, go gamble it back, steal it, gamble it back. And probably, you know, I've went for three days doing that straight. So I couldn't even tell you how much it was like,

you know, like I said, each machine is about 300 bucks. And some of them have double hoppers. It would be like making like 700, 600, 600 bucks. So, you know, I would do three or four machines at a time. I would say I would do about $1,500 before I would cash that out and then have, okay, I got $1,500 and then go gamble back. Now, if you're hitting multiple machines in the same casino on the same night, no one's noticing that you're getting that lucky winning? No, they just don't, no, they don't, because there's no sirens going off. You're just catching the quarters and you're filling up your bucket. Just like, you know, there's a lot of things going on in the casino. You just kind of blend in, you know. Yeah, that's the whole

trick to it is just kind of blending in there, you know. I thought it was crazy how, like, certain places we would always, these machines, like, they have, they don't, how do they not notice that, like, these eight machines never win? You know, that's, that was always blew my mind. Like, how did they not notice that? How long does this go on for? And do you end up getting caught for this? Okay, I do. So this goes on for, um, probably two years. And then one day, it was a Super Bowl Sunday. And I'm, uh, uh, my dad had went back to prison again on, like a parole violation. So, but he, um, and he just gets out. and Super Bowl Sunday I'm by myself and I go to Circus Circus and there's this like machine

that's got a double hopper and it's by this like side door and there's no camera on it and you could park right out the side door like across the street so you can just kind of go in there grab three buckets of quarters walk out and do your thing so I go there and I'm by myself and sitting there and playing a machine I got two buckets full already maybe almost getting ready to pull it out and get out of there and I look over security guard right there has got a piece of paper in his hand he's like looking at me

he's looking at the paper he's looking at me he's looking at the paper I'm thinking is that what I think and I look and I see another one over there like kind of just you know lurking and I see I'm starting to get surrounded so I get up grab my quarters

and of course then they surround me and tell me to come with them they want to go and take me in the back room or whatever I'm like I think I'm good I'm just going to leave because they're not touching me so you don't know if they can't touch you know what I mean can they could they grab me you don't know these things

so they kind of have me where I can't move so I just drop all the quarters. Like drop the buckets out of my hands. So like we're talking $1,000 and quarters are just all through the whole casino floor everywhere. So they look down and then I ran out and hit that side door. I'm running across this street and I'm literally like almost a block away and I hear this like sound like a piece of wood hitting the ground. It was like tink, tink, like a baseball bat is what it sounded like. And I turned around to look and then all of a sudden something just catches me in my legs and and it trips me up and I fall face down on my face. Dude runs up and grabs me. And what he had done?

he had pulled his belly club out and just threw it and tripped me up like it was gangster like i couldn't believe it either that he got that's how he got me did that like shattered your ankle no it didn't it hurt a little bit my adrenaline was going so much but it didn't break nothing but it was i couldn't even believe he did that i couldn't even believe that's how he did that and uh he takes me in uh the back room there whatever they have to call gaming now to come arrest me and uh i don't say a word gaming shows up and since it's super bowl i guess the main head of gaming this guy his name Zofoffer. He's one who shows up, right?

And so he comes in and he's got reading the paperwork thing or anything. He got my ID and he's like, Rita, like, are you related to Tom Rita? And I'm like, it's my dad, yeah. And he's just like, his whole expression lit up. And he's like, oh, my God, that fucking, I've been chasing him. I remember he, I remember you when you were this big. And he was like so excited. He was like, man, the apple don't far far from the tree.

He puts me cuffs me in the front. Totally cool to me. Be getting the car to take me to jail. And he's telling me, like, I'm just going to charge you with like one charge right now. You're going to get a bunch later, but just one so you can bail out, you know, how much money you got in your pocket? And then he's like, can we call your dad? So we call my dad on the, my dad, and I go, someone wants to talk to you. You know, it was him and they were, like, they were old college buddies or something.

It was crazy. And, that was kind of weird. So what do they charge you with? They charged me with, um, burglary, um, possession of a, burglary, um, cheating at gambling and, uh, yeah, burglary and cheating at gambling. And they have no idea you hit these other ones yet. No, they, the discovery on that case just had like, me cashing in some quarters there, like a surveillance, to me cash in some quarters there.

But on that discovery, I'd noticed there was no, I beat that case because they didn't have any, they didn't have me putting the thing in the machine. Okay, so they give you bail, and then your- So I bail out, correct. And then basically, the DA didn't file on it. And when I finally, you know, it was no, it was like they denied the case because they didn't have any evidence to get me.

Okay. So I think I'm cool, so I'm, you know, I'm back at it. Well, about three weeks, about three months later, I wake up and my house is raided. I got cops all with guns in my faces. And it's a gaming control board. And they come in there and I've got, I've got a slot machine there that I got for manufacturing cheating devices.

They find the whole fraud lab in the, in one of the, you know, in the office, you know, everything's there. Like nothing's, nothing, a million felonies laying around. They bag everything up, tag everything up, leave. Uncuff me and my girl. Say, well, you can have me a business card, you know what I mean? And then leaves. And we're just looking around like the whole house is thrashed, you know.

And then he be here and knock back on the door. And it's this detective still. And he reaches in his pocket, pulls out like a eight ball of meth that he had found in the office and then just throws it at me. He goes, oh, you probably want that back. And then leaves, you know. And my girl was like, what the hell was that? What does that mean? I think that means I'm going to prison for like a long time is what that means.

Like you didn't even, you know what I mean? That was his way telling me like you're fucking hit. And so I don't hear nothing for five months, maybe. And then I get, they come back and they get me, they arrest me. And they arrest my dad too. They came to my house to get me. And my dad would just come to my house too. And it was like, he's seen him arresting me and he tried to take off high-speed chase.

They get them. What were you doing for those five months still doing this? Just going to muck. Yeah, absolutely. Writing checks. I'm going out of town, you know, machines, just going crazy. So I get arrested and I'm in there. My dad's in there.

And he gets bailed out. And every time I had my charges were burglary, forgery, theft, and uttering. What's uttering? Uttering is that this is for the checks. So each, so that was, that was, for checks, that was one. And then there was conspiracy to cheat a gambling, manufacturing, a cheating device, cheating a gambling, and then burglary. That was that in separate inductees, these two separate indictments, one from the gaming,

one for the checks. So I would bail, every time each one for that burglary, forgery, theft, and uttering was, it was like $4,500, though, 30,000. $3,500 cash you'd have to give the bail bondsman. That's what cover that. That's whatever it was. That was like $30,000 for those. Well, we bail out on that.

And then they don't let me out. And I'm like, what the hell's going on? They go to the copy, looks it up and goes, oh, you got new charges. What? Burglarry, forgery, theft, uttering. So it would be another check from a different location from somewhere else. Whole other case.

bail out on that. This happened like nine times. No bullshit. And then so my dad, he finally gets arrested. for the conspiracy part of the cheating and gambling. He had nothing on the checks at all. There was nothing because he never messed with that. He didn't do anything with that.

So I'm in there and I finally, I quit trying to even get out. And so one day I get, they tell me roll it up, you know, roll up, so I roll up and they take me into the elevator. You're being released. And I'm like, I don't know. That's great. So we get to the elevator. And there's my dad from another unit.

He shows up. And we're both looking at each other. We don't know what's going on. Like, fucking we're getting out. Like, yes, I don't know. This is crazy, right? And we get downstairs, of course, two U.S. Marshals are down there. The feds pick it up.

The feds pick up the check stuff, the fraud stuff, not the gaming stuff, but the fraud stuff. My dad, he had nothing to do with that, like I said. But there was like when they found all the IDs, I had made my dad an ID. I was making it. And I made one and I had his picture, but he didn't even know I was making it. Like, I was just fucking around. It was on my computer. And they found that and he got charged to be a conspirator, but he'd had nothing to do with that, which was, it was crazy.

And so we end up getting, putting, that's when we ended up becoming sellies. and that was the first realization that I'm not getting out you know like you think you always think you're going to bail until it's a fed case you're they detained me as a flight risk I appealed it and they had a recording of me when I got arrested the first time from circus circus talking to my girlfriend saying I'm going to leave when I get out of sound but had a whole separate thing you know you know how they are so I got detained and I remember I'll never forget this the next court day was like four months away I was thinking like what how can you just keep you like this with no bail for that long and so we

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How much were you doing in check set? It was big enough for the feds to pick it up. At the end, it was 188,000 was the loss value. I'm surprised they picked it up for that. I know, but this was, I know, me too. This was back when it was kind of a thing, though. It was like a thing then. So did you go across state lines for it to become federal, or it was just because

it was a check? It was just, it was uttering, uttering a possession of counterfeit securities of an organization was what the federal charge was. And, and I remember, too, like, going in the feds and you go with that charge, and you don't know what's going on in the feds, you know. And I'm like, when they offered me 30 months, you know, everybody, like, when you first get in there, they're like, you good. You know what I mean?

Like, what's your charge? I tell them, like, oh, you good, man. You mean, you're going home and shit. Like, you're telling me I got 30, you know what I mean? Like, you're home already. Like, you're going home, you're good. Then you start realizing that people in there have, you know, some people are just fighting to get 10 years, you know, like, and they'll come back.

with 10 years happy like they're the like they did good you know how it is in the fed so that kind of relieved me a little bit of you know what my charges were and and not to mention there was a time I sold some a lot of drugs and when I seen what the drugs the people that got caught with drugs what they were getting and then looking at it like going damn I was doing more than that and I never got caught for that thank God but um like get life changing life changing stuff so you and your dad are in a prison cell together what's that conversation even like like Like, what do you guys talk about? So we're in there, and there's four of us in this.

So this was city of Las Vegas had the federal contract back then. So they had this whole unit, unit two, which was the Fed dorm. And so we were in there. It was me, him, this South Sider and this other white dude. And he drove me crazy. I'm not going to lie. Like, my dad drove me fucking crazy in there. All, all, I mean, it was all good, but he drove me crazy.

He just would, like, be worried about me, you know, be all up on my shit. It was just, it was just fine. but never went in there like my dad. Like I said, he was a cool dude. He was really likable. But the conversation was like, we never really, like, argued about, you know, I knew what I was, you know, doing.

I didn't, like, sit and blame him, I guess for any of that, for being in there. I was just tripping, like, on my girlfriend the whole time. I remember that, like, really bad. Because she's, she, she was my co-defendant, but they let her out on pretrial. So she's out running a muck, you know, getting, she's getting away, you know what I'm saying?

It's all bad. And so, I hate saying this when, when she finally got, they finally, like, violated her and locked her up. Like I was like, I, that was, I slept good that for the first time ever that night. I remember that. I was like, I slept like a baby that night. It was like, fuck. I ain't saying that. And she, she sat there for 18 months and didn't, and got credit time served. Did your dad take any accountability? Like, when he's in the cell with you, is he saying, hey,

I'm son, I'm sorry, you know, I got you into all this? Oh, quite the opposite. Because like I said, he had nothing to do with the Fed case. Remember, I told you, I made an ID. So he had no, he never cashed a check. He never did anything. Never made a nickel from any of that. But yet he was in the he was a co-conspirator for that. But even broader, you know, him saying, I'm sorry, I didn't. No, I know what you mean. No, no, he never, no, never did. Never did.

How'd that affect you? It didn't really affect how I, you know, I accepted him long, you know, way long before that as being he is who he is. I'm not mad at him for it. That's for sure. Now, is it normal for them to put family members together? I thought they would separate family. You know, I've seen it before.

but it was in this case they did you know um don't ask me why but there's really no other place to put us to there's that separate us they'd have to they would have to be i didn't even know how they could do it back then because they had like unit two in in city jail so that's why we probably ended up in there one time i went to the hole i was in city jail i go to the hole and they moved me to a different unit to punish me it was like the regular general pop unit from the city jail which i thought it was great because i was in a two-man sale we were porters because I was a, you know, fed person. And there's a lot of stuff coming in, cigarettes going out because there's people move.

There's a lot of movement coming in and out of there. So, you know, I was like, like, this is a change in pace. I was loving it. And I was there like two weeks. And then this lieutenant came and got me and said, like, my dad wouldn't leave him alone about bugging them to bring me back. And so then he took me back to the, put me right in the same cell as them again. And, yeah, it was, I mean, we made the best of it.

But can you know, that's all you can do, you know. What's the final deal you end up taking? So I end up taking, I get in the state, in the cheating at gambling, they just, the feds or the state drops all the check stuff. They drop those charges because the feds happen. So I get, I end up with like a one to three, one to three years in the state prison for the gambling. And I end up with 30 years in the fed, 30 months into the feds, excuse me. Now, the state case is supposed to run concurrent with the feds. And my dad got eight to 20.

years in the state because of his record and 30 months in the feds so we both had the same months and months in the feds and so my dad would never see the my dad my dad was supposed to never see um for at the time he thought the fed time because we both went to state prison first now what it happened was is so we're on a writ we were because we got arrested from the state first we went to federal and got were sellies they picked us up picked us up on a writ took us over to the feds we got the 30 months returned us back to the state the whole time i'm thinking it's concurrent so is he So I go do the one to three years in the state.

I get parole to the Fed case. And I was supposed to have like, I did, I should have like just two months. I was supposed to go in my head, I'm going to go in here and turn around and get out of here. Well, I get to Stafford finally. And they tell me my time started right now. He goes, your time starts now when you got here. I'm like, well, what about when I was in, you know, city, you know, federal attention. You were on our rich, so you were in state custody.

So that time don't count. Right? And I'm saying, but the state ran a concurrent. They go, well, the state, so what does that got to do with us? So they ran a concurrent. You know, because you're on a writ. If you're not in federal custody, they're not going to run your time. And I didn't get credit for anything. Even when I got on the cheating of gambling, when I pled guilty in the state,

I remember I was bailing out on all those charges. Well, I couldn't even get credit time served because the case I pled guilty to, he wants to give me my jail credits. And he goes, well, you bailed out on this case, on this actual case back in a year. ago. So they bamboosom me that way too because, you know, no one caught it. And so I couldn't even get credit for them all that time in jail. And so I'm pissed. So I write a letter to my dad to tell my dad, hey, man, they've got, um, our time's not running. You know, I mean, it's just FYI, our time's not running. So he writes a letter to his, to this judge and tells her, you know,

my time's not concurrent, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and he gets a court. She calls him back in court. Jackie Glass, the same judge who buried OJ in Nevada. You had a show after that and all that shit. So she says, you know what? I'm sick of this shit. I'm giving the feds 30 days to come and get you. And 30 days comes and goes, they don't come and get them. So she goes back to court and she goes, well, I have no choice to do this.

She goes, I'm resentencing you to 8 to 20 years state prison, but I'm suspending the sentence. Gives him probation. So you're released from custody now. So the feds have to come and get you now. So they do that. And so now he's out early. He probably was in, I think, two and a half years at that time. one day I'm told you I'm at Safford and I'm sitting there you know what I'm going to eat one day and

a dude comes up to me from laundry and says hey you know Tom Rita and I'm like yeah he's underd my daddy goes so he's coming he's coming here tomorrow I was like damn so they sent him to saffert too where I was at so he shows up and shit I'm like cool you know he shows up we're happy you know me and seeing each other and probably like a year you know locked up and and so we go to um R&D because he wants to find out was release date the next day we go should we both go to R&D he goes in there talks to the dude comes out says he'll get back he goes the guy said he'll get back to me. He, you know, he, he emailed Grand Prairie or whatever, you know, Grand Prairie, Texas where they calculate the, the time. So he goes, we leave him, go eat

lunch, and we're, about on her second lap on the yard, and they call Rita R&D. So I know it's him because he was just there, but we both walk up anyway. Right as we're walking up to the front, the associate wardens out there, they're all out there and they're like, roll up your stuff for my dad, roll it up right now. You've got, you've got to be out this compounded an hour. And so what had happened was when he got sentenced by Jackie Glass in the state, she suspended the sentence and she gave him zero days credit time served. So you got to remember, so the feds had to give him all the time that he was locked up. They have to give, the only time they were going to give you credit for anything. And it put him past his release day now.

I'm tripped. I'm fear. And I'm like, well, that just makes no sense because I had the same exact thing with the same thing. So how am I not getting my time? How was he getting his time? And it was And the guy was in the R&D guy was telling me that, oh, they made a mistake on your dad. He just couldn't do nothing. They said, release him. He didn't even want to. He really didn't. He was, I really don't, but I have no choice, you know.

And I was like, God, man. And I was happy he got out. And then I ended up getting, um, the jail time part. I got, like, so a couple weeks later, he called me in. And I had like 14 months left. And I got credit. He gave me like three months to go, which was cool. I was happy with that.

So how much time did your dad end up doing? He ended up doing, um, 20, 27 months on a 30 month sentence, basically, it depends. Plus the, what do you do on the 8 to 20? He did, he did it all there. That was the, the, the, the, those months he's how many months he did on the age 20. When he got to the feds, they got to get, they ended up giving them all the credit. You know what I'm saying?

Because the, but he did about that many, 26 months in the state. That's it? That's all you do on it? That's all he did. No, no, it's not all you do because you understand he had eight year, eight years to go to parole. But when, after a couple years, when he went. back in front of her and they wouldn't pick them back up to make a concurrent. She, she, she re-sentenced them to eight to 20 years, but made it probation. So she basically reduced her

own sentence. Right. She just made, she gave him probation on the sentence. That's the only way she she could get him into federal custody. So it was concurrent. She said, and she made up speech about it. She goes, well, this is what I got to do then. I'm not, I said concurrent. I met concurrent. And she was like adamant about that she was, she was going to do that. So he, and she even said, you beat us for six years or whatever. She could have also just waited, though, for him to do the and then say and do that, you know? I guess, but she, whatever the reason is that she, you know, he, uh, that's what happened. So he got, you know, he, you know, he just did that, which, which I thought was like,

justifiable. Like I said, he had nothing to do on the Fed case. So, you know, it should have been something, you got some kind of a break on that, a relief. Was he mad at you about the Fed case? No, he wasn't. I think he was just happy, because he was in trouble anyway in the state. I think he was just, he was just happy to be as sick as that sounds with me, like to be,

at least there with me, like, have me there to, do. during, you know, maybe to watch, I don't know. He just seemed like he was, he was just like he'd been in prison so many times. It was nothing to him. You got to remember. He was, you know, that was what he did. Tell us about Nevada State Prison. What's that like?

So Nevada State Prison is very political. You have Southern Desert, which is kind of a minimal. Then you have a high desert, which is where you first go, which is a, it's a whole yard's locked down. It always has been since a riot many years ago. But it's very political, like any West Coast prison. So where did you fit into that? I was just, you know, I wasn't in, you know, gangs.

I didn't do anything like that. I just basically, if it was time to go to the yard and put our boots on, you know, I'm going to do it. Did I policy going to think? No. Did I go do my mandatory workouts every day? Yes. What do you mean by mandatory work out? Like every day, you know, you have to go out during yard and do like burpees, you know, like 100 burpees or whatever it's going to be.

Like, that's just what you have to do, stay in shape. That's what the white guys would do? Yeah, the white guys. It would be like if you were under 50 years old or, something that's your mandatory workouts you got to go do every day so it like makes you um you know keeps everybody strong in case something what happened the shit goes down so what if you didn't do that workout um and you were you would just basically get smashed off the line if you didn't want to do it i mean you would either check in or just get smashed off the line you know so are there no

overweight white guys in these prisons they're over yeah but they're up there doing their burpees though coughing and sweating and trying at least you had to go out there and do you know what I mean, even if they didn't complete it, they better go, they better be out there until they're broke up, broken down, you know? So that, yeah. And we weren't as bad as like the, like, you know, the Serenios, like their program. Oh, my God. Like, they have us like, like, it's like, army boot camp and shit sometimes with those guys.

It's so crazy. Did anything ever pop off while you were there and you had to step in? No. My whole career, I got lucky enough to where I didn't never, like, there's never like a huge riot to where I had to like, you know, do that or show phase. Thank God. And I never, and I got, I never had one wreck either. I did my time.

I did what I'm supposed to do. You know what I mean? Kind of stayed out the way and read a lot. And, you know, mandatory yard. I'd go out there and just whatever, you know, play the game. So how do you feel when people say that you, white guys always have to kind of click up on the West Coast? I would say that when you're in a prison that has, you know, like when I was in Victorville, for example, my second Fed case, which we'll get into it a little bit. but when there's, you know, 800 Pisces, which is, you know, Mexican-born Mexicans,

and there's 200 South fighters, 200 blacks, and 54 white guys, you better kind of, you need all 54 white guys to stick together. Or you're not going to have any phones. You're not going to have any tables to sit down. You're not going to have any TVs to watch. They're just going to, you'll get bullied out of it. So you need to have that group stance in there. You do it.

It has nothing. It's not racist. It's just what it is. Do you know if your dad clicked up with anyone? No, my dad, no, he just, I don't know what he was like probably when he was younger in there. But, you know, he clicked up with, like, the old guys when I was there when we were together. Like, he would be with the old guys, whatever they did. But no, he was never in no gang or anything like that.

What do your grandparents think about you going to prison? Were they still alive? When I went to my grandfather had passed away by the time I went to prison. And my grandmother passed away before I went to prison too, yeah. I was 30 years old the first time I ever got arrested. What do you think they would have said to you? My grandma would have said, I told you so. I knew you'd be, because she always said you're going to be just like your father.

So she would have definitely, she was just said, I knew it. And so she would have said. And they loved my dad, too, so it wouldn't have been something. They would have been surprised at, I don't think. When they did tell you, you're going to be just like your dad in your mind, are you thinking, no way, I'm never going to. I used to think no, absolutely. No, there's no way now.

I used to think that. I used to really think that. There's no way. What's a difference between Nevada State Prison and federal prison? Politic-wise, it depends where you're going to go in the feds. Like it's high desert's equivalent to like probably a medium, the Victorville medium, for example. That would be like high desert. That was, you know, what was strange to me was leaving.

I'll give you an example. When I got out the state and I went to the feds and I went to Safford, I get to Safford. And on the train with me was a guy from Sacramento. And this guy, you know, he swah stickers, the whole thing, whatever. His name's Tim Tipton. It's actually a shout out to Tim Tipton. And he, we get there and we're both from those. same kind of politics from, you know, the state yards, you know, no, no child molesters,

you have to do this, you know, all that kind of stuff. And you smash them on site. That was like the thing in this in the state. I'm at Safford and the lieutenant comes out for the speech and he goes, hey, man, just, I want you guys to know that 70% of this yard are sex offenders and, you know, lows are, you know what I mean? And it's because it's the speech. And if you don't like it, you want to see, you know, we can, we'll gladly put

in a hole for whatever it takes, nine months and you can get transferred to a medium where you can just go up there and politic, I guess. So I'm like thinking, so the, no one, no one really cares. But since we, I, from where I just came from and where he was from, like, we both kind of looked at each other like, you know, like, because we know these policies, we come from those same kind of, we came from those strict politics. And we kind of looked at each other like, what are you going to do? You know, I mean, you're going to go in the thing.

And so I was just like, yeah, well, let's just go. Like, you know, looks nice out there anyway. There's, there's cabanas and all this shit. And, you know, it's a low. What are you, that's where they send you. So we went, we went on the yard and learn that, you know, there's, if you want to sit. at the table you have to have your paperwork, you know, to sit at the, you know, table with all the other other dudes. And there was a small group of us in there. And that's the difference, you know, you just turn to blind eye and that you can really do about it.

Or you just go to a medium to where it's a... This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Go further in a long-range Subaru hybrid with up to 581 miles per tank in the Forrester Hybrid. Longer range, better fuel efficiency. And legendary symmetrical all-wheel drive. standard. The Subaru Forrester Hybrid. Visit Subaru.com slash hybrid to learn more. Maximum range based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy and a full tank of fuel. Actual mileage and range may vary. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without

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Mornings are when the grind starts. Stretches, immaculate, cardio, crushed it, territory marked. Sorry, geraniums. The dog routine is on point, but it can't get a little wolf. That's why I feel up with high protein, Benifle, freshly,

prepared meals. I'm eating clean with real meat and veggies served fresh from the pantry. Kick boring in the bowl with Beneful freshly prepared meals. Visit Purina.com slash Beneful to shop now. Or get to a camp where you're not, you know they're not in camps either, but. So how much time do you do in total on these state and federal sentences the first time? About 41 months. 41 months all done. Right the time I got out. From the time it was the rest of time I got out. So you get out, what happens? Okay. So I get out all that and, um, And I'd been cleaned the whole time in prison, you know, when I was doing that prison.

I didn't do any drugs in prison. I didn't do anything. I get out and I got my three-year supervisory lease. So I get a job driving limousines. CLS limousines was named the company. They were the number one biggest limo company in Las Vegas. They had all the MGM property doors. You know, it was a company you probably want to work for.

So I get, I go to training, I get training. I get put in a town car on the day shift, like the smallest vehicle, you know, day shift really no money. And I did that for like two years because there was a lot of, to work in this company, you had management that you basically had to pay to get into a new or better vehicle. You had to pay to get into, you know, these are very lucrative positions. Like there was only like the stretch hummers and, you know, escalates. Like those guys are making, you know, 10 grand a week type shit. You know what I'm saying? Versus you're making, lucky to make 100 a day in the daytime, you know, driving a town car. But you have a goal to try to

get to that point, but very almost impossible to get to with management and all these. people sucking money from them. So, um, I did it for three, you know, I, I, I just did it for about two years on day shift like that. I'm on supervised release at the time. Um, no problems on supervised release, no violations, you know, no dirty UAs, nothing. And, um, I work my way up in the company and I eventually end up in a, in a stretch escalade, which was the nicest, basically, one of the nicest stretch attributes on the strip, you know, um, uh, and everything's fine. And I'm working. I got my own house. I got custody of my kids. I mean, everything's going great in my life. Um, the owner of the company, Charlie Horky, he calls me one day and says, um, am I available that weekend?

And I said, am I free or I booked up? I said, I'm free. I have nothing going on. He goes, well, you're going to be driving a friend of mine from L.A. He's an entertainment lawyer. He's, uh, super cool, whatever. You're going to pick him up from the airport. You're going to be with him as long as he wants you and then just write it up as a direct bill, which means, like, you know, charge it to the company. The guy's got an account with the company. He's got, he's, whatever he pays me would be a tip. I said, no problem. And then, uh, he goes, one last thing, he goes, the dude's a pussy hound. The dude likes girls and shit. You know what I mean? He'll probably want to go to strip club or he'll, you know, uh, want to get a girl sent to his room or something. And he goes,

and I told him 1,500 a girl and he's going, telling me all this stuff. And I'm going, he basically telling me, like, if you ask you for a girl, don't get, don't rip him off. Don't take him to a rip off joint. You have a few options as a driver enough. Someone, ask you for a girl. You can, number one, you can take them to Perump where it's legal. Nye County. It's about an hour away. The whorehouse will give you 40% of what they spend there as a commission for a driver for taking them out there. Or you can call an escort agency. It's another legal way. The escort agencies will give you $200 kickback if the call goes through and they do what they're doing. Someone asks you for a girl, you say, okay, um,

I would, if it ever happened to me, I'd say, yeah, what's your phone number? I'll have a girl call you. That would be a phone girl from the escort agency, and I'm not doing nothing illegal at that point. I'm just getting my commission. I'd have a driver number and I go, we would get 1099 and taxed on it and everything. I could go that route or if I know some girls, I could just, you know, personally hook him up in that aspect. Every driver would do one of those things. So by him asking me, like telling me if he wants a girl, like he's just, he's not assuming that I have all these girls.

He's just, as a driver, you know what to do it. And he's just saying, don't get him ripped off. This, this, this, this, this, I know this guy. Well, I picked the guy up. He's with his wife. He says, just take me to Blasio. Take him to Blasio and he goes, I'm good for the night. You're good.

He hands me a $100 bill. So I guess his wife came with him, so he's just not going to do whatever he's going to do. I call up, Charlie. I tell him what happened. You know, he just dropped me off. He goes, all right, we'll go back to work. Boom. Last time I talked to him.

Hang up first, one of the, one of the only times I talked to him pretty much the last time I talked to him. Ten months later, I'm taking my kids to school. One of them's pretending he's sick. You know, they're in high school at the time. One's pretending. So one doesn't go. I drop off the one and he comes back home with me.

He talks his way back home and we're pulling into my neighborhood. And my whole neighborhood's surrounded by like, there's a helicopter. There's fucking trucks. And I already know that it looks like it undercovers it. But I have no, I don't, in a million years think they're there for me. I'm kind of messing with my son when I pull in. I'm like, because my streets were like,

like there was a big square, you know, with streets going down the middle. So I pulled down the wrong street. I'm like, I'm going to my street, you know, just messing around. And then this SUV is like following us, you know. I go up and I pull up the next street. Now I'm starting to get kind of nervous. Like, what the hell? My son's like, I think he's following you to pops and fucking all of a sudden they light me up and pull me over.

And I'm thinking, what's what's going on? He goes, oh, we're just looking for somebody. And then I kind of get relieved. I go, okay, cool. They're not. Obviously not me. I give my ID or whatever. And then he fucking looks at it, reads it.

And he goes, man, stand up. And I'm like, what? For what? And he puts me in the handcuffs. He goes, I have no idea. I just know I'm here to apprehend you. These guys have bigger badges. They'll tell you, they'll tell you something. And this, um, Dodge, uh, charger pulls up and two FBI guys get out with her, you know, flag jackets. And I'm like, what the hell's going on? I have no idea. Wouldn't tell me anything. Um, one of my charge with. They wouldn't say anything. They just said, well, talk about it when we get down to the FBI headquarters. So they put me in the car and I'm, I'm dumbfound. I have no clue of what it could be. I haven't done nothing wrong. Okay, so I get down there and they put me in a room, then they got a, they come in with a tape recorder, they sit down. They hit play on the tape recorder, and they go explain this, and they hit play, and it's a phone recording, and it's my dispatch at work. Elena, or his name, and Elena's calling me, she says, you know, James, where are you at? I said, MGM.

She goes, get to X caliber, there's a ride waiting, see the door man. All right, cool, hangs out. they hit stop. They look at me and they said, explain that. Now I'm like, that's my dispatch, telling me to go to get a ride from Excalibur. You know, explain it. And then they get up and they leave.

Leave me in there for about an hour. And I'm sitting there and thinking, it just has to be a joke, right? There's no, I mean, you can't imagine what you're thinking at this point. I'm totally relieved when they played that. But I'm trying to think why. You know, I'm thinking like, did the person, I'm thinking maybe the person I picked up from X caliber got killed or something.

That's what I'm thinking. You know what I'm saying? Like maybe something happened. You know what makes it looks like. And I have no idea what the fuck could it even be. And so then they come back in again, get play on the tape again and explain this. And now this time, this was the phone conversation me and Charlie had about the girl picking up his buddy with the girl. So they play that. And I'm just like still, I'm like, so they, I didn't never got the guy the dude of girl in the first place.

And I never even said anything about he said that. You know what I mean? I just said, okay, sure. So they asked me, what's that? about and I said, exactly what's the owner of my company. And this is his friend. And you, that's what you, you heard it. And then he goes, uh, I go, but I didn't get the dude, a girl in.

And they said, well, how many times have you gotten Charlie a girl? I said, never. I go, never have like, there's, I go, you ain't got another phone conversation to me and him. That's for sure because I never talked to him. That's it. And so they're like, okay, well, um, what would you have done if he had, what would you have done if he wasn't with his wife and all that? And I said, well, I don't know.

That's what I said, I would, I could have took them to Perrump because I know this is Lee and I I tell them the same thing I just told you. And they go, well, how many times have you done something like that over your career, you know? And I said, well, over the five years I've been driving, I said, you know, four or five times, maybe. But it's, you can look at tax records and see I'm 1099. I'm not hiding it. And so they go, all right. And then, uh, it was the end of the interview.

And then we, they, I went to court the same day and I go there and then, um, oh, no, excuse me, let me go back. So, so we have the interview. I tell them that, and I still don't know what I'm charged with, and that's when they break it, you're charged with racketeering, RICO. And your charge in this RICO conspiracy is facilitating prostitutes for the criminal organization, CLS. A federal case.

Federal case for the criminal organization CLS, which was involved in all this, like, fraud and drug dealing, these other drivers, like shit had it. I didn't have nothing to do with me, like the fraud that he was doing had nothing to do with me. I just was a driver at the company, you know, I mean, I was doing none of that shit. And you're still working for him at the time of the arrest? At the rest of it, I just, I was, we had a kind of a falling out. So it had to been like, I haven't been worked, I hadn't worked for him for a couple weeks.

That wouldn't mean I wasn't going back. I just was taking a break at that time. And, uh, I couldn't believe it. Like, racketeering and I'm losing my mind on this. I'm like, fucking, are you kidding? Like, I didn't do nothing. I never got the judo, you know what I mean? And I, and I, I had no, he had called me.

I forgot about that that phone conversation. I forgot about it. It's like, there's no way, like, I'm not living off of earnings of prostitutes. You know, that's not what, that's not what, that's, not true, you know, and there was no other evidence to say that. It was, you know, and so my attorney had me feeling a lot better, you know, he's telling me we're going to beat it a million percent. Like, there's no way we're going to lose his case. Like, he was adamant. And I got this, I got lucky in the, in the attorney pool, and I got this guy, Todd Leventhal, who was, he was a character.

And he was, he was cool. He was super cool guy. And we were going to go to trial and we're going to beat this thing. And I'm on pretrial for a couple years. Now, you got to remember, I went from making really good money in the limo company. So now they got raided and they're shut down and it's bullshit and I've got no income. And I'm getting ready to lose my house. They come and repole my Mustang. My car is gone. And so you fall, you get depressed and you start falling down into this hole.

Like, what am I going to do? And of course that led to like a relapse of like getting high. And I remember like getting high. I remember my brain being so scattered and just so I, so my. I get indicted in December 13th. So then on January 13th, a month later, I got a job driving a cab. I was going to try to, you know, I'm pre-trauma.

As humiliating as it was to go to from where I was at to like a taxi, I was just, that's what I'm going to do. And so I get this cab job. I go through training. And when I'm getting my keys, the first night, I'm forgetting keys to go drive. You're not supposed to be on your phone or anything, you know, because they're yelling on all these names or on this podium.

You yell at you for you're on your phone. Well, my dad called me, and he answered me. He's hard to get off the phone sometimes because he'll start talking and you won't let you hang up. And I'm answering, and he's saying something like, oh, man, I'm all, my head hurts. I can't remember what he was saying, you know, but I was just like, man, I got to call you back. I'm getting my keys. He went and let's see him, so I had to hang up on him, so I hung up on him. Not the first time I would ever have to do that.

I get my keys and I get the taxi and I take off and I don't, I forget to call him back. and I get to my I go to the Bellagio to do and I get in line with all the other taxis this is going to be my first ride Belagio I decide well Belagio the cabs is they're inching along they go down in this tunnel underneath and then pop up at the cab line at top so I'm down on this tunnel now right as I'm getting in this tunnel my phone rings is my dad's girlfriend at the time this girl Renee and and I answer it but there's no reception because I'm in this I can't hear what she's saying so um it takes about five minutes to get through this tunnel and she keeps calls and I keep trying to answer, but she won't stop calling.

So I think something I'd be wrong, you know? And we get, right as I get out the tunnel and there's like one more, I'm like one cab away from, they're going to pull, call me up. I answer the phone. It was, you know, she tells me that they found him dead in his car. And pretty sure he was called. That's when he was calling, you haven't known that happened, you know. And so that was like really bad.

And so I didn't, then they called me up for the first cab ride and I didn't even, I just kept driving a cab and went. And I never drove a cab. I just drove it back to the yard. it never ended up being kept ever yeah and um that was tough at that point really tough you know i started losing my mind probably because so much bad shit was happening to me it was like it just didn't make sense from the indictment i'm losing my car my house um no money and then my dad dies and it was like that was tough that was really tough you know i never probably

told anybody this really talked about it but before he died i was like kind of a real piece of shit to him I'm not going to lie. He didn't have much going on, so he was kind of staying with me on my couch, and I just was like a dick. It was a dick. Yeah, so that's... What do you wish you could say to him? It's not what I wish I could really say to him.

It's more like, I wish I could go back and not just treat him different, you know, when he was down on his luck. And I was doing good, you know, and I don't know if it was a ego thing. I don't know, but I just wish I could have, you know, treated him different. Did you ever see yourself getting arrested again when you got out of prison that first time? I did not. I did not. And I, not in a million years.

I mean, I got that limo job and I worked my ass off to get to where I was at, like legally. And, you know, I had a lot of shit, nice shit going on. And I wasn't a criminal anymore. That 40 months had fixed being changed all that. I got off drugs and I just wasn't a criminal no more. And all that shit happened. And then I found my, I mean, I'm damn never going to lose my mind. And so I get high.

And the second I get high, it seems that everything just is going to be okay. So I thought, but it's not, you know, but it worked. And so now I'm getting high again. And so I need money now. And sure enough, the next thing I know I'm back to doing fraud and I'm doing like credit cards now. And I'm full-fledged right back into the same shit that I swore I would never do again because, you know, I thought I had changed. But I felt that I got pushed into that. into this corner and I had a lot of regret because I got this Fed case and I didn't do nothing wrong.

If I'm, I got this attitude like if I'm going to prison, it's going to be for something I did. So I'm, you know what I'm saying? So that's, that's, that's what it was. So I'm going crazy on that and really careless because I'm high shit. And I'm like, I'm doing a bunch of, I come up with this gift card thing I figured out where I'm generating these numbers and writing them on gift cards, right, where I'm able to like take these $50 gift cards. And it sounds a little bit, 50.

bucks so you know it doesn't sound like it's a lot but i can basically with one swipe i could make these fifty dollar gift cards good over and over and over again no matter what it says a gift to you on the card you don't need an id you didn't need anything if someone was 200 bucks you use four of them because they're fifty dollars each you know if it got down to like a dollar left on it you could go get gas put in any zip code don't tell me how i have no idea how this worked with this bin number put in any zip code and you could fill your tank up i don't know how the bin number all i know is i would take the last four numbers off the card, whatever that was, and the first five numbers of the credit card, the middle numbers, I would just generate on a generator, and then I would put it,

I copy and paste it into that track, and then write it onto the track writer. So I just got this off of somebody else, and it worked every fucking time, no matter what. It never did not work. And so I had, you know, now I've got like 50 cards on me. I've got these cards on me, and I'm going in and fucking, like, me and my buddy used to fuck around, like, what's the record of how many cards you would. you know, buy, spend it one time. And I had, so I come up with a great story because it looks strange when you got, you know, 30 gift cards. And you're trying to buy something because they're only

worth $50 each, you know. So I came up with the story one time, like right on the spot, I said, you know, I'm a car salesman. And every time you sell a car, you get a, this is a bonus. You get a, you get a, you get a, you get a, you get a, a salesman who's got the most at the end of each month, it gets, they match how many you've got. So if like, if you've got the most, if you sold 40 cars and you were the most cars that month, you would get, you'd have the 40 car. cards you got for each sell of the car, and then you would get another 40 as a bonus because you were the top seller. That's why I've got 80 of these cards, and I'm trying to buy, you know what I'm saying? That's my story. It sounded great. And they would just go every time. There's

no way to tell. It was just worked every time. And then I started getting these rental cars with, I would take cards that you couldn't swipe that, you know, I couldn't, that you couldn't get the track for regular credit cards, but you'd emboss the number on them and go into the like rental car place. And, you know, they would type in the number. whatever. So me and my buddy, we've got escalades and Corvus. We got cars all over the whole whole city just parks in different places, Camaros, like you name it. They were everywhere. And me and this, me and my boy, Tommy McClough, shout out to Tommy. We would go out and fucking going crazy with these gift cards. And then I was taking those same cards I'm renting the cars

with and I'm going to like hotels like say MGM and I'd rent a room at MGM. Now in like MGM's got nine properties on the strip, you know. And so, So anything you can go eat in any restaurant, do whatever. You just charge it to your room. Put it on as a room charge. You know what I mean? So once I got that room and got the card down on file in there, now I can just go anywhere and I know that, you know, I just signed it as a room charge.

Any MGM property, any restaurant, gift shop, stores, anything that's in there, you could go shopping and just sign away for it. So that was like too easy. But then I started like staying in some of the rooms. I just like dumb. You should never stay in the room. That's stupid. You know what I mean?

Well, so I'm in this suite one day. And I just left MGM and beat them for like a bunch. Like I was there for like four days, you know, but I'm not staying in the room, but just going around, you know, fucking around and, you know, charging shit to room, eating in restaurants, doing all that kind of shit. And so I go to this casino on the outskirts of town.

I was with my girlfriend, different girl that from my, you know, a different girl, but I was with my girlfriend. And the girl I was with now, she didn't, she didn't do anything illegal. You got to remember that. She wasn't into any of that. She was just with me, you know what I'm saying?

and to go to the church, go stay at the hotel room with that night. And so I go over there and fucking, I've got my, like, she knows what I'm doing, but she's just not involved in it. I've got, like, basically a whole fraud lab with me, you know. And I'm sitting there. And I remember I got high getting the jacuzzi. And I'm sitting in the jacuzzi, like, chilling like, boom. Got the TV on, you know, whatever.

And then also the phone of the hotel rings and I answer it. And it's like front desk. You need to come down and something with my credit card. I said, oh, okay, no problem. I got you. Hang up. Look at her. I go, it's time to go.

I get up, you know what I mean? If I grab my backpack, I go, I'm going to go down first. And you go get the car. Okay, I tell her to go get the car. So she, uh, she says, okay. So right when I go down and the elevator opens, it's Henderson Police Department. She's standing there waiting for you. I don't even have a chance to do nothing.

And they're, I can't remember the name I was using, but they, they, they said, you know, whatever name fake name I was using for the room that they said that name to me. And I was just like, what's going on? You know, and they're like, um, you need to come with us and talk. I go, I need to go to the front. desk call me. I'm supposed to go to the front desk or whatever. And I'm trying to figure something out. And then then I just took off running in the casino. I just start running. Stop, please. They're chasing. I hear them behind me. So I run through the whole casino and go down

these stairs and I end up in this like convention area where they're like, there's all this like just huge ballroom and they're waxing the floor of this ballroom, I guess. So I hit the ballroom and then all a sudden I just slip, boom, hit my ass and I slide like 20 feet. Then I hear behind me, I hear like this, I hear thud, thud, and I hear like keys and shit, you know what I mean, hitting the ground because it's the cops. And I look and they're sliding, right? And I get up to run. It's too slippery.

I fall back down. Same thing with them. It's like three stooges shit. I swear to God. And then I fucking start crawling to the, I'm crawling and they're crawling because you can't even walk on it. It was that slick with this whack shit. So I get, I crawl off to the thing and I bust out these doors and the outside. It's a pool area.

I'm thinking so I can see the pool area and I can see the little wall at the end of the pool area and I can see the parking lot. So I'm thinking I got this and she's going to be out there with the fucking car, right? And so I run and all of a sudden my legs stop working and I just fall to the ground. I can't move my legs. I don't understand why. Well, I'd gotten tased like four different angles. And so I didn't even feel the tasers.

I didn't even know what was going on. And the next thing I was, you know, zip tied up, handcuffs out at the polaria. And remember, I'm in federal pretrial to and, uh, so I'm like, damn, you know, this is fucking all bad. You know, I'm going back to prison for sure now. And I hate, so weird to say this, but like, I remember standing up and, you know, they wipe me off a little bit. I'm in handcuffs and I start walking to the thing. And I just felt relieved that I don't have to worry about this. I don't have to go to.

I'm not going to trial on this Fed case. That was my thing in my head. I just felt relieved like they're going to have to get a deal now. It's because I'm going to prison anyway. What's the point of fighting it? And so that's, I don't know if that's what really made me so careless is because I was scared. And I figured I was just going to, if I'm going to go to prison, I'm going to go for something I did. That was my thing. I had this, I had this, um, scary thought of going to do

trial against the feds. My lawyers assured me that we're going to win, but, you know, that it was going to carry 27, 27 years of my criminal history with that RICO charge, if I got to be to the RICO. And, um, the other charge was like using a communication device for interstate combat, whatever that charge is. And so my, my, What scared me about it was is with using the cell phone, I guess, so me and him talked on the phone. I did, was on the cell phone. I was discussing. That's what we were discussing.

So I told my lawyer, so I'm playing devil's advocate here. I did do that. You can, as stupid as it is, that's what we were doing. Here's the law for the, the crime I'm charged with, whatever, 18 USC, whatever it was. I go, if I'm him, I'm just going to put that on the wall and say, this is the charge, U.S. even. I play the tape. And clearly that's what we did, you know, using a cell phone. I mean, you can't deny that. How am I going to be found not guilty of that? And so I end up taking a deal. They gave me 27 months. Here's this is, I got, this is the,

and this is the, this is the, this work is interesting. Remember the first, the first time I did the feds, my dad got out and, you know, I was on the writ with the state and all that. So now I'm in the state. When I got arrested on that, I'm in the state. And, and, and, I'm, and, and, And I'm not bailing out because I have a Fed hold. There's no point in bailing out. So five months into this, I go to court. And luckily for all that fraud shit, all that shit I was doing, there was no detective after me. There was no, I had no heat.

So there was like, they weren't really tripping on it. They'd agree to give me two to five years to run concurrent. So I'm my prelip to run concurrent with any Fed time you're going to get. So I'm in court. And I'm like, okay, so, all right. So I kind of set them up for this. And I said, so what do we do? So we're wait.

Because I wanted to get out of there and go to the feds anyway from county jail. The feds now had this private in Perump. They had a private facility up there that held the feds, which is way nicer than county. I mean, it's night and day from county jail. And so I said, well, so what are we doing? Are we waiting for the feds to come and writ me out of here? They're going to come get me on a writ so I can go over there and go to court, right? She's like, yep.

And then get sentenced over there. And she's like, yep. And then I go, then they'll send me back over here. you know, to return me on the writ. And she's like, yep. And then so everything will just be concurrent then, right? And everybody agreed yet. My attorney, everybody.

And I said, well, pump the brakes because that's not true. It's not going to be concurrent. If I'm picked up on a writ, the feds ain't never, if I explained the whole thing to him. He's like, are you sure? I'm like, I just lived it. I know. And he goes, we have no other, what do you want us to do?

And I said, oh, are me today. Okay, oh, army. I plead guilty to get the due to the two to, and then O Army. It's not like I'm getting out. The feds, then the feds have to come get me and I'll be released out of your custody. And then you could sentence me an absentia. I don't have to be here.

I'll be over in the feds. And so they all agreed and that's what happened. Well, we'll owe are you. So they owe army. And now I get out and they send me to Henderson, which is where you would go before you would go to like, because you have to go to the U.S. marshals to get booked in the feds. And then you go to like from court, you would go to, you know, Perump. well if you got arrested on a Fed charge i say on a Friday night or Saturday night or something

you're going to go to Henderson they're going to hold you there and then take you to the federal court you know the next business time they can take you well like so I go to Henderson I figure that's why I'm in Henderson because they're going to you know they have to wait to go to the next day to go to court to go to go to proump they put me in there and I'm in there uh they said you had court and I had like a misdemeanor for when I ran that stayed in Henderson and I had a warrant for it because I'd been in jail five months so they give me credit time served on that misdemeanor. misdemeanor and then they they put me in this holding tank it says usMS you know United States Marshal services that stands for I sitting in there and fucking they give me my

clothes and I dress out I'm thinking I'm going and there's two other guys in there and I'm like you guys are going to the feds too or whatever you know you know what's going on and they're like no we're getting out and I'm like thinking buck well that's cool shit lucky you motherfucker I'm going to the feds you know dude comes in gives them their bags of stuff of their phone and you know jewelry or whatever they have in their personal shit he hands him meets their personal shit. Looks at me and he goes, what's your name? I said, Rita, whatever. And he goes, hold on. And he goes, come back and then he hands me my personal shit. And I'm like, and he's like, let's go guys. And he just walks us all three to fuck out of the jail. Dude, it was fucking crazy. Right. And so I fucking

just, I take off running. I just drop all my shit once I got out. I'm gone. And, uh, I end up getting a hold of my attorney the next day. And I'm like, he's like, how are you about? He's tripping too. Like, what the fuck? And I tell him the story. And he goes, well, my advice as your attorney is, you know, go turn yourself in right now. And he's, you know, but let me see what's going on. And so then he calls me a few days later and says that the state thinks you're in the feds and the feds think you're in the state. That's what's going on right now.

I'm like, well, perfect, right? Beautiful. And so he said, so my court date was, this was like in May. And so my court date, to be sentenced in the state when I played guilty was like January, like fifth or something of that next year. And this is like, man, I haven't took no deal or nothing in the Fed case yet. But he tells me that they do have a deal of, of, of 20. 27 months on that case.

And then I had it worked now, but I was going to be in Fed custody anyway, so I knew it was going to be concurrent this time. So I, you know, so I wasn't really worried about it. And, but I go, he goes, if the state catches you, you know, out, like right, you end up back in state custody, you're going to be fucked.

You know what I'm seeing first. So, you know, you have, I had a court date of October, like 13th or something that year to plead guilty for that Fed case. So I just go, look, I'm going to show up, I'll show up and plead guilty, you know, obviously. And then I'll be in,

the federal arrest me then. and then I'll be in their custody when they sentenced me in January in the state and everything works out. And so that's what I did. I went down there like on that October, whatever it was. And I remember walking in, my pretrial officer was walking out. I had had. And he looked at me and double taken me.

And he's like, what the fuck? He couldn't believe that. I was standing. Like, how the hell are you out? And like, what are you doing? And like, you know what I mean? And I said, no, I'm going to court, man. What do you mean?

How am I out? You know, he couldn't believe. So he follows us back in there. And this is the crazy part of it. So I go up there and take the deal. or whatever. They sent us, they sent a sentencing date. And the judge is like, is Perump here here today? And they're like, no. And he's like, because they were trying to detain me, you know, and he was like, well, Perump's not even here. And he goes, he's not a flight risk.

The boy's standing here. He came to court. How was he a flight risk? This is the judge arguing with them about it. And he looks at me, he goes, you need any time to do. I go. I'd love a week to like, you know, get my shit together. And he's like, oh, no problem. Yeah, he's not a flight risk. And they were mad. And I didn't even get arrested that time. The judge didn't even say anything. No, the whole situation. No, he was just like, they let them if they let him go they let him go what's he supposed to do he didn't it's not his fault you know what I'm saying he didn't he didn't he he showed up to court like what's the problem the judge is that you know I mean and so and they didn't even really know at the time that what really what happened how I even got out

you know yet I'm only told them what happened I said I don't know I went to court and they just let's what happened they let me out and so um so you know so that was cool so then I came back a week later and turned myself in like when I was supposed to and um went and did the 27 months That's crazy. Yeah. And yeah, it was crazy. And the, um, uh, the great part about that was, is probably like a little payback from the first time I got fucked on that fed stuff was is, uh, on my state. Oh, so here's another thing too.

That's those are crazy. So I, they send me back and I go to the feds and I got to get sentenced. I haven't got sentenced yet. You know, I just pled guilty. He gave me a week. Turn myself into. I turned myself in a week later. Now, my sentencing date was like January, a couple of days before my state one was.

And so I'm sitting in there and, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, when I get, I get sentenced in, yeah, so I get sentenced in the feds and then I get sentenced in the state and I'm waiting to go to prison. So they switch you units. They put you in this other unit when you're waiting to go out to prison. So I'm in this unit. It's like three months go by and I still ain't gone to prison and I'm just like trip. I'm like tripping. I want to go to, you know, you want to go to prison. You want to get out of jail. And then all of a sudden they, when they roll me up and they send me back to the federal building and then the state, state prison people are there to get me. It's like the first time I did it. And I'm thinking like,

it's a fuck. Like, how are you? How are you? you guys picking me up. I wasn't on no writ. You know, I was in, in your jurisdiction completely, as I'm thinking something's wrong now. And the U.S. Marshal ladies arguing with me. You don't know what you're fucking talking about. What do you mean? I'm like, dude, I'm in federal custody. You guys are just, if you're releasing me to the state, you guys are done with me then. That's what, that's, you know, how can you release me when I haven't done my time yet? And so she goes, no, you're going to the state. So I go to the state and I'm in the fish tank. They're stressed out that it's going to be just like last time. And I'm, you know, my Fed time's not running now and I'm stressed.

I write my buddy from in there because you can't make phone calls for the first 30 days and he sends me a print out of like the BOP.gov and I had a release date on the BOP.gov. So I said, oh, cool, I'll just do it in the state. It's running for sure. And then like four months later in there, they come and get me and roll me up one time

the officer goes, man, I never seen this before but the feds are here to get you. I guess they fucked up. They weren't supposed to release you over here. And I was like, I knew it. That's what I told them. And so I went back to the feds. And there was sure enough,

there was that Marshall lady. She looked at me when I'd come, walking up and she's like, shut the fuck up up because we were arguing to me. She said, you better not see it. Fuck them work to me. She said. And I just like, it was hard for me. I want to say, you know, I was like, just shut up, you know,

I went back and I went to the feds. And then I get to, uh, um, uh, they send me to Victorville, medium because, um, I had a detainer in the state, you know, because the state time's running with it. So, and that, that was a lot different than Safford, you know, the low. Um, I liked it better, Victorville. Victorville, I liked my having my own cell. I didn't like dorm living.

Victorville had politics, pretty strict politics, but I was very lucky that the year I was there, or two years I was there, the, um, nothing popped off ever. Like the shot caller for like the white dudes wasn't a gang member. He was just some cool, he was cool, kept a piece, whatever. And everybody in there was like on drugs.

So like no one wanted any problems of, getting the yard locked down or anything and they just openly let them do it it was the craziest thing I ever saw in my life in Victorville the amount of drugs in Victorville drugs? Yeah Did you end up doing drugs in there

because you were not first a little bit but not really they're so expensive like you know I wanna fuck with it you know but like most people were doing heroin in there like it was a big big thing heroin or spice K2 yeah which is

I did that once and I never I ended up in the hole I never do it I ended up in the hole doing it so I was in this band I had a band we had a little band there and I played drum I played bass in this little band, right? And so we'd have the band room, whatever, at night.

Right before, like, 845, like 8.30, it would be the last people from the yard to go back to our units, right? And so there's like seven of us. Well, one of the dudes in the band had some K2 and he hitting it. And I'm coming out the door and then he goes, I said, sure, I grab it. And I take like two big hits off the shit, right? You know, throw it down and start, you know, it's windy.

And I'm from running. They're like yelling to come on because it's, you know, going to be counting. I'm running to the metal detectors. Now there's three units, the three units, It's like A, B, and C, or whatever it was, right? Of this, where all the sales were. So right as I get, go through the metal detectors, it hits me, right?

And I stop and I'm thinking like, I don't know which one I live in. Do I live in A, B, or C? It's like, my brain just stopped. And I'm sitting there looking around and I'm like, should I remember why I was even there? I couldn't remember that. And I just remember, I was like, fuck. So I just sat down.

Cops yelling at me, what the fuck are you doing? And I just sat down the ground. Then he came up and he's like, oh, you're on that fucking shit because there's happened a lot of people, right? And so then they sent me to the hole and just for just one night. And the next morning I woke up in there and fucking they...

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That was like fucked up shit, yeah. So did you do your whole sentence in Victorville, or did you go to a lower security? So I did my whole sentence in Victorville, and then I got released and I had to go back to the state because my state time was still running that two to five. It was running concurrent, but I couldn't go to parole board. I was past the two years, but I couldn't go to, I had to go back to the state just to go to parole board. And that was it? So I went back to the state for like two months and then got released. And was that the same state prison that you were at years before?

Yes, it was. Yeah, same state prison, high desert state prison. Did it change a lot? Yeah, no, it was kind of the same. It's a lockdown prison. You're just locked down. There's like four levels. level four. You start off in level four and then you work your way down to like level one.

But normally you'll be out of there and go to like a camp somewhere or like across the street to the lower custody like southern desert just depends. But I never got to get out of high desert because I always had a fed hold. Both the times I went, I had a fed hold. So I can never get sent anywhere but staying in high desert. But I never was there long because like I said, they shot me back to the fed. What was going on with your kids during this second term of incarceration because your life kind of got upended. Yeah, so they were like basically living with my with their mom when they when they could but then my aunt and uncle ended up getting when I had gotten them there with me and then I got in trouble. My aunt and uncle picked them up from

my place then. And so they had them for a while and then my ex-wife eventually got him from her, got them. She got, you know, her own place and kind of got her shit together. And me and her still like, we have grandkids, the grandkids together now like we're best for it. We've been never not in contact like for since I for 30 years. Did you ever get to reflect while you're in prison on why all those things happened to you that second go around like you had your life together? Oh, that that that it haunted me like I couldn't understand what or why that that happened. Especially looking at the discovery of my case and everything.

It was like like like for example the that another damning piece of evidence they had was remember when I told you, they interviewed me there and they were asking me about what would you have done? And I said, you know, I would have got escort agency, stuff like that. They asked me how many times I did that. I said four or five times, you know what I mean? And the FBI 302 report said that I said in an interview that I got prostitutes from Charlie four or five times for him. I'm thinking that I never said that. That's not true. First of all, it's not true. So I know I couldn't to set it because it's not true. And I said, pull the audio tape up and they don't have audio tapes. My attorney said that one, one asks questions. There's two of them there. One will ask questions

and the other one will take notes of those questions. And whatever those notes are, that's what he says, that's what, that's what you said, you said. And so that was like very damning to me. I'm like, they lied. That's, you know, that's a lie. That's not, you know, that's not what I said. And if you listen and they also made it sound like I did kind of still get the dude of girl you know what it's not the case you know like well where's the next phone call the phones were tapped where's the other phone call the phone call that of me saying hey he's dropped off of they they have to have that right and so when that that's what they did was so that direct bill that night for that ride from the airport to the blasio right that that that bill for the charge for that ride

they said that was the the fee they paid me for the prostitute that i never got him but what about the cost of the that was for the cost of the ride that was for the cost of the ride It was the exact price of ride would be from the airports of Blasio. So it's it's it's so weird when you think about that. It's like so why would we instead of, so I give the guy a ride from the Blasio from the airport of Belagio for $150, whatever it was. You're saying that was for drug for the for the prostitute that I, that I didn't get him. If that's the case, if that's true, then who's paying for the ride? The ride's still $150.

You know what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense. Why would anybody, why would we do that? Why would we give somebody a free ride from the airports of Blasio so we can make $150 off of a prostitute When we could just charge him $150 for the ride Is that what the ride cost? It just didn't it was a lie

They knew better and like where's the second part of that conversation Where I said hey He just dropped them off at Blasio and he told me to you know He didn't need me the rest of the night You said okay go back to work Where's that? That tells you right in and there that that's not true And they never produced that other audio phone call

And so they lied to a grand jury What happened to the other? owner or the company? He got four years in prison, too. So he got convicted? He got convicted, yeah. Were there other limo drivers that went down to? Yeah, absolutely. Everybody got convicted or took a deal, basically. No one took much trial, but everybody got a deal. Do you think about what would happen if you never committed those new crimes while you were on pretrial? That's a lot to think about, because I could possibly not be sitting here talking to you right now. I could still be locked up to this day.

if I got convicted and went to trial. I think about that a lot. And I think that's a strong possibility. I don't think I would have won at trial. Even though you genuinely didn't do anything? I think that when I got in trouble for the, you know, doing the other crimes, it killed that whole innocent vibe

that I could have had in that Fed case, if that makes sense. Oh, sure you didn't do anything. Look at what you, sure you were reformed. Look, you just got 100 felonies, new felonies, in the state. So how can you say you were reformed from from before? You know what I'm saying? Which was, you know, which was the case, but I just got, you know, pushed back into it because of, like I said, those circumstances. But I do think about that. What would have happened? Yeah, I don't know. I can't say it

would have been good either. You know, all that fraud stuff could have saved my life when you really look at it. How old were you when you got out of prison that second time? That second time I was 405. Was it harder to rebuild your life the second time compared the first time? Yes, the first time was easy because I got out. I went to the halfway house. I got this limo job and just, you know, it was off to the races. This time, I went back to try to drive limos.

That's all I really knew, you know. And it took me a little bit of time and I ended eventually getting, you know, like, you know what to drive again, which led into like what I do now, kind of. So is the limo business felon friendly for other people that have gone through that? Okay, that's a great question because now they have what's called the National Transportation Authority, the NTA, who are like they govern the limo, you know, that business. So you have to apply to the NTA if you're a felon or whatever. First, they do a FBI background check on you. And if something comes up, then they'll then they'll summon you to put you on the agenda.

You got to go see the NTA. And then you got to bring, you got to explain all your crimes and it's up to them to vote. It's a three, you know, they vote three. three-panel voting system and then they vote whether or not you can drive or not if you're fit to do it. So I went. That was so I go in the, so this time I get married to the, I get married to, I get married, I get married, I get, I get married, and I went to go drive a limit. I got a job. And in the beginning, I was able to work before. So I get hired the, I'm waiting for the background check for the FBI. And then all of a sudden they call me and they summons me in to go to, you know,

to a hearing. But you got to remember, I'm working at the time that you can still work while this process is going on. So I'm working. I'm doing great. I got my own spot now. I'm rebuilt my life. And I go into the hearing. And one of the commissioners was like, they were, they're voting on where they give it to me like he's been doing great. He has a house. He's been, he's been working for a company for six months. The company owners came and testified at the hearing on my behalf saying, hey, the dude's been doing great. You know, I mean, no problems with him at all. You know, yada, yada, yada. Federal probation, same thing. You know, telling him the NTC, you know, he's fine. He's doing great. Well, they, um, uh, this one commissioner,

like he goes what are you talking he goes what do you mean he goes approve you and he looks at me and he's like this dude's a pimp and i'm like i'm like what are you talking he goes you're a pimp it says right here you fucking you um he goes you uh pimp young girls out like he's like young who said fucking young girl you know what girls you know you have to really read the indictment and he goes off like you're fucking he just fucking brutalizes me and uh um i get denied hearing over you know and so fucking i appeal it and so i i'm able to work for you know, during the appeals and all that, and I eventually ended up getting it. I had to go to this, like, Hope for Prisoners and this guy, John Ponder, who's very influential in Las Vegas.

He's actually has a great program as far as fighting recidicism and giving people second chances. He's got this great program, and he walks in and there, and I was like, you're approved unanimously with John Ponder. But, and he's an ex-con to ex-federal. He'd be someone great. You should get on the, on the. Definitely, yeah. John Ponder is a beat. I mean, he helped write the first step back to the Trump.

put in. He's got a lot to do with that. Are you banned from casino still? No, I never was. I never got black books. Wow. And there's some properties that, like the one I got chased, you know, and falling all that. Like I was 86 from there permanently, but I've yet, I've been back since then and don't know that. They also change ownership. Yeah, who knows what, yeah, exactly. I have no problems in any of any casinos or anything no more, no. How's your relationship with your kids now? We're close. We're all pretty close. I've got three, three boys and I got two grandsons. And, yeah, the little grandkids are, yeah, they're cool, man. And you're married now?

No, I just have a girl. I live with my girl. A girl that I used to date for many years and we broke up. So I've known this girl for a long time, she was like 20 years. But we live together. And then actually one of my sons is actually staying with this actually right now, too. What does she think of your history? You know, she was with me.

She's the girl who was with me that night of the one where I got chased, you know, the cops. And I'm slight. She was with me there. She knew about it. Yeah, she didn't really, you know, I don't know. She didn't hate on it, I guess. She was cool about it. She's a ride or die?

Yeah, basically, yeah. I mean, she didn't really get involved in too much stuff, but, you know, she didn't mind it, you know, being around it for sure. What advice would you give your teenage self? Join the Army. I would. So when I was 18, my grandpa offered me, like, a hundred years. $150,000 or something, we get put into a account if I went into two years in the military, completed it, get out, and I would get that money, and I wouldn't do it.

And I think that would have changed my life right there because I never had any, I was spoiled. I just didn't have any consequences for my actions. There's a lot of reasons why I probably ended up, you know, doing that other than my influence of my dad, I guess. Are you happy with where you're at today? Yeah, I'm actually, I am. I think that all of those experiences, all those things that I went through, you know, make you who you are now today. And so I think that, yeah, I'm very happy who I am today.

That I survived it, that I'm just close with all my kids and my grandkids and my ex-wife and just the people, you know, who I love. We all, we all kind of made it through that. And that's kind of cool, you know. And we're still, you know, everybody's doing pretty good. Well, James, I appreciate you coming on the show today. I appreciate it, too, man. I really do. Thanks again.

Thank you, Ian.