Locked In with Ian Bick - I Stole $472,000 to Fund My Addiction — Then the FBI Came | Richard Mcdonald

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Richard McDonald was a Mormon kid from Southern California with a bright future—until a car accident left him hooked on painkillers. What started as a prescription spiraled into a 16-year addiction, a hidden gambling problem, and a $472,000 embezzlement scheme to fund it all. Indicted by the FBI for wire fraud and sentenced to 24 months in federal prison, Richard shares the shocking truth behind his downfall and how he’s rebuilding his life. #AddictionRecovery #PrisonStory #TrueCrimePodcast #WireFraud #FBIInvestigation #RedemptionJourney #PainkillerAddiction #Embezzlement Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Get 50% off the Magic Mind offer here: https://www.magicmind.com/IANB50. #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00:00 The Downfall of Richard McDonald 00:06:49 Choosing a Mission Over College 00:13:30 Navigating Life's Challenges with Parental Support 00:21:04 Navigating the 2008 Recession as a Car Salesman 00:27:29 Discovering Online Sources 00:34:49 The Life-Changing Fold at the World Series of Poker 00:40:03 Overcoming Addiction 00:47:29 Navigating Federal Wire Fraud Charges 00:53:53 Navigating the Sentencing Process for White Collar Crimes 01:01:50 Betrayal and Manipulation by James Catlage 01:07:18 Meeting Greg Lindberg: A Life-Changing Connection 01:14:19 The Unheard Injustice in American Business 01:21:02 Tragedy in the Prison Cafeteria 01:26:50 Billy McFarland's Financial Struggles 01:33:04 Greg's Business Takeover and Mismanagement 01:40:01 Innovative Clean Energy from Magma Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You took $472,000. How does that work? Pretty simple. You take 30 pills a day at 20 bucks a pop. That's $600 a day. That's a $4,200 a week habit, which is a $17,000 a month. month habit. Well, over a three-year period, that adds up really, really quickly. Richard McDonald was a clean-cut Mormon from Southern California until a car accident changed everything. What started as painkillers spiraled into a 16-year addiction, a secret gambling habit, and a $472,000 embezzlement scheme that landed him in federal prison. This is a shocking downfall of a man who once had it all and the painful road to redemption. Richard, welcome to Lockton, man. Thanks so much for coming today.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, where do you come from today? New York City. Yeah, I live in New York City and work there out of my home. And, yeah, just not too bad. Just pretty easy up up the train there, the MTA North. Oh, you took the train in? Yeah, I just took the train up, yeah.

Oh, where to Brewster? Actually, you know, I went to Danbury. Oh, Danbury, because you have to make a pit stop or whatever. Yeah, yeah. In Stanford. Yeah, but I think I probably could have. stopped at a different place and probably gotten sooner, but yeah, you could have done the direct line to brewster and then it's just a, uh, that's an Uber here. Brewster to Grand Central is direct. Yeah. They should

make a direct one from Danbury. They really should. Yeah, they really should. Yeah. Did you grow up in New York City? No, I know. I grew up in Southern California. Yeah, so grew up in Southern California. And, uh, I'm 51. So, uh, just had a, like, really beautiful childhood, great parents. My mom and dad were incredibly great, like, had a great relationship. And my dad was a civil engineer. He had his own business. And, you know, they were just really good to me and my brother and my sister who are both older than I am. Were you close with your siblings? I was close to, I was close to, yeah, I was close to them when we were growing up. and I grew up in a pretty strict Mormon household, so I was raised, I was raised Mormon, and so that was kind of this big arc of my life of growing up. And, you know, you were kind of raised in this culture of obedience, right?

and so it was you're worth what your obedience level is and so and I always I always just I mean really from a pretty young age I had a really hard time kind of connecting with that of like just this kind of exclusivity to the highest spirituality possible because you know Mormons believe that you know they're the only true church and that the only the only the only way is their way and um and so if you drank coffee you know you could be you could be considered bad or if you drank alcohol or um if you um didn't if you stood out on certain principles or you question

things you were always considered you know oh well you're different and you're not you know you're not following the the rules or you're not following the culture so it was a and very early on like i found myself really understanding that, wow, I'm just, I'm like really different. And it really came out when I was in high school. There was a student that I'd grown up in junior high school and it just became really evident that he was gay. And you got to remember this was 19, 1990. And it was a different culture. Like everyone was making fun of him. And I just felt myself like feeling so bad for him. and and so at the same time like people even in the church that I that I knew and stuff like that they would also like oh yeah he's just he's a lost soul and so I just knew really on that it was it was

just not something that I was a thousand percent aligned with but yet it's a part of your life it's a part of everything you are and so you do what you're supposed to do and so my older brother a mission. So I served a mission. And so I went on a mission, served as a missionary for the church, and just kind of further complicating things because I started to learn things that I wasn't necessarily aligned with as well. I just didn't have the total belief system that I probably should. So it kind of complicated my life and put a lot of pressure on me because I was kind of I was a bad actor, right? I was acting.

And, you know, you're just supposed to be so committed. You're supposed to be so with it. And there's even a part of, like, Mormon faith that says, hey, you know, if you ask God in prayer, he'll tell you that the Mormon church is the only true church and that this is the way the truth in the life. And I remember doing that. They call it the promise. and I remember doing that, and you know, you're supposed to get down on your knees and pray, and you're supposed to ask God if this is the only true church and God will reveal it to you. And I remember doing it, and I felt nothing.

But yet there were millions of people in this church that have said they've had these huge spiritual experiences where God has told them. But yet, I continued on. I continued on. I served a mission and then it just kind of morphed into this you know I'm trying to be this really good Mormon but yet in deep inside of me I kind of knew that it just wasn't

it just wasn't for me and I'm not saying that it's bad for anybody or it's not for anybody I just think that it's I think we're all different and we all have our own ways but I just thought that looking back on on looking at people because they're different because they quote unquote sin or they don't do certain things i i just couldn't get on board with kind of this

exclusivity to to what the the truth was supposed to be or the right way how old are you when you went on the mission 19 so that's a as that's instead of college like you put college on hold yeah you put college on hold for for the mission so did you have plans before you agree to do the mission to go to college going down a specific career? Yeah, well, so it was going to be Brigham Young University, BYU and Provo, Utah. And that was the plan. The plan was, all right, I'm going to go to,

I'm going to do my mission for two years, and then I'm going to go to BYU. But kind of what happened was is my dad got lung cancer. And he got staged, when they found out it was stage four. And I served the first part of my mission in Argentina. I lived there for about six months. And then I got sick.

And so they transferred me to New York City. And so I finished in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island. I lived in different areas. And I was doing the mission there. And when I found out that my dad got cancer, and this was like a really, really kind of pivotal time, I really wanted to come home. I would have come home early,

but it would be viewed as, like, dishonorable. And my dad, who was a wonderful, wonderful person, at the same time, was also very, he was, you know, very faithful, and he had said, well, you know, you should finish. And I think that's kind of like one of the, the first things that I realized about, you know, it's okay to have regrets. and I regretted the fact that I stayed and that I didn't go home and spend more time

because he passed about a year and a half after I finished. I finished in November of 1994 and he passed in June of 96. And how old were you when you finished? I was 21. 21. And what was the exact mission? So it was to teach about the Mormon church to people in Argentina and New York. city and and basically the goal of of the church is to you know have people join the church get

baptized join the church join the Mormon church and obviously become a become a follower and you know I had I had quite a bit of success was able to was able to talk with a lot of people and get them to um join the church and and change their life to to to to live those types of teachings, which is, you know, obviously a very strict lifestyle when you're a Mormon. Like no coffee, no tea, you know, no alcohol, no premarital sex, you know, so very, very conservative. And so that was how I spent those two years. And like I said, it was, I mean, I learned Spanish fluently. I mean, there were, there were good times. But at the end of the day I always felt conflicted. And it was just one of those things that I had a really hard time

reconciling with. And when I finished and, you know, I was home for like a year and, you know, my dad got really, really sick. It was, it was really, really challenging and I was also about to get married. And so I was trying to fulfill all of these, all of these obligations, you know, because in Mormonism, like, you, you, you have to, you have to, you know, you're not allowed to have sex before you're married. And you have to, and you get married in a temple, meaning that to go and get married in the temple, you have to meet certain requirements. Like, you, you have to pay a tithe. You have to, um, you can't drink alcohol. alcohol, you can't drink coffee, you can't drink tea, obviously can't do drugs. You have to basically

state that you 100% believe in the church and that you'll support the leaders and you'll never question. So all of these things were that you had to do to do this. And if you didn't do this, then you were basically kind of considered less because in Mormonism, you're married for time and all eternity, you're not married for, till death do you part. And so once again, it was kind of one of those cultural things where, well, in our church, the Mormon church, we're married forever. We have the more true marriage. We have the better marriage. And so it just was, it was really, really difficult because I had a best friend that has been my best friend since 10th grade. And he has no really religion but through my life and as it comes out as it'll come out you know he he was my biggest

supporter and he has been my truest friend um through everything but when i got married he couldn't be there because he wasn't a Mormon he had to wait in the lobby of the temple because he wasn't allowed to come in to the ceremony because he wasn't a member and that was like this separation of like were better than you or were different from you and this exclusivity type of thing was it made cause me a lot of angst and a lot of anxiety over the years if your dad had known that those couple years were going to be the last years of his life do you think he still would have pushed you to do the mission and to be away from home you know that's that's a that's a fantastic question um i think that he probably at the end of the day would have wanted to want to be that's a fantastic question um i think that he

probably at the end of the day would have wanted me to be home when he got sick. I think he would have wanted me to stick through it up until the point that he got sick. Because that was, you know, I found out about six months before. So I had done 18 months of my mission at that point. But at the end of the day, like, it is the biggest regret, I think, one of the biggest regrets I have. And just because when you lose a good person, a good father, somebody who always stood for what was right and just did the right thing,

and then you lose that, you lose that kind of beacon and somebody who can guide you and be there for you, I mean, I was just talking to your dad, and he was telling me about how he was monitoring your time, and you know, you're getting transferred all over the place, right? And your dad's kind of, he's telling me, you know, he's following your story, he's following it,

and he told me something about, like, you know, he was going to sue them because they were going to, they were transferring you and they weren't treating you. Right, correct. And I was like, you know, I just think about that and it's like, you know, that was the kind of thing that my dad would have done had he been alive. he would have been present and he would have said yep

I'm not going to let this happen and he would he would fight and he would fight for me and so that was tough to lose it was tough to lose that really really good person and so yeah I was um it had a profound effect on me um and um it just was it was just really really difficult what happens after you come back from the mission so my dad passes away and I get married to my wife and we start our lives together and it's, you know, it's 1996 and we're really, really young because in Mormonism, you're encouraged to get married basically as fast as possible. After your mission, they counsel them in, like you get married as soon as possible. And so that's what I did.

In high school, I was a big nerd. Like, no girls ever wanted to date me or anything like that. I mean, my prom date for my senior year was a blind date that somebody set up for me. I mean, that's how pathetic I was. That's the worst. In the, I mean, I just, I had no game. I was such a nerd. No one ever expected you to go to prison.

Yeah, I don't. No. Not at all, not one bit. And so, like, yeah, I mean, I didn't have a girlfriend. I mean, and so I met this just beautiful, beautiful girl during my mission. You're not allowed to date when you're on a mission. And so after the mission was over, I would come back to New York City from California, and we dated.

And then, obviously, per the church kind of guidelines, like, I needed to get married. and so we got married. And we started living our lives. And the, you know, kind of the pressure to live that lifestyle, like, you know, in Mormonism, like you go to church every Sunday. And if you're not there, people start to question, like, oh, you're becoming a bad person if you don't come to church. So, and then they give you what they call it as a calling in the church where it's your

opportunity to serve. And, I mean, I've seen people that have been away 20, 30, 40 hours a week in certain church callings. And so, and if you ever turn down a calling, you know, it's, it's not a good thing. And so, so you're trying to, you're trying to, to do that. You're trying to be, you're trying to build a career. You're trying to be, um, be this really, really good Mormon. Um, and it just starts to get to the pressure. And the pressure just starts to get to you. And 2001 comes around and I'm driving and this lady pulls out in front of me and have a car accident. And it totally destroyed the front end of my camry and had whiplash.

My neck hurt, my back hurt. And so I wound up going to urgent care. And the urgent care doctor, he says, all right, he gives me this prescription. is when they would hand you the prescriptions on, you know, a piece of paper. And I remember looking at it and it says the number sign, you know, which is always hashtag now, but 120, Vicodin 7.5, three refills. And he says to me, he says, take two of these every day. And then if you're still hurting after you're done with this, just come back and I'll give you three more. and so I go and keep in mind like I had drinking alcohol one time in my whole life at this point

when I was 14 years old I drank four beers with a friend and and you know I got drunk off of my ass and then never never never did it again so I take these two pills just like instructed and I was like, holy shit, my life has changed forever. I couldn't believe how I felt. And it totally put me on a different path in life, which, I mean, realistically, it led to 16 years of on-again, off-again addiction. and going through the withdrawals, being clean for a certain period of time, and then basically relapsing. And at the same time, trying to build a career, trying to work and make money and whatnot. And just they ruled my life.

I mean, the pills eventually, like I became a total slave. to the pills. What were you doing for work? So I initially was working in the hotel business, but figured out really quickly there was really no money working in a hotel. And so I started selling cars. And I promoted really, really quickly. I became a finance manager very, very, like within just a couple of months. And I started making great money. And I was really, really good at. it. It's very successful. I had a lot of other dealerships kind of wanting my services and offering to pay me really, really good money. And so I stayed in that business for like 10 years. And I really, obviously, I really got to understand credit and finance. And, you know, I hadn't,

I didn't finish, I didn't finish college when I first got home for my mission. I went to junior college for just like a year. And so I always kind of wanted to get my degree, but at the same time, I'm working 70 hours a week and also just like gaining weight like crazy. Because you would work, a typical day in the car business when you had to work was start at 8 a.m. and get done at midnight. you know and so i was eating mcdonalds and del taco or taco bell whatever you want to call it i was eating that two three times a day and because we were at work and we would just all eat and you would eat and you would close deals and um you know he was negotiating all day long and selling cars and um 2008 happened and the recession happened and i remember i was working for this this deal at this

dealership, this Honda dealership. And basically the owner of the dealership was creatively telling us that we needed to make sure that we continued to sell cars. We needed to make sure we did everything possible, which the translation was, you know, if someone doesn't make enough money, then the bank needs to think they make enough money so they qualify so we can sell them a car. And I wasn't going to do that. And I told them I'm not going to do that. And so we parted ways. And so I left that, I left that job and, and then did a quick stint at Wells Fargo, worked for them for about a year. Once again, I started, literally started as a teller, and I was a branch manager in six months. Without a college degree? Without a college degree.

Wow. I was getting my degree. I wound up pursuing my degree at Colorado Technical University. And so in addition to kind of trying to live this really strict Mormon life and going to church every Sunday and having kids, I had my first daughter in 2001, had another daughter in 2007. I'm also working. I'm trying to get my degrees, which I eventually did. I went up getting my associates, my bachelor's. I got two master's degrees, you know, all at the same time, working full-time and taking drugs, taking pills off and on, going in and out, going through withdrawals, which was physically probably the worst experience in my life. I'd done it a handful of times, and it's got to be the most, it's the most terrible thing I've ever experienced in my life

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So I hit it really, really well most of the time. But there would be times where, I mean, it all comes to a head always, right? Like eventually it just comes to a head. But I also wasn't using as heavy as I wound up. where it eventually got. And I would wind up getting clean. I'd go through withdrawals and make, oh, I'm never doing this again.

I'm never going to go through this pain again. And then all of a sudden something would happen, and I would wind up, I just wind up using again and whatnot. And so when I left Wells Fargo, and we were moving all over the place because I was always looking for the next big thing, we moved from South Carolina to St. George, Utah. and I needed a job and I'd just gotten my master's degree in HR.

And, you know, and I loved people and I really wanted to get involved in it. And so there was this ad. And, you know, even in 2013, like, you could still, like, look in the newspaper and stuff for jobs. And there was this pool, maintenance and repair company that needed a human resources person. And so I was like, great. And so I went and I interviewed with the owner. And it was funny, in the interview, he asked me if I was Mormon. And I said, yeah, I am.

And because I was. I mean, I was at the time. And that was a very, very important point for him. And so I wound up getting hired. And the day I started, he calls me in and he says, well, our accountant just quit. And so I need you to be the accountant, too. And I said, oh, okay, all right. And I said, so, you know, you were going to pay me $45,000 a year for this job.

And he said, yeah, I were just going to keep it at the same and just have you do the accounting, too. And I had never been an accountant. I had no idea. And so I just kind of had to learn on the fly. What kind of accounting was having you doing, like simple bookkeeping or filing taxes? Like the business accounting, the day-to-day. And, you know, they were, I think, if I remember, like a two-and-half or three, million dollar a year company that's what they were they were making they were the biggest in the area

and um and i was you know i was at the point in my life where like i always was looking and trying to find that father figure in my life and in this guy i thought i found it i i'm still battling this oh i just need to please i need to be a part of the culture um and you know living in utah and is big-time Mormon culture. That's a big part of it. And so I really, really wanted this guy to, like, kind of take me under his wing. And I wanted to please him.

And I wanted to, you know, I wanted to be the best Mormon I could, you know, so that he would respect me that way. And it just wound up going off the rails because it just didn't have to, happened that way. He would question just certain things about me. We had an applicant once that came in to get a job and, you know, he wasn't Mormon and he didn't want to hire him. And I questioned him on it. And we got into this argument about it. And I kind of realized that, you know what,

I'm never going to please this guy because it's just not me to be that way. And so at that point, I just was like, okay, well, this is, this is, this is probably not the job for me. But at the same time, it's a smaller town. There wasn't a lot of options. And so, you know, and making, supporting a family of four on 45K a year, even in 2014, 2015. I mean, it was, it was tough. And so I started, but one thing I did have is I had good credit. and I was like and so I started to try to figure out well how can I how can I start using again

but like how can I how can I how can I start using but I don't know I don't know how to get them I don't know anybody who can get me pills and I wound up on this drug buyers guide.net message board and you paid like 30 bucks and they would put you in touch with people who would send you send you pills. And I reached out, got an email address, and they sent me this menu of all the different things they could send me. I couldn't believe it. And sure enough, I said, and I was, I was at the point, because you work your way up on these pills, that I was taking what they called roxies, these little blue, they were little blue pills at the time. I had, so, you know, I graduated from Vicodin, which is, you know, hydrocodone or percocet, and then it went up to roxies.

But you take them, and then eventually you build up this resilience, like this tolerance. And so you have to take more and more. And so then I started taking oxies. But the problem was, is 80 milligram oxy cotton is 30 bucks a pill. Well, I had great credit, and I also supplemented my income by playing poker. because I lived an hour and a half from Las Vegas. And so I was like this part-time amateur, wannabe professional poker player.

I was going to Mesquite, Nevada, which was 30 minutes away. And I kid you not, when I used, I was a great poker player. I was in the zone. And I pretty much would go to Vegas, spend a couple days, could come home with five, six, seven,

thousand dollars um every wednesday night in mesquite pretty much would come home with five hundred dollars and i'd play tournaments i'd play cash games and um i just was i was really really good at it but at the same time i'm starting to take 80 milligram oxy cotton and um you know a lot of people ask like well you know how could you how can you how can you do that well i had a ton of credit and so i would just, I would go to Western Union when I needed drugs and I would, and what you did is, you would send the money to Mexico. So you would use money gram or whatever. And it was always a different name. He would always give me a different name. It's all done through email. And it'd always give me a different name. So it was, you know, Maria Nunez or Jose Morales. And I would

send the money. So if I wanted to, if I wanted 30, 30 pills, I would, I would pay 600 bucks, I wanted 60 pills, whatever. And I would just do a cash advance on my credit card. And I would send the money. And then I'd get my pills by FedEx from San Diego the next day, like clockwork, every single time. And so that went on for a while. So I'm playing poker. I'm doing really well in poker. But at the same time, like, you know, we have a family of four. We're trying to buy a house. And, you know, it's just like all just building up at once.

And I'm just trapped in this addiction. And so come to the point where I was so scared to go through a withdrawal off of OxyContin. And I had maxed out my credit cards. And I was like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And then I noticed just, and I even questioned at the time, like the owner of the company that I work for, he never checks the books. Like he never, he never reads a bank statement. I produce the income statement, the balance sheets. I do the journal entries, which I knew none of how to do any of this. You know, I just basically was self-taught. And, but he's not checking anything. And I really need to use. And so I had this, um, I had this, um,

I had this American Express card, and they had no limit on it. And I remember, and I, and, you know, I subsequently did this over a three-year period. And people kind of ask, like, you know, oh, you, you know, you took $472,000. How does that work? It's pretty simple. You take 30 pills a day, because that's what, that's how it got. I was taking 30, 80 milligram oxycontin a day at 20 bucks a pop. That's $600 a day. That's a $4,200 a week habit, which is a $17,000 a month habit. Well, over a three-year period, that adds up really, really quickly. And so I basically had this life of poker, empezzlement, addiction, and I'm always trying to figure out. how am I going to get out of this?

How am I going to get out of this? And I had my kind of my last hurrah. I got approved for this credit card. And I said, you know what? I'm going to play the main event, the World Series of Poker Main Event, $10,000 buy-in. I'm going to play it, and I'm going to fucking win it. And so I advanced the $10,000 for the entry fee on my credit card,

and I entered. And I played. And I had my drugs. I was good. And I went and played. And I'll never forget, I'll never forget kind of the turning point of where it all went bad for me. So it's Texas Holden. And so I remember the hand I had Ace Queen. And, you know, and I'm playing next to, the guy sitting next to me is like, won $15 million or something in his career. And, you know, I'm playing with, like, really, really good players. I just wound up getting put at this really good table. And when this, I remember this one really, really aggressive Asian guy sat down at our table. And I got Ace Queen and the flop comes out and it's like Ace 7,6. And he bets into me and I'm like, man, I got, I paired my ace.

And so I call him. and then the turn comes down and it's queen and I got two pair and he goes all in which would have put me all in and this is day one of the world series of poker and I sat there and I was like you know what I'm

I sat there and I thought about it and thought about it and you know of course I'm high and I said if I call this bet and I lose I'm out if I fold then I can still I'll be down

you know 30% of my stack but I can hang in there and I sat there and I thought and I thought and I'm just sitting there and I finally made the decision and I folded

and that very moment when I folded that hand I kind of folded my life because sure enough he told me afterwards bagging up our chips at the end of the night because, hey, I got to day two of the World Series of Poker. I mean, that's pretty awesome.

Sure, it goes to day seven. But on day two, you get to day two, that's an accomplishment. And we're bagging up our chips, and he says, yeah, I had six, seven. So he had two pair and I had two pair. I would have beat him. And you would have won how much money? Oh, I would have put myself in a position where I would have been in the top 10% at the time of the tournament of all the players, because I would have had easily.

I would have been like top 15. Now, I'm not saying I would have won the tournament. I'm just saying that I would have been in a very, very good position to keep moving on with momentum. Because I played it by the math. I played poker by the math. I locked in. But yeah, like I said, when I folded that hand, I pretty much. And it affected me because I went home.

I drove home that night two hours because I didn't have to be back until the day after. And it bothered me. beyond belief and i showed up for my next day to play and i was done within two hours i was out of that tournament i was gone and ten thousand dollars just out and um it was it was just one of those it was just one of those moments where i was like yep this is closing in on me i know it's closing in on me and sure enough um another few months went went down i kept doing my thing making my little money at Mesquite or I still spend a weekend in Vegas

and make some good money. But I went on a vacation and I had forgot to make a payment for the business. And so the owner got a letter in the mail. Your credit line's not paid. And so I get back from vacation and he brings me in and he's like, so what is this?

and I said, oh, I thought you knew about this. And he's like, oh, no, I didn't know that we were even utilizing that credit line because I had used it. I wasn't using the credit line actually maliciously. I was taking the profits of the company because for three years, company ran just fine. They maintained their profitability. I mean, we paid all the bills and whatnot. And I learned to play the system and make the wrong. write journal entries and whatnot to kind of keep my, keep my trail. But if he would look to

the bank statement, there's no way you can hide a bank statement. But the journal entries you can hide because you don't have to input the journal entries for the money you're withdrawn. Well, you can offset the journal entries, which then translate into the income statement. So he never looked at a bank statement, but I would deliver him financial reports. And those could be made out of thin air. The bank statements don't lie, but the journal entry could show a whole different... You can manipulate the whole company finances. So are you using your own personal credit cards and linking the business account to and just paying them off and full?

Yes. Like with Amex, like I have my Amex link to my business account. Correct. So that's what you were doing. Well, and they had an Amex for the business account. But you weren't using that actual Amex. No, I was using my own. But if you looked, you know, an Amex payments and I mean, this is a company that was charging $50, $80,000 a month.

Yeah. So if they see an Amex payment, they're not batten an eye. Exactly. They think it's a business one because it doesn't say which one. Exactly. So you were saying you made a $10,000 payment to your personal Amex came off of the business bank statement. Correct. You weren't entering that on the actual bookkeeping ledger.

No, I would just journal entry it over so that it looked like a business expense. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And it was at the end of the day, though, that one miss payment on that credit line caused him to look into other things. And when he questioned me about it, I just said, oh, I thought you knew about that.

And he was like, well, you know, we called our accountant who does our taxes. And they said it's concerning. And, you know, they started looking into things and it's concerning. And I said, okay, I understand. I said, maybe I should just quit. Maybe this just isn't, you know, we're just not a good, we're just not a good fit. And he was, he was just like, well, you know, let's just kind of work through it. see you know he at the end you know he's he he's a he's a he's a wonderful guy and i i loved him and

a lot of people would be like how can you even say that you stole from him for all those years and you you say that i really did and i know that's kind of the strangest thing to say but i really did i really looked up to him and um it to this day like i go to bed every night and i think about like how how trapped I was you know and how much of a slave I was to these drugs because it didn't matter um you know in addition to my addiction and whatnot like I was a terrible I was a terrible husband I wasn't a great father like you know I wasn't present I wasn't any of these things so um I wound up wound up quitting basically well they texted me it was kind of this mutual like hey, you're out of here type of thing. I'm out of here. And I didn't hear anything for a while.

I tried to play poker full time. And so I was heading off to Vegas or to Mesquite and trying to play all day. But now I didn't have access. I have access to what I needed. And so I was so I was going to run out of drugs. And so I emailed the drug dealer and I got Suboxone. And Suboxin is a drug that curves your withdrawals. And so they sent it to me. I got it. I would always go to the FedEx place in St. George to pick up my envelopes.

And so I picked it up and I checked myself into rehab. I used the Suboxin to pretty much avoid the physical withdrawals because I knew that it was going to be it was going to be some crazy, crazy mad stuff. And I went into this rehab called Renaissance Ranch and you know, broke it to my

at the time I had three kids at the time. My, at a youngest, which was a baby and I had my two oldest daughters person and my wife at the time. And I did a three-month outpatient program, so I would go there in the afternoons and evenings, and I did it for three months, and I graduated, and I was still trying to make enough money at poker, but I was not using drugs anymore. I was a terrible poker player when I wasn't using drugs. And so we finally decided that, well, need to do something else. And so I wound up getting a job in South Carolina as a human resources manager for a textile

manufacturing company. And this was but two, three months after. And I hadn't heard anything from the business. I didn't know anything that was going down. And so we moved to South Carolina. And I started working there, but I was always checking the state of Utah's warrant. You know, it would be like a daily thing every few hours. I would check see if there's an outstanding warrant for me in Utah. Because I knew this was probably going to happen. We had gotten a letter from the business's attorney right before we moved. And it was just pay us where we're going to go to the cops.

So they had at that point they had figured out how much. money you had taken, they audited the books and everything, and they were giving you an option to repay them. Yeah, they were basically saying pay us lump sum, all the money. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd, but too often life gets busy or the price holds you back. Price line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip.

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Or we're going to go to the cops. And your wife knew fully what happened? Yeah. You had came clean to her. I came clean to her. And so she, you know, obviously, I mean, it's just not good for her marriage. Like, it's just not good.

and so but we you know obviously wanted to take care of our our family and and whatnot and so we moved and we lived in this we rented this home you know I got the job I passed the background because there was no charges right like so and they hired me and and just like pretty much a lot of the jobs that I've had I've been really fortunate like I people are pretty impressed and so the owners of this manufacturing company that I worked at, they were really impressed by me, and they wanted to bring me out to Germany and had me start helping them manage

all their locations throughout the world. And so I was like going to Germany and Slovakia. And then we lived in this little community in South Carolina that had 23 houses, but the landscaping was, was covered. My wife at the time, she had a ring video doorbell, and these two guys come to the door, and I'm at work. And they come to the door, and they, she gets on the ring video doorbell, and they're like, yeah, we're looking for Richard McDonald. We're with a maintenance company.

He wanted a quote for landscaping. And she calls and tells me this, and I'm like, well, we live in a nature way where they do the landscaping. And so we send the picture of the video to my best friend, my best friend from 10th grade, who, by the way, is a welfare fraud investigator. That was probably one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my life. I was telling my best friend who is a law enforcement officer that I committed fraud. that was one of the hardest days up to this point of just telling him. And, you know, of course, he looked at the, he's like, those are cops.

And yeah, and sure enough, checked it out. There was a warrant out for my arrest. And so South Carolina was trying to pick me up so that they could ship me back to Utah. And so I had hired this attorney, which, of course, this attorney ghosted me after I paid him, you know and so I had to get a new attorney um and I got this new attorney and he's like yeah just stay at a hotel and then come out to Utah and we'll get the warrant squashed and it was you know state charges at the time and so I stayed in a hotel in South Carolina and then I flew out to Utah it was like I stayed on a Saturday and on a Sunday I flew out to Utah and then um I went they squashed the

warrant and I went back to South Carolina and um My attorney started negotiating with the DA in Utah. And I'm still working. I'm working in South Carolina and doing my trips. And sure enough, I remember, like, he calls me, my attorney calls me. He says, yeah, I think we have a deal with the state. And he's like, you pay your restitution, and they'll agree that, you know, you make aggressive restitution payments.

you're good and i was like okay great and then two days later he calls me back and he said well they dropped the charges and it's now gone federal and i'm like what and he's like yeah he's like the word on the street is is that somebody got screwed over by um somebody in town and not a different case from yours um but they have an uncle that's in the FBI and so what they did is they took all of that charge the federal case, all the fraud case is above 100,000, and they turned them all federal so that they wouldn't just go after that one person, and your case is one of them. But what was the federal case? Wire fraud.

But isn't wire fraud, because I was charged with wire fraud, doesn't it have to be across state lines, like from, is it because AMX was located in a different state? Yeah. Yeah. So if you were paying like a local savings bank credit card or something, you probably wouldn't have been hit federally. Probably not. Okay, that makes sense.

But because it was going, and it was all electronic. Like, I never physically took anything, right? Like, I wasn't, like, in the safe taking cash, right? And so, yeah, it was, it was, and all the sudden it's like, and he told me, my attorney told me, he says, look, federal, he's like, they're going to be difficult to get that kind of deal. And I said, and he says, they're charging with one counterwire fraud. And I had six charges.

Utah had come up with six charges. but they were going to make this plea deal with me. And so, but he said, yeah, you know what? Like, he's like, you're just going to have to see how this works. And, you know, there's a graph in your criminal history versus the amount of the offense. And he's telling me all about this stuff. And but of course, you know, he's an attorney. I don't, I don't have a ton of time with him.

He's a good attorney. I mean, you know, but I didn't know anything about any of it. And so, but he told me, he said, you're going to go to prison. And so I was like, okay. And so this is 2020. This is all going on kind of in like March, April of 2020. And I'm just like, okay, I'm going to go to prison. I got to plead out.

COVID is like going all over the place. I'm having to lay off hundreds of people because of my job. And they have no idea this is going on. No one knows anything that's going on. but I'm also having to lay off people that, you know, took it really, really personally. And they were angry and they were mad. And so sure enough, I'm one of those people that, like, okay, if I'm going to go to prison, I need to learn all about it. So I wound up listening to as many podcasts as I could.

And I wound up on prison professors podcast. and it's this prison consulting type podcast. And they're reading off this blog of this guy who's in prison for fraud. And he's writing about what it's like in this California minimum security prison. And he's a Mormon. And he loves BYU.

you and I'm like oh man this guy this guy I get this is this is great and his name is James Cadledge and so I emailed the podcast producer I said look I just really connect with the story and you know I'd like to write him in prison and his mom emailed me and she said he's actually getting out on COVID and he had like a five-year sentence he had done like I don't know 18 months or something you had like a five or six year sentence and she's like but when he gets out I'll put you in contact with him. And so he got, he got out and he called me and, you know, he said, oh, you know, and he was, he was in prison for like a $160 million fraud, some Dominican resorts in the Dominican Republic where they defrauded, him and his partner defrauded a bunch

of people out of a ton of money. But, like, none of that matter to me because you're so vulnerable at that time. Like, I was so vulnerable, like, not knowing what I was in for, and I was starving for information. And so when he called me, you know, it was kind of this instant, like, I'm going to guide you. This is what he's saying to me. I'm going to guide you. I'm going to stand by you.

And he's like, I'm going to help you write your allocution to your judge, and I'll help you find a prison and and so I was like great this is fantastic and so um and I knew that he you know he would make sure and tell me that you know what kind of lifestyle that he had before he went to prison you know private jets and all this kind of stuff and and um you know that he golfed in the best resorts in the world and and whatnot and so he uh he had said to me you know yep I'm going to guide you right through it so sure enough the case comes around and we're negotiating and my attorney says hey you know this is how this is how we do this i mean you're obviously guilty you've told me you're guilty there's not really any play here so do a c1c

plea and what that is a c1c plea is where you basically go to the the u.s government and you say look get this off your desk we're not going to fight you on it we're not going to delay we're just going to say, yep, we did this, and I'm supposed to get 38 to 53 months. But if we do this, 24 months. And so sure enough, that's the deal we make, 24 months. And my attorney says, you know, you can always at sentencing, ask the judge for home confinement because of COVID. You can ask for maybe 18 months, maybe a year and a day. These are all options, you know. but he's like a C1C plea is just basically that you're throwing yourself on the mercy the government's just like yep I don't have to worry about your case anymore we get to move it along and so I think the government called the owners of the company I worked for and they signed off on that they were they were okay with it I remember that their one thing that they wanted to make sure happened is that I was always branded as a felon that was what was most important to them was that I had this mark on my on my record. I remember hearing that. And so, so at the same time I have this James

Catledge guy telling me, you know, helping me write my, my, my statement to the judge and, and, you know, he's telling me that, you know, he's in my corner and that he's just going to, you know, he's going to guide me. He's going to be there for me. And so I get up to, get up to sentencing and we've written the statement to the judge. And, you know, I, you know, I, used a white collar prison consulting service as well. But I quickly realized that, you know, they were very interested in me. And then when I paid them, I wasn't really that important. But, you know, they were pushing the, you know, writing this narrative and they write your, you write your character reference letters for you. You know, they helped the people write

them. And I did meet a gentleman who I continued to just have a great, a great friendship. with today is Brad Rouse. And Brad's, he lives in New York City and, you know, he's done time and he did time in Brooklyn and he's just a beautiful human being. And he was great at writing the narrative and he was great at helping me write the character reference letters. But ultimately, that was the whole value. The head guy of the prison consulting, it just was whatever, you know.

So I get up to sentencing and, you know, people will ask me, they'll say, what kind of advice would you give someone when you would go to sentencing? And the number one piece of advice that I would give somebody is if you're going to get sentenced for your crime, and in my case a white-collar crime, don't get sentenced with anybody else who also has a white-collar crime. Because we're getting sentenced over COVID, right? Over teams or Zoom or whatever. And so this lady gets up there. So she's in front of me and she had stolen money from this real estate company.

And there was like five or six partners in this real estate company. And they had to shut down the business because of what she did. And so she gets up there. So they are pissed. Rightfully so. Absolutely. And they just let out their anger. And then she gets up there.

And she, to do her allocution to the judge, and she says, you know, Your Honor, I took all this money because I'm a family person. And I took my husband and my children and all of our brothers and sisters. That trip for the 15 of us to Tahiti, that was because I loved my family. And I am on Zoom and I'm listening to this and I'm like, oh, I'm toast. if I want to get an 18 month or a year and a day. And sure enough, like he, the judge was not thrilled with how she was like, oh, and I paid tie to the church out of the money I stole. And it was just this complete shit show.

And so I knew. And so when he called my name, he's like, oh, here's another one. And I was actually, he actually honored her sentence, her plea. So I was, I wasn't too worried that. He was going to, you know, and if he would have broke the deal, then it would have reset it anyways. Because on a C1C plea, it's the government agrees, you agree, but if the judge sways or it doesn't agree, then it just resets and you'd have to have to go through it. And so, sure enough, 24 months, he gives me this, you know, long speech. The owners of the company, you know, they just, they were super classy about it, to be honest with you.

They just said, you know, we're just so disappointed. We're hurt. and I made my my allocution which at the time I thought was genuine but it really wasn't because I didn't really write it. James had really guided me on what to say and so it really didn't come from me. And so but 24 months, Montgomery Federal Prison. And that's the camp? That's the camp. Okay.

Yeah. And I just remember asking the judge, like, because at that point, we had let go at the work that I was at, we had let go this one of the managers. And she took it out of me. I was like, it was my fault. And so she looked me up online and she told them about my crime because it had been written about, you. in the St. George news. And so they found out about it and they let me go. In fact, it was the day after,

so I had to let my Human Resources Assistant go. And she was just fantastic. And she was great and we just worked really well together. And I really valued her as a person, as a working partner. And, you know, she was very talented. And so I just convinced them to bring her back. And then the next day,

and they took her back and then the next day she reported me and then a day after that I was gone. So at that point it's like, okay, I don't have a job. I might as well just get this prison thing done with. And you were out on bail, so you were going to self-surrender to the gun? Yeah, I was going to self-surrender. Yeah, I was given that to be able to self-surrender. And sure enough, I wound up, I wound up, I remember asking the judge, I'm like, so it's December 3rd, 2020.

And I'm like, can I surrender in 30 days? Because he wanted me to report like in March. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to just get this over with and get in and get out. And so I wound up reporting January 29th, 2021. I was 290 pounds. I remember we went to, oh, well, backing up. So about two weeks before I'm about to go in, James says,

hey, I'm going to send you a subscription to Inc. Magazine, this financial magazine. He's like, I got a plan for when you get out. You know, a job, everything. And I'm like, okay, so tell me about it. And he says, well, I have this friend who owns this really big accounting service. And so he's like, you know, when you pitch investments to people, they always say, oh, I need to talk to my accountant. And I'm like, yeah, I know that. And he's like, well, we're going to build investment.

We're going to sell investment products to people, the clients of this accounting firm. And it's going to be backed by the accountants. So when they say that, they're obviously going to, the accounts are going to back it. This is a great business model. He's like, you're going to be making so much money when you get out. And I'm like, so what do I say? He's like, oh, you just tell him you work for Janie Kallage, which is his mother. And I'm like, but I'm a convict.

felon. I can't sell securities and all that. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. And he's like, we'll just have you, we'll just have you operate under someone else's license that works there. And I'm just like, okay, here we are. And, you know, and he had had his mom talk to my mom and, you know, about how to support me through this and, and whatnot. And so I was like, just like, no, you know, like, I just like, yeah, thanks, but no thanks. And I was kind of like, okay, this probably was the best thing for me to do. And so, sure enough, I go, I go, I check into prison. I wind up in quarantine. And so come to find out that, and this was basically over the next nine months, and just kind of out of respect for my family and my children, I won't go into a ton of detail,

but James College wreaked havoc on my family while I was in prison. not just my family but extended family he inserted himself into the lives of everybody and created a lot of damage caused a ton of damage he's a predator he's you know I didn't know what an evil human being was until I met James Catledge and it was like I said it's okay to have regrets it was a big regret that I let somebody

so diabolical and sinister into into my life And, you know, that's a regret. You know, we talk about regrets. And so, yeah, he wreaked havoc. And it was really, really tough. So I'm going into prison, and I'm in quarantine. And I remember coming out of quarantine. So I did 20 days in quarantine.

And I was by myself. Like, there was nobody. And so 20 days, no contact with anybody. guards would drop off my my food and and whatnot and then um i come out um and i um i had talked to one guy who'd been in montgomery before like just right before i went in and his wife told this other guy that i was coming and so when i came out of quarantine i met this guy named stan who's called i call him stan the pharmacist and stan um we ought to be in the same housing unit and and Stan comes up to me and he's got like gym shorts and a toothbrush and it's got like this

welcome package for me and I mean it's really really really nice and and we wind up having we have this beautiful friendship to this day but come to find out that you know four days before this Stan's son daughter-in-law and four-year-old grandson were killed in a automobile accident and I like I still can't get my head around it like four days earlier this guy like had this huge loss and of course they didn't let him go to the funeral they didn't let him they didn't let him leave like you know and and he's and he's in prison for 36 months for waving co-pays for his pharmacy customers which they called they called it insurance fraud insurance fraud because he's he was deceiving the insurance companies out of their it was enticing people to use their insurance and he was like a beautiful human being and um and i mean here he is like four days and he's like has a welcome package for me and yeah and we had a that was one of the most beautiful friendships that i had i basically had two or three that i made and i'll get to the main one here in a minute but um um um that was like stan the pharmacist is one of the pharmacist is one of the

the, you know, from Alabama, just amazing individual, amazing human being. I don't know if you had this experience, but like, I met some. We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place. The Testaments, a new Hulu original series from the executive producers of the Handmaid's Tale. It's easier to accept a story than believe that the people around you are monsters. The battle isn't over. There comes to time when you have to take action. When you have to choose your own destiny.

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Yeah. You make great connections. Yeah. And I, for whatever reason, gravitated to people, like, for whatever reason, like, people like Stan that waived co-pays. Another guy, Casey Connor, he was a partner in an ambulance business, and all his employees were committing fraud and he was a silent partner. So they got him for willful ignorance.

You believe this? Yeah, that's a federal crime. 66 months or something like that. One of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life an engineer, brilliant as can be. And then I was actually with Casey and we were sitting in his, and I just met Casey and we were sitting in, we were sitting in his cube and this red-headed guy comes up and he's looking for peanut butter packets because we weren't going to the chow hall at this point. We were going to, they were handing out sack lunches for dinner because of COVID. And so this guy's red-headed guy,

he's looking for, he's looking for peanut butter packets. And so he gets some peanut butter packets in case, he moves along and my best friend who was the welfare fraud investigator remember he was sending me a hundred bucks a month every month light clockwork him and my sister sent me money so i always had money in my commissary account and so i was like you know what and and and they told me oh yeah this guy he just he just eats protein and so i was like yeah i'm going to buy this guy a couple jars of peanut butter i really you know i wanted to help people where i could and um and so i got this guy, two jars of peanut butter. I had no idea who he was. And I just sat him on his desk. I'd seen, he, we lived in the same wing, but, and so I sat him on his desk and I just left him a note.

I knew his name was Greg. And we, um, and so he got the jars of peanut butter and, um, we were out on the yard and he came to me and was very, very thankful for it. Um, and then we started walking. And that was, the first walk was two hours, two and a half hours. And it was just about life and family and you know at this time I had I was losing my religion I was losing my family I was lose

I was I was at this place where like I was pretty distraught I was fat I was ashamed and you know this guy Greg he was just

you could tell you just really wanted to understand and know about my story. And we talk through, you know, what life is like when your marriage is crumbling and when your children have lost respect for you. And he's just talking me through that. And we just developed this really, really strong connection because he just really, he really cared. And I could tell that he was genuine. And we just started talking about all sorts of all sorts of things but we didn't talk anything about business for like two weeks it's just personal and kind of things that we liked we kind of both like the same type of music and whatnot well he finally gives me his book he written a book and uh yeah i get the book he's like here i wrote

this i just thought you might want to read it and i looked at this book and come to find out you know and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, this is, and I didn't know who he was before, but it's Greg Lemberg, and he, you know, his story is basically, you know, he, graduated from college. His parents gave him a $5,000 gift upon graduation, and he built it into 130 companies billions of dollars. And he was in, he was in prison for bribing the North Carolina Department of Insurance commissioner. And so when he starts to tell me about his case, I couldn't believe it. Like, I couldn't believe the case. I was like, this is ridiculous. And the case was, so he had acquired companies and he was ultra successful and decided, and he saw what Warren Buffett did, right? Like Warren Buffett

acquired all these insurance companies and was, you know, super, super successful. And so Greg decided he wanted to get an insurance business. So he spent two years investing in research on how to do this. And so we went to the North Carolina Department of Insurance. And he said, here's my plan. I want to acquire insurance companies. And I want to be able to bring them here and have them here in the state of North Carolina. and I'd like to invest the reserves into other companies.

And so he vets out this plan. The North Carolina Department of Insurance approves the plan. And so he's telling me about this. And subsequently, when I got out of prison and whatnot, I looked into all of this as well. And so they approved the plan, and he buys a couple of insurance companies. companies. Colorado Bankers' Life takes it to North Carolina. Southland National Insurance

Company takes it to North Carolina. And North Carolina is on board. And then in 2016, Mike Kelsey gets elected as North Carolina Department of Insurance. He wins by less than a half a percent. And he, this guy was basically a career loser at this point. He had tried to win five times. He had failed. And then he got elected. come to find out that when he was elected within 30 days, he hired a friend of his at the department to investigate Greg for no reason, just investigate him. So the investigator comes out and investigates Greg, comes back to Kowsy and says, the only thing I can find is that he has a guy on his board of directors named Gupta.

That's all I can find. He's like, that's a close society. That's all they could find. So they couldn't find anything on him. But Mike Kelsey knew that Greg had supported his opponent. And he wasn't about to play ball with Greg Lindberg. He had it out for him from the get-go. And we come to find out that even before he was elected,

he was telling people that I'm going to take down this guy. And so, sure enough, So the scenario that Greg had worked out was that, and this is exactly, and this is very similar to what Warren Buffett did, is that he could invest a certain amount of money to acquire other companies, non-insurance companies. So usually the law is that you can do 10%, you can take 10% of your reserves and you can use that in non-affiliated investments. Well, Greg spent two years and got the approval of the Department of Insurance. to invest 40% and acquire other companies. And so when Kousey comes in, he fires everybody in senior level staff, 13 people. And he promotes this lady, her name's Jackie Obusick, to be kind of the lead regulator.

And she's assigned to Greg's companies. And she doesn't understand. She doesn't understand the financial end of it at all. And so in addition, like she's not returning emails. And so they can't, and they can't, you know, you can't operate an insurance company without regulation. Like you need to be regulated. It's just, it just has to happen. So they go six months with hardly any communication.

And they're trying to acquire other insurance companies, you know, and he's an entrepreneur. He wants to get things done. And so they finally, they're trying to get a meeting with CalC to say, hey, what's the deal? We're here. We want to support you. you're the elected official now, you have a badge, and finally, Kalsi agrees to meet with them. Unbeknownst to them, he's wearing a wire.

And so you meet with him, and Kalsi's first request is, hey, I want to fly on your plane to Washington. And Greg says, well, you can do that, but you've got to pay your way. So if you want to ride on my plane to go to Washington, you have to pay the charter, whatever it is. so he fails at that so then he tries 30 40 50 times nothing gets nothing keeps trying finally after 30 40 attempts of talking to Greg and I'm listening to the story but also doing my research so this is I'm telling the story of how I heard it in prison but I'm also telling it after after I got out of prison and how what I heard about this because this story at the end of the day is

the biggest injustice in American business history that nobody's ever heard of. And so he's trying all these different ways to get Greg to do these special favors for him. He's saying, well, you supported the governor, but what's in it for me? So finally he says that to Greg on tape. He says, well, what's in it for me?

And so Greg says, well, we can put money in an opportunity committee for you, which is a super PAC. Totally illegal. You can do that. And Greg says, I'll put money in there. We'll run ads on regulatory reform. And Greg says to me, he's like, look, we just want to be well regulated. This lady Jackie, she is fine, but she doesn't understand our stuff.

It's just way of her head. So please bring in Debbie Walker, who was her boss, and have her regulate us. Like, that's all we want. We just want to be well regulated. So Cousie goes away again. doesn't get anything. And so then he finally comes back and they have another meeting and he says, well, can you, he's like, well, how about, he's like these opportunity committees, these North Carolina packs, like,

they do nothing for me. He's like, how about something in an account I can control? Like my personal checking account? And Greg says we can't do that. We can't do that. and so he goes away again and then they decide that they're going to okay we'll take a donation to the north carolina gop so greg is going to donate 250,000 dollars to the north carolina gop and then the chairman of the gop is going to then send that money to cowsy's campaign account so in

North Carolina, that's a civil violation, meaning you'll get your hands slapped, right? But on a federal level, that constitutes bribery and honest services fraud. Sounds like entrapment that he was... Totally entrapment. And so they took him, they took him to trial because Greg Limburg's not the type to just be like, oh, he's not going to do what I did because he didn't do anything wrong. Yeah. Like you can make a, at this point, you make a campaign donation to the North Carolina GOP. At that point you send the money it's out of your hands you don't have anything else to do with it and so robin hayes who is the chairman of the gop he's the one who transfers the money and of course he takes a plea deal and then they go after gregg they go after the successful entrepreneur and the yo's on trial

and he gets an 87 month sentence and you made him in prison and i met him in prison and i met him in prison off of that case. And so we, we, we spend, I spent eight months in, um, in federal prison. Why so short of a time when you got 24 months? Uh, the CARES Act. COVID. And so, um, so, and I had done three months in ARDAP. Like I was, you know, I was going to be, I was going to do the, I was going to do the whole stand without COVID. I was going to do our DAP and, you know, maybe we would have done 12, 13 months there. But under the CARES Act, you get to go home early. So I was going to go to seven months of home confinement. But keep in mind, because of James Catledge, like everything was, you know, he had left a chaotic situation at home.

So it was going to be a very tough, it was going to be a tough role on home confinement. But, you know, Greg was there for me. Like, he was listening to me, and we were talking through, like, how to, how to go through that and how to really reconnect with my children. And, you know, he just was so supportive. And so we wind up having to go into quarantine when we leave, right? And, and Greg was one of these people in the prisons that, like, he didn't break any rules. Like, there was, he was always doing, you know, he was always, he was always teaching classes,

and he was always always following the rules. Like he would never do anything that was even close to breaking the rules at all. And so he comes to quarantine, but you're not allowed to be in quarantine, right? Like we're quarantine. So he comes to the door and he knocks on the door. And, you know, there's people going in and out of that quarantine like you wouldn't believe. But not Greg. Greg wouldn't go in.

And he asked to see me. And he says to me, he says, you know, He says, Richard, I know you're going home in like a couple days. He says, he goes, I think you're brilliant. And he's like, I think that you would be really, really good in my business. And so I want to know if you would consider coming to work for me. And we could work together. And, you know, he's like, I'm going to be here, obviously, for a certain amount of time.

But like, here's the people that you can contact. And, you know. And I, of course, was blown away. I was like, of course. I mean, you know, of course. I mean, this is a person who's shown me so much compassion. And I had this one experience when I was in the chow hall when I was washing dishes, right? That was my first job in prison.

That was my first job. It was it? Yeah. I think they stick all the newbies in the dishroom in the kitchen. I mean, at the prison camps in the kitchen. So I was pots and pants, meaning we didn't get to work until the breakfast was over. But yet, we still had to be there at three in the morning. morning, you know, but breakfast was from six to six to six 30, right? But we had to, so they were going

through getting their, their food, their, their food. And this guy, probably in his late 50s, he starts having, like, he's struggling physically. And I'll never forget this. I've been there like two weeks. I was like two weeks out of quarantine when this happened. And the guy is like, needs to sit down. And so the guard is like, what the fuck you doing, man? And he's yelling at the guy. And he's like, you can't sit there.

He's like, go sit over there. And so the guy moves himself all over there. And he's just, and he's, and the guard's like yelling. And he's like, this stupid motherfucker, you know, complaining. Well, two minutes later, the guy peels over. And he starts like convulsions.

And so me and this other guy, named Omar, really beautiful human being, really great guy. We're like, this guy's having a medical issue. Well, he ends up dying. It's a heart attack right there. They didn't call medical for five minutes. He yelled at the guy for five minutes to get up why he was dying. And that was like wild to see that.

Yeah, your second week in prison. My second week. And, you know, and let me tell you, Montgomery Federal Prison was a cakewalk. it was easy. It was like going to this adult daycare where they treated you terribly. Like the staff was mean to you. But like, yeah, seeing if somebody lose their life like that, that was rough. And especially when you hear the backstory, like he had been to medical complaining about this issue.

And they'd sent him away and did nothing. I remember, you know, I was so fat when I got into prison, I was 290 pounds. and my blood pressure was like 160 over 107. And it just put you on meds and that was it. And so in that nine months that I knew Greg, like, you know, we talked through that kind of traumatic experience. And then, you know, and then I was walking a ton and had the little black M3 player that I downloaded music on and whatnot.

And I went up losing 70 pounds in the nine months. So I was 290 and when I left, I was 2.20. That's good. And it was pretty awesome. And I felt great. Do you go and work for Greg when you get out? So he wants me to go to work for him. And so I go to the halfway house.

I'm on home confinement. And the halfway house lady, she's looking, she's like, you can't work for this guy because you're both in BOP custody. I'm like, well, I'm not working for him. Like, I have a manager that I would be, you know, working directly for who's, no, you can't do that. So I wasn't able to work for him. Well, one of the things that Greg had done when he was in prison is he established a nonprofit from prison called interrogating justice, which is a, which I think you'll appreciate this because it's a reentry resource.

And there's 400 pages of different state resources for people who are looking for housing, employment. and Greg was putting, you know, money into this nonprofit, which, of course, I'll get to how the government shut it down. But it was a great, 400,000 website visitors a month. We're really, really gaining, so I started writing articles because, additionally, giving resources, it was kind of like I was doing, it was writing a series about what prison foods like, what it's like to be in prison, you know, all of the kind of things,

just from a camp perspective. and I would actually write that. This is, you know, I have no idea what it's like to be at a low or medium or a pen, but this is what it's like in a camp. And you were paid for this? I was not. So you were just volunteering your time? I volunteered to be at the, to write for this.

Because, I mean, one of the things I wanted to do when I first went in there is I thought it would be cool to have a nonprofit that was kind of like a prison consulting nonprofit. And then I kind of figured out that that was just. just like a really big business. It was just like everyone was in business for that. And so it didn't really get much past my thoughts on it. But so I wrote, volunteered for that. And so, but I knew that when I was going to be done with home confinement that I wasn't going to be, that I needed to be in a different place than I was. And so through Greg's attorneys, he wrote me and says, well, I really, I really could you somebody in New York. We've got these different things that we're doing and you'd be really great there. And so the minute that I got on supervised release, I transferred from South Carolina to

New York. And your family was okay with moving to New York? No, my family didn't move to New York. So you moved on your own? I moved on my own. Yeah. Yeah. We were, we had ended our marriage, which was, which was tough. It was tough. But like I said, I was, I was a terrible husband. And I think if you asked her, she would say that she, you know, that we both struggled in our relationship and being there for each other and whatnot. So I moved to New York and they had no issue with it. Like I was in the New York, the Southern District of New York, it was kind of like, who are you? Like they literally, they did one apartment check and I never heard from these people. Like they just were like, you know.

and I mean even in the camp and in no way whatsoever am I minimizing what I did because like I said it haunts me still this day every night I think about it um

is you know $472,000 is a lot of money to me but when everyone I was in the camp with I mean I was the lowest I was the lowest one yeah me and you both yeah 10 million

5 million 3 million you know I mean it just was um millions of millions of dollars yeah I mean you were you were close to me right yeah I was about 490 I'm down to $1.99 now. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

And meanwhile, you got Billy McFarland from Firefest walking around New York City on TikTok talking about I always tried to sell FireFest now. Yeah. And to raise the money, Brow, go work a normal job, man. Yeah. I'm not working out.

You owe $26 million. I know. James Catledge, funny, the story about him, is he had, I think it was $60 million or $80 million, and he would brag to me on the phone before I went into prison that he only had to pay $1,000 a month. Yeah, that's what people, I know people that are like that owe $10 million and they're paying $100 a month.

Yeah. They don't care. Yeah. It's, yeah. And you know what? I call the court every month, make my payment. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know if my victim is getting it.

I have no clue. And it's not my place, right? Like, I fulfill my obligation. But I will tell you, like, one of the greatest days of my life. And this is kind of like a post-prison. supervised release fantasy that I have is the day that I get to walk into his office and show him a copy of a big lump sum cashier's check that pays that off how much are you paying a month now so the the minimum I have to pay is 400 and and that was one thing James Cowler thought that was the greatest thing in the world that I had a

$400,000 restitution and his was 60 million and his payment was a thousand of mine was 400 and I just was like whatever you know I try to pay as much as I can How much do you have left? Gosh, last time I checked, I don't even know. It's still, it's still too high. You know, it's probably north of four still. Still in the fours. Yeah, yeah.

But it is just one of those things that, you know, every day, like I think of that day when I'll be able to go in with the copy of the cashier. This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Go further in a long-range Subaru hybrid with up to 500. 81 miles per tank in the forester 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. Get business done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card with unlimited 2% cash back on all eligible purchases.

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Visit Purina.com slash Beneful to shop now. I just gave this to the, well, I guess it now, I guess it's the financial litigation. unit now. Do you think that's how you make amends with them or is it more than that? Do you think you should call them and talk to them? Or do you think that's all irrelevant? I think in their mind, that will be the immense. And it's important to me to respect their feelings. And it's important to me to pay it because I'm responsible for it. And it's my responsibility. And so every day I think about it, you know, like I said. And, you know, there are two things in prison that I did before I went to bed as I thought about that. And then I thought about my, at the time, my daughter

was four, my youngest daughter was four when I went in, and she's now eight. We had this ritual, and we still do this to this day. And she's with me for the summer, is we say, good night, sweet dreams, I love you, kiss. And I would say that in prison every night. Every single night I would say that when I go to bed. Just in honor of my youngest daughter and really in honor of all my daughters. But that's what we did with. And I still do that to the day with my daughter. Have you talked to your kids about prison? Yeah, quite a bit. Are they receptive? I think to a point they're receptive. I think that in their mind, just because of it was so hard when I was gone given just the third party trouble that was going on and that they just want to kind of move on. And I understand that. I get that.

But I can't move on because of what happened with Greg. When I discovered what the government had done to him, I couldn't stay quiet. Like I can't. I can't stay quiet. And so I finally start working for Greg and then he gets released on appeal because the judge told the jury he gave them improper instructions basically said well you have to convict him based on this well you can't you can't tell a jury how to deliberate and so he gets out on appeal and he's released from prison and we start we start working together not person to person you know he's in florida i'm in i'm in i'm in new york um and so one of the things that happened with his insurance companies is is when he got charged, they also started to come after the company.

So you have this new insurance commissioner, and you have basically taken a lot of loans out on your company to buy other companies. And so, Greg Limburg, he adopted, so Warren Buffett's philosophy was, it's called affiliated equity, meaning he would take the profits of his insurance, companies and he would invest it into the stock market and buy unaffiliated companies. Greg took an affiliated debt approach, meaning he would put together loans to where the insurance companies would loan via a special purpose vehicle loan the money for his companies, for him to go acquire companies, not affiliated companies. Like I said, approved by the previous North Carolina

the Department of Insurance. And so when you do that, and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, right? And you go make these acquisitions. You know, the payback period, you know, just in a traditional M&A type of transaction, you know, the payback period's 10, 15 years. So Koussi gets in there and he's, and, you know, he's trying to give him to bribe him. He's not giving him a good regulator who doesn't understand this at all. Kalsi comes to him and says, I want, I want all these loans that you've taken out on these insurance companies. He's like, I want them payable within a year. Well, you can't do that. Like, that's, you can't make, when you go acquire a new business, you know, they just doesn't grow that fast. So, but Greg scrambles. And he starts, he starts converting

these loans, which he even gave up control of, like, he had. had no stewardship over the loans. He created different trust, different people to run them. And so they were structured the right way. And so he started getting senior secured notes to try to convert them down and pay them, you know, get them paid down faster. And Kalsi agreed to it. And he started doing it. And he started to follow the rules like he always has. And he's adjusting all of these 10, 15-year loans that he had taken out against his insurance companies into these senior secured notes. And he's securing him on like five years.

And then Kelsey comes back to another one, and this is right about the time where they're about to indict him on the bribery charge and says, no, I want to payable in one year. And Greg says, well, okay, and he's trying to make it work. And Greg had also pledged his whole net worth as a personal guarantee, so he knew that he would be able to cover it. And so in 2019, Kalsi decides to place all of his insurance companies into receivership. So he takes the companies from Greg, even though he's paying, meeting the obligations, every annuity is paid, every claim is paid. And Koussey takes control of the insurance companies, and he stops paying the policyholders. He hires a group of receivers.

basically to rehabilitators, right? Hires this group of rehabilitators to oversee these insurance companies and quote-unquote rehabilitate them, right? And so Greg loses control of all of his insurance companies. And this is, you know, this is $600 million in insurance companies. And with about a billion dollars in debt, like $1.2 billion in debt on them. and he takes him from him, stops paying the policyholders, and then says, hey, I had to do this because he's committing fraud.

Well, there was no fraud at all whatsoever. And he hires and coordinates all of these receivers who come in, rehabilitators, and they are a group of individuals that the first person is Mike Dinius, and then another gentleman who comes in, West Camden, who ironically used to be Greg's attorney, and now he's now the attorney for the rehabilitators, which that's, I don't know how in the world that happens. And they hire this management company called M3 to take all of his non-affiliated companies. so his insurance companies they're being managed here but then they create this new hold co they call it new hold co and they take i think a hundred of his companies to start managing those so they put them all in trust

and they take him away from him and they start managing those so but the whole point is hey we need to rehabilitate these we need to figure out how much money is owed so that we can we can get these loans paid off and move forward. And what happens is, is it's been six years. They've had control of them for six years. There's a group of about 10 people that have collected $150 million in fees. And they haven't paid the policyholders. Now, Craig, when he had controlled insurance companies, he paid the policyholders.

But these people have collected $150 million. Imagine that. $150 million. And they set up a structure to where, they can spend whatever they want and they don't have to get permission for it under $250,000. And anything above that,

they just have to get approval. Well, Mike Dinus is approving all of this. They're all approving it amongst themselves because the board that's overseeing the insurance companies, these other group of companies, they're all affiliated with each other. There's one guy that's on the board

of this new hold code which controls all the non-insurance companies, companies. And he basically hires his son. And so his name is Tom Biagi. And he used to work for M3, the management company, but now he doesn't. But his son works for M3. And his son is like two years out of college. And all of a sudden, his son is billing for $680 an hour. Well, I'm not stupid. I went and did the research. What is the second year? associate make or even a senior associate what do they bill they're bill in 300 400 an hour but no Mario can build 600 he can build 683 an hour and no one says anything so are you like

working with gregg to on this project or well so I have worked on various projects with Greg one of which was we um and I worked quite a bit on this is we went to we we proposed a solution to this because if they would have never taken the insurance companies from Greg. They would still be operating. Policyholders would have been paid, but they didn't do that. So we made the approach of, you know what, we're going to sell all of our non-insurance companies in a SPAC. We're going to launch it on the NASDAQ. And they valued the companies that he had on the deal, and we worked months and months at this, at close to $3 billion. Now keep in mind, the insurance debt is 1.2.

We start working. I'm having meetings in New York. We're working with investment bankers to launch this spec deal. And it was called Quadro. It's on the NASDAQ. You can look it up. And we start working at it. But we run into issues because they won't cooperate.

Because if they did cooperate, what happens? they lose their receivership. They're billing $3 to $400. They're billing $2.5 million a month right now. So what are you actively doing now? You're working for Greg? I work for Greg, yes. So you're doing projects like what you just discussed on the side

and what's your main gig for sure? So I work as the chief strategy officer for Magma Power. And Greg's, so Casey Cotter, who we met in prison, who's a brilliant engineer, he, and we've got 32 patents around harnessing clean energy from magma. So we're basically,

no one's been able to do this, and we're basically going into 2,000 degrees Celsius, and we are able to harness energy from magma. And so Casey and Greg came up with this in Montgomery Federal Prison, and they um like i said it's um it's 24-7 renewable baseload power and we've started to build this startup this renewable energy startup and um the big thing that everyone has told us is oh well you can't you can't you can't drill into that because it'll melt uh it the tools will melt you can't

No one's been able to do this. And so, but Casey designed a patent. It's a latent, a heating infusion patent that cools the temperatures down to where you can still harness energy. And we're talking about supplying AI data centers, and we're talking about if mining Bitcoin, whatever. Because these are all like super heavy energy consumers, right? Like AI is off the charts and how much that it, that, how much energy it takes. takes up. And so this is a solution. And we just did a test at a university and synthetic lava, 2,000 degrees, and we drilled into it. And we harnessed the energy. And so we are really to the

point where we're looking to actually launch our first project. And because it's so hot, that translates into really super low costs. Like, for example, three to four cents a kilowatt hour is what our projections are where I think in New York I pay 20, 22 cents. It's revolutionary. And like I said, we've got 30 plus patents. We've got another 50-60 pending. And it was all invented in a federal prison. Yeah, it's cool.

I see so many guys working with other guys that have been in prison together. Like some of my friends, Facebook, Billy, who was on the show. He started a hot sauce company with two other guys that were in prison. and you just see all these guys collaborating. I mean, my podcast, my business now essentially came from my prison experience. So it's really cool to see that. What do you think is the lesson, the biggest lesson you learned throughout your crime and going to prison and where you're at now?

I think that when it comes down to it, what I've learned is that I cannot in any way whatsoever shy away from something that's such a huge injustice. I went to prison because I was guilty. And prison existed for somebody like me who I battled on OxyContin addiction and you have certain programs that, you know, and we won't get into that, like, the effectiveness of RAP and all that kind of stuff. But prison is supposed to be for somebody like me. It's not supposed to be for people to weaponize the justice system to go after people because they're a political threat because they supported another opponent and because people want to make their careers and so and you know the way these people have weaponized this justice system against him

fed the wall street journal in the new york times with complete false lies like people need to know the facts of who Greg Lindberg is. And they don't because the narrative is so swayed towards people in the justice, and previously in the Justice Department. I'm actually really, really encouraged by like somebody like Savannah Crissly who has advocated so much in terms of criminal justice reform. I don't know if you've seen what she's done lately, but I mean, she got her parents pardon and but she worked she worked hard like she went she went to washington and she knocked on doors and she got she just worked really really hard and so um somebody who you know and i know amy elson um she is starting uh the clemency project and it's a brand new um project to

help support clemency and amy's leading it up and it's launching i believe it's launching By the time this probably goes on, it'll have been launched. And we've submitted Greg's case, and we're hopeful that it gets accepted. Amy's a tremendous human being. She's been through. You talk about weaponization of government. I mean, that's kind of, you know, she's been through it. But she's involved in this project.

We're hoping that, you know, Greg can be on that because if there's anybody who's a victim of the criminal justice system of just weaponization. It's just, it is absolutely just, like I said, it's the biggest injustice in the history of American business. And I can't sit there and not say anything about it. And because if they can take down Greg Lindberg, they can take down you, they can take down me, they can take down anybody.

But at the same time, I'm super hopeful to where, you know, there's a new BOP director that seems to be really making some good strides, I think. And then I can't, I mean, what do you think about an actual former inmate being a deputy director? Yeah, I heard about that. I thought that's interesting. I think it's good. It'll be good. I never thought I'd see the day.

Yeah. I think that it's becoming more modern to have felonies on your record, to have mistakes from your past. and to be able to be given a second chance like that. And that's how you create change through your lived experience. Exactly. It's almost like that should be a qualification. You know, it really would. And you would probably solve a lot of problems a lot faster than you do.

Definitely. Well, Richard, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it, Ian. Thank you so much. Yeah, you did a great job telling your story. Thank you. We appreciate it. I appreciate it.