Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was a CIA Operative for 25 Years — Then I Got Set Up & Sent to Federal Prison | Michael Williams

Starting point is 00:00:00 He worked for the CIA for 25 years and says the U.S. government set him up and sent him to prison. My guest today is Michael Williams. He spent 25 years working as a CIA contractor and under non-official cover before traveling to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. He says what he uncovered there put him in the DOJ's crosshairs and federal prison. Today, he's telling his side of the story for the first time ever. grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi. So small town. So where Elvis Presley's from.

Starting point is 00:00:36 You brought me a nice mug. Yes, I hope you enjoy that. It was a small town, kind of sheltered in the grand scheme of things. But we were sort of like the big city kids in the area, I think, because our town was a whopping like 30,000, 35,000 people where all the towns around us were, you know, much smaller than that. So we were, I think, kind of considered, you know, the city kids, even though we were mostly just middle class and reasonably sheltered and, you know, just a good American upbringing. My hometown's been like a voted all-American city. I don't know how many times. So it's a little

Starting point is 00:01:21 like a suburb of a big city. We had everything you needed, but without the big city nearby. but yeah, just good all-American hometown. Both of your parents were in the picture growing up? Yes, good stable family. Parents started out as school teachers. My dad kind of became, or didn't kind of, he did become an entrepreneur. He bought a sporting goods store. So that was most of my life that I knew him from a work environment,

Starting point is 00:01:52 is that he owned the sporting good store. and the town was small, so he was kind of the sporting goods store guy. There was one other sporting goods store in town, but my dad's shop was bigger, which was still, you know, a mom and pop shop. But it felt sort of like a big deal in a small town that people knew my dad's name because it was called Bill Williams Sporting Goods. And that was his name. So if I said, yeah, Bill Williams, they would say Billion Sporting Goods?

Starting point is 00:02:24 Yeah, oh, yeah, that's your dad. Yeah, that's my dad. So a little bit of a little bit of an ego boost whenever I would have those conversations. But, you know, I think I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. And I think I probably got that a little bit from him. I think you're kind of born with the entrepreneurship kind of gene, if you will. But the fact that he ran his own business, I think was probably put the seed in my head very early on. Were you into sports too?

Starting point is 00:02:56 Yes. Played everything growing up. And certainly having a dad in the sporting goods business kind of made that very easy. I never, you know, we were a solidly middle class family, but I never wanted for anything sports related. If I needed a new bat, I got it because I could just go down to my dad's store and beg him for it. And he would eventually maybe give me one. I couldn't get three or four or five. I didn't get a new one every year.

Starting point is 00:03:22 but if I needed one, I would get one. If I needed a new glove or a pair of cleats or anything, I would get a good, solid pair of cleats, had the first pair of Air Jordans that ever came out, had no idea who Air Jordan, who Michael Jordan was. Nobody really did at the time. But, you know, just knew they were cool shoes and got a pair and wish I still had them, but I don't.

Starting point is 00:03:46 But did play every sport growing up. played narrow that down from everything everything you play in the south you know we didn't really have cold weather sports we didn't have hockey which i think i would have loved never played that didn't really have lacrosse of course we didn't snow ski or anything we would travel in snow ski later in high school a little bit and i go and i've snow skied since then um lots i love i try to go you know, outside of my conviction and all of that, I would try to try to go out for a couple weeks every year, but didn't grow up doing it at all. But eventually kind of narrowed down to football and baseball, played church basketball, but because sports are so time-consuming

Starting point is 00:04:34 that you, as you grow up and get better at it and as your teams get better, and I plan on some really, really great teams, you kind of have to pick. You know, you're either going to focus on one or two, or you're going to be very average and probably ride the bench in three or four or five, unless you're just a phenomenal athlete. And I was a good athlete, but I was a phenomenal athlete. Did you end up going to college? I did. Went to the Naval Academy at a high school, which was an experience, a good experience, ultimately.

Starting point is 00:05:13 I never been to Annapolis. this is kind of how sheltered. Shelter is not the best word for it, but I don't think this would happen in, you know, in today's world where a kid would just go to college four or five hundred miles away, having never set foot on the campus or really talked to anybody that was there or knew a whole lot about it other than what they had read in a catalog. Because we didn't have the internet. This was kind of right before the birth of the internet and email and all of that. that. So my first day at Annapolis was the day before my induction day, which starts Pleeve summer, which is basically the boot camp. You go there in the summer. I think I reported on like June 29th and boot camp started the next day. My day is maybe off a day or two, but then you're, you know, you're in boot camp for six weeks and then the upperclassmen come back and you start the academic year. But that was a big deal.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Annapolis was and still is very hard to get into. I wanted that challenge. I wanted to serve. I think I felt a calling to serve as cheesy as that may sound. I used to equate it when people would ask like, why did you go to the Naval Academy? I would equate it to kind of like how probably ministers and priests kind of feel a calling to go follow God.

Starting point is 00:06:46 I felt a calling to kind of, serve my country. And I had the grades and the and the athleticism and the leadership of all the great teams that I was a part of and the great coaches that I had and the great teachers that I had and the great family that I had and have, even though my parents have passed away now. But that I had the opportunity to even apply. Like you have to, I'm not sure how it is now because this was many moons ago. But at the time for an now, you had to apply to apply. Because I think, you know, it's the Navy.

Starting point is 00:07:23 So I guess the government didn't want to send out that many applications. Because back then it was all handwritten. It was not, it wasn't fill out this form online and submit it via email. It was print this or we're going to mail you a packet. You fill it out with a ballpoint pen and mail it back to us and we'll get back to you. But I had to get a congressional appointment. So I had to go to my senators and congressmen convinced them that I was worthy. That was after the pre-application.

Starting point is 00:07:56 So you apply to apply. So I don't know how many people do that, but they end up sending about, and again, this I think is generally about the same because the school is the same size. It hasn't grown because it's the Naval Academy. They're not necessarily trying to make more money and expand their size of their student body. But about 12,000 people apply and about 1,100, 1100, 1,200 are accepted. So about a 10% acceptance rate. And the people that even apply, I believe, may, I can't remember exactly to apply. I think you may have to have a congressional appointment, which is its own set of applications

Starting point is 00:08:38 and impressing those politicians and things like that. You can also get one from the president or the vice president. I had zero connections to them. I had zero connections to the senators and congressmen in Mississippi. But again, I was on great sports teams. We had made some international news. We had a lot of really great things going on in high school that looking back seemed now very impressive. But at the time, they were just like, yeah, that's pretty cool, I guess.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Like we were on ESPN when ESPN was small, this was when there was one, ESPN. There weren't 20. We were on ESPN when you were in high school. We had a guy from my high school, one of my buddies that was on Teen Jeopardy. We had a guy that went on the Tonight Show as a magician. We had one of the best guitar players that still to this day I've ever seen. And so, but they would do these things and people would kind of make a big deal about it for about a day. And then they were just back to being normal kids. I invented a math formula at some point that I don't even remember. And I didn't even know I'd invented it until I came back to class one day. And my teacher said, this is the Michael Wayne formula. And I was like, wait, I'm in the, you know, I'm in the middle

Starting point is 00:09:57 of class. I'm like, wait, what? She goes, yeah, you came, you told me this formula the other day of like, it's a, it's a kind of a quicker version instead of doing these four steps, we can make that into two steps. And I was like, yeah, but I thought that you didn't just know that. Or that's not common sense. and it probably was and it was probably not a big deal at all. But I looked back at it and I saw my teacher like 20 years later and I was like, do you remember that when you said I invented a formula? She was like, no. And I was like, that might have been like a big deal.

Starting point is 00:10:27 Like I could have gotten published for that or something, you know. And in today's society where I could quickly go online and show everybody my brilliance or whatever, dumb luck or whatever you want to call it, simple observation is what it was. But at the time, like I, for, you know, 10 minutes in class one day, I felt very important, and then it was just gone, and everything was back to normal. But I guess having those things, and I mean, my, again, back to the teams, we were, you know, nationally ranked in sports and football and baseball. We won multiple state championships.

Starting point is 00:11:00 We led the nation one year in no hitters in baseball and won a state championship that year. And then again, it wasn't even a big deal. Like, it was just, yeah, you guys are really good. Keep, you know, keep it up. So getting into Annapolis was a huge honor. And I remember being, you know, very excited and very honored. But at the same time, thinking, well, yeah. Well, of course I got in.

Starting point is 00:11:31 I got into West Point, too. I didn't apply to the Air Force Academy. But, yeah, like, I've worked my ass off for 17, 18 years. And this is the reward for it. it so far. Now the real challenge begins because Annapolis is an extremely hard place. That's why it's considered one of the best schools in the world, not just academically, but for the military aspect of it, the leadership components, just turning raw high school kids and people also come from the fleet from the enlisted ranks. If they perform well in the enlisted ranks,

Starting point is 00:12:10 they can apply and be accepted as well, which is a great. pipeline, I think. And they had so much value. I was one of my good friends there was a former enlisted guy who, you know, just taught us all a lot because we're coming straight out of high school. I didn't know how to salute. I don't know how to march. I didn't know how to put on a uniform correctly.

Starting point is 00:12:29 Of course, he did. And of course, everybody else, the upper class and the other, the instructors and the other officers there taught us everything you'd ever, you know, needed to know, to be a officer. but that's where real leadership training started as well. Coming from the sports again and coming from the great coaches and coming from the great teachers that I had and the great family and great parents, it was a refinement of leadership training that I think has served me well since then. And, you know, extremely tough place to be.

Starting point is 00:13:06 I think it's, when I describe it, I describe it, kind of like running a marathon or doing a triathlon, like doing an Iron Man, which I hate doing distance stuff. So that's why I've done it. And that's why I kind of, you know, did the paramilitary side of things because it's something that I kind of hated. So I wanted to conquer it, if you will. I hate a triathlon. So I kind of want to make them my play thing. I wanted to, you know, win them. Not just, not just survived them, but win them. Never did. But got fairly decent at them. But they suck. You know, when you're in the middle of it, when you're in the middle of a tough workout,

Starting point is 00:13:43 anything that's tough in life, it's going to suck. And it's easy to quit. And if you think, why am I doing this? And you can see the purpose behind it and see that there's something bigger and more important and that you're contributing a small way into doing something that will either make you a better person and make you a better person for those around you where you can make a bigger and better impact on other people in your immediate orbit or on a bigger scale to people that are, you know, on the outer rings of your orbit or, you know, even to society and, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:26 nonprofits and volunteer work and things like that or certainly in the military of like, make me a great leader and this is going to suck, but I'm going to come out of here and I'm going to be an officer in the Navy or the Marine Corps. and I'm going to go out into the fleet and I'm going to kick ass and I'm going to train these guys up and we're going to be the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. And I fear for the terror we're going to put into anybody that ever opposes us or tries to harm anyone that I love or anyone that stands alongside or in front of the American flag. So that's what it was all about. And that's what I was like, sign me up. Sign me up.

Starting point is 00:15:04 I know how hard it's going to be and it was. but I always felt like there was a bigger purpose and a bigger reason for being there. So it was worth all the suckiness about it. You know, you remember that when you're there. It's a tough, the cliche back then, and I'm sure it's still around, is it's a tough place to be, but a great place to be from. And it's not just because you get a leg up because you come from a great school when you go try to get a job or whatever after you're out. If you don't spend your career in the Navy or Marine Corps, but you're committed. That's another thing. When you sign up, you're committed to, at the time, it was five years.

Starting point is 00:15:42 So you're not committed to, you don't just go to college. You go for four years and then you are committed by law effectively for another five after that. So you're signing up for nine years at 17, 18 years old. That's a serious commitment. You know, when you've only been on the planet for 17 years. That's how your life already. Exactly. That you're just like, gee, I'm going to be like, you know, my late 20s when I'm, before I can even think about getting out. Like that's, I'm going to be an old man.

Starting point is 00:16:13 But so you got to know what you're getting into. And, you know, people quit and people wash out and people got hack it. And they realize, you know, they're doing it for the wrong reasons. And people get kicked out. People flunk out. But the people that stay,

Starting point is 00:16:29 I think they have tremendous skills. not just academically and intellectually, but from a leadership standpoint. And this goes for all the service academies that, you know, I think from even back in the 90s when I was there up to now, 2026, our military and leadership are in very good hands. If maybe it's gotten even better, I like some of the things that I'm seeing coming out of those places, just following them on social media all the way from Heg-Seth down to the superintendent of the Naval Academy and the other service academies. But anyway, I'll shut up about that. Where do you go after the Naval Academy? So I was in Annapolis for two years.

Starting point is 00:17:17 All that, all that rah-rah about Annapolis, and I didn't even graduate. But I was there for the two hard years, I guess. All four years are tough, I think, but it progressively gets slightly easier. You know, your Pleeb year, your freshman year is your hardest, I think by far. But My, your sophomore year is called your youngster year. It's just the nickname for it. So I may interject those two. The sophomore, the winter of my sophomore year, my father passed away, died of cancer. So I had a tough choice at that time.

Starting point is 00:17:56 It kind of fell to me and my family because I was in college. I had no huge commitments. I didn't have a job in a career. My sisters did. We still had the sporting goods store. My dad had sold. My dad had been sick for a year. He died almost a year to the day after his first surgery.

Starting point is 00:18:18 So he was diagnosed with lung cancer, had surgery like within a week or two, and then died almost exactly one year to the day after his surgery. Went into remission for a few months during that time, but ultimately succumbed. And it was very sad. But in that time, while he was in remission, he sold the bigger store and just had one smaller store that was more of a retail store. Like in the big store, he did what we called the big store.

Starting point is 00:18:47 He did a lot of team stuff. So he would outfit entire university football teams and high school teams for any sport, every sport, all the way down to softball teams. If you and your crew wanted to put together a softball team, or now a pick a pickleball team or something. And you needed jerseys and shorts and matching socks and this, that, and the other, you would come to building sporting goods and you would get outfitted. And then he sold that and still had a smaller store that was more retail, but it was still there. But it was just, it was on a lifeline.

Starting point is 00:19:22 And my mom was taking care of my dad and was dealing with, with his illness and also still teaching school. She was a junior high school teacher. And she took a sabbatical at some point in there, maybe the last year of his life or the last several months of his life. He died in the hospital, so he didn't go to hospice or anything like that. So it all kind of toward the end, it kind of came on pretty quickly. I remember getting a call at Annapolis from one of my best friend's dads. And back then, you know, we didn't really have cell phones.

Starting point is 00:19:55 So if you wanted a message to anyone, you had to call. like the main office at Annapolis, and they sent a runner up to where your company lived. We all lived in one giant dorm. A company is about 120 people of all ranks. You all kind of live in the same part of the dorm. So they sent a runner up to the company. Then the guy standing watch at the company comes and finds you and says, hey, you need to, you know, you got to have a message. Here's your message.

Starting point is 00:20:22 And give me the message and just call this guy. So now I go down to the phone room. There's a huge room, not huge, but. a big room of pay phones. And so you didn't need to put, this was beyond where you just needed to plug it full of quarters, but you could use a calling card. So I go, it's truly like a phone booth. You go on the phone booth, shut the doors, call up. And I remember my friend's dad said, you need, you need to go ahead and come home. And I was like, man, like, you know where I am. Like, I can't just be like, see ya. I'm going to jump in the car and come home. One, I'm in Maryland.

Starting point is 00:20:55 And two, I'm in on a military base, which is effectively like a prison. Like you can't just leave. And I didn't have a car, even if I wanted to. So I'm like, you know, that's, that's easier said than done. He's like, yeah, you need to go ahead and come home. And so I knew at that point, like, oh, man, I need to go. So when talked to my captain, who's Captain Chamberlain, great guy, was over our company. He was the, he was a Marine captain.

Starting point is 00:21:23 and kind of he was the officer in charge of our company of college kids, you know, of midshipman. That's what we were called. And made it work and flew out either that day or the next day and got home kind of just in time for dad to pass away. And I was there when he passed with the rest of my family. But I remember coming home from his funeral. And so, you know, I can't remember the exact days or the exact timeline, but as I think is normally the case, you know, the person passes away, a day goes by, you kind of make arrangements and maybe the second day or third day you have a wake and a visitation and then a funeral.

Starting point is 00:22:14 So it was maybe two, three days later. And I hadn't really reported in because, you know, my headspace is not in Annapolis thinking about like, differential equations and physics three and like, uh, ages class cruisers and things like that. It's about, you know, my family and my father.

Starting point is 00:22:35 And so I hadn't checked in and I hadn't even thought about it, which is my own oversight. But we got back from the funeral. We walked in the door and, and I have a huge extended family, huge tons of aunts and uncles and cousins. Now second and third cousins. Um,

Starting point is 00:22:50 but the phone rang. We had, I mean, We probably had 70 people at the house. Somebody answered it. And I remember walking the back door and the phone was kind of on the wall there near, near coming into the kitchen. And maybe my aunt or sister, I don't even know who, said, hey, this is for you. So I'm like, oh, okay, answered the phone.

Starting point is 00:23:09 And it was Captain Chamberlain. And he was like, hey, just checking in, you know, like hadn't heard from you in a couple days. Like, you can't just check out. You can't just leave a military. base as an active duty member of the Navy and not check in or not report in or just stay as long as you want. It's not a vacation. Of course, you didn't say that, but all that suddenly just ran through my brain immediately.

Starting point is 00:23:38 And I was like, oh, man, now I'm thinking, God, am I in trouble? But, you know, again, a great guy. He knew the situation. And he was like, well, you know, we're just wondering, like, what's going on? And like, when we should expect you back? and I was like, well, Captain, I actually just walked in the door for my father's funeral. So can I call you back like in a couple of hours? And he was like, oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:24:04 Yes, of course, of course. So all that was kind of a side note. So apologies for going off on a tangent. But that's kind of where my head was at and where it kind of stayed because I realized soon thereafter, like nobody had really been running the store, the sporting good store. Mom had been taking care of dad and dealing with their own stuff. And we had kind of had somebody and a few people trying to help out a little bit here or there, but it wasn't a priority.

Starting point is 00:24:34 So the store was on life support. It was near bankruptcy. And I figured that out. I can't remember how exactly or who told me that. But I learned it. And I was like, oh, man, like we can't just let this thing go bankrupt. I mean, this is my dad's legacy. This is my family's legacy.

Starting point is 00:24:55 And like my mom needs me home. Like my mom, I think my mom went in the hospital soon after that just because she was so worn out and burned out from taking care of my dad and being in and out of the hospital with him, just visiting him. And there are so many things that she went through with him. God bless her. I mean, she was a soldier that he would go into the hospital and he would get out. and something would happen and you had to turn around and go back.

Starting point is 00:25:22 And he, he went, the cancer moved from his long, he had lung surgery and then the cancer moved to his hip. So he ended up, he ended up dying, I guess, a bone cancer. But it was on his Iliac crest on his pelvis. So that affected like his whole leg and walking ability and things like this. So he's like, no, I can walk. And he really couldn't, but he didn't want to use a wheelchair and there were stairs. And so, you know, God bless my mom for, for, for, and we didn't.

Starting point is 00:25:49 hire anybody. You know, you just kind of sucked it up and did it. So she needed help. And I kind of saw it as my duty as the only son and the youngest who's kind of that isn't tied to a family or a career like my sisters were. So it was easier for me. As tough as it was to leave Annapolis and as tough as it had been to get accepted and to be there and to give that up. And to, and to give that up. People ask still to this day, you know, was it hard when you decided to leave Annapolis? And I said, I can't even think of it that way because it was a it was a no-brainer decision. Of course, family comes above country. As much as big of a patriot as I as I was and am and as much as I wanted to serve, you know, my family needs me.

Starting point is 00:26:43 So this is a no-brainer. Do I regret it? No. Do I wish things had been different? Absolutely. But, you know, my life kind of got, I had the opportunity to serve afterwards, not in the Navy, but in, you know, in the intelligence community. And ended up going to from Annapolis. I came home.

Starting point is 00:27:05 I ran my father's business. My mom retired from teaching school later that year or at the end of that year. So that was the spring. I left Annapolis about or close to the end of the year. So I didn't quite make it to the end of my second year. And that was, you do have the, you do have an out. They give you an out at the end of your sophomore year, at the end of your youngster year. If it's just not for you, you can say see you later and you can with, you can resign from the Naval Academy and go, you know, live your life and you have no commitment.

Starting point is 00:27:37 But when you come back for your junior year, you sign a commitment. You actually sign on a dotted line. It's a big ceremony. It's a big deal. and they have a name for it now. I don't think we had a name for it back then. But like you know, when you show up, you know, you come, because in summer you go to training.

Starting point is 00:27:54 You don't just go off and party all summer. You go to different training, depending on what year, you know, what summer you between, if you're between freshmen and a sophomore, you do a certain set of training, sophomore and junior, another set, junior, senior, you kind of have a choice of what you might want to go into. Do you want to fly jets? Do you want to be a seal? Do you want to be on submarines, whatever?

Starting point is 00:28:15 And you can kind of steer toward that direction to get exposure into that niche of the Navy or Marine Corps to see if you like it. Because a lot of people, you know, want to be seals until they go to mini buds. And they're like, screw this, man. Like, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be. So they bounce. And then, you know, they end up doing something else. But it's good to get that exposure beforehand. But when you come back for your junior year, you sign a commitment and you're in it.

Starting point is 00:28:41 Like, if you quit or get kicked out at that point, you go to the fleet as an enlisted person. So I didn't have to worry about that, thankfully. Not, you know what I mean by that, not thankfully, but the timing was not as horrible as it could have been. But I actually planned to go back. I was a decent student at Annapolis. The academics there were a shell shock.

Starting point is 00:29:11 I thought when I went to Annapolis, everybody was going to be like me, kind of a jock. He was also pretty smart. And probably more jock than smart. And what it turned out to be was like the smartest guys and girls in like six counties, wherever they were from, who could also do like 50 push-ups. So I was way behind the curve when I first got there academically.

Starting point is 00:29:40 I mean, I had all A's. I made one B. in high school, and that's because I got the chicken pox and missed like a month of school and came back and couldn't make up the grades. And that's a whole other story I won't bore you with. But that's still a burr under my saddle because I really should have had an A. But I'll skip that. So I ended up with 1B in high school and took all the AP classes and all the things you need to do to get into school like Annapolis. But so the fact that it was so hard to get in and that I was there and I was excelling and I didn't that I didn't hate it.

Starting point is 00:30:17 You know, nobody loves it when you're there back to the triathlon and marathon kind of analogy a few minutes ago. But I appreciated it to the point where I didn't want to leave. I never thought about leaving. Never thought a single day and people call BS on this. People that I was there with and people that have been through the, through the academies. I never said this to anybody, but Justin's like, we all thought about it. Come on.

Starting point is 00:30:41 You didn't think about it. Like I never thought about it. leaving, never thought about quitting. As hard as it was, never even, never even said, never, I don't want to say never crossed my mind, but I never crossed my mind to the point of like, man, I don't know if I can hack this. I might, I might need to, you know, go ahead and check out and go somewhere that's easier. Never in my mind, never even crossed my mind until I had to make the decision and said, I'm leaving. And which was a very hard decision to make, of course, but at the same time again, it was a no-brainer decision.

Starting point is 00:31:14 So all that to say is as soon as I tried to set the stage before I left, because it's a process to get out. Again, you can't just leave and say, see you later. You've got to go through all this withdrawal process and talk to this person and that person and get signed off and turn your equipment in and all this. So I did all that, but I set the stage to return one year later. And nobody does that. except like you don't quit Annapolis people quit and people leave Annapolis and people leave the

Starting point is 00:31:44 Naval Academy in West Point and the Air Force Academy for a handful of reasons one you get kicked out you break the honor code and you get kicked out for an honor violation or you fail you fail out you can't hack it academically or militarily so you fail out and then or you quit because you hate it or you know yeah basically because you hate it so nobody leaves and nobody comes back or excuse me if you leave, nobody comes back. Nobody transfers in. There's no NIL deal now that we have that with sports. So there's no open door policy of coming and going. If you go to school, you could go to Harvard for three years, then get accepted to the Naval Academy. And or, you know, again, the other Service Academy is the same way. When you go to the Naval Academy, you're not going in as a

Starting point is 00:32:36 senior or even a junior, you're going in as a freshman. You're going to be 21 and whatever years old, but you're starting day one, just like Mike coming from Tupelo, Mississippi, you know, he's never even been to Annapolis, Maryland, never seen the campus of the United States Naval Academy, never taking a college course other than AP courses in high school. But so nobody comes and goes. So I was like, but I want to come back. And I'm a good student. I'm a better soldier, even though, you know, we'll say sailor, uh, soldiers. Uh, soldiers. Army. I get punched for saying soldier around my Navy Marine Corps guys and girls. But as soon as I left, I was just going to drop a year. I was class of 97. I was going to drop and be class of 98.

Starting point is 00:33:20 The only precedent for that are Mormons. So Mormons generally take a year during college and go on a mission. So we had Mormons at the Naval Academy. And they would do that. They would take a year off, going a mission trip for a year, come back and pick up kind of where they left off. So I was like, I'm not Mormon, but there's the precedent. So it's doable. Let me do it. And they were like, all right, well, let's do that. We'll do that.

Starting point is 00:33:45 But let's process this withdrawal first. And then we'll start the whole other side of it on the other side, once you're out and all that. Yeah, yeah, I get it. And that's kind of what I wanted to do. First things first, because I've got to go take care of the family, take care of the business. I mean, within a month after I was home, back in Mississippi, I was going to go to Mississippi State for a year just to keep my academics up. I couldn't transfer any grades back in, but I didn't want to just sit on the couch for a year, of course. So my thought was, well, I'll go take all the classes at Mississippi State that I'm going to take my junior year at Annapolis.

Starting point is 00:34:27 And I'll come in back to Annapolis and just I'll have to take those classes again. But I'll just, I'll breeze through instead of making Cs. and B's, I'll make B's and A's, which like making a C in Annapolis is actually pretty good. Like I said, you've got the smartest people in the country going there. And so the curve, I mean, I won't go down a tangent on that. But I mean, there were plenty of tests and plenty of classes that I took where I would show back up into the hall and into the dorm. and we would compare grades when we got our test papers back,

Starting point is 00:35:04 like to see who got the worst. And it was a joke because from one to 100, you know, we would make 17s, not like 97s that we were all making in high school, but like 17s and 10s and 20s. And then, of course, you had the guy, the smartest guys and girls who were making 97s. And we're just like, dude, you're killing me here. here. But thankfully, they would, you know, a lot of the times they would curve it. So that, you know, that 17 would turn into a 67 or something. And so you, you know, you'd kind of squeak by or get by.

Starting point is 00:35:41 But as soon as I was back in Mississippi, I'm thinking, all right, I got to take care of the business. I got to, you know, take care of mom, take care of the family, take care of the house, plan on going, get ready to get ready to go to Mississippi State, which was just where my friends were. It was close. It was an hour away from my hometown. And I got the call of like, okay, we need to know from Annapolis. We need to know right now if you're coming back. And like, we need to start the paperwork and start processing everything.

Starting point is 00:36:12 And I was like, dude, like, I just got home. Like, yes, I'm coming, but coming back. But I can't, like as an honorable guy who's, you know, taught, that's the whole everything that, that the blood of Annapolis and all again, the military in general, I guess, but is honor and duty and loyalty and truth and don't tell a lie, right?

Starting point is 00:36:38 So I couldn't in good conscience say, yes, I'm absolutely coming back. I'm ready to sign this commitment papers. I'm like, I need a minute. Like, I got to take care of what I got.

Starting point is 00:36:46 I got to take care of what I got to take care of here. Yes, I'm coming back, but I can't give you that answer right now. So, you know, a couple of weeks go by and then it becomes, all right, we need to know.

Starting point is 00:36:57 And I'm like, I can't commit to you right now. This is, we're still a year away from that. I can't commit to that. So ultimately, it was like, I guess I'm not coming back. If you need an answer right now, the answer is no. And I, if I were doing it today, I might have fudged that a little bit. I'd be like, absolutely. I'll sign wherever you need me to.

Starting point is 00:37:17 Thinking like, you know, in the litigious world we live in, I could probably back out of this if I absolutely positively needed to. because I was not in the military at that point. I was just a civilian. So me signing a signing commitment papers. I'm sure there are people even now that sign, you know, you can go down to the local recruiters office, sign your way into the Marines or Navy, Air Force, wherever, and then have second thoughts, you know, two weeks later and say, you know, I quit and they may not be happy

Starting point is 00:37:45 about it, but they'll let you out. I would, I would assume they're not going to put you in jail or, or force you into boot camp or something. So I went to Mississippi State for two years. That was fun. You know, I got the discipline and the leadership training in Annapolis to kind of make me grow up running my dad's business. I grew up. Thankfully, I already had a lot of that maturity coming back to Mississippi, even though I was 20 at the time, ran his business, turned it around.

Starting point is 00:38:18 My mom retired at the end of that year. So I kind of segued her into running the business. And again, we made it more of a retail thing where she showed up and made sure everything was stocked and ran the cash register and talked to people all day and just had a pleasant time. And it gave her something to do every day because all the kids were out of the house. So she was in a fairly big house on two acres of land. And eventually, as happens with everyone who loses a loved one, like the friends and family come by for a while. But eventually they have their own lives and they stop coming. So her running the store gave her something to do where she didn't just sit at home and feel lonely or anything like that.

Starting point is 00:38:58 So it worked out well in that aspect. And of course, I was still around and still there helping, but I wasn't there on a daily basis. I went to Mississippi State and had fun and was a party. You know, I was going to say party for two years, but certainly did my fair share and greatly enjoyed being in college. But ended up with the degree from Mississippi State as opposed to go. going back to Annapolis, which took me on a very different track, obviously, from being a career. I wanted to be a seal. You know, I was on that track in Annapolis and was doing everything right to go down that road. And then, of course, life got in the way. And I took a detour and

Starting point is 00:39:39 ended up in Mississippi State. And life, you know, that was my last stent directly in the military. I have to admit something. For someone who interviews fraud investigators, IRS agents, detectives, and former scammers all the time, I almost got got. I got one of those text messages saying I had an unpaid toll and needed to pay it immediately. At first, I laughed, then I clicked it. Then I thought, wait, did I actually drive through a toll somewhere? For about 45 seconds, I completely talked myself into believing it. Right before I was about to send money, I stopped and thought, Ian, what are you doing? That's the thing about scams. They don't always catch people who aren't paying attention. They catch people when they're busy, distracted, or in a hurry. That's why I appreciate the security features built into Cash App. When you get the Cash App card, not only do you get access to a ton of perks and benefits like exclusive early access to nationwide concert pre-sales or discounts on popular brands,

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Starting point is 00:41:13 in the app or at cash.app slash card. New Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use code Secure 10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank, banking services provided by Cash Apps Bank's bank partners, prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, Cash App Visa Debit Flex cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, and the Bancorp Bank, N.A. pursuant to a license from Visa USA Incorporated.

Starting point is 00:41:51 See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton Debit Flex card, and Bancorp Debit Flex card. Discounts and promotions provided by Cash app, a Block Incorporated brand. Visit cache.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. What degree did you end up with? A business degree. Bachelor of Arts maybe in business administration? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:42:19 I didn't even go to graduation. Like I appreciate the degree. I love the business school. I've worked with the business school. I've given speeches at the business school in Mississippi State. Love the faculty over there. But at the time, I was, I had already started my own business. I had been running my father's business.

Starting point is 00:42:34 I started another investment business. I was very much an entrepreneur. Again, I'd been an entrepreneur since the fourth grade, I think, even through Annapolis. So school at that point, I, realized really quickly, you know, my first week there, like the tests were comparatively now to Annapolis were, I'll say politely not challenging. So college was fun. And the degree was just, okay, I guess I have a degree now. Like I can now show that I've completed something. But I was running my own business and not applying for jobs. I had great grades, but just because I work hard.

Starting point is 00:43:23 You know, if I put my mind to something, I want to do the best I can in it. So, but the hurdle was low. So I didn't have to put in 20 hours of study for one test. I'd put in, you know, 20 minutes of study, 22 hours of study, something like that. I mean, it was a full, you know, college curriculum. No, no disrespect to Mississippi State. But comparatively from what I had been in, you know, it's like going from, this is not a good analogy, but it's, you can appreciate the distance. It's like going from a maximum security to a prison camp. Like it's vastly different situation. And the prison camp is going to feel vastly easier than the max security, right?

Starting point is 00:44:05 So that's kind of how it felt. So the degree, the fact that I had a degree wasn't ultimately hugely important to me. Like I said, I didn't even go to graduation. I mean, my mom knew I graduated, I guess, but nobody made a big deal of it. I didn't have a graduation party. Didn't get a cap and gown. Didn't take the pictures or anything like that. I just kind of like, yeah, let's just check the box.

Starting point is 00:44:27 I've done with that. Now I can go really be an adult, which I was already an adult. I was already, you know, doing everything a 30 or 40-year-old would be doing in the world of running businesses and acting like an adult. also having a hell of a good time at Mississippi State doing the whole college party scene because I'm 2021-22 at this time. But at the same time, had my feet kind of in the real world, the adult world and the college party world.

Starting point is 00:44:59 And that's kind of, you know, we'll get into the career, my career, but all the way, as far back as I can remember, it's always been a little bifurcated. I've always kind of had feet in two worlds. You know, growing up, I was always in the accelerated classes and the AP classes. And just, I just wanted to be there. Like, I just wanted the challenge. I didn't want to be bored. And I, but I was also playing all the sports.

Starting point is 00:45:31 I was a huge kid. I've been like this size. I'm not, no joking. My friends that I grew up with, if they see this, and I hope they do, they'll be like, Yeah. Mike was like six feet tall when he was like 11 years old. And I'm 6'1 now. So I grew a little bit more. But I was a giant kid very early, height wise. So I just, when I was, you know, an adolescent, I just dominated most sports just from sheer size. So I dominated the basketball court because I was a foot and a half taller than everybody else. You know, it was good in the other

Starting point is 00:46:08 sports just because of my size advantage. And I do remember, like, eventually in high school, all these kids who I used to tower over caught up to me. And now I'm like average size or even short. Like I remember I was in line to not to circle back to old, old parts of the story, but I remember being in line at the cafeteria in high school. And one of my best friends was behind me. And I remember just our whole lives, you know, when I, when I would turn to talk to him, this is how I would do it. You know, look over, look down. So that's how I talked to everybody my whole life.

Starting point is 00:46:45 And I remember I turned, I like forgot my money or something. So I was like, hey man, can I borrow? What the? He's now like 6.3. So I'm looking up to him. And I'm like, what did you? How did you get taller than me? Like, and I look at him, he's bigger than me too.

Starting point is 00:47:01 And I'm like, what the heck happened here, man? Like everybody caught up, which is again, another reason we were going to sports because we were just stacked with pure athletes who again had great coaches and you put that combination together and and we were very happily dominant in many ways for many years, not dominant but very, very good. But again, had those had, you know, I'm in the in the classes with all the smart kids with the guys who were winning Teen Jeopardy and, you know, things like that, who were going to all these academic competitions and just crush you.

Starting point is 00:47:37 it. And I couldn't do any of that. One, because I didn't, I was kind of a nerd and a geek and smart, but I wasn't that smart or that big of a geek, honestly. And God love them. Like, they loved it and ate it up and just dominated it. And the teachers that ran those things are just phenomenal. And we were all extremely proud of them. But I wasn't dedicated being that smart at that time. I wish I probably had to been because I would have done better thanapolis. But I was, you know, had the other foot in athletics and in sports and really that's where I really want to do excel. So, you know, I would go from my every day from seventh, sixth, sixth, sixth grade, all the way through graduating high school, I would never see my good friends except maybe at lunch or chorus.

Starting point is 00:48:26 I was in chorus too, which thank God for a couple of guys who were a little bit older who went into chorus who were jocks, who were football players, who made it cool to be in the chorus because all the good looking girls were in chorus. So when it came for us, when it came time for us to go to high school, like all the jocks, or not all the jocks, but several of my good friends joined chorus. And we were great in chorus. Like we won national competitions and things. A big reason for that was because we had six feet tall, big football players who could sing

Starting point is 00:49:03 bass parts. And most choral programs at other schools didn't have those big testosterone weightlifting guys who could hit those low notes and stuff. So I think that helped. We certainly had great, we had great sopranos. Oh, my God. But the entire chorus was phenomenal. But I'm glad we could contribute a little bit of it.

Starting point is 00:49:27 But we all joined chorus because the good looking girls were in chorus. And a couple of other guys set that precedent. But so I would see a few of my friends in chorus. But I, through in the academic classes, I would never see my friends. Then I would go to, to practice at the end of the, at the end of school and see all my friends. So it was very bifurcated experience where my whole day was in one world and then it would go to another world. And then on the weekends, it would mostly be with the jocks and the guys out running around having fun. but that

Starting point is 00:50:04 bifurcation and kind of living in two worlds simultaneously that precedent I think was set pretty early in life to where it was very comfortable for me to do that and to kind of have that chaos and manage that chaos of living in two worlds and kind of living two separate lives because I didn't go into my jock friends and start talking about Fibonacci sequences

Starting point is 00:50:30 and fractal math and things like that, of course. And I didn't go into the academic classes and talking about a cover two coverage and running button hooks. And we're going to dance like this when we get in the end zone this time. We're going to do this trick play. Or let me tell you how I change my grip.

Starting point is 00:50:51 So now I can go to the opposite field better. And when I get a pitch on the outside corner, like, they don't care. They don't understand that. So very different conversations. not a different person. That's one thing that's kind of helped me is that I've, in my core, I'm the same person, but I can speak different languages, all speaking English at this time, but speaking to different groups and being comfortable in different groups, which served me

Starting point is 00:51:18 very well as my life progressed. So what career do you end up getting into after college? So when I was in college, beyond now helping my mom. mom run my father's store, I started investing in real estate. I knew that I was going to start some sort of a business, even if I, you know, stayed in the Navy or Marine Corps. So I remember right when I turned 18, I got a credit card because that was the earliest you could do it. I don't know, I don't know if it still is, but to start building my credit score. Just to have a credit card, just so I could start building my credit score. So at the time I was 21, 22, or I guess 20, I had a couple of three years, or I had two years of credit and had made some money from running

Starting point is 00:52:06 my father's store because I was living at home with my mom. My dad had left us three kids where he left a little bit of money to my mom. Nothing, nothing. She didn't become a millionaire or anything, but she had enough to not have to stress out about anything, paid off the house, gave us three kids, a little bit of money. So I had a little bit of a nest egg, not a lot, but a little, a few thousand dollars. And so kind of knew that I wanted to be a real estate investor. And especially when I first went to Mississippi State, I lived, a buddy mine kind of picked where we were going to live.

Starting point is 00:52:42 And we lived in the coolest part of town for the students, you know, for the Mississippi State students. And we lived in this little shoebox, two bedroom, one bath place in a very cool area called the Cotton District. still there, still very cool, maybe even cooler now because the town's grown around it. But a very great location. And we were paying at the time what felt like a ton of money. And I only saw my landlord. We would actually drop off physical checks. This is long before PayPal or Venmo or even paying bills online or anything.

Starting point is 00:53:17 So I would drop off a physical check to my landlord once a month for a big amount of money to me, right, in Mississippi as a 20 year old, 21 year old. And I thought this guy, and he's just sitting in his office doing nothing, accepting checks. There's a line of people out the door every day because he owned a ton of property. There's just a line of people out the door every single day of the week to drop him money, to give him money for sitting behind a desk. I was like, this is the job, man. I got to get into this.

Starting point is 00:53:47 So I did. They built a new set of townhouses, which at the time felt a little. sort of on the outskirts of everything, but now it's like right in the middle of everything, as towns do. The town grew around it a little bit. But I went and looked at them and they had four left and I was like, I'll take all four. And they were like, hold on, hot shot. You know, you're 20.

Starting point is 00:54:12 And I was like, here's my game plan. So I tell the construction crew that or the developer. He's like, hey, great. Like, I'm sold out. Like you take the last four. Good. My thought was I'll live in one. It's two bedroom, two bedroom one and a half bath was the one I wanted to live in.

Starting point is 00:54:35 So I'll live in one. I'll get a roommate. He'll pay me. And I'll run out the other three. And the math on it was like I'll live for free and maybe have a little bit extra, you know, every month. And so that's what I did. And I went to the bank. I went to the developer.

Starting point is 00:54:51 And I was like, I want him. He's like, great. Like, you know, let me put your money where your mouth is. Let me see if you can do it. And, you know, we're talking to six figures into this for four of them. And I didn't have six figures. But I had a little nest egg. So I went to the bank.

Starting point is 00:55:05 I had enough for a down payment on all four. And I went to the bank and I was like, I need a loan. And they're like, yeah, see you later, child. But again, I'm like, you know, my size now. Like, I'm a grown man. I'm 6.1, you know, at this time, probably. Because I'd been, I was medical redshirted at Mississippi State. I was playing football.

Starting point is 00:55:23 but, you know, I've been in the athletic weight room. So I was probably 205, 210. So I was in all muscle. So I looked like a grown man. But they were still like, how old are you? I'm like 21. Like, all right, you know, come back when you're 31 or whatever. I was like, no.

Starting point is 00:55:42 Like, we're going to make this work. So I just didn't take no for an answer in a small town, small banks. You know, you build relationships. You kind of show them prove yourself personally. where Mississippi State is, is Starkville, Mississippi. At the time, it was maybe 15,000 people, max without the college and the student body.

Starting point is 00:56:04 So, you know, going to the local bank, it was like, no, let's talk about this. It was a little bit more, it wasn't as transactional. It was a little bit more, let me convince you, you know, like you see in the movies a little bit. And then I think ultimately what kind of sealed the deal is my mom didn't put any money in,

Starting point is 00:56:21 but she, I don't think she co-signed for with on the loans, but she like guaranteed them somehow. So she was sort of kind of sort of the backstop. And I was like, don't even worry about that, mom. Like, yeah, I don't need any backstop or anything like that. And she wasn't. She was like, you're on your own. But she knew because I'd save the company, save the, save the sporting goods store.

Starting point is 00:56:41 She knew like I had my head on my shoulders. So when I graduated, I had that money. And the rent had gone up a little bit over, you know, you increase the rent a little bit. And I was doing a few other things to make a little bit of money, but I wasn't looking. It was enough to where I didn't feel like I needed to graduate and go start handing out my resume and applying for jobs right away. So I was just, I was running my own business, doing my own thing. And a buddy.

Starting point is 00:57:16 And I kind of had, I don't want to say no direction, but I was like I can, I was a business. Nomad kind of before that was even a word or a phrase and that like I can own property from anywhere. That's another beautiful thing about it. And as long as nothing goes wrong, like you just take the money in every month. And you know, the once a year or a couple times a year something goes wrong or a toilet gets clogged up or something. Like you handle it and you figure it all out. But it was a great gig. Because I always bought new constructions and ended up owning well over 100 residential properties and always bought newer constructions because less headaches, right? And as soon as they started getting aged and things started to break, kind of like a car,

Starting point is 00:58:03 you know, you're just like, all right, I'll sell this, sell this thing before I have to put in $20,000 to renovate, you know, the bathroom or $50,000 to renovate the kitchen or whatever it may be. So I'll just sell it and go buy another newer property and just keep that business, keep that train rolling. And it was great. And but one of my best friends who I lived with for a part of my time in college was moving to Atlanta. He was working in the furniture industry. So we got the opportunity to go to Atlanta. He's like, you want to go to Atlanta? I was like, sure. Why not? Never lived in Atlanta. I'd maybe been to Atlanta twice in my life. But again, all the experiences

Starting point is 00:58:44 that I had had from, you know, going to Annapolis site, unseen, all the things we had done, you know, in training and just kind of jumping into these new areas and just figuring it out and being excited about that. Like I realized pretty early on, like I thrive in chaos and I kind of like being the underdog. Like even on the, again, I'll stop, hopefully maybe stop talking about sports like growing up. But as good as we were in a lot of those sports, like I always loved it when we were getting beat. I wanted to win. I didn't love getting beat.

Starting point is 00:59:22 I loved when we were getting beat because now we've got a real chance to come and show what we're made out of. To, you know, tighten up our laces, tighten up her belts and get after it. And show what all this extremely hard work that we put in. And we did, man. I mean, we worked so hard. And that is why we were so good. It wasn't that we were just gifted with great athletes. We had our fair share of those.

Starting point is 00:59:48 But we all knew that the work ethic that our coaches and whole community instilled in us meant something that there are benefits to this. There are rewards for this. And those rewards are state championship trophies and rings and letter jackets and college scholarships and major league baseball contracts. My best friend growing up got drafted first round by the New York Mets that year. Again, huge deal. That actually was a huge deal. That stuck. He's still kind of famous for that.

Starting point is 01:00:23 He was also Elvis's cousin because Elvis was for my hometown. But that helped. But phenomenal athlete, great guy, extremely humble, which thank God, because that could have easily turned him into a crazy person with all that sudden sort of fame. But going to Atlanta. I was just like, yeah, new adventure. Let's go. And I was there with my buddy.

Starting point is 01:00:50 And I knew other people that lived there who had come over from Mississippi State and who had graduated before. So we had a very small group of people that we knew. So I was like, yeah. And he and my, my buddy had lived there as a kid. So he kind of knew the lay of the land a bit. So yeah, I moved to Atlanta. And it was kind of just doing, still doing my thing.

Starting point is 01:01:11 I was looking for new properties to buy. I was, you know, just, just running the math. actually was gambling at this time, betting on sports. And that was really where the finance and the math really came into it. So I minored in math in college. I've always been kind of a math guy, statistics, probabilities. So it was easy to kind of turn that into sports. And when you go to college, I mean, it's like I wasn't in a fraternity,

Starting point is 01:01:41 but all my friends were in fraternities. And fraternities are just giant betting parlors. You know, it's just like back then nobody was really gambling. Well, we had a casino an hour away that we would go to, but it was more just sports gambling. So, you know, betting on football games on the weekends. So I got into that. Learned by fire, you know, lost plenty of money, but made plenty of money, just figuring it out, playing the probabilities, seeing where the lines were off a little bit as I determined that they were off, which, you know,

Starting point is 01:02:16 And humans are notorious for seeing patterns where patterns don't actually exist. You see that in the stock market and everything in the world. Any kind of trend. Is it really a trend? Are you just making it a trend because that's what we're predisposed to see? And you just really, really, really want it to be a trend. So suddenly it becomes a trend. And then that becomes, not to go off on a tangent on that, but that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Starting point is 01:02:37 If enough people think that, well, then it does become a trend. And the probability is correct. So it's fascinating when you when you dive into the math of it of the way that's the way the world works now Coming back on point So yeah when I went to an apple or excuse me when I went to Atlanta I didn't have a full-time job and I wasn't looking for one What year was this when you're in Atlanta? I moved there in those in 1998 So yeah

Starting point is 01:03:10 And it was awesome This is the Super Bowl came to town in 99 or 2000. The town kind of changed after that. And the 9-11, of course, changed a lot. But, yeah, for a couple of years there, it was good. So now, how does this journey lead you to the CIA? So when I went to Atlanta in the summer, I got a call.

Starting point is 01:03:39 I had my, because I have my own business. This is, again, we had cell phones, but nobody really had cell phones. phones, not like we have today in our pockets. I had my own line in my room. So we lived in a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment when I first moved there. So that phone never rang. I would use it when I would call out just for some privacy and, you know, I had my own answering, we had answering machines back then and things. So I had my own answering machine. Didn't have to bother my roommate with anything. He never picked up in the middle of an important, you know, business call or anything like that. So I had my own line. That phone never rang.

Starting point is 01:04:14 One day it rang. And I answered it and I thought it was a telemarketer. I said, is this Michael Wayne? I was like, yes. Do you live at so and so and so and so? Yes. And I asked a couple more questions. And I was,

Starting point is 01:04:26 I mean, I was this close to being, to saying, you're doing a really horrible job, man, of selling me, whatever you're going to try to sell me. Like you haven't even, like,

Starting point is 01:04:38 you're on your fourth or fifth question and you haven't even mentioned your product yet. I didn't say that. I was on the cusp of it. but it was a guy from CIA and he was like I'm and he didn't say that he was just like this is so-and-so I work for an agency we we have been following you we know your story we know you're in Atlanta not not in a nefarious way but like in a complimentary kind of way like we're kind of I'm a fan kind of thing like a recruiting you know something like a job recruiter would call you or something

Starting point is 01:05:09 like that. And this guy knew a lot. And I was like, this is weird. Because again, I'd been to Avonapolis for two years at this point and never done anything with any intelligence or never been approached at Annapolis or since Annapolis for anything in that world. This guy's calling me on my line that's not listed that, you know, that nobody knows about. That was essentially outgoing only. So, He said, you know, we talked for a bit and he said, I work for an agency. You've heard of us and we're, you know, we're interested in having a conversation with you. If you would be open to that conversation.

Starting point is 01:05:50 I was like, well, what agency? You know, who are you talking about? Is this like the, you know, Department of Agriculture? Like, I'm from Mississippi, but I don't know anything about growing cotton or soybeans or corn or anything else. But I can't remember if he said CIA in that conversation. He said something enough to where I was very intrigued. So, and then it was a very short jump to realizing exactly what it was because he said, all right, do this.

Starting point is 01:06:19 Go online. Because we did have the internet by this point. It certainly wasn't what it is now. But he said, go online, go to this website. And I don't even think it was CIA.gov, which is the website now. Like you can go online, you can go to CIA.gov today and apply. Anybody can't. It's not a secret or anything.

Starting point is 01:06:39 It was some back then, you know, the name was a sentence long. It was 400 characters. So, and print out, you're going to see an application. Print out that application. I can't remember if it had a pass code to get in or not. If it did, he gave it to me. Print that application, fill that application out, and fax it to this number that I'll give you. So that's what I did.

Starting point is 01:07:04 I printed out an application, filled it out, and it was for CIA. and faxed it in because you couldn't upload it or what there were no real online forums or at the time so you had to print stuff out and fax it. A lot of people now don't even know what a fax machine is. But so I faxed it in a few days later, get a call. Got your, Mike, we got your application. We want to meet. Okay.

Starting point is 01:07:33 Awesome. What's, you know, what's next? So come to this. place at this time. And it was local. It wasn't like up in Langley or in Washington. It was in Alpharetta, Georgia, which is just up the rows, like 40 minutes north of Atlanta. At the time, it was kind of the suburbs. Now, again, Atlanta's growing so much. It's almost part of the city. So I hike up to Alpharetta, just this office building, no big deal, nondescript. It doesn't say CIA on the front of it. it's got no

Starting point is 01:08:02 you know cool markings that that make it look elite or official or or anything like that so you know go to like the third floor and knock on the door and this guy opens it and there are two guys in there and one there's two at the time

Starting point is 01:08:19 and they're like hey Michael good to meet you come on in really nice really like they were recruiting me a little bit and of course I knew that it was a job interview and I'm, you know, wearing a suit in the whole nine yards and I'm buttoned off and I'm very military.

Starting point is 01:08:35 I've got a short haircut now. I had probably shorter even then. And I'm like, you know, I'm got to impress the hell of these guys. This is like, this is a real deal. This is. And it's a chance for me to get back into serving. Like that calling that I had didn't go away just because I left Annapolis. Like I had that itch and that feeling like I was just derailed from the life I was supposed to be living

Starting point is 01:08:57 for those past two years. They were fun. and I was, you know, living a fun life and making money and doing all the things I wanted to do in that world of entrepreneurship and just being a young adult. But at the same time, I was like, you know, my friends are graduated in Annapolis and they're joining the fleet and they're becoming seals and they're becoming Marines and they're jumping out of planes and they're learning how to fly Tomcats and F.A.18 Hornets and they're turning into Tom Cruise and turning into Charlie Sheen from Navy SEAL, you know, and. And I'm just going to Atlanta and drinking for an ice link and having a blast, but felt like, you know, I'm not contributing that much and not following that call to serve. So this is what I'm thinking is like this could be a chance to kind of get back on the, on the tracks to a degree.

Starting point is 01:09:49 And it's the freaking CIA, hey, man, like this is, this is 1998. So nothing was going on. This is Clinton presidency, which they had downsized the military. The military wasn't a big deal. You didn't see soldiers in airports and things like that. Like we had to at Annapolis when you left, the first two years, when you left Annapolis, you had to wear your uniform. Second, junior or senior year, you could change into civilian clothes. But so when I was in Annapolis, my father passed away.

Starting point is 01:10:20 Both of my grandmothers passed away. My uncle almost passed away. He was in the hospital with pretty serious. illness. And then my mom was in the hospital after my dad passed away before I left an appellate. So I was back and forth a lot. I was on airplanes quite a bit in Navy whites and in the winter in the in the dark uniform, winter uniform. But it was unusual to see a guy in uniform in the airport back then because we weren't at war. The only thing we had, if you remember Black Hawk Down book or movie Mogadishu in Somalia was kind of all we had as far as war.

Starting point is 01:10:59 That was tragic. And we had Panama years earlier. In years years earlier, we had the Iraq War that, you know, lasted a minute. But that was several years past. So we were in a down cycle with the president who was not very pro-military. So it was big downsizing. they were closing bases. I think the CIA was getting downsized to a degree,

Starting point is 01:11:26 which kind of segues into the contract side of things as opposed to going direct and going to the farm and all that. But this is still, you know, I'm thinking, this is the big leagues. I don't know what they're doing because the Cold War is kind of over. This was a few. So the wall and communism kind of fell in the late 80s. So we're 10 years out of that.

Starting point is 01:11:47 There's a lot of chaos going on in that world. in Eastern Europe still where chaos was prevalent, or excuse me, where communism was prevalent. But it's all, it's not in the public eye. You might hear of, you know, some guy bought 100 helicopters from Uzbekistan the other day. Like, that might make the news. Because that's another thing we had to do in Annapolis. As a freshman, you had to read three newspaper articles a day every day and be ready to report on them to anybody that asked. So we'd be at Chow and, you know, somebody say, would you, you know, what articles you read this morning?

Starting point is 01:12:28 And this is 7 a.m. You get your paper at 5.30 a.m. And so you'd have to say, I read about boom, boom, boom. And they go, tell me about the second. You know, tell me about the helicopters in Uzbekistan. You've got to recite, like, you got to remember what you read and give an informative kind of book report. So you might see something like that every now and then. But there were no. wars being fought and it wasn't the world we live in now and that we've lived in for the past 25 years post 9-11. But again, back on point, it was still kind of like, this is cool. Are these spies? Like, what are they, you know, you don't, all you think about when you think about CIA is spies or all I did at the time. You don't think about like, this is a government

Starting point is 01:13:11 organization and they have like health care and human resources and people that mop the floors and support systems and the whole thing, everything you have in a normal government organization you have in CIA, but you also have the clandestine side of things. You also have the Directorate of Operations, the SOGs, the ground branches, the Knox, all the cool stuff that you kind of, you kind of sort of see a lot in movies. So that's what I'm thinking walking in the door.

Starting point is 01:13:49 So there's one guy that when I met him, I was like, this is not the guy I expected. This is not James Bond. This is not like, I don't even think Jason Bourne wasn't out at that point. But, you know, this is not like the elite clandestine, former Navy SEAL, chiseled guy. This is just a doughboy desk jockey. It's kind of no disrespect. Like he was a very smart, very nice, very great guy ultimately. I knew him for a while.

Starting point is 01:14:21 He wasn't like, he wasn't a mentor necessarily. But he stayed in my life there for a while. Awesome guy. But just, you know, wasn't a former seal. So he didn't need to be a marathoner and a triathleteat and bench breast 500 pounds and all this good stuff. He could ride a desk and still be a razor, you know, still be sharp and still cut and get things done. And the other guy there was that guy. He was cut out of the mold. And he didn't

Starting point is 01:14:52 really say much in that conversation, but I think he was there to kind of show me what it could be. And I think he was a paramilitary, or I know he was, he was a paramilitary guy. And he was doing all the black ops stuff and the things that nobody ever knew about that you back then, you didn't even see it in movies. Now you see it more in movies. but so we had a little bit of both and that that was an interview but good you know is the the the the few jobs I've kind of had in my life and the few things where like getting into grad schools and getting accepted to different things like the interviews for those things have always been the easiest interviews because the people running them know what they're doing number one

Starting point is 01:15:41 They're not trying to be asshole interviewers. They're just trying to see do you fit with what they're looking for. And they have a pretty good idea when you walk in the room if they're good, right? They've done their homework. So that conversation was very good. It was like, let me tell you a little about, you know, about it wasn't about like, here's what we do. Let me tell you some secrets, you know. And I knew that.

Starting point is 01:16:01 I didn't ask. And that would have been very stupid if I had, right? They were like, yeah, this guy's not cut out for this. He's asking us about secrets. Yeah, tell me who killed JFK. Yeah, exactly. Are there UFOs real? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:16:16 But it's a very good conversation. Yeah. I'm trying to think of like, were there anything that makes that one stand out other than the general experience and the answers, no. I left it thinking that was good. I really want to do this.

Starting point is 01:16:36 I really want to see what the next steps are. Because they don't tell you, it's not like when you go work for IBM or something. of like, you know, we're going to move you to, to Dayton, Ohio, and you're going to work for this guy, and you're going to have three co-workers, and this is going to be your cubicle and whatever. It's not like that. It's just like, they just kind of tell you the next step. But do they tell you why you on that first meeting? Yeah. And that was everything kind of we've talked about. I had done well in a grand scheme

Starting point is 01:17:07 of things at Annapolis. You know, I wasn't the best student, but I was a decent student, solid student. I was very good militarily. I was a good shooter. I could scuba dive. I had my scuba diving license. I skydived. I snow skied. I was comfortable in the water. I was comfortable on a mountain. I was comfortable in cold weather. I was a good leader. I was on an honor board at Annapolis. So I had that leadership and that trustworthiness. Oh, so there's some type of list probably. Yeah. Then they knew this. from that school. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:41 There had to be something, right? Or like, why is this guy leaving? And, oh, he's not a piece of shit that got, you know, lied or cheated or stole or something and got kicked out. So I guess put it this way, had you never been to that school, they probably never would have called you? No. Okay. Not a million years. I don't think.

Starting point is 01:17:59 So, yeah, it all started, I think, just from my past at Annapolis. And then segue into, you know, running a business, running my own business. showing that entrepreneurial spirit, and then just not having any ties. Like, again, I could work from anywhere. I owned real estate. So it wasn't a day-to-day job. They somehow knew I wasn't looking for a job. I had no commitments.

Starting point is 01:18:20 I had no fiancé or steady girlfriend or kids or anything like that. So I was a free agent. And so I was in shape, strong, smart, motivated, a huge patriot. wanted to serve my country, and had no ties to keep me from doing any of that. So that was like, let's see if this guy's worth his salt here. And so, yeah, that's what got me in the door. And then if you progress from there, a lot of people get in the door, but they get pointed toward the exit door shortly thereafter or months later even.

Starting point is 01:19:01 So do you end up getting the job? What happens? So we had a few rounds of interviews. I got flown up or I didn't I didn't get flown up. They said if you're interested in the next step, be in Virginia on this day at this time. And that was kind of part of the test. It wasn't like, here's a first class ticket. And here's a four star hotel, a five star hotel for you to stay in while we wind and

Starting point is 01:19:25 dine you and convince you to come work for us. It was like be here at this time. Okay. That's again, how resourceful is this guy? How motivated is this guy? How entitled does this guy? feel like, does he think he's a big shot? Like, because at the time, I probably did in some degree felt like a little bit of a big shot because, you know, I own property. I was, had had a

Starting point is 01:19:52 couple of nickels to rub together, had a good life going. But ended up going up to Virginia. I thought it was going to be the CIA headquarters. It was not. It was a little disappointing. It was just again another just nondescript strip malls not strip mall but like office building that would be you know anywhere and kind of small town america on the outskirts of dc um i love dc just all the history and the monuments and everything there so that's always exciting to go until i went from my reverse proffer which we'll get to at some point not not necessarily a fun trip although not a bad trip um but yeah and then had more interviews there i can't remember remember how many how many people I met with, but it was a, you know, it was a handful. It was a

Starting point is 01:20:40 gauntlet kind of thing. You meet with this person for an hour, this person for an hour, more of an interview process, more, a little bit of, let's tell you what we do, but a little bit of like, you know, can you handle this? I don't, I was trying to think about this before this podcast. I don't think I did a lie detector then, but I certainly did one before I signed anything, which are a total waste of time. We can talk about that later. But it's a, you know, it scares the shit I know you.

Starting point is 01:21:16 It's the first one I ever did. And that's the point. That's the old point of the lie detector. It scares a shit out of you. And it's a prophylactic. It's preventative. So if you know you've got to, if you know you have to take a lie detector test,

Starting point is 01:21:29 you're less likely to do anything that would, where you would need to lie to the people telling you, conducting the lie detector test. Same thing in our world now or my world now of supervised release. It's like, well, you don't drink because you've got to take drug test or you don't do drugs because you've got to take a drug test. And that may be tomorrow. It may be, you know, it's a random kind of thing. So don't drink.

Starting point is 01:21:56 It's very preventative to keep you to deter you from drinking. I may get drug tested tomorrow. I may get drug tested never until I get off of supervised release. but I'm not going to drink just because I don't want to take the champ. So anyway, light detectors are the same way. But from there, you know, go home and you don't hear anything. And I want to say, like, I don't even think I really had a number to call. Like, I couldn't call and be like, Ian, where do we stand on this?

Starting point is 01:22:26 Like, what's going on? It was kind of like, you'll hear from us. And I just kind of took them at their word and thinking, well, I, even if they don't like me, I guess they'll send me a rejection letter or give me a call and say, you suck or something. And they eventually did. And they said, we would like you, you know, to join our training. It wasn't a job offer. It was a training author, sort of like going to Annapolis of, you know, during Pleeb summer at Annapolis, you can quit at any time.

Starting point is 01:22:57 And they just, you know, send you home. And no harm, no foul, I think. You don't know, you don't have to serve. I don't think you would owe any money or anything at that point. But so we're inviting you to train and you may still never make it, but we would like you to come try. So that kind of starts, and again, it's been, you know, 30 years. So I apology, in my mind shot for several reasons.

Starting point is 01:23:25 And my mind Swiss cheese for multiple reasons. But it was a series of training. trainings and almost like, training is the right word for it, like going to school, going to class, learning about some different things. And they were still, what I found out after the fact, they were still trying to figure out themselves because this was CIA, but it wasn't CIA. This was the contractor of CIA. So it wasn't going to the farm where I'm going to the farm to become a CIA officer. That's what I thought it was. And that's kind of what when I signed up, I think that's what the plan sort of was.

Starting point is 01:24:07 And then it became, for whatever reason, the bifurcation of it, the change of administration is coming, the way the world was going. This was also around the time that al-Qaeda actually had bombed two embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in Mozambique. I think this was before the USS Cole. So the world was changing a little bit. So. and Clinton was wrapping up his second term. So then it was, and again, I'm reading into a lot of things here that I don't have privy to. So I'm guessing as I go here.

Starting point is 01:24:44 But, you know, as it goes in American politics, if one party serves two terms, there's a higher probability that the other side's going to win again, just because that's what we do. You know, we want change every so often. Sometimes it happens in four years. Sometimes it's eight years. So when it came time to kind of place me, they said, come be a contractor. And I don't know that I had a choice, but I was like, well, you know, sell me on it, right? And again, it wasn't like, you can go here, you can go here, you can go here. It was like, we want you to be, we want you to work for this contractor.

Starting point is 01:25:22 You're going to be effectively, you can be paramilitary, you can be kicking indoors. You're going to be, you know, taking out bad guys. you know, you're going to be protecting good guys. You're going to be doing all the things you wanted to do as a seal. You're just not going to be wearing an American flag when you do it. And you're not going to call your mom or your girlfriend when you're done and say, Mom, guess what I just did? Yeah, could you tell anyone you were working for the CIA?

Starting point is 01:25:52 Zero. Not a soul. What about when you first got called? Because you hadn't signed anything at that point. Could you? First conversation. don't tell anybody. And again, I could have, but then they would have figured that out.

Starting point is 01:26:05 So this is all a test. Everything is a test. Everything in life, I guess, is a test. You can look at it that way. But in hindsight, and this is what I've done as an adult running these same kind of things, hiring other people. This is all a test, man. You're free to do whatever you want. It's like being in a prison camp.

Starting point is 01:26:26 You can leave any time you want. There are ramifications for that. and repercussions for that. But if you want to walk off the base, go for it, man. That was true in training. And to an extent true, I guess my whole career. Yes and no. I mean, it's not like you're going to get assassinated if you quit,

Starting point is 01:26:51 but it's harder to quit, I guess, once you're kind of in it and you commit and you start learning things and you're read in and you get, you know, the top secret and that whole world is very, very Swiss cheese. It's not like there's one level of top secret. You have super ultra special top secret privileges. There's kind of top secret and then beyond that, like that's what defense contractors have, right? That doesn't take a, that's not a huge hurdle to clear. But from then, in my world anyway, you are what's called red in.

Starting point is 01:27:30 to this operation or and it's it's a maze like it's a it's a masked ball in a labyrinth with the thousand doors and you open one door and there are two more and you open one of those doors and there are five more so and there are all these different compartments and it's sensitive compartmentalized information this is if you've ever heard or you'll hear this like in movies called a skiff that's a cone of silence is for sensitive if I remember this right, now I'm going to start to blank on it. So forgive me, intelligence community, if I get this wrong. But sensitive compartmentalized information facility is a skiff, but it's a soundproof room that, you know, you've checked for bugs.

Starting point is 01:28:17 We know this conversation is 100% private. We know that anybody we're on the telephone with or on the comms with, they're also in a skiff. So this is not, there is zero point zero one chance that this leaks unless one of us in this conversation leaks it after the fact. So, but all that to say is the information is all very compartmentalized like honeycomb, you know, everybody doesn't know what everybody else is doing because there will be liabilities. Even the director of the CIA doesn't know. And a lot of people, even if you think they're read in and you start talking about it,

Starting point is 01:29:05 which you never really do. But on the odd chance, some junior guy or girl does, like, you're just like, like, oh, la, la, la, like, shut up. Don't, I'm not read in on that. And as interesting as it may be, you know, who killed JFK? Tell me, tell me, tell me. He's like, I'm not read in on that. So don't tell me because now I'm on the hook for it.

Starting point is 01:29:24 Now I'm liable if something happens about all. this, they're going to cast a net, and I don't want to be in that net. If I've never heard anything about it, I can sit for that lie detector test and say, I don't know anything about it. And it'll be, you know, flatline, flying colors. Like, there's no ambiguity here. This guy doesn't know anything about it. So back on point, if I remember what specifically we were talking about, I didn't talk about anything. But that was part of the process of getting selected. And as you go through the process, And as you go through the training and the classroom settings, it's the same thing. It's like every kind of speech at the beginning of it is, this is confidential information.

Starting point is 01:30:04 Don't talk about it. Don't be stupid. Because if you talk about it, we're going to know, and this is nothing at this point that is going to change the world or anything. But we're going to find out. And you're not going to like it when we do. Because at some point, you're breaching national security. But even beyond that, you're just being a dick, right? If you're telling stuff, you shouldn't be telling.

Starting point is 01:30:25 telling and you said you wouldn't, it's more consequential than just being a good friend, but it's like being a good friend. And when I say, Ian, I need to tell you something, man, but please don't tell anybody. And you say, yeah, got it. And you keep the secret. Or you don't. If you don't, now you're not a great friend. If you don't in this training, you're no longer a good candidate to be an intelligence officer.

Starting point is 01:30:53 So see you later. And by the way, if you don't keep your mouth shut, we're going to come after you because we can do that too. Like legally, and we'll figure out a way because, as you and I both know, the government can certainly do that if they want to. How long was the training for? All total. From that point from fall. So I signed my commitment papers on 9-11, 2008, interestingly enough. So September 11, 2008.

Starting point is 01:31:25 And then... Wait, eight years after they first reached out. Sorry, I'm sorry, 1998. Okay, I was going to say. Catch me on dates because I will get those wrong. So 1990, so three years before 9-11. Okay. Which, you know, September 11th is nothing at that point.

Starting point is 01:31:43 It's my cousin's birthday, which talk about a shitty birthday for the past 25 years. But from that point, probably about a year. It all gets kind of blurry because it all runs together. as it does the older you get you know life you've in my mind January was two weeks ago you know I was in prison six months ago and I was I was in prison a year two years ago now yeah I reported to you less a year and a half ago I reported in August of 24 and I mean I have to think about what year it is not even you know forget about what month or what day it is it's like I can't remember the year half the time.

Starting point is 01:32:29 But the real training started at the beginning of 1998. And at this time, I had bought my own house. So I was living alone. So I could vanish, you know, for a month, two months. And nobody knew. Again, not working for anybody. Had nobody to report to. Had no girlfriend.

Starting point is 01:32:49 Just I wasn't out partying on the weekends with everybody else for a few weeks. But went to training for about six weeks to start. and that was training, training. That was, it was only six weeks, and I don't want to get in hot water with any of my operator colleagues or friends, but it was in the realm of special forces training, and that training continued past those six weeks, but it was some, it was a little, it was a version of kind of buds and true paramilitary training from, in, in, in, in, in, in, you know, in, in, it was a in CIA, which has their own paramilitary training kind of subset for their ground branch

Starting point is 01:33:36 and sea branch and aviation and those guys. And intelligence. So it's a combination of like military, tier one, tier two, which like seal training, Delta Force training, a lot of those elements. crammed into, you know, six weeks. It wasn't six, it wasn't budged crammed into six weeks. I'm not trying to say that at all, but it was an element of that, you know, with the boats and the sand and the swimming and just the suck of it all.

Starting point is 01:34:11 It's to make you want to hate life and to quit. That's the primary goal for part of it. But also, I was really the only one in my training at that time that wasn't coming directly from military. So you had former seals, you had Delta guys, you had. had Marines. You had force recon guys. You had maybe some pair of jumpers in there. You had a very few like just real civilians like me. But they were trying to kind of round all of that out from a cohort perspective just for the diversity of it because I brought a different perspective

Starting point is 01:34:47 than, you know, the Seals and the Delta guys who bring a slightly different perspective. but they're trained differently, but they're all trained to kind of do a version. They're all playing baseball. You know what I mean? Maybe one's playing small ball one day and one's playing big ball another day and they may flip-flop here or there,

Starting point is 01:35:10 but they're all kind of playing the same game. And that's on purpose, right? So having a different angle and a different perspective, now I had to learn how to play their game, because that's what we were doing. You know, this is a tier one unit that I was ultimately in, but I was coming at it from a different angle. So it was hard.

Starting point is 01:35:30 Much harder, I think, for me than those guys, because they had already been through buds and through the Delta training and all that. And they had served. So they'd been out in the fleet and gone on missions and gone after bad guys. What few there were, you know, in 1998, 1998, and the years before that, again, with the cutbacks and all that.

Starting point is 01:35:47 So there weren't a lot of wars to fight. There weren't a lot of battles to fight back then. But they had done some cool stuff. and they have certainly been trained to a razor's edge. So I had a lot of catching up to do on everything from just being in. I was in great shape. I thought I was in great shape. I wasn't.

Starting point is 01:36:04 I had to get in great shape. And I did. And that's part of the process. And I had to learn how to be very resilient again. Because growing up with athletic training and some of the stuff we did, it was extremely hard. And then, of course, going to Annapolis, that training physically was pretty hard. But this was exhausting in every way possible from multiple angles because it was physically exhausting from the military side of things. And just like, we are going to break you.

Starting point is 01:36:36 You know, you are going to quit on this run or swim or dive proving or proofing or whatever it may be. That's our goal. You can quit anytime you want. And, you know, God bless you. Go, you know, go work at Home Depot. Go do whatever you want to do with your life. So that was an aspect of it. And there was a, the clandestine part of it, like the more of, I think the farm aspect of it.

Starting point is 01:37:02 We weren't out just running and being exhausting and swimming and drownproofing and learning a few things of, you know, shooting and clearing houses and CQB and a little bit of diving. A lot of shooting. We were learning how to be basically case officers. And that meant like, you know, how to classroom settings a little bit, but field settings of like, and this, we got more and more in this over the months and over the years, but just in this initial, this is kind of an initial measurement of what you're able to do because we're going to teach you how to do something and then you're going to go do it. It's not, we're going to teach you for six months and then maybe you'll take a test and maybe you'll

Starting point is 01:37:48 pass. If you don't pass, you'll have another test and, you know, and then you'll, you'll, surprise you'll be a, you know, you'll be a lawyer, a doctor or a or a Klanestine intelligence agent. It was like, we're going to teach you this today and tomorrow and then you're going to go do it. And if you don't do it, I don't know. And that was part of it that you didn't know. Like, what's the tests? You'll see soon enough.

Starting point is 01:38:11 What are the metrics? I need to know what's passing and failing. This went for everything. This went for shooting. This went for runs. This went for dives. This went for swimming. you know, here's a three mile run.

Starting point is 01:38:25 Go. All right. What's my time? Like, what's my pace? What do I need to? What time do I need to be? Just don't worry about it. Just go.

Starting point is 01:38:35 So, you know, you're thinking, well, shit, man. It's like 8 o'clock in the morning. We got 12 more hours of this. Like, do I go all out? Like, is this a real test? Or is this just a warm up for the rest of the day? Um, am I trying to run a six minute mile here or can I run a 10 minute mile or an eight minute mile? Very different things.

Starting point is 01:38:57 Very different fuel levels after that that you're left with. Uh, to, to be able to do stuff after. So you just don't know. So you got to just use your best guess. Um, same thing on everything. And, and then, you know, some, one of the things was after, after a little bit of training, it was, we're going to drive to this town. And, or, or,

Starting point is 01:39:23 You know, kind of get in the car. Put on civilian clothes. Get in the car. And it would be like four of it, three or four of us in a car. And everybody did this, but not all, we didn't just all show up in a group. We'd be split up. And this sometimes even by yourself, not by yourself, but with one of your trainers, drop you off in the middle of town or outside them all and be like, get home.

Starting point is 01:39:47 And you're like, what do you mean? Like, they're like, come back to the base. And you're like, oh, okay. And they're like, and you're like, but I, I don't have anything. Like, I don't have any money. I don't have my wallet. I don't have my ID. I don't have my key card. I didn't have, we didn't have key cards or anything. I can't get back. I probably shouldn't say where we were. I can't get through security when I get back to where we're training. They're like, yeah. Like, what do you think, what the hell you think we've been doing for the past six hours in,

Starting point is 01:40:19 in training you? Figured out. You just learn how to do. do all this. It's like, did I? Okay. And like how to manipulate people, how to spot people, how to, you know, how to do all these different things of like elicitation and you can, you can get things from people by begging or, you know, you can get things from people in different ways. So go do that. Oh, but you can't, sorry, you can't do this. You can't say what you're doing, you can't tell them, I can't even remember what the things were, but there were rules involved of what you could and couldn't say. Like you can't go up to say, you can't go up to somebody and say, hey, I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a, I've got a bet with my friends that I can't

Starting point is 01:41:08 get back to this place by, you know, within two hours. Can you, can you give me a ride? Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah. And then I'll, you know, I'll, I'll give you 20 bucks when we get there or something, you know, for gas money or whatever. You can't do that. So you got to figure out other ways to do it. So you do or you don't. You know, people would fail those things. And you didn't know like, well, crap, I didn't get back in time or I didn't get back at all.

Starting point is 01:41:32 What's going to happen? Am I going to get dropped? And sometimes they were tests and sometimes they weren't. So you just never knew. We didn't even go by names. I didn't really know anybody's name. You didn't really socialize. You had your own room, had your own kind of dorm room.

Starting point is 01:41:46 So I think we had at that point, we had rivers, rivers and colors in my initial training. So it would be like blue Danube. That wasn't my name, but that would be my name for like two days or a week. And then at some random point, they'd be like, all right, now you're black rine. You know, okay. So, you know, they're yelling at you. And they've got a like, look at their cheat sheet. And they're like, Black Ryan, what the eff are you doing?

Starting point is 01:42:21 Like, get your ass blah, blah, blah. And you're like, God, Black Ryan's getting his ass kicked. Like, oh, crap, they're talking about me. So. But so that was part of the training. And segueing into a little bit of, without kind of revealing too too much. I guess it may be best to leave it there.

Starting point is 01:42:50 Have you learned a lot of paramilitary stuff and you learn you're exposed to a lot of just what a normal, not, you know, what I'm made by normal, a case officer kind of guy or girl would go into a foreign country and start recruiting spies and how to do like SDRs, like surveillance detection routes. how to hot wire car, how to pick a lock, you know, how to defensive drive or aggressively drive, how to run somebody off the road.

Starting point is 01:43:26 Really cool, fun stuff. But under a lot of pressure because you're not just learning it, you're getting tested on it at the same time. So fun, but very chaotic feeling, very overwhelming feeling, very high pressure. situation where you just never know where you stand. And oh, by the way, you're with elite operators who all want your job too. And you don't know how many jobs. It wasn't like, hey, they're 50 of you and we're giving away 25 jobs. I think there were maybe 30, 40 of us.

Starting point is 01:44:05 You know, some people matriculate. People bounce. People leave and get cut as you go. You know, you fail a shooting test. you're gone. Some of them. I think we had a couple of, all right,

Starting point is 01:44:19 you know, you didn't, you weren't just terrible. So, and you just ran like, you know, 10 miles or something. So,

Starting point is 01:44:26 and all that factors into it too. You're not supposed to, at that point, it wasn't, you need to walk in the door as an elite operator, although we had guys who were elite operators.

Starting point is 01:44:38 It was all guys in this cohort. But it was, you need to understand how this world works and even you need to understand your breaking points and like there's a great line that made me love the movie the first born movie where born Matt Damon is in a cafe and he says to the to the his co-star the the girl he starts saying like I know how many cars are I know the license plate of every every car in the parking lot which that's a little bit of a stretch but okay good on you.

Starting point is 01:45:16 I know the guy at the counter, blah, blah, blah, probably has a weapon and knows how to handle himself. And this is the thing that really stuck out to me. Like, because that's stuff you learn. Like, sit with your back to the door. Sit with your back to the wall. Face the door. Duh.

Starting point is 01:45:28 Like, I kind of knew that before I ever did anything in the intelligence world. Basic kind of stuff like that. But he said, I know I can run. I'm paraphrasing here. He said, I know I can run flat out for. a mile before my hands start shaking. And I remember hearing that and thinking, damn, like, that is, that's legit. And I'm impressed with the research, this, this movie's done because would you, do you have a guess of

Starting point is 01:46:00 why that's important? No, why? How I interpret it and how we learned it. Now, other people may have different opinions on this. If you're handshaking, you can't shoot straight. Oh, so if you're running from someone and then, okay. So I know if I'm running from someone or towards someone and I know I'm going to have to fight, I know from the training how far a mile is, give or take, just in the number of steps and how I feel and how my heart rate is,

Starting point is 01:46:32 that's one of the things kind of you learn. It's like I've probably been, I'm probably at two and a quarter miles right now. You just kind of inherently know that. Marathoners, I think, know that, you know, people that do distance things. your sense of surroundings and sense of space and sense of just yourself and being present in the moment, which is such a yogi, spiritualistic, spiritualistic thing, but is so important in that level of operating of, you know, know thyself. That I was so impressed by that because not everybody, it's not a mile for everybody. Some people, it may be two miles, some people may be 100,

Starting point is 01:47:15 yards. You know, right now for me is probably 100 yards. But knowing that and knowing, okay, I'm almost, if you know it's a mile and you're at three quarters of a mile and you're still getting chased or what have you, like, you know something needs to change pretty quickly. Either you need to be in a position where you don't need to shoot or you need to stop and turn around and start shooting at your earliest possible opportunity because otherwise you're not going to be as effective as you need to be when the bad guys are made the bad guys are in a car so they haven't been running at all you know so um but those things and that kind of training and then i passed that thankfully and then it was you know congratulations we'll let you know again nothing i didn't i didn't

Starting point is 01:48:00 know it wasn't like we had a graduation ceremony it was like thanks you're done and we knew kind of when we were going to finish up to kind of have to go you know go back to our lives because most people had other jobs and few very few people had kids and responsibilities not many um back then you know now you see operators that like you're a great combination of of the mix of pre 911 and post 9 11 from here you're pre 9 11 from here you're post 9 11 because you got sleeves so like dev grew guys seal team six guys and even seals and even Marines, you know, and Delta Force and ground branch guys. Like back then, they looked like accountants.

Starting point is 01:48:47 Like, so even the guy in my first interview that I said looked like he was carved out of, you know, the prototype of like when an operator would look like. He did look like that, but most of the guys didn't. If you look at pictures from the 70s and 80s and 90s or, yeah, yeah, all of 90s. for like this delta force this and seal team this those guys they're wearing khakis and penny loafers and carrying assault rifles and clean cut maybe glasses you know again look like accountants and now because partly where we've been in the world of where beards are the custom and everything and the and the standards have become more like wear your elitism if you want to

Starting point is 01:49:37 you and God bless you. So the sleeves mean something, right? Being on a military base looking like a homeless person means you're a bad MFer, right? Because military guys can't look like that. Or non-special operators and spec warfare guys can't look like that. You have military code, a dress code and hair codes and all that. So now it's like the grungier and the dirtier and the grittier, the better. And it's a bragging right almost and should be, you know, because they've earned the right to wear those, you know, look like homeless guys and wear civilian clothes on a military base and have sleeves and earrings and crazy hair and long beards.

Starting point is 01:50:26 We didn't do, we couldn't really do any of that because I have no tattoos. I have no obvious markings and there's a reason for that. I'm a there's a even going back to the OSS and the birth of intelligence of the gray man of a guy who can come in and out of anywhere and nobody remembers he was there it's not because he's a ninja it's just because he just didn't just didn't make an impression on anybody so I can walk in a room and make a big impression and be you know happy fun Mike and I can walk in a room and you know and leave two hours later and not not make it obvious that I'm going to go hide in a corner but just be normal going to coffee shop for two hours order coffee

Starting point is 01:51:16 work on my laptop look like a normal everyday civilian and I leave and nobody knows I've been there and it's not like it's some magic wand that you wave although remind me of of of of being invisible later in a few minutes. And I'll tell you a good story about that. But you're just kind of taught, like, don't stand out. So, like, I can't grow a beard. Like, I'm like an eighth Cherokee. So very hairless.

Starting point is 01:51:48 Like, I have hair, but not much everywhere. Can't grow a good beard, which has been a huge disappointment in my life. Because I would love to grow a beard. But so in the Middle East, I stood out, but I was in a, I was in, it was okay. I looked very distinctly American, which led to a nickname that I had kind of around the world, uniquely where it became kind of my call sign. But being nondescript was a factor there. But all that to say is, come up.

Starting point is 01:52:33 a little back, trying to get back on point of when we were done with training, you know, it was kind of like, don't go out and get any tattoos, but also like, we'll let you know something. So, but we're not going to let, you know, we didn't have a graduation, which would have been awesome if we had. But again, all part of the process and all part of like setting expectations. Like if you're doing this for graduation parties, you're in the wrong game. so go home go about your business go back to your life and we'll let you know something and then so I pass that they and again all this is none of this is we'll let you know something

Starting point is 01:53:15 in two days it might be two weeks or two months so it gets blurry from there frankly but it's more training more classrooms more cool stuff like diving like I had my scuba diving but it was license but didn't do military diving, just did that while I was in Annapolis, which was cool because we kind of got fast-tracked on that because they knew we weren't just normal, you know, everyday civilians were in the military. So we didn't have to go through every single step of getting, you know, all the, or we fast-track the classroom stuff. I don't know how long it takes to get a normal civilian dive license.

Starting point is 01:53:56 but if it just if it took normally 40 hours you know we did it in 20 or 25 or something like that skydiving similar like now I don't think if have you ever skydived no you should I'm too chicken come on I'm not going in a helicopter I'm not skydiving none of that here are the two things now I'm going off on a tangent for a second so I worked in trauma for for about uh putting five years in the midst of all this. It was a trauma consultant. And I worked with a lot of brain surgeons. I've seen a ton of brains.

Starting point is 01:54:34 I've seen a ton of open hearts. I've seen a ton of facial gunshot wounds, car crashes, anything where the heads involved, and they need bone fixation. I've been there. If you saw me in a hospital, you didn't want, you weren't having a good day. But one of the smartest men I've ever met was a neurosurgeon, who's Syrian, actually. and we were going to lunch, I'll keep this short, but we were going to lunch one day, and he got a call from the OR, somebody had fallen off a ladder, cracked his head open.

Starting point is 01:55:06 All right, do this, this and this, and stabilize him, and I'll be there. Like, it wasn't an emergency. It was just like, or they were calling, you know, he was on call and he figured out it's not an emergency. Stabilized the guy. I'm going to lunch. You know, I'll be there in an hour or two. But like, even if he was, I don't want to make this guy. sound like he was shirking his duty for lunch.

Starting point is 01:55:27 Like even if he had been there standing over the guy, it still would have been nothing for like two or three hours, right? So he was doing his job to the best possible way. Great surgeon. Very smart. And he said, I won't do his Syrian accent because I can't. And I couldn't do it justice for him, even if I could do a Syrian accent.

Starting point is 01:55:45 But we were with another guy. He was also an inventor. So he had like a machinist with him who made his tinker toys and stuff that he invented because he invented a lot of medical equipment. He would invent it. He would give the design or write it out and he would give it to this machinist, whatever the guy was called, and he would fabricate the prototype for it. So we're talking in the car and the machinist guy's like, I don't know, you know, what

Starting point is 01:56:10 do you do? You fall off a ladder. You crack your head open. I mean, shit, that can happen to anybody. And this guy's, his name was Dr. Mahana. God bless you, Dr. Mohana, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're still with us, because he

Starting point is 01:56:23 was older. then. I mean, this was 20 years ago. But he said, look, there are two rules of life. And I'm, you know, I'm leaning in. I'm driving, but I'm like, I'm all in for this, man. And at this time, I'd been a covert, clanded paramilitary officer for a few years. And it's seen a lot of crazy things. And like, I'm like, this guy's got two rules. And I, this guy, this guy, he's one of the smartest people. I'm in, and this is rules to live by, this is why you should go skydiving

Starting point is 01:57:00 and riding in helicopters. He said, if you listen to Dr. Mahana's rules and there are rules to live by, and I kind of live by these. He said two rules. And I was like, you know, yeah? He goes, number one, don't smoke. Number two, don't ride a motorcycle.

Starting point is 01:57:21 And the machine just was like, that's it. He goes, that's it. because everything else, you're just roll the dice. You're going to fall off ladders. Sometimes you're going to fall in the bushes. Sometimes you're going to fall and, you know, hit your head on a brick. You want to ride in a helicopter? Sometimes it's going to crash.

Starting point is 01:57:38 99.9% of the time is going to be a fun experience, right? So you can do that for anything, anything in the world. But smoking, we can talk about that for ages. Like, it is so bad for you. I just saw that in that medical world of not, not, not. good and I think vapes I don't know you know I think the jury still out on that but from what I've heard they're even worse certainly worse for your coughing I remember in camp it was just nonstop I thought it wasn't a tuberculosis ward because it was nonstop coughing because as soon as you

Starting point is 01:58:12 hit that vape you cough like nine out of 10 people do every time they hit it so if this guy wasn't everybody's doing vapes everybody's got cell phones everybody's got vapes all of it's illegal nobody cares. I didn't have any of it because I don't want to smoke. Don't have anything against anybody that does, even though my dad died of lung cancer and smoked his whole life. But I don't judge people. I don't tell anybody what to do. But all that to say is we should go skydiving if you're up for it. So what ends up happening? Do you finish training and then officially get in? So I do. Again, no big ceremony. It's just like you're now part of the team. We'll call you. and they did.

Starting point is 01:58:54 And it's probably about a year in that we started kind of doing some stuff. I was, again, not I was a contractor for CIA. So we would get called when, and this, this was the whole time, this is the whole time period.

Starting point is 01:59:16 This was after I segued into, into non-official cover work as well. But, when the military doesn't want to get involved, the DOD, you know, when the SEALs and the Tier 1, Tier 2 guys aren't going to get involved because you don't want the, because America doesn't want that exposure, they'll call the CIA. And CIA will put ground branch on it, Special Operations Group, Director of Operations. And sometimes they don't want to send those guys.

Starting point is 01:59:54 And those are tier one guys. Those are door kickers. Those are the equivalent of Team 6, still Team 6, Delta Force. Doing the same types of operations just not, just completely clandestine. Off the books. We weren't supposed to be here. America is not involved in this whatsoever. Really cool shit.

Starting point is 02:00:17 Really secret. Like when people, like if you look up ground branch, you're not going to. to find much on ground branch. I'm not divulging any big secrets. This out there. It's a known thing, but it's not so much in the public eye. Much like Team 6 and Delta Force 20 years ago, people knew they were there, but all those guys weren't everywhere, writing books and telling their stories. And now you have that more. So they get more exposure in the world we live in with social media and everything. That's bound to happen. I don't know many intelligence guys that are out there. I have a good clean break from that world. So I don't feel like I'm divulging anything. And I would never divulge

Starting point is 02:00:58 anything that even comes close to a, to crossing any sort of a non-disclosure line or treason line. I still love this country too much to, and love the people I worked with too much, even though I no longer work with them to ever even get close to getting anybody into any kind of situation that would harm them or, frankly, our country. But, So as a contractor, you have the same level of, this is for us anyway. There are many contractors and the whole game changed after 9-11 as well. But we had the same clearance as CIA operators, but we didn't necessarily, we didn't have all the red tape. Because like I said before, CIA is a government agency.

Starting point is 02:01:50 and a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and I need three signatures before I can tie my shoelace and permission from Santa Claus and the director and his dog Walker's babysitter before I can go use the bathroom. You run into that sometimes. The skids got greased a little bit after 9-11. and thank George Bush for that. And I do. And we all do. I think the world does, frankly, or should. Because he loosened those restrictions a lot and allowed us to go ultimately destroy Al Qaeda

Starting point is 02:02:32 and take down some really bad guys, of course, bin Laden at the top of that list. And a lot of guys you never even heard of, frankly, that I will not talk about. but we would get the call when something needed to be done fast or something needed to be done that was so off the books or so kind of out there and unprotected that they didn't want to risk their own guys. It wasn't that it was more difficult because we were no better than the ground bridge guys. Those guys were freaking razors, you know, the best of the best. I would put us right against them.

Starting point is 02:03:16 You know, a lot more training than just that six weeks, of course. It was just training, training, training, training, until I caught up to where I needed to be to be, you know, a junior officer. Because I'm still in my 20s at this point, early, you know, young 22, 23, 24. As I progress, of course. But, you know, I'm the equivalent of the lieutenant or a second lieutenant. like in the normal military and like in the Marine Corps or something. So junior officer, I'm still leading guys, but these guys have,

Starting point is 02:03:50 most of the guys had a lot more experience than me. So I'm learning from them. I'm a sponge and all this. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. But we're doing things that are so off the books that if we got, and this is another reason why we would call us, if we got caught, then who are these guys? These guys are just some hoo-ya's out with.

Starting point is 02:04:11 some guns playing war, playing army. You're like, maybe they're like, fill in the blank, just bad dudes that one of there, maybe they're robbing that drug dealer, drug lord that they're trying to take down, or, you know, whatever, whatever it may be. But we operated mostly in Western Hemisphere at that time. And, yeah, so we, you know, it was, I had a pager at that time. I would get paged. I get caught, I get paged.

Starting point is 02:04:42 They'd say, you know, we need you. And I'd say, tell me when and where. And get on a plane or get in the car and go there. And I've always lived in towns. And this is like when people go, wait a minute, Michael was CIA. Like he worked in the intelligence community. Like, how was that? Like what, like if you, the tumblers, when I told my sister,

Starting point is 02:05:06 I had to tell my sister for, because I put in a petition. for pardon and I talk about this in my petition, but I've served my country for 27 years. And she kind of sponsored my pardon petition. I was like, I need to tell you something because I need you to write a letter for me. And I want you to say all the things you know, there's a whole other life that you don't know about.

Starting point is 02:05:26 And she was like, you know, eyes super wide, what the heck's going on? And then she said, you know, the things started to make sense. Looking back over the past 27, 30 years of my life, the tumblers of the lock started to fall into place. And one of those is like, I've always lived in a town with a big airport.

Starting point is 02:05:46 So Atlanta was great. Maybe another reason why they recruited me because they knew I was moving to Atlanta. The biggest, busiest airport in the world, I think it still is. But it was back then for sure. And so I could, you know, jump on a plane. I could be on a plane in an hour and be where I needed to be. Sometimes we would go to the place where we needed to do operations. Sometimes we would go other places to train for the operation to do what are called workups.

Starting point is 02:06:14 And that might be a few days to a week or two, depending on how big the operation was. If we're working with other people, how many people are in our group, the depth of the information that we need. Is it, are we going wet? Are we going kinetic? Like, were we going to pull triggers and kick indoors and take out bad guys? are we just going to sit on a fucking hill and watch this house for two months with the idea, not two months, it wouldn't be usually not that long, we'd rotate out, but with the capabilities to go kinetic if we needed to, right?

Starting point is 02:06:52 So that's why you send us. Otherwise, you just, you know, hire a local with a pair of binoculars or something. But if things needed to go hot, we were there to be able to do it. And, you know, sometimes they would. But yeah, so that's what I did for the lives overlap and they kind of go back and forth a little bit. But I was only doing that until 2009-ish. So for, you know, 10 years. And what happens in 2009?

Starting point is 02:07:27 I decided I wanted out. I had, so let's back up a little bit to 9-11. So I just, I wanted out. I actually got shot, um, through, from a green tip, I guess.

Starting point is 02:07:44 We never really figured out what it was. When, uh, on an operation, wearing body armor, like I, like I showed you outside, um,

Starting point is 02:07:56 it was different back then, you know, 20, 30 years ago, armor, body armor was a little bit different. But, um, got shot in the back.

Starting point is 02:08:04 I was, a guy had taken some shrapnel. and I was bending over to, I was crouching to help him. And he was, he was fine ultimately. It wasn't like I was on a sucking chest wound or anything like that. I'm glad for him, but it'd be a cooler story if it was. But I was, I was down on him, helping him, and just got popped right in the back. And it pierced the body armor, went in my back.

Starting point is 02:08:29 So that, it didn't do major damage or anything, but it took me a couple months maybe to recover. You know, my arms and hands and stuff were kind of numb for a while. It missed my spine by a couple of millimeters. Could have been really much worse. It didn't go too deep to, you know, affect my heart or lungs or anything. So the body armor more or less did its job, but not quite. So, and again, this is pre-9-11. So we're not doing a whole lot.

Starting point is 02:08:57 I mean, we're doing a lot, but it's not what it became, you know. think of, you know, what the world was like. If you can, if you even have this memory, you know, I've got a few decades on you, age-wise, but pre-internet and post-internet. I don't remember that. Okay. You know, all right. So pre-cell phone. Pre-cell phones?

Starting point is 02:09:23 Pre-cell phones, maybe you remember a little bit. I remember my dad had this black brick. Yeah. Like the brick and then in the car with the actual cord. Yeah, you had to plug it. on the cigarette lighter and stuff like that. And then I remembered the transition to the flip phone and then to the smartphone. Okay.

Starting point is 02:09:38 So I was around for that. So, all right. So think of like the brick era. And the brick computers, the brick laptops. I remember those a little bit. Yeah. My dad was a teacher and he had one of those in late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:09:52 I used to play. There was only like four games on it. Without going off on tangents. Did you ever play? the Oregon Trail. Was that one of the four games you know I'm talking about? You'd have to describe it. Oh, you would know.

Starting point is 02:10:09 You would remember it. It was such a terrible game. It was hilarious. But it was such a, it was probably before your time as well, but it was like early days of computer, like war games, if you've ever seen that movie.

Starting point is 02:10:22 Great movie, by the way. Also, like all the influences of anybody that kind of goes into this world or goes into the military, all the movies and pop, culture influences that we didn't have social media. So those movies and TV shows were hugely influenced and music, hugely influence, huge influence on all of us growing up.

Starting point is 02:10:41 But War Games was a great movie. It's about a kid that kind of sort of falls into some secret stuff that he wasn't supposed to be doing. It's a backdoor into NORAD and starts launching nuclear missiles. Matthew Broderick, it holds up. I made my sister and her family watch it a few months ago. And they were like, this is great. And it's from like 1984 or something.

Starting point is 02:11:03 But anyway, so those days of the bricks. But it was like that era game show, or not game show, but computer game, to where what made it memorable is you'd be going along. And it was just very binary. Like there were no great graphics or anything. It was one step up from Pong, which was two bricks doing this and a ball bouncing between them. You were playing tennis on a computer screen. That was like the first computer game.

Starting point is 02:11:30 one of the first ever made. And it's addictive. And it was back then, and it probably kind of to a degree still is. But Oregon Trail was hilarious because you would be going along and you have to make decisions. It would pause and you would have to make a decision like Aunt Jenny's sick. Like, do you stop and help her or do you keep going because winter's coming? And I'm kind of making this up.

Starting point is 02:11:51 I don't remember the game necessarily because this was like 40 years ago. But I do remember randomly, it would just say, Game over. And you're like, what the hell? Like, I didn't even do anything. And it was say, you have died of dysentery. And you're like nine years old. You're like, what's dysentery?

Starting point is 02:12:12 It's like, this is a Civil War disease. It's like you basically have diarrhea until you dehydrate and die. Your body can't hold nutrients. But it's such a like 19th century disease that never happens in the first world. You still see it sometimes like in third world countries. sadly, but there's, you know, you give somebody in orange and now they don't have dysentery anymore. It's very curable.

Starting point is 02:12:37 So anyway, that's the Oregon Trail and the brick computers. So 9-11 happens. Sorry. So back on track. That changed everything. So now it's a blank check for the intelligence community. It's like you guys knew about al-Qaeda. You guys knew about Osama bin Laden.

Starting point is 02:12:58 He had already done some stuff. If you'd done the coal, those guys and bin Laden as their leader had done the USS coal. They had blown up the embassies that I mentioned earlier back in 98, 97, 98. So we knew this guy was bad. We could have taken them out, not my group, but CIA. Again, red tape and we need permission and we got to call this guy and the babysitter in Santa Claus and get, you know, because nobody wants to take liability, nobody wants to take accountability for it if we do something wrong.

Starting point is 02:13:29 When 9-11 happened, that all went out the window to a degree. It kind of came back as we put ground forces on the ground, like DOD, like military ground forces in Afghanistan, certainly when we invaded Iraq. And of course, we were in Afghanistan for 20 years. Is that right? Yeah, give or take, 19, 20 years. And we were all over the world. We were doing, I mean, there were bad guys everywhere. And that terrorist groups spawned and motivated other terrorist groups.

Starting point is 02:14:02 So it wasn't just in the Middle East. You know, we were focusing before 9-11, mostly on the Western Hemisphere. And the CIA breaks up geographies. It's kind of a mesh network. You have geographic regions, but then you also have centers like counterterrorism center. And then you have different directorates. So you have a directorate of operations and a directorate. of analysis, you know, I'm a director of science and technology, which does all the cool stuff

Starting point is 02:14:29 and the gadgets and, like, I can pull everything from your cell phone while we're just sitting here drinking Coke, you know, and you don't know it. Really cool stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about, but wish I could. And it's just gotten even better over the years. But all those centers and all those different directorates and all those geographic regions were separate. it. So after 9-11, you started, the director said, we need to bring these things in house. We need an analyst sitting right beside an officer, like a director of operations, like a case officer, who's out with building spy networks, who's sitting next to a targeter, who is an expert on finding targets for us to shoot, you know, hellfire missiles from predator drones, which was a new thing that, that, that, you know, Now they're ubiquitous.

Starting point is 02:15:25 But when 9-11 first happened, those were kind of just getting up and running. And then arming them with hellfires was a whole other thing. Like, now we have unmanned aircraft that we can shoot weapons from. We don't need to send pilots into the air. Like, and they can stay up and they're so slow. Like, for a few years, they were unbreakable. They, like, because if Iraq's and up planes again, them, the planes are going too fast because they're jet planes. This thing's a prop plane. It's not

Starting point is 02:15:58 much different than what you would buy just as a model kit, you know, at Walmart or something like that or at online now. It's just bigger. But it's slow. Then you put weapons on those. Then you put fancier weapons on those that have a bigger frag radius. When we first started using those things, you'd pop a car with the bad guy in it. And a big explosion. from the, that's what you're seeing on camera. But, you know, you'd see a guy stagger off and end up, you know, getting another car being okay. Maybe not being okay, but not dead, which is what we wanted him.

Starting point is 02:16:37 I mean, I hate to say it. These guys are mortal enemies to the United States and our citizens. So we want to kill them and everybody they know who also hate us before they can kill us, right? That's mission, number one, protect Americans, what we fail to do on 9-11. But so we We The CIA and DOD and the contractors that worked on those things They they made the

Starting point is 02:17:04 The munitions tips on those more They put more metal on them basically Which is added more frags So when it exploded more metal scattered And after that No more walking away Which it sounds morbid to kind of

Starting point is 02:17:23 Tell that story of like Look how great this was and be excited about it. But, you know, again, we're at war, man. These guys just attacked our country. So it's certainly to us, it wasn't kill them all, but it was kill all the bad guys with no remorse whatsoever. And we made every effort to do that as quickly and effectively as we could. And we succeeded in many ways a lot of time. But as well as that thousands of other people that worked in intelligence and then as the military came in. So then everything, of course, shifted primarily to the Middle East.

Starting point is 02:18:04 You had a little bit at that time in North Africa. And then it slowly, it was kind of a party in the Middle East that everybody wanted to come to. So especially when the military finally got involved. The military is a bigger, bigger machine to get cranking, right? They have their fast, fast moving guys. Those are the Team 6 guys, the other clandestine guys. You have the ground branch guys. You have Delta guys.

Starting point is 02:18:39 But sometimes they can be on scene quickly. Sometimes it takes a few more signatures and a few more the presidential findings and the title 50 issues and things that we can talk about for an hour that we won't. But belt and suspenders type things. so nobody gets in trouble, nobody goes down for it. You know, Kofa Black, he ran the CTC, the Counterterrorism Center at 9-11 and afterwards when we're going after the bin Laden and his network. He said, you know, we're all going down for this. And he kind of said it jokingly, but he wasn't joking.

Starting point is 02:19:15 He was like, look, when people go to war and generals lose the war, they shoot the generals. When people win the war, people still shoot the generals. So we're going to do what we need to do. we're going to do it right and we're going to do it we're going to do it as effectively as we can and we're going to protect the innocent and harm the bad guys. And when this is all over, we're probably going to look like bad guys because that's what we kind of signed up for. That's what always happens to the intelligence people because they're shadiness and you can't

Starting point is 02:19:49 tell everything you've done and you can't be on the news talking about all the great things you did and all the lives you saved. So the covertness equals bad somehow, you know, shadow type. Oh, if they're in the shadows and we don't know about it, they must be doing something bad. So he kind of extrapolated out of that. We're all going down for this, which is kind of my first, one of my first lessons of, like, you know, they can get you if they want you. And you need to be prepared for that at any given time, especially like if you get caught overseas, again, because my team, And the contractor I work for, we get caught.

Starting point is 02:20:27 We're out on a limb. Sometimes we're in theater where we're working with other groups. We may have air support when we're actively going kinetic and we're actively in battles. And we're actively engaging with the enemies like you see on TV or, you know, in, I don't say war films, but documentaries and things like that. You're calling in air strikes. You're calling in air support, which is amazing. air support Wart hogs

Starting point is 02:20:54 that sound a wart hog makes a warthard is a plane that is built around a Gatlin gun They said here's the gun we want to use Bill me a plane around it And they did So there's this giant gatling gun That I don't even know

Starting point is 02:21:06 I can't remember the specs on it And at the Naval Academy That's the kind of stuff we had to know Like that Like how many rounds it fires Like per second But it's like you know 50 rounds a second

Starting point is 02:21:18 Or something crazy It's just, and when you hear that as a good guy, you're like, oh, baby. That's like, you know, hearing the woman you love tell you she loves you or something, you know, like it's Christmas morning or something. You know it's just raining hellfire down on bad guys. And if it's not killing him, scaring the hell at all. So it's a win-win, no matter how you look at it. But pull me back on track there. We're going kinetic.

Starting point is 02:21:51 we're doing different things. I got shot. 9-11 changed that. I wanted to get out. And then when not like I got shot, I rehab from that. We're not doing a whole lot. I was on the way out. I was actually, I was still running my investment company.

Starting point is 02:22:07 But I was actually, had written a screenplay. They got a little heat in, as they call it, out in Hollywood. Like I had an agent. I had people talking about it. I was in all these meetings with all these producers and studios and actors and famous people and then 9-11 happened. And I'll tell you quickly, so anti-climactic now, because I've kind of given away the punchline, but I wrote a script about terrorists from Afghanistan who come to America, sleeper cell,

Starting point is 02:22:44 go to the Naval Academy, which I knew, of course, blow up a building, kill 4,000 people, kill almost the entire student body of Annapolis, which is about 4,000 people. All the officers, all the teachers and stuff. They're all there for an assembly. They blow up the auditorium or the gym, which is where we had our big gymnasium, you know, basketball arena,

Starting point is 02:23:03 where they had the big events when the whole class would go, the whole brigade. Blow that up. The only people left are the people standing watch in the dorm. So they blow that up, kill 4,000 people, and then take the rest of the student body who are only a handful of people, handful of students hostage.

Starting point is 02:23:26 And in that is the president's son. In my script, the president's son goes to Annapolis. So you think, all right, wow, that's innovative. Like, you just took 9-11 and carbon copied it. And like the first scene from 9-11 is, or excuse me, first scene from my script is guys fast roping down a helicopter landing in a compound in Afghanistan. a helicopter hovering above it fast-roping down to the roof of a two-story three-story compound black kidded out seal team six basically black kits night vision uh going in taking the

Starting point is 02:24:07 compound taking down a bad guy that's first seen exactly like before the helicopter crashed exactly like the the raid on uh osama bin laden's compound except the key to that was I wrote that in January and February of 2001. 10 years before that happened. No, like eight months before. No, but the raid. Oh, 10 years before the raid, but even 10 years before, like, you know,

Starting point is 02:24:36 nine months before the Afghanis, nobody knew where Afghanistan was or anything about Afghani terrorists. They might have heard something in the back end of the news about the embassy bombings, but, you know, that's old news. But, you know, it was fresh on my mind because that's what we were thinking about.

Starting point is 02:24:51 in the Klanestine world, in the intelligence world in early 2000. So I was like, well, I'll write a movie about this. Again, nothing. This is everything I told you is the whole plot. And it's up to the midshipman to grow up, kind of, to go from kind of playing soldier to becoming soldiers and taking lives and saving the day and overcoming these Afghani terrorists. But I wrote it before 9-11. So one, it was, you know, wow, you wrote that and it kind of came true.

Starting point is 02:25:25 They came to, Afghanis came to America, sleeper sale, blew up a building. They killed 3,000 people, not 4,000. But it didn't take anybody hostage at the time. But obviously a tremendously traumatic, tragic event. And of course, nobody wanted to make a movie about Afghan terrorists blowing up a building after that happened. So that shifted. diverted my screenwriting career. And then at the same time, of course, I'm getting pulled hard back into the intelligence

Starting point is 02:25:56 world. I've got one foot out the door at this point because up to that point, again, we weren't super busy. We were doing, we were doing some work. We're doing a lot of hell of a cool training. But I'd been shot. I wanted to go, you know, as an entrepreneur at heart. So I was like, this has been great.

Starting point is 02:26:13 But for what we're doing, like, I want to go be a grown up in the business world and or, you in the artistic world at this point. And that pulled me back in. So now I'm back in. I'm full, full blown back paramilitary. And that whole world just expands because the money came in and they're more bad guys. And it's like,

Starting point is 02:26:31 go get these bad guys, whatever you can. So to not just bore you with too many of those, but we did a lot of very cool stuff all over the world, not just in the Middle East. In fact, like I said, it was kind of a party everybody wanted to come to.

Starting point is 02:26:45 So every contractor, every tier one, tier two, every SEAL team, every Army Ranger battalion, of course, Delta and SEAL Team 6, but all the way down to, you know, you got the Special Forces guys, the Green Beret guys, anybody with the rifle wanted to go to that party, and rightly so, right? Because we, we, you're trained to go to war, and as much as war can be bad is you want to go do your part and serve your country and defend your the freedom you've been you know born and raised to defend and and equally as much stand by your your comrade in arms and protect him and carry your part and not let him down and not let him die and everything that goes along with that of a true brotherhood

Starting point is 02:27:39 and sharing that bond is undescribable experience. So everybody wanted a seat at the table or a ticket to the party. And so I did that for several years. And then about 2008, 2009, I thought, you know, I think I'm, this has been awesome. But, you know, 9-11 was seven, eight years ago. We've taken down some really bad guys. the DOD, the military guys are really running the show now. That's fine.

Starting point is 02:28:20 But so we're doing stuff. But, you know, I'm just kind of, I don't say I'm over it, but I was kind of like, all right, you know, and I'm in my 30s now, which is kind of prime time for that work. But I was like, it's time for me to move on. I just felt it, you know. And so I kind of went to my bosses. And I moved up in the ranks at this point. I was like, I think I'm done, you know.

Starting point is 02:28:45 I love you guys. I'm here to support you. You know, I will still kind of work behind the scenes, be an analyst. I kind of segueed a little bit sometimes when we're not hot and kinetic and, you know, getting shipped out. We did a lot of analysis work. I'm, you know, a good pattern recognition guy. I'm a good probability guy. But I was like, I think I went out.

Starting point is 02:29:09 And they're like, you know, my kind of mentor or boss was like, what do you want to do? I think I was like, I think I want to go to grad school and work in finance. He goes, all right. And we talked to me. It wasn't just this quick, but it happened pretty quickly. He's like, all right, go do it. But you're still going to work for us. And I was like, all right, what do you mean?

Starting point is 02:29:28 And I, you know, I never say never. And I never say like, what? At this point, you're like, somebody says something. You just say, tell me more because it could be the most craziest thing you've ever heard. And it happens. And it comes true. And it's a real thing. And so I'm like, you know, tell me more.

Starting point is 02:29:44 I would love to be a multimillionaire and also an operator, but I don't know that I can go kick indoors and run in chocks and do CQB for two weeks in the middle of BFE, literally bumfuck Egypt. You know? And also work in high finance, you know, work for Goldman Sachs or whatever. And he goes, well, what do you want to do? And I said, like, I want to go back to grad school. I was still living in Atlanta. And Emery had at the time, and I heard this on the radio.

Starting point is 02:30:18 I was on, every day on the radio, I listened to NPR at the time when NPR was very neutral and very good news resource. And like they didn't have commercials, but they had commercials. And the commercials would be sponsors, almost like podcast sponsors now, where it would be like the host talking about whoever was sponsoring. And it was always, not always, but a lot of Emery's MBA program, Masters of Business Administration Program. Sixth in the world, six in the world. These guys are six in the world.

Starting point is 02:30:51 I was like, really? Sixth in the world? Like, there are a lot of business schools in the world. And I know Emery's a great school, but sixth in the entire world, like there are, what, nine, give or take, Ivy League schools. Not all of them have Masters of Business programs or MBA programs, but still. Like, Emory? Yeah, come to find out.

Starting point is 02:31:11 They were ranked at that time, sixth in the world. So I was like, well, hell, let me throw my hat in the ring and see if I can get in. And, you know, it's done it hurt to try, right? If they tell me no, no harm, no foul. So my boss was like, yeah, give it a shot. I was like, if I want to go work in real high finance for like heavy hitters, like the J.P. Morgan's Goldman Sachs of the world, a legit hedge fund, which hedge funds weren't even really a big thing back then.

Starting point is 02:31:37 And it wasn't in the vernacular like it is now. Private equity and venture capital wasn't either. But that alternative space was where I wanted to focus, not the run-of-the-mill mutual funds or buy Apple and hold it for 20 years kind of thing. That's all well and good. I just wasn't interested in it. I'm a sprinter, not a marathoner. So this buy-and-hold mentality did not excite me at all.

Starting point is 02:32:00 So I like more of the trading. I like, you know, just buy at 10 o'clock and sell at 10.30 kind of thing. That's trading versus investing, which is buying and holding, doing a hell of a lot of research, deciding this company is undervalued, buying 100,000 shares of it and holding it for five years and keeping your fingers crossed that it goes up. That's investing. Buy it, forget about it, balance your portfolio every now and then and keep your fingers crossed. Just not the game that I wanted to play.

Starting point is 02:32:31 So I was like, to get to work for somebody that I really want to work for, I'm not going to, it's going to take more than a degree from Mississippi State. So God love Mississippi State, but, you know, Goldman Sachs isn't knocking on the door for a, for Mississippi State undergraduate, certify, you know, got undergraduates from Mississippi State, no matter how good their grades were.

Starting point is 02:32:54 So I was like, Emory's here, you know, it's an executive program so I can go like every other, it's like on nights and weekends. So I could work. my normal job, I can still kind of do the analysis stuff, but a big chunk of my life was now going to be in school. And he was like, do it.

Starting point is 02:33:17 And I was like, I can't, you know, I'm not going to be able to kick in doors. I'm not going to be a meat eater, a paramilitary officer, and do this. He goes, well, you're going to, we're going to move you over just the basically, again, back to kind of CIA parlance, just to the director of. operations. You're going to be effectively, you're going to be a spy. And you're not just going to be a case officer because you didn't go to the farm and you're not directly with CIA. You don't have a badge and so CIA on it. You're a contractor. So that's even better. You're going to be a knock. And I knew what that was. It's a non-operational cover, which is very similar to what we're doing

Starting point is 02:34:02 in the paramilitary in the covert intelligence. side of things in that not to try to sound too cool, but the easiest way to explain it is you're a spy overseas with no cover. So if you're a spy working out of an embassy under a different cover, you might be the director of agriculture in Lithuania, right? For the American, you're working out of the American embassy. You're the Lithuanian contingent, American contingencies under the chief diplomat, or the diplomat, working as the director of agriculture or, you know, there are dozens of roles.

Starting point is 02:34:55 This is a big organization in most of these bigger embassies. So nobody rolls into an embassy, even though the stations are usually based, side of embassies and you have a chief of station. He's kind of the boss of the CIA. And you have people underneath them. And those are the people that are generally going out and recruiting assets to spy on that country or other countries or whatever. Doing CIA work, what, you know, kind of what the movies talk about.

Starting point is 02:35:25 But if they get caught, they can be like, wait a minute, I work for the United States, call my boss. And they do. And then you get like a really hard scolding. and you get turned back over to the Americans and you get deported. When you, and that's your cover. You're under official cover. You're under cover.

Starting point is 02:35:51 You're the director of agricultural affairs or whatever it may be. But that is your cover and it is official. You have a business card with the United States of America's seal on it. You're working for the embassy. You're working for the United States, not as a CIA officer, but for the United States. when you're non-official cover, you're just Michael Wayne working. So if I got caught, if any knock gets caught, you're done, you're cooked. They're like, you're trying to steal secrets or you're trying to recruit assets.

Starting point is 02:36:31 And what the fuck? And I can't say, no, call the embassy. This is all just a huge misunderstanding. I'm the director of agriculture and they go like if the real covered guy could do that and they know you see a but it's the we know we're all doing this. We know you're breaking the rules and doing some really shifty things. But we know that's part of the game of the world that we live in. So we're really pissed off. But we're going to let this one slide.

Starting point is 02:37:03 Just don't ever do it again. And you get out of it. You do that as a knock. You don't get out of it because you call the embassy. even if I said, no, call the embassy. I'm an American. I'm an officer. Call the embassy.

Starting point is 02:37:15 They're going to be like, who the hell is Michael Wayne? We don't know who the heck you're talking about. And they're going to go, then whoever, name the country, comes back to you and goes, they don't know you.

Starting point is 02:37:28 And you say, crap. And then you're up shit's creek. So that's the risk. But again, there are tradeoffs in that. that, good tradeoffs in that because you don't have all that bureaucracy in red tape and you don't need 15 different signatures to go do this or that or the other thing. And you still get the

Starting point is 02:37:49 cool gadgets and you still get red in on the operations. And you're still doing something incredibly awesome and effective, important work that I play, you know, I'm very proud of the work that I did and my team did. And, you know, protecting Americans, because that's ultimately what it's all about. Everything we're doing is to protect Americans. And learning about, you know, certainly plots for future 9-11s. And we stopped a few. I didn't stop a few of those. I was part of groups that stopped a few of those. We stopped a few smaller things. That would still be big deals like embassy bombings and other terrorist attacks and these groups that are just going to go shoot up, you know, the plaza outside the Eiffel Tower or whatever.

Starting point is 02:38:49 I'm making that up. We didn't stop anything like that. But, you know, things like that. Like when you stop those things, you feel really proud of yourself. And you can't call mom. You're like, mom, guess what I did? You can't call your girlfriend and be like, I know I haven't called you in three weeks. But guess what?

Starting point is 02:39:04 Like, there's a reason for that. And here it is. but that's what you sign up for and that's what you're training even before you get selected and before you kind of graduate training they you're already in that mindset

Starting point is 02:39:19 of you're going to do a lot of hopefully you're going to do a lot of things over for many years and survive and not die not get killed or captured and you are not ever going to be able to tell anybody about it or by the way you're not even going to be able to tell

Starting point is 02:39:34 anybody you are in the intelligence world year just a dude that owns an investment company. But when I segued, when I became that guy, I went back to grad school, got an MBA and my last semester of MBA school coincided, or the last year of my MBA programs, two-year program was the financial crisis, 2007, 2008, 2009. So I graduated in 2009, which is when the financial crisis. the crisis started to end, but nobody knew it at the time because you have like dead cat bounces and things go up and then they go back down.

Starting point is 02:40:16 And it kind of the market bottomed out in the spring of 2009 and slowly recovered. But nobody, you know, nobody knew it through 2009. So I was trading derivatives and making just with my own money and making a ton of money for me, not, you know, not millions or tens of millions of dollars. but the volatility and the chaos was serving me well. Like it was the same chaos. Like when I, after 9-11 and things, the whole world and the intelligence world, you know, I talk about this a little bit in the first part of my book of the world became

Starting point is 02:40:57 extremely chaotic after 9-11 and uncertain and nobody knew when the next attack was coming or who even made the attack. And, you know, a few of us did really quickly. Like when I remember when the first plane hit, I was in Atlanta, and I remember when they first started talking about it, and I'm guessing at this, forgive me for not remembering this is horrible, but it was like a flight from Boston to L.A. Something like it was a cross-country flight. I think that was it. And it hit a building in New York. And my first thought was, you know, until the second plane hit, it was like, is this a mistake?

Starting point is 02:41:34 Was it a Cessna? There reports that it was a small plane. that kind of stuff happens. Stuff like that. Somebody had run a plane into the Empire State building like 10 or 20 years before. Like it stupid or crazy or maybe trying to kill somebody, maybe just on a suicide mission. But every now and then something kooky like that happens and people die, unfortunately, but it's not it's not, they're not taking down buildings, right?

Starting point is 02:42:01 But when I heard about a jet airliner full of fuel, because from, Boston to LA, that's a full tank. My first thought was, that's a bomb. We're under attack. Fuck. We're going to war. And there's mixed, there's mixed thought in that, right? This is horrible.

Starting point is 02:42:24 But it's time to fucking go. And it's time to show what you got. And it's time to man up. And whoever did this just fucking sign their death warrant. and I get to be a part of it. And I'm extremely excited about that. You know, there's a, there's a great quote from probably a guy this remembered in history as a bad guy, but it was Robert E. Lee as a general for the Confederate Army.

Starting point is 02:42:53 He said, it is well that war is so terrible or, let me, I'm blanking on it. Actually, let me think about it. It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it. Well, yeah, that's a powerful quote because of all the things I talked about a few minutes ago of why warriors want to go to war. We want peace through deterrence. We want to protect innocent people. But when the time comes and it always comes since human became humans, since Cain killed Abel or we evolved from monkeys or whatever you want to believe, we are warriors. and we will go to war.

Starting point is 02:43:44 And so when the time comes, and you can play a small role in that to help defend the defenseless, I want to be there. And, you know, that 9-11 solidified that and also gave me, you know, the first taste of kind of what the stormcraft doctrine that I developed over the next 20 years.

Starting point is 02:44:09 of just leading through uncertainty and converting chaos into advantage of like we don't know what the hell is going on. This is a chaotic situation. Okay, let's take a step away from this. Let's go through these steps and figure out what can we, how can we use this to our advantage? This is crazy and people are freaking out and there's so much tragedy. But that creates gaps and we can exploit those gaps. It's going to create new dangers, but it's going to create new dangers, but it's going to

Starting point is 02:44:39 create new opportunities and we can seize those opportunities because now, you know, this happens so this is unprotected or that's unprotected. So now this person is doing moving over here and this country is more concerned about X and before then they were concerned about Y. So now they're exploitable in Y where before there was no chance of exploiting that. Again, all in the realm of like we're going to do the things necessary to protect Americans and protect America. So that was the birth of Stormcraft.

Starting point is 02:45:14 And I certainly used that through the paramilitary training and then going into the knock training or excuse me, going into the knock world. And more training involved in that too. But it kind of, you know, over the years, I'd already been working for 10 years in that world. So it was an easier transition. But going into those very, it's a very shadow, just the true shadow. world of international espionage.

Starting point is 02:45:40 You're meeting in, you know, dive bars and dark back alleys and doing handoffs and doing detection route, you know, two-hour diversions and all the kind of cool stuff. It's also a lot of sometimes very boring. But doing important things and learning extremely important information. You're not kicking doors in every day. but you're getting information that's going to prevent the doors from needing to be kicked in because you're taking down those cells and those people before it ever gets that far. So I did that and while I ran my hedge fund.

Starting point is 02:46:21 So I ran a legit hedge fund. My hedge fund investors had no idea that I was working as a knock. I traded derivatives, had a very good strategy. I made a lot of people, a ton of money. it grew into being one of the most successful hedge funds on Wall Street in the industry. It was still never, it never grew to be very big for multiple reasons. One is I wasn't out, I was trying to raise money because that's what you do as a hedge fund manager.

Starting point is 02:46:52 And that also helped me be a good knock because I could travel the world and talk to investors and money men and directors of sovereign wealth funds and people in government and retirement funds and things that people that knew the inner workings of governments and things like that. And I could also go into those same meetings and ask those questions. Instead of having to recruit you who works for the sovereign wealth fund to spy on the government for me, I can just go in and ask the same questions because I'm a hedge fund manager. And I want to know that stuff for my investment, for your investment, for the decisions that I make as a hedge fund manager.

Starting point is 02:47:31 And they didn't know if I needed the, you know, those answers. or not to make money. But it made sense that I was asking a lot of those questions. And it also gave me entree into the world to meet all the bad guys that I wanted to meet to take them down and to stop the rat lines and arms race and nonproliferation things that we were doing and human trafficking and drugs and you name it, just all the bad stuff in the world that needs to be stopped. But it's hard to stop because of all the red tape.

Starting point is 02:48:04 in bureaucracy and things like that. So people in the fringes and people in the shadow world can get those things done quickly and effectively and disappear. We're ghosts. And it's wonderful. And you understand, well, you can't tell anybody about it, but that's what you sign up for. So none of my investors knew. The ones that see this will probably be surprised, but they're all going to be happy because

Starting point is 02:48:30 they all made money. my hedge fund investors made money. And I ran the hedge fund right up until I got convicted. I started my nonprofit in that same realm. Yeah, grew the fund, grew the asset center management to over $100 million. Average had two funds. One was extremely successful but extremely volatile. That was the one I started that in 2009.

Starting point is 02:49:01 I realized a year or two, probably not even that long within a few months that investors love great returns. They love 70% returns. That fund I was making. Again, this is coming out of the financial crisis when there was a ton of volatility. So I'm using my Stormcraft training left and right. I'm loving it. More volatile the better.

Starting point is 02:49:20 Market crashes, sign me up because we made more money when the market crashed. It was a very contrarian strategy, a reversion to the mean, a lot of fractal math, a lot of Fibonacci, incorporating a lot of different indicators and a lot of different math components to determine inflection points in the market. Trade of the S&P 500 as a whole as one aggregate, the ticker symbol SBX and the E-Mini that went along with it, futures contracts, not to go dive into, but like even what I've just said is a good explanation of why it never became a big fund. Because that world gets very complicated in language.

Starting point is 02:50:06 You've heard the phrase, that's Greek to people saying, that's Greek to me. It's literally Greek because all the things that have to do with options trading are in Greek. So you're talking about deltas and alphas and gammas and betas and how all those interact with each other. And to the normal investor, no matter, very smart investors, but if they're not experts in derivatives and you start talking about how you have a competitive advantage, because the gammas affect the deltas and we neutralize the deltas because we do levered levered

Starting point is 02:50:37 ratio calendar verticals and we hedge that with e minis on the near date expiration and their shades come down right and they're like that's awesome man like it sounds like you got it nailed

Starting point is 02:50:51 but you leave the room and they're like what the fuck did he just say and then they end up you know writing a 20 million dollar check to like another fund manager that comes in and says, all right, we're going to go long Google and we're going to short Apple and here's why. And the investor can say, oh, yeah, okay, I have an iPhone and I use Google 100 times a day. So I understand what you're talking about. And I can understand your argument

Starting point is 02:51:20 of why you're going to short one and why you think one's going to go down in price and why you think the other is going to go up in price. That makes more sense. And I've got to go, explain this to my investment committee tomorrow. And whatever Michael's talking about sounds really cool and his returns are off the charts. Great. But it's volatile. And there's no way I'm going to be able to repeat this to my investment committee. So, you know, I would say, well, let me talk to your investment committee.

Starting point is 02:51:50 Well, most places are like, no, you can't do that. Like, we don't allow fund managers into those meetings. So things like that, as well as just the knock work. kept it from being as big as I would have loved it. I would have loved to have been the biggest hedge fund on the planet. It was scalable to that. The strategy was sound. The first fund was very successful.

Starting point is 02:52:11 I mean, the average returns were over 50% net a year, which is, you know, that's, you're in the Hall of Fame. You're in the Hedge Fund Hall of Fame for that. Maybe the Michael Jordan, if you do that for 20 years. but the volatility was crazy. You know, we would lose, we would make 20% in a month and we would lose 15% the next month. And the wins outpaced the losses, but the volatility made people's stomachs turn. So I realized early on and should have probably pivoted a little bit earlier, but I didn't. I kept that fun going just because we were making so much money.

Starting point is 02:52:54 And I had my own money invested. So when we're making 50% returns, I'm making 50% on my money. So, you know, my $5 million is turning into $7.5 million in a year. And then you just keeps on compounding. The greatest force in the universe is compound interest. And you turn that into 50% returns with the interest percentage mark. That's legit. They're super legit.

Starting point is 02:53:20 But the second fund I started in 2016, and that's when I became more New York focused. It had much less volatility, which institutional investors, the big, big institutions, the sovereign wealth funds, the teachers' retirements unions, the giant family offices, and of course, high net worth individuals and investors, but they love the lower, they're willing to sacrifice the great, great returns for pretty good returns. And we still out out, we outpaced on returns, we still hit like 20% a year, which is still one of the best in the world, especially over time. If you can do that year and year out, we're hitting 20% when the market's down 5% for

Starting point is 02:54:06 the year, that's a pretty good spread, pretty good gap that people love us. Other years, the market's up 20% and we're still hitting 20% and we're just kind of like, okay, you're average. Well, no, we're consistent. You know, we're hitting singles and doubles consistently with low, with very few strikeouts, with very low volatility and making more money when the stock market falls than so not to go down an investment road, but that's very appealing to especially sophisticated investors. It should be appealing to every investor because you don't, you want diversity in your portfolio.

Starting point is 02:54:42 When one thing goes up or when one thing crashes, when the market crashes, you don't want all of your investments to crash because you can go broke that way. You want a few safeguards in there that either they stay flat. Market crashes. We hear 9-11 crash, 2008, 2007 crash. The whole world's coming to an end. The market's down 30%. Here are one or two or ten investments or some percentage of your entire portfolio

Starting point is 02:55:12 that haven't crashed. They're holding their own or even better. They've gone up, which is what we did. So when the market crashed, people loved us. When the market did really well, we were just, okay, you did, you know, congratulations. You did the same thing everybody else did. Annoying, but, you know, I'll take it. But we're helping individuals make money and my investors loved us.

Starting point is 02:55:37 But, you know, I'm also managing money for retirement funds and teachers unions and things like that. So my parents started out as school teachers. My entire extended family, both my sisters have been, one still live. is a schoolteacher. So, you know, knowing that I'm making money and helping to making money for those institutions so they can pay their teachers and not go bankrupt in their retirement accounts 10 years from now, five years from now, because a lot of those retirement funds are still struggling, especially when a financial crisis because they're over levered and they're not diversified

Starting point is 02:56:15 and all the things you don't want in an investment portfolio. But that's another conversation. but in that so I did that until until I pled guilty and in that mix I went back I went back to school I got a master's degree from Cambridge in the United Kingdom I've done a program at Oxford and also in the UK and started a nonprofit during that time it kind of came out of I started a society at Cambridge. And the nonprofit I started in the States was kind of a bigger, better version of that. But it was called Oasis.

Starting point is 02:57:00 It's the acronym for, don't let me butcher this, as I say that loud, I never say the whole thing. Organization for active social impact and sustainability. Yes. Oasis. We do disaster. leaf. So when a tornado, a wildfire, a hurricane, anything like that hits in the States, we're one of the first boots on the ground. Again, my stormcraft training of being very comfortable in chaotic environments, when you roll into town, you know, 20 minutes after a tornado

Starting point is 02:57:36 blows through, it's very similar to a war zone. This house is gone. This house is untouched across the street. It's crazy. But you got people wandering down the street. because their house is gone. Like, where do they go? What do they do? What's coming next? Very uncertain, very scary time. And, you know, I learned over the years, like, I want to be the one that's there on those

Starting point is 02:58:04 people's worst days because I can help them better than most people because I have a game plan to manage this chaos and to see the advantages that it presents us. Even in a very tragic situation, there are ways to manage. it and often they are often very oftentimes ways to convert that into an advantage. But that is what working with OASIS is natural disasters in the United States and what quickly became manmade disasters overseas, which are wars. So when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, I went to Ukraine and volunteered over there taking humanitarian supplies to the people.

Starting point is 02:58:48 because civilians still lived in the war zone. The war in Ukraine was and still is. It started more on the northern border and on the eastern border, but it very quickly just became kind of the entire eastern border of Ukraine. Ukraine is about the size of Texas. So imagine if Texas was being invaded from Oklahoma, from Arkansas, and from Louisiana all at the same time. That's the front line in Ukraine because Belarus and Russia arc that entire border of Ukraine. So Ukraine's a very corrupt country. So we were worried and all the donors over here from the United States government to just mom and pop, you know, and people you know donating whatever they could to help the Ukrainian

Starting point is 02:59:37 civilians, not necessarily doing anything to thwart the Russians, but just to help the because there's a huge evacuation of women and children. The men weren't allowed to leave, even though a lot of them did, some of them did, but they weren't allowed to leave because they're fighting a war

Starting point is 02:59:55 and they don't have a giant population, so they need all the health they can get, so all the men had to stay. But I created a pipeline from Poland, which is on the western border, all the way across Ukraine to the eastern border of human,

Starting point is 03:00:13 humanitarian supplies. And I did that overtly. This was not CIA stuff. This was not clandestine stuff. This was for my nonprofit. When I first went over there, I just kind of went by myself and didn't make it a big deal. But I started a fundraising campaign.

Starting point is 03:00:29 It's called Kids Helping Ukraine, where we sold friendship bracelets that Ukrainian kids made, still going on. So we had these big groups of kids in Ukraine all over the country, making thousands of friendship bracelets in the in the colors of Ukrainian flag red and gold same colors in the Naval Academy

Starting point is 03:00:50 same colors of my high school same colors of Emery actually but so it was very overt that I was there and but very quickly I got tapped in the intelligence world

Starting point is 03:01:08 for the not just the humanitarian supplies that were going to the from the west across the country to the front lines, but for the U.S. donated supplies and equipment, you know, from the military, from the bigger suppliers to help the Ukrainians actually defend themselves against the Russians, as well as help, you know, protect the soldiers and the volunteers, the body armors and things like that, up to big equipment, down to medicine and, you know, defibrillators and tourniquets and all the things you need in a war. that most people don't think you may need in a war.

Starting point is 03:01:46 But and that kind of segued into how we ended up here. And I was happy to do it because to kind of give you a sense of where things were then and still are to a degree like the airspace was rushing controlled. So you couldn't fly in supplies. So you had to park them in one of the neighboring countries. And that was generally Poland. So I had kind of a home base in Krakow, which was about the closest bigger town, bigger city, bigger town to the Ukrainian border.

Starting point is 03:02:24 So I would shepherd that equipment across the country. You couldn't fly it in. You didn't use rail that much because the Russians were bombing the rails to an extent. When the Russians first invaded, they thought they were going to take it in a couple weeks. So they didn't really target the infrastructure. So it was weird. You'd be on the front lines and you had a cell phone signal. You're in a trench, getting attacked by artillery, and you know, you can watch Ian Bick, the podcast.

Starting point is 03:02:53 And you're like, this is so surreal. But because the Russians didn't blow up the infrastructure, they didn't blow up gas stations. And there were nuclear power plants there. Chernobyl's there. It was obviously not active anymore. But there are other nuclear plants that power not only Ukraine, but large parts of Europe. So they eventually started bombing civilians and started bombing, started drone attacks and rockets and artillery when they could,

Starting point is 03:03:21 civilians, and they're doing that to this day. You'll see a headline in the morning that'll say, you know, 500 Russian drones attack, Keeve and eight people dead. And those are civilians. I mean, they're just flying them into apartment buildings. It's ridiculous. But there's a strategy behind that. You know, we can get into, but not necessarily need to get into.

Starting point is 03:03:50 Like this war is endable. And I'd love to be a part of it. And I was. Like I didn't say this earlier. But in all this world and all this work I was doing and all the education that I had, I was so I was told anyway, I was kind of on short list to be a diplomat. So to be an ambassador. not to Ukraine necessarily, but somewhere.

Starting point is 03:04:14 And then when this whole thing went down, like that and everything else in my life, like you just slid right off the side of the roof. But, you know, again, chaos and extreme uncertainty, but where are the advantages in that situation? That's what I'm, you know, that's from day one. That's what I'm looking for. You've done a great job of turning that adversity into something and finding the advantages of it.

Starting point is 03:04:39 So big, big congratulations. on doing that. But so I guess any questions up to this point or like segue? I guess a million dollar question is how you end up in prison. So that segues right into what started the down cycle, I guess, if you want to call it that, what started the beginning of the bad cycle that I'm hopefully on an up cycle now, but where things turn for the worst. So I need to say this without saying anything that I shouldn't be saying non-disclosure-wise,

Starting point is 03:05:26 like national security wise. So it's a well-known fact to the world that I'm donating. A lot of these donations came out of my own pocket because I was making plenty of money running my hedge fund. I'd run my hedge fund at night because it's six, seven hours. depending on the time changes and the time zones between Poland's one and Ukraine's one more distance. But like I would start work at like three or four in the afternoon and work to like 10 or 11 and hedge fund. And I didn't, the way I had the hedge fund structure and I didn't have to work it every day. So just the whole strategy, I would either have it hedged to where there was no chance of loss or we would be in cash.

Starting point is 03:06:16 I was in cash like 50% of the time, which is great. Again, going back to when I started the whole thing, I was very interested and passionate about trading derivatives. And the strategy that I ultimately developed, it was just you, it's like a, I called it kind of a sniper strategy. If I saw an opportunity, I would get in. It wasn't high frequency training, but it was kind of one off of that. So I would get in, I would make a big trade.

Starting point is 03:06:42 I'd put, you know, 10 or 20% of the fund at risk, hold it for maybe. a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few days, no more than like maybe four days, get out or it would expire. Options have expiration dates. That's a big component of them. So do futures. But so we're back to cash, no risk. So if I know we're back in cash, now I can go anywhere in the world for a day, a week, a month, whatever, and not have to worry you at all about the hedge fund. And we've already made 3% this month. So my investors are going to be happy. So everybody wins. So my job was to shepherd humanitarian supplies and a lot of the U.S. donated supplies,

Starting point is 03:07:34 like covert and overt, but doing it, I was wearing two hats. I was a humanitarian volunteer and had other humanitarian, American humanitarian, and people from all over the world really stood up. and came. A lot, you know, not many people went to the front lines. I've got stories about that about the few who went with me. Chapter one of my book is a story about we actually almost got caught by Russians and I was with just normal American volunteers who knew nothing about my espionage life and they didn't realize until after the fact that we almost got captured by Russians and became kind of POWs. We wouldn't have been POWs because we were civilian, but they like,

Starting point is 03:08:17 Like they would have detained us and maybe sent us back to Russia and we could still be in prison. A Marine got out yesterday, yesterday or today that had been held in Russia for four years for espionage or something. Nobody's even really sure. They just sometimes they just snatch you and put you in prison. That's what they do. But overtly, I was running humanitarian supplies. Covertly, I was making sure this equipment got to the places that it needed to be. Some of it was kind of overt, but my role in it was not overt.

Starting point is 03:08:47 It was covert. So, and I was doing things. I was training soldiers. I was training volunteers. I was, that's not, there are pictures of me online doing that. So that's nothing secret anymore, even if it was then. But I'm working on the front lines. And there weren't a lot of Americans coming to the front lines.

Starting point is 03:09:09 Covertly or overtly. But again, I'm comfortable in those situations. So I was kind of tapped to do both. And again, we can't fly anything in. So we're busing, like with cargo vans and trucks on just roads that are like the surface of the moon. They call it the Ukrainian milkshake because you went the potholes over there are so deep that you're, whatever you're in, your car or whatever is just doing this. I mean, not exaggerating.

Starting point is 03:09:42 You feel like you're going to flip over any minute just because the potholes are so big and deep. and they call it Ukrainian milkshake because whatever you're holding is going to get shaken up. So in that role, I saw a lot of corruption. And you see corruption all over the world in what I was doing in the intelligence community.

Starting point is 03:10:10 But rarely is any of it affecting people and harming people. And the things that I was in charge of shepherding to the front lines were things that people needed. people that were saving people's lives, civilians and military and volunteer groups. So when I saw that they were being diverted,

Starting point is 03:10:36 I got upset. And I was like, stop doing this. Because none of these people that, these are other Americans that are supposed to be there helping, but they're there stealing. Not everything, but, you know, this warehouse full of stuff disappears. but the other three are still there.

Starting point is 03:10:52 So you can take those, but don't worry about this one. Well, I am worried about this one because they're waiting on me to show up with 10 trucks. And if I show up with six, they're going to think, like, we can't rely on you. And worse, they're going to think I've done something with the other four. And I don't want that any way you look at it. So I protested. And I'm in an overt role. If I was in a covert role and I protested, I protested before.

Starting point is 03:11:18 And people are like, F off. and I'm like I won't and and I'm the one going to the front lines you're not going to the front lines so I'm the one responsible for these things so I'm taking this personally this isn't just we have 20 Ferraris on a ship and and 18 of them make it to the port kind of thing or get delivered to the Sultan of whatever whatever and to go missing somehow it's like people are going to die if this stuff doesn't get there and that's That bothers me a hell of a lot. So I protested.

Starting point is 03:11:55 And that was not smart. Because to give you a little peek behind the curtain and things that I think are out there to a large degree, but it's a lot of conspiracy theories and a lot of very inaccurate information. And that's good because the more inaccurate stupid conspiracy theories, it makes the real conspiracies pliable and doable that you don't have to worry so much about being exposed if you know if I throw a thousand white marbles on this table

Starting point is 03:12:31 and I tell you one white marble is a pearl but they all look exactly alike like good luck finding the white marble right that's the real thing that's going on is the pearl and the other 99 are marbles they're conspiracy theories that don't amount to anything, but a peek into the pearl from a distance. So let me give you that, again, all these other ones are similar or not too far off. And I'm not going to go too deep because,

Starting point is 03:12:59 again, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to go to jail and I don't want to expose anybody. Go back to jail. The world is controlled by very powerful groups of people. Not by one group, but by different groups. And those groups, as you can imagine, are Very wealthy, mostly men, a few women, a few, I'll say fringe participants like thought leaders, intellectuals, up-and-coming founders that are doing some really cutting-edge stuff that might benefit the people in those groups. these groups supersede boundaries and borders and flags. They are standing above it moving the chess pieces around. And again, there aren't a lot of these groups, but they're a handful.

Starting point is 03:14:02 And sometimes they work together. Sometimes group A and group B will work together. And a few years later, they may, I don't want to say hate each other, because it's above that. It's above war and hate and revenge. A lot of times you still got humans. There's still emotion. There's still people.

Starting point is 03:14:25 But it's on a higher plane where you stealing a billion dollars or $100 billion for me pisses me off, but not enough to where I'm going to screw all of this up. Because all of this is much bigger than me. and all of it, that $100 million I might make back on the next deal or I might make three times that. So you have shifting alliances. I equated a lot for history buffs out there to like the city states in ancient Greece and then even into Italy before they unified of, you know, the Venetians against the, against Florence, against Milan, against Rome. and, you know, going back to the Spartans against Greece and, and when the barbarian horde attacks, they banned together and they were fighting a year ago, but now they're in it together because

Starting point is 03:15:33 they have a bigger enemy that they have to worry about. So these groups have shifting alliances to whichever ones benefit them the most. So all that to say is, you know, that changes periodically. So I guess just the point just to make is they're not set in stone. Like Russia doesn't always, and it's not like one Russian group, and not to dive too deep into any of this, but there is not a Russian group and then there is not an American group. It's bigger than that. It's borders and states and countries don't matter. So if Russia and America hate each other, yeah, and I want to go, you know, if we're in war with Iran and my job is to go kill Iranians, there's a whole other game being played above that.

Starting point is 03:16:32 I'll leave it at that. So the war is just chess pieces and people are dying and suffering and it's horrible and terrible. And the people running these groups aren't necessarily always in it for themselves because it's, you know, if they're just in it for themselves, society's going to fall. Society's going to crumble. So it's not like these rich fat cash, just trying to make a buck and trying to make another billion dollars here and $100 billion there. It's not that at all.

Starting point is 03:17:02 That's an element of it. Money controls the world for better or worse. You have the money, you have the power. You have the power. You have everything. You have the power you get more money, right? That you have a hand over those chess pieces. that's a peek behind the curtain when you piss one of those groups off there are consequences

Starting point is 03:17:30 i did not realize that i pissed one of those groups off and i should have i guess in hindsight i should just kept i shouldn't i wouldn't have kept my mouth shut because fuck that people are dying right and i don't give a shit who's in power and what's going to happen to me but when i'm in charge of saving people's lives. I'm going to do everything I can to save those people's lives. And like another big thing we did, we would take supplies in and we would evacuate women and children out of the front. Because people still live on the front lines. Call them crazy and stupid, but people don't want to leave their homes.

Starting point is 03:18:10 Well, you know, when the bomb falls across the street, now suddenly you want to leave your homes. So from day one there, we would bring supplies in and evacuate women and children out to Leviv and the safer parts of Ukraine. and then over in Poland, they would end up in Germany, some ended up in the United States. So we evacuated hundreds of women and children, and I'm very proud of that. And I'm there, you know, to help and to help in the conflict and to help protect people. And only realized after I had protested multiple times, like I've been told, you know, keep your mouth shut. or really join us no like one i was always i'm in a really great world and i'm in a really shadow world where where bad things are done but i was successful and i had a great reputation

Starting point is 03:19:06 i think i had a great i'm pretty sure i had a great reputation because i was kind of a boy scout like i still come from that honor and duty and country from annapolis and the way i grew up and god bless america and apple pie and baseball and we're all doing we're all doing we're all in it to help each other and got in there's no other no better country than than america and i didn't believe that for a while and i've kind of kind of believe it again i do believe it again america's is kind of like the most beautiful girl you've ever seen that has her faults but she also has a really great heart and and does more good things in the world than bad things in the world and people argue against that maybe.

Starting point is 03:19:51 But, you know, every now and then she sets your car on fire. And it throws all your clothes out the window and goes a little crazy and does some really stupid, crazy shit. And we have been on the other end of that individually. But she's still the most beautiful woman compared to all the other women in the world. and you still love her and you still see all the good things of her and here's the

Starting point is 03:20:25 blessing and the curse is that every four years she's going to get shock treatment and when you get shock treatment like psychiatrists and like insane asylums and people do it now just in the strip mall down the street

Starting point is 03:20:42 it can change your personality so every four years whether you want or two or not she's going to get shock treatment. And sometimes you don't want a personality to change at all and you hope it stays the same after the shock treatment and it does sometimes. And other times it's completely different. And so that's our election system, right? So sometimes it's changed and it goes a completely other direction, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. And then four years later, we do the whole thing over again. And really it's every two years with the midterms and all that. But back on what landed me as a

Starting point is 03:21:19 is I learned that a lot of that corruption was tied to some very powerful people in the United States. And I kind of learned it after the fact, but I was still thinking, like, I don't care. I don't care if, you know, if Santa Claus is behind this. These people are still suffering and they need this stuff. So we need to, you need to stop this corruption. And we need to do what's right here. You know, do what you signed up for. Do your job.

Starting point is 03:21:57 Be honorable. So I didn't. So they, back to the, like I was kind of a Boy Scout, they were like, you need to do this with us or shut the fuck up. And I was like, I'm not going to do it with you. And I'm not going to shut the F up. Because, again, all this stuff I already said. And then it was, you need to shut up or kind of, you know, you're going to, you need to shut up or you're going to be sorry. And it's like, F, you.

Starting point is 03:22:21 you, man. Like, who are you? Like, we're, we're the same. Like, you're not a general or you're not a, you're, I'm a freaking GS-15 level, uh, operator here. You're not telling me what I can and can't do. There's no rank. You can't pull rank on me. Um, coming from a guy who's actively stealing donations from the United States of America. He's not stealing. He's not Omar stealing from drug dealers. Uh, and, and, you know, selling it back to drug dealers. He's, stealing from the United States Treasury and from United States citizens and other people in the Western world who had donated their hard-earned money to help people. And that's what I'm there to do.

Starting point is 03:23:03 Well, the fact that I was overt, it scared the powers that be. It's like, this guy knows a lot. And people know he's there and he's not, he's not bound by any sort of non-disclosure agreement. so he could blow this whole thing up. We need to do something about it. And I learned all this from my intelligence colleague, from two separate, very dialed in colleagues, very high up intelligence colleagues, obviously, you know,

Starting point is 03:23:37 can't name them. But they're the kind of guys. Not at the same time, individually, they came to me. They're like, what's this I'm hearing about this and that and the other? And I'm like, fuck, you heard about that? And I'm like, yeah, you need to shut up. And I was like, one, I appreciate you coming to me, but also no. And like, I've already, the cat's out of the bag.

Starting point is 03:23:59 Like the dice cast, I've already, they know I'm pissed off about this. Not until the point where I would whistleblow because I'm not a rat, even when you're doing things like that. I certainly wouldn't divulge anything that would be even come close to being any sort of like traitor type thing or divulging any kind of national secrets. but even guys who were being dirt bags, pieces of crap, who were stealing, I really want them to stop and I'm really pressing hard for them to stop so we can help the people that need to be helped. But at the same time, like, I'm not going to rat them out. I'm not going to do that.

Starting point is 03:24:37 So the guys that told me are guys that, like, if they called right now and said, Mike, you need to get out of Connecticut, I would say, this is done. and you're coming with me. Grab everybody you love and your dogs and your kids and a go bag if you've got one because we're going wherever they tell us to go. And like now, that's the kind of guys, that's the kind of access these guys have. So when they tell me like, this is serious, I listen. So as it went, prison was probably the better version of what could have happened

Starting point is 03:25:15 because the option number one was, should we just kill this guy? He's on the front lines. Like he's doing things with the Ukrainians that could very easily result in his death. No, let's not do that. We don't kill Americans. And that's true. Unless they, like, you know, convert to Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Starting point is 03:25:41 Like, you've heard over the years some of that stuff. If you actively become a U.S. citizen who becomes a sworn enemy of the United States, You're going down. So, but if you're still on the side of good, we're not going to kill you as an intelligence community. And if that's ever happened, I haven't known about it. So two things we don't do, kill our own and spy on Americans in the way that we do to people in other countries.

Starting point is 03:26:13 Is there metadata? Is there things? There's ways to do it? Yes, we won't go into that. but you can feel relatively safe that if you're getting spied on in the United States as an American, it's not the CIA, it's another agency. They're 18 of them. It's Apple.

Starting point is 03:26:28 They're not uninvolved. Maybe, maybe not. You know, our good friends at the FBI are certainly no stranger, some of that stuff. But the problem with the FBI is they're not looking to prevent anything. They're looking to capture bad guys and put them in prison. So they're good FBI agents and they're bad FBI agents. But they kind of want, I won't say they want bad things to happen, but their job is to get the people after the bad things are happening.

Starting point is 03:27:03 So they may know this isn't part for the course and this isn't every agent or every division or whatever, every group. But if they know something's going to happen, they need it to happen. And they kind of maybe want it to happen. So then they can go in and get. the bad guys. We do the exact opposite in the intelligence community. We prevent it from happening. You're building a bomb in your basement. We're taking you out or we're coming in, not in America. We would send in SWAT or we would send in like the local police, maybe the FBI.

Starting point is 03:27:33 But also, you're building a bomb in your basement. We got enough to charge you and put you in prison. So now the FBI is involved. Before it gets to that point, they're like, no, no, no, maybe maybe let him build a bomb. we'll get him before he blows anybody up with it. Maybe, hopefully. Anyway, not to go back off on a tangent. But so option one, let's kill him. No, we don't do that. So that was good to hear.

Starting point is 03:27:58 This is all after the fact, right? This is after I'm being targeted. And this kind of led to why I pled and kind of one of the reasons I pled when I figured out who was behind it, when I heard who was behind it, and I was like, fuck. So option two, let's make him look like a traitor. Not that he's working with the Russians and let the Ukrainians deal with him. Well, that didn't work. That was a quick no because I'd done too much with the Ukrainians against the Russians.

Starting point is 03:28:35 There was no way they could say that I was working with the Russians. So option three is like, all right, what's this dude? What's this guy do when he's not in Ukraine? Oh, he runs a hedge fund. Oh, well, fuck, that's a no-brainer. Go get it. He works in finance. Like, he's probably committed seven felonies while we've been having this conversation.

Starting point is 03:28:57 Not because I've committed any felonies, just because the way the law is structured, like, I can't remember the author's name, but the Harvard lawyer who wrote the book three felonies a day. Like, you've probably had other, you've probably talked about it. When they want something, they'll find something. Yeah. The average American on an average day commits three felonies. Just because it's not because they're actively doing anything wrong, it's because the laws are so vague. And a lot of laws, and this goes for finance, certainly,

Starting point is 03:29:30 and it certainly goes for freaking medicine. I feel so bad for anybody in the medical industry. Because the laws are so vague and even contradictory that if you obey this law, you're breaking that law. And in the financial world, that's certainly true. If you strictly obey this regulation, you are by default breaking this regulation and vice versa. So they can get you one way or the other. And it's not designed to be that way.

Starting point is 03:29:56 I don't think. I hope not. But it's just through all the layers of new regulations and new regulations and red tape and years of politicians coming through the committees and, oh, well, and they're handling the fire. They're putting out the fires and they're creating, you know, putting a new fire escape on a building that already has 37 fire escapes. And that's their financial regulation that the fire escape, that new fire escape makes the fire escape that they built 17 years ago now a fire trap. So anyway, they're like, all right, this guy runs a hedge fund.

Starting point is 03:30:37 Go find something. So they investigated my hedge fund. Let me back up a little bit because this goes into like, well, how do you know this was a conspiracy? I won't go through all of them. I'll just give you some of the highlights of like this is pretty obviously. I was pretty obviously targeted. I did nothing wrong. This is what they do to people that that kind of fight the power, if you will.

Starting point is 03:31:06 The SEC regulates the financial markets. The SEC is not a criminal. the SEC can't put criminals, put people in jail, in prison. They can just go after money and take away your licenses and things like that. I had a Series 3, Series 65, federal licenses, was a registered investment advisor, all this stuff. You just take tests and study and get your licenses. It makes you more educated, but more certified, you know, investors feel better when you

Starting point is 03:31:33 have those licenses behind you. I like to feel better when you have master's degrees from Emery and Cambridge in Oxford and wherever. So I started my first fund in 2009 for up until from 2009 to 2020, the SEC had examined my fund three times, which is par for the course. And it was very successful. Like the performance was very good. So it made sense that they would come in and be like, make sure you're not Bernie

Starting point is 03:32:03 Madoff. Make sure you're not just making up returns and pocketing all this money. And I spent a ton of money. for to do all the things that giant funds have done, the third party administrators, the big four accounting firms to do the audits, the top tier brokers, all of the things that billion dollar funds did. I did even when I was running, you know, $20 million. When I was a very, that's a lot of money.

Starting point is 03:32:29 But in the hedge fund world, that's pennies. You know, that's a lemonade stand. So, but I had all that infrastructure in place. So when they came in and did the examination, it saw. because it was expensive because you got to hire a lawyer. That's 50 grand at the drop of a hat. It takes the SEC the amount of time to fill out one of those forms. It's a subpoena, which sounds very threatening and it's very scary because this is an official subpoena for the United States government.

Starting point is 03:32:56 It's got the seal at the top and everything. And it's really just a request for information. But you have to hire a lawyer and now you've got to get all of your records, all of your emails, all of your statements, broker's statements, all of your trade. needs everything. It's called open kimono. You've opened your kimono. You're, let them see inside and underneath the covers and under the hood and everything.

Starting point is 03:33:20 It's fine. I, it's sucked because it's a hell of a lot of work that you don't want to do because you've got other stuff you got to be working on, especially me having kind of two professions running parallel to each other, working as, you know, as a knock and working as a hedge fund manager. Now I've got this other basically full-time job of compiling all

Starting point is 03:33:40 this other information. And then you've got to pay a lawyer to put it all together, get it bait stamped, submit it to the SEC, make sure you're doing everything right. Because if you try to do it yourself, you're going to screw up, and they're going to use that to get you because that's what they do. That's their job. It's not to help people prove their innocent, is to find guilty people. And if they're on the fringe and they need a few more scalps on the wall that month to hit

Starting point is 03:34:06 their quota, this guy's probably guilty. let's go ahead and find him $10 million, take away his license. But they never found anything. Three, not investigations, that's the whole other story. That's the whole other level of coming after you. Inquiry. So I had three inquiries over, what, 10 years, longer than that, 12 years. And then in 2020, and made it through all of them with flying colors.

Starting point is 03:34:38 It sucked because, you know, like I've already explained, it's expensive for the lawyers. And it's time-consuming. And a lot of times the SEC doesn't even have the courtesy to say, okay, we're done. You're good to go. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. It's called a no-action letter. They'll send you a letter.

Starting point is 03:34:58 It never says, like, congratulations, you're off the hook. It just says, we didn't find anything this time, but we aren't going to prosecute you. but, you know, kind of keep your nose clean because we're always watching. And that's their job. They're a regulator. So, you know, no harm, no foul on that. If you aren't speeding, you don't mind if a cop's on your ass. But like Warren Buffett says, if you, if a cop follows you for 200 miles, you're going to get a ticket.

Starting point is 03:35:31 Because you're eventually going to, you know, go one mile over the speed limit or cross the line a little bit or something. His quote, not mine. And I say, you know, if you never do anything, you should never get a ticket unless you get a dirty cop. But so that was, that's the backstory. In 2020 and December of 2020, and this is kind of, this is COVID had started in China, but had not really, it hadn't become a thing in the United States yet. I got another inquiry started, got a new subpoena. They wanted all the information. So, you know, here we go again.

Starting point is 03:36:03 There's like, now it's not 50 grand because we're in 2020. We're in 2020. It's like 70 grand because that's what lawyers do. They don't get any less expensive over the years. If inflation goes up 3%. Lawyers go up 13%. You know, we're 30%. So I'm like, man, like that's an analyst.

Starting point is 03:36:23 Like I could hire an analyst for that money. But now I've got to pay it to a compliance lawyer to get, make sure we give all this stuff to the SEC correctly. So we do. Had a great lawyer. That was 2020. 2021, 2022, the war starts. I'm running the fund the whole time.

Starting point is 03:36:47 I'm still working as a knock. The whole thing is, you know, pre-COVID. Get the inquiry. Don't think anything of it other than this is going to be a pain in the ass, and I'm going to have to pay this lawyer to make sure I do everything correctly. So, sorry, jumping 2021, 2022, the war starts in February. I go over in March, like a couple weeks after the war started, after Russia invaded. right after the Winter Olympics actually, so they waited.

Starting point is 03:37:20 Still, nothing. 2022, this is when I'm over there and I'm seeing the corruption. I'm speaking. I'm protesting. I'm, you know, not with a sign and a stick, but like you guys need to stop doing this. 2023, spring, I get a target letter out of the blue. Haven't heard from the SEC in two years. Over two years, the times we had reached, the times I would call my lawyer every six months or so and be like, have you heard anything from the SEC?

Starting point is 03:37:52 He's like, no. I might call them. Because he went to law school with one of the people who were in my case. You know, this is out of the Atlanta office, which is where I live for many years. At this point, I was living in Miami Beach, had an office and was living part-time in New York City. Again, major airports, all that good stuff. But the SEC where I started, the SEC group was out of Atlanta, which is where I started my first fund. So for whatever reason, they were the ones who kind of still regulated me, I guess.

Starting point is 03:38:30 So over two years go by, every six months or so, for like the first year, my lawyer, I would ask my lawyer to reach out to his law school friend or law school where they worked at the same firm. They knew each other. they were friendly, as they all are. You know, everybody in that industry, and like every criminal defense lawyer is friendly in one way or another with the assistant U.S. attorneys, and they all golf together and then come in and argue in the courtroom. And so it's really a incestuous mix that we're exposed to. But so when he would ask, the first time it was after, you know, after every couple

Starting point is 03:39:11 months, then it was like every six months. But every time he would ask, they would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, just send us updated information. So that's more money. Now I've got to go back for, you know, for the past four weeks and get all my emails, all my statements, all my trades, package those, send those to my lawyers. She's got to bait stamp them and all that. Send those to the SEC. Nothing would happen.

Starting point is 03:39:34 So after a year, just stopped. And this had happened before. Like they had wrapped up their inquiries and just not let me know, not let me know. not let my lawyer know. My lawyer's like, hey, where do we stand on this? They just stop responding. So after a year, we just think it's over and done with. Another year goes by.

Starting point is 03:39:53 All right, yeah, nothing, dead in the water. If anything, maybe a new inquiry, because it's been two years and they're regulators. And I was doing well. I was coming through, well, this is before COVID, but we did well during COVID. When the COVID crash, we actually made money. but in 20 in the spring of 2023 I get a target letter from the SEC not from the DOJ at this point from the SEC saying you're a target. So they escalated it to an investigation. And I was like, these guys haven't been around for over two years.

Starting point is 03:40:29 And suddenly they're saying I'm breaking the law. Like what have they been doing for two years? If I'm so, if I'm breaking the law, why have they not kicked in the door and shut me down? And I'm, you know, I'm still running full speed. So, but it turns out, I guess, unless they think you're actively stealing money and, you know, for a true Ponzi scheme or something like you're going to run off to Russia or North Korea or somewhere with that money, you know, they're not, they're not necessarily going to shut you down until they're ready to like truly prosecute you. So they may let you go. I don't know what the percentage is, but they don't always shut. you down. So they started an investigation on me and right on the heels of that was the DOJ.

Starting point is 03:41:15 And this is, you know, now we're talking criminal. And supposedly their investigations, the SEC is separate from the DOJ, but their investigations were running in parallel. They weren't running in parallel. None of this came out of any, all of this came straight from my Ukraine work, some very powerful of people called some very, very powerful people, some very, very powerful people, called some very powerful people in the U.S. government and said, we need you to find something on this guy. And it's called defanging. We need you to defang this guy. It's like the fangs of a snake.

Starting point is 03:41:57 Take the fangs out of a snake. The snake's harmless. Poisonous snakes anyway. You got your constrictors and your anacontas and all that. but the term serves of we need you to ruin this guy's reputation. So if he blows the whistle, nobody's going to believe him. So brand him a liar, find something on him, convict him, get him to plead, whatever you need to do, do it. Before this guy blows the whistle.

Starting point is 03:42:21 I had no intentions of blowing the whistle. They didn't know that. They just know I was overtly in Ukraine, not overtly saying it on social media or to the common man of like, these guys are stealing, but saying it kind of out loud of like, you guys are stealing. And if the guy walking down the street wants to hear me say that, okay. But so that started the targeting. And so the SEC kicked it off first. And then the DOJ was right on their heels.

Starting point is 03:42:52 And then it's just a shit show of like what, you know, we think that you're doing all this, all this crazy stuff with money. And they never mentioned Ponzi scheme. They actually said in every conversation we ever had and every correspondence we ever had, they actually said, we know you're not stealing any money. And we didn't know what they were doing, what they were coming with. Now I'm hiring more lawyers. I'm hiring former prosecutors.

Starting point is 03:43:21 Ended up with six lawyers total. Different ones on the case at different times. But at any given time, it would be four or five working in some former facet. And so pretty this all goes down pretty quickly. This all, I got that target letter from the SEC in the spring of 2023, about a year after I went to Ukraine and about only a few months after I'd really been protesting because winter had come and like people are freezing to death. And like that's a whole other situation. So they, we don't know what's going to happen. And my lawyers are like, I can't get an answer from anybody.

Starting point is 03:44:03 And then at some point, they, they suggest a reverse proffer. And people probably know this. And I'll try not to kind of regurgitate everything that all your other guests say. But to educate people who are hearing this story that know nothing about the DOJ, Department of Justice. Department of Justice is DOJ Bureau of Prisons, which is a whole other shit show, is full of terrible people, is the BOP. So for those who don't know, I know 99% of the people that watch this, of course they know that. But so the DOJ offered us a reverse proffer. Let me say my case, and oh, it wasn't for my hedge fund.

Starting point is 03:44:46 We did find out they weren't targeting my hedge fund, which had over $100 million in asset center management. They looked at it. They wanted to target it, but they couldn't. because there were too many checks and balances in place. Of all the things that these multi-billion dollar funds do, I had all that infrastructure in place. So I've got, I'm outsourcing the accounting.

Starting point is 03:45:09 I'm outsourcing the brokerage. I'm outsourcing the audits. So I'm not touching anybody's money ever. Like if you are investor of mine and you want money, you send a request directly to the accountant or to the administrator, which is an accountant. And they wire you your money. Like, all I do is make.

Starting point is 03:45:28 the trades. So there's no way for me to steal money. You can thank Bernie Madoff for that. Before Bernie Madoff, it was a whole different story. But after Bernie Madoff, the new regulations came in. So they offer reverse proffer. But they had come after my management company, the company that ran and managed the hedge fund. So when I started that company in 2016, I thought, all right, I want a runway, like any startup, you go to investors and you say, I'm going to build this business and this business could fill in the blank. Nightclubs, it could be restaurants. It could be a lemonade stand.

Starting point is 03:46:06 It could be a tech company. It could be a podcast company. You name it. But I want to raise X amount of money and that'll give us two years. If my math is correct on my spreadsheets and burn rates and all this and projections, that's going to give us two or three years to which. where we can lose money to give us time to get in the market and start our business. And like most startups do in any industry, you lose money for the first.

Starting point is 03:46:37 Really, I think on average, it's three years before you even break even. And then you don't really turn to profit until like year five. That's on average for most startups. I think that's a little tech focus, but on general, you can kind of, if you start a new business, unless you've got a magic wand, you can kind of count on losing money for the, first year or two or three, on average again. Some people go out of business in two years. Some people turn into unicorns and, you know, go from zero to a billion dollar valuation in six months. So you just never know, but those are outliers. Well, the unicorns are outlier.

Starting point is 03:47:16 Bankrupts more common than anything. Most companies just go out of business no matter what the company. But so I had raised a, I had targeted like three million. million dollars for that raise for the management company. So to kind of give you an idea of what that is, if you think of like a mutual fund company like Vanguard or Fidelity or even Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan, those are the management companies. Underneath those companies, you have mutual funds and bond funds and treasuries and all these different instruments that they that they create and the funds that they manage. But on the higher level, it's the vanguards and the Fidelity's. That's what my company was, called High Guard Capital. And that's what they invested in. And that controlled

Starting point is 03:48:09 the hedge fund. And my goal was to have multiple hedge funds and become, you know, the next Goldman Sacks, the next fidelity. But, you know, you start with one thing and then as you make money on that, you get bigger and bigger. We ventured into venture capital a little bit. But the main hedge fund was the big thing. So they couldn't find anything on the hedge fund. So they targeted the management company. So we're talking, I didn't, I ultimately, the number that they finally came up with ended up being like $2.8 million.

Starting point is 03:48:41 And as you probably know, like the numbers these guys come up with are almost like, I don't know, think of a number between one and a zillion. and somebody goes, 30,250,750,743, and they go, done. Let's go after him for that. And I'm not joking. Like, that is not an exaggeration. Like, especially when you talk to some of these Medicare fraud, guys who went in for Medicare fraud, who will admit guilt.

Starting point is 03:49:11 And they're like, yeah, like, this farmer rep paid me $102,000. But like, my restitution is $73,456,000. because every script turned into some other amount, and that's the total that the government went after, just because they could. So they did. Because screw you, you're a bad guy, and we're going to take you down.

Starting point is 03:49:36 And, you know, we know that story, and most of your listeners know that story. But they prosecuted me out of the main... So this is like $2.8 million, total. It's not $28 million. It's not $2.80 million. It's not $2.8 billion. It's $2.8 million, which is no small amount of money, but in the grand scheme of finance, again, we're talking pennies here.

Starting point is 03:50:02 That's a good week of dinners at Goldman Sachs, like in the city. And maybe a few private jet rides, you know, to Amsterdam or somewhere. But the groups that prosecuted me were out of Washington, D.C. This is the A team. This is the dream team from the DOJ. They didn't come out of Atlanta. They didn't come out of Miami. They didn't come out of New York.

Starting point is 03:50:27 They came out of Washington, D.C., where I've never worked, never lived, never had any business whatsoever. But they've got the heavy hitters. This is the group that took down like WorldCom and Enron and the major players. Same with the FBI. The FBI field office out of Washington, D.C., where their most elite agents work, were the ones that came after me. $2.8 million fraud alleged fraud scheme where they admitted on day one no money was missing. So if no money's missing, what's the crime? So we're all ears.

Starting point is 03:51:06 They're like, come up for the reverse proffer and we'll tell you. So we flew up to Washington. And that was I said earlier. Like Washington's always been a great place. When I'm riding, I'm riding in. I think I, did I, did I draw? I drove just because I like road trips. And, you know, passing all the monuments and stuff.

Starting point is 03:51:27 And I'm thinking, I love seeing all this history. And again, a very patriotic guy who's less patriotic at this point. Because I'm thinking, what kind of country do I live in where they're coming after me? What is it? Like, what kind of mistake are they making here? This is stupid. We're going to clear all this up like today in this reverse proffer. But the reverse proffer, as you know, I think, you know, it's a little.

Starting point is 03:51:50 listening exercise. It's not an argument exercise. It's not a negotiation. You're just there to listen to their case. And what a reverse proffer is, again, to tell any of your audience that doesn't know, you go in with the DOJ, with the Department of Justice attorneys, and they tell you all the bad things that they're going to charge, all the crimes that they're going to charge you with, all the ways that they're going to put you behind bars for the maximum amount of time, which in my case was 20 years. So there, we go in and it wasn't like any cool building at the FBI. It was some nondescript building in the middle of Washington, you know, a few blocks from

Starting point is 03:52:30 everything, from the White House and everything. But it was just a rundown office with cubicles and worn out carpet and and upholstery coming off the chairs and the boardroom, like this tired boardroom. and I'm just like, man, I can understand why these people are miserable. Like if I had to come to work here every day, you know, I would be miserable too. But we go in and there are four or five attorneys there, Department of Justice attorneys. I think the FBI agent was there who turned out to be a total piece of shit. And one of the attorneys, this is one of their props, I guess.

Starting point is 03:53:14 And I'm just, I'm just biting my tongue as I go in. And as they start their thing, I'm just, I've got to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. But one of the things, I don't know if they did this with you, but they had a giant stack of, like, legal books. Like when you see when you go to, like, a lawyer's office and they have the whole just bookcase after bookcase of books that are like this thick. They're like twice the thickness of a phone book. They're stacked up like two or three feet. They're like this high. And then, like, at one point that one of the guys.

Starting point is 03:53:49 It's like pat's it. Like, this is what we're, you know, this is what we're going to throw at you kind of thing. And I'm just like, I'm rolling my eyes. And again, I'm like, they don't know anything about my intelligence life. My lawyers don't know anything about my intelligence life. Because I knew that would complicate things. And also I knew my lawyers would probably double my rate. And I've already paid them many hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point.

Starting point is 03:54:15 Because I think we're going to trial. I'm like, whatever they said. we're fighting this. Like, I can't believe I live in a country that's even going to think about prosecuting me. Not because I'm some super government employee or agent or any or officer or anything, but just because I'm an American citizen who's running a legitimate company and making money for, you know, teachers' retirement funds and helping little old ladies and things like this.

Starting point is 03:54:41 And oh, by the way, I just evacuated, you know, 300 women and children from getting their brains blown out in Ukraine. And now they all have happy lives and are well fed and sleeping warm beds every night in Europe in the United States. So anyway, not to not trying to pound myself on the back, but like I'm thinking like I'm, I'm a good guy here. Like what's going on? Why is this happening?

Starting point is 03:55:11 And whatever the reason is, like, let's fix it. So we go in. And I know at this point they're coming after me. I don't know who's behind it yet, but like they're coming. Like they don't offer you. They don't offer you a reverse proper unless they really want to put pressure on you and scare the hell out of you. So we go in and they try their best to scare me.

Starting point is 03:55:34 And they rattled off like 30 different things of all the things I've done. And all of it was a complete and total joke. It was like you switch banks and you had multiple brokerage accounts. and you had this and you had that and you did this. And I was, and I didn't say a word, but I'm just thinking, well, of course I did. Like, that's a good fiduciary. Like you have multiple brokerage accounts because guess what? What was it?

Starting point is 03:56:03 10, 12 years ago, brokers just went out of business overnight. And people's money disappeared and got frozen. So like you need a backup plan. Like all these things, I'm just thinking, you've got nothing, man. this is a joke. This is like beyond laughable. So and turns out like one of the one of the lawyer, one of the prosecutors apparently hated me.

Starting point is 03:56:30 Because I would pause like, this doesn't disclose anything. It was a woman, but I didn't really tell you who she is or anything. But she's the one kind of rattling off everything. And they've got a PowerPoint and all this stuff. And again, I'm just like, well, that's not right.

Starting point is 03:56:47 And that's wrong. I don't know where you're getting that from. And those three things you just said aren't even a crime. So like switching banks is not a crime. But I would stop her every now and there because she's just rattling it off. And I'm like, hold on a second. What did you say? I'm trying to take notes in this.

Starting point is 03:57:05 My lawyers are taking notes because they're not giving us anything. We can't leave with any of this. They're not giving us a copy of the PowerPoint presentation. They just expect us to absorb all these things. and they tell you, I guess, about like 80%, 90% of what they're going to hit you with. And they hold back, like, maybe my lawyer said they just hold back some. They're going to scare you with the biggest guns. They're going to show you their biggest guns.

Starting point is 03:57:31 I don't know if they did or not. But their biggest guns were slingshots you make out of a, you know, in study hall with paper clips in a rubber band. They had nothing. And I walked out of there smiling. And I mean, I literally did this when I walked out. We walked out and I've never done this before my life. But I was like, guys, we got nothing to worry about. I was like, this is going to be fun.

Starting point is 03:57:57 We're going to, I know these guys are coming at this point. So I'm thinking, man, we're going to embarrass these guys. Like, I'm going to make them lose their job. If they're going to target me like this. And I still don't know why at this point. They're going to target me like, who the hell they think they are? Like, I'm a good guy. I haven't done anything wrong.

Starting point is 03:58:17 And they kind of just proved my case for me and the reverse proffer. Like of all the things that I've done right, everything, 99% of what they said up there, we're going to use their words to show that that was actually what you're supposed to do when you run a hedge fund. These people don't know jack's shit about a hedge fund. They just know how to put scalps on the wall and have to target whoever they target. It's not just they're going after fraud. They're not necessarily going after hedge fund fraud. especially derivatives trading, which again is a small little niche of the industry.

Starting point is 03:58:50 So I'm like, we have nothing to worry about here. And both of my lawyers, both former prosecutors were like, not so fast. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, they said this and they said that and they said this. And I was like, no, all that's fine. Like I have solid answers for all that stuff. And my lawyers knew most of everything, but they didn't know. everything about everything just because I didn't, you know, we, there's just so many moving parts

Starting point is 03:59:20 and running a hedge fund. But, you know, I'm happy to clue them in on everything, whatever, whatever they felt like they were missing. Because again, nothing to hide. And we went and had a drink like at a hotel, you know, down the street, or maybe back at their hotel. And by the time we were done with that drink, they were like, we need to settle this. And I, I was like, you're out of your mind. No way. And they're like, well, here's what you're going to do. And then they gave me the game plan, you know, because they're both former prosecutors.

Starting point is 03:59:54 They know the game plan. They've run the game plan. They help write the game plan. And they're going to spin it this way and they're going to make you look bad. And another thing the DOJ did, they, they, it's called, not jurisdiction shopped, but that may be a district shop, something like that. my they prosecuted me out of so the world the country is divided into into federal districts as obviously you know but for the people listening that don't they didn't prosecute me out of

Starting point is 04:00:26 new york they didn't prosecute me out of miami or atlanta or even mississippi where i was born and raised they prosecuted me out of the southern district of ohio again like washington where i've never lived never worked never i've been to oh Ohio State just to see the campus. That was kind of Columbus, Ohio. That was my extent of experience in Ohio, basically. But yet my case came out of Ohio. And the reason they did it was because the Southern District was notorious for punishing

Starting point is 04:00:58 and prosecuting white collar defendants. So that was my jurisdiction. And as it turns out, Citibank where I banked and all my funds banked, who cut me off immediately after I pled or very soon after I pled, as did my black card, my credit cards, all my other banks, my brokerage accounts, as they do, you know, maybe with everybody, but they certainly did with me. Citibank had servers, computer servers in that district. So because money had moved through those servers, that allowed that to be the

Starting point is 04:01:42 district. So go figure. Turned out to be sort of a blessing. I got a little lucky. My judge turned out to be great. But the time that drink was over, they were like, you need to plead and here's how they're going to spin it. And I still didn't believe it. I was like, I live in a country where justice prevails and the innocent don't go to jail and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we're going to fight this. And I've got great lawyers and you guys are great lawyers and don't sell yourself short. and we go back like I now left Washington the next day thinking like we're going to fight this but still thinking like these guys really want to settle and like if they really want to settle that's not a good thing like I figured they would come out of there being gung ho to fight

Starting point is 04:02:26 and I think part of it too I learned this kind of in camp of like just the whole machine of especially coming no disrespect to these lawyers but coming from being former prosecutors they're pre-wired to settle. So in most lawyers in cases, in financial cases and in wire fraud cases, I think everybody just kind of wants to settle because that's the easy thing to do. The government absolutely wants to settle. There's data out the ass of if like 90s, this number's not right, but it's close, like 97% of all cases settle.

Starting point is 04:03:03 And if like 2% change their mind, if that number, dropped to only like 95%, the whole system would grind to a halt because they can't hold it. The system, the number of judges, the number of prosecutors, they can't absorb that just a few more people that say, no, I want to go to court. As long as it takes to go to court already, you know, it would just grind to a halt and they'd be like, your court date seven years from now. So they want settles, you know, and that keeps the machine running. So we go back, I go back to, I guess I was in Florida at that time.

Starting point is 04:03:47 They go back to Atlanta. And at some point in this, this is in the summer of 2023. At some point in this, I learn who's behind it. And I'm like, oh, shit, I'm fucked. but I'm a fighter so let's fight it then muller's like look we'll fight it we'll take your money you know and we'll do the best job we can but here's what they're going to do and you're going to be this one I mentioned Columbus or Ohio earlier like they're going to see it was this rich white straight fat cat Wall Street asshole hedge fund manager

Starting point is 04:04:41 who's hurting everybody in the world because you're a rich white fat cat hedge fund manager because Wall Street guys are all villains. That's the picture they're going to paint. And they're going to be talking to a jury in Columbus, Ohio. And you're not going to get many hedge fund managers on that jury because there aren't any in Ohio or there aren't very many in Ohio. And the ones that are, they're going to strike from the jury immediately. So you're going to be talking to.

Starting point is 04:05:12 people that have never even heard the term hedge fund who are just, you know, good middle American, God-fearing Americans who get up and go to their normal jobs, non-financial world, derivatives where the language is Greek and complex even to people, other people that work on Wall Street. These are bus drivers and cafeteria workers and business owners, sure, and very smart people potentially, but people that don't know what you do. And so when the government stands up and say you've got an offshore fund, they're going to immediately think there's something wrong with that, even though that is, you have to have an offshore fund to accept money from nonprofits and from investors outside of the country. So it's something that every hedge fund does. Anyway, like a dozen things like

Starting point is 04:06:01 that that can sound very suspicious or nefarious, but are just the normal course of business and actually required to not break the law, to stay legal. So, you know, all this, like, this is how they're going to spin it. This is how they're going to spin it. And I'm like, and I've studied behavioral psychology. So I'm like I, and I'm like, I know a little bit of how people work. I know how their minds work or I've studied that. I've done the research on it.

Starting point is 04:06:30 I've been training for, you know, whatever it was, 15, 20 years at this point of how to manipulate people and how to get people to do what you want. And I was like, their game plan is pretty good. And my lawyers are like, yeah, they've been working on it for 100 years, you know, since the modern justice system was really created. So they're experts at it. That's what they're trained for. And I'm like, I'll testify.

Starting point is 04:07:02 And they're like, if you testify, they're going to make you look like you killed Abraham Lincoln and JFK. And that you're stealing baby. And, you know, every, like, no, you can't testify. So I found out who was behind it. These guys are chirping in my ear, how there's no way you can fight the system. One of my lawyers, who was not one of the two that went up to Washington with me, but he said this at some point in the mix.

Starting point is 04:07:30 And I don't like cussing any more than I have to, even though I was a sailor and Wall Street trader, which gives me allowance. And it's hard not to cuss every other. the breath. But one of my lawyers said, look, Mike, when you fight the justice system, or no, he didn't say when you fight, he said, when the justice system of the most powerful country in the world wants to fuck you, you're going to get fucked. It's just a matter of how bad it's going to be. And again, when he told me that, it was before the reverse proffer and before everything, like kind of really went down before I found out who was behind it.

Starting point is 04:08:11 I was like, no way. I can't believe that. I can't believe I've fought for this country. I've taken a bullet for this country. You know, I put my life on the line for this country for decades and sacrificed a lot of I'm single. I've never been married. I don't have any kids. I don't have cool tattoos that I would have like, you know, all this little stuff, big stuff.

Starting point is 04:08:41 that I've done because I absolutely wanted to do it, but all the things that I could have done had I not chosen to devote my life to this country. I can't believe in a country who would not turn their back on one who served because they didn't know my years in intelligence. They knew I was a veteran. They knew I'd go on the Naval Academy, but didn't know any of the other parts, would just that they would do to an American period. Like, we don't live in a country where they turn,

Starting point is 04:09:14 where the justice system turns on its own citizens. That's what they do in the countries that I'm trying to take down, that I'm trying to thwart, that I'm trying to get regime changes in. That's what the bad guys do. It's not what Americans do. Well, yes, it is. And that's what you know. And that's what most people listening to this know.

Starting point is 04:09:35 And that's what a lot of people that have, will hear your podcast for the first time because of me are now hearing. And the problem with an hour after this podcast ends or an hour after they turn it off is they're going to forget about it. So we could say the most eloquent thing about how corrupt the system is and how bad the system is and not even going into the BOP, which is a whole other pit of vipers and cesspool. But how much. much the system needs to be changed, how they target anybody that they want, et cetera, et cetera, the things you've heard, but how just really corrupt a system is and how much of an overhaul

Starting point is 04:10:20 it needs. And hopefully Trump's administration has taken some strides to do those things. I think, you know, hiring, I think is the assistant BOP who's actually a convicted felon. That's probably a pretty good start because he's been there, done that. but nobody outside the justice system knows how the system operates and they don't want to because they figure, well, if the government's going after, yeah, if the cops are going after and the justice farmer is going after anybody, they probably did something bad because we live in America and justice prevails and you're innocent until proven guilty.

Starting point is 04:10:56 And you and I both know that's not true at all. Like I was guilty the day that I got that target letter. Now I've got to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours in the stress and the chaos and all that. That thankfully the Stormcraft training helped me kind of navigating it through my intelligence training. But it didn't help my family. You know, all the stress and worry that was thrown on them when they found out about this. And I kept everything from them until even when I pled, nobody knew that I pled. this wasn't a thing because my whole life had been in the shadows except for, you know, my overt life and running a hedge fund.

Starting point is 04:11:38 So even when I pled guilty and when I was getting investigated as quickly as it went, I thought, all right, I'll go to Ohio and I'll plead, which I finally decided to do. I'll come back to that in a second. I'll try to not keep you for 10 more hours. when the DOJ targeted my they didn't target but they threatened to target my family so my mom has passed away at this point my dad died when I was 20 so when I was in when I was in Annapolis so my mom died in 2022 early 22 which is part of the reason why I kind of was overt and out in the public in Ukraine even though I was going to the front lines you know I was like I'm my sister just can handle it. But I wouldn't want to worry my mom with it. So I probably would have stayed covert

Starting point is 04:12:29 and my mom's still been alive. But she had a stroke and pass, unfortunately. And that was, you know, it was a surprise. But all the more reason to go out and help people who can't help themselves. So when Ukraine happened, you know, which was a huge deal at the time, and it still is to an effect, but it's been put on the world's back burner. But back on point, I found out who was behind it they threatened to target my sisters not in anything that I was doing but just in general

Starting point is 04:13:04 they're like we're fine your sister does this your other sister does that one's kind of in the public eye we'll find something you know we can or you know we can find something we can spin and you know we've done it before

Starting point is 04:13:19 because your lawyers have told you and they threaten to go after some of my co-volunteers that had nothing to do with any of my covert stuff, nothing to do with anything in the intelligence community or intelligence world, just people trying to help other people who needed help. Yeah, we're going to go after them too. Not just overly, this is all kind of back channel type conversations and stuff. And I'm like, well, that's not good. And of course they're going to threaten. Like, you hear that. Like, everybody that I was in,

Starting point is 04:13:50 every white collar guy I know anyway, that fought it, you know, or that, you know, that, you even if they took plea deals, their families were threatened to. Some of them, if they fought it, they went after. Like one guy I was in with, his wife was in another prison because he fought it. If he had just taken the police, she would have been fine. But they were like, you haven't done anything wrong. She said, fight it. Next thing you know, she's indicted to.

Starting point is 04:14:16 So it happens. And, you know, my lawyers are like, you cannot win this. And you're going to, if you fight it, you're going to go to jail. for many, many years. If you plead, maybe, you know, we can keep that on the lower end. And then again, I'm just like, F this, F this. There's no way. There's no way.

Starting point is 04:14:35 And then finally one of my lawyers, and I'll never say who, which one. But he goes, he said, Mike, you know they're going to spin this. However they want to spin it to make you look like you killed JFK and that you started COVID. and that, you know, all, they can say whatever they want. And it's up to us to prove that you didn't do these things. And I was like, I can't believe that they would do that. He goes, and he said if they, and if they don't think that they have enough, they'll just make some stuff up to throw it in there.

Starting point is 04:15:10 And I was like, no freaking way. He goes, Mike, I've done it. I know they do it. That was my job. That's why I was good at what I do. And he didn't say it in a way that, like, we always made up, they always made up stuff against people. But when people above you are like, find something on this guy.

Starting point is 04:15:29 And if you don't find something, we'll find somebody who will find something. Because you've got to realize, and people listening need to realize the Department of Justice and all of these different departments are Bureau of Prison, et cetera, FBI, they're all bureaucracies. And the number one rule in a bureaucracy is don't do anything to get fired. Like, don't do anything to rock the boat. and then it becomes like, okay, what do I need to do not to serve justice, but to get promoted? Because that's more important to me. I need to get promoted.

Starting point is 04:16:05 I need to move up on this ladder. I need to by this age or this tenure of my career. And then, you know, for the DOJ, it's, I need to be this by year two. I need to be this by year five. And then I'll go out in private practice and start defending these guys. start making, you know, a few million dollars a year as a defense lawyer. And they do. And they do both. They follow that trajectory and then they do make that money because guys like you and me hire them because they know the game plan. And to be able to do that, if they need to, they will

Starting point is 04:16:40 make stuff up, which they certainly did in my case. And unfortunately, so did the FBI in my case. the only people who've been decent in this whole thing have been my probation people since I've been on supervised release. I've got a very good probation officer. But so when they targeted, when they threatened to target my family compounded with all this other stuff and then, you know, the going to trial

Starting point is 04:17:10 and you know the penalty that happens most of the time. Like if you fight it and lose, you're not going to prison for two years, you're going to prison for like 12. You get tax. You get penalized for fighting it because F you for fighting it and not just taking the plea deal. So I took a plea. It was hard, hard, hard, I think I made that very evident. But to protect these people and knowing all that I knew and I learned from the intelligence, who was behind it, the fact that it was basically unwinnable. And the money that was going to be involved in the time, my business was cooked. You know, as soon as my investors found out that I was under investigation, which nobody knew at that point, I wasn't under obligation to disclose it to the investors.

Starting point is 04:18:00 As soon as they, because they never indicted me. Like they never shut down my business. They never indicted me. No cop cars or FBI agents outside my house. Nothing like that ever. They just wanted to brand me as a liar. so if I blew the whistle they could say that

Starting point is 04:18:19 oh well this guy's a liar he's a convicted felon of like who's listening to him so there was no need for the indictment and the kicking in the doors and all that stuff and you know first time offender non-violent and all the volunteer work I had done so I finally

Starting point is 04:18:35 begrudgingly decided to take the plea and this is you know it just goes from kind of bad to worse and just another bite of the shit sandwich on there and I'll run through this as quick as possible. But like when I pled, you know, the point system for everybody out there, when you, when they're racking up felonies to throw at you in the financial world anyway, there's a, there's just a matrix. There's a chart. And every little thing that they can think

Starting point is 04:19:03 of is like two points or four points. So all the, you used a computer. So that's two points. And it was over a million dollars. So that's 16 points. And it was this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah. all these little nitpicky things. When I pled, there was no negotiation. They just strong-armed me on that. Because I was like, here's what you're going to say, because I have been through many negotiations and learned all those tactics from in the intelligence community.

Starting point is 04:19:30 And then certainly in the Wall Street world, like so in my mind, I mean, I think I'm a really, really good negotiator. And I've got a proven track record of kind of being a very solid negotiator. Again, that's why I think like I could, probably help expedite this whole Ukrainian-Russian thing pretty quickly, relatively quickly quickly because nothing moves quickly over there. But, and, you know, was kind of thinking that in the whole run-up to all of this happening and maybe something could happen on the other side of all of this.

Starting point is 04:20:03 But so I'm thinking we're going to negotiate this. And my lawyers are real quick like, this isn't a negotiation. We can ask them and kind of try to, you know, elbow in the ribs. come on like this isn't a big deal it was you know two million dollars or whatever um so eventually the points that i pled to whatever the points totaled equaled the and they agreed to their ranges as again you know but on these points there do you remember what the ranges are like from three years minimum to the they're all recommendations so the judge for people who don't know, there's just a chart. It's like an Excel spreadsheet. It's got the number, the points on the

Starting point is 04:20:49 side, and then out beside it are columns, first time offender, second time offender, third time offender, all the way. And whatever your points, you just scroll across and the judges, it gives a judge, the judge can do whatever you want. He can give you a bare minimum sentence or he can max you out. If he doesn't like you or if you come in and try to be a smart ass or say, you know, know, anything, he can give you the maximum. He's not bound by any of this, but the, that spreadsheet gives him or her a pretty good guideline of the sentencing range. So, and the ranges, if I remember correctly, I want to say they're like three or five years. That may be too broad. But, so the minimum for me, and the justice, they did agree to this. This was in right.

Starting point is 04:21:43 writing, thankfully, they did agree to the minimum, whatever my range was. So if it was from like two years to five years, they didn't come into court going, you need to send him for five years. They came in and saying, yeah, we're okay with two years. Well, my number equated to two years and nine months. So 2.75 years. So a little bit, let's call it three years. And I thought, all right, well, I've done enough good.

Starting point is 04:22:13 things in my life from the Naval Academy to all the way to Ukraine to coming out to leaving the Naval Academy taking care of my mom, saving my business. When my mom was ill later in her life, I put my whole career, intelligence and hedge fund on the back burner, came back to Mississippi for several months to help take care of her, help take some stress off of my sister who lived in my hometown, and just be there to be a, you know, good son and a decent human being for the person I love the most on the planet. You know, my mother. who was not healthy. The stroke was a surprise that ultimately killed her,

Starting point is 04:22:48 but she wasn't healthy for several years leading up to that. And so, you know, all these things, I'm like, okay, you know, and my rose-colored, I'm still trying to squint through some rose-colored glasses on all this. And I think, all right, I can turn, I can turn 2.75 years into zero. I think I can do that. And my lawyer's like, you're going to jail for, like, At least 2.5 years. At least 2.5 years.

Starting point is 04:23:17 You need to get ready for that. You need to get you head right. And I was like, no way. And so, again, telling you what, of course, you already know, once you plead, before it goes, I may have my memory wrong in this. I think maybe even before you go to, because you sign a plea agreement, and then at some point later you go to court and actually stand before the judge and plea. Yep, and then you go back for sentencing after that.

Starting point is 04:23:46 Right. So for me, that was six months later. And when does the PSR start? Right, in between the guilty plea and the sentencing. Of the plea in person. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 04:24:00 So that's when the shit hit the fan in my life. When I pled, again, I drive up to Columbus, Ohio and, you know, kind of slink into court by myself, no family, no support system. I'm again, I'm single. My lawyer, one of my lawyers was there, I assume. I can't even remember. But go in and plead. And then I'm driving across from Ohio to see a buddy in North Carolina. And then I guess I was heading back to Florida.

Starting point is 04:24:30 I can't even remember. Because I'm a nomad at this time. When COVID hit New York, I gave up my apartment in New York and was just a nomad. I was in Europe for most of the time. again, Ukrainian war. But when I was in the States, I would just stay in hotels and stay in, you know, extended stay hotels. In Florida, it has notoriously cheap hotels, you know, because of all the vacationers and

Starting point is 04:24:56 stuff. So kind of in the offseason, they're very cheap. So anyway, my phone starts blowing up and, you know, people start finding out. I haven't told anybody. Well, come to find out, because I'll forget to say this later. I think it was at this point. the FBI agent who had interviewed dozens. I don't even know how many people,

Starting point is 04:25:18 dozens of people. I've tried to get FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests. They've shut me down on those. And one of the, that's the whole other story. I won't bore you with in this, but one of them came back and said,

Starting point is 04:25:32 it's going to take us seven and a half years to fill this FOIA request. For this case that lasted less than a year, and was for like $2.8 million, seven and a half years. And I'm like, this is another reason why this is like a huge F you to Michael Wayne because this is what they were going for, you know, is to target me, make up stuff against me, effectively frame me, take me down, and then cover up the truth of this by saying things like, it's going to take seven and a half years.

Starting point is 04:26:08 You think in seven and a half years I'm going to actually receive anything? Of course not. I received something else from another department. I can't remember which department because I put in FOIA requests to everybody, FBI, DOJ, SEC, BOP as soon as I got out. I haven't gotten anything from anybody. I got a letter about a week ago, actually, that said, hey, it's been a year. There's an email. It's been a year since you put in your FOIA request over a year.

Starting point is 04:26:39 It's been like 14 months or something. Are you still interested in getting that information? If so, email this email address, and it wasn't the email address that it came from. And I'm thinking, are you kidding me? That's like, you know, that's like being on hold with AT&T or something for like, you know, a day. And then they come on and go, hey, are you still good to be on hold or don't you really want to hang up right now? Because you can hang up if you want to. Otherwise, you're going to be back on hold.

Starting point is 04:27:11 And you're going, okay, I guess I'm done, click. I was like, no, of course I still want this stuff. So they leak the press release about your arrestor? So, yes. So as you know, and as we all know who've been through this, when I pled guilty, like, as I'm walking out of the courtroom, there's a press release. By the DOJ and or SEC saying a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. Nobody said Ponzi scheme. And this reverse proffer, when I walked, this is, I don't know if there are transcripts of this or not.

Starting point is 04:27:48 I got transcripts of my plea, my, when I was sentenced, my sentencing hearing. Because a judge, like, made a whole speech of what a great guy I was. I thought he was going to let me off. He didn't. But I'll get to that in a second. But when I went to the reverse proffer, the first thing that the lady who hated me, I guess, the most or at all, said, we know you didn't steal any money. We know all the money's accounted for.

Starting point is 04:28:18 So that's not what we're here, but we don't care. Let me tell you why you're going down. Not in so many words. She did say, we know you haven't stolen any money. We know that all the money is accounted for, but you know, you're still going down. So then they proceeded to make a laughable case that my lawyers didn't think was so laughable just because the way they spend it and everything.

Starting point is 04:28:42 We've already talked about that. So in all of this, my entire case, entire investigation, whatever you want to call it, nobody ever said hedge fund or excuse me, nobody ever said Ponzi scheme. And they put that in the press release. That was the press release. So I'm halfway across Ohio or West Virginia or somewhere driving east. And my phone starts blowing up from people who don't call me. both of my sisters back to back voicemail what she calling me now voicemail one of my best friends

Starting point is 04:29:17 who knew this who who didn't know about the DOJ but knew the SEC was was knocking around because he had been on my board um so they interviewed him um of course he had nothing but good things to say everybody nobody had anything bad to say i'll tell you what they what what i ultimately pled for in a second. So my phone starts blowing up. It's about four or five people. And that was it. But that was enough. So I started listening to the messages. And they're all like, so my buddy and his wife, who's now one of my good friends too, they both independently call me. And they're like, man, I just heard like, I'm so sorry. Please give me a call. Let me know what you need. My sisters call me. And they're both individually. They're not together. Like one's in New York, one's in

Starting point is 04:30:03 Mississippi at the time, still is. And they're freaking out, dude. I've never heard them sound like that before in my life. They were calling like they were calling someone who was on the ledge of the Empire State building about to jump. Like that's the, they were, and trying to talk that person off. They were crying, Mike, just please call me back. Please call me back.

Starting point is 04:30:31 Whatever's happening. You know, it's not. that bad. And I'm just like, oh my God. Like, first of all, how do they even know this? The FBI agent forwarded it to everybody that he could think of, which did not include my sisters. Maybe my friend, my friend in, that was on, that had been been on my board. That's how I found out that the FBI agent had done it. But he has sent this thing out to dozens of people. and in a blatant attack to just ruin my reputation, to get it out there that I'm now going to be,

Starting point is 04:31:08 you're not really a convicted felon until you get sentenced, but that I had pled guilty to one felony count of wire fraud because wire fraud is just a catch-off or any sort of fraud. Yeah, anyone could get charged with that. And that's the simplest thing to charge. And again, it had nothing to do with actually wiring money. It's like postal fraud or whatever. It's like if you've ever sent a mail, a piece of mail, like they could charge you for postal fraud, I guess.

Starting point is 04:31:33 But so I'm like, well, shit, the cat's out of the bag, obviously. But I didn't know how much. And I just assume maybe only those people know for whatever. Or maybe only those people that the FBI agent emailed serve no purpose of justice whatsoever. Like, and that's the big thing, even in my pardon petition of like, here are all the things that all these bad people did just to get promoted. and basically just because they're attack dogs. When the master says sick them, they sick them. They don't give a shit.

Starting point is 04:32:05 If you're guilty, you're innocent, they just know they got to take you down and they need a scalp on the wall because that's what they've been told to do. And if they don't do it, maybe they're probably not going to get fired, but maybe they get shifted from Washington, D.C. to the Netherlands of any place they don't want to go.

Starting point is 04:32:27 I don't want to name a terrible city. because I don't want to get, have anyone in those cities that I may know get mad at me, but a place that they don't want to live or work, right? That's not Washington. That's not as fun and metropolitan and cultural as Washington, D.C. And that's what happens. You know, if they don't do the master's bidding,

Starting point is 04:32:48 then that's what happens. And they certainly don't get promoted. So in some small way, I think they're very corrupt people. people and just take people down just to take people down. They take people down because that's their job, but they sort of maybe take pleasure in it. And they don't care about the repercussions, and they don't care about the consequences, and they don't care about justice, which is the main thing that everybody, every single person in the FBI and every single person that works for

Starting point is 04:33:18 the Department of Justice should care about justice and serving justice. Even in the face of your boss telling you to defang this guy. Put some more scalps on the wall. You've got a quota, damn it. And we need you to hit your quota. So find some more criminals because they're out there. And if you can't find them, invent some. Because they're probably criminals.

Starting point is 04:33:41 We just haven't caught them yet. So we go to the PSR. I am telling my lawyers the whole time, you know, ask for zero. Ask for zero. We're going to try to get probation. And of course, after, I don't know if this happened to you, but I think it's very common that they backdoored me. The, they, they, so two years and nine months turned into six and a half years.

Starting point is 04:34:04 They added all these other incentives or other points to the, to that spreadsheet. To the PSR. And the group or person or investigator, if you want to call them that that does the PSRs, they're, they're not even lawyers. Like there, as I learned this, they're, I'm not even sure. who they work for, if they work for the BOP or the DOJ. But the DOJ basically handed them a list and said, add these things, add these enhancements to his, to the plea deal or to the, to the recommendation to the judge, sentencing guidelines, whatever it's all labeled. So less than three years turns into a six and a half year minimum. It was like six and a half years to nine years or something like that.

Starting point is 04:34:57 But again, they agreed to the low end of the minimum. So I'm looking at six and a six and a half years now. And again, I'm furious. Multiple times through this whole process, I learned something new. And just, I'm just like, I can't believe this happening. This is, this is beyond ridiculous. And this is another one. And I said, if I knew it was going to be six and a half years, I never would have pled guilty.

Starting point is 04:35:19 We would, we would be fighting this. Because you think just logically, six and a half years, even if we go in and show a remarkable civil servant and humanitarian, it's not going to turn into zero, because that's just asking for too much. And my lawyer's like, you'll be lucky to get five. You know, anything at five or lower, you should, you know, be doing backhand springs out of the courtroom in happiness. And I was like, I still can't believe this.

Starting point is 04:35:53 I was like, we're still asking for zero. I don't give a shit of this. 16 years, we're still asking for zero. And the night before we turned in the PSR, when we had to finalize it and submit it to that investigator the next day, I said, okay, change zero to six months. And so he did. And he was like, because his first draft was like five and a half years or something like that. And I was like, no way. I told you zero.

Starting point is 04:36:26 I was kind of irritated at my lawyer, my main lawyer. And so the PSR, our rebuttal to the PSR, the PSR is its own entity. So they interview you and they do all this and they create their own thing. The woman who did mine was in Florida. I'm not sure where she was, honestly. I was living in Florida at the time. She had no idea what she was doing. She had no idea about finance.

Starting point is 04:36:52 She had no, she actually referred to me as a woman at one point. So she's just cutting and pasting from old PSRs, you know, just half-ass doing your job as 90% of the people that work in any of these jobs do, unfortunately. And we pay the price for that, unfortunately. The further you get down the chain, the less people actually work. The people up the chain, the prosecutors and the FBI agents seem to, in my experience, be more concerned. concerned about not screwing up and getting promotions than they are about serving justice. And then the further you get down the chain to like the PSR, probation Bureau of Prisons,

Starting point is 04:37:41 it's just, it feels to, and again, this is just my experience. It's more about how little, what's the smallest amount of work I can do and not get fired? So then you get PSRs. that are gibberish and make no sense.

Starting point is 04:37:58 You get PSRs that have refer to the male defendant as a woman with the wrong last name, like all these things. And it's just, you know, every time the phone rang, every time I got an email for my lawyer, it's like, all right, here's going to be another big bite of a giant shit sandwich. Because it never, that's just what it was. Every time, every piece of information was another piece of bad news. So you kind of think maybe, or I maybe naively thought when I pled, we're towards the end of it. No.

Starting point is 04:38:32 And I knew, you know, the prison was a possibility. But even before then, I was like, okay, we've all agreed on this. We're all kind of on the same team now. Their job is done. The DOJ's job is done. The FBI's job is done. They've won. And I said that multiple times.

Starting point is 04:38:46 I was to my lawyer, I was like, why do they keep hammering this? They've won to take the victory. Like, why does two? Two and three quarters years need to turn into six and a half years. And I don't even think that had anything to do with the motivation of defangging me. I just think it had to do with that's just what they do. Like, because fuck you. You just play guilty.

Starting point is 04:39:10 And you've seen this. And anybody that's actually been to prison, and I don't want to spend two more hours talking about the whole prison experience. But the day you plead guilty, you are less than human. You are, in my experience of going to a camp, which was minimum security, I never saw bars. I never saw handcuffs. I never got strip searched. It was still a really shitty place, full of the dumbest, laziest, sadistic people that you could put in a working environment who were all the CEOs and the warden and the case managers.

Starting point is 04:39:49 And you name it. The education people for the most. part, and you have some outliers there. You had a few good people that I hope don't get too corrupted by the terribleness of everybody else. But it's in their mind, we are stray dogs. And so my thought of most people, you can react to a stray dog walking out of the street in three ways, generally. You can feed it. And you got the one out of a hundred person that will and maybe take care of it and help it. You got 90 people of 100 that are just going to ignore it.

Starting point is 04:40:32 Like, fuck that dog, you know, screw him. He's just stray dog. I'm not going to help that dog. And he's taken up to me, me spending half a second looking at it was half a second. I didn't, now I'm mad at this dog because he took half a second of my life. And then you have 10 of those, nine of those people or whatever, whatever. numbers remaining, that will actively go try to beat the dog. So that's the same, that's my experience kind of going in prison.

Starting point is 04:41:03 That's my prison experience in a nutshell. Once I finally got there, I was sentenced to answer your question to a year and a day. The prosecution asked for six and a half years. Let me circle back to the judge in a second. But my prison experience to jump ahead a bit was basically they treated us all like stray dogs. They just didn't give a flying shit about any of us. And I was at a camp, man. This is where, like, the camps are designed for re-entry into society.

Starting point is 04:41:35 The whole purpose of the camp, because they can let anybody out from any level of camp. You can, and I'm not sure if you step down, but a lot, most of the guys in my prison, my camp, were stepped down from higher level security. Which camp were you at? I was at Montgomery, FBI federal prison camp, Montgomery. Okay. Yeah, I went from a low to a camp. Okay. So, but these are guys coming from higher level security.

Starting point is 04:42:02 A lot of drug charges, a lot of gun charges, a lot of meth, you know. But a lot of these guys have been in prison for quite a while. So they need help thinking about getting back into society. You've been behind bars in some capacity for 10 years or so. Like, you need a little guidance. of what to expect and a little help. And that's what the camps are really supposed to be for. They are not in any way, shape, or form.

Starting point is 04:42:30 So, yeah, it's just lazy, terrible people. The camp I was in would have been awesome if it wasn't for the people working there and the fact that the people working there had done absolutely nothing to keep the camp up. So it was like going to a summer camp that hadn't been maintained for 15 years. beautiful campus. It's like a college campus. It's on a military base. It's on the, I guess, Montgomery Air Force Base.

Starting point is 04:42:59 It's just the name of the, I don't think the Air Force Base has a specific name. I may be wrong on that. But it's off in the corner on the base. Overlooking golf course on one side, river on a bluff, like 100 feet, overlooking the river on another side. The other two sides are just buildings and then, you know, the free world. You could walk off. You didn't, we had no fences.

Starting point is 04:43:20 anything. You would, you know, pay for that if you did. They would find you quickly. But it could have been a great place for rehabilitation for people who needed it. For the white collar guys like me and there are only maybe 20 of guys there, the whole camp is supposed to be white collar. There are like 20 of us out of 750. Everybody else had worked their way down from higher level. And, you know, there are some straight up criminals there who were doing more crime in prison than they were doing on the outside and probably making more money in prison. Again, that's maybe a whole other episode. And it's not another episode because you guys talk about it in all your other episodes because it's the same in every prison.

Starting point is 04:44:04 I had a bunkmate that was scamming people going on dates like online or whatever and scamming older women. Jeez, really. There's so many scams and it's at the camp. That was at the camp. That was at the camp. I mean, you would see it at the low, of course, and higher security, but at the camp, yeah, because So, I mean, you could have 10 years on your sentence and get to a camp. Yeah. Anything 10 or under, right? Say you got 15 years, you work down to 10. Are you really rehabilitated at that point, too?

Starting point is 04:44:32 Especially if you've done like a $200 million fraud or something. Yeah. So I've seen a lot. It's crazy. Yeah. You got some great stories to tell. And that's one good thing about this podcast. It's like there's so many stories that just never get told outside of the community.

Starting point is 04:44:49 You know, the quote unquote, justice impacted community. I'm in a few support groups where people talk about things like that. But yeah, outside. And that's what I was saying earlier of the world needs to know, but has no idea and just doesn't care. And people have their own lives and own priorities and things like that. So everybody doesn't suddenly need to, I don't expect the world to suddenly become justice

Starting point is 04:45:13 advocates, but any kind of exposure of like, these guys are really getting screwed. and one commonality I had with everybody in the camp and everybody in prison was even the guys who were like, oh, yeah, I was totally guilty, still got screwed in some respect by the system. So, and that was in some way, I thought I was the only one. So to find out that everybody got screwed, I wasn't happy about that because that means, you know, I'm never happy when something bad happens to somebody else, unless they're trying to kill me. but I was like, well, at least I'm in it. We're all in this together to some extent.

Starting point is 04:45:51 Like we're kind of bonded in a small way because we all got screwed by the system. But I'll come back to my trial because I do want to say, I want to give a shout out to judge, to my judge. He did me a solid. So we go to the sentencing hearing and two of my investors in my management company who were two great friends of mine who I invited friends. and family who could afford it to invest in this company to make them all rich. Like I had high expectations of this and we were going to be rich. The company was valued at $70 million until the Fed stepped in and quickly made that value zero.

Starting point is 04:46:33 And now it's a dead company. Hedge fund. They never shut down my hedge fund. Here's another interesting fact. Nobody ever shut me down. Nobody ever seized anything of my own, of my possessions. Nobody seized anything of the hedge fund. Everything was going until the day that I shut it down because I knew that I was going to prison.

Starting point is 04:46:54 So if somebody's committed fraud for a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme, as the headline said, the DOJ press release said that the FBI so kindly distributed to dozens or hundreds of people, why would you let this guy keep managing money? Why wouldn't you seize everything that he has, especially when it's other people's money that are still sitting in those accounts. They didn't do any of that. Again, all these little things that kind of show maybe there's more to this than meets the eye when the justice system goes after somebody.

Starting point is 04:47:29 And they call him a fraudster. They call him a Ponzi schemer, but they don't stop him from running his business. He just stops it on December 31st of 2023 because I knew I was going to prison and probably going to prison in 20. 24. So I just wrapped it up at the end of the year, redeemed everybody, sent all their money back. They were worried sick because they found out from the FBI agent that I had pled guilty. So now everybody's like, where the fuck's my money, you know, as they should have been, as I would have been. It's like it's coming. We, you know, we got to wrap up the end of the year, just like normal, any kind of redemption.

Starting point is 04:48:07 And for a hedge fund, there's such big investments. Like my minimum investment was a million dollars. So these are all, this is all pretty sizable chunks of money. You got to make sure you cross all your T's and dot all your eyes again. So you don't try to solve one problem and create two more by missing some regulation or something and get sued by them or the SEC comes back into the picture, whatever it may be. So everybody got their money back. Everybody in the hedge fund made money. So they ultimately, I think still, you know, think fondly of me, other than,

Starting point is 04:48:42 the fact that they'll never do business with me again because I'm a convicted felon. So mission accomplished United States of America. But so sentencing back to that, and we'll wrap that part up, I go to sentencing in March or April. I pled in October of 23. And then March or April was my sentencing. and I'm worried because this district is supposedly notorious, has a bad reputation for just hammering white collar guys. So I'm like, well, that's not great.

Starting point is 04:49:22 I'm looking at six and a half years minimum. My lawyer's like, you're going to jail for at least five years. I'm like, this is not going the direction I wanted to go. And then in most sentencing hearings, what's it called, allocution, something like that, where you can speak for yourself, you know what I'm talking about? I don't know what the word is. Yeah, some fancy, fancy legal word.

Starting point is 04:49:42 But you're allowed to stand up and address the court, right? And you certainly can't. So from the day that I pled going forward, you know, six months or whatever it was, I kept my mouth shut because I pled guilty. So I've got to fall on my sword because the last thing you want to do is plead guilty and then turn around the next day or two weeks later or two months later and say, I'm innocent. I only pled guilty because they were threatening my sisters and my and my volunteers and that let me tell you who's behind this. And it's going to blow your mind and it's going to sound like a Tom Clancy novel. That's what Brian Koverger's trying to do right now. Is that right?

Starting point is 04:50:24 Yeah, the guy that killed the Idaho for. He's trying to rescind his guilty plea. So, and that's a bad move. And I mean, I threw that out there a couple of three times to my lawyer. like, F this. And I'm telling call the, the, the woman handed off the case to another guy who turned out, you know, he's still an attack dog. He's still sick him and trying to get everything he can.

Starting point is 04:50:52 But he, I think he's ultimately a semi-decent person in that. And maybe he just, it was on the tail end of it. So he just didn't, he wasn't that vested into it. So towards the end of it, you know, he, he was sort of decent. But I was like, call him and tell him that I'm taking my plea back, you know, because the press releases and all. And then they add to my sentence guidelines and all this stuff. All these lies show up in the PSR, the pre-sentencing report, the PSR, which is by far for anybody facing this now. You should know this is the most important document of your life until you are off of supervised release.

Starting point is 04:51:34 And maybe even beyond that. because everybody that your judge is going to read it, the prosecution is certainly going to read it. They have a hand in creating it, of course. But if you go to prison, your case manager is going to read it. Your unit manager may or may not read it if they get involved in your case. Your parole officer for supervised release is going to read it. Everybody's going to read this. And that's their first impression of you.

Starting point is 04:52:01 So you better prepare for your interview. And I did. and I think I gave a pretty good one. But I'm falling on my sword this whole time, right? Because I pled guilty. And the quickest way to get six and a half years turned into 20 years is to say, I'm innocent. I didn't do anything, but you pled guilty.

Starting point is 04:52:19 No, but yeah, like I did plead guilty, but I'm not really guilty. That's not good. So I wasn't able, I didn't talk to anybody. So a few people reached out and I'm like, I can't talk about it, but there's more of the story. I'll tell it to you at some point, even some of my investors, who the FBI had completely and totally convinced that I had stolen their money. And I think this is where I was going on my sentencing hearing.

Starting point is 04:52:44 The judge, and this worried me, the judge did not allow anybody to speak on my behalf. He was like, I guess he never said this in court, but going into court, it was basically the mentality was he's heard it all before. So he knows what you're going to say. So there's no point in you saying it. So let's save us all some time. I know you're going to say Mike's a great guy. But anybody that wants to call him an asshole, come on forward. So he could have had 100 people that came and said that I stole their money or was a bad guy or, you know,

Starting point is 04:53:17 Rob Santa Claus last Christmas, whatever they wanted to say. Because the DOJ was saying everything. They were just making things up for the PSR, for the plea deal for everything, just inventing things. And I don't think I'm special on that. And I found that out in camp that they just throw wood on the fire and then throw gas on top of that wood just because you can. Just because that's their job. And why not? Again, stray dogs.

Starting point is 04:53:48 So let's kick him a few times because we can. And I was bullied in high school. And now I hate the world. And so I'm a federal prosecutor and I'm out to get everybody. Well, you know, being facetious there, but it's not far from that, I think. But so two of my good friends come and and speak in court to the judge of this guy's a piece of shit. He stole all my money. He's a one guy called me a mini made off.

Starting point is 04:54:20 And I'm just, you know, I'm just sitting there. I'm like, no, that's not true. That's not true. That's not true. like I didn't is this is not I nowhere in anything did it say anything about a Ponzi scheme or using money for personal gains or personal use or anything like that and then one of the guys the judge stopped him and he goes wait a minute what are you saying and he said I'm he stole my money and he did this and he's a mini made off and he said are you you're saying that he he lined his own pockets

Starting point is 04:54:55 with your money. And my former friend goes, yeah. And he goes, okay, continue. And I'm thinking, well, at least the judge kind of knows what's going on here. And so my buddy kept on talking. He finished. The other buddy came up and said his piece. And then I get up and I say, I do the allocution or whatever it's called where you can say your piece. And I say a whole thing of like, And this is one thing I didn't think about early, but it was inevitable of not what happened to me. Because, you know, that's not like, again, I don't have kids or a wife or anybody in my immediate orbit that's got to take the blow of this. In my mind, this was all on me. That was dumb.

Starting point is 04:55:45 That was naive on my part. Because the frag radius is to my sisters and to my extended family and maybe even. probably not to my friends, but they don't necessarily, I lost so many friends in this, just because they don't want anything to do with a guy who's a convicted felon. And nobody wants the real story and nobody got the real story until after my sentencing. So I gave my allocution and I was just like, you know, I'm sorry for what I did. I brought shame on my family. I was a, you know, it was a pillar of the community.

Starting point is 04:56:19 I was a volunteer. I was helping people in Ukraine. I was running a great hedge fund. I was helping my mother and my family and doing, you know, it was just a normal, nobody knew anything about the intelligence life, but even on my normal civilian life, I was just a good guy, you know, helping people and trying to make a living. And of course, this all came as a bombshell to everybody. And they're like, what?

Starting point is 04:56:47 That guy? Like he went to the Naval Academy, honor and duty and trust and loyalty and all this. And all right out the window, of course. And of course, everybody believes what they, the two press releases, even though they've heard nothing from anybody else. And that starts a rumor mill. No newspaper reporters, no investigations from, you know, even my local newspaper in my hometown, nothing like that.

Starting point is 04:57:16 The only two things that were out there were the press releases from the DOJ for my, and the SEC. so maybe kind of three things. But they all said the same thing. It was basically one article regurgitated. It was 90% false. And it was about 70% false, 29% true but not illegal.

Starting point is 04:57:39 Like I mentioned earlier, they spun things that were perfectly legal to make them sound illegal. And like 1% like the truth, sort of, because what I pled to, to kind of back up a little bit, when I pled, I said, I will plead to one thing. And it was that, and again, it gets a little complicated on the whole hedge fund side of things. But I had a big investor that had in the hedge fund world, size makes a big difference. And in the actual hedge fund, I had an investor that was going, that came in

Starting point is 04:58:20 for three years. Like this was a package deal. All my investors in the management company that I allegedly defrauded ultimately and were my so-called quote-unquote victims. They knew all of this. This was all in many emails and contracts and like it was, again, open kimono, open book, overcommunication and all this stuff.

Starting point is 04:58:41 So one of my or my biggest investor came in and their, our contract and our arrangement was They would put in $20 million into the actual fund because a lot of what I managed were in separately managed accounts. It wasn't actually in the fund. I was trading it and managing it and earning fees from it or we as the hedge fund, but it wasn't directly deposited into my hedge fund. So that was where I was trying to steer things because money attracts money. So the more money you manage, the more money you attract. So, and I won't dive into the reasons why behind that, but that's just the nature of the beast.

Starting point is 04:59:22 There's no way around it. So this company was going to come in, put in $20 million. And they did this. They put in $20 million, although they actually didn't put in the full 20, but they put in like 15 or 17. I can't remember the exact number. They take a percentage of the fees we're charging, the way we earn revenue. So they take a small slice of those fees, but they've put in, you know, $20 million. And we're earning fees on that $20 million.

Starting point is 04:59:53 And the whole thing, and this is done a million times a year. It's a common, is extremely common. And of course, 100% legal. But it's called a seed fund or an accelerator fund. They come in and they put in money. It usually stays in our case for three years, usually two or three years. And then at the end of three years, they pull their money. And they keep the fee split.

Starting point is 05:00:17 So that's their long term. They kind of have a long term dividend on this. And they only have to tie up $20 million for three years. And again, we're earning fees on that $20 million. So anyway, I had a new investor coming to the management company in 2020, maybe 2020 or 2020. 2021. I don't think it was during COVID. So I in the 20s in the 2020s early or maybe 2019. I don't know. It's somewhere in that in that ballpark. I should have looked at this. I haven't looked at the numbers in years. But she came in a few months, like six months before that

Starting point is 05:01:11 company was going to withdraw their 20 million. And I, told her about this. I was like, here, our assets of management are 100 and something. I can't remember exactly, 100, blah, blah, million, whatever that number was at the time because it fluctuates as we make money or every now and then we would lose money in a month. More investors are coming in. People are making redemption. So the money's never like solidified. It changes every couple months or so as people come and go and we make profits and losses. Not by a ton, but you know, 120 million turns into 131 million and it goes back to 127 million, et cetera. excuse me um so i said but in the actual i told her in the actual fund the company our seed company

Starting point is 05:01:57 is scheduled to pull their 20 million now i'm going to try to talk them out of that but they're they're probably going to pull their money because they don't have to we were a good investment for them so if they don't have anywhere to put that 20 they can just leave it with me which is all that i wanted them to do and also it's a fraction of the fund it's not a small number but it's it's It's not, we were managing more than 20, a heck of a lot more than $20 million. So a $20 million withdrawal sucked, but it wasn't a backbreaker. It wasn't going to crush the company. So I had a deposition at some point after I received that first target letter.

Starting point is 05:02:37 And they asked if I told her that and I said yes. And they said, you know, do you have proof of that? And I was like, no, we had, you know, 100, not 100. But we had a dozen conversations before she made her investment. But I remember we specifically talked about that on this day, like, because it was a unique kind of situation of our conversation. Those are snowstorm and which never really happens in Mississippi. And she lived in Mississippi. So I remembered it pretty clear.

Starting point is 05:03:08 I remember everything we talked about in those handful of conversations. We talked to other times on the phone and things like that. Anyway, my lawyer spoke to her. and asked her if she remembered that conversation. And she said, I remember the conversation, but I don't remember what we talked about. And which is every conversation anybody's ever had, right? Do you remember a conversation you had three years ago?

Starting point is 05:03:33 No. With one person who was maybe going to invest in your nightclub, but then didn't and maybe did. You know, it's kind of one of those things. It's like if you recorded, you either record every conversation you have, which is doable in today's age, I guess. but or you make notes immediately afterwards.

Starting point is 05:03:52 And if you did that, you would spend half your life in conversations and the other half dictating what you talked about. And then sending it to that person who you had the conversation with and saying, please verify what we talked about and confirm this because I don't want to go to jail three years from now or 10 years from now or whatever it may be.

Starting point is 05:04:10 But that was what I ultimately pled that I didn't disclose to her that that, that big investor was leaving the fund. And I had disclosed it. I just didn't document it. And as any white collar felon will tell you, if you don't document it, you're wrong or it's illegal or whatever the cliche is. But so when I pled, I was like, I'm not, I don't want to plead anything. But if that's one thing that if she doesn't remember it and you put her on the stand and they put her on the stand and she doesn't remember it, then I can see how that can be spun to be a risk that I did not disclose or that I cannot prove that I did disclose. And I was like, that's a

Starting point is 05:04:57 effed up way to kind of back into a guilty plea or verdict or whatever. But I can see how they could spend that in court. If nothing else, once they've confused the jury enough, that that could possibly work. And then you add in all the other things about the threats and who was behind it. So I pledged. So fast forward, they've added all this other stuff to the plea agreement. And my lawyer kept saying,

Starting point is 05:05:26 who cares? It's one count of wire fraud. They could say, you know, you killed again, killed JFK. It doesn't matter. You've got one count of wire fraud.

Starting point is 05:05:34 It doesn't, who gives a shit what they say in this actual plea agreement that you sign or in the PSR. or in their press releases, that doesn't change one count of wire fraud. And my argument back to that was it changes the reputational damage because anybody that's going to read any of those things, that's going to be hanging around my neck for the rest of my life long after I'm out of prison and have served whatever debt to society karma has dictated. So, and, you know, now I've got the hedge fund Ponzi scheme, multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme, $2.8 million, multi-million.

Starting point is 05:06:13 Ponzi scheme hedge fund manager as the headline, even though, and here's the kicker, at my sentencing hearing, the judge took a break for like an hour. I think he went back and reread the PSR and my support letters. And I showed up to court with like a million dollars. So just that I had, that I hadn't, that the lawyers hadn't got a hold yet. So, and I think he said somewhere in there, that's unusual.

Starting point is 05:06:45 He goes, usually when there's a Ponzi scheme, there's zero money because the guy's blown it all on, you know, cocaine and strippers or whatever, gone to Vegas or what have you, bought yachts with it, whatever Ponzi schemers do, whatever Madov did. And I didn't, you know, again, all the money's accounted for. And I brought a lot to court and turned it over at sentencing. and I think that impressed the judge. And then he gave a speech at the end of it. And he said, like, I got the transcript as soon as it was available just for his speech.

Starting point is 05:07:23 Because I found out after the fact, like, yeah, judges, both my lawyers that were there at the sentencing, they were like, yeah, that was awesome. I was like, really? And they were like, yeah, man. Like, you heard what he said, right? I was like, yeah, I was loving most of it. because he would say some bad things. He was like, well, we have to serve justice and we got to, the punishment's got to fit the crime.

Starting point is 05:07:43 And I'm thinking, oh, crap. And then he's like, but this is the most, he said, I've been on the bench, he's in his 80s. He said something to the effect of, and this is almost an exact quote. So I remembered it. I've served on this bench for over 30 years and this is the most unusual wire fraud case I've ever seen, something of that effect. But this is a direct quote.

Starting point is 05:08:12 This was not a Ponzi scheme. This defendant did not line his own pockets with the victim's money. This was not a Ponzi scheme. And then he went on to tell like, I tried to build a company that other factors came into it and the company went under and which were kind of like the way the process Acution had framed it. It all kind of, he was, he was right. And I did.

Starting point is 05:08:44 I mean, I tried to build and had built. We were doing great and getting better every single month and every single quarter. With new investors, great performance, growing business. Now we've got, at that point, I think five or six year track record, which is a big hurdle to clear once you have like five years in that world. now you're talking, man. You got $100 million under management. You got a great five-year track record. No losing years.

Starting point is 05:09:12 No losing quarters. 20% average a year. Net to investors. Very unique, competitively advantaged trading strategy that nobody else is doing. Nobody that I knew about was doing. We're going to be a billion dollars in like two years. We're about to crush it.

Starting point is 05:09:29 And then the government comes in and just takes it all away. And, you know, crushed it for me, but crush it for my other investors too. These guys, you know, these are people that were my friends and a couple of family members who I'm thinking, we're going to make you all rich. You know, congratulations. We're all on the gravy train. And I'm going to work my ass off to make sure that happens. And I was doing it. And it was working until it didn't, until it wasn't, until the government came in and said, we got to take this guy down.

Starting point is 05:09:56 And these people are, are collateral damage, his investors. And they've got there. They've lost money because the company has to shut down. but we still get to defang this guy. But so the judge ultimately kind of said some really nice things about me at sentencing, which, you know, at first I was like, oh my God, shut up. And then he kept talking. I was like, say more.

Starting point is 05:10:20 Keep talking. And I thought for a second, like, he's going to let me off. This is all in my head. I'm thinking, you know, six and a half years is about to go to zero. This is exactly what I planned. And then, but he gave me a year and a day. And for people, people that know, they know that's a great sentence. That's about as good as it's going to get if you don't have like the judge's son tied up in a basement somewhere or, you know, something to blackmail him with or something.

Starting point is 05:10:48 That's as good as it could have gotten. And like my sister was in the court. And so I had done a little research, of course, you know, coming into this or a lot of research, really. So I knew what that extra day met and she didn't. She was like, you know, most people here a year and a day. Yeah, here's another day for you, sucker. You know, you're felling, you piece of shit. Stay one more day just because you're the dredge of society.

Starting point is 05:11:14 But we know in the spend through the system, that day actually puts you in a different category where now you can have good time credit and you can have FSA fully kick in and all the good stuff to where you can actually get out much earlier. If he had sentenced me to one year, I would have had to stay almost that in time. year, but because he sentenced me to a year and one day, I was outside that one year threshold

Starting point is 05:11:40 by one day. So I served six months in camp, which was supposed to be five. But, you know, again, we can talk about the BOP and how just lazy and dumb and just terrible people that generally work in that agency. They just didn't get around to it. And so, you know, and me and a lot of people. lot of people vindictive and we can go on and on about the food strike and them just retaliating against us for no reason other than they just had nothing else to do but go kick a stray dog so

Starting point is 05:12:15 but i've kept you too long as it is but so i served six months just serve five serve six was at the halfway house for two weeks that was supposed to be like two days or a day but they had just changed managers and the two weeks was just because Why don't have to stay here two weeks? Like politely asking this. They were all very, very nice. But they had, you know, they had made their own policy. And the two week minimum was just because, because that's a good number.

Starting point is 05:12:48 It's like, but my sister's house is ready. It's been inspected. I'm going to go stay with them. I've got a great support system. Everything's ready. Everything's ready for me to go to home confinement. Yeah, okay. Two weeks.

Starting point is 05:13:01 Are you sure? Because like, I'm ready to go. Like my car is like now two weeks. Okay. So I stay there for two weeks. And then I was on home confinement for two weeks. And then I've been on supervised release since then. So that's the story.

Starting point is 05:13:14 What do you do now? So I'm writing a book that is a leadership book about Stormcraft about, about, I mentioned a little bit. It was a leadership doctrine that I developed starting after 9-11 in the intelligence world of just how to, not only navigate chaos, but to convert it from a threat into an advantage. So the title of the book, the working title of the book, I've still got to finish it. I haven't finished it yet. It is for pre-sale. I've got it for pre-sell on my website. Shameless plug. Official michaelwing.com. Kids helping ukraine.org is still up and running if anybody wants to donate and help

Starting point is 05:14:01 help orphans and children in Ukraine. All that money goes straight to them, 501C3 nonprofit. But I am finishing a book. It's called the working titles, The Chaos Advantage of how you can use chaos to your advantage. And I've certainly, I developed that in the intelligence world,

Starting point is 05:14:23 but it worked. I found quickly that it worked equally as well, all the steps and the processes and just the whole way to navigate through it when the world feels overwhelming. And this is not just for people running businesses and CEOs. This is for anybody that feels chaos, anybody that feels that their life is spinning out of control for a minute or for a year or all the time when they wake up in the morning. It's our methods that weren't developed in a classroom or a think tank. They were developed in the field.

Starting point is 05:14:56 They were developed in war. They were developed in very chaotic situations, in very dangerous places around the world in my intelligence career. And I found as I moved into the knock side of things and started working in hedge funds and venture capital, they worked just as well in those environments. I was trading volatility. I was trading options. So volatility inherently is chaotic. So it was very high pressure situations trading stormcraft. the techniques and the frameworks worked amazing there for myself and my team.

Starting point is 05:15:32 And it's just, it's for people, but it's also for teams, just how to lead teams through chaotic situations. Your company is going bankrupt. The market's crashing. You're about to get fired. You know, anything you can think of. And then, of course, that's worked in disaster relief in Ukraine and America for, you know, tornadoes, hurricanes, everything I've done with Oasis.

Starting point is 05:15:53 And it certainly worked. And I was very glad I had this knowledge and this skill set and these frameworks when I was targeted because that became obviously very personal being targeted by something you love more than almost anything, which is the United States of America and defending it, suddenly turns us back on you. That's a very uncertain and chaotic time. And you don't know what's going to happen. So, and it worked well there. So coming out of camp and just as we all are and anybody watching any of your. any of your podcast has learned and all of your guests know is just it's just hard coming out because you have a black cloud and a scarlet letter you have a black cloud over you and a scarlet

Starting point is 05:16:40 letter on your forehead and you are a convicted felon it doesn't matter what your story is innocent people go to jail every day and even for guilty people who go to prison and serve their time and pay their debt to society as a felon, that's a life sentence. You've turned it into something amazing and big props and big congratulations to you. You know, it's the Marcus Aurelius quote of the impediment to action becomes the action. What stands in the way becomes the way. You've done that. Instead of using it as an obstacle and trying to run away from it, you've used it as a method.

Starting point is 05:17:21 to create something great. And hopefully in a bigger and better place than you ever thought you would be before any of this happened. But it's tough coming out, and I don't want to take too much of your time because everybody knows that. Everybody's been through the system knows. Just finding jobs and the restrictions that you have. And the big thing for me, being, I'm still on supervised release. And the big thing for me is like, I can't help people. I can't easily travel.

Starting point is 05:17:50 I can't, I certainly can't go overseas and back to Ukraine or anywhere else that places need help. And I don't necessarily, I mean, I would love to go back in hell, but that's not my priority now. But even when a tornado hits Mississippi, I can't leave my district without a lot of permission. My PO has been great. Super, super nice guy, super patient guy. I think his bosses who kind of, you know, sign off on things as well have all been, I haven't met any of them. But they seem, you know, they let me come here, which. is a big deal. They didn't have to, of course. They don't have to do anything. We're bound by the

Starting point is 05:18:29 restrictions and nobody has to give you any leeway to do anything, no matter how good of a supervised leasy you are, but not being able to travel outside of my district to help people when they need it most. These are the most desperate times of people's lives and the times that I want to be there. And I have the skill set and and the motivation to be there to help them. I can't do it because I'm a supervised release. And even off of supervised release, finding people that, that want to work with felons, whether it's in a nonprofit situation or not, when they hear the story, it resonates. And a lot of people will say, yeah, man, you got you got screwed completely. And they totally believe my story. And that makes me feel good. But it doesn't change the

Starting point is 05:19:17 the greater perception of just having that mark of felon that that sticks with you. And so that's kind of where I'm at now of finishing the book. I'm helping companies and individuals who are navigating chaos. The skill set is there. The education's there. The experience is there. But it's just it's almost easier to do your own thing and be your own boss and put your own efforts out there than it is to go try to get a job somewhere. And, you know, I'm not allowed

Starting point is 05:19:55 to work in finance. But even if I, you know, just wanted to work at a, pick your company, at a new tech company, that's a, that's a bigger hurdle, despite my experience, despite my education, despite my knowledge. It's, you know, it's a challenge. It's a challenge we all face. So I don't want to sit here and play the victim and feel like I'm being specially targeted against as a post-prison sentence felon. But hopefully on the other side of it, you know, I've applied for a pardon, I petition for a pardon. A handful of people have told me they really wanted to help me. And then those people have disappeared. As happens, people get busy and with their own lives or find other people.

Starting point is 05:20:46 that deserve it more, maybe. I don't know. But that is something that I would love to see happen. And I think that would free me to really do what I was doing beforehand, which is really helping people. What happened with the CIA? How come no one helped you? Or do they stay in contact? Or do they write you off? Yeah. And that's kind of what I signed up for. That's another part of the of what I knew was going to happen. And, you know, as a, as I've been in the game for 25 years, like, I was running a lot of these things. I was making a lot of these decisions.

Starting point is 05:21:21 So I knew very much what I was getting into in that we had it set up in my company that and I, and I, I don't know how it is specifically at CIA, but we had it set up. Like, if you do a few different things, you're done. And you're still bound by everything. Like you can't turn around and start telling secrets and things like that. You're still bound by the United States, you know, treason laws. But if you, you know, if you commit a violent crime, if you beat your wife, if you do some things that we don't agree with, and you're done, you're cut off. As much as we love you, as much as we want to support you, these are deal breakers.

Starting point is 05:22:09 And one of those is like pleading guilty to a crime. And that crime can, you know, it could be not paying 100 parking tickets and going to jail. You're done. Maybe not that. But you know what I mean? Like when I pled guilty to being a liar, which is what wire fraud effectively mean, anything with fraud in it, you're a convicted liar. I burned those bridges. And which is extremely unfortunate because those are great people doing great work.

Starting point is 05:22:37 And now I am dead. to them and they are dead to me. And that may change at some point in the future, but it won't change in a way that we'll work together again, I don't think. But right now I'm radioactive, you know, to that group. And again, you've got to be careful, too, on their side of things, working in that world of guilt by association. And so if we start communicating again, you know, people may start asking, what are they doing behind the scenes? These are all experts at SpyCraft at TradeCraft. So what are they working on? What are they doing? So it's just easier just to cut ties, again, as much as it heard. And I knew that was a that was a big part of why I didn't want to plead, why I wanted to fight.

Starting point is 05:23:29 But, you know, ultimately, look, they threaten your family. You got to make tougher decisions. And then you find out, like all the other things behind it, that this isn't going away. Like this isn't when powerful people that I mentioned put a bullseye on you, this something's going to happen. You're not getting out of those crosshairs, unfortunately. And I've seen it happen in my career. So, I mean, I didn't do it, but I saw it happen to other people, not necessarily in my circumstances, but I've seen when I've seen behind the curtain of the way the world really works. And it's not pretty.

Starting point is 05:24:10 And so I knew what could happen. And so again, when I found out kind of all of those things behind it, it was ultimately sort of a business decision, it was a life decision, but the most efficient decision thinking, okay, I'll get through this and I'll come out of it and I'll, I'll go, you know, I do a tech startup or be a COO of this or that or the other. And then to find out, no, this is a life. sentence. Like you're a little bit radioactive, unless you do your own thing, like advise people on a strong skill set that you have like Stormcraft and write a book about it, which I hope is a success

Starting point is 05:24:54 and actually helps people navigate uncertainty and the companies that I've been helping. And I think some of those clients, you know, they love me because they see they see the forest for the trees. They see Michael instead of the felon. They see the skill set. that I bring to the table. And hopefully the people listening and watching to this, and I apologize for the length of this, but thanks for indulging me, of even speaking to you,

Starting point is 05:25:23 and I'm sure a lot of your other guests, even people who have admitted guilt and been to prison and paid their debt, just because you have a label attached to you doesn't mean you're a terrible human being. And I was definitely not a terrible human being before I went to prison. Prison kind of tries to make you want to be a terrible human being, maybe, because

Starting point is 05:25:43 it's full of criminals who are actively committing crimes in prison. Nothing in a camp, of course. We're talking, you know, cell phones and vapes. Nothing any more than that. But you certainly see things that you've never seen as a, even in my intelligence career. This is a new experience. And not one I would wish on anyone, but look, I learned this a long time ago, even at the Naval Academy and all through my intelligence career. You put a bunch of guys together in the worst possible.

Starting point is 05:26:22 So I have not been in those worst possible circumstances. I've been in an extremely terrible circumstances in war zones and in my intelligence career. But you find ways to joke and have a little bit of fun and very bad situation. So I don't think anybody would ever say like prison camp is fun, but it has fun moments and light moments. And there's a lot of, there were some laughs and some great stories. And in hindsight, it's probably a lot rosier than I remember it. But it's nothing I would want to revisit. I certainly never want to go back there.

Starting point is 05:26:58 But, you know, it opened my eyes to a world that I'd never seen. And it was a sad situation. But again, I mean, I'm hoping the new administration coming in or that's been in Trump and everybody in the new P.O.B.O.P. The new FBI director all the way down the chain. I mean, I'm hearing what little, you know, I can communicate with other other felons just through the support groups that I have permission to communicate through my P.O. That, you know, changes are slowly being made. But we'll see what happens. but it's back to the kind of the ramifications of it. Yeah, CA, that whole world was a very important world full of very great relationships. And again, this is what I signed up for. This is day one, more or less, of like, here's what you're getting into. You can't ever talk about this.

Starting point is 05:27:58 I guess unless you go to federal prison and then here you are. So they should have told me in 19. 98, you can never talk about any of this unless you go to federal prison and then you can talk about a little bit of it. You can tell people what you did or that you were a part of it. But if I had never gone to prison or been convicted or pled guilty and, you know, if I wasn't currently a felon, like I would have lived the rest of my life and no one ever would have known outside of the community, no one ever would have known of that part of my life. And my sister asked me something to that effect one day when I first time, told her. And I said, the only thing you would have known would like if, if I died before you and a few people showed up at my funeral that you didn't recognize that looked like me, sort of, you know, because in my company, we were all like everybody was kind of like accountants and, you know, like really in shape hedge fund managers, you know, it was like nobody was because just what we did, we couldn't, we couldn't do the full-on, you know,

Starting point is 05:29:09 J-Soc tattoos and scruffy beards and all the things that those guys are so proud of. And I would be too if I had the opportunity to do it. But so that would be like, that'd be the only thing. Some guys would come and say, Mike was a great guy and he would say, who are you? And they would say, nice to meet you. And they would leave. And that would be it. And you'd be like, who are those strangers that I've never seen before?

Starting point is 05:29:31 That's funny. But yeah, that's my story, man. And I thank you for indulging me on it. Yeah, I appreciate you, man. Longest episode ever. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing. No, it's good, man. I mean, you know, you got to make the space available for people when they have a story like that.

Starting point is 05:29:48 You never know going into it what it's going to be, but you've got to just be a good listener and give the person their opportunity to share it. Well, that's what Leticia said. And that's what I've seen by your other episodes, too. It was like, and I fell right into the trap that I hope. to avoid for myself, not that you're laying it, but I wanted to, I wanted this to be much more interactive and it has not been. Well, that's not my styles. Right.

Starting point is 05:30:12 That's just the way you do it. And I think, look, you get out of the way and let people just go. Yeah. And yeah, that's why, that's why, you know, you've been successful, I think. So, well done. I appreciate you, man. Appreciate you.

Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was a CIA Operative for 25 Years — Then I Got Set Up & Sent to Federal Prison | Michael Williams

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