Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was a Gay Inmate in Federal Prison — Here’s How I Survived | Kyle Sandler

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Kyle Sandler scammed 79 people out of $2.3 million, went on the run from the FBI, and ended up serving time in federal prison—twice. But his story doesn’t end there. In this interview, Kyle shares how he built a fake startup empire, what life was really like as an openly gay man in prison, and how he's now trying to make things right by helping others navigate the prison system through his consulting agency. #WhiteCollarCrime #FederalPrison #StartupScam #LGBTQInPrison #PrisonConsultant #FBIManhunt #ScamStory #lockedinpodcast Connect with Kyle Sandler: https://thekylesandler.com/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://convictclothing.net/collections/convict-clothing-x-ian-bick Timestamps: 00:00:00 Kyle Sandler's $2.3 Million Scam and Arrest 00:06:07 Perspective on Prison Experience 00:12:07 Unexpected Journey to a Prison Camp 00:18:58 Getting in Trouble on the Radio 00:25:45 Struggles and Mismanagement in Startup Incubation 00:32:48 Transforming Startups: Innovations and Challenges 00:39:31 Living a Lie: The Dual Life of a Fraudster 00:46:34 The FBI Target Letter and Life on the Run 00:54:00 Being Blackboxed in Transit 01:00:58 Emotional Impact of Leaving Family for Prison 01:07:17 Navigating the Prison Economy During Quarantine 01:14:00 Unspoken Rules in Prison Relationships 01:20:05 Personal Growth and Rehabilitation in Prison 01:27:00 Navigating Federal Prison Transfers 01:33:39 Personal Reflection and Change 01:40:32 Creating the Ultimate Podcast Guest Experience Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobil. I come through and these two big skinheads and little old gay me comes because I'm already started to come out of the closet comes through the door and they're like, hey, are you Sandler? I'm about to shit myself. And I'm like, yeah? Like, come here.

Oh my God. This is all the things I've been hearing about. I'm about to get my ass beat. Kyle Sandler was adopted and raised in Maryland, built a successful startup and moved to Alabama to expand his empire. But behind the business was a $2.3 million scam that defrauded 79 investors. After going on the run from the FBI, Kyle was arrested and sent to federal prison twice. In this episode, he opens up about his time behind bars, including what it was like serving time as an openly gay man in prison, and how he's trying to rebuild his life by helping others through prison consulting and making amends for the past.

Kyle, welcome to Lockton. We've been talking about doing this for a while now, but pleasure having you. I'm glad we can finally settle our beef for you to come on the show today. I just want to thank you for putting that behind it so we could actually do this. Yeah, there's a couple TikToks Kyle made shooting at me about how I operated my prison sentence that we'll get to later in this episode. But it's all good, you know. I know how the business works. I appreciate your open-mindedness and letting me come on and being open-minded about it.

We have so many mutual friends that it was only natural to fix everything and do this. Of course. And we originally first met through Generation. Hustle, which was the documentary that came out about us. You were one in the episodes. I was one of the episodes. Everyone always asked me about the series. It's not on HBO anymore ever since they merged with Discover, but you were one of the episodes on it. Yeah, I was episode nine. I think you were like episode number one or two. Yeah, and then I think they switched up the order. Like, I don't know. I don't know why they canned it. I mean, some of the episodes were trash, but there were some really good

ones, like the ones where they actually had the people. I heard that the produce, I heard that Alice Gimney got into some kind of beef with Discover. Oh, that's what I heard. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but that's what I heard. Yeah, and I was waiting for like a leak to happen somewhere, like the series is somewhere. I mean, you know, I've got like an Android box, you know, where you can get free channels and free movies and I'm always looking for it. It's like not there. You know, somebody that does Torrance sent me a copy of mine.

I could ask the guy if he has a copy of yours. No, I have a copy of mine, too. I'll secretly send the link to people sometimes. That's what I'll do. I keep it on the Google driving like, hey, you got that HBO thing? There you go. That's exactly what I do. I mean, it's just silly that it's not up there and everyone asked for and there's so much searchability behind me and now you with all the content you're making.

Like, it's just good for business for everyone to just keep it up there. I mean, it was a good thing too. I think you were out when they contacted you, right? You had already been done? I had gotten out. I was a year after prison and a HBO intern actually DM me on Facebook. I happen to look at it, but I was working at Whole Foods. So it really, the story ends there of me.

walking off in the distance, paying a couple hundred bucks in restitution and working at Whole Foods for the rest of my life. It never talks about prison. Right. And never talks about anything after that, you know, it's just me getting out and that's it. So there's so much more. It's like a whole other act that happened. So I've talked to a couple people that are trying to do that to do like, because they mentioned,

a producer talked to me about, hey, you've been successful after prison. I know you were on Generation Hustle. And then I also did another one called Scam Goddess on Hulu. And they're like, and now you're doing pretty well with what you're doing. And, you know, guys like Ian Bick and Dave from Dave's Killer Bread and, you know, we're talking about doing a show. I can give you their contact info. But that, that, it's a, this is a great story. I mean, if you've watched since, you know, back in 22 when I started watching your TikToks, how I think you were still working, were you still working at Whole Foods in 22?

Yeah, I was there for a month when I started making content. And then I quit because I was supposed to the real story is. I was supposed to get cast in like some dating show that a producer hit me up on. Right. I didn't realize at the time that once you start going viral, like you're going to get a ton of producers, but it really never works out these casting producers. So I thought like I was going the distance. Yeah, I had just gotten my passport back from the judge.

So I was like, this is my big break. So I quit because of that. I got ghosted, never heard back from them. So I was like, well, I'm too prideful to walk back to Whole Foods. So maxed out my credit cards, started making content, lived off the credit cards, and then start driving Uber, DoorDash, all of these things, and then it finally started to take off once I found my purpose with the podcast. But see, that's the thing.

And I think, and we can get into this later, but I think you've talked about this in different social media posts. They don't get that guys like me and you, this is not, we're going to sit down for an hour, hour and a half, however long we do this. But me and my friend that came up here with you, another mutual friend of ours, we've been here for two hours. And all you've been doing is work. Like, this is a nonstop. you know, 14, 16, 18 hour a day thing when you're doing, it's not just, hey, let me get in front of the microphone in the video camera and do something for a little bit. Like, this is,

we pour, we pour our guts into it just like everything, everything we do. And I think, and we can touch on this later, because it's on the topic of this little beef that was in my head more than yours. But Kevin Lannning really conceptualized it for me. Me and you are probably more alike than we think. And, you know, we both are the kind of people that don't let shake in our way, whether we were 18 or you're up like about 30. I'm about to turn 50. But neither of us let prison get in the way. And now we're doing, if you set your mind to it, we can do it. It's just we set our mind to doing something that fell off the scale. So we just did it big. It ended up in prison. Which was kind of the theme around Generation Hustle when it was pitched to me. And I think like the, the main similarity

is you used your prison experience, your version of it to create a successful business that the audience is going to hear about. But I did the same thing. Absolutely. It's just not your version of it. And I think that's where there became an issue. And there's an issue with a lot of people with me because of that. You know, I did a whole different approach to it.

But the other thing, Ann, is that people aren't remembering, you were 20 years old when you went into prison. I'm about to be 50. And you don't look 50 either. I know. Thanks. But that's what your friend Lou was saying the same. thing. She was saying that I could sell some rejuvenation secret. Hey, for $199, hit the Lincoln bio. But on the for real tip, you know, and this was like where this whole conversation with Kevin

Lannin went, if I was your age when I went to prison, I'd have done the same things that you did when you went to prison. And I would have had to pay for protection, I'm sure. Yeah. And I did my whole, like looking back on it now, I did it all wrong, my prison sentence. But it was the best thing that could ever happen to me. Because those stories made me different. to get on to this, you know the prison market's oversaturated and it's, there's a lot of the same thing out there, but I had a different approach to it, just like you have a different approach to your prison consultants. Like we were talking off camera about how I got scammed by a prison consultant when I was in

prison and I was asking you those questions, you know, about what makes your thing different and that shed some light to me on how you operate. So it's very similar in that sense. Right. And it's everybody's whole experience is different, but the, you know, the, the, The really funny thing is, and when I first met Nelson from Honor, who's a mutual friend and works for me now, we talked about the fact that, you know, this true crime genre, it's taken off. And there's only a handful of true crime podcasters and content creators that have actually done true crime. You know, you're one of them, Matt Cox, Nelson, me, JD.

But, you know, a lot of these guys with these true crime podcasts, they just do this analyzation piece. Like scam goddess. Like scam goddess, she has no clue. Well, that's where I had a problem with her because she did a whole piece, I think, on each individual of us after Generation Hustle. She did like a big hit piece on me. Yes, she did. I remember that. Yeah, and I reached out to say, hey, I'd love to come on the show, give my side and nothing.

You know, I just feel like if you're going to do something like that, you should at least reach out to the subject, interview them. You can roast them if you're interviewing them and asking them the hard questions, but to just do a hit piece and not get that other side to it. So I was evolved in another podcast. I was doing something called Beyond the Narrative down in South Florida as federal prison tips. And when Scam Goddess came out, because you know, I was on her TV show on Hulu, you know, she, she, and I agreed to do the show. I was dumb. I was the only one of the ones that said, hey, just like you, let me tell my side of the story. And she told, they pitched me like everyone was coming.

Oh, Kyle, don't worry. We're going to talk to everybody that we profile. You know, you're just going to be the first. Okay. So I was the first and the only one at the end. end of the day. But, you know, we were talking about it because we decided to do a live stream while it was on. And there was a lot of comments. It was on YouTube and TikTok. And it was the first time I ever saw it. And there was a time, we shot over four days. This particular day, I had

been crying about what had happened. You can see it in the video. Like my eyes are wet. And she's like, and you have no remorse. I'm like, the F are you talking about? I'm crying, lady. Can't you see it? You just edited it out. So, I mean, that was a complete scam. That whole scam got us thing. Yeah, and then, I mean, you have successful ones like crime junkie. Yep. She does a great job.

And then there's a couple others. But a lot of times it is one-sided. What's his name? What's that? An Austin. Johnny, whatever his name is? Oh, Johnny Mitchell. Johnny Mitchell's good.

But he went to prison. Yeah. So that's not really the same category. That's in a different category. But yeah, I think it's tough. I think that's what makes these interviews special because the interviewer is someone that went to prison. Like you look at the Johnny's, the Mac Cox.

things like that, the person has lived experience. Just like we were talking about federal prison consultants, you've got to have lived experience to do the job correctly. And the thing is you're saying earlier, your whole experience was different than my whole experience. But at the end of the day, you still experience it. So we still do have, we still stood, we still stood count. We still got ourselves tore up. We still went to the shoe. You know, we still had to buy, you know, Keefe coffee, all these different kinds of things.

So it's like, and I'm going to tell you what, I went upstairs and saw the cell, and I have never seen something so authentic. And the fact that, you know, the AC don't work and it's 106 degrees in Connecticut today, you got this Fort Dix thing going on up there that is truly authentic right now. The AC doesn't work upstairs, just so the audience doesn't think I'm cooking you out down here. No, no. It's beautiful down here. It feels great down here. And it's a really nice place. But upstairs true authenticity.

Oh, yeah, I remember those summers at Fort Dix. 100 degrees, you have to put the blankets on the windows. Everyone's got four fans that you could buy in commissaire on each corner. It was hot, man. The ice machine would be out of ice because everyone's just grabbing ice. You wouldn't mind jumping in a freezing-ass shower. I wasn't at Fort Dix, but we had AC problems at Arkansas at Forest City. I actually got lucky my first summer at Fort Dix and my first and only summer.

I only had to deal with the heat in May because I was in the shoe. rest of the time. And the shoe was AC? Yeah. Every shoe I've been to, it's AC. So I got so lucky that I did that. And then the winners, but then when I was at the camp in Oxford, Wisconsin, there was no AC. So that was a hot one. So they sent you all the way to Oxford and Otisville's right down the street? So what they did was, and before we get into your story, I'll just tell this quick, they were like, yeah, the CEO said you're going to a camp. I was in the Danbury shoe and they were like, you're going to a camp that starts with O. So he's like, yes, I'm going to Otisville. I was like they pulled it off.

I had no idea there was another camp. I'm at the tarmac at the Stewart Air Force Base. Where am I going on a plane? Yeah, there's a bus for Otisville and then there's the plane, right? And then so I'm chain shackled. They called the Otisville bus and the plane at the same time. I'm in line. Then all of a sudden they're escorting me to the plane.

You're like, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be over there. I said, that's my bus right there. And they're like, shut up. And then go on the plane. I went from there to Oklahoma, didn't know anything. Finally, a guard saw like I was like disheveled and it felt bad for me. He said, you're going to Oxford, Wisconsin.

Don't worry, it's a sweet camp, you know. So that made me feel a little bit better, and I got to tell my family over the phone. But I was in Oklahoma for two weeks, and they picked me up again, shipped me to Chicago for two weeks. And then I was on a bus ride to a camp. I didn't believe I was going to a camp until I got on the bus, and they said, you're not going to be chained and shackled because you're a camper. And I was like, okay, finally. We can do this. But, yeah, so, Kyle, where did you grow up?

Where are you from? I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. I was bonding with your father because even though I don't look at, I was adopted at birth into a white Jewish family. That's how I ended up with the last name, Sandler, which is very Jewish and look like this. What is your background, your ethnicity? My original parents, one of them was from Guam and the other ones from Hawaii. Okay. But I was born in Baltimore. Like, I don't know, some of it was going to be sick. And I was sick as a kid. So I was born in the 70s in Baltimore and 75. Do you know how you came to be in Baltimore? I was supposed to be sick or something. They were having prenatal problems,

so my birth mother gave birth to me in Baltimore. And then the Sandler's took me from there. And how did they find the Sandlers where they lived in? I think it was prearranged. Okay. So what's life growing up, what the Sandler's like? Pretty much, you know, middle class Jewish family in the Baltimore area. Hebrew school, I got Bar Mitzvitt at 13, which I'll tell you how it related to prison later.

But I played ice hockey and it was really good. So I was actually ended up going to Catholic high school because the Catholic high school, Mount St. Joe, wanted me on their ice hockey team. I got, I flirted with trouble, you know, just dabbling in little schemes and scams and things like that, like a kid, you know, the, I did the school store thing and selling candy out of my locker. And so I was a sick child. I had one of those grant the wish things, and it was to, I wanted to, this is the 70s, not the 80s or 90s. So I wanted to meet the radio DJ from the local radio station, B-104 in Baltimore. His name was Big Don O'Brien. So he comes to Johns Hopkins Hospital with a Fisher Price tape, a Fisher Price record player, the little brown one, and like a hundred forty-fives.

And we're having these little dance parties in my room. So I wanted to be on the radio when I was a kid. So I ended up doing that until I was 30. I got into some trouble in the radio business. I'm just kind of skipping around. But no, I had a decent upbringing, never lived to my full potential, always, you know, doing something under the radar that I shouldn't be. Bonjour, compadre.

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Sounds very grown up. Right? It felt like, okay, we've got this. So doing it yourself. may be simple in theory, but Mayflower is common reality. Is that it? Exactly. Moving?

Trust the people who've been doing it for generations every step of the way. Get a free quote at mayflower.com. Did you get in actual trouble with the law at all in your teenage years? I did. I did. I got involved with a group of kids when I was 10 and we, the statute of limitations is way up on this. Plus, I already got in trouble for it. We burned down the fun put, which was like an outdoor mini golf place when I was 10 for $500 in cash.

Someone paid you to burn it down? Yeah, the guy that owned it. He paid five of us, 10-year-olds, to burn this place down. So I'll tell you, this is my first exposure to snitching. Me and four friends are our little huffy bicycles, you know, big rod. That was the guy that owned the fun put put put put put up. He left all the stuff we needed, the gasoline, everything. We're supposed to put gas all over the – it's not a big building.

It's like a building that has golf clubs and big. video games and outside golf course. We do everything we're supposed to do. And then it dawns on us that there's like 10 video game machines in there. And we have the keys to the place. So we open up the video games and they're filled with quarters because I guess he didn't think about it either. So we take our huffy bicycles back to our houses and get pillowcases for all the quarters.

We fill them up, you know, torch to place. Go back. We're 10 years old. We go back to our houses. thing burns down, fire department comes, everything's good for a couple weeks. Then one of our friends, I think we're in sixth grade, one of our friends starts buying every kid in school, ice cream and all kind of crap from the cafeteria with quarters. So like a principal or a teacher follows him back to his locker and he's got this pillowcase with a thousand quarters in it. And of course, the teacher's like, where did you get these quarters?

Oh, you know, tell us or you're going to get in big trouble. Well, me and Kyle burn the fun butt down. So then, you know, they did charge us and I got some kind of diversion thing. I didn't go to jail or juvie or anything like that. I had to do some community service or something, but that was my first exposure to snitching. Did you guys snitch on the guy that paid you? Of course we did. And what happened to him?

He went to prison. Wow. That's crazy. He recruited a 10-year-olds. Yeah, this is like, I mean, Ian, this is like 1986 or something. Different period of time. Yeah. Wow.

That's crazy. This is when 10-year-olds could stay out all night and nobody would think anything of it. Were you doing things like that because you were trying to fit in because you felt like an outcast? Yeah. Because, I mean, I actually started writing about this in prison and talked to a couple people about it. I was dumped into a white family and I have all white siblings. Like all my siblings are natural to my parents. So, you know, when you're adopted, they try and do this, you know, oh, you were picked and nothing.

thing. But when you're the adopte, you know that you were picked, but you also know that you were given up. And it's a lot harder to explain, why do I look brown and everybody else looks white? Because like if, you know, if you had been adopted by my family, they could get, you know, you could be like 15, 16 years old and they're not telling you. But when I am, it's like, everybody's different, you know, and you're watching Sesame Street and one of these things doesn't belong, and it's me. So, yeah, I did a lot of things, I did a lot of things for attention and a lot of things to just fit in with everybody. Did people bully you or pick on you? Oh, yeah.

When I was a kid, they did this thing when I was in second grade called Kyle Germs. It was like, it was the kind of thing that like helicopter parents would have gone crazy about, you know, had this happened 20 years later. But, you know, I took my licks as a kid. How was your family financially? Upper middle class. We had no problems. I mean, I did stupid things just to do stupid things. So it was never about money.

It was never about money. And then it was just about, you know, being as successful or just, you know, overcompensating for any, for my shortcomings, I guess. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be on the radio, and I did that until 2004. And I got in trouble on the radio, too, and then I had to stop. There was this thing called Pail. I had worked my way up all the way up to music director. and a program director in smaller markets.

I had been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I had done some part-time at Z-100 when I was younger and Q102 in Philly. And I had been in Atlantic City at Boston 97, all up and down the East Coast. And I had been a music director. And there's this thing called Paola where back in the day when you had before the Internet and you actually had to pay to, you know, had to listen to the radio, the record companies these reps would pay the people that worked at the radio station, either in actual cash, drugs, or in Sony's case, in RCA, like electronics, or trips or something, to get their song

played more on the radio and reported to Billboard or R&R. And that was called Paola if you took money because some really bad songs were made based on Paola. And in the early 2000s, when Elliott Spitzer was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he saw. started coming after people on the radio for doing this. And that's when I dipped out of the radio business completely. I'm like, I'm not going to federal prison.

I had a friend who is still in radio now who was Exhibit G in their case in New York. And we used to call him that. We were like, oh, my God, it's Exhibit G. And, you know, he ended up doing probation or something crazy, something minute compared to what you or I have done now after the fact. then I was scared shitless so I was like oh I went and sold cell phones after that and no college you skipped it uh I went to I went to I went to classes and stuff at Auburn and here and there but I never finished how did your adopted parents or adoptive parents uh see your future playing out did

they want you to go for radio did they want you to go to college what did that look like I mean they had struggled with me so they wanted me to be happy I had a child psychologist tell them that I was either going to be a millionaire, dead, or in prison by the time I was 25. I've done two of those things, but it was way after I was 25. But yeah, I mean, at one point it was just like, as long as you're happy, as long as you're happy. But then, you know, and my mom, I've talked about it a little bit on social and some other stuff.

My mom was a terrible enabler. I love her to death. But, you know, Kyle could do no wrong. I could have been completely dead to rights. And she would just, oh, no, Kyle didn't do that. If Kyle says he didn't do it, he didn't do it. So, you know, when generation came out and her friends were like, oh, my God, my mom's name is Marty. She's like, Marty, we saw Kyle on HBO.

And I didn't know, you know, oh, it wasn't that bad. Mom, it was that bad. I mean, that's what I did. It was that bad. I'm sorry. But so that was the kind of, but they were trying to be as fostering as possible. And I was adopted at a time in the 70s when a lot of women were told that they couldn't have kids. My mom thought she couldn't have kids, and then all of a sudden she had them.

So I have four brothers and sisters, a brother and three sisters. Your parents, were they harder on their own blood kids rather than you? I don't think they did, my brothers and sisters did nearly the wrong that I did. Because they saw me get in trouble all the time, like little trouble, not big trouble until I went to prison. But they let you slide on everything. Yeah. Because they didn't know. I was out of control. Do you think you're out of control looking back on it? Back then, I was starving for attention, I believe.

So what happens after the radio? What do you do? So I start selling cell phones, and I get really good at it because I'm a good salesman. That was part of my crime. And I was working for T-Mobile at the time, and I caught the eyes of the people in Washington in Washington State. And for some reason, in 2006, I was one of the people that was invited to play with the first Android phone ever. And so I did.

And I did, like, videos of it on a JVC handycam. And I uploaded it to what I created was the droid guy. Dot blogspot.com. And it took off, like, a rocket. Like, everyone was like, oh, my God, this Android thing is going to be huge. This is 2006 a year before the very first Android phone the G1 came out on T-Mobile. Shortly after that, I moved the website to the droid guy.com,

which was the very first Android website in the world. This is where I got the money to start, that ultimately morphed into the crime that I committed. And then I quit my job at T-Mobile. I started this blog called The Droid Guy way before this kind of content creation was going on. But if you go back on the Internet, on the YouTube.

You can see that I was like doing the same thing I'm doing now for federal prison tips. 15 years ago doing the exact same thing just with a different, you know, with Android instead of prison stuff. And it was, you know, on Twitter, on MySpace a little bit and on a blog. And then I sold the droid guy in 2011 for $10 million. And I used that money to start a venture fund in Auburn, Alabama. where I was living called the Roundhouse. And in 2014, we weren't getting any good startups that I just started making shit up and stealing all the money. How did you get to Alabama from Maryland?

That's a big difference. That's a good question. So before I came out of the closet as gay, I started seeing this girl that was writing for me at the droid guy. Her name was Allie. And we would meet up at conferences. I was based in Baltimore doing the droid guy. and she was writing for me from her home in Alabama. And one of those hookups in the conferences,

and it resulted in my daughter. Hmm. So my kid's going to be 18 next month. Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize you had a kid. I mean, it was estranged since prison. So that got you to Alabama?

That got me to Alabama, and I was in Alabama for a while. And Alabama is where you ultimately committed the crime. Yep. And a town called Obelika right outside of Auburn. Which is a very small town. Yeah, it's about 30,000 people. But the reason I picked out Opelika is because, number one, it was right next to Auburn. But back in 2012, when I started my business there, and I started the business there legitimately, the Roundhouse.

It was a tech incubator. And what we did was we tried to incubate startups and invest money and things like that. And I had a 30,000 square foot coworking space and incubation space. And I chose Opelika because they had one gigabit internet. internet in both directions, which was brand new in 2012. It was one of only six cities in the whole country that had it. They had it because they had just converted their power lines to, their metering for power to this one gigabent infrastructure so everyone in the residents could have it if they wanted to. So we opened up there. The real estate was dirt cheap. I mean, I got 30,000

square feet for almost a little bit more than what you're paying here. But imagine 30, like the whole, They'd be almost like having this whole building for not much more than you were paying here. But it's smaller than this in terms of the size of the town. But we were only five minutes from Auburn, so people would fly into Auburn or Montgomery and come and see us. And I started, I was supposed to raise $500,000 in equity. And I would have held 50% of the equity and the investors would hold 50% of the equity. But when I got to $5,000, $1,000.

and somebody wanted to invest $35,000. I wasn't turning their money down when I should have. I was just like, okay, just write the check and we'll figure it out. And then there was a lot of the just write the check and we'll figure it out until the point where I had sold 200% of the equity. So basically I sold two pizza pies, two whole pies worth of equity when you only have one. That was crime number one and crime number two was actually stealing the money. So did the business stop making money? Like why did you even need to raise more money when you had the startup, the seed money,

that have produced other money? I was co-mingling funds and it was operating in the red completely. And I was drowning and not getting any help from anybody. So I had pissed most of the money away. And so I need more money. Was it ever successful? No. It wasn't successful, but it wasn't like.

So some people think that I like sat in, you know, in the back room of an apartment and just scam people's money. That wasn't the intention. You know, we were like people were coming. and co-working and we were we had revenue we just weren't profitable i feel like a lot of people the misconception about fraud is um a lot of people do start off with legitimate businesses and good intentions and somewhere whether it's like the mortgage crisis or over leveraging or anything you know something happens and an outlier and that's when they turn over to that dark side that's

like that moment and then you can't and yeah and then for me like it was so the the idea behind the investors for what the roundhouse was, that was the name of it, the roundhouse, was that we would invest little micro investments for equity in these companies that were starting up with us. If one of them made it, it would have made the whole thing whole. So I was always looking for that one gamble to fix the whole situation. In my mind, it was always coming until it wasn't, until it was just like, okay, shit, I'm weighing over my head. So the resident, and so people think that I did a Ponzi scheme. And I always say, no, I didn't do a Ponzi scheme. And I kind of laugh at it and it sounds messed up, but nobody got their money back. Like I didn't leverage more people's money to pay

the other people back. Nobody got their money back. And that wasn't intentional. That was because they were investing in if had the startups, one of them been successful, they would have all gotten their money back. But here's where I messed up. I sold way too much equity. I had 75 investors in a fund that should have 10. And then I was used. using the money not, I was using part of it to run the roundhouse. I was paying the payroll, keeping the lights on. Sometimes I was having trouble with the lights, but, you know, I was trying to pay bills, pay my staff. But, you know, I was living in two houses and I shouldn't have been. And I had gone through 24 different cars, which obviously I shouldn't have done,

when we weren't solvent at all. And part of it was just gross mismanagement and getting over my head part of it was ego like I'm not you're not going to let me down I'm not going to let everybody down I want to show the world that I can do this yada yada yada and then the other part was just like oh shit I got to do something so I had this spot in opalika which was outside of a auburn and now it's not a ponsie scheme yet and it never became a ponsie scheme but I did open up another roundhouse in Mobile, Alabama, and was charging double the equity for Auburn, and the intention of the Mobile Roundhouse was to pay back the Opelika people. So then had that executed, then it would have been a Ponzi scheme.

But it didn't execute because I got a target letter from the FBI saying, hey, you know, we want to investigate what's going on with the roundhouse. We've heard that there's some fraudulent questions. come see us on December 20th, 2016 at the field office and Mobile. I got this target letter on December 6th, 2016, and on December 7th, we left town and never came back. So why do you think you needed the cars, the houses, all of that when the business was insolvent, you were smart enough and old enough to know that the business had to become profitable to make money you had operated a business before a legitimate business?

A status and just wanting to fit in and be more successful to live into this persona that I had created in my head. And on paper, I had told people. So backing up a little bit to when I had the droid guy, which was successful. Like I could have just told the story about the droid guy and been fine. Being that I had the very first Android website in the world, I was flying to Google with a lot. all the big name journalists, the C-Dets and all that stuff. So I was at Google a lot and I had pictures on my Facebook of me at Google a lot like four or five times a year. So at one point in time while I was raising money for the roundhouse, somebody asked me if I worked at Google because

they had seen it on my Facebook and I said yes, which was a complete lie. And then I just ran with it. So I was raising money lying saying I worked for Google and I had never worked for Google. I had heard a lot of people doing this because the whole town had rallied around us. And that's why, I guess, Scam Goddess even did my episode. How did you find the investors? How would you be connected with them? I know they knew of you based on that publicity, but how would you seek them out? So I was speaking everywhere, like the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Young Republicans Club, any civic organization in Alabama, Georgia, Montgomery.

Birmingham all over the state. And I was very active in the Auburn tech space. I was a judge and what they called the Tiger Cage, which was like Shark Tank for Auburn University. So I saw all those people and I was at all their events constantly pitching the Roundhouse. And we were able to get a lot of publicity. And then we had one startup that was founded by this kid named Taylor Rosenthal. He had come to us with this idea to sell first aid kits at sporting events in a pop-up tent. And we had helped them pivot to selling first aid kits in a vending machine. And, you know, the vending machine was going to be interactive and send reports back in an electronic medical record and all this.

We actually had a prototype of it made. And we were pitching Walgreens. We had actually physically gone, actually, we pitched Walgreens by email, but we had physically gone to Trenton, New Jersey to meet with Johnson and Johnson about the machine. Like, that's, that was all documented. And this kid ended up on CNN and Fox and all these different outlets. And all that footage is still on the internet. So we raised a bunch of money around that project as well.

But because the roundhouse fell, that kind of, that fell as well. So the whole thing was a victim of it. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

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Real California milk by real California farm families. Stupidity and ego. Now, say I'm an investor or a potential investor, what's your pitch to me? And is it guaranteed? Is there a guarantee profit? There's no guarantee. So it's high stakes. It's high stakes venture capital investing.

So it's like gambling. But you invest $10,000 for a point of equity in the roundhouse. And we spread small investments over 10 or 15 different startups. And they get like five or 10 or 15, 20,000. $10,000 for a percentage of equity that we negotiate separate. So you don't invest in the startups directly. You invest the roundhouse. The roundhouse holds the position in the startup.

So if one of those startups, if this kid that had the vending machines took off and got a $40 million deal or a $50 million deal and sold, then the roundhouse will get their equity and we redistribute all the money. So yeah, for your $10,000 equity, $10,000 investment, you could potentially make a decent amount of money, but nobody did because nothing hit like that. Was there any legitimate investments? There was. We had five or six different startups that, like even recmed, like I said, we had a, we had meetings in Trent, New Jersey with Johnson and Johnson. We had made a working prototype and taking it out to CES and all these different trade shows. And we had some talks working in the pipeline. But I was too busy trying to raise money for Roundhouse and run these two places and try and buy different investors out and concentrating on this fraud.

pulling off than nurturing the startup. In fact, he, Taylor the kid, it was started by a 13-year-old kid at first, he turned down Shark Tank because he thought we were going to end up with a deal. But did the money actually get transferred to them out of your Roundup account? No. So it never that, so it wasn't never an investment. No, did we actually invest in some of the startups? Yeah, we did invest in the startups?

Like, did that money actually leave your account? Like an investor gives you, say, $100,000, were you actually taking that money and investing it into things. Yes, but not like not the whole hundred, like 10 of it. 10 grand of it. Yeah, not nearly as much as I said and not nearly as much as I should have. Now were you giving audits, reports, anything to these investors? No, but that's when it came, that's when I started getting in trouble when they were like, hey, we want to see the books. Okay, now you got to see the books and now I'm in trouble. And what's a time frame? Like, say I invest in June with you. When are they expecting money by? They're expecting something to happen

in a year. In a year. So you had a good year run before people. People started to question things. Yeah, but also my movement started, my movement in a small town started raising some eyebrows. All these different cars. Where's Kyle? He's opening up another place where we haven't even seen the investment on the first place. You know, what's going on? So, you know, part of it, that's one of the reasons that people went to the FBI, I imagined, and said, hey, something ain't right here.

Do you think if you went to college for business, you could have avoided this? business or finance or anything like that. Yes, but I also think I could have avoided prison had I got to actually talk to the FBI. Okay, so how much do you end up raising in total over how many? $2.9 million. $2.9 million from all from these investors.

Yeah. And that's not including your initial investment that you put into this company. No. So 2.9 million from how many investors? 73. And what types of people are these? Are these older adults?

So all of these people are not there are bona fide investors, they have to have a million dollars. In order to get into my fund, they're supposed to sign paperwork, but not many people did. But the paperwork would require that they had a million dollars in equity outside of their home. So another thing that people think about all fraudsters or about all people that have big money scams, I wasn't taking grandma's money from in-between her mattresses. Now, how much did each deal to add up to that 2.3 million? How much did each deal consist of?

Like, what was the amount? It was anywhere at the bottom was 10,000. My biggest investor was 350,000. So on 350,000, what's the percentage they're getting in the company? It's supposed to be 35. 35%? It's supposed to be, because it's supposed to be a point per 10,000. But remember, part of the crime is that my equity table is all messed up.

I've now sold, you know, two whole pies instead of half of a pie. Now, couldn't you have just evaluated the company higher and get one bigger investor? Yes. Or vice versa? That's what I should have done. Or I should have stopped it when I actually, one of the really big, one of the most unfortunate parts is I had a couple investors. First of all, I have one investor, the $350,000 investor. He refused to be listed as a victim and he refused to be on the restitution.

because he says he really wants his money back. Now, I am paying my restitution, as we talked about, off the camera. But in most cases, most people don't pay restitution so they never get their money back. He's just hoping that, you know, through federal prison tips or through something else, I'll make the money to pay him back. But wouldn't he want to be on the restitution list anyways? Because if we were making money from those businesses, the government, that's a better chance to get that money. He thinks it's going to be a better chance to get the money outside of it if we do a separate deal and it's bigger. And I understand his logic because, like I said, you, people that have, people that have,

actually pay the restitution are an anomaly because I talk to a lot of them, trust me. Like most guys that go to federal prison for a fraud charge in the millions, the government doesn't see a dime past probation. So you get $2.3 million. How much do you think you're spending a month? $50,000. And that's cars, houses, dinners, whatever, clothes. White, bullshit.

All stuff I don't need, you know. I needed one car. It was me and my daughter and her mom in a 10,000 square foot house with an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Did you feel guilty while you were doing it? What was your mindset? You know, half the time I was feeling like I was a boss, and half the time I was feeling like a fraud. I was. I mean, there were lonely moments where I felt like, oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into?

But I had to keep this persona up. I mean, I don't know if you ever watched my generation hustle, but this city, like, it was a sleepy town. I woke it up. We became the catalyst of the whole town. I turned 40 during this time. The whole town threw me a surprise birthday party. The mayor came out and gave me my own day. Like in the city council meeting, you know, they declared November 24th Kyle Sandler Day.

Then he came at my birthday party. my surprise birthday party that I wasn't even expecting because they did it in a very crafty way and there was the mayor of the town with a proclamation like a real proclamation declaring November 24th Kyle Saller Day so I had this whole city rallying behind me and you know

I would go to bed sometimes feeling like a real loser about it you know and it wasn't even just like in it wasn't like oh my God what if they find out it was like a holy shit I'm all wrapped up in this complete, this has gone from something great to a complete fraud because it was something great in the beginning. Did anyone know about your scam internally, your family, friends, or people that worked with you? No, and like the person that I hurt the most was my assistant at the time.

Her name was Emily. She was like my biggest supporter. She was in both shows. You could tell like she went from, so just the timeline between generation and scam goddess is like, like two and a half years, I think, in taping time. And so you can see her go from generation she's hurt to scam goddess. She's mad. And I deserve both because, like, she believed I hung the moon just like my kid did.

And, you know, that everything was on the up and up. And whatever I told her to do was legit. But I was telling her to do things to help me cover up lies. And, you know, telling people other stories so that I wouldn't. get caught right then. I mean, it was like the world was closing in. It was going to close in, and I was trying to delay it as much as I possibly could. Tell us about what it looked like when that year hit and people started to ask for their money or their investments, what those conversations were like. So I had opened up the Mobile Unit, the Mobile Roundhouse. It's like

two and a half hours from Auburn or Opelika. And, you know, I tried to have this big celebration, and I did. And some of the investors from Opelika, came down and they're in the pictures but later on that same night you know they're like how are you opening up you know another one and we're not even seeing our money back so i had the lie or balance out oh it's coming um and then people would start asking emily who was based in our opalika roundhouse you know when's kyle coming back i need to see kyle i need to talk to him about my investment i went out. So I had an investor meeting. And this was like in November or late October of 16. Because I'm out of equity in Opelika. People are starting, it's starting to be exposed. And I tell them,

if you want out, I'm liquid enough to buy you out. I just need till the end of the year. So out of the group of 79 or so, more than half of them signed a paper that I had made up saying that they wanted out. I didn't have the money to buy them out. So I don't even know what I was thinking having this meeting. I just, again, it was delaying the inevitable. So I get a stack of papers like this thick of people that went out. I'm like, oh, shit, everybody wants out. It wasn't everybody.

It was about half. And I tell them, okay, after the first of the year, though, this is 16. After the first of the year, I'm going to buy you out. I had come up with lie after lie. This time it was like I have this annuity coming. at the end of the year, and that's when I'll have enough money to buy everybody out. But before the end of the year is when I get the target letter from the FBI, and I run. Now, couldn't you have just told them that the businesses had failed?

Yes. That would have been the right, that would have been the bright thing to do. I mean, aside from giving the real honest truth that you spent the money, but also just that the investments you did fail to come to some type of conclusion without giving them all the money. I had the way that the agreements were written, I could have done that. But rather than do that, I just, you know, told, oh, no, don't worry, everybody. I'm going to just buy them out. You know, we're going to keep going with the roundhouse.

Everything's going to be fine. Everything was always going to be fine. Oh, don't worry. Everything's going to be fine. And, you know, at one point, you know, in December of 2016, everything came to a scratching hole. How hard was it to deal with and maintain those relationships and conversations with that many people? Oh, it was terrible. I couldn't keep the lies straight.

I had, I mean, this is where, you know, me and Emily's relationship started to deteriorate because she had to come up with lies for me for everyone. And, you know, at the end of the day, Opelike and Mobile were just, you know, two and a half hours apart. So there were people like, no, you tell Kyle to get up here right now. And it was like, oh, Kyle's busy. He's got this meeting going on down there. And he's actually not in Mobile. He's in Florida or New York or Las Vegas.

But I was sitting in Mobile at my other house, you know, or opening up the other roundhouse or whatever it was. I wasn't supposed to be doing. Just, I don't know, just extending the inevitable. Who ends up going to the FBI? A couple of my investors. I'm not exactly sure which ones. And what happened in between you telling them you're in a buyout and them escalating it to the FBI? I think they had already gone to the FBI by that time.

For me to get the target letter when I did, by the time I had that meeting, it was already over. Okay. They were just having the meeting as a show, like, to see what Kyle was going to say next. I think they had lost complete confidence back in September, October, and that's where they started talking to the FBI. Tell us about the time that the FBI came to you with the target letter. So it was just a letter in the mail. I got a letter in the mail on December 6th of 2016, and the next day I left town and went to Texas. Why did you decide to run?

Never came back. What was, why run? Like, what was your? Oh, because I was thinking based on, so I didn't know anything about guidelines back then. I only knew about statutory time. And I was like looking at my investors and looking at the charges that were in this target letter.

You know, it was whatever the code was for wire fraud. And I'm thinking, I wire frauded 79 people. I'm going to prison for the rest of my life. Literally, I thought I was going to prison for 100 years. And then to make it worse, that's what they said on the news because what I ended up with. So I stay on the run for 18 months. I get caught the next June in Texas. And that's on Generation Hustle.

I got the body cam footage from the police. I use it all the time on TikTok. But, you know, I go to this guy who I think is my friend. I'm supposed to be buying a car from him at his car lot. and I go straight to his car lot and I get out of the car that I'm in and they're like, hey, are you Kyle Sandler? And I'm like, yeah, and they're like, bam, there's like 40 of them. And then from that day until 22, I don't see the light of day again.

Now, how does a guy like yourself avoid, you know, the FBI for that long? And within the country, it's not like you went to a different country. Nobody was really looking for me until then. I was flying every, I went to South by Southwest. that year in Austin. And I saw investors and some of them were like, Kyle, you shouldn't be here after you stole all that money. I'm going to, you know, and I, I titled it out of there. I was living in Bryan, Texas.

So I drove right back from Austin to Brian. But, you know, I was going everywhere. And, you know, at first I was scared to death. And then I realized that nobody was really looking for me until I got God. I had, I went to a convention in San Francisco. I took the train there because I was afraid to fly. And then, you know, I'm supposed to get off the train in San Francisco. But in Sacramento, because I bought my ticket at the last minute, the marshals want to see my ticket.

But they want to see if I'm running drugs. They're not looking for Kyle Sandler. They're looking for dope. And I don't know that. So I like, I'm freezing. I'm shaking. I give them my ID. I give him my bags.

They're looking through my stuff. I'm clean. They tell me to go back to my seat. Everything's all good. I get off the train at Sacramento. I don't take an Uber for $300 down to San Francisco because I ain't ride in the train another stop. This is how it was life. That's what life was like for me on the run.

And then I realized, okay, nobody's looking for me until this guy who I thought was my friend, Alex Balls, at the corner lot in Bryan, Texas, he got in trouble for swapping vins on cars, which for some reason is some terrible federal charge. And rather than do his time, he said, oh, I know a guy you're looking for from Alabama. he calls me about 10 times on this one day, tells me he's got this car I want. Great, dude, I'm coming, I'm coming. I finally get there, and that was the day I got caught. When you went on the run, did you have money left over to support yourself? Yes.

How much did you have? A few hundred thousand. So couldn't you have essentially divvied that out to investors before? It's like a good faith payment or anything like that? Yeah, of course, but I wasn't thinking about that. I could have. There's a lot of things that I could have done, and I should have done in retrospect. I think the number one thing that I should have done is gone to see the FBI.

Because based on what I know now, you know, in my business and the time that I've done and everything that I've learned, I would have got that year and a day or 24 months sentence easily. What was your relationship with your parents while this was going on? My dad passed away in 94. My mom was still my number one champion. Oh, it can't be that bad. Oh, it can't be that bad. Oh, it can't be that bad. I explained to her that it was.

And then, you know, she finally didn't get through. Well, you deserve to go to prison, but not for that long. Tell us about the day you got caught after being on the run. So I get calls from this guy, Alex, who runs a car lot. He's like, hey, Kyle, I got the car you want. Come on. He's texting me. I'm supposed to meet him at two.

I'm about an hour late. He's asking me where I, he's blowing my phone up. I should have known something was up. and I was with a girl and she dropped me, she was going to drop me off there and I was going to get this car. And I get out of the car and a guy, not even a cop-looking guy, but a dude gets out of a pickup truck and he's like, hey, are you Kyle Sandler? And I'm like, yeah.

He's like, I'm Officer Shoe with the Brian Police Department. And that's when the body cam footage on Generation Hustle takes over. but then I turn around and there's police from Brian, Texas Rangers, U.S. Marshals. There's like 40 people altogether that were there to get me. And they take me to the Brazos County Jail in Texas. And they're waiting for Fed charges and they don't get them right away. So I'm extradited to Alabama stateside and I have to take what they call the extradition bus. So you literally ride in this van.

I rode in this van in June of 2016, 2017, yeah, 2017, all the way back to Alabama from Texas. Like, we don't stop overnight. We have to sleep on the van. We go to rest areas to go to the bathroom. And they take us to like Wendy's where we can get like one, one dollar burger. and one fry for like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And in six days, we make it to Alabama. And then eventually in Alabama, they take the case federal, which was what they were always going to do.

And what were your official charges? It was originally five counts of wire fraud pled down to one, and five counts of securities fraud pled down to one. So one count of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. I got sentenced to 63 months on the front And then I went back to prison and got a 24-month sentence I did 33 and 14 respectively So you didn't want to go to trial You decided to take accountability after the arrest?

Oh yeah I wanted to get this shit over with It was actually, you know It was a big relief to get caught finally I could stop running I could like the clock could start over I could get on with my life And then, you know, I guess that's what I did.

I took responsibility. It took me forever to go from plea to sentencing, but I pled and I was ready to plea as soon as I got to, as soon as the FBI got to me. And they didn't give you bail because you were on the run. Yeah. And I'm blackboxed anytime. I was blackboxed any time I went into transit. And even when I went back on my violation, I was blackboxed. So that's, you know, the little extra box that they have.

on the handcuffs. And, you know, I've been on the U.S. Marshal plane, too. Con Air. So, yeah, I was, you know, me and Nelson, we flew Spirit Airlines up here. And let me tell you something, Ian, before prison, I would never in a million years take Spirit Airlines. But now that I've ridden with the Marshals, I take Spirit. We fly in the front.

It's like, first class is like a G5. It's like, all right, cool. Can't wait until my Spirit plane gets here. Let's go. Well, because of Con Air's. Got the duct tape. It's got the duct tape and it's all rocky and your ears are going to explode and forget trying to go to the bathroom. That is funny.

Yeah, you can't go to the bathroom on there. No. So hard. And the bag lunch. And they give you this bag lunch and they're like, here, eat it. How? Yeah. And you know, the Spirit Airlines has a bigger and they have a small aisle, but it's still bigger than Conair.

Oh, yeah, for sure. So, yeah, we take Spirit. Every time I fly now, I take Spirit. Well, I mean, the Spirit Hub is the Fort Lauderdale Airport where I live. But I've flown all over this country, all spirit airlines, all thanks to the U.S. Marshals. And I keep saying to myself, like, the next time I have to switch planes in Atlanta, I'm going to try and stay overnight. Because if you can stay at the Atlanta Renaissance, that's where they do the U.S. Marshal plane. And, you know, get a nice 50 to 200 lens and just be like, then I can have some great pictures for social.

That is funny. So being in prison that first time, like at the detention center where they held you on trial, what was that like? it was terrible. I mean, well, no. Oh, I got a great story for that. So when I had my business, not only did we have the roundhouse, I spent some of the money. I think psychologically, this was getting, this was me making right for the put putt put thing. When my daughter was four years old, we went to a mini golf place. And she had, and we were in, we were in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And when you know, when you go to the last hole, the hole eats your ball. She had a complete come apart when we got to the last hole and she couldn't have her pretty

purple ball back. And so, you know, I went to the little girl that was working at the counter. I was like, hey, let me give you $10. Let me have one of them purple balls. So she gave me a purple ball for $10.00. Great. The next Christmas, I asked Tatum what she wants for Christmas and she wants a mini golf. Now, any sane parent would think that. she wanted the mini golf set from like fisher price or some shit from walmart there was this place in the opalika town center called usa minigolf that was for sale for $15,000 i bought it and i changed it from an indoor minigolf and i put black lights up and did the whole black light mini golf and it did very well we called it planet putt i did a interplanet theme and hung space shit

from the ceiling and we had little parties for middle school kids we did okay i had this girl her name was Paige. She since passed away off. She was on drugs. But she was like 17, 18 when she started working for me. She was a real cut up. I could tell. But when she worked for me, she was on it. She wouldn't have stolen a penny from us. And, you know, she worked her ass off. She did great birthday parties, always getting good tips. So when she got down on her luck, me and my wife at the time had given her some money to help her get her own place. Then she ended up pregnant. And me and my wife, we went to Target or wherever and got everything on her list. We really took care of her. We found out that her dad's name was Adam Howard, and he was the captain, I guess. He was the

shot caller for the Aryan Brotherhood for the entire state of Alabama and the Alabama State prisons. So go with me on this. I come back from the extradite bus from Texas to the Lee County jail in Opelika. And they're already talking about me on the news because my case was big. And I come through and these two big-ass skinheads and little old gay me comes, because I'm already starting to come out of the closet, comes through the door. And they're like, hey, are you Sandler? I'm about to shit myself. And I'm like, yeah?

Like, come here. Oh, my God. This is all the things I've been hearing about. I'm about to get my ass beat. So I go to their cell. Like, you want to sit down? You look tired. So I sit on the stool, but I'm told not to sit on anybody's shit.

So they just told me, so I better do it. You want a soda? Okay, great. So they gave me a soda. And then they explained to me that word came from Adam Howard that the A-Bs are to take care of me. And I was scared out of my mind. So the county jail went okay, the Lee County Jail. And then there was similar experience in the Montgomery County Jail when I got transferred to Montgomery for federal hold.

It wasn't too difficult. I mean, you know, detention time sucks. You have a lot of 23 and one time, a lot of cell time. And then I went, I don't know if you know this, but I went backwards. I started at camp and ended up in a medium. I was at my camp. I was at the Montgomery camp for nearly three years. And then the kid that fixed a cell phones told on everybody.

And I ended up going to Forest City Low. And then in Christmas of 21, I got another phone shot, went to Forest City Medium. But they didn't do my first step right. So on Valentine. Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each last day. four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, Anabacholinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine

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Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit Botox Chronic Migraine.com or call 1,800-44 Botox to learn more. As a day of 22, I went home on first step, and then by August I was back in. So you got caught with a phone at the camp? Yeah, and at the low. So when he snitched on all of you guys for the phone, how did he just say where everyone's phone was hidden? Like, how did they tie to you? Oh, yeah. He gave up all, everybody's spot, everybody's phone. There was an actual phone repair guy.

Yeah, his name was Omar. He was a little Middle Eastern kid, and they took him away. I don't know why they took him to the county jail because there's no shoe at Montgomery. They took him to the county jail on a Friday. On Monday, he's back on the yard. So we know something's going on. And by right after lunch, right after Mainline, we're all called to lieutenant's office, like nine of us that had cell phones. Wow.

Yeah. But did they actually get the cell phone? Yeah, most of them they did. Okay. Why didn't you guys just get rid of him when he got removed? Because we didn't think of it. We thought he was gone. We're not worried about it.

Just keep rolling. How is that? The kid had been doing our phones. for years. How was that camp experience for you, those first three years? Montgomery was nice. Montgomery was great at the time. They're going through some stuff right now from what everybody tells me, you know,

in my social media, but back then Montgomery was nice, you know, nice tennis court, really nice softball park. Church teams would come and play us. We would have like snow cones and stuff on special holidays. Camp was wide open from 5.30 in the morning until 9.45 at night. So it was nice. How did it feel to leave your daughter behind when you went to prison? It was terrible.

For the first two years, there was phone calls routinely. But as she grew into a preteen and then a teenager, she rarely picked up the phone. The last year of my bed, I didn't talk to her one time until I got home. Now, after you got caught, you went to a medium. I went from the camp to the low, then the low to the medium. Okay. What was the low like for you? The lows were a lot like camp, but with the fence.

I mean, you need a lot of your time with the low. Yep. But Fort Dix Lowe is a lot different than Forest City. I've heard from a lot of people at Fort Dix Lowe. It's kind of run like a medium. There is politics on the yard at Forest City, and I ran independent because I'm gay, but I'm also a good jailhouse lawyer. so everybody kind of laid claim to me, so I wasn't, I was like untouchable, I guess. But being a good jailhouse lawyer was I got to the yard and before 4 o'clock count,

before I could unpack my stuff from my bag, everyone's like, hey, can you look at this paperwork? Hey, can you tell me what to do here? Hey, you know, I just got this shot. Can you help me write the appeal? I mean, this is before 4 o'clock count. But, you know, I got wrong good at Forest City Low and then I went to Forest City Medium for two months. Is jailhouse lawyer your hustle? It was, but I was also the O.M. cook at Montgomery.

So fried food was my hustle, too. And how would you do that? I would put, like, fried chicken in my socks, you know, in the plastic baggies, wrapped around my legs. They have these fat burner belts. I don't know what you call them. You might know, but you know what I'm talking about you wear. And so we'd buy it from the commissary. It was a great way to put all your stuff so that they could pay.

you down and and the guards knew. So you're smuggling it out of the chow hall. Oh, yeah, you smuggle it out of the chow hall. The guards know. I mean, they know that, you know, you're a little bit bigger than I am, but they would notice if you look like 20 pounds heavier and they just go on with it as long as they're not going to get in trouble. But so when I was at Montgomery's on stamps now, but when I was at Montgomery, it was

on max. So. And that's a mackerel fish pounce. A mackerel fish pound. Yeah. So you could get like, I think I did three pieces of fried chicken for 7 max. And I did French fries and fried fish and stuff like that, but also jailhouse lawyering. So you're the professional smuggler.

I'm the professional smuggler of food from the chal hall. Now did the guards not search you because of the way you looked and acted? Is that why they hired you to do it? Because why wouldn't people just smuggle it out themselves? Okay. The reason that I was good at it was because I'm actually, let me tell you something. I'm by far no Michael Bick, but I'm a decent enough cook and probably the best cook they had had in the O.M. For quite some time, so they weren't messing with me because if I went to the bucket or left, they'd have to get a new cook.

And they liked me. But also, when you're the O.M. cook, they need to know that you're not putting something in the food. Because at other institutions, they actually have that problem. Whether it be inmates spinning in the food or putting X-Lyx in the food or syrup of Ipecac in the food. or syrup of Ipecac in the food. You know, I've heard horror stories like at Lompok and other places where, you know, guards eat at the O.M and then they can't get off the toilet. So that's done intentionally by inmates to hurt guards.

So they have to trust the person that's cooking for them. That's why the job never changes. And that's one of the reasons, you know, if Kyle looks 50 pounds heavier, they're just letting me go. So, I mean, I didn't really ever, there was one time, you know, some new, rookie guard shook me down and ended up with like 50 chicken patties. But other than that, I'd never gotten caught. Yeah, I feel like any head position in prison, like had orderly, head maintenance guy, head cook, they always get a little more leeway. Unless it's like they're

getting caught with a cell phone, more likely than not, they're turned a blind eye to everything else. Right. Because if you think about the dynamics of it, that head orderly or the head facilities guy or the OM cook is doing the job that a BOP staff person is supposed to be doing. So you got this inmate doing it for a quarter an hour. You can sit back and do whatever you want. Why I mess with that guy? And those head inmate positions take their jobs extremely seriously. Oh, absolutely, because the head inmate positions typically getting the highest grade, which is like a dollar. But they're also, there's pretty much usually some other back channel way they're making money, whether it be preferred bunk or access to mattresses if you're the head orderly, access to extra toilet paper. I mean, now you need extra toilet paper.

It's crazy. But for me, yeah, the smuggling thing was a big deal. They've since gone from Max to Stamps. Well, Max to Stamps and Cash App. But the COVID killed the Max. But yeah, you know all about the Max. Yeah, tell us about Cash App in prison because you were in prison a little bit more after me,

so that's even more modernized now than before. Well, I mean, it's unrealistic. Most, well, not most, but a lot of campers and a lot of low guys have cell phones. And they just cash app each other directly. Or, you know, you find a creative way to do it on the wall phone, but SIS is listening to you on the wall phone. Or, you know, you borrow somebody's cell phone to call your people on the street and say, hey, can you cash app, E. And Vic real quick, 20 bucks? He just cut my hair.

I just lost 20 bucks to him in a poker game or, or, or, you know, or, you just cut my hair. or whatever it is that you have to pay for. But there's guys in prison in camps especially that run up gambling debts in the thousands. And if you don't pay your gambling debt, it's going to follow you around. And in some places, you're going to really get hurt. Yeah, I think the prison economy has really grown, like, in recent years because of things like cash up. Like, normally you would think, like, $100 is a lot in prison. Now I feel like that bar is getting higher because of how accessible money is.

So when it was max and you had to deal with. the conversion. We killed the Max in Montgomery was quarantine for COVID because when your prison economy runs on something like Max, it's the whole prison economy. So the ticket guy is running on Max too. So what happened during COVID is we got three different buildings at Montgomery. Montgomery Unit, Mobile Unit and Bramingham unit, but one ticket for the whole the whole compound's under one ticket. So the Max from Montgomery and Birmingham have to get to the ticket guy in Mobile. some inmate has to risk getting caught by getting caught by the guards running across a field with a bag full of max and this shit weighs like 100 pounds at least and you know I don't know if you remember this but compound max you could have a mac from 2010 in 2020 I mean that's that gets hot it's gonna stink it's gross and it's all liquid literally full fillets have turned into liquid we had this lieutenant, I was telling Nelson, we had this

this guy got caught doing that run from one building to another. So this lieutenant, Eaton, he was very creative with punishments rather than right shots because he was lazy. It was like 95, it was like today, because it's 100 and some degrees out here in Connecticut today. It was like 100 degrees out in Montgomery,

Alabama, where there's no trees. And we got this red bench outside of the lieutenant's office where you sit when you're bad. So this kid's punishment for getting caught, taking the max back and forth, was he had to sit outside on the red bench With the Mac bag for four hours a day for like five days in the heat next to the stinking bag, it was like he would have rather taken a shot probably than done this torturous punishment.

But, you know, going to stamps and then the cash app made it so much easier. But the amount went much higher. I was able to charge a lot more for helping inmates with motions in 2022 than I could in 20. How much would you charge for that? In prison? Like in 2020, in 2018, it was like a 2255, which is a big motion would be like two weeks worth of commissary, which is like the equivalent of $200. Like one sack full each week. But by 2022, it's like, you know, $500 on the cash app.

It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Now, we always hear this from the woman's perspective, but we've never heard it on the men's perspective. What's it like to be gay in prison? So for me, it wasn't hard because I'm not freaking gay. I'm not like in your face and I'm not like telling everybody that they're hot. I am in a relationship with somebody that I met in Montgomery and we were in the relationship in Montgomery. And it came out while we were in Montgomery and I was the popular jailhouse lawyer.

So there were people that were kind of turned off by it at first. So I had a town hall meeting. I did. Not the staff in my building. I was in the mobile unit. It was on a Saturday, which was roast beef night. You know, we had roast beef every four weeks. So I put up little signs that Saturday afternoon saying right after count,

meet in the atrium. We had this big atrium where everybody waited to be called the main line. So I basically said, look, you know, you all figured out that I'm gay. I'm with Cody. If this is somehow you think it's affecting my legal work, I won't do your motion, but I'm not giving you your money back. And everyone's, no, no, no, no. Or I think I said, or you can just stay in prison.

And they were, no, no, you're good. But because I came correct with it, it was okay. But a lot of gay guys in prison have a really hard time. How do you guys run your relationship in prison? We were in different housing units at first and just sneaking over at night. Well, we were in different housing units in the same building. So it was much easier than it sounds. So we would just sneak over it in the middle of the night after.

At our camp, I don't know how it was in Oxford, but our camp, our, guards, they were in the lieutenant's office bullshitting unless it was count time. So we knew if it wasn't 10, 12, 3, or 5, we were good. We just kept, you know, a good watch and we'd hang out. We hung out on the yard all the time, but if we were messing around or whatever, it was typically between midnight and 3 a.m. count. And were you doing, like, PDA at all? We did the packet holding thing.

What's that? Oh. Where we held each other pockets? Wait, no. Really? Yeah, we did because everybody knew. And that's the thing. Everybody knew, so it was like no big deal.

I think I did not happen that way, and I had not been doing everybody's legal work, or we had been like crazy about it. It would have been different. But yeah, everybody knew. Wait, so tell us about this. What would happen? They were like, oh, Kyle, hold his pocket. Oh, Cody, hold his pocket. His name's Cody.

So we'd, like, you know, hold hands or hold pockets while we're a rock on the track or whatever. So you just walk around holding each other's pockets? Yeah. Is someone, is one of you holding the other persons, or are you both holding it? No, one of us holds the other. holding the other persons. This is like some TV stuff right now. I know, right?

I mean, not a lot of people have ever, nobody's actually ever asked me other than the, what was it like being gay in federal prison. But then on the second time around, since it was out, you know, that I was out, I was very, very upfront about. Like when I was in the county jail,

I was like, look, I'm gay. If you got a problem with that, tell me now, so I don't have to, like, jig my shit later when you find out and get sent to the door. And everyone's like, oh, no, you're cool, man. You're cool. So. So when you went to the medium, did you have a harder time being gay there?

Because there's more stricter politics. Well, first off, I was only there for two months. And no, because, again, the legal work superseded me to the medium. And, like, there was other guys that had already been tossed back, too, that knew me. So my reputation on the yard was okay. Was there, like, in women's prison, the woman we've talked to, there's always, like, a lot of jealousy. And there's a big selection of women that are interested? Was that, like, yeah, for you?

So there's no big selection. Here's what we get. When you're openly gay and a guy's prison, you get a lot of kites. You get a lot of like, hey, I'm looking for somebody to do, I mean, I don't know how graphic you can get on this podcast. Go graphic. You know, I'm looking for somebody to give me some head, you know, going to meet me in the bathroom. I would get notes like that all the time. Cody would get notes like that all the time, too, from just random people.

Now, is there a difference between gay for this day and actually being gay? I believe that if you're gay for this day, you have some kind of tendency or you're not, you know, on a technical level, there's this Kinsey scale, right? And everybody falls somewhere on it. There's, you know, your complete straight people would never even think about asking for, you know, anything from another dude. But there was a lot of, I got a lot of people that propositioned me. But more that propositioned Cody, because Cody's got long hair and he's very flamboyant. And you would get propositioned by, straight males. People that you think were straight. But are really, or they claim that it's just gay for the stay and, you know, if it's six months or less, then it's unacceptable. If it's six months or less to the door, it's good. Yeah, I've heard that before. Don't tell nobody. Don't tell nobody. Why do you think that is? Do you think they're actually just gay or bisexual or? I think a lot of them just want to get off. And that's what it's about. I really think so. I just think that they're tired of jacket, you know, they're tied a jacket off, so they want to try something new.

I mean, there are people that you can tell, you know, through your gator or whatever that, hey, that guy's not, you know, completely straight. What are they called that they would make fupas or? The pocket pussy thing? Yeah. See, I don't know about that. I've heard people. I don't know exactly. I've heard of that.

I've heard, like, peanut butter in a sock and just crazy stuff. Yeah, I've heard some crazy stuff from higher institutions. But for me personally, yeah, we get. I'd get notes, you know, hey, can you meet me at 10 o'clock? Can you meet me after the 10 o'clock count? You know, I got a note before. I'm sure you did because you're white. It was my first time and last time in the library at Fort Dix.

I was there sitting, reading, or doing something in this choma with glasses, comes up to me. He doesn't say a word, just standing there staring at me. And I look up and I'm like, hey, what's up? And he, like, looks around and he passes me a note. And it was just explaining when I opened it. was explaining how he was gay, he was there for child porn, all these things. Can you meet me at so-and-so, like the bathroom or something at X time? You're like, hell no.

He walked away suddenly after that. I never saw him again, but I ripped it up, flush it down the toilet, and I was out of there. So let me ask you this. What happened with the guard in the kitchen? That guy tried to take my buns, man. For real? Yeah, I was scooping the muffin mix. At 4.30 in the morning.

Yeah, and he just, we're having a conversation. Now, this guard was always nice to me. I thought he was just friendly with me. It would let me smuggle out cream cheese, anything, like do whatever, extra seconds in the line. But he was always smiling and staring at me. And I just thought he was a friendly guy until that morning where he starts rubbing my elbow and then he's rubbing my side and rubbing my butt. And I think what made this story is that I was scooping muffin mix while this was going on

and everyone called me McLevin. I think that's what made the story, you know? It wouldn't have had the same effect if it was something different. But yeah, this guy got me, you know? And then a couple weeks had passed by, I was avoiding him, and then he got me in the walk in cooler, the freezer.

And instead of, like, leaving it open and standing outside, he closes it and shuts the door behind him. And then when I'm trying to get by with this tray of frozen cookies, he's making me walk past him with my butt against his groin. It was crazy.

And everyone knows what's going on. Everyone's talk about at the camp. There's 100 people at the camp. I had told my bunky who told everyone. And at first, we all decided not to report it. We didn't want to bring heat to the camp. But then it was just getting out of line. So I reported it.

I had a few months left. I was worried I was going back to the shoe. But luckily, they just removed him to the medium. They launched the investigation. They took it very seriously. They left me alone my last few months. I'm freaking running through the woods, bringing back bags. I'm on the phone.

I'm on social media. I'm going live. So you're the smuggling too. I was smuggling. I was smuggling. all these things, which I genuinely think if I didn't put that claim in, they probably would have busted me because it was kind of high profile. Right.

Just based on from Danber and being back home and stuff. But that investigation was going on. They interviewed some guys that were part of the investigation as witnesses, got shipped off. So I know that they were in vesta, like internal affairs went to the other SIS went to the other prisons to interview them. Nothing ended up happening. It's my word against his. But what I did find out was a guard from Oxford.

that watches the podcast message to me years later asking if it was so-and-so, and he said that he's been accused of that before, and he's no longer with the Bureau of Prisons. So I think they swept it under the rug, probably... He probably moved him to the medium because you were not his first time that he got in trouble for this. Well, they needed to separate us from the camp, and we couldn't be in the same prison. Like in Danbury, when I was at the low here,

they removed me from the yard and put me in solitary because there was no other yard for the guard to work at that reported that me and him were friends on the outside. and that he used to, I used to date his cousin and stuff. So, yeah, that's what happened.

And then they let him come back to the unit right after I left. Like the day after I left, he was back working there. But I was the youngest person at the camp. I looked the youngest. It's clearly there was something there, you know? Yeah.

It was just, it was crazy. That's funny. But it turned out to be another one of those good stories that helped build the platform. Oh, yeah, for sure.

I mean, that actually exists. I mean, so for me, I met this kid, Cody. You know, we've been together now for four years. And we used to mess around at night between 12 and 3 for the most part. We'd hold hands on the yard.

And we'd all get, we both get propositioned. He seemed to have a whole lot more play like before we started dating. But we started dating like the day after he hit the yard. Because I had my eye on him like when he was in quarantine, which was in a another unit. And he ended up in my building. And so somebody told me they were like, hey, that long-haired freaks in our unit. And I was like, really? And I ran back up to the unit. And I was like, hey, I'm Kyle, by the way. And we had this counselor named Stoddemeier. And I was showing Cody around. And he's like, Sandler, I see you. I see you. I'm like, yeah, you do, don't

you? But then he's got on my Facebook. Cody's, you know, my picture on Facebook. He's like, see, I told you. Like, yeah, I know. Everybody knows. It's not a big secret. Do you think prison was rehabilitating for you? Like, did you actually take the time to understand what you did, why it was wrong, and show remorse for that? Yes. There's a lot of things that I worked on in myself in terms of realizing that, you know, I do have some, I'm really smart. And I can do some things, but I need help. And so, you know, this time around, we're doing, I'm doing very well, but I have a huge team.

and I have a lot of fail safes in place to make sure I don't go down the wrong path again. You know, more people want to help me than anything, and I'm taking the help. But I'm not like invincible or Superman or anything like that, and it's not all about the big show for me. But yeah, I got a huge ego. It's probably one of the reasons that I came for you in the beginning. But, and I'm not afraid to admit it, but it's just like, you know, it's part of my personality, but I'm,

trying to overcome it and I have to a degree but you know me and you were both on generation hustle and you know like in the two years that I was well a year and a half that I was gone is when this blew up for you and it's awesome man you know but in the beginning I think like in 22 we were about the same place I went back to prison and you took off like a rocket but now we're like both taking off Lake Rockets in different directions. And, you know, I've learned a lot about, like, appreciating things that I actually have and not trying to do things I don't have, things that I can't do. And I'm trying to, you know, make things right with some people that I did wrong in my past.

And I guess one of the biggest things is to not live outside my means and to kind of be, kind of, you know, be proud of the story that I do have because I have a really compelling story without all the bullshit and you know I didn't really think about that until I had the time to sit down and think about it and I had like seven years and some change to do that

or I must say six years in some change to do that and I did I journal a lot you know I wrote a book I haven't published it yet and tell my story whenever I can but like right now, I have the opportunity to really help people. And I've been able to really take hold of that. Like what I'm doing now started off a TikTok. I started doing TikToks in 22.

And when I came out in 24, I didn't want to do anything like this. I wanted to get a job. But I couldn't. Every job door was getting shut in my face. So I did this like one TikTok on April 20, April 25th, 2024, that got like 9,000 views, which was nothing in retrospect. But back then it was huge. Like, oh, my God, I got 9,000 views.

And I didn't look back. And now today I've got like eight people, all who have been to federal prison, that are working with me and helping me bring this dream to life and help as many people as we possibly can. Why did you go back to prison after getting out the first time? So I had started a business similar to federal prison tips and was called Raised. wire legal services and we were doing pro se legal work which is completely 100% legal um and i had a client i wrote a compassionate release for his then wife who was in um what the hell is the place she was in prison in Texas at the medical at the medical center for women carswell and she was in prison for stealing

$12 million while she was on supervised release for stealing two. She ended up with a brain tumor, but I told her husband at the time, and I had it in writing. There's no way the judge is going to give her compassionate release. She could die. The judge isn't going to care. She stole $12 million on supervised release. Well, he says you miss 100% of the chances you don't take, or the shots you don't take. I said, you know what, you're right.

So I wrote the motion for him, but I put a watermark on it, and I'm like, look, dude, take this motion to your wife and if you guys like it tell me and then I'll take the watermark off and you can pay me this is the only time I've ever done the deal that way oh I loved it my wife loved it we want to use it we're going to file it it blah blah blah it's the best thing since sliced bread he put comments all over Facebook if you're looking for somebody to do

compassionate release go with Kyle Sandler I still have these things like in my Google drive and three months later they lost and when they lost it was oh Kyle sales. The motions sucked. I took it to five lawyers. They said it was terrible. And so he called my probation officer and told her that I defrauded them. And I tried to explain to her that I didn't, but she wasn't hearing it. She was like, shut the business down. And I'm like, I can't shut the business down. I got like 30, 30 cases in court right now. If I just shut the business down, all these people are going to be screwed. Well, shut it down, Kyle. So I was like, okay,

I'll shut it down. But I didn't shut it down. I kept it going because I had 30 cases in court. So I went back to work delivering pizza of all things Which you talked about experiencing I was making decent money doing it But I was also doing motions on the side And trying to get these things done For the people that paid me

Because I didn't want to see their shit just die So I get on a phone call with this lady named Donna And she's like I really need your help I really need your help I know I saw in another Facebook group That you can't do this work But please help me please

Okay fine I'll help you I'll just write this one thing for you I wrote this and this lady called my probation officer and said, Kyle's not supposed to be doing work. He did this for me just now, blah, blah, blah, blah. So my probation officer calls me up is like, hey, can you come and do this form for me? I was like, okay, sure. So I go and do the form and she throws me up against the wall and arrests me

and takes me back to prison. They tried to, she wanted me charged with practicing law without a license, but it's not a federal charge. And then in the state of Alabama, to practice, and in Florida, to practice law without a license, you have to go to court and represent someone. without a license. And I don't know anybody that's dumb enough to do that. So I'm never going to get in trouble for that. But what we do, for the most part, we do federal prison consulting in the beginning, like what to expect, what to, what's the first step act all about, what classes to take, what

not to take. You know, we do a lot of handholding, which is a lot more than just answering question that's on the internet. We do a lot of one-on-one consultations, a lot of PSR prep. We review plea agreements and things like that. And then we do a lot of... America's first pledge was freedom. Jeep still carries that fighting spirit. With the Jeep Declaration of Deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the American people

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It's conviction work. We prepared pro se motions for inmates in federal prison. Was it easier to go back to prison the second time? Like, because you knew how to navigate. Except, you know, I had one of those stories like yours for Oxford. I had a management variable on me because I had camp points. But I was varied up to a medium because I had two phone shots. So I wasn't sure where I stood as for his custody went when I went back, but I was thinking I went to camp. Now, Atlanta Transit Center has all these detention cells who know with doors and locks, and then they have a camper section that has cells with doors that don't lock. It's the camper section.

And that's the section they had me in. And so I'm like, okay, cool, I'm going to camp. And so, you know, they call me at 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'm thinking I'm going back to the Montgomery camp, but we go the wrong direction on 85. And I'm like, where the hell are we going? We ain't going to Montgomery. That's for damn sure.

So we end up at Butner. And then, you know, they go to the Butner medium. Like, they didn't take me to the medium. And they go to the buttoner low next. And they take me to the low. And that's where they let me off. And I'm like, damn, I'm supposed to go to the camp. They're like, nope.

And so I pitch a big fit about going to the camp. So the case manager comes down like, you're not supposed to be here. I'm like, see, I told you I wasn't as much. supposed to be here. You have a management variable. You need to go back to the media. Holy crap. So I go to the medium one for like two months and then I finally make it back to the low. Ever make it back to the camp again or no? No. I finished a button or low. But it was nothing. I mean, you know, I did 14 on 24 on the first step back. Was your mindset different that second time getting out of prison rather than the first time? I did not touch the cell phone, which was a big deal for me.

Like I thought about it over and over and over again. I didn't even rent a cell phone. I didn't touch a cell phone. I had like somebody check my email twice over the wall phone. And that was it. You know, I just stayed straight and narrow and did it while I was supposed to do this time and came home. What about even once you got out, how was your mindset compared to the first time you got out? Well, first off, I killed my paper, so I had no probation.

I was completely, well, I had to go to the halfway house for 30 days. but I knew that when I got it out of the halfway house, I'd be completely free. So that made the mindset different. I knew the minute I left the halfway house, I was going to Florida. I was not going to stay in Alabama. But I did my halfway house time in the Montgomery halfway house. They did okay. I mean, it was decent.

I got a job at Papa John's while I was at the halfway house. Again, they wouldn't let me drive, but I worked in the store, and they let me work like crazy hours, so I didn't even have to be at the halfway house. I would work like 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. but I mean did you if you did halfway house time you know how it is just get the hell out of the halfway house and then the day that I got out I took the Greyhound straight down to Florida but I worked on me this time and you know I think I learned I took more in and I took a more introspective look at myself to make change in the 14 months rather than the

the 33. Because when I came out, it was still bucking. It was just like, oh my God, you know, you can't hold me down. F you, F, you know, my right off the rip, my relationship with my probation officer was crap. I got home, you know, when I left federal prison the first time, it was Valentine's Day of 22. My outdate on BOP.gov was January 20th of 24.

I'm going to back up just a little bit. You know, something we didn't touch on, we probably won't. It's been on other stuff is I was John McAfee's campaign manager in 2015. So there was a guy, a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, who had reached, this is still in 22, so I was on the cell phone, who had reached out to me on my Gmail and wanted a quote for a John McAfee piece because he had just killed himself in the Barcelona prison, wanted to talk to me. So I did a phone interview from my cell. cell phone and the interview came out in the market watch section of the Wall Street Journal in early February of 22. This guy literally, and I could probably send it to you later, says in the article, Kyle Sandler spoke to us from a cell phone at an Arkansas federal prison.

There's only one Arkansas federal prison. So when they called me to the lieutenant's office on Valentine's morning at 6.30, my head was dead set. I was going to the shoe for the cell phone that was in the Wall Street Journal. I had my stuff locked up. I told a couple people, called my family. So I get to the red bench at Arkansas and Forest City medium. And I was only there for two months, so they didn't know me. They're like, are you Sandler?

I'm like, yeah, he's like, you got to ride home? Remember, my outday is not until January 20th. I'm like, in January of 24? he's like no before four o'clock I said no sir but what are you talking about he's like well we got an order from Grand Prairie you need to go home like home home home home so he explained to me that I had a habeas go through

and my first step credit I was done and this was January or February 14th to 22 almost two years early I didn't have a ride home so they arranged for me to take the bus two days later so I had to sign a waiver that I wasn't you know if I got my ass kicked It was not on the BOP. It was on me.

But then I couldn't get in trouble to save my life. Like, I was still bucking, so I went back to the unit. I got my unauthorized hoodie sweatshirt that we had made, you know, by fastening some sweatpants and shit together. And I'm wearing, it was February, so I'm wearing it on the yard. You're not allowed to wear a hoodie on the yard. Nobody's stopping me. I'm passing like eight guards.

They're like, hey, sailor. And, you know, hood's on. I'm like, dude, send me to the bench. Do something so I can tell you I'm leaving. Oh, they must have already known. I couldn't get in any trouble to save my life. And so February 16th, I went home or went to, I was homeless, so I went to the halfway house for a couple weeks.

And then I went and got an apartment. Have you been able to rebuild your relationship with your daughter after getting out? A teeny tiny little bit. She'll take my phone call now. That's it. How do you plan to make amends with that? I don't know. I got to work on it.

I mean, I have to show her that I've changed, you know. It's not a monetary thing. She knows she can get whatever she needs from me. I would gladly give it to her. I'm sorry that everything happened. But I was a complete shit bag to her mom. You know, first off, I've been gay since the seventh grade, so I had no business being with a woman in the first place.

Because I'd always had, like, little boyfriends on the side or Craigslist action or grinder or something. You know, I'm in a much better place romantically than ever. But, you know, I cheated on her with guys and with girls. to complete flanderer or didn't bear any mind. I didn't throw her under the bus with my crime or didn't try to. I would never do that. But, you know, I uprooted them from Alabama.

They came to Texas with me. Pulled our daughter out of, I pulled our daughter out of the public school, put her in the hoity-to-oity private school, had to pull her out of the private school to go on the run. You know, we homeschooled. That didn't go very well. I mean, she's a brilliant kid, but, you know, we didn't plan that very well.

and you know all the lies and everything made her mom look very bad and i don't think i'll be able to live that down and her and her mom are super tight so that's a barrier right there but what about making amends with people that uh who lost money with you and restitution so i'm making restitution payments um technically i can talk to them again because i'm done with court i'm off probation I've sent a few of them letters that have gone unanswered. I guess it's a kind of a show me state. I've had a couple people reach out when they realize what I'm doing now and tell me that they've gotten a restitution payment from the court.

Obviously, it's not what I've paid in, it's what they pay out. And then they see that what we're trying to do and are commending me for it is making sure I stay up on the straight and arrow and everything. What are you doing? So I've got two things going on. Federal Prison Tips is a prison consultancy and post-conviction firm. We help inmates with pro se motions. Most of it right now is around the First Step Act and making sure to get their credits right.

You know how it is to be fighting the system. The prisons across the country are just bucking the implementation of the First Step Act. The new director is harping on it has to be done right. We're seeing how it's being done. You know, we've just done a bunch of clemencies. President Trump's supposed to be doing it. doing 10,000 clemencies during his term. And the first big tranche is supposed to be this summer.

So we've done a bunch of clemency writing. And then we do the prison consulting thing. Like you were saying, you had hired a group that I think has been disbanded now. For advisory stuff. What's prison like, you know, expectations to correspond with while you're in prison? We help with plea mitigation. We review pleas, PSR preparation, PSR challenges. I think you had a paid attorney, right?

So he was quarter-appointed after I paid him. C-J-A. Okay. So, you know, a lot of these guys with the federal defender, the federal defenders are spread way too thin. You know, they see the client for like 20 minutes all in. So people need an explanation of what's going on. And there's a lot of cases.

It sounds crazy when you're not in the system to hear about it, but in the system you know. there are instances where your attorney has traded you for another case. That's totally not your case. You know, it's like, I've got this drug dealer and I've got, you know, clean cut Ian Bick. Let's give him five years so the drug dealer can do three. And the prosecutor's like, okay, let's do it. You know, so we have a prison consultant helping you.

We can point out that, hey, this looks wrong. And we do that. You know, we do a lot of, we do everything in written form so they can go back to it and reference it. We stay with our clients for a retainer period, whether it be three, five years or the life of the sentence on the consulting side and then the post-conviction side. And then me and Nelson and about four other South Florida-based felons, we opened a reentry center in Fort Lauderdale called 700 reentry.org. And we are reducing recidivism through entrepreneurship and education. We have a second floor of an actual old bank building, like from the 90s, so it's a real building. We rent office space to felons.

It's almost the exact model of the roundhouse except the investment place, investment piece. So we have co-working. We're teaching classes on social media, real estate, business development, business preparations, public speaking. We're having like event mixers where people in the community can meet felons that are trying to start their own business. business and things like that. We're not holding any equity except in the rent. We do a pay what you can, but we verify what you can pay. You know, I don't want to someone to say, hey, we can only afford $100 a month and then find out they're making $30,000 a month. So our residents are incubating companies. We have access to their books, but there's no actual investment. There's no investment

on the public facing side. And then we teach classes, like reentry stuff because I don't know how it was for you, but for all of us that are involved, we were promised the moon when it came to halfway houses. You know, you're going to go to the halfway house. You're going to get programming. They're going to help you find a job. They're going to help you find a house. They're going to give you these classes about, you know, bookkeeping and how to get your social security card. And all I got was a bus ticket, a bed, and a meal. So all that other shit is what we're doing at 700 reentry. We've been working like round the clock at like just putting. the space together and we grand open at the end of July.

That's awesome, man. So we're doing that. And then we have 700 media. So I have a podcast with Jason Vulturebeck called Tentozoos Podcast at Tentozoospodcast.com, where we do like the, it's very similar to what you do in honor among thieves. I'm going to start doing some long form federal prison tips content with like judges and attorneys and advocates. and advocates when it's just about federal prison, not about what your background and all this kind of stuff,

it's more like what happens in federal prison. I'm going to brand that federal prison tips, and then Honor Among Thieves is based there, and going public with Ross Mandel is based at our studio as well. Awesome. And next time you come to South Florida, we need you to come down. Yeah, I'll do an interview with you, Kyle. For sure.

Yeah, I'll be in Florida probably pretty soon. I'll come check things out. Right. I mean, it's hot as hell in here. It's hot. Not in here. Well, it's getting hot in here because I have to turn off the A.C. I know from the home.

But, you know, it's beautiful in the studio and it's nice and cool in your office. It's like a man cave in here, dude. Yeah, I've made it into a man cave. The people that haven't been here, I was blown away. I like it. It's all about that's like my nightclub music industry background. Like making a hospitality, having the big green room, you know, that's what it's all about. So let's go to that.

I mean, I don't know how much time you have, but two things I wanted to say. This is my compliment for Ian Big. When I got out of the car, this is what I said. I said, dude, Ambik is doing very well to have people come here in the middle of nowhere to do his podcast. I mean, we are an hour and a half from the nearest airport. And we went down like, we didn't go down a dirt road, but it was pretty close. And you know exactly what I'm talking about by the look on your face. I mean, it's nice.

It's a very nice area. I can tell. But it's not like for us, to come to the seven years. 700 studio, you get off at the Fort Lauderdale airport. This is a $4 Uber ride. Yeah, I mean, that's why there's a part of me that wants to move to, like, I've looked at like Austin. I've looked at Florida.

L.A. is ruled out because of, you know, the traffic. But then even Nashville, like the airport's literally like 15, 20 minutes away. Right. But I am the only me in this area. And I have the great stories from like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania. It's not that far from there. Not that far. I mean, there is the Westchester County Airport, but the problem is there's,

no direct flights there unless from Florida. It's all direct. I mean, it's all layovers. Otherwise, the closest airport is an hour away in Hartford or an hour and a half in LaGuardia or JFK. Maybe I move closer to the New York, like that outweigh and maybe like Stanford or something. Yeah, but your rent goes up like 10-fold. Exactly. I mean, that's the unfortunate part about it, but I try to make as mutually possible for the guests because we do have a large listener base.

They always get to plug in their stuff. But I noticed for anybody thinking about coming here, like you've got everything. Like, Nelson laughed because we're not staying in New York overnight. So he's like, man, I forgot a toothbrush and I forgot toothpaste. And so we went like 10 miles out of the way to go to a CVS, you know, on the GPS. And he gets here and he's like, oh, my God, he installed everything. Here's a whole basket of toothbrushes and toothpaste all brand new, never touched. Yeah.

Like you got snacks and food and an amazing deli downstairs. and a bar stock better than most nightclubs, that's your nightclub experience right there. Yeah, we got the whole bar. I just want to make it a hospital for the guests, you know, that are traveling. I appreciate everyone that comes out here, and I just want them to be able to share their stories. That's why I don't interrupt people,

just so they can share their story the way they want to. And is every guest going to be the best storyteller? No, but at least they get the experience to be on the show and share their story in their way. Yeah, but I noticed that if they're a terrible storyteller, you can jump in there and just kind of like coach it out of them. Yeah, there's only so much you could do, but I mean, it'll touch someone. Someone will be affected by it in a positive way.

So, yeah, you know, I think that Kevin Lannning, so I do Kevin Lannning's show. How much did he pay you to plug them in on this? You know, Nelson's like, hey, I think I have something to do with y'all make it up. And I'm like, no, it was all Kevin Lannning. And you said the same thing to him at the same time. So, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm doing Rise Above, and we're having a, great conversation like this, and we're like done. And he hasn't hit the stop button yet.

He's got, wait, I mean, I forgot. I got one more question. What's up with you and Ian? And like, he sits back down and I go into, you know, this is what happened for me. First off, I wasn't taking into consideration of your age. And I have this 63-year-old doctor who's self-reporting to Fort Dix. And I've talked to him a hundred times on the phone. And so he calls me and he's panicking, like screaming.

How much money do I need to put on my books to pay for protection? And I'm like, dude, if you mind your own business and keep your head down, you don't have to pay nothing for protection. You're going to be just fine. There's a hundred doctors just like you at Fort Dix. Ian Bick said, you need to pay for protection. I need to know how much money I got to put on my books to have protection. I promise you. He's like, Ian's got 10 times more followers than you.

you. And that is what set me off. I'm like, dude. And from that, like, my ego was bruised. And I'm like, F that. And I think that was the first time I did a cut at you. J.D.'s thing was a little bit more personal. I think I've addressed that at one time. I don't know what happened. See, I think that when I first got out of jail, first got out of prison in 2022, me and you were like, you weren't this big. You were still working at Whole Foods. So we were talking every now and then on Instagram message it or whatever because I remember you did a video with that poster from Generation Hustle. That used to be my background on my videos. Dude, where do I get that poster?

And I email Martha that day and I'm like, Ian Bix got this poster. I want that poster. So like she overnights it to my house in Montgomery, Alabama. And then, you know, when my brother takes my house down when I went back to prison, that's like the one thing he left. I'm like, dude, you got my G.H poster? I think I left it there How are you going to leave my poster? I don't even knew the show anymore

I mean the show's off That's funny So you know At that point We were like almost neck and neck on social And I don't know what I was doing You were kind of still feeling your way around You blew up at that time

But I didn't consider your age When you went in You had a whole different View on things I'm just thinking of my experience I'm thinking of my experience With other people at Dix And my experience

and loads and mediums. And I'm thinking, I'm looked the way I do when I'm gay, and I've never paid for protection. So whatever this guy's paying for protection, he's putting it on himself. But that doctor hurt my feelings when he said, Ian's got 10 times more followers than you, and he had to pay for protection.

So I think I ended up telling him, you know, put $500 a week on your books. Oh, Kyle, you're funny, man. But listen, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for having me, man. It was a very fun conversation. I'm glad we got to do this. Me too.

And definitely keep in touch, and I'm looking forward to doing your show. Come on down to South Florida, see all of us. You do one and just boom, boom, boom. Yeah, we'll come visit Kevin. That's what everybody's doing. Sounds good, Ben. Well, safe travels back, and we'll have the links to all your stuff in the description in this episode.

Thank you very much.