Locked In with Ian Bick - Ian Bick Reveals How He Owned a Nightclub at 18, Got Arrested by the FBI, & Survived Federal Prison

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

Ian Bick sits down with HBO and Netflix producer Jed Lipinski to share his story in a raw, unfiltered, and candid way. Ian discusses becoming a nightclub owner at just 18, the choices that led to his arrest by the FBI for running a Ponzi scheme, and his time in federal prison. #IanBick #TrueCrimeStories #FBIArrest #PonziScheme #NightclubOwner #PrisonSurvival #RiseAndFall #rawandunfiltered Thank you to PRIZE PICKS for sponsoring this episode!: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/IANBICK and download the app today & use code IANBICK to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup! Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: IG: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast Listen to Jed's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gone-south/id1592823205 Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://www.ianbick.com/shop Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Growing Up in Danbury, Connecticut 00:16:52 Mischievous Plan: Insulating Spray Foam Prank 00:33:52 Launching a Prom and School Dance Business 00:50:54 Launching Teen Rave Nights 01:08:20 Unexpected Business Ventures 01:26:00 The Start of a Risky Business Endeavor 01:42:09 A Series of Unfortunate Concert Failures 02:00:00 Gambling Away the Fortune 02:15:12 Accusations and the Turning Tide 02:31:36 Legal Disputes and Public Perception 02:48:02 Navigating the Trial: The Importance of Presenting Your Case 03:04:26 Arrest and Courtroom Experience 03:20:01 Navigating Sentencing and Plea Deals 03:35:30 Navigating Prison Hierarchies at Fort Dicks 03:51:24 Journey through the Prison System 04:07:16 The Beginning of the Storytelling Journey 04:22:49 Podcast Growth and New Season Insights 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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What was that like when you were a little kid? So I grew up in a small town, Danbury, Connecticut. I think there's less than 100,000 people that live in the town. We moved from, I was actually born in New York City. A lot of people don't know this. In Manhattan, that's where my parents met. That's where they lived. My dad was a New York City public schools teacher and administrator

and had a catering company and entrepreneurial business on the side. and him and my mom decided they didn't want to raise kids in the city, so they moved to my dad's summer home in Lake Wabika, a small gated Jewish community that had about 200 homes that my dad's dad was one of the co-founders and neighborhood attorney for. It was founded by Jewish New York City firefighters that were looking for a second summer home aside from the city to get out of the city. So that's where I was raised.

We, they renovated that house, turned it to a, from like a one or two bedroom cabin into a two-story, you know, on two acres of land. Waterfront, we grew up on the lake. Me, my dad, my mom, my brother, family vacations, you know, Friday night pizza movie nights going out, always had a family dog. And we were just a really close family. And growing up in that neighborhood, we were given a lot of freedom, you know, It was because it was a safe neighborhood. It was a gated community. You go out, you know, when it's sunlight and you come back when it's dark just to check in or eat dinner.

And then we'd go back out again to go night swimming or set off fireworks or go around the neighborhood and play manhunt. And I formed some really good relationships in that community growing up. And, you know, living in a community like that gives you a – makes you have a lot of independence and a lot of thinking on your and going out there and we love building cabins in the woods and playing paintball and playing airsoft. And I remember one time me and my best friend growing up, decided we were going to make a candy shop across the street. And we had like axes and we started cutting down the trees until the community gave us

like a cease and desist letter and said, you can't do this. And, you know, every summer, I was always very entrepreneurial as a young age doing the lemonade stands. you know, something I think a lot of people misconstrued about me growing up was that, you know, we were middle class, but we always worked for what we had. My dad instilled that in us at a young age. So if we wanted the new Xbox or whatever new system or whatever toy I wanted, I was setting up a lemonade stand and working towards that all summer or selling candy or, you know, I remember in middle school, I was the kid selling candy bar.

and energy drinks out of my backpack. My dad would drop me off at school and I went 20 bucks for school lunch money for the week. And what I would do is walk to the CVS down the road and stock up on gum, energy drinks, candy bars and it just kept flipping it and flipping it and flipping it until I'd have a couple hundred bucks in my hand and I'd just sell it out of my backpack. So those are what really where my early childhood years were like. I struggled a little bit in elementary school. I was very overweight and chubby. If anyone wants a good laugh, they can look up Ian Bick on Google and they could see kind of the old photos of me. And I got made fun of a lot in elementary school. I was called Twinkie. I was called Chubs. You know, fat ass, all of these, you know, mean names. I was always the last

kid picked for any sports team. You know, I was the first. funny kind of class clown type person because I did acting in theater. I love being on stage. I love the attention. They would always dress me. The theater camp would dress me up as Milton Burrow and Ed Sullivan. I remember as Milton Borough. I put on lipstick and, you know, shoe, high heels and a dress and a wig and went out on stage. And I remember being casted in my Millridge Elementary School play one year as it was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And yeah, they put me as one of the little bears. And, you know, that was my persona and I loved acting. And that was acting to me was helped me stop the bullying and got people to like me. All I wanted was just for people to like me.

And I remember the bullying got so bad that, you know, my parents enrolled me in karate and I did like the grappling and the karate at Tiger Shulman's karate in Danber. And I tried to do all that. And, you know, my dad taught me, you know, the best way to get back at a bully is you, you know, hit him right in the face and he'll leave you alone and I had gotten into some trouble. I got suspended. The school had suspended me for fighting back against the bully and in school there's no one person's innocent, one person's guilty, you both get suspended. So that was like the last straw for my family and they ended up pulling me out and sending me to a private school called Hudson Country Montessori School. And that was, that furthered my ability to be independent and be on my

own because that's literally, it's a private school where you have fourth through eighth grade in one classroom and it's 15 kids max between all the grades. There's no desks. It's not normal school. There's like a bunny rabbit hopping around and aquariums and, you know, frogs and all of these cool things in it. And it really, you know, promotes getting you to think on your own. It promotes having science fairs and doing these projects and you would sit, you know, crisscross applesauce on the floor and read in a corner, you would do all these cool things. And it was not your normal school experience. And I think that really helped create independence in me at a very young age. And I did that all the way till seventh grade when my parents said, you know, and I was very strict on it too. I said,

hey, I want to go back to public school so I can, you know, have some type of social following and social setting and adjustment before I go to high school. Because I knew that. that some of seeing some of the upper classmen, the eighth graders graduating from that private school, they had a hard time acclimating to one of the largest high schools in the state, Danbury High School, going from that, you know, small private school. So I wanted to get my feet wet by going back to middle school and that's what I did for seventh grade. Got it. And I'm interested to hear more about like you helping your dad at his catering company and also just a little bit about more,

a little more about who he was. Like, he also seems like sort of a rule breaker. Like, he was an entrepreneur, too, and I know that he inspired you to be successful, but maybe not always to follow the rule. So can you just tell me about, before we move on, like, about, about, you know, working with your dad and being inspired by him?

You know, and I look back on it now and just everything that transpired, and as you get older, you, you get closer with your parents and even more so in my case because I've had the privilege of, you know, seeing him on a documentary before and then getting to interviewing, interview him twice on my show. And honestly, I think that's so, you know, such a unique perspective to have a child sit down with their parent in a setting like this and talk. That's almost like therapy, but without having the therapist in the room.

And so I've got to learn so much about me and so much about my dad. and I realize I literally am my dad's son. Like I have all of the traits that my dad has for better or for worse. And I think one of the most important ones is the work ethic. And, you know, he is almost 80 years old now and he gets up at 4 or 5 a.m. And he can work till midnight or 1 a.m. And he just has this insane work ethic. And, you know, even back when I was a child, before he left teaching, he would, you know, teach five days a week.

and then he would go and do catering on the weekends. And I didn't realize how big of a caterer, how big of his business was until much later on when, you know, I'd start to see pictures of him with Bill Clinton, or he did stuff for 50 cent, or I got to go to the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter premiere, where I got to meet the whole cast in sixth grade whenever Goblet of Fire came out.

And he catered that. He catered the biggest names, the Rolling Stones. And he would just casually come home. And I remember one time I used to idolize Hillary Duff. And I had her posters all over my room. And he was like, he showed me a picture. He's like, you know, this is like, holy shit, that's Hillary Duff. He's like, yeah, I was just talking to her.

It was like New Year's Eve and they had a casual conversation. Don Cheadle, like literally the biggest names in Hollywood, he would cater to them for. And he was just so nonchalant about it. And I had no idea that that would foreshadow my involvement with celebrities in the concert business. and then now the podcasting business later on. And he just, you know, that I think you're kind of born with being an entrepreneur. I don't think that's something that can get taught. The people that go and become an entrepreneur randomly in their life and are good at it,

I think they always had that within them. And they kind of needed to break free just how, you know, we'll hear later on in my story, how I ultimately led back to entrepreneurship after I working a normal job. I just think you're always going to be meant for that. you're born with that fire and flame within you. And I started working for my dad. I think the earliest, you know, was fifth grade. I think when I was nine or 10 and I would help him. I never liked working in the kitchen at first. I hated dealing with food. I liked being in the front of the house, being a waiter, wait staff, helping out, you know, organizing things. I loved

growing up playing with Playmobile and Legos and building something. We'd call these like setups where we would do reenactments where you would have a construction set up with Playmobile or a police setup. I was very imaginative, very creative. When I have a vision in my mind, I can execute it within minutes once I have a plan, and that's how my mind worked. So for event planning, I fit perfectly into that mold. And I remember one time I was in seventh grade, transitioning into eighth grade in Danbury at the Palace Theater in Danbury. and what ends up happening is that he has another party that weekend, and this is for the Connecticut Film Festival,

and he's like, I don't know what I'm going to do, I need someone to run it. And I go up to him, I said, dad, I can run it for you. He's like, well, what do you mean? You're, you know, 12 years old. I'm like, I've been watching you, Dad. I know what to do. And what I did was I organized that whole event, ran the wait staff.

I'm a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old directing like 20 wait staff on what to do. And at the end of the night, my dad came back to make sure everything was good from his other party. And a police officer came off to him and is like, is that your son over there? And my dad's like, yeah. And he's like, I bet you he has a hard time in school, acknowledging that my brain worked very differently. And that, you know, school, public school specifically doesn't encourage this type of out-of-the-box thinking or this type of entrepreneurship. And I just had that in me from a very early age. Yeah, so interesting. I'm glad I asked about that. The next thing I want to hear about is you and your friend Stephen, grown up. I don't know if he was in that community or not, but I think he lived in Danbury. And the two of you are anti-authoritarian. Your rule breakers, a lot of dirt biking, a lot of paintball, a lot of trouble. And you got blamed for everything.

that and what that leads up to, which is the moment that you spray the president's car with some kind of permanent spray foam, which seems like, you know, that really sets a lot of things in motion for you. So if you could, why don't you just tell me about, you know, you guys as these rabble rousers in Danbury and what that ultimately led to and the fallout of that, which was so significant to your, you know, future. So I met Stephen O'Connor, who was and still is one of my best friends in Hudson Country in Montessori School. And I always say the story starts my story of going to prison and even doing the podcast now starts with Stephen. But when you think about it now, it really starts with the bullying because that triggered everything because I never would have met Stephen if I was never bullied. And you think about how the actions of others changed my entire life. I just didn't know it at the time. And so I meet Stephen, and me and Stephen is this ginger.

And, you know, gingers are odd out of the bunch anyways, looks-wise. And that was his personality. And he loved McGiver. He loved taking things apart and fixing them. My dad got a brand new car. And we were in the back seat, and he's sitting there with a screwdriver trying to take apart the DVD player because those were new in the cars back then. And my dad's like, what the hell are you doing, Stephen?

and he just had like everything we love being outdoors he grew up riding dirt bikes and ATVs and his dad was an entrepreneur owning his own business we loved hiking our house is actually connected we found out through the woods it was like a three mile hike and before we had cars and we're driving he would walk through the woods or take his dirt bike to my house or when the lake was frozen in the winter he would walk across i'd get off at his bus stop and hang out with him he'd get off at mine we were literally inseparable he was about two years old older than me. And, you know, we, as these independent nature, outdoorsy types people, we got into trouble in my community. We would do paintball and the neighborhood didn't like that. So they'd make a rule

about no paintball guns. My parents got me a golf cart when I turned 16 and they made a rule saying you needed a license in order to drive the golf cart. Fireworks, which were actually illegal. The other rules might have been petty, but the fireworks were, I get it. We'd throw firecrackers at mailboxes and at people's front doors and do ding-dong ditch and all of these things. And we did what kids do. And that stirred some ruckus in the neighborhood. And they would start the neighborhood is structured where there's a vice president and a president, a board of directors. And they started passing all of these rules that we felt targeted us directly.

And I had already felt like I was being targeted at school with the administrators. They passed rules about no backback. So what did I do? I started a backpack petition. And I carried my backpack every day around school. I'd wear flip-flops. I wore a Hollister shirt that said, this is what happens when you party naked.

So I was, you know, budding heads with authority. I just did not like authority. And I didn't like silly rules. Anything that was like these societal, like, rules. And what really upset me the most was, you know, the rule of, you know, everyone needs to go to college. think that was always like an underlying thing. Teachers during this time period were always saying

you have to go to college to get, you know, anywhere in life. You have to get good grades in middle school. You have to get good grades in high school just to reach this ultimate goal of college. And for whatever reason, it was just in me that I thought there was something more out there than that. And I love thinking outside of the box and doing something different. And that was just that feeling of always being at the center of attention. So with Stephen, me and him, the same, is, you know, fast forward to Halloween mischief night 2010. And we're, I'm a freshman. He is a junior in high school. We're at Danbury High School. And this would be the night that changes my life forever. Maybe, you know, the bullying, like I was saying, led me up to this point and set me on

this path. But this is the night that everything that transpired after would be caused because of this night. And what happens is, you know, we're driving around. He has his license at this point. I don't even have a permit yet. And because I'm 15. And he says, let's go to Sears. You know, it's mischief night. Everyone gets into trouble throwing toilet paper, this and that. He said, let's go to Sears. So we went to Sears and we're looking around and he's like, look at this. And we find these cans of insulating foam. And I was like, well, what are we going to do with that? He's like, I'll show you what we're going to do with it, you know? And he kind of explained how it worked, how if you take the foam and you put it on a lock, and this is insulation foam, it's meant to

like insulate things. But he said, if you put it on the lock, it'll harden just enough so they can't get access to their lock. It would like freeze it. And that was our plan. We were going to go to the president and vice president's house at night, dressing all black, put on masks, and we were going to lock their car handles so they couldn't get in was our genius plan. So we get the spray foam. We go home. We suit up in all black. We put like Halloween masks on. and, you know, instead of walking, which is what we should have done, we take the golf cart as our escape vehicle, which has the lights and it makes noise. And at that time, very few people in the neighborhood had golf carts.

Now everyone has them. But, you know, it was obvious you could count on one hand the people that had golf carts in the neighborhood. So we go out at like midnight and we take this golf cart and park it at the president's house, like kind of in the woods. We back it up with the lights on, then turn them off and we go on this mission. we're like, well, I'm keeping watch and Stevens going around with the can

and spraying all the handles of the car. And then a car comes, we run back and he's like all clear and we're pretending like we're on a mission, like a, you know, a call of duty mission. Hop back in the golf cart drive all the way around the lake like another mile or so in this cart to the vice president's house.

And he's pulling out his phone checking to see if his theory was, you could see if they had security cameras by taking out your cell phone and seeing if like a light illuminated or something. And he does the same thing to now this BMW. The president's car was a Jeep Wrangler brand new.

Now the VPs was a BMW and he does the same thing. We hop back in the golf cart. We go to my house where he was going to sleep over. And before we go to bed, we decide to take toilet paper and teepee my parents' house the tree because we're like, listen, we know they're going to blame us first. So let's make it look like we got hit too. So we TP our house and we go to bed. Next morning, Steve leaves.

He's an early riser. He went home, whatever. I'm still in bed. And we get a knock on the door from a female officer who coincidentally had arrested one of the board members the prior summer on my behalf for assaulting me. A board member put his hands around my neck because they had sent me to community service in the neighborhood. because I, like, broken the community house, quote, broken. It wasn't really a break. And it was just we went in there and took some T-shirts.

And, yeah, they gave me community service in the neighborhood. So anyways, this same cop comes back at her whole demeanors changed. And she is livid at us. She's trying to fish information about what happened. And I'm like, we were home all night. Look at outside. We got hit too. We got T-Ped.

Whoever did whatever they were. She was saying that cars got vans. I'm like, I've been home only. I don't know what happened. My dad's down in the kitchen, too, and she's like, well, if you didn't do anything, do you have permission to search the property? Can we go look in your garage? And my dad tells her yes, because he's thinking, you know, they can't be stupid enough to leave any evidence behind. She opens the garage door. And what is there? Four spray cans of insulating foam with the foam still dripping down one of the cans. And I was caught red-handed right there. And I was caught red-handed right there. And I was trying to say, we used it to fix the golf cart, this and that. And little did I know simultaneously there was another cop taken out of the policing handbook at Stephen's house saying that I snitched on Stephen, which wasn't true. So Stephen was squealing like a pig over there admitting everything. So they had us dead to write. I got issued a summons to report to juvenile court on whatever date.

And that was it. Later that morning, the president drives his Jeep to the front. of the house and like parks in the woods across the street to showcase what would happen to the car. Well, Stephen was wrong. The car would not just lock the handles. This foam before it dried dripped all the way down all four sides of the car causing $2,500 worth of the damage to each car. It was literally dripped all the way down, which was not our intention. We just wanted it so they couldn't get into the lock. This turned out to be a whole big thing. So we end up, you know, getting assigned to juvenile court, and we both get assigned community service, and then it would be

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Now let's get back into today's episode. Oh, my God. Wow. All right. So the next thing that happens, of course, is that, you know, you organize this party for the homeless shelter in Danbury, right? Like, that's community service. But before that, a small thing, like, what does this do to you?

What is your reaction to all this? Like, how does this impact you? Do you just continue to feel this anti-authoritarian streak? We were wrong. This is dumb. Or do you feel a degree of guilt? Like, what are your emotions as this is happening? You know, back then, I don't know if I felt bad that there was damage done.

I didn't feel bad at the time that it was them because I felt like the intentions were right. that they deserve something. It was like a revenge type thing. It was a childish type of act, but I just felt like they wronged me, so I had to wrong them back. And as I got older, I realize a lot of things in life or most things don't even need a response. If you continue to do your own thing and build your own thing and focus on your own path, that revenge will come naturally, organically. And I don't even know if revenge is the right word, but whatever it is, you know, just continuing to stay in your own lean and push on your own and go through challenges on your own automatically will bother some people when they see you succeed. And that should have been

my mindset back then, but it wasn't. And it was just an act that, you know, that's what kids do and that's what we wanted to do. And we took it a little bit too far. But, you know, I was just, I had this mindset that I wanted to be different. And maybe it was just another way of me wanting to be liked by, you doing this type of cool, you know, badass Robin Hood type thing. But it ultimately backfired, but it ultimately ended up being the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Perfect. So tell me about what happens next, what you guys do for community service and organizing this party for the homeless shelter and what that leads to. So Stephen ends up doing community service at this local gym, which he would later get a job at, which actually worked

out for him. And me, on the other hand, I was always an out-of-the-box thinker. You know, when I'd get schoolwork assigned, I always would think, okay, there's got to be like a cheap book that I could find online. Like, I always needed to find, I wanted things done quicker. Like, I would think I was assigned 100 hours of community service. And I wanted to find what is a way to get around this. And not in, you know, I don't want to do the hours, but there's got to be a more beneficial way, like thinking about actually doing it, thinking smarter and not working harder. And I kind of applied that methodology to a lot in life, you know, when I'd get assigned algebra, which I actually, which I, you know, utterly hated, which I think most kids do. I would look up cheat sheets or books

or anything, because back then there wasn't the technology that there is now with the iPads and all the apps and everything. Or buying, you know, books with all the answers marked. I was always looking at those types of things. So I'm sitting in English class one day in our English teacher. This is freshman English class. And meanwhile, the school does not know that we got into this trouble. It's a juvenile record that's not in the newspapers. It didn't make anything. No one knows. So from the teacher's standpoint, because this is now freshman year, I went from an eighth grade being on a naughty list of kids to watch out for because I have Cs and Ds and Fs on my record. I was a kid that failed gym for refusing to change.

now I'm one of the top people in my class freshman year because I wanted to prove them wrong that I wasn't this bad kid. So I was taking honors classes, AP classes. I had A pluses all across the board. And so I'm sitting in this English class and we're reading this essay on homelessness by Anna Quinlan. And that's when it just hit me. Like there's these moments in life and I've had this several times where you're just sitting there in an idea, and I'm sure you get that in your field and career where it's just like, this is it. So when I read the essay on homelessness, this is 2011 or 2010, the Livestrong bracelets were hugely popular. This is before the Lance Armstrong scandal. And everyone was wearing those yellow bracelets. I remember my dad would buy a family pack and we're all wearing them. And I had

one on my wrist and I said, I'm going to raise money for the homeless shelter. I don't know how I came up with this idea, but just it was, I was sitting there after reading this, and we watched the pay it forward movie in English class about how you should pay it forward and this and that. And I said, I'm going to sell these bracelets. It's a fight for the homeless for a dollar apiece. I brought the idea to my dad, and he invested $400 bucks to buy me the bracelets on 24-hour wristbands.com. I got all these different colors, and I showed up when they came in with a manila envelope with the bracelets. and a jar for the money and walked around and sold them for a dollar a piece. No school permission, nothing.

Just walked around. And I just started to fall into this role. I got posters printed that said, Fight for the Homeless Community Change Project. I posted them around the school, which I didn't know you had to get permission for. But I just started doing all these things, and it naturally gained traction before I knew it.

The Danbury News Times wanted to do an article. We had raised like $2,000 just by selling wristbands for the local homeless shelter. and now the school board of governors, the students, the vice presidents, the presidents were now getting involved and the school clubs and the teachers were all kind of taking me under their wing and involving me. And this just formed from nothing. And then pretty soon I started wearing a suit and tie to school.

And I still to this day do not know how to tie a tie. So I would put on a blazer and my pair of jeans and my dad would tie my tie every morning and I'd carry around a briefcase. and that was my persona. I was just this, you know, whiz kid that started this charity and I was really passionate about it. And what I realized was that, you know,

well, on the community service spectrum, I walked in the first day I was supposed to report. She had obviously read the article and I had a log of all the hours I was putting into this project, which was over like 300 at this point with all the work I was doing. And they signed off on it.

And, you know, that was just another opportunity for me to, because the probation officer thought I was the worst of the worst and pure evil and I wasn't getting anywhere and she was like disgusted by me and her opinion changed and, you know, looking back on it, that was a motivator to prove her wrong and to show her that I wasn't like that. So me doing this, that gave me drive to do this project. And so we built this whole brand called Fight for the Homeless. And, you know, like all things, it started to die out. out how many bracelets could you sell?

You know, everyone in the school that wanted a bracelet had bought a bracelet. And we had the news article written. And so in my mind, you know, based on working for my dad and seeing how school dances operate, I said, I want to take it to the next level. I want to start a school dance. I want to raise money because normally some of these school dances would be for a good cause, the non-prom dances, because proms are normally for profit for the class, but they would have like a snowball or a homecoming,

which would raise money for something. But historically, at the high school, these dances were always lame that weren't the proms. There was no good DJs. You'd have the teachers policing, you know, grinding on each other to make sure you stood a certain distance. It wasn't fun, low turnouts. So I wanted to create an awesome dance.

My dad ended up, you know, stumbling across someone that he knew locally from his business that connected him to this new course. Center that had taken over the Union Carbide famous building in Danbury, that they now turned it in the Matrix Corporate Center. And he's like, hey, I got us this meeting. Let's go over there. And we go and see it and we sit with the director of events, a catering director, and it's beautiful. They have no proms here yet. It was different. It was beautifully designed. It's up on like stilts above ground, huge grand ballroom. And I'm like, this is the place. Like, this is where I want to do. And the best part was

no school had ever done a dance here yet in Connecticut. I think a couple of New York proms had their book for that coming year, but the place just opened was just renovated. So in a matter of days, I come up with this elaborate plan on a PowerPoint to convince the school to let me throw this dance. And the first teacher I went to was the head of the board of governors who oversaw it, and she shut it down immediately.

She said, you can't do this. School dances need years in advance of planning, our roster's filled, you can't do it. It's just not going to happen. It's not possible. And I didn't take no for an answer. I went to the principal. I marched into his office and I asked for a meeting.

And I got a meeting like a week later. And it was me, my dad. I even brought the catering director from the corporate center over here because they had an angle where they wanted the prom's business and all the school's business because that's six figures worth of business a year. And the board of governor's teacher was forced to go in there by the teacher. by the principal. So I'm sitting around on this PowerPoint saying everything,

for any question that they were going to ask, I had planned out, security, I had teachers that already volunteered, the costs, everything laid out to a T on a spreadsheet, on a PowerPoint, and the principal said yes, and let me do this dance. And I promoted it from the ground up.

I booked the security. I booked the DJs. I booked the lighting. I took care of everything. I called sponsors. I picked the food. I promoted every day. I put up a banner in the cafeteria.

I went from classroom to classroom talking about it. I was on the loudspeaker. And I, you know, ticket sales were extremely slow up until like the very last day. And we ended up selling like 300 tickets. And I remember the day of the event, I got there to this corporate center. Like I convinced security to let me in early and I got there at like 9 a.m. before staff wasn't even in there from the corporate center. I set the whole ballroom up on my own.

I got the tables. I set the linens everything. And when the staff came in and the catering manager, they were like, who did all this? And I was like me. Like that's just, I learned this for my dad. This was my elephant. This is what I wanted to do.

And the event went extremely successful. The crowd loved it. We ended up raising another $1,500 from ticket sales. And then the CEO of the Matrix Realty Group matched my donation with another 1,500. And he comes up and meets me that night from one of his directors that had met me. And, you know, he shakes my hand. He says, you know, great job.

I heard what you did today with the setup. And when you turn 16, you're working here. And it wasn't a question. It was a statement. And I said, absolutely. And that's where I would later start working, you know, five months later when I turned 16 as a corporate job, which I would later build upon where I was a. able to steal proms from other schools because of my age. And I was vice president of my class

going into that year. I was able to bring business to them and build this whole prom and school dance business. But that dance fueled a couple things within me. One, it fueled my ability to create and organize. And I love that, bringing it together and seeing it. Like, I always hated the events themselves. And you'll hear about that more. in the story, but I love the planning of it. I love the buildup of the hype, building the hype. Everyone's talking about you on Facebook, which was big at the time, the Facebook event pages, on Twitter, those were the big things. And people were talking me around school, and that hype was there. But then after the event, the hype's gone. The next day, everyone will say how great it was

and post the pictures, but after that, it subsides. So I had that element of the craving. I never did drugs, but this was my drug, the ability to, you know, that, that hook of being center stage, being that front person. And that's what I wanted. So you mix that with, okay, now my charity obligations are fulfilled. How can I turn this into a business? Because there's lemonade, stand, candy shop stand, Ian's brain turning of 300 kids just pay $20 a ticket to come to this event. And everyone's looking for something to do. How do I create? and bring my need for wanting to be liked and popular to how do I turn this into a business? And that's when I was like, I need to start, I need more of this.

And the easiest way to get more of this for free and for quick was to start throwing house parties at my parents' house. And I convinced them to start throwing these house parties, which I swore up and down would only be 30 or 40 people. This is now sophomore year of high school and a sophomore year of high school. and a sophomore year of high school. I said there's going to be 30 or 40 people, and that 30 or 40 people turned into 200.

It turned to the 300. It turned into 400 every weekend. These huge parties, these parties got so big. My parents had to set up a tent, a wedding tent, with a dance floor. We did the after-prong parties and the homecoming parties and everything in our yard, too. Kids would take the boats out. We had like a bar on the patio that my parents didn't know about, We were charging $5 for a solo cup.

The inside we put a fog machine. Kids were hooking up in the bedrooms downstairs. We had pong tables set up everywhere. My house parties were always the best because I stocked. I'd go to the dollar store and stock up on chips, snacks, mixers, sodas, everything. And it was just the place to be. And I quickly became this event planner whiz kid in school where they entrusted me to help plan their homecoming. I turned the cafeteria into a nightclub for the night. I did my own events at the

Palace Theater in Danbury. I turned that into a nightclub. And that was my first real for-profit event where I structured everything from hiring cops to a dance floor to a DJ and all of these different things, all of these elements. And I was building this brand, my sophomore year high school, that Ian Bick is the most well-known kid in the school who catered to upperclassmen, underclassmen. And I had this incredible brand and I started calling myself, this is where it's at productions. Because if my parties were going to be where it was at for the night, why not make it a play on words? This is where it's at productions. And I had the business cards. I got an LLC. I found some local business partners from kids from surrounding towns. And we formed this LLC and I just created this persona. And I was known for being

that whiz party promoting kid. And that was, you know, closing out the end of the sophomore year, I was on top of the world and I was throwing these parties every weekend. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. And that's what it looked like going into junior year. Wow. A couple questions. it really seems like your parents are very supportive during this period.

Like your dad, the way you describe it, almost sounds like your business partner. And your mom is in the background. But like, what were your parents thinking about all this? For example, like my parents would have been pretty appalled about hosting kids 200 plus every weekend at my place. But it seems like they were willing participants. Just tell me about your parents and the way that they kind of dealt with all this. I think that the reason why they agreed to the parties in the beginning, the very first one, was because my dad and jointly my mom, would rather me be at the house where they could supervise than me go to some other party at some stranger's house and who knows what's happening. And I think when they realized, like most parents after that first one would shut it down, you know.

but when they, I think they realized that one, I had a lot of upperclassmen who worked for my dad that would care and tendered or take care of my parents during the night, like talk to them, socialized with them. The group of kids, the upperclassmen, were so friendly with my parents. And also you mix that with there was never problems. Out of all the parties, I probably threw 30 or 40 house parties, the cop showed up one time after everyone left and it was my birthday party when it was only like 50 of my close friends. and it was a noise complaint because in this community, it was mostly summer homes at the time. So I had no neighbors during, you know, the spring or the winter when we were throwing these parties. And when they did come up for the summer, it was just on the weekends. So if we threw a party on a Friday tonight, no one was getting there until Saturday morning.

So we never got any noise complaints. So the cars could be lined up and down the road in the neighbor's house. It was a different time period back then. Now you couldn't get away with that. And even now, kids aren't throwing. house parties to the level we did. So I think when you mix that with, there was literally never any issues. And don't get me wrong, we had to hide the alcohol.

My parents were on it. My dad would confiscate bottles. I remember one time this is a famous story among my friends. Someone was smoking weed on the patio area. My dad goes up, takes a joint out of his hand. And he says, if you're going to smoke shit on my property, it better be good and tosses it out because he was smoking bad stuff. So I think there's that, you know, people don't, when they watch like the documentaries about my life or they see the interviews, they don't realize that my parents were very vigilant and they never would have condoned drinking. And even going later on when it comes to the business aspect, I never asked my dad for business advice ever until it was too late. I was the type of person that needed to learn it on my own. And, you know, when you look back on it, I don't necessarily regret that because it made me the business person I am today. You look at it. You look at it. I don't necessarily regret that. You look at it. You look at it. I don't. You look at it. I don't. I don't.

at kids that come from entrepreneurial families where everything's just handed to them, businesses are handed to them, money's handed to them. Are they themselves actually business savvy because of that? You have to learn and you have to make mistakes. And that's something my dad always instilled in me. And were you using drugs or drinking during those years or not? I never use drugs. Now I'll do edibles. Shout out to our sponsor, Mike Tyson. I love his gummies. But, alcohol, I did it for fun. You know, like we would get the cheap bottle of duber. I remember getting so sick off of that.

But I didn't like it. And when I'd be given, like, I tried to fit in with the cool kids with weed. You know, like I pretended to sell weed at one point. Me and my best friend would steal it from his dad. We'd sell, like, dime bags at the carnival. I wasn't a drug dealer that we were just do it to fit in. This was like in middle school.

And then when you'd get past the joint, I would like puff it in, hold in my mouth, and then like blow it out before anyone was looking, things like that. But, you know, looking back on it, like I had friends that were addicted to drugs, not nearly as bad as what the environment is now. Like, I interview people and they're talking about heroin and cocaine and this and that at such a young age. We didn't have any of that. The worst drug at that time in our group was, you know, weed.

Maybe occasionally you'd hear about some cocaine. But, no, me personally, I never got involved with anything. And did you have an idea about what you wanted to do when you were older? Or were you just at this point just kind of going with the flow and seeing what was working? Going into sophomore year, a high school, when I was so focused on my grades, I wanted to be an FBI agent. That was my goal, which is ironic because I would later be arrested by the FBI like three or four years later. But I knew that you had to get good grades to go become an FBI agent. And I was just, I loved, you know, the criminal aspect, you know, chasing down the bad guys, the good guys win in the movies.

We would do reenactments with paintball pretending like we were agents or in the military or anything like that. I loved playing, you know, Call a Duty growing up. And so that was my passion. And it would shift, you know, going into junior year when I really had a sustainable business from party promoting. It changed to hospitality. And I remember junior year, I told my parents I wasn't going to go to college. and I was dead set on it. Junior years when all of your friends

are starting to pick out schools where they're going to go visit. And I said, I'm not going. Like, I have this business. At that point, I'm doing these events, making $10,000 a night at this local club called Tuxedo Junction before I would ever come to own it,

doing these raves once a month, the Halloween rave, the Christmas rave, the intensity paint party, catering to kids from all over Connecticut and the New York border and working my way, up from 800 kids in one night to 2,500 kids, grossing, you know, $20,000 a night in cash. And my profit was 10 or 15K, you know, once a month.

So I have this established business now where it's legitimate. It's making money. And that's what I was passionate about. I love these events. I love promoting. I love passing out the flyers doing the grunt work, which is something I would later lose sight of, and which is what I believe led to a lot of my failures in life. but I told them I didn't want to go and they said, listen, at least go check out Johnson Wales,

which has a great hospitality program. And so I went to Florida for the weekend to visit Johnson Wales and my parents paid for the trip. And what I learned that weekend was that I would spend the first two years of a four-year degree being stuck in a classroom, learning nothing about the field I wanted to be in. And the next two years, I would get some hands-on training. and I would come out and I would have, that was I think at the time of 50 or 60 grand a year school, not including room and board.

So I would come out probably 200K in debt about with everything, maybe a little less. And then here was the nail in the coffin. They brought us to the Fountain Blue Hotel in Florida at the end of this trip on that Sunday, which is a beautiful hotel. The biggest DJs in the world and acts perform there, all the celebrities,

and they introduced us to, people that just graduated that previous year from Johnson Wales who now have internships there. You know what the interns were doing? They were polishing silverware in the kitchen. That is something I was already doing at the corporate job. I was booking events at the corporate job aside from having my own business. I was working full time while going to school because I would work, I would go to school, cut out early, be at the corporate center until like 10 or 11 at night and run my business doing the events. And I was like, this is not for me. I'm already light years ahead of that. Maybe not mentally, but physically I was in my field. And so at that point, I knew I wasn't going.

I remember when I showed up, I didn't even take the SATs, but all my AP classes that I was in that year, I showed up to the test because they were going to give you like suspension if you didn't show up. And I doodled smiley faces for the whole three hours of the test in the gymnasium for the AP classes. So why don't you lead us from, you know, you're working at the Matrix, you're throwing these massive house parties. It's all going really well. Your dad and your parents are very supportive. And the next step is you propose taking over tuxedo junction. So just like make that transition for us.

So when I was throwing the parties at my house, eventually like all good things, they're going to come to an end. My parents really got sick of it towards the end. And the last parties were the prom parties where they were just like over the top. You know, we had the tent, the whole shebang, the DJ, and the cast parties because I was in the musicals all four years of high school. I never played sports, but I did the musicals. I was a theater kid. And they said, Ian, you can't do the parties anymore here. and I had tried an event at the Palace Theater in Danbury a few months after that dance.

This is 2011. Now this is beginning my junior year. And it was a good first event there outside of the box where I got to keep the profits and whatnot. But the landlord didn't necessarily want to keep doing these events because the kids show up drunk. You got to have the ambulances. It was a liability thing. So I get introduced to clubs downtown. There was two reputable clubs.

One was Tuxedo Junction. and one was this nightclub called Club Plasma at the time. And it had changed names of variety. And one of my friends who was an upperclassman, a year older than me, was a DJ at one of them. And I reached out to him on Facebook and I said, hey, can you connect me to these clubs? I'm interested in doing these things called teen nights. And teen nights when I was in middle school were big. The middle schoolers were tried to sneak into them where I was just, you know, only high school kids to get in.

And it was like a club. You were in a club for the night. those had died out in recent years. You would see the flyers everywhere, but eventually it got old. And people would do DJ skate night at the local ice arena, where you would go and you'd listen to music and hang out with girls and skate and whatnot. So it had died out. So I came up with the idea, why don't we bring them back?

So I go to this first club called Plasma, and I talk to the owner, and he is this, you know, very thin, older man, long hair. We called him Mr. Ponytail. and we sit down with him and, you know, he's not even taking me seriously. It's like a Wednesday night, 7 or 8 p.m. I'm in the suit and tie, and he's like looking at his desk through the calendar. I'm like, hey, this is what I want to do. I want to do teen nights.

I'm going to pack the place out. I'm going to sell this place out. And I didn't know at the time that everyone wanted to do a teen night. And, you know, promoters are full of shit. And no one can actually do what they say they're going to do. And so I said, hey, what dates do you have available? and he does the classic skim through the calendar that's clearly empty

and said he has nothing available. Try again in six months. So I leave with the kid that introduced me and we go across the street to Tuxedo Junction. Tuxedo Junction is a historic nightclub. If you know like Toad's Place in New Haven, it matches Toad's place. It's had some of the biggest bands in its heyday

and biggest rap stars like Meek Mill, French Montana, and then bands like Oasis and Joneses, jet and all of these big names at tuxedos. But in later years, this is around like 2011, had been kind of run down and doing kind of like those underground rap shows and wasn't necessarily a reputable place. Parents did not want to send their kids to Tuxedo Junction.

So I go in and meet the owner and his name's Al Kakamo. And he is an Italian older guy and I go up to his office and I sit down and I pitch him on my plan to do these teen nights. and I tell him my plan and, you know, he could have told me to screw off at that point, but he believed in me. He was probably one of the first adults at that time period that genuinely believed in my business plan and what I was doing. And he said, listen, I'm not going to give you the big room that could hold over 1,000 people. I'm going to give you the small front room and it's not going to be a weekend night. It's going to be a weekday.

So he gives me the room. It could hold like 150 people more if you're going over legal capacity. and he didn't show up that night because he was on vacation, but his business partner shows up that night. And this is a Wednesday night in the middle of the summer, August 2011. I'm 16 years old. And his business partner calls out, and he's like, dude, this kid has a line around the door.

There's over 300 kids here. And I just charged five bucks to get in. I sent a bunch of texts, made a Facebook event page, because back then, if kids said yes to a Facebook event page, you knew that everyone was going to show up. They were very accurate back then and didn't even pass out flyers and I packed the place out, made a couple grand. And it was a great night. And, you know, after that, he gave me dates in the whole space.

Tuxedo's was shaped like an L with a big stage and lights and everything. And he gave me it once a month for like six months where I did these elaborate raves and I passed out flyers. We would go to the top staircase of the school and when the bell would ring, during a move, you would dump all the flyers so it would rain on you, and I would say like the Halloween rave presented by, this is where it's at productions, or the Christmas rave, everyone would just a Santa Claus or elves or reindeer, or the paint party where we would throw paint into the crowd. And these events attracted kids from everywhere, and we would charge $10 to $12 a ticket.

And I was the first person to bring electronic dance music to Danbury. At the time, all of these colleges, you would hear of Avichy and a less. so, and these big, big names were starting to explode in the college market. I tapped into it in the high school market, mixing, you know, like regga tone and hip hop with electronic music and the girls loved it, the guys loved it, the girls would come, so the guys would come. And, you know, my biggest event did, you know, 2,500 people. And it was just such a great experience.

But like all good things, as we hear throughout the story, is they would eventually come to an end. you know, everyone always asked me, why didn't you just keep doing the teen nights? And in my mind back then, they were starting to die out. All of these individuals wanted to do teen nights because they saw my success. So back then, social media isn't what it is today with the way you could build a brand. So there was no way to differentiate my parties from other teen nights. And other kids wouldn't take the time to go to the levels that I would do to make sure I did it. Everyone had a good time. We did giveaways. We gave away an Xbox, a TV.

We gave away free soda at our events. I would go to the dollar store and buy three liter bottles of soda, fill my car with it for like $100 bucks and I have $103 liters and we would give soda out for free. We made it a good experience on all parts, gave out goodie bags, but the other competitors weren't doing that. So these teen nights started to get a bad rep. Kids stopped showing up. The market died out. And that's when, you know, Ian, who is now getting right to go into senior year, high school is thinking about the future and wants to bring this to the next level.

And the next level for me, in my mind, was to start doing concerts. I had my mind fixated on doing these arena-sized shows with acts like Big Sean, Wiz Khalifa, the biggest names in hip-hop. That would be my next move. You just kind of like, that all happened very quickly. And it's like in your mind that's like, oh, yeah, this is like what I did next. but it's also like, I'm curious just to hear, like, because this is a big, this represents a big new, you know, stage for you. Like, all of a sudden, you're not running the nightclub.

You're just promoting. Yeah, I was just a promoter, yeah. So, so, like, I guess I'm curious about the reaction from the same people, including Al, you know, like, watching you, he must have thought, this kid's like a fucking phenomenon, you know? and of course you're not like you're not putting on the shows yet but you're also you're organizing your promoter I'm just curious about like this new stage before we get to what we're going to talk about next like the reaction from people around you maybe you know or like I'm looking for like the best question here but I also you know I'm interested in your reputation as you start putting on these big shows like all of a sudden like this is a new level like now you're

putting on like shows at an actual night club as a kid, still at 16, 17, 17? 16, yeah. 16. This is like, this is crazy. This is something that, like, people in their 30s and 40s do, and you're doing it at this age. Maybe you can just tell me briefly, like, the reaction that you start getting from these, you know, parties, including, you know, the owner of, of Tuxedo Junction, who must have thought, like, wow, I have a real phenomenon in my hands here. I think, you know, looking back on it, I was one of the original. influencers before there was a world of influencing. But, I mean, Instagram was just kind of beginning at that time period. Same with Snapchat. And I really had this command over a huge group of people just from this

brand, like it was brand building. And, you know, this is like what Barstool and Dayglow and all these things were doing with the college market. I was doing with the high school market. And Al, you know, instantly respected me from that moment because I came in and I did exactly what I was. I was doing. what I said I was going to do. And I was, you know, I just had this ability to promote and work my butt off, passing out flyers and leaving no stone unturned to pack this place out. I wasn't going to let anything stop me. No matter what, I knew that I had to put in the work to do it.

I didn't just sit back and relax. And, you know, my friends started gravitating towards me. People would naturally gravitate towards me because I was the cool thing, the popular person. and everyone knew me. My parents were proud of me. I remember coming home that first night with 10 grand in cash saying this is what I made that night. And I remember counting the money with Al just in disbelief, you know, just sitting there that night. It was like 1 o'clock in the morning.

We're just counting all this money. And, you know, I couldn't even believe it, you know? Looking back on it now, it's crazy. Like, it's literally crazy because no one's doing that now. Not with the high school market. It's unheard of. And it was, I think, you know, Going back in time, those teen parties that came before me were never really ran by teenagers.

They would have teenage promoters, but it was always ran by adults looking to make money. Mine was different because I was the actual teen promoter who was also the owner of this business doing these teen parties. And when I look back on it now, that was always the missing key of why I was successful because that's the missing key to why I'm successful now is because not, Not only I'm I the creator and the host of the podcast, but I'm the editor and the poster, and I didn't outsource anything. I went back to my roots to do it all, all of the things. And I think when I look back in time, you see that success and how it'll all go bad so very quickly because I deviated from that plan.

And are you still like going to school and getting good grades? Are you sleeping? Like how is this new life as a promoter influencing your high school? school career academically. Well, by the end of junior year or middle of junior year, I'd say when these events were going on end of 2011, early 2012, when I made that decision, I'm not going to college. I'm paying kids to do my homework. I'm ditching classes when I can.

I remember I had my mom do my paper one night, and she got so mad because the teacher gave her a C. And my mom's a college graduate with all of these degrees, top schools, and the teacher said this is poor writing. But I did whatever. I'd cut school. I'd leave early. Most kids got in trouble for smoking weed or whatever.

I got in trouble for answering a business call in the middle of class with a DJ or with Al at the club looking for a date. And, you know, whenever I got suspended, I would go into suspension. I just text my dad and say, hey, call the office and say, the school office and say, you need me for something. And that's how I would get out of it. Or I would say, I'm getting my lawyer on the phone. that was my famous words. I'm getting a lawyer. I'm going to sue you. And at the time,

you know, everyone's a frit now. I know, like, it's not really much anything to get sued because there's so much money that goes into it. But back then, I would just say, I'm going to sue you. I'm to sue you. And that was me. I was just kind of like a cocky type, arrogant, you know, type person, who was also likable in a way. I wasn't like not likable. I think I was more arrogant to adult and authority, never to other individuals that were my age. And, people liked me for that. And, you know, it was just a, it was a very interesting time period. And I was dedicated 100% on building my brand and building my business and focused on that. School was the least of my priorities. What, tell me what happens next. So I'm doing these events at Tuxedo Junction

and they are skyrocketing. We're doing, you know, 1,500, 2,000 people for these rave type events. and I'm making $10, $15,000 a night in cash. My like investors or partners were other high school kids at the time who I would give a cut to if they like paid for some of the party supplies or helped out with setup or promoting. And all of this, you know, was right in a time where Facebook event pages were the big thing. And it was all word of mouth and using the flyers, we would go put flyers on cars at the mall at the movie theaters at the ice rink.

and we would just pack these shows out and do these raves. And unfortunately, like all good things, they eventually come to an end in that we found the market was getting oversaturated because the club owners started renting out these venues to do tea nights to anyone that wanted to do a teen night to try to replicate our brand. Our brand was that this is where it's at brand. And we found people started copying.

No one was able to differentiate what the brand was or what was that this is where it's at party. So everyone starts going these teen nights and they're not as, you know, popular as what ours. So it kind of died out. It fizzled out. The bubble had burst. Everyone was doing it. And in my mind, I'm like, I want to go to the next level.

And the next level is concerts. I wanted to put on concerts with big acts at colleges. And my first thought was I wanted to do Big Sean at the O'Neill Center. and Danbury. And what ends up happening is one of our former classmates that was a few years older. His name was Dave O'Say. He was at the University of Rhode Island and he started a party promotion business. This is like the peak. This is 2012 going to 2013. This is the peak of that whole concert phase at colleges where you have all the EDM acts, you have all the hip hop acts and everything performing for like their spring shows or their start.

the school year shows. And my business partners, which were other kids in Richfield High School, kind of went around me, took my idea, brought it to him, and he was the guy with the contacts to all the talent. And he, they end up booking Big Sean and Danbury. But then they found out that they realized they needed someone to actually promote it. And I was the promoter with all the contacts. So we made a deal where I didn't have to invest any money, but I got to put my name on the flyer and said, you know, Big Sean was presented by Ian Bick. This is where it's at Productions. And now this was like my first official show.

And we did Big Sean at the O'Neill Center in Danbury. I was a senior in high school. And this was the first semester, started the school year. And the show absolutely tanked. We only had like three weeks to promote it. Big Sean was huge at the time. He had just won a Grammy. But it was just not enough time to promote it.

A lot of extra costs. and my business partners who had had like their family invest money and stuff ended up losing like 50% 60% of their investment. And they came to me after like, Ian, we shouldn't have went around you. We're sorry. Why don't we go and do our own thing? And one of my business partners at the time said, hey, I have contacts to Wiz Khalifa. I can get you, Wiz Khalifa.

We just need the money to do it. And we believed him at the time because he had just booked us for a charity event for this project called Save the Children. which is a, I think it's a pretty national charity, and they had a rich field like branch. He had booked us Asher Roth, who at the time was signed with Scooter Braun, which was Justin Bieber's agent, and Asher Roth was huge. He had the hit song, I Love College. And so he had got us Asher Roth to play at Tuxitos for this charity event with a couple other bands that he was touring with.

I think that was Asher Roth's last tour. I don't think he's toured since. So he got us Asher Roth, and he said, hey, Asher Roth. is with the same agency as Wiz Khalifa so I can get them. So we believed them. And we said, how much is Wiz going to cost? He said it's going to be about $70,000 for Wiz. Then you need to have the venue expenses, production, everything like that.

We talked to the manager at the O'Neill Center. He gave us a price. We put everything into a spreadsheet that we had copied from what Dave had done for Big Sean. And we estimated the whole thing was going to be about $120,000. So our business partner, his name's Matt, he says, listen, if you guys are able to come up with the money, to me and my other business partner, there was three of us. Then, you know, I'll vouch for you guys, just show me a proof of receipt that you have the wire or that the money to make the payments and I'll get you whiz. So we believed him and we set out and started raising money.

This is now the beginning of senior year or fall time, like October, November, 2012. and I'm 17 years old. And so we start raising money from friends and family. Zach gets his dad to, like, commit like $15,000. They were Richfield kids well off. And I got my aunt and uncle to come up with $10,000. So we were at about $25,000 off the gate. What we were finding was is that a lot of people,

they like the idea of the nightclubs. Everything was good. Like with that and some of my friends were making money from there, little couple hundred dollar investments, but we were asking for $10,000 or $15,000. A lot of people didn't have that because we needed to raise this $120,000. So at the time, you know, my mentality is I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this work, to make this happen. So I don't know what it was, but it just flicked in my switch that I had two ideas. One was that I'm going to not go to a few people for a big amount. I'm going to go to like 10 or 15 or 20 people and get like a thousand to

$5,000. So it's more of an obtainable sum. And two, I'm going to guarantee their money back. And that was going to be the hook. And the idea for that didn't come off of an idea to like defraud people or scam anyone. It was literally like, Wiz Khalifa is one of the biggest rap stars in the world. There's no way we won't get the 2,500 people we need to get at least recoup our money based on the ticket prices we were going to sell them for. So I add in the contract, which is the same contract I'd gotten from Legal Zoom, one of those legal sites that I had printed out like an investor agreement, because in my mind, okay, you're getting investments from people. You've got to have a contract. And I added into the line, I was able to put into Microsoft Word and add in the line, your investment will be fully

guaranteed, even if the show loses money. I didn't have any assets to back that up, but I was just so confident in the idea and in myself that it was going to sell out. So as soon as I changed the contract and started walking it around high school, my high school, to tell people, the money starts flowing in. I have kids bringing me a check for a thousand bucks, $1,500, some people put in $2,500, and I think the highest at the time I got like $5,000 from a couple people. Within like three weeks, this is like right before Thanksgiving now. I have $120,000 in a business bank account. I remember Remember, there was some days I'd go from school. My dad, I had my license at the time, so I would drive to the bank, a little local bank, and I'd walk in because I'm wearing it now a suit and tie to

school every day. And I have my briefcase, and I have some kids are giving me cash or the checks, and I'm just handing it to the teller. Just handing it over, they don't even bat an neither. They're not asking any questions. And, you know, I have this notorious baby face, which was even younger back then. And I'm just a 17-year-old casually depositing all this money, and no one asked any questions. And, you know, we take the, eventually we have this $120,000 fully in the bank account. We get one of those transaction receipts from the teller to show proof of funds. And we bring it to our business partner. And at this time, we have an office at the corporate center, the Matrix Corporate Center, where I was now employed at full time, helping get proms and events and all of that

for them. And the owner of the building had given me an office space for like $500 a month, which at the time would have been three or four thousand dollars a month. And they gave it to me at a discounted rate. They had a lot of vacancies because they were just starting to sell like this idea of executive suites. And we had two offices that were next to each other. And we're sitting in the office one day and we bring our business partner, me, my one business partner, bring it to our other business partner who had the connections. And we show him the receipt and we say, here you go. And the look on his face, he didn't know what to say. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll make the call.

And a couple weeks had gone by and we're like, dude, what the fuck? Like, what's going on? Where's Wiz Khalifa? Investors are asking, when are we going to announce a show, this and that? And we get it out of him that in like a very heated discussion. Papers are flying all over the office. Like my one business partner had kind of a hot head. He was literally about to beat the crap out of him.

And he finally admits that. there was no chance ever of getting Wiz Khalifa. He didn't have the connections. He just thought that we were never going to raise the money. I mean, in his defense, how many 17-year-olds can raise that much money in that short a period of time to pull this off? So he comes clean to us. That kind of ends the business relationship. We kick him out of the company. And my other business partner and I said, you know, we got to tell the investors. And at this point, everything's legit. Like we're keeping good accounting. I mean, the money's not being spent. The most we spent that money on is a couple hundred bucks in office supplies. So we call a meeting in December. This is after Thanksgiving now

in my parents living room at the lakehouse where we threw all the parties. And there's like 15 kids in this living room for this meeting. None of the parents of the kids that threw money in came, but it's just the parents, I mean, it's just the kids. And we're sitting around. Everyone's spread out. And I'm like, listen, this is what happened. I come completely honest. But we have another idea. And that other idea was a couple days before Dave Osei, who had lost the money in Big Sean calls me because our other business partner went crying to him saying, I screwed up.

You know, you got to help me here about not getting whiz. And Dave, being Dave, calls me and says, I have an idea. I heard you have all this money. And so we pitch it to the investors. And this idea was that we would take the money and split it into not one, but a bunch of shows, like six or seven shows. So it would be less risk, more potential to make more profits. And there would be shows with Big Axe, Rusco, Motion Twist, Mike Stud, Huey Mac, this foam and glow show, this new type of rave that had like foam sprayed into the crowds between Connecticut and Rhode Island. and the college market was booming with electronic dance music.

So this was a big good bet. And you guys don't have to go forward with this if you don't want to. I told the investors, you could pull your money out. We could give you a check right now. Or you could leave your money in and we'll come up with new percentages based on each show. And the dollar amount signed new contracts and your money will still be guaranteed. And that was my mistake there. I went from promising Wiz Khalifa to which I was so sure about to never,

guaranteeing these individuals their money back for artists I had no idea I had no no idea who they were I knew none of these acts EDM I knew the big names in EDM but not like these middle tiered or lesser tiered underground acts that were big in a sense but not I never would have booked them knowing what I know now and about I'd say 40% or half of the people pulled out we had about 60 grand left the people that stayed in we gave them new contracts, came up with new spreadsheets, this is all legitimate, we're telling them the truth about everything. We have the numbers, everything's good. We get through Christmas, we announce the shows. Now this is beginning of 2013. I graduate a semester early now from high

school. Technically, I didn't graduate at the time. They failed me by like a half a credit for some, because I didn't show up to a class I never even signed up for. In the school at this point, I went from being like that whiz kid idolized in the school by everyone doing all these good things to they were starting to push me out because I was now turning it into a business and monopolizing it. And I threw, I got a bad rep for throwing these house parties where, you know, alcohol was served and the teen parties because Tuxedo Junction had such a negative name in the town. It was associated with underage drinking and the grinding and this and that. and the mayor had came out at the time saying, we have to get rid of it and all of this. So it was becoming tied to me.

And that was like the school was, I was becoming the black sheep of that. And so I ended up leaving a semester early from school. I was working full time. The Matrix Corporate Center had made me like the cafeteria manager of another school lunch program that they ran. So I would serve these kids lunch at a local school at a church school Monday through Friday. And then I would go to the office in the office.

the afternoon run this concert production business. And so we book all the shows. Dave organizes everything. And me and my business partner are completely hands off. We're not doing anything. And this is where one of the most defining things is because I went from being hands on, doing all the work, hustling to now, I think I've made it. I'm sitting back in this office, kicked back, relaxed, where the most work I had to do was book the limo in the hotels for me and my investor friends to go see these shows. And Dave had everything covered. Everything was good. We just had to send the money.

He would tell me where to send the artist deposit to, the venue deposit, all of these things, where he needed money. I had to sit back and everything was good. And the first show was Rusco at the University of Rhode Island. This is February now. And this was a $20,000 investment we made into this show. And it was our first big arena show after Big Sean. This show was supposed to double our money. It was supposed to be sold out.

Everything was going to be great. It was going to be one of the biggest nights ever. And we were being told from Dave and his team that tickets were selling great. It's going to be packed. And so I booked a limo with some of the profits I thought were coming to us. to University of Rhode Island with some of my friends that had invested in the show. And we go to, you know, we're 17, some of us are 18,

but most of us are 17 and we're partying with college girls. We get a hotel. And what I realized, you know, you could get into these hotels underage if you had a business debit card. Whenever a hotel saw the business name on it, they were like, well, the kids got to be old enough because, you know, he has a business debit card. Back then they weren't even really checking,

like date of birth on IDs or anything. you just give the card down and everything was good. And so we're at this event and I'm, you know, in the back of this massive gymnasium at the University of Rhode Island. I see the production. It was huge. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, wow, you know, we've made it. Everything's great.

We're making a ton of money. I told all the investors, hey, guys, let's celebrate tonight. We're making a killing. I had some, like the Matrix kitchen staff, the executive chef invested. I'm telling them. everything's great. We're going to this thing tonight. And I'm standing in the back. And one of Dave's partners, who I'm just meeting for the first time, comes up to me. And he's like, ah, dude, so sorry about tonight. I'm like, what do you mean? Everything's great. You know, money's coming. It looks great.

And he's like, dude, we took a wash. Like, we lost our shirts on this. I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I'm showing him the text from Dave that, hey, everything is kosher. Everything happened. And, you know, like ticket sales are great. What happened? He's like, dude, we didn't sell anywhere near to the amount of, you know, tickets we needed to sell. And I would know, I think, you know, I would find out a couple days later on. We met at the Cheesecake Factory. They came to see us in Danbury, him and his partners for the first time to spell it out for us on that first show.

Out of that, you know, 20K investment, I got back like $1,800. bucks when I'm telling investors, hey, you made money. So that Rusco show is a DJ Rusco was the biggest, most impactful defining moment of my life, because at that point, that's when everything goes from a legitimate business, everything's good to now I have to make this massive decision where it's like, do you tell everyone that the show lost money and that I was given misinformation and that you actually lost your money. And on the flip side to that, you know, people will think, well, maybe he's, you know, not telling us the truth

because they are seeing that the place looked packed too. So, you know, maybe he's trying to keep the money for himself. Or option two was, do I just, you know, say it did make money? And everything's good. And they'll still like me. And, you know, I will still have this image of success. And I won't be looked at as a failure. and that's the decision I ultimately made.

And that goes back to, you know, like being liked and wanting to be wanted and popular. And also that influenced my decision was I knew that there was four or five, six other shows to leverage off of. So I could easily make that money back if all the other shows worked out. And the thing about me at the time was I was dangerously optimistic. I always thought that I always looked at the pie as it was always always. going to be a full pie no matter what. There was no option for any slices to be missing. So if a show could make $10,000 based on 2,000 people, which was the max capacity, say, I was always considering it that, okay, it's going to be sold down, this is what we can make. I'm never looking at it any other

way at that time. So I'd end up telling everyone the same story that I had been telling them originally was that you guys made money. And what I did was I edited a sheet and came out with like imaginary profits. I said on that 20 grand investment, we made like 35, 30 grand. So now, not only am I down missing like the 18 grand that I lost from that initial investment, but now I owe another 10 or 15. This June, the world comes to Los Angeles. Kick off FIFA World Cup 2026 at the FIFA Fan Festival at the iconic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Watch matches live on Giant Scream. Feel every goal with thousands of fans. And celebrate with music, culture, and flavors for around the world. Join us June 11th through 14th opening weekend as the tournament kicks off in Los Angeles.

Tickets are just $10 and kids under 12 were free. Get yours now at Los Angeles FWC26.com. In imaginary profits. And that's when everything starts going downhill. And how are you feeling at that point? Like when you start kind of manufacturing those contracts or editing the contracts, Like, what's happening internally for you? At first, you know, I was fine. Everything was good because I was so confident these other shows were going to do well. But as my luck would have it, every single show tanks. Lack a ticket sale, snowstorm, artists not showing up this and that.

And I never made money on any of those shows. So the closer I come to the last show, the more I'm under stress. I'm under pressure. I'm in uncharted territories. I mean, it's one thing, you know, to, I mean, I guess when you look at it, I had never lost before. I had always won. The team nights were always super successful. I had never experienced a loss. I mean, most kids at that age would never experience any type of investment loss because they're not dealing with that type of money. The most traumatic thing happening to a kid at that time was getting a bad grade on a paper. That was failure. That was loss. Here I am,

who's supposed to be this successful business owner losing everything. But I think what kept me going in my mind was looking at those greats like Mark Zuckerberg and all of those individuals that I looked up to and idolized who I had seen as they had failed first. That was the picture going on in the world. You have to fail to succeed. Just a lot of people didn't accept that. But everyone was preaching that, you know, like you got to fail to succeed. And I would study those individuals and I would be fixated.

on that. I was like, this is my failure. I just have to figure out how to get through with it. And looking back on it now, all I needed to do was just tell the people what actually happened was that they lost money because I could have proved everything that had actually lost money. And I was just trying to cover it up, not for my own benefit, but just because I didn't want them to lose money because they were my friends and family. That's all I needed to do, but I didn't do that. And who, like, if anyone, were you confiding this to and your feelings at the time? Like family, friends, did you have any other people? Were you holding this like all inside? I mean, I'm assuming your business partners knew, but was there anybody else that you were talking to? Well, so here's the thing,

no one knew. Not even my business partners. I faked his spreadsheets. He, oh, actually, I didn't necessarily fake his spreadsheets. He was in the meeting when we were told we lost money. So he knew he came from an investment background with his family and stuff. So he knew it was a loss. There was nothing you could do. He didn't know that I was telling the other investors that I had gotten on my end from Danbury High School because he was from another high school. So no one communicated with each other. So he had his investors that he dealt with and I had mine. So he didn't know I was telling my investors a lie. He was telling his investors the truth, the couple that he had in is like his dad.

But I was lying and no one knew. I was holding it all in. And as dates kept getting further, people started out. ask for their money because now I can't say, oh, we have to wait for the ticketing money. And back then I did have some excuses. You have to wait for the ticketing site. You have to wait for them to send you a check. It's not like what it is now with like instant pays or transfers.

I kept stalling, stalling, stalling. And I was also, I had plausible deniability because I was a middleman. I had, you know, Dave, who was then going to another person. There was just these strings of middlemen's and connections to book these shows. which is what added the costs up astronomically, well, however you say that word, to these things because we were going through so many people and everyone was getting a piece

and everyone was charging. Nothing was direct. Had I had been directly associated with the agencies at the time, it would have been a lot cheaper, and I would have had more control over everything. So I was able to stall in that matter, but eventually, like by the springtime,

people are asking for their money by January, and at that point, I'm giving up whatever I have from my job because I'm still living at home, you know, a couple grand here, a couple grand here. And this was my first experience dealing with shady figures because I went to one of the cooks who I knew sold weed, who was from New York, who had also invested. I said, dude, I'm waiting for the ticketing money to come in. Can you connect me with anyone that could give me a loan?

And that was my first time ever borrowing money from a shady figure. I got 10 grand from a local drug dealer, went to his basement apart, apartment and he gave me 10 grand cash and I used it to kind of like, you know, pay, take from Peter to pay Paul just to as a float until I could figure out a plan. And that's when John Roble comes into the picture. And John Roble would later be my co-defendant. He was my best friend at the time. We had met the beginning of the school year became very close. We actually met in a funny way we were hooking up with the same girl. And we went on a drive together to pick up the Hatter's Hooter Shirters shirts for our school cheering section. He had volunteered. I said, does anyone want to come with me to pick up these shirts? He volunteered. And we ended up finding out we were seeing the same girl, hit it off, became close and separable.

And he ultimately ended up investing with his sister into this business, too. And we formed the circle, him and his girlfriend, mine and my intern that was interning with us. who I would ultimately end up dating and she would be my girlfriend. We were like this, you know, tight-knit person and our group of people. And one day we were playing like hide and seek at the Matrix because it's like this big, diverse corporate center. And he says to me, because me and him were like in this corridor and the girls were searching for us. And he's like, dude, what's going on? We used to call each other Finn and Phineas.

I was like, he was F-I-N and I was P-H-I-N. And that was like our names. And it's like, Finn, what's up? And that's when I told him, like, dude, this is what really happened. I'm in a rut. And I need help. I don't know what to do. I have no money.

All the show, at this point, this was May now. And the last show that could have possibly gotten me out of this hole had failed. And I need your help. And he said, well, I might have something? And he said, have you ever heard of Beats by Dre? or, you know, electronics, like beats pills or otter boxes. And John was a guy that was always wheeling and dealing. He had sold pot.

He was the guy that also, like, if you had a broken iPhone, he would say, hey, I'll give you money for it. And everyone's like, you know, I'll take money for a broken iPhone. No one batted an eye. John was able to turn a $50 broken an iPhone into a $400 or $500 profit. But he was a sheister type of, you know, well-dressed preppy guy, knew how to talk, smooth sailor. My dad always called him, you know, slick pretty boy Johnny, knew how to talk, always well-dressed. The girls loved them, but he was mysterious.

And he knew how to wheel and deal. And he was a hustler. Always had like four or five different bank accounts and this and that. And again, he's a high school kid. High school kid, same age. He's a few months older than me. His birthday was in like February and mine. in May. And he says, listen, this is what you're going to do. Can you raise us some money? And I get us,

I find another kitchen cook at the Matrix to give me $5,000. I promised him, I'd say, listen, I'll guarantee your money back. I'll give you $7,500 back in 30 days. And the reason why I get this idea is because John explains to me that he can get us beats by Dre headphones for 50 bucks, the most expensive one being 80 bucks. And we could sell these for $300, $400, $500. And I was like, that's a crazy profit. So we could give an investor, or at this point, I'm thinking loans. Let's borrow money from people because we have a product.

So we can't lose because we can always sell the product or return it or whatever. Let's raise money and promise people back a 50% rate of return. And there's still be plenty of money. I'm paying out, if I get five grand from someone to pay them $7,500, with that $5,000, I could make $20 or $30,000 or $40,000. So I make this deal, print out a new investor contract. Now I'm calling them loan agreements. And we called ourselves WB wholesale, Roble and Bick.

He was John Robel. I'm Ian Bick, and we're a wholesale company. So W&B wholesale. And just a quick question. Like, did you understand how he was able to sell those beats headphones for such a markup? I had no idea. And were you curious?

I think the problem was at the time is that I was so desperate for money I would do anything. And I was not passionate about electronics. I didn't want to be in electronics business. I didn't want to sell anything. I loved concerts. I loved promoting. That's what I wanted to do. Honestly, I probably should have went back into teen nights to try to get out of that rut, you know, looking back on it.

So I turned my eye to everything just so I could, you know, do what I had to do to get out of the whole lot. There were so much pressure. I had my phone blowing up every day. Hey, is the money in yet? I need a payment. And then you got the threats from this drug dealer I borrowed money from that's saying he's going to kill me if I don't get the money to him. And he was a Danbury guy or the city?

New York guy. Just a New York guy in like the suburbs of New York. And, you know, I was under so much pressure. So John's offering the safe haven for me to go to. And I was going to, you could have offered me to sell drugs at that point, I would have done it. I needed to do whatever I needed to get out of the hole. And John was able to produce. He shows up one day with this giant duffel bag of Beats by Dre and auto boxes and the Beats pills and they all look legit. Like they literally look legit.

And so we end up getting a second office space just to store everything. And, you know, he starts selling, going about his thing. And we raise this, we start having some revenue. and that's when I'm like, okay, this is sustainable. I can pitch this electronics business to like, my thought is, okay, if I could get like $200,000, this could be a million dollar business. Little did I know there was no infrastructure to sell $200,000 worth of product or that all this product was fake and that, you know, the Amazon accounts and eBay accounts would soon be shut down

for fraudulent activity selling fake product. But I'm now pitching it. I still owe people money, but I'm going to other investors, and I'm saying, hey, can anyone point me in the direction to a new investor? And one of the guys that I went to high school with who was also like a Johnny Robo-type figure, sold some drugs, sold electronics, did this and did that, presented me with the idea of connecting me to this individual name Henry Scaza Fava. And I had known Henry came to my parties at the house. I knew he was into drugs. I knew he was always like the guy that got into fights, this and that. And I said to him, what is Henry going to do?

Does Henry have any money? And this individual explained to me that Henry had just won a million dollar lawsuit from suing New York Sports Club in Danbury because a piece of equipment broke and he lost vision in his eye. And I didn't know about any of this at the time. I knew Henry had something happened. He was in the hospital. It was like on Facebook, but I didn't know anything more than that.

So he brings me to Henry's house and Henry's playing video games. And I pitch Henry. I say, hey, we have this electronics business. I'm looking to do this. I told him that I had just lost some money in concerts and I'm doing this now. And I'll offer you 50%. And he said, 50%'s good, but I'm actually in another electronics business now. And he's giving me 60%.

I was like, oh, and little did I know that there was this whole web of the guy we were buying electronics from was also getting investors and actually running a real Ponzi fraud scam and had Henry and other people and lawyers in Danbury and all this involved. And he would later get arrested and go to prison and I would run into him later on, which is very ironic and very crazy. And his story didn't nearly get as blown up as mine did because he had taken. and a plea deal, this and that by the feds. So I say, because I'm desperate for money and I knew Henry had it, and I knew Henry had the ability to write a check right then and there. He had the access to it, and I had no other options. And so I asked him for 30 grand because that's what I needed to get to even with all the old

investors. We had made some money from electronics that month, and between me working and paying everything off, I was about 30 grand in the whole. So I said, listen, I'll do that. double your money in 30 days. And he said, listen, you got a deal. So a couple days later, he shows up to the office with a bank check for 30 grand. I cashed it. And this was structured as a loan. I think me and him both, or he knew that, you know, double your money is, he knew I was in a bind, you know, and he took advantage of that. And he wasn't going to give me that money without that

double, you know, interest. And so I took that money and I paid off everyone I owed, got a clean slate and I was at even minus the 60 grand that I would have owed him. But that was the lowest debt I would have, that was my last day being in, you know, the lowest amount of debt I'd ever be in for quite some time still to this day. And so I pay everyone off and, and I'm thinking, okay, now maybe I'm done. Maybe I just work my regular job to pay Henry off or whatever, you know, buy some time, stall it out, pay him back, just give him the 30 figure something out. A couple days later, my phone starts ringing. And now, word is getting around town that Ian Bick has this new wholesale company and everyone has made money. Those people that got their money back from that I owed

from the concerts, everything's good. You know, yeah, there were some delays with the concerts, but, you know, everyone got their money. And now everyone is hearing that Ian is offering a 50% rate of return on their investment. And I was only doing that for a couple people for the electronics. I wasn't doing that for concerts or anything else. But everyone starts calling, and now this is July 2013, our June 2013, I just turned 18 years old, and we raise like $300,000 within that first month. Just people calling, hey, I'll give you a 50 grand, give me 75 grand back in 30 days, hey, this and that. And it just all started coming in. And I'm like, holy shit. And then at at the same time,

Dave is back in the picture saying, hey, Ian, I know we screwed up on the concerts, but, you know, you're a big believer and you need to fail to succeed. We have a great idea to do these huge shows with, you know, Chief Keefe, Tyga, Ace Hood, kidding, huge names that fall. All we need is, you know,

it's a 500 grand budget. We need half to get started. And we're good to go. and we can make that the spreadsheet showed we would have made like 1.5 million as the gross and the profit would have been like a million bucks. Can you set us up a meeting with Henry? Because now our other old business partners

telling everyone about Henry and how he's investing with me and I had just paid Henry back with some of the new investors' money to give him the 60 until I kind of figured everything out. And my plan was to go gunhole on the electronics and whatnot. Well, simultaneously, the electronics business was getting defunct because all the sites were getting shut down, the Amazon, the eBay sites. We couldn't sell any product.

We had bought like 10 grand worth of product. It wasn't working. It was all fake. We figured out at that point that it was fake. And we had even had due diligence where we had an attorney draft a contract with the guy we were getting it from to say, hey, these are 100% real and legitimate. But they would end up being fake. So I called Dave, I said, fine.

Well, I'll get you a meeting with Henry. Let's pitch it together. We go to The Matrix, have a whole spread of like cake, sodas, ice, water, food, the whole thing in front of a conference room with a PowerPoint, telling Henry everything we're going to do if he gives us a quarter million dollars. And he agreed to it. And he gave us a quarter million dollars. So now I'm 18 years old. This is now July 2013. And I've raised like $600,000.

between the quarter million from Henry's money and the other money that was the electronics business. So now in my mind, you know, what's going on is that there's no electronics business now, but people are giving money for electronics. And within 30 days, I now owe, you know, 50% on their money. So what I start doing is I go to a lawyer in town. I say, listen, can I structure the business as like an investment company, not just wholesale, not just concerts. I want to be an investment company because I had two separate entities, the concerts and the electronics. I want to be an investment company and I want to be able to take loans from individuals, give them a fixed rate of return, but I could do whatever I want with the money. And in my mind, okay, I don't have any credit,

but I have this cash. So I could pay off one loan with another a loan just like a bank pays off one mortgage with another mortgage or you refinance. That was my logic. And so I tell the lawyer this and he writes me up a one paid, like literally two paragraphs saying this so and so is loaning. W&B investments now is the name of the company, X amount of dollars to be repaid, X amount of dollars on this date, and I changed it to 45 days and I eventually changed it to 90 days just to buy some time. And this would be used for business purposes. So in my mind, business purposes is to pay one loan off with another that's part of the business. And this was my thought processes. I just need to keep flipping and paying the interest to people until the fall when all the

concerts would make money and I'd finally be out of the hole. Everyone would make money and then I could be done with this business. And so I'm going around with these contracts, raising money. Every month I'm using one because we had no revenue. So I'm using one loan to pay off another loan. Just keeping it afloat. we book all the concerts, we sent all the payments, all of Henry's money legitimately went to paying the deposits of these concerts. Because these concerts all happened. If the money got spent in a fraudulent way, who would have paid for the concerts? You needed to put the down payments on the venue, on the artists, everything like that.

And then also at the same time that July, you know, we get all this money. So we're thinking, hey, let's celebrate, you know, me and my business partners, me and John, let's go to Key West. let's go rent jet skis, which I ended up falling in love with. So I said, hey, let's buy company jet skis because the investors are going to use them. So it's a company vehicle. And we took some trips and we bought some clothes. I bought like a $5,000 Gucci outfit, which I realized like, I'm never going to wear freaking Gucci.

I wear that outfit once. And then John took it. He was a flashy one. We went to dinners, which, you know, I was under the impression. You're bringing investors. It's an investor dinner, this and that. The problem is I'm not accounting for anything. I have no books. I didn't know how to do bookkeeping. I'm not saving reheats. I'm not doing anything. We just have these business debit cards and we're swiping them for whatever and we're making these payments to people. And now some people are giving cash. So now I have a safe at the office that has like 50, 60 grand cash because people are giving cash. We're doing this. We're doing that. Like a day in the life was literally me hopping in. I bought myself a Mustang convertible to go meet for lunch or dinner with an investor or go ride on the jet skis. I remember.

I remember going to like Chipotle at the Danbury Mall and signing an investment agreement over. And that was my life for like this month and a half and taking these trips and kind of bullshitting around because my job was done. I got the money. I booked the concerts. Now we just have to wait and keep things afloat. And money keeps coming in and investors are keeping money. And then I realized that some people didn't even want the physical return back.

They would just say, hey, give me a new contract. Keep your money. So someone that's say invested $5,000 would keep rolling. it and rolling it and rolling it thinking now they have 20 or $25,000 invested into WB investments or loaned money. Come August now, 2013, I see in the news that Tuxedo Junction was finally closing its doors. It was going out of business. So I get in my mind like, hey, you know, we kind of need some cash flow for the business. Why not I open up a nightclub? So I call Al and I said, hey, can I buy into this and get the nightclub back open? We work out a deal. I take over just the

front room. I pay off the old bills, like with the liquor distributors and vendors and whatnot that we needed to reopen. And I take $100,000 of our investment money and open this place called Sky Bar and Lounge. And we had it SkySKYY2Y, so we ended up getting sued by Sky Vodka for a name infringement for copyright. But we opened up this nightclub. And I, and I, and I, and I, thought that the nightclub would be a perfect thing in the portfolio where an investment company. I'd put some money into like some shoe company, some app development. I'm trying to invest into different things, not doing any due diligence or anything or knowing how it really operates. So I end up sinking a hundred grand into Skybar and I got taken advantage of by every contractor

from painting to getting the windows fixed to everything. Guys would come off the street and say, hey, you want this done? Five grand here. Five grand here. Five grant here, all the equipment I bought brand new. I made every mistake you could have made. Didn't listen to Al, did things my way, and spent top dollar for this club, which would ultimately in the end only end up breaking even on the actual operating expenses every month. I never recouped that $100,000 back. So now we're going into the fall of 2013 when the concerts are slated to happen. And the first string of concerts are these three shows with Kid Ink. And the first string of concerts are these three shows with Kidink and those completely tanked and not in the way where no one showed up.

See, the thing about the fall concerts this time around was on paper, everything was showing profitability. We had tickets sales showed. We were going to make all this money, which is why I kept taking on new investors and loans because I'm just trying to make it to these concerts. But at each show, a series of unfortunate events would happen. the first Kid Ink show, which we knew was a wash anyways, but we needed to book them for three dates to get a discount on his price.

We ended up, it was in Waterbury, it was a bad market, we just gave out free tickets to everyone at the local mall to fill the spot. But the show that we had with Kid Ink and Providence, the guy in charge of collecting money from the openers who would pay to open for Kid Ink, we had like 20 grand in opener money, forgot to collect the money. So we never got paid. got the money. And then the show with Kid Inc. on the third night, we subbed it out to a promoter subcontracted it out. He never paid us. So that's 30 or 40 grand that I laid out plus the profits.

That's like 60 grand right there. We explained it to Henry. What happened? Hey, no worries. We're going to make it on the next one. Now we're going end of September, early October. People still paying investment dividends to everyone. But money's getting tight because now I'm not recouping that money back from the concerts that I had banked on getting cash flow back from. The nightclub's making no money. I had sunk $100,000 in cash flow into that, which I needed, you know, to keep me afloat. And, you know, people are starting to want either returns or, you know, Henry's getting antsy about wanting his. My contract with Henry was by December of that year he would get paid.

But he wants to be kept updated. He wants to know what's going on. And then one of the biggest blows happens is that Chief Keefe at Toad's Place in New Haven, we sold the place out. It was going to make like 75, 80 grand gross. I paid him as deposit up front, paid for the venue. It's the night of the show. And my business partner on the show, who booked Chief Keefe, calls me an hour before

doors open, says, hey, we just got called by his manager. He's not showing up until an hour later. He missed his first flight, but no worries, everything's good. I was like, oh, okay, whatever. We'll just hold doors a little bit. We won't open doors right away. I'm about halfway to Toad's Place from Danbury in New Haven, and he calls me and he says, hey, Chief Keefe's not making it.

They can't find him. He missed all the flights. That's it. And we never heard from Chief Keefe again the next day. He put out a tweet saying, sorry, Connecticut, not the promoter's fault. See you next time. So he screwed me out of his deposit, which was 15 grand. The venue kept all their money because the venue was ready, open, they paid security,

the extra police officers we had to pay because he was gang-related and this and that, and then refund everyone's money. So I lost everything that night on that show. And it was just a series of unfortunate events. Another show, the venue lost its liquor license right before Halloween because of another show that had actually made money for us, but costed, um, Schmack, the big college tour, had got this venue to lose its liquor license, which affected not a lot of, only that show, which I laid out 30 grand for the artist and everything, but the profits we

would have made. And then it affected our biggest show, which was Taiga. Tiga, I put $120,000 into that show. The gross was supposed to be like $250,000 in that one night. Out of that $120,000 investment I made that night, I got back a wire transfer for like $14,000. And that's because the dean and the campus said we're not allowing buses because of the amsmacked incident onto the campus. So bus tickets made up like 2,000 of our ticket sales because we couldn't bring kids from other campuses that were around Rhode Island, Johnson, Wales, all these other different colleges to URI. So we lost those ticket sales. Another snowstorm canceled the Ace Hood show. It was one after another after other. and now by December of 2013, on paper, with the interest,

I owe like $1.2 million to everyone. And not only that, but in between this time, I between the fall time to keep venue expenses running with like the nightclub that I was operating and paying the extra fees like, say, Taiga, I laid out his 20 grand deposit six months prior, but now I had to come up with the other. payment, which I didn't have the money for because we kept losing on every show, I had to come up

with cash to pay these individuals. So I started borrowing from shady bikers who used to be a promoter at the club. And he was like the motorcycle club president. And they were dealing drugs like cocaine and guns and this and that. And I asked them for money. And they introduced me to shady individuals where I would go to them and I'd say, hey, give me 60 grand cash. And I'll give me 60 grand cash. And I'll be a hundred back in, you know, three months. This is all cash, and I'm just borrowing more and more money from these shady figures. So I owe $1.3 million now on paper to the investors between Henry, who I never promised a profit, but I promised his initial money back, and all the people that invested into the investment business, who, you know, wanted their returns now, who haven't gotten returns

in months. This is now the end of the year, and they just kept flipping over. So all in all, I'm like $1.5 million in debt. So when you had originally had all those failures and struggles with your original concert business, like the shows that didn't happen in Rhode Island, shows that didn't happen in Connecticut, and yet like just months later, you go back to Tuxedo Junction, you start trying to put on parties again, put on these big shows again. Like, didn't you kind of learn your lesson the first time around? Or did you just like keep thinking this was possible?

Or was it also like the environment that was so enticing to you? Like putting on these big shows, getting big acts, seeing, you know, thousands of people show up to these shows. I think it was definitely the environment. Like I wanted to be a promoter. I wanted to be Scooter Braun. I wanted to be one of those big, famous promoters so bad. And at that point, I was just chasing success because I hadn't experienced success in almost two years at that point. Those teen nights that I was throwing happened when I was 16.

I'm now 18 years old now. It's loss after loss. I had no success in those big concerts until I would own Tuxedo Junction a year later. But these big arenas as a promoter, as not as a venue owner, I lost everything. I couldn't make any money. I didn't know how to.

And I think the biggest factor was that I got lazy. I got enfolded by the money and just sitting back thinking I'm the CEO. I literally had business cards saying I'm the CEO. of this is where it's at entertainment. I always laugh when I see people's Instagrams and it's like CEO of this or that. And that was me and I had those business cards

and I thought I made it because I got all this investment money. But getting the investment, and this is something that really applies to like what I do now and stuff, is half the battle. The other half is you have to produce and you have to have a viable business. And I'm hedging everything

and guaranteeing everything on concerts, which is literally the riskiest business, you could ever think of. And I think had there been like, I was the original Fire Fest, even though my shows actually happened. You know, Firefast happened after me. But a lot of people compare me to Billy McFarland,

but I did the actual shows. But I think had there had been like a Fire Fest at that time, none of this would have been possible because no one would have invested and no one really knew about the concert world. And don't get me wrong, the concert world can be extremely profitable. That's why all of these major, you know,

businesses like Live Nation and stuff in AEG make millions of dollars, but it could also be extremely a losing business. And I was on the losing end of that really bad. And you can just bleed and bleed and bleed. I remember as a, when I'd become a night, the venue owner later on, I'd see some promoters. You'd lose everything. You can lose everything. The weather. All you need is bad weather. And when I was doing the team nights, I never had bad weather. Everything went perfectly. and I was doing all the work of myself and I never ever experienced something bad which got in my mind that I was like untouchable

that nothing was ever happened bad to me. So when things start to happen bad, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to handle it. And I'm just folded and lie after lie after lie. And your lifestyle at the time too as you're putting on these parties and these shows, are you like, are you backstage,

are you partying, are you hanging out with girls? Or is it more, you're just so focused on the business aspect of it. You didn't have time for that stuff. I never was a big partier. Like I would drink here and there or I'd fake like smoking weed or this and that. But I was, I lived for the buildup of the show. And I like to be backstage and stuff.

But those shows I never really got to enjoy later on because I was under pressure. Like I literally had people texting, where's the money or this and that? Like everything was riding on these shows. During the teen nights I was very hands on, you know, those were successful. I was like on stage.

I was on the mic. We were flinging out confetti or giving out giveaways. I'd dress up as Santa Claus during like the Christmas rave and I was dancing and having a good time. But those bigger concerts I never got to really enjoy. And even when I would run tuxedos, which we'd get to later on, I never really necessarily enjoyed them because I was so focused on running the business aspect. But these shows that we're talking about specifically, there wasn't really a business. I was just giving money to another person who would put these shows on. I wasn't doing the physical.

I wasn't hands-on, and I really think that was the missing key to everything. And lastly, like, as you're now a million dollars in debt, what are your parents thinking? Are they just in the dark? You're keeping them in the dark? I'm imagining so, but what did they think about all this? My mom had no idea. She thought it was crazy that I'd have a limo pick me and my friends up to go on some trip or that I had jet skis in the yard or this and that, which at that point, the jet skis only lasted

for a couple months. We pawned them for cheap. We paid like 23 grand for them. We pawned them for like seven grand. And because we had no money. We were just trying to, me and John, John knew everything that was going on. We really just needed these concerts to work. And had these concerts worked, everything would have been great.

And those concerts were going to work. It's just that everything that could go wrong went wrong. And my dad, I remember that was in December of that year. That's when I finally sat down with his lawyer that he had helped. me with Skybar with the copyright infringement, that's when I finally went clean to him and I said, listen, this is what's going on because I'm in fear of my life now. Like, I have these drug dealers after me. They're threatening to hurt me. And I needed serious. It's so weird. This app shows that my credit score is pretty good, but I couldn't get the car loan. Are you using myfico.com?

No, it's some other company. Oh, you should get up my FICO account instead. FICO scores are the ones used by 90% of lenders. And other credit scores can vary up to 100 points. That would have been helpful yesterday. Get the scores lenders used. Get the right FICO credit score for your credit goal, including your FICO scores used for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. Visit MyFICO.com or download the MyFICO app to get started today.

Oh, and that's when I tell this lawyer everything. And at that point is when the investigation starts. So it's December 2013. you've just met with your attorney to tell him everything. And like what happens next? So we're at the end of the road now. All the concerts have bombed. Henry, our main investor, wants to know where his money is,

which I don't have. We literally lost everything in the concerts or some of the concert promoters who we were dealing with were still had to pay us, which in hindsight we never ended up getting. And not only do we have the investors that were all the kosher investors, you know, after us and asking for their money. But some are starting.

We're getting wind or going to the police to report it. And we're not thinking anything by it. We're thinking it should me and John Roble with my business partner. We're thinking they're not going to actually go to the police. This isn't like a criminal case. And while that's going on, on the other end, we have these groups of bikers and drug dealers and Dambar in the surrounding towns that are now owed, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars. with the interest who are now, you know, times run out. We already went through the instance of them,

you know, threatening us, you know, smashing my fingers. And, you know, we think the next thing on the list is literally death at this point. Like, these guys are going to kill us. So me and John Robill get this last hurrah to try to round up the money that we owed my aunt and uncle, who were out in California, one of our original investors, I owed them like $15,000 with their payment. And they were very wealthy. Their son was a writer for the office and a couple other shows. And they were both famous doctors. So our genius plan was, if we raised 15 grand, at this point, we're negative, like a million bucks.

We have no money. And Skybar, that first club I opened is making no money. But our genius plan is, okay, if we raise the 15 grand, we'll go to California, pay them back. and then ask them for a hundred or $200,000 investment. We'll pay off the dangerous people that are after us and we'll have a little bit more money to buy some like pallets of iPhones or some type of electronic business that's a guarantee where we could flip the money

and pay everyone back. So we're going through all of our contacts. This is like a couple days after Christmas now in December 2013. And this is a few weeks after I had told my attorney like everything, what was going on and he was sending letters to investors who were all getting pissed that, you know, they were getting letters saying they were going to get no money back or they're not owed anything. And so we're calling all of our contacts.

By this point, words out that we haven't made good on our returns to anyone, people are owed money. So we're calling in our old investors. And the old investors, you know, are very skeptical of this. The ones that haven't talked to the cops, they're very, you know, they're thinking it's a scam at this point. They're like, why are we going to give you money? They don't realize that we're under this danger by threatening individuals. No one knew about the other parties involved.

Like when you look at my story as a whole, no one knows the other person that's a part of it because there's so many characters in this. So we finally have the idea to go to this, you know, former Italian mafia guy that had originally invested with us, had been in our corner, was very chill. And we went to his house in Danbury. And we had owed him like 20 or 30,

grand at that point, but we went there and we were honest with them. And he said, listen, we took money from some shady individuals. They want their money back, but we have a plan. And we told them the plan to go to my aunt and uncle, but we need, you know, $20,000 because we were budgeting for flights and stuff to go and get this money back to pay everyone and we'll take care of you too. He goes underneath his couch and he pulls out, you know, a cash for like $15,000 in an envelope and then writes us a personal check for the other $5,000. And he's like, listen, you don't have my money back by, you know, this date, there's going to be consequences. But go take care of what you got to do and never put yourself in this situation again.

Now we get to the bank before it closes. Me and John are, you know, rushing there to the Bank of America. We get the money. We go in each pack a duffel bag. We have our other friend, like, staying at my apartment that was now above the club in case the biker showed up because I had given them my key. so they knew where I was at all times. And he's going to be like the staller. He's not telling them where we are

and we put our phones on airplane mode and we dart out to the airport. Now this is like eight or nine o'clock at night. We don't have any flights booked. We're just trying to get the hell out of Danbury and get to California. Well, on the way to the airport is the casino that I went to gamble all the time

and had luck winning. So we thought, well, you know, let's test our luck. Let's take the 20 grand and let's get some extra money. So we have some spending money while we're out in California, have money to live off of because we literally have nothing, no money. We go to the casino and I start to play back around. And John kind of does his own thing, walks around. He plays slots or whatever, but he trusts me to do the own thing, my own thing.

And then he comes back like a half hour later and he sees that there's only like two grand left on the machine. He's like, oh, you have the rest of the money in your pocket, right? and I'm sitting there like sweating bullets. Like this money's gone. I went from 20 grand to 2 grand in literally like 30 minutes. And he's making a scene. He's had a couple drinks in him. He's yelling at me.

He's like, Finn, you fucking idiot. What are you doing? You lost all the money. We're fucking dead. All of this shit. And like security is starting to look at us. People are starting to look at us. And he storms off.

While the casino was running a promotion at this time, where you could. do a scratch-off if you're a member for like for the holidays and you can win X amount of dollars. So of course I went from $2,000 to $500 and then, you know, they pass around the scratch-off tickets and I hit it for $2,500. So now I'm back to $3,000. I keep playing double down. I get up to like $17,000. John comes back, sees them at $17, we cash out.

We're off to the airport. And I forgot whether we went to LaGuardia or JFK, but we're there by like 12, clock and we go to the front desk person, just like in the movies, and we say we need the next flight out of here to Los Angeles. So we were on a red-eye flight, and because we bought it at the ticket booth, it was probably triple the price. So I think it was like two grand in airfare tickets. So now we're literally down to like 15 grand, which is the money we needed to give my aunt and uncle. We fly to California, land there in the morning, go take a, I think it was, we had a driver because of our driver that we knew from back over the summer when we were with Henry and spending all that money in California.

And we had a good rapport with him. But we didn't have any money to pay this driver. But he gave it to us on credit because he knew we were good from the last time. And that's a whole other story of trouble we got into it with him. But we show up at my aunt-uncle's house. Give them the 15 grand. They were shocked to see us. They didn't know we were coming.

But we didn't have the balls to ask them for the more money right then and there. We give them the 15. and then my uncle says, because their initial investment was 10, he said, here, take the five grand, give that to your dad, take care of him because that was his brother-in-law, and we'll keep the 10. So now we have five grand spending money. And we're just there with, we have no return flights home.

So each day we're just stalling, trying to come up with the balls or the confidence to ask my aunt and uncle for $200 or $300,000. So we're living in their guest house in Malibu with this personal driver that's costing us $500,000, $100 a day, which we don't have. And driving us around a black escalade, we went to the movies, we went to dinner, we're just blowing this five grand.

We end up at the driver's strip club where he introduces us to this porn star, where he was literally like, if you pay $100 each, you can fuck her. And we're like, well, is she a real porn star? And we go, and we look her up on Porn Hub, and there she is Brittany Olson, the Ford Star. And we're like, no fucking way. And she has like the whole tram stamp. asked to see it and this was her. So we bring her back to the house in Malibu where we're in this guest house on the beach and me and John each got to hook up with her in turns because she wouldn't do

it together and she showered in between each time and it was just comical. Then, you know, like we're getting phone calls. My phone's blowing up. I got all these missed calls from these bikers and from investors saying, where are you? What's going on? Where's the money? And I finally called them because if this went south, I needed a plan. I said, listen, this is our plan. We're in California. We won't be coming back until we have your money. So that kind of kept them at bay.

On the last night or towards the end of the trip, I got a call from my attorney, and he says, Ian, the Danbury Police Department would like to talk to you. They're just on a fishing expedition. I'll be there with you. And we'll set up a meeting for like first week of January. So that was going to be like a couple weeks later.

and then we finally met with my aunt and uncle, like on the last night of the trip, when we were like, we're literally out of time. We have no money. And we told them everything. We told them about the drug dealers, the bikers, how we're in trouble. All of the, you know, we told them the whole story, truthful for the first time, the same one that I told my lawyer like a month ago. And they were just shocked by the whole thing.

And they said, listen, after tax season, we'll give you another 15 grand. We went there asking for $200,000, $300,000. and we felt like they were sending us back to die, essentially. At that point, we didn't even have the money for the return flight, so we called one of my other friends who bought us the tickets, and then we like PayPaled the driver, and it ended up, like, bouncing because we did one of those PayPal e-checks, so he was after us for a month.

But we finally make it back home, and we knew that we had to face these bikers and drug dealers right away. So we went to the head guy, before even getting back to Danbury to confront his henchmen or anything, we stopped at his house and literally pleaded for our lives explaining the whole situation. And miraculously, that bought us a little bit more time to figure it out. So now we're back in Connecticut, and it's after New Year's, and it's January 2014 now. So question about Danbury and the bikers and this mafia associate that you spoke to.

I live not far from here. Danbury, I thought was like a pretty nice town when I moved here. But the Danbury that you're describing is like a very dangerous kind of place. And I'm just wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the biker culture, the mafia culture, like the underground of Danbury, as you understood it back then at least. I think the biggest thing was, you know, looking back in hindsight, I thought everything was like the movies or like TV shows. So I thought that people were actually capable of when they say they're going to kill you, they're going to kill you.

Or when they start to hurt you or this and that. Little did I know, looking back on it, these guys are small time players. They had like a motorcycle club that they all, you know, rode around in. And each of them individually might have sold drugs. It's not like it's the hell's angels or something or the Mongols, you know. And even those clubs, they're not in this day and age actively committing, you know, violence. It wasn't like that type of thing. It's not like I was borrowing money from Tony Soprano and didn't pay him back or something like that. This is very low scale, but the gravity

of the situation in our mind back then was that this was like TV or the movies because we're 18 years old. We thought this our lives were over. And maybe if I knew everything I did now, that I would have handled it a lot differently. But you also never want to be the one to call a person's bluff. So were they dangerous people? Yes and no. Would they have killed us? I don't think so. Looking back on it, because at the end of the day, are in their respect later on by not snitching on them or throwing them under the bus with the FBI or the feds or anything like that. And then in regards to the mafia guy, at the time we thought he was mafia related. You know, who knows? There's rumors that he was associated with them or this and that.

I don't know looking back on it. All I know is in our mind at the time that these are the most dangerous people we've ever encountered and our lives were being threatened. So that's what what happened. Right. I mean, you did get your finger, your hand smashed with a screwdriver, or a hammer, and you did have a gun pointed at you. So it's reasonable to think, at least at 18, that these guys might have wanted you dead, but still. Yeah, I thought I was in fear for my life, but I also knew that I couldn't go to the police to talk about that. Right. All right. So, what happens next? So now we're back and we're just stalling, you know, week after week, I'm like, hold up in my office above the the um the club which the club's making no money it's just paying the bills um

you know i'm like person and non grader now in danbury but they had just published this article saying i'm one of the top 10 most fascinating people for revitalizing damberry and all this this is like my last good article from the danbury's news times um and we're just biding our time and then my attorney and i go to this meeting at the danbury police department and we sit down with two detectives, and my lawyer doesn't let me say a word. He's like a shark. He's a highly regarded personal injury attorney, which, you know, he wasn't really in the criminal defense round, but I knew he was like a pit bull as an attorney. He had sued the police department for harassment or something and won before they didn't like him. I didn't like the police department. I thought

we were on the same team. And we sit down and this was a meeting where they could kind of like play their cards on the table. And, you know, they were basically saying, This is right before they got our bank records. So this is early in the investigation. And they said, listen, you know, we've interviewed this person, this person, this person. You have X amount of complaints against you. We think that you spent the money all in Universal Studios. We think you're selling drugs.

We think you own real estate. We want you to, you know, confess, tell you what's going on. And my lawyer and I just look at each other and we knew they were so far off that it wasn't going anywhere. So he basically tells them to fuck off and he's like, we're done, this interview is over. And all that did was really piss them off and put some gasoline on the fire. And this detective, you know, like in every movie, every TV series is like that one antagonist detective that sticks with the case and gets it to the highest level possible. And this was like his last big case before he retired.

And he was Detective Roger Brooks and just like this old guy with the old suit, you know, typical movie figure and, you know, he just looks at me and he's like, I'm going to get you. And he was after me. And that's when the investigation officially started in 2014. I was 18 years old. And where did they get the information that you'd committed all those crimes that you didn't actually commit? They had just been, there was a lot of rumors flying. So when you have a lot of kids that are literally reporting that they're owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. some legitimately, some thinking that their $5,000 investment turned into 50 grand because they kept rolling it over. These are all kids being interviewed. No parents ever went to the Danbury Police Department.

The kids went, reported that they lost their entire life savings. I'm in the paper saying I own a nightclub and this and that. They're starting to look at everything like I'm a big fish. And they're saying, well, my parents invested too. So then they start contacting the parents and they start looking into all this. but all of this is hearsay and rumors being started because the police didn't have the bank records yet. I got it. Just briefly on your revitalization of Danbury and the Danbury News Times article, what were they saying you were doing?

I mean, in some ways it seems like it's true that you were contributing to this revitalization of downtown Danbury. But like how extensive was it? Were you like a local hero at the same time that all. this other stuff is happening? They just said the news was putting so much press out there that like I was reopening tuxedo junction. I had opened sky bar. I was investing into downtown. My dad and I were opening up this burger shop called Bix Burgers, which is entirely different story. And so they just and you know, every time they'd interview me, they'd take me at my word for whatever I said. I'd said, yeah, I'm going to, you know, buy this building. I'm going to do this. I'm going to fix this up.

And that was the message getting put out there. The Danbury News Times, you know, you know, wrote all of this stuff, which is why it's funny looking back on it because they flipped so quickly to all the negative stuff. Right. And you'd also just mention that you went to that casino and lost a lot of money. And I was just curious, like, how much a part of your life was gambling during that period? Gambling was like every day. That's literally how I, you know, I paid investors off when things got really tight.

when, you know, like if I was, you know, if there was a drug dealer that needed X amount on this day, anything, I would depend on scraping up any money I could, whether it's selling like a piece of equipment at the club or borrowing from another shady figure that I would meet through the club business. And I would just go to the casino and that was my day. I had a Camero at the time. I was driving there. And I would spend all day sometimes if I was on a winning streak, I would sleep there at a hotel. And, you know, we were getting our food comp, drinks comp. and I would just play. And then I'd shuffle over to the bank next door to deposit money to someone and have a little bit more to play.

And I would eat there. And that was my life day after day after day. Because I didn't really have any other job. The club, I was kind of hands off. I was just like promoting. But my partner, Al, was running the day-to-day operations of it. So it wasn't, I was just in limbo, you know. And what casino were you going to?

It was the Empire City Casino and Yonkers. Wow. Yonkers Raceway. Wow. It was a crazy period of time. I'd valet it. And sometimes if I won, I'd tip the valet like 500 bucks. I figured that was my good luck charm.

There would be days I'd walk in with a couple grand and lose it in seconds. And there was days where I was coming out, winning 20 or 30 grand. Right. I mean, did you consider yourself a gambling addict at that time? Or was it something you could control? I think that at that, that was in the beginning stages because that was like the first six or seven months. that was more controllable. I think towards the end when I opened up tuxedos and I was literally desperate,

that was more where like an addiction part came in. And that's what ultimately landed me in federal prison at the end of all. But I think in the early stages, it was less of an addiction more as a tool. And I relied on that later on, which turned into an addiction. Got it. And again, like you're going to the club. You're going to the casino. Are you drinking, smoking, doing drugs?

drugs are not so much. I never drink, never smoke. I would drink occasionally in high school, but after that I never drink. And, you know, even to this day, I just do my Mike Tyson edibles. And, you know, I have a drink here and there. But no, I was just always on the straight and arrow, you know, I guess because I was just like always stressed. And, you know, thank God I didn't, you know, get an addiction because I very, I was probably very vulnerable and open to doing something like that. Yeah, I feel like had you been addicted to drugs or alcohol, things might have gone completely off the rails, but they didn't. Yeah, I think I only got as far as I did, because I did have a clear head on my shoulder. I always operated under stress and pressure,

which is where I kind of like thrived under, but I was able to make, you know, in my mind, conscious and clear decisions in the scheme of things, they weren't, but, you know, I kept everything afloat for as long as I did, which when you look at it all stacked up in the bigger picture, I made it pretty far for what was, you know, against me. You did. And lastly, before we move on, like you have John Robel, your buddy by your side. But have other people abandoned you at this point? Are you all alone?

Or do you still have friends in Danbury who are supporting you, even as you go through all this struggle? By that point, when the investigation started, friends started to drop off, they were kind of like in limbo. Like they wanted their money, but they also valued my friendship. I think everyone really turned on me when law enforcement, like the feds and the postal inspector started putting in their mind that, hey, he deliberately scammed you. That's when the tide really started the turn. I think in the early investigations, they didn't know what to think.

They just wanted the truth, which is I wasn't giving them. But I think the Fed successfully flipped everyone else to thinking like I was this piece of shit scum of the earth that set out only to steal their money. I think they succeeded in that because most of those people won't talk to me to this day or still think of a certain way of me, but they don't necessarily see the whole bigger side of the picture. All right. So let's keep going with the investigation. Like so after they really sink their teeth into this story, like what's the next step? So what do they do next? So now a couple months later in March, a couple things, three things.

Three major key things happen simultaneously, which would define my future. And this is March 2014, a couple of months before I turned 19. My attorney that was representing me that I told everything to sends me a bill for like $14,000, which wasn't our agreement. He had promised my dad millions and, you know, legal fees covered. He had my back, this and that. And he was also suing Chief Keefe, the rapper for me, for not showing up on my show. And I look at this bill, and he's billing me.

like $350,400 at hour. Like every time I was on the phone with him, $200 for a 30-minute conversation. It was insane. And, you know, again, I made the mistake of, okay, I'll pay you. Like, I didn't know what to do. Like, I was just trying to do the right thing.

And he just got vicious. He started suing me. He dropped me as a client. He called the police department saying, I don't represent him anymore. He wrote letters to all the, you know, investors, saying, I'm no longer representing him, this and that.

He abandoned me. So now I have no lawyer. The second integral part that happened is I'm sitting up in the office above the studio or above the club, which was also my apartment. And I have this big whiteboard and I come up with like three ideas for plans. Like we have the burger shop here. I have, you know, restarting the electronics business here. And then the third one was reopening Tuxedo Junction, which was the big part. Right now we just had the front room.

But what if I went back to my roots, opened up the big aspect of Tuxedo Junction? junction and did what I did when I was a kid where I was going back to my roots and not only doing that, but booking big X and turning it into a big EDM venue. And within a matter of weeks, I somehow convinced the landlords because there was two separate landlords to give me like three months free rent in exchange for on the third month. I would give them a $10,000 security deposit and the first month to rent. So I had three months to come up with $10,000. And I pitched it to them as, hey, your place is vacant right now. No one was renting it.

It's a shell of a building. And you have a bunch, you have 30 years of crap in here. So I volunteered to clean it all out. So I was cleaning this out with a couple friends. I was hiring even homeless bums off the street. My dad gave me money for paint, a dumpster supplies. And now I'm rebuilding Tuxedo Junction from the ground up. My bare hands going back, you know, down and dirty, eating there, sleeping there, painting.

He brought in leaf blowers to get all the dust out. We're fixing the whole place up, and this is me and a couple friends. And at every point in my story, I seem to always have like a group of friends that would come into the picture. Like even now at the studio, there's new people around me. It just comes and goes. So that was the second thing that happened. And then the third thing that happened was that April I got a subpoena by the Department of Banking. Both me and John Roble got that.

And John and I were still close friends at this point. And I had never heard of the Department of Banking. but they gave me a big subpoena, a big government document. They said, hey, bring X, Y, and Z records for all of your LLCs. And I put everything together. Like, this was like a school project. I put together names of everyone leaving off like the bikers and shady figures, addresses, phone numbers, all my bank records, everything to the T, every record that I had.

And I even went and did my accounting for the first time, like putting the books together and everything like that. And I went to Hartford, Connecticut, the capital of Connecticut. And I sat with the Department of Banking, these three officials and a reporter, a court reporter to write everything up. And I sat there for John went the day before and he told me like the questions they were going to ask. And then I went there the next day. And I'm there for like five or six hours going through my whole entire story, like everything, like what we're doing now. Every detail answered every question. And my plan was just tell them the truth.

truth. Like, listen, guys, this is one big accident. I literally did not mean for all this to happen. I just need a way out. I need some help here. And at the end of the meeting, and I went in without an attorney because my other attorney had dropped me. I knew nothing about public defenders or anything. And I thought I would look guilty if I had an attorney there. So I'm sitting there talking to them. And at the end of the meeting, they said, we have no further questions, but there's some individuals here waiting to see you. I don't know who these individuals are. They escort me to a room. They have me waiting there. This is later in the day now. I'm tired. I want to go home. I have an hour drive now back home. I just want to, you know, figure this out. I'm waiting in this room and then, you know, they come in. It's two guys, your typical federal agents in the, you know, like the tan suits. They come in. They show their badges. Hey, we're so-and-so postal inspectors that says, I don't know what a postal inspector is. They sit down and they said, hey, we have a few questions. can you go over your story? I didn't know that they were listening

to the whole conversation that I just testified for the first five hours. They came in asking casual questions, hey, did you purchase Jetskis? Like very specific questions and also a summary of like the story. And then they had targeted questions like Jetskis, names, investors,

and I gave them that information. And then at the end of it, they served me with a target letter, which is one of the scariest things you'll ever receive in your life. It says, United States of America versus Ian B. and it says, you are officially a target and an FBI IRS, Postal Inspector investigation,

blah, blah, blah, blah. You have to give us all these records. He gives me his card. He's like, hey, and this was like the lead detective on the case. And he was like, hey, you know, it's in your best interest to cooperate with us. Answer all my phone calls. We're going to get through this. We're on your side.

We'll get this all resolved. soon as I got out of that office, I go on Google and I start searching Best Criminal Defense Attorney in Connecticut. That's when I discover John Einhorn. I look at his website. He says that he's won all these trials, this and that. So I fill out a forum. And I say, hey, this is what I'm going through. I give like a quick one paragraph description.

I said the FBI just questioned me. Next morning, he calls me right away. And I tell him everything about the postal inspectors, the Department of Bank, the local police, everything. He says, Ian, don't talk to them anymore. Don't answer their calls. Nothing. I'll take care of this.

The postal inspectors are blowing up my phone. They're texting me. Ian, where are you? I thought we had a deal. This and that. They're getting pissed. And I said, hey, I got an attorney. And I didn't hear from them ever again after that.

I go and meet with my attorney for the first time. I tell them everything from the first attorney I had to all of this. I gave them every information, every detail, what I said, and he said, let me talk to the U.S. attorney, let me find out what's going on because he had a relationship with them, and it doesn't sound like you intentionally set off to do this. We're going to fight this. And what ends up happening is that he finds out that I'm the target of their investigation. He goes over what's going to happen, and he sets up a meeting called a reverse proffer. So there's a proffer where you're sitting down with the government and you're telling them

everything about their case. And then there's a reverse proffer where you sit down and you hear everything that they have. So this is now July 2014. Tuxedo Junction is now reopened. It's up and running. We booked our first few shows, which are the first times I'm making actual legitimate money. I found some new investors again by the grace of God that have no idea about this investigation or anything like that. And I reopened Tuxedo Junction and I'm starting to book big acts like GTA, Blow, a bunch of people. And we go to this meeting at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Haven. This is July now.

And this is the famous meeting with the Silver Fox. And the Silver Fox is AUSA, United States Assistant Attorney, Michael McGarry, who has silver hair, glasses, and we called them the Silver Fox. And it's me, my dad, and my attorney with me sitting in the middle at this big round table on the top floor of their office. and I'm facing the Silver Fox and two assistant United States attorneys, and then the whole room is filled with FBI agents, postal inspectors, IRS agents, clerks taking notes, and then they had interns like clerks, interns, college students that were interning at the U.S. Attorney's Office. This room is packed. Their intention was to kind of scare the shit out of me, and they lay out all the cards at this point.

They had the bank records. they are literally accusing me of running a Ponzi scheme, like a, you know, a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme. And I'm sitting there getting livid in my seat, face turning red, we had to take a break, like I'm telling my lawyer in the hall, this isn't true, this and that. He's like, Ian, we're just here to listen to everything that they have to say. And at the end of this meeting, I'm down on my phone texting because we have a big show with Blau that's like sold out the next night.

And the Silver Fox looks at me, and he's like, Ian, you know, you really should be paying a when we're explaining all of this. You have the FBI here. This is no joke. And I look it up at them and say, hey, I have a sold-out show with Blau tomorrow night. That's what I'm focused on. And that just pissed them off. That was the famous scene in what would later be an HBO documentary. And that just started it to the races. My attorney told them, we're not taking a deal. We're not pleading out, which I think the purpose of that meeting was to, you know, try to get me scared to plead out. I don't think the feds ever expected this to go to trial. They expected me to take some type of deal. I think the first deal they offered me was like four or five years, which was

way longer than I actually ended up getting losing at trial later on. But that started the races. And from there, I'd get texts from friends, people local that the FBI was investigating. The FBI was showing up at people's doors, doing interviews, everything. They'd show up in my dad's work at his kitchen and talk to them. They'd start interviewing John Rollb. and me and John Roble worked out with each other, hey, you know, as long as you don't cooperate against me, I'll take all the heat for everything. And, you know, my attorney basically said

they were just fixated on me. For whatever reason, I was in their sights. And we go through that fall, you know, booking these huge acts at Tuxedo Junction, dubs, Zeds Dead, Adventure Club, the chain smokers, the biggest acts in electronic dance music we're coming to Danbury, Connecticut, while, you know, the city is now starting to raid

the club. I'm getting arrested in the local paper now. This is the first time I've ever been arrested for selling liquor without a permit. We were selling liquor in the club with no license, making like batches of jungle juice and putting it in gatoried bottles and finding ways to trick the town. And now I'm fighting off a war with the city of Danbury who's trying to shut me down while, you know, unbeknownst to anyone else, the FBI is investigating me and there's grand jury proceedings going on. And my attorney is keeping me updated. about, hey, they're not, they didn't come down with an indictment yet, it's probably going to be after the holidays. And, you know, every day you're in limbo of every time there was a black SUV

that pulled up outside the club or every time there was, you know, the cops coming in to raid the place, you think, is this a day that the FBI is getting ready to arrest me? And this is on top of the stress of dealing with the everyday operations of the nightclub, still owing money to shady figures having to borrow more money and take on more investors to run the nightclub and run the shows because now shows are losing money because this is another startup business. And I'm taking good money, money that should be used for the electric bills or for rent and taking it to try to pay off old investors who I just want to show that I didn't genuinely defraud you. I just want to, I don't have any money. I'm trying to make it back. So I'm this 19 year old kid running this club and doing

this and doing that. And I make it through that year. And now it's, you know, January 2015, and that's when the indictments come down. So just to go back, when you are sitting there in the courtroom and you see the FBI agents in the gallery and the clerks and the postal inspectors and everyone who were designed to maybe intimidate you, like, what are you thinking in that moment? You know, back then, I don't think I was never really present in the moment of how serious a situation was. one fixation in my mind, which was, Tuxedo Junction is my life's plan on how to get back to even. In my mind, I needed to do whatever it took to get Tuxedo Junction. I had two plans to either have it make enough revenue where I could pay everyone back.

Because in my mind, okay, you have a fraud case here. They're accusing you a fraud. You pay everyone back. There's no fraud. It was an accident, which was in my mind. Or plan B was, okay, build the club up to enough, a big enough reputation where you could sell it to someone, because this is a time where nightclubs,

this is before COVID, this is a hot market, electronic dance music. And where I went wrong in the promoting concerts aspect was I was never building a brand for myself. I was always investing into someone else's business, promotion business, or using another venue. This was my own stable location where I was building an actual brand,

which was Tuxedo Junction. So I knew that I had to do everything possible to make this work. So the last thing on my mind was just an investigation or the FBI. I wasn't phased by it at all. I was annoyed that they were accusing me of things that I didn't do, but it was not, I didn't care. It wasn't a thought.

Now, if the FBI were to sit down with me today, I would take it a lot more seriously. But back then, I didn't give two shits. And one of the things that they were accusing you of was committing a Ponzi scheme, it seems. And did you have a sense of one, like what a Ponzi scheme was and two that you actually committed one or not? They said that I was Bernie Madoff Jr.

And ran this massive Ponzi scheme. And the first time I had ever heard of Bernie Madoff was, you know, rewind six months earlier or seven months earlier, was when Henry made a joke saying, imagine if you're secretly Bernie Madoff, which is ironic looking back at everything. And when he said that, I had Googled who Bernie Madoff was. and that's when like that first thought in my mind was like, I could see how this could be interpreted in a Ponzi scheme, but it wasn't because I had this whole idea about loans, this and that,

and it said he was never investing in anything. Then when they accused me of being a Ponzi scheme, I remembered what that was, but that just made me even more mad because I literally, this was not like I know in hindsight now, yeah, it turned into a Ponzi scheme, but that was not the intention at all. This was no deliberate Ponzi scheme.

And I think that's why I ended up, you know, going to trial because I was so intent on clearing my name that this was not intentional fraud. Right. And did they seem to think that it, I guess I can rephrase that and say it seemed to them like it was intentional. They said from the beginning, they thought like I was the worst of the worst. And I don't know where it goes back to. Maybe it was that initial, maybe we went about it wrong, that initial meeting with the lawyer that pissed them off and gave. them a bad taste in their mouth. Maybe it was lawyer. I don't know what happened. Somewhere along the way, they got so, the Silver Fox got so much hatred for me. I mean, even to this day, the guy

doesn't like me. We've seen him in the HBO documentary. They're just not there. They still think I'm the worst of the worst. No matter what I do, no matter what, I'm still this evil person. And so whatever happened along the way triggered that in their mind and they just wouldn't let it go. And as the feds start to close in on you and accuse you of all these different things, let's go back to your mom and dad. Like, what is their state of mind as they start to realize what you're being accused of? So the first time I told my mom about, because my mom was in the dark on this completely, was when I, after I met with the attorney and he said he needed a $7,500 retainer, which I didn't have that money. So I went to my mom, and I told, that's when I told her everything. And she was just in shock and disbelief and everything.

And she ultimately gave me the money for the retainer. But that's when she first, this was now July 2014, a few weeks before we went to the meeting with the FBI. But after the postal inspectors, that's when we brought her in the loop. And, you know, my dad has the full, you know, kind of sees exactly what was going on. He's just wishing that I had told them earlier that I told him what was going on and what had happened. So maybe he could have helped.

And, you know, looking back on it, if I had brought him into the picture, earlier and before I even borrowed from shady figures, which just made it worse, he could have talked to parents and maybe explained it and have like a heart to heart to parents or something, anything. But I just kept, you know, I wanted to do it all. I got myself into it. I wanted to get myself out. Gotcha. Okay. Next step in the investigation. So now it's January 2015. And I know indictments are coming down soon, but the prosecutor tells my attorney that I'll be able to turn myself in when it comes down. I'll be a quiet ordeal. Well, now it's second week of January. It's like the 9th or the 10th. I'm at the casino because now I'm going the casino to fund the bills at the club

before I was using the casino to pay off investors. Well, now I'm using it to, you know, crazy stories of I owed the chain smokers 25 grand for months because they performed before I even pay. them and I would send fake wire receipts to agents from like Bank of America. I would take a wire receipt to my email and then alter it and send it to them saying, hey, I sent your money just to delay because I didn't have the money to pay them, but I needed them to perform. So now I was chasing casino money, which is what had made me money in the past to try to get this money back to pay off the agents or pay off expenses. One time I racked up a 30 grand electric bill at the club and they shut off my power. I had a big pile of wood in front of it blocking the meter. And then they

ended up coordinating with the city to remove the wood and find the meter and shut it off. So I had to pay that and just all of these different things. It was such a, it was a great business model, but it had no cash to operate. And when you can't operate a business without a good cash flow, you're in trouble. So this particular night, I get back from the casino at like 5 a.m. I had lost that night. So I'm already defeated. And it's beginning to snow outside. I just get into bed. I'm maybe asleep for a half hour, 45 minutes when there's a loud banging at the door, like loud.

I go, I'm in the front room of my parents' house now. I'm still, I moved back home. I had abandoned the club apartment up top. And I look out the window and there's flashlights and machine guns. There's black SUVs, cop car, state trooper cards lined all in up down the road. It looked like one of my previous high school house parties. and there's just agents surrounding the whole house and IRS tactical vests, FBI tactical vests.

They got their guns loaded, guns drawn. I look at it, I'm like, holy fuck, I go back and sit down in bed. I'm just sitting there at the edge of my bed and I hear my mom running downstairs. I'm coming, I'm coming, like downstairs and they're just being banging on the door. Probably any second later they would have kicked the thing down.

She opens the door, they're rushing in. Step back, step back. Where is he? our dog, our family dog runs down and they're like, hold the dog, hold the dog. Now my dad's up. He's running down.

I think my brother peeks his head out or something. They're like searching the house and then they come into my room and I'm just sitting on the bed. I'm in my boxers. That's it. No shirt on,

no pants, just my boxers. And they come in and they're like Ian Bick, hands behind your back, you're under arrest. And I'm thinking like, what is this?

I have no idea this is the FBI. Like, and I saw their vests, but it doesn't click with me. I'm thinking this is another liquor violation or something, because in my mind, okay, we made a deal with the feds that I would turn myself in. They're handcuffing me. They're, like, searching my boxers.

They let me put, like, a pair of jeans on. They're like, do you have shoes without laces? I said no. So they go in my closet and I had cowboy boots from when I did the musicals, Annie, get your gun in high school. So I put on these cowboy boots and these baggy jeans that were too big on me.

and then they put a jacket on me. They uncuff me and then cuff me back up behind my back. And then I make the rookie mistake. They say, what's the password to your iPhone? I give it to them so they get into the phone. They don't even let me brush my teeth. I'm like, can I take a piss at least? They're guarding me in the bathroom while I'm taking a piss.

And then they lug me out the door. And I'm telling my parents, call John, my attorney, call John. My dad's like fumbling for his phone. They escort me out of the house. and you just see all the cars with the flashing lights and it's winter, so it's kind of still dark out this early in the morning. And it's got to be like 6 a.m. or something by now. And they don't just put me right in the car.

They sit me on the side, like in our driveway, our circular driveway, there's like a little edge of stone. They sit me down there and they're like, wait here. And we wait like 10 or 15 minutes. Also the initial detective of the case, Roger Brooks could show up. He comes up and we live on a big hill in a private gated community. also he could come, pull up in his crown Vic, and say, hey, you remember me?

Like one of those moments where, like, in the Wolf of Wall Street, I got you. He wanted it to know that he was the one that brought me down. And I didn't even say anything. They put me in the back of the cop car or the, it was like a Ford Explorer or something with the postal inspectors from the initial meeting. And they're sitting there in the tactical vest. One's next to me. And my hands are cuffed behind my back.

And one's in the front armed. And then there's a drive. driver and now we're driving to the United States federal courthouse. But now it's snowing. It's already, it takes us like two hours to get there. We had to go to a different courthouse because the magistrate judge for one city wasn't available. So we now end up in New Haven at the New Haven courthouse. They bring me down to the holding cell through the back gate. They search me. I have to get my fingerprint done. I get the mug shot and I have like long hair at this point. I look very disheveled. I'm very overweight and chubby.

This is, I probably, I'm like 290 pounds at this point. And I'm, I just look beat. I'm in the morning. I haven't brushed my teeth, nothing. I'm in the holding cell. My lawyer comes and sees me. I'm like, is this the Fed case? And he was like, yeah, I'm like, what happened?

You know, I thought we had a deal. And he's like, I know they went back on it. The feds are known for this. But don't worry, you're going to get out on bond. They're not opposing bond, this and that. Like an hour or so later, we go up to the courtroom. The courtroom is packed. court reporters like they brought everyone they're FBI U.S. attorneys everyone and all of like it's like you know in the movies where everything's rushing around you but you don't really hear anything you don't process you hear bits and pieces so you hear like the judge banging or gavel you hear like U.S. reading the indictment and the charges and I hear for the first time that there's now 15 federal counts against me nine counts of wire fraud three counts of money laundering

making a false statement, all of these different counts, federal charges. And it's just me and my attorney versus the U.S. attorney, the FBI, everyone's there. U.S. marshals are guarding me because I haven't officially been giving bond yet. So I'm still there, you know, handcuffed with the marshals guarding me. And they eventually agree to a bond and it's a $250,000 bond. And in the federal court, all you have to do is sign. So all my dad had to do was sign right then and there. I didn't even go back to the holding cell.

I was released right there. My dad signed. They signed like the house where like if I were to run away and not show up, then they could go after the house. And then the biggest thing was my bail conditions. Like you can't talk to victims. You can't do this. You can't do that.

And the biggest thing was that they banned me from social media, which looking back on it now is probably a huge amendment right, which we would later win down the road. But they wanted to prevent me from running the club. They were trying to say I can't run the club, but the magistrate judge ruled against them saying he's entitled to operate a business. This business has nothing to do. And, you know, from the get-go and the news always got it wrong,

Tuxedo Junction had nothing to do with any type of fraud that came after, after the alleged indictment, after everything. That started afterwards. But they wanted to debilitate me from running the club so they said I can't operate social media, which would stir up a whole big issues of bail and this and that later on. But that was a day that early, you know, January day of getting charged and arrested on 15 federal accounts. And I got released.

I had no phone because they confiscated it. I remember going to the mall when I got back to the Danbury and going to AT&T, getting a new phone reconnecting my number and just looking at the news. These articles that got published while I was literally in cuffs walking out the door. They had this all ready. It was staged. Dambury nightclub owner arrested by FBI IRS postal inspectors on 15 federal charges. social media is going crazy.

All the kids I went to high school are screenshoting. I knew he was up to no good, like saying nasty stuff about me on the internet. And I just getting calls from the current investors of the nightclub. I'm getting calls from agents of artists. I'm getting all these texts. Like everyone's just shocked because, you know, on one side you have all of this press that I'm running one of the biggest EDM venues. And on the other side, okay, now there's the FBI arresting him. and people are thinking it has to do with the club and this and that,

and it's just one big mess. It's so crazy. So this is happening in what month? January 2015. I'm 19 years old. Got it. So when does the trial take place then? So after I get out on bond, you know, we have bond violation hearings.

We're doing this. We're doing that. And I'm still running the club actively. Still get budding heads with the city. The city's trying to extort me by paying. ambulances and police and and I'm trying to sneak in people under, you know, go over capacity

because they're rating the capacity so low. All of this stuff's happening. Like I'm fighting the city while fighting the feds. The trial ends up getting scheduled because I turned down the plea deals and everything for November. It was originally September and then it got moved to November of that same year,

2015. I'm 20 years old now and I'm taking the federal government to trial. And it's just me and my attorney and a private detective that we hired, battling, you know, the United States government. On one side of the courtroom, it's us. And on the other side, you have everyone else. And the trial lasted almost four weeks,

the whole month of November. We were right up against a clock, you know, to Thanksgiving. And that's where we think, you know, things went wrong with the verdict because I testified on my own behalf for two days. And we had the head United States attorney for Connecticut come. It was a packed courtroom. We had all of these students going to Yale and Harvard and stuff for law that came in.

It was this huge skeptical. I wish, looking back on it, they had a video allowed in there, but at least we had the transcripts. But it was this huge skeptical. Yeah, spectacle. Spectacle. Not skeptical. Yeah, spectacle. And, you know, and then eventually came the jury deliberations.

And it was very crazy because the government said the verdict is going to come back within hours. that first day passed no verdict, second day, no verdict. On the third day, they pass a note to the judge saying, we can't reach a verdict. And unfortunately in federal court, when the judge gets that, the judge has to order them to reconvene and go at it another time. You have to reach a verdict. And they come back saying, well, what happens if we don't reach a verdict by Thanksgiving break, which was like the day after? And he says, well, then we'll reconvene in December or this and that. And like an hour after that, they come back with a verdict. And the verdict still to this day doesn't make sense. Some wire fraud was guilty. Some was not guilty. All of the mean Henry charges with that money were all a mistrial. Lying to postal inspectors was not guilty because we proved that they set me up during that interview. And then we won like one of the money launderings.

One got dismissed. Another one guilty. But one of the elements of wire fraud is you have to have the intent to defund the fraud someone. So during this time period, so how could I be guilty of wire fraud on one and not guilty on the other? I never really understood that aspect to it. So we really think, you know, we were up against the clock with Thanksgiving. The jury wanted to go home. They were tired of getting paid, you know, pennies a day to be there. It was a very long trial with a lot of witnesses. So I got proven guilty on X amount of counts. And in federal court, all I need is one count,

you know, to give you prison time. The judge ends up letting me go out on bond that day, going home, and I go back to running the club. But now the only difference is I'm sneaking out a state to go gamble at the casino to run operations at the club. I had taken that year off since I got arrested because I was in the spotlight with the feds. I knew they were investigating me. I didn't want to, you know, release my bond. But now I felt defeated. I'm guilty.

All of the news media saying convicted Danbury nightclub owner. I'm trying to keep this club of foot and run it. My life is now in limbo. You know, that feeling after you get sentenced from, you know, I mean, after you get convicted or take a plea deal to your sentencing, you don't know what's happening with your life. You're just on edge. You're in limbo. And so there was just that period of time.

I'm now, you know, from the end of the trial all the way into like May of 2016 when I turned 21, where I was just in limbo day by day, you know, eating very unhealthy. running the club, you know, I was still doing shows. We still had big acts like Steve Ioki and this and that. And I was just trying to keep things afloat the best I could. And the decision to go to trial, it sounds like the deal that you'd been offered was not good at all and you were always going to go to trial. But did you have any doubts about the decision to go to trial? Did your attorney say, we're going to trial, we're going to fight this, we're going to win? My attorney left it up to me to decide. And I knew he wanted to go to trial, but I wanted to go to trial. I think looking back on

it now, if they had offered me just probation, maybe I probably would have took the deal. Because we had offered them, listen, we will own responsibility. Well, we want to pay the money back, but no jail time. That was the biggest thing. But they were persistent. They didn't care. They don't care about the money back. They wanted jail time. They wanted to do that. They wanted prison time, a lengthy stay. And we didn't feel like that was fair given all the circumstances. And we went to trial because the thing about going to trials is if you take a plea deal, the judge only understands the government's perspective. That's it. He doesn't understand you. So in my case, a trial benefited me because the judge got to see everything that happened. And I, looking back on it, the only reason why I got prison time was because

of my own mistakes after the trial. But we'll get to that later on. But the trial itself, And, you know, all of that, we wanted to clear my name that, yes, people lost money. That's legitimate. Lies were told, yes, wasn't honest because of X, Y, and Z, and because of these people we were depending on that ultimately lied to us. But we didn't set out to intentionally defraud anyone. That's what we wanted to prove at the trial. Not that money was lost, but that it wasn't fraud.

Right. one of the more damning things that they seemed to have brought up during trial was those faked, oh, sorry, was those faked bank statements? Yeah. So when you look at those, it's like you were faking wire receipts. You were faking bank statements. And some onlookers might say, well, Jesus, like you were intentionally committing this fraud. And I think that's probably what they argued.

But was that, like, among the most damning things that they presented during trial? Like what really convinced the jury do you think of your guilt? So I think what happened was there was like overall there was there was a lot of aspects to this, which is why I think there was a mistrial on like the Henry counts because of the concerts because he did invest money and they did go to concerts. If we stole the money, how did we still have concerts? Because the concerts all happened. It was just a series of unfortunate events where they didn't like one thing happened after another,

but we still put on these shows. but there was a couple cases where like we had one investor where he was so adamant about seeing numbers and being hands on that you know we were up against the back and we were just trying to stall to come up with the money to pay him back where we created a fake spreadsheet about the numbers so that's what really got us into trouble of these you know creating that fake spreadsheet but every time i made a fake wire receipt or anything like that it was literally just a stall and i know that's not necessarily an excuse for it but but I just wanted to find a way to pay back the money. I couldn't be honest. I couldn't look them in the eyes and say, hey, I lost your money. And then the other piece that was damning is that at the last second, when the trial was about to start,

they flipped John Roble. And they gave him the sweetest deal ever. They said to him, hey, we're going to charge you. But if you testify, you'll get a misdemeanor in state court for lying in the Department of Banking. And that man went on the stand for like two days,

saying, we came up with this whole plan to defraud, like just all of these lies about how, you know, I knew it was a Ponzi scheme, like things that just weren't true and put on that whole story. And my lawyer went up, it was really funny. He took a whiteboard in front of the jury and him when he was testifying. And he put like a hundred times John lied during his testimony to the Department of Banking, also in court, and also in insurance cases, like one time he got hit by a car and he faked an injury to get the insurance money.

All these cases to prove he was a liar, but the feds never charged him with perjury or anything because he was just after me. They just charged him in the state court for lying to the Department of Banking. But that hurt us too, that you have people that are 50-50 partners who one is saying that they concocted the whole thing.

And the things about trials and stuff is prosecutors and stuff can put things into evidence that's technically not allowed. And then the judge just says, oh, we have to strike that from the record. But the jury's already heard that, you know? So like things, it's just like it's a very unfair system. There's no winning in these types of cases. And how did you feel you did on the stand? I thought I did very well on the stand because the thing is most attorneys don't want their client

to go on the stand because it's not because they're not afraid of their client or it's not because they're afraid of their client not being truthful. It's afraid that they will look guilty if the prosecutor successfully provokes them. And I wasn't successfully provoked. I looked at the jury. I stayed calm, cool, and collected, and it pissed the prosecutor off. Because the problem is not when you're on direct with your attorney. He walked me through the first day and a half of testifying. My attorney walked us through the whole story.

And we said it, everything. He put the bank records, everything, and I had an explanation. But when the prosecutor gets up, when they open you to cross-examination, they're trying to get you adjectated. They want to get you pissed off. and they want to show, especially in murder cases and anything like that, that you're this violent or criminal person. So if I'm there arguing and getting mad and this and that,

it looks terrible for the jury, and I never did that. I testified very well. I even had some of the law interns in the hallway in the gallery afterwards on break saying, dude, you did a great job. It was just a performance, you know? And, you know, the prosecutor, the Silver Fox kept yelling, objection, objection. He's testifying like it's a cocktail party.

because he would ask a question, I would give an answer, and then I would volunteer more, saying, well, this happened because of this and this and that. Got it. Yep. Okay. So one of the things that they claimed is that you'd stolen $500,000 from 27 investors. Is that all? Or was there more?

So the final, when they added up, when they did. did the final tally of all the dollar amounts on the spreadsheets and everything. And they looked at, like, they deducted what people had gotten back in interest payments and this and that. The total out of pocket was only $480,000, minus whatever street money was owed to, like, the drug dealers or the bikers or whatever. But the loss was nearly as much as they expected when all was said and done. And I don't think they realized that until the last day, because or up until the trial, because they were still interviewing people, they were asking people to come forward. I think the police from the start, the reason why the feds picked up this case is because

they were convinced there was millions of dollars out here. When you look up federal cases, unless it's like a tax evasion case or something, you know, which those are rare for this dollar amount, they don't pick up cases like this. If this was a state court case, I would have gotten, you know, some type of accelerated rehabilitation program. and I would have gotten probation in the state, ordered restitution, and that would have been it. But because of this went to the federal level,

you know, I just think it went to a whole different level than it needed to be. Yeah, I asked that because, you know, some years later, Billy McFarland, for example, would be accused of stealing like $26 million from investors in his efforts to pull off fire fraud. This is like a small fraction of that. And yet, you know,

you know, you guys ultimately received a similar prison sentence. Yeah, it was a very, I mean, look at Ann Adelvey. She had a little bit half the dollar amount, but she was a state case. The feds didn't pick her up. A lot of people, I don't know any Ponzi scheme that's this little, alleged Ponzi scheme that's this little and ended up being a federal case. That went to trial. And I think if we had a couple more days of jury deliberation,

we probably could have had a backdoor deal with the U.S. attorney to get something no jail time because we are you know there was u.s. attorneys asking my attorney while the jury was waiting why did this go to trial you look up all the money they spent that they spent millions for this they looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway fiji airway sale is on now fly nonstop round trip to fiji from just 748 or enjoy a sunny fiji stopover on your way to australia with round trip fairs starting from 839 as a one world alliance member and american airlines advantage program partner your miles go further across the South Pacific. Book now at Fiji Airways.com or contact your local travel agent.

Conditions apply. Who and my aunt and uncle to testify from California, they did this, they did that, two years of investigative work. It just seems like a lot for this for a 19-year-old kid. It does. It really does. And before we get to prison, I mean, you mentioned the things that. that you did after the conviction that really maybe threw gasoline on the fire and got you

the prison sentence that you ultimately got. Why don't you just talk about that? Yeah, I think the biggest flaw in all of this was the actions that I did after the trial. Because the judge, so right after the trial, the prosecution is trying to revoke my bond. And they're saying I'm using social media and this and that. And the judge ultimately rules, hey, this is unconstitutional. He can use his social media. And then I ended up getting like a monitor, like a social media person to make sure I wasn't talking to victims,

yada, yada, yada. So he's giving me a lot of leeway. He's letting me out on bond. He saw the trial. He let us enter in a lot of stuff that was kind of like maybe in the gray area during the trial. So he does have some faith in me. I showed up to court, this and that.

And I basically blew that all because those months after the trial, that almost year after, I was going out of state to gamble at the casino. And I didn't have my license at the time I was suspended. So I started off going on my own. I would take a train or I would take a taxi and put my phone on airplane mode. So like no one could track me and I'm paying all in cash. But then as I got lazier and more pressed and stressed,

I started bringing this one kid that would drive me. I'd give him a hundred bucks. I was working with me at the club. I'd bring my phone. And I started using my business debit card to withdraw cash. if like ticketing money came in and I would withdraw the money and I'm starting to leave a paper trail. So he tells these other guys working for me, which are his close friends at the club that had been working with me for the past almost two years now about this. And they see an opportunity to take the club from me.

They are always jealous that I had the club. They see I'm convicted at trial now. They're losing support in me. So they hatched this genius plan of theirs to go to the FBI. And they tip the FBI. that I'm going out of state to gamble. But here's what goes wrong. They think that these groups, this group of individuals think that I'm going to get arrested the next day. They had already called the landlord to work out a deal. Hey, you know, if Ian goes to prison, can we take over the club?

Well, I find out about it because the landlord tips me off saying, hey, just so you know, this is what's happening. And the landlord doesn't give two shits as long as he gets his money. And there would be times where he'd lock me out and just, and I'd have to go to the casino to gamble all night. just because we had a show the next day, all of this stuff. So then I get called by the pretrial probation officer to a meeting, very nonchalant. She was always out to get me from the get-go.

And before I leave that day, because you have to fill out monthly reports. And the monthly reports I would do online, but I kept saying I'd get locked out or whatever because they would always ask, have you traveled outside the district of Connecticut in the last 30 days? And it's illegal to lie on those. So I would just not fill them out. on that last meeting with them now. She, it's a very nonchalant interview, but she is like, hey, can you just, you know, sign this form? You haven't traveled outside the district, right?

And I say no, and I sign it. Then she calls me back a few days later with her boss, and they start heading me hard on, have you gone out to gamble? Have you done this? And I'm like, they got me dead to rights. Now there's like another investor from the club that we genuinely lost money on a show that they got connected to through these groups of individuals that were throwing me under the bus and they say that I defrauded them. So now they're building this like case of a violation.

And I, at that point, I'm cornered. I lied to them and I said, you know, I didn't go out of state, this and that, and they let me go. Well, a couple weeks later, I got the court noticed that one, my sentencing was delayed because the judge had an emergency or something. And so I'm thinking, okay, I lived to fight another day. But then the next day, the pretrial services officer files an emergency motion outlining that, you know, my bond should be revoked, all of these things that I lied, this and that. And I get ordered to go to a bond revocation hearing the next day. My lawyer said, hey, you have to go to this, this, and that. And I just remember my last night before going that revocation hearing, you know, sitting in a Mexican restaurant next to tuxedoes,

you know, having margaritas and some tacos, there's this video that I have of me, like, hanging around, just like very depressed. I have blonde highlights in my hair. I'm very overweight. Like, I'm huge. And this is what I didn't know at the time was going to be my last night of freedom for the next few years. And I just, you know, I felt defeated. Had I known, I generally thought I was going to leave that bond revocation because I always got lucky. Always something always happened. I always got by. But that the luck was going to. end and I was time to face the piper. Yeah, so tell me about the bond hearing.

So the morning of the bond hearing, you know, I was telling you about how the night before it was like my last hurrah, I had no idea that this was going to be the last day of freedom or else I would have gotten at least my, you know, affairs in order and the nightclub and literally just went into this not knowing what to expect and my dad drove me. And once again, it's a pack court. room prosecutors and all of them and the FBI and the IRS and the postal inspectors on one side and me and my attorney on the other. And we got absolutely, normally in these bond hearings, we always like won and the judge was on our side. But in this one, we got absolutely hammered.

I mean, all the evidence was against me. We tried to come up with arguments about like the judge wanted to know why I was going out of state to the casino to gamble, you know, while owing investors money and after being found guilty at trial. And the biggest thing was because I wasn't allowed to travel out of state. So I said I had to go, I came up with every excuse I can make. I had to go at 12 o'clock one night to pull out money at the casino for the production crew that was going to be there the next morning before the banks opened and this and that, like coming up with every excuse possible. And the judge just was not having it. The government came well prepared. They had those other, you know, investors that were investing in the club that were saying they got, you know,

defrauded, which wasn't really true. They had invested money into concerts and genuinely lost. So we were just getting hammered from all angles. And you could, you can always tell in a court hearing whether the judge is for the defense and for the prosecution. And he was just pro the prosecution the entire hearing. And I'm just like, you know, kind of blacking out a little bit in my mind of what's going on and just seeing like the bickering for my attorney and then the prosecution and this and that. And then all of a sudden, you know, you hear the judge just say, at this time, you're going to be remanded to the custody of the United States Marshals and your bonds revoked pending sentencing. And you're going to be taken away at this time. And then all of a sudden,

two, you know, big courtroom marshals come up behind me and they don't handcuff me out there waiting for the end of the hearing, but they're placed behind me. And my lawyer is asking for an appeal if we can, you know, bond out. If we could go on home confinement, if there's anything we could do to avoid this. And the judge just says there's no, you know, he doesn't think any conditions would keep the community safe at this point is what he's saying. And from you, scary. Yeah, from me, scary and Vic. Because the probation officer at that point wanted me, you know, locked up too.

She's been after me since the get-go. And they just didn't really understand my perspective of it. Like, I know on paper it looked terrible. You know, I lied to the probation officer, this and that. But in my mind, I was just thinking I needed to do whatever it takes to get tuxedo junction to work so that I could pay everyone back. And at that point, at the end of the hearing, the marshals handcuffed me and escorted me out of the courtroom. And I just see all these news reporters there. It was always crazy how there was always news reporters.

you know, whenever the government called a hearing, they got there so quickly or the day I got arrested and how they were able to publish articles so quickly. And I just remember getting, you know, whist out of the courtroom and seeing my dad who was there. And, you know, just a look on his face, he was in like absolute shock and he had to go home alone, you know, because he drove with me, but he had to drive home alone and tell my mom and brother that I wasn't coming home that I would just got my bond revoked. So I couldn't even imagine what he went through in that circumstance. You know, the marshals dragged me out, brought me into the elevator. I'm handcuffed behind my back.

And I'm in, like, I wore, I think, like a button down and, you know, a nice pair of dress pants and shoes and got taken to the bottom ground basement, the same basement where I was processed in when I got indicted. And, you know, fingerprinted, mug shot it again. And then I was put into a holding cell after I stripped out, naked, squat and cough, put back into my, you know, street clothes, but they took away my belt, took me sure I didn't have laces on my shoes, and then I waited for the van to come pick me up. And then, you know, I think I was there like an hour or so, and a white van pulls up to like the loading Bay Area, Bay Area. And another set of prison guards come out. And these are from the Wyatt W. W.D. Wyatt detention facility in Rhode Island, which is where, because Connecticut doesn't have the county jails.

So in Rhode Island, they hold federal detainees that are pending pretrial or pending sentencing or anything like that. So these officers come out. They, you know, chain me up, handcuffed, shackled to the feet and to the waist. And then you're just escorted. You're like herded like cattle. When they got there, they had emptied everyone out of the van. At each stop, they have to empty everyone out, put the,

them in the holding cell and then load up the next batch of guys. So they brought, after they chained me up, they brought everyone out and had me and the other guys kind of like cattled to the van and we hopped in there. And as we were loaded up into the van, we were given a brown paper bag for lunch and a ham and cheese sandwich, you know, an apple, a juice box. And I think there was like some cookies there and you just have to eat it with your handcuffs. And at that point, I can, gave away my sandwich because I was just in shock and I just remember looking out the window leaving the courthouse, you know, just like that feeling of unknown and like, how am I going to get myself out of this one? And so as this is all happening, like, you know, deeper thoughts.

Like, are you, are you panicking? Are you terrified? Like, and also, did you expect this to happen or no? It seems like you didn't think that you were actually going to be thrown in prison. I literally never thought, you know, and maybe that was just me being like the cocky, you know, self that I was. But also I just felt like, you know, I came from a good family. I was young. I had never had any, like, felonies on my record. Like, I wasn't going to go to prison. And this wasn't like, no one got physically hurt in this crime.

I didn't, like, rob anyone with a gun or anything like that. I just, you know, I was very naive to it. And I was definitely, I was just like, the only things in my mind where I was panicked because, of the club. Everything was around the club. Like, I have shows coming up. It wasn't like, I didn't care about anything else. It was just about what the shows were, what was going to happen to them. What would be the outcome of the club? And I remember getting to the detention center, which was like two and a half hours away and, you know, just waiting for hours in, you have to go through a process. And I would learn this at every, you know, facility I went to,

every time you get there, you go through this long, treacherous process. They put you in one holding area and then you move to a next one and next one as you go through the process of seeing the doctor you know if there's a counselor um fingerprinting you again and taking photos and getting you know you're the proper clothes and stripping you out and they do that in this scenario there was only like 10 of us but sometimes there's two or 300 people and um my first phone call when they finally gave me a phone call after i got like that they left meals there from chow earlier and the day and it was like dinner because we got there around dinner time at by like five or six o'clock because we had to stop at other prisons on the way, even then the court hearing was early morning.

And as soon as I got like that cold plate of food that was left over that they left for us, my first phone call was literally to my parents saying two things. One, call Whole Foods because I was working at Whole Foods giving my paycheck to restitution on top of running the club just as like, hey, I'm trying to do the right thing. and two, I just gave my dad a list of things to take care of the club. Call this person, call this person, do this, do that. And, you know, little did I know, like all the headlines at the time were like Danbury nightclub owner Bonn Revoke, Judge said the parties over.

That was the famous lines that were just went everywhere. The parties over was just all over, you know, Yahoo News. The Danbury's News Times ate that up. And that was like the first night. in prison and they ended up putting me in a cell with this guy that was coming off of like having withdrawals. He had just gotten picked up again for like a bond or a parole violation or something and he was just in the cell tweaking out. And I'm sitting on the top bunk like in disbelief, not knowing what to do and he just keeps walking around the cell. He's like, you can eat that

because it gave you another bag lunch when you get to the cell. The president's full of bag lunches when you're in transit. It's like you can eat that, this, this is what you can expect? Is this your first time just like a bean shooting all over the place. How old was he? He was probably a little older than me like late 20s, but he was just like kept itching himself and it was just not a good experience to be with for someone because he did nothing to like kind of calm me down. And I just, I couldn't sleep that night, you know, you're just and you're locked in a cell. Like that first feeling, whether you're claustrophobic or not, just being detained in a room for that long, it's like when you're in a doctor's office in there, but the only difference is the

doors locked and you can't escape. And you're just locked in and you can't leave. And those first like 48 hours, you don't leave your cell because they give you your TB shot. You have to make sure everything checks out with that. And you're just waiting. You're waiting at their time. Everything time moves very slow. And you don't have a watch. You don't have a clock. You don't know what time it is. And you're sitting there with no books. Like that is absolute torture. Oh, my God. Yeah, I was telling you that I dreamt last night that I was in prison. And it's terrifying to have your freedom taken away like that. So I guess what happens next?

I mean, it's been like 24 hours pass, 48 hours pass. And then why? So eventually they move. I meet with a counselor like after two days and the counselor was useless. They were just like, yeah, this is, you know, you're in limbo right now. You have to wait till sentencing. You're going to be moved to this unit. And I think it was like, see or I moved to some unit.

and when I get to the unit, it's like a tier, like what you would see on 60 days in or your normal prison shows, which is what I envisioned prison to be like. There was two floors that overlooked, you know, a main common area with like the cafeteria tables and some TVs mounted to the walls. And then there was like a wreck area outside, which you had access to to go throughout the day, which was just like a concrete gymnasium. you couldn't see out the windows. The windows were up top, but that would be like your fresh air.

And, you know, your day is literally, you're stuck in this unit unless you're called for like a visit or the doctors or anything. And the visits there are you can't touch the person. It's just through glass with the phone again, like what you would see on TV. I remember, you know, my parents coming those first times and my mom coming and those are just brutal. And you're just, you know, you're talking to them on that wall phone through the glass. and you're wearing, you know, two-piece tan, you know, khaki tans. You have Converse sneakers on. Converse or vans has like a huge deal, I guess, with the prison system

because they all, that's where you get at every location. The same ones you're wearing, that's what you'd get in like blue or orange or, you know, the slip-ons. And then that happened. And then, you know, you're just kind of trying to navigate. And those facilities, there's not really politics because everyone is in limbo, Everyone, in most of these places, those people are just fighting their case. They have no bail.

They were endangered the community or they were a flight risk and they're stuck there awaiting trial. Normally after your sentence, they move you out of there like two or three weeks away or two or three weeks after. And ironically, I ran into at that prison, this guy named Alex Bergen, who was our electronics connect, who ended up taking a plea deal for, you know, wire fraud and defrauding investors. And they were all calling him like Harry Potter there and he was running the ticket. His bond had got revoked like eight months earlier and he was awaiting sentencing. And this was the guy who sold those beats headphones? To John Roble.

Yep. That was a connect in the town over. And he was there. He had gotten like a DUI. And the feds had actually put him through like an accelerated rehabilitation program like through drug court. See, the thing in the feds, like if you're on drugs, there's a lot of when you're doing your crime, there's a lot of advantages.

Like you can get a year off your sentence for the drug program. you could go through the drug court. There's all these options. But he ended up blowing it. But me and him, you know, talked a lot there. We were kind of, we had similar, you know, dollar amounts and similar charges. The only difference is he took a plea deal and I went to trial. He would end up getting, I think, like, two years or 30 months was a sentence.

And he had already had a year in, so we only had like two to go. And I would actually run into him later on when I was in Danbury. I just missed him. He was going home when I got put in the shoe. So it was pretty funny to run into him. So I'm in this unit, you know, and for like 21 days, saw some crazy shit. Like a guy get his finger bitten off because the other guy cut him in line because the lunch line is they bring the trays to the communal area during lunch. And this guy cut the line and bit his finger right off over this fight.

And there was like blood spraying every. the finger was like on the ground and they had to like remove the food and we all got locked down for like two or three days. Whenever there's a fight in those spots, you're locked back in yourselves. And you're normally locked in your cells during count time and at nighttime in these units. And that was the worst too, being locked in yourself for two or three days at a time or four days during a lockdown. And you just can't go anywhere and you're stuck with your cellmate. And a lot of the times when I was there, you were always put with someone who had just got there that was in prison. that is going through the similar situation as you.

And I remember trying to talk to, like, other fraud guys where other guys in the system that have been in the feds before seeing, like, where are they going to send me? What's going to happen? What can I expect? And all these guys, like anyone going to prison, you don't want to ask anyone for advice because everyone gives you a different answer

and more or less none of it pans out to be true. Unless, like, they give you helpful advice, like, you know, have your prison paperwork or have this and have that, which none of them did for me. Otherwise, that would have saved me a lot of trouble down the road. Why? Because it's so unpredictable what will actually happen to you?

Yeah, everyone's situation is totally different. Like, I had guys tell me you're good, you're going to a camp, which is what my attorney was telling me. And I thought I was going there. Like, you're set. You have nothing to worry about. You're going to a camp, which was the total opposite of what would happen to me. So everyone just has something to say.

And there's different variables and factors to every person's case. So I'm there. And then, you know, three weeks later, I get hauled to court, which is a huge process to, you know, they wake you up at like, even if your court hearings at like 10 or 11, you're up at like 3 a.m. They're getting you ready. They're bringing you down to the, you know, the loading area. And you go through the process, bag lunch, chained up, handcuffed, the whole nine yards. And because it's not just you. It's other inmates that have to go to court. And the van rolls out early morning makes a stop at each stop. You're unloaded, uh, reloaded, different courthouses in Connecticut,

this and that until you're finally at your stop. And obviously they prioritize who, as the first hearing of the day. And then, you know, we got back to New Haven where I was at, you know, three weeks earlier. And for a sentencing hearing, you don't really get to get the option to dress up or anything because there's not a jury in front of you. So you're still in your tan clothes and, you know, you're hauled up to sentencing. And there was a couple victims that spoke at my sentencing made me sound like they were the worst of the worst, you know, the prosecutor, went, did a whole speech at sentencing, my attorney spoke and then I spoke. And I wrote like this whole thing, you know, kind of just explaining everything and talking about how like the last

21 days in prison were absolutely eye-opening. And I generally thought the judge was going to release me. Like you just wanted to teach me a lesson and that, you know, that that was like a scared straight thing. Those three weeks in prison that I would, you know, get home confinement or something. I would be released. I was very confident in that. Yeah, I was going to ask like during those 21 days. what are you thinking about the crimes that you'd committed? Are you regretting all of them and thinking I would have done things totally differently? Or did you still kind of think, hey, I was kind of trying to do the right thing.

I was trying to get these people paid back. Yeah, my mindset didn't change until like years later. You know, I never came to terms with everything until honestly, I think the first time, like, I really analyzed everything was when I did the HBO documentary where I, like, you know, someone I was actually asking me thought-provoking questions. and I covered everything step by step, you know, because when you're in that and you're talking about it for 10 or 12 or, you know, 15 hours and you're going through it and someone's actually asking you.

Because like when you're going through the court system, no one's asking you questions about why you did this or, you know, what actually is everyone just kind of like out to get you and out to bury you. But when I sat down with the, you know, the producer asking me questions and the director, you know, he gives you a different, you know, light of things. Could you have done it this way? what could have happened if you did this? Do you think about this?

And I think that's something I really carried into my podcast when I asked my guest questions and stuff because it opens up a new door of light and you see things in a different perspective. So my mindset was, you know, I was literally running the club technically because there was still one show left that we had booked and like rentals and stuff, but we canceled all those. Who was going to play? It was this DJ Zamboy. He was like a like a bass type DJ or a trap DJ. and I was like, Dad, we got to have the show work because if I get out, I need a good relationship with these agents and the artists and the management companies and stuff. So he's like, I got it covered. And he literally ran the show, you know, while I was in prison, every, you know, a couple hours I'd call him on the pay phone.

Guys are yelling at me to get off the phone. Like, you know, your time's up or this and that. And I'm just saying, hey, do this, talk to this person. Work out of deal with the landlord. My dad, you know, pulled off the show. It was a success. And that was like Tuxedo Junction. ended on a good note. That was like the last hurrah. And it still lost money that show, but at least we made it happen and had the connections intact. So, you know, if I got out, I could just pick up where I started.

And then, you know, during that sentence and hearing, I even said I was willing to walk away from tuxitos. I was saying whatever I had to say to essentially knock at prison time. My lawyer said the judge is going to want to hear that, you know, say you want to work still at Whole Foods and all of this, which, you know, like looking for,

back on it now. I thought it would have been fair if the judge had just said, hey, you're banned from the club business, you're on home confinement, continue your job at Whole Foods, because that, I thought that would have been a good outcome to get investors their money back. I could have lived at home, gave up my check to that and just did that, which obviously I wouldn't have this right now if he did that. But I just think like as the system as a whole, that could have been a rehabilitating type thing rather than sending me to prison, I think that could have, you know, got investors their money back quicker and this and that. But, you know, the system doesn't care about investors getting their money back. If there's no, like, if it's not like a Bernie Madoff case where there's

actually assets or anything. And what are you doing at Whole Foods, by the way? I was just a hot bar cook. I was making, at that time, I started, I got hired at $10 an hour and then they like up the rate to like 11 or 12. So I was just working there as many hours as I could part time, just like hustling, you know, and I'm this, like, nightclub owner that, like, when I was working there, I'd have a show at night. I'd do morning shifts, and I've always been a hustler. I've always just been a hardworking individual, you know, and I think we said this earlier in this, you know, interview that just like that was always everyone's biggest misconception about me. And I still am a hustler. Like, I do whatever I got to do to get the job done, you know?

Like yesterday I was, I was here. I filmed two episodes and, like, it was five-hour episodes. and it was just like a long day. I was here. It's like eight or nine o'clock at night. But, you know, the show goes on. You got to do what you got to do. And then you're up again this next morning filming. And, you know, then you carry on.

And I try to get to the gym and do everything I have to do and do the editing and stuff. So that was the mentality. And ultimately the judge sentenced me to three years in prison. But they don't say three years. They say 36 months. So I'm sitting there like an idiot trying to figure out how many years is 36 months. Because no one.

talks in months, you know. I was interviewing a guy the other day. He's like, yeah, I got sentenced to like 378 months or this and that. I'm like, how do you even figure that out in your head, you know? So I got that and then he, you know, he gave a big list of conditions one year of home confinement after release, another two years of supervised release. I had to do a year of counseling, which like pissed me off. I'm like, why is he making me do counseling and this and that? And, you know, like no gambling. While you're on supervised release, no creating any businesses,

no lines at credit, all of these things. And, you know, he said, I wish you the best. And the thing about this judge, which I respect was every time after ever hearing,

he would always come down and shake your hand, which you don't see in most judges, which was cool. You would come down, shake the defense team and the prosecutor's team before we left.

And did he give you, like, reasons why he was giving you that prison time that like he felt that you needed this to be reformed or would help you or anything like that? Or was there no real justification? It was just based on the crimes committed. I think he just felt, well, so my going into sentencing, I was faced by the sentencing guidelines, I was faced with nine to 12 years or eight to 12 years.

That was by the United States government standard, given everything. You go to trial, you know, that hurts you. You do this, you do that. You know, you don't take responsibility. and then there's all these factors that like the government argues to even raise that. One of the biggest things was they were trying to hit me with, which would have racked up the time, was that I was the kingpin, so to say, of it. And I was the leader.

But the judge ultimately ruled that John Roble was equally responsible and acted on his own. And I wasn't like the leader of it. So I got the deduction for that. But John took a plea deal. Yes. Which is something we always brought up, just like. you know, it's not really a fair situation that John is, you know, clearly made throughout trial to be this 50-50 partner. You know, he should be responsible for half the money, this and that.

And, you know, the judge just says his hands are tied because it's a state case. He plet out in the state. He has no jurisdiction over it, you know. So that's why he ordered $480,000 in restitution fully to me. And if John was an equally charged co-defendant, it probably would have been split. They did give me credit for like the 30,000 that they came up with for him to pay in the state, which didn't make any sense how they came up with that number. So that brought my liability down to like 450. But that's what happened.

And then the judge ultimately, the prosecution asked for 7 to 8 years. They said we agree 8 to 12 is too much. It was 6 to 8. And then we were asking for probation or house arrest. So really what the judge did was met in the middle was he did three years and then the year house arrest. So it was like four basically. And that was in the middle. So he departed downward by a lot, which I still think, and I think a lot of other people thought was a lot of time for the case and everything compared to what other people get for the dollar amount.

Right. But I think what hurt me was the bond violation. I still think to this day I never would have went to prison in general. because I was kept out on bond. I was doing everything I needed to do aside from that, you know, discrepancy. So I think the judge would have given me, you know, house arrest or probation. If you hadn't gone gambling out of state. Exactly.

That's what really screwed up everything, lost the trust with the court and everything like that. We couldn't get past that even at sentencing. Right. And lastly, do you think that if you had taken that plea deal, which was originally for something equivalent to what you got, like three years or whatever, that you would also have been spared jail time, prison time? I don't think so, only because what I've learned about the system is the judge would never have gotten to understand my story. You know, he never would have understood the age of it or anything. Once you take a plea deal, there's not much argument of whatever defense or anything you can do in the plea deal.

And the biggest thing about it is like so that you go before sentencing and you meet with the probation officer like a neutral one who has never met you before and is supposed to be neutral to the government and neutral to you. and they work on like behalf of the court to come up with a pre-sentence investigation report going through your crime, this and that. And all they did was copy everything the government said and put it in there to come up with those nine to 12 years. So I don't think I would have been given a fair shake if I signed a plea deal. They would have just put everything that was in that plea deal into there and the judge would have looked at it. And I think I probably would have ended up with the same amount of time, if not more. Normally these judges stick with the plea deal. I don't think he would have departed that much lower, you know, without looking all the facts. So, you know, to this day,

I would never regret not taking a plea deal. And I'd tell everyone that asked me, like I even told Syed, who was on the show that you know and he was on Generation Hustle, he asked me for advice all those years ago. And I said, don't take a plea deal, you know, take them to trial, just to get the facts of the case out there. So you never want to know about the what if, you know. I think it's a myth that, at least in federal court, that you get hammered with more time because you want to went to trial if you get a fair judge. What hurts you is that you don't get the deduction for taking responsibility. But you also never know until you try. Right. Got it. So you get sentenced to 36 months. You're doing the math in your head. You conclude that it's three years. And then what?

So then I get, you know, hauled back away with the marshals. They take me down, go through the same process back on the bus, go to the detention center. The marshals were like taking bets on what I would get down below in the holding cell. They're like, I think you'll get a year and a day because it's common to get a white collar fraud guys to get a year and a day because then you don't serve the whole year in a day. If you get anything more than a year, you can get good time and everything like that. But that wasn't the case. I got the three years. And then I went back, excuse me, I went back to the detention center and, you know, all the other inmates were like, how much time did you get? How much time did you get? What was the outcome? And, you know, I told them.

and, you know, two weeks later, they woke me up at, you know, the crack of dawn. And the Bureau of Prisons, Federal Bureau of Prisons, was there to pick me up and transport me. And I go back through the loading dock and same process. Only this time you're on a giant bus. And there's inmates from different prisons, from different detention centers, from county jails all there, waiting to be transported to the next designation. And they picked me up and they actually brought us. to Dambury, my hometown, the Danbury Federal Prison, the notorious Danbury Federal Prison.

And I thought I was getting off there, but I wasn't. They were picking up more inmates, dropping off inmates, and then back on the road, and we were heading to Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Detention Center. And that was a whole, you know, another experience going to one of those large tower detention centers. And the Brooklyn Detention Center mirrors the Wyatt Detention Center. It's a pre-holding facility, you know, waiting trial, waiting centers. this time you're given, you know, brown full jumpsuits. And, you know, I was I was sold up with this guy who was like a snitch for the cartel, the Philadelphia cartel for like five or six years.

And he was sentenced to there because that was the only place he was safe. At these detention centers, no one's really checking paperwork because no one has paperwork to check. Everyone's kind of like in limbo. There's not really much violence. Occasionally there's a fight or two. but it's the same thing day after day. You know, you're waking up, getting out of your cell,

walking around these units, you could go crazy. I was lucky I found some guys that I played with Monopoly with every day. There was a monopoly board, and we just sat there for hours playing Monopoly, and that helped pass the time. And I didn't have any visits. I just had phone calls. And what was keeping me hopeful and kind of keeping me going

was that my judge was now able, now that I got sentenced, he was able to file an appeal. you have to wait till your sentence to the second circuit to appeals. One, notice of appeal for my case in the verdict and two for bond pending appeal. So it was common that you could, you know, possibly if you have a good appeal case, that you could get bond pending appeal. And we were confident that I would get that. And, you know, every day I was calling him, hey, have you heard any news? What's going on? Because I'm just itching to get out. And I just, you know, I remember making a plan saying, you know, like, this is what I'm going to do.

Like, I'm going to go work at Whole Foods. I'm going to do this or I'm going to start this. And I just like, that's what kept me going, you know, that hope. What else? Work at Whole Foods, but what else? I think I wanted, you know, to get back to the concerts at that point. Like, I had retreated from that sentencing. But in my mind, I was just like, you know, you know, fuck the court, this and that.

You know, they didn't want to give me a chance. So I'm going to go do what I have to do. And I just really wanted to, you know, I just wanted to be success. I knew it like in my mind success would be like the best revenge. And so, you know, that kept me alive. And then three weeks later, I'm finally transferred to my designation, which my attorney had told me on the phone that none of the counselors or anything will tell you. They're not allowed to tell you.

But my attorney knew someone in the BOP who said I was going to Fort Dix and he's like, it's a camp, nothing to worry about, you know, you're going to a camp. Fort Dix is a good facility. And so when he told me that, I started asking people, hey, what do you know about Fort Dix? and people are like, it's sweet, it's a great spot, you're in good hands. I met another person that knew they were going to the Fort Dix camp, so I was like, oh, wow, great, this is going to be good. And the bus picks us up again early morning.

This is like early December now, two months after my bond got revoked, and about a month and a half after sentencing, and we get to Fort Dix. And, you know, they stop at the camp first, and they let off like the three or four people that were going to the camp. And I'm like, I think I'm supposed to be with them. And they're just not saying anything to me. And we drive off and now we go to the low. And the difference between like the camp and the low is the camp is there's no fence.

I think actually at Fort Dix there's like a small perimeter fence. But at most camps there's no fence. Very free. At the low, you know, you're surrounded by barbed wire, high security fences. It's a different ball game. And so I was taken off the, you know, prison bus with all the rest of the guys and brought to Fort Dix where, you know, you're put through the same process hours and hours, and then you're finally released to the yard. They have a building, they call it like the A&O building for orientation, and that's just for individuals who are

brand new, who are just getting off. And there's two sides to Fortex. So Fortecks has 5,000 inmates pretty much on their compound. There's an east side and the west side. So when you get there, you're on the west side in this building. And it's an old army barracks that they converted into a prison. So it was very different than what I was. was at before. Like this literally looks like a college campus. There's 12 man rooms, six bunk beds, a big square table, some chairs. Everyone has a plastic chair and a little like locker, like as tall as this chair with, you know, two doors where you keep your commissary. You could get a lock for it, this and that. And guys were some of the other guys,

like the Spanish guys and the black guys that I had arrived with where, you know, other guys would come up and greet them. They would give them a bag of like flip flops, toothpaste, like a care package, you know, no one was coming up to me. And I didn't realize why no one was coming up to me at the time, but I was just like, all right, maybe these people know each other. And it was common, you know, when you get to a yard, your people, you know, would come up to you, and they would give you a care package.

And they would say, hey, like you have, you know, 30 days or whatever to show your paperwork that you're not a chomo, not a rat. Do you agree to these terms? And then they'll give you your care package. And if you take that care package and your paperwork's not good, you're going to get beat up and you're going to get checked in, which means, you know, sent to the shoe. So you never want to take it in bad faith. And they're guys that will turn it down right away and people kind of know what's up with them. So in my case, because I was a white guy and the other white guys that were with me, you're automatically labeled as a sex offender or a rat.

You know, unless you're going to like a penitentiary where, you know, the Aryan Brotherhood or these white, you know, gangs are coming up to you and they'll put the press on you to see what your status is, then you're looked at as a chomo. They called a child molester a chomo. So at Fort Dix, it's loaded with chomos, and no one hurts them, no one touches them because there's just so many of them. And it's a low security prison. So there was no like white, they call them cars in federal prison.

They're not like gangs or cars, which is the people you ride with, essentially. And it's, at least on the East Coast, it's the cars operate by what state you're in. So like the Connecticut car, they had the New England car, the New Jersey car, the New York car, where in Fort Dix, the New York car was the biggest. So it's not necessarily race. So it's not like white guys are coming up to me checking paperwork. It's cars that would come up to you. Technically, if someone found out I was from Connecticut, the Connecticut car, or in this case, the New England car, was supposed to come up to me, make sure I was taken care of, and check the, paperwork. No one ever did that.

So your actual paperwork. Yeah. Your paperwork means your sentencing transcript and your PSI. Which you had access to? Not in that moment. You would have to tell them, hey, you know, I need some time or this and that. But no one explained that process to me. I had no idea about any of this. So what ends up happening is this is, you know, like what really defined my experience in prison was we came in right after around when they were calling for chat. Chow was around after the 4 p.m. count. It was like 4.30 or 5. And you leave your building because it's all separate buildings. And they normally during count the lock you're building and at night the lock you're building. And your building is three stores high, three stories high. The ground levels where there's like the officer that runs a building. It's like one officer per, you know, 400 inmates about your handicapped people are on the bottom floor. There's like a little workout area. There's a pool table.

and a TV room and all the TVs are assigned. You have like a Spanish TV. You have a news TV, a movie TV, and a regular TV. And it's like a big open room. But there's assigned spaces that are like imaginary. Everyone has a chair that they bring with them back upstairs to their room because you use that chair when you're in the shower or to climb up on the top bunk because there's no ladders.

So one thing I realized was that, you know, you can't just go put your chair anywhere in the space. people have like their own imaginary, you know, markings in their mind and everyone kind of remembers it, which was like fascinating. And all the tromos have to sit in the back of the TV room. So I remember like one time I just brought my chair and plopped it right in the middle. And they were like, this is my spot. I'm like, there's no other chairs here. There's no markings on the floor. And I get the fuck up. This is my spot. And you just have no idea, you know. So anyways, they released us for chow. And we go to this chow.

hall, which it's literally like a huge cafeteria, like a titanium, aluminum, like building, windows, you walk in. It's literally like you would see in high school. You have your long rows of tables with the chairs attached them, like those folding tables. You go around the perimeter to the buffet line where you're going up just like as if you were in high school or college and you're going to get your tray of food. You pick up the tray, you walk through and they'll put like a, a. slop of the whatever the meal is and the next person puts on the rice or the starch,

the next person, the vegetables, and then the next person, whatever, whatever was on the line. Then you take your tray, and I thought this was great because compared the detention centers, you were getting more food, the food look decent, and they also had like a salad bar, a create your own salad bar. It had like lettuce, tomato, onions, a couple different dressings. They had a soda machine where they had like all the knockoff sodas and a desolate. dispenser. They had like a milk machine. They had dessert options. You could pick between like pudding or jello. Like this was, I thought it was great. But I'm all alone. I had made friends with

this one Spanish guy who had never been in the feds before he had served time in the state. And now he just got like a five or six year drug sentence. And he was kind of like walking with me. We had played cards. We had gotten friendly with each other at the detention center. at Brooklyn, but ultimately he was Spanish and he rolled with the New York car. But he hadn't really found his people yet. They gave him a care package, but he was still navigating and we were a similar age. So we stuck together. And so me and him go and sit down at this table that had like really pretty much mostly white guys.

When you're looking around and based off TV and movies, you're going to sit with the people that look like you in prison. So we go and sit at this table and there's some Spanish guys there and we sit down, we start eating and I just I'm chowing down like I'm excited I'm looking forward to this meal I've been living off bag lunches all day and the detention center like I'd spent Thanksgiving in my first holiday at the detention center and that was terrible the food everything just sucked you eat on holidays you eat a meal at like 10 a.m because they serve you early you eat it and they give you a bag lunch for the day they have like turkey and mashed potatoes and they have all that at like the camp

and stuff when I would get later on in my prison journey. The meals were actually nicer. The detention center sucked. But like on Christmas we got a Cornish hen, a full bird. One year we got a steak, like a strip steak. You got a Christmas bag where they give you a bunch of like Keebler's cookies and Doritos and all of these cool things. And like, it's like picture items from a vending machine put into a zip block bag.

Now they've gotten smaller in recent years. And then they would have special. items on the commissary like oysters or like bagged oysters or clams or all these cool stuff or different chocolate bars. Nice. So I'm sitting at this table and I start eating and a couple of people like across from me like stop eating. And one guy like this big bald white guy is like saying, hey you, you and I'm not really

paying attention. I'm just eating. I'm trying to, I knew you mind your own business. I had learned from the detention centers. Don't look at other people sell. You know, don't go into anyone's cell without permanent. mission. Don't do anything. Just keep to yourself. And so I'm just eating. And then he finally like, bangs on the table. And he's like, you, I'm talking to you. And I look up and I'm like me,

looking behind me too, like seeing like, is it really mean? He's like, yeah. He's like, who are you? Like, where are you from? What's going on? And, you know, I give my name. I tell him where I'm from. I'd say I just got here. And he's like, this table is for the good white boys. And I'm like, okay, what do you mean by like good? He's like, you know, you have to have your paperwork in good standing to sit here. And I look at him and I'm like, yeah, my paperwork's fine. I don't even know what paperwork is. I'm like, yeah, I'm sure it's fine, you know?

Like, I don't know what to tell you. And he's like, what about what are you here for? What's your case? And I said, I'm here for fraud. I went to trial. And he looks at me and he's like, that's what they all say. And I'm like, what do you mean? That's what they all say.

who is they? And I had no idea that the cover for a lot of these white sex offenders in prison where they would automatically say they're there for fraud. And I also didn't know that I looked really young. I still look young now, but I looked even younger then. A really baby pudgy face. Are you still like 190 or 290? Yeah, I was about 290.

I was chubby. I was a big boy. This is like literally my first couple months in prison. I look young. I got the, I had these glasses, which coincidentally, all the tromas would wear like those black framed glasses, these thick like Nike glasses I had on. You're a classic chomo.

Yeah, I was literally fit the image of it and they would all say it's a cover. And also what was working against me was that there was no one really my age in prison for white collar things. You would see gun cases or drug cases, but white collar was very rare for my age. So he said, that's what they all say.

And he said, you have to show your paperwork to sit here. And I was like, well, where do I get the paperwork? I'm sure I can find it right now. Do I go to like a case manager or counselor? He's like, you have to get it from your attorney, you know, and then you have to show it to us and check it out. And I said, okay, yeah, no problem.

And I continue eating. And he's like, you have to get the fuck off the table now. Like you cannot sit here until, you know, you show this paperwork. And I'm like, well, where do I sit? And he points behind me and I look around and it's a table full of white guys. that are literally sex offenders, chomos, old white guys with the glasses, you know, unshaped beards, and they're just looking at me like I'm fresh prey, just staring at me.

And, you know, there was two options in that moment. You either stand up for yourself and, you know, fight the biggest dude and go out with a bang, or you leave the table. And I did, you know, what anyone I think in my position would do, given my background circumstances, was I got up and left the table and went and sat with the other guys. And, you know, that kind of like defined my prison sentence of, you know, like getting taken advantage of or, you know, like getting, you know, beat up like later on, like a few weeks later, I started moving around too much at Fort Dix trying to get. And because I realized there was

this world of like cell phones and contraband and there was like drugs and there was, you know, people were playing dice. So I started playing dice and, you know, all these different commissary meals. Everyone had a hustle. Everyone was. like making money. It was a huge like economy there. And I started getting mixed up into all these things. I was trying to get like cell phone smuggled in or I was trying to do this or that. And eventually like these guys came up to me and they were just trying to extort me. You know, one day they everyone started calling me Mclovin there because I looked like Mcloven. And they called me Mcloven. They called me Bieber guards later on at different prisons would call me squints from the sandlot. And one day these

guys from D.C., these two big black guys, you know, saw me walking and they yanked me into the hallway. Guards? No, no, these are inmates. They had gotten down from a medium security prison. At the time, Obama was given a lot of clemency. There was a lot of changes with sentencing and stuff, and people were getting resentenced for drugs.

So a lot of guys in these higher security prisons worked their way down, and they ended up there. And so what ends up happening is that they yank me into the bathroom and they're like, listen, buddy, they hand me a number with like their commissary account number. They're like, you're going to start putting money on here and we're going to protect you. You know, we're going to guard your phone. We're going to make sure you're good, you know? No one's going to mess with you. And I'm like, I don't need protection. Like, I'm good, you know? And right then and there, one of the guys just slaps the glasses right off my face. Everyone still says

my cheeks are still red from that slap. The other guys, like, has me like pinned up against a bathroom wall, my glasses go flying across the bathroom. And they're like, you don't have an option here, buddy. Like, you're going to pay us this money or you're out of here. You're going to get hurt. And one guy had like a big, you know, a lot of these guys here that came from higher security prisons were walking around with like literally steel blades in them that they would make like shanks. It was crazy. And I was scared, man. Where were they hiding the shank? They would keep it down like their crotch. It's the same way they would like hide cell phones and stuff. And what ends up happening is I end up finding some guys from like the New York car.

And still at this point, no one from the Connecticut car or anyone has approached me to help me or anything like that. But I approach these guys and I kind of work out a deal where I became friendly with them. I used my personality and likeability and got friendly with them and saw that they had some influence in the New York car, which was the largest, you know, car or gang on the compound. and I worked out a deal that I was giving him whatever he needed in Commissary like 50, 60 bucks a week. And basically what it looked like was that I was like his bitch kind of, you know, getting him this stuff or his staying, they would call it. And in return, no one could touch me because no one's going to infringe on another man's hustle. And those DC guys were eventually moving around so much, causing so much trouble. No one wants, everyone wants the economy to be stable.

They want peace. You know, people want to go about their business without bringing heat to the unit. And these guys who are trying to extort everyone left and right were causing heat. So someone ends up planting a cell phone on their beds or in their boot. They get raided and they get hauled out of there and sent to the shoe and sent to another compound. So that was like the end of that saga. And I ended up being at Fort Dix for like seven or eight months. And I eventually get wrapped up in like a cell phone investigation because they raided our room.

They would do raids all the time looking for cell phone to. in contraband, people would have crazy hiding spots, like cutouts behind the door, literally, like they would have like the work crew of guys, like drill into the concrete to put phones, everything. The work crew? Yeah, there was different, like, the inmates would be on, like, the construction crew or stuff, and you would pay them. Or you would pay, like, the Spanish guys to hide the phone.

And every phone had, like, a magnet glue to do it. Chargers would get charged, like, in that you would never keep the phone. This is why we didn't have iPhones because an iPhone, you can't. take the battery out. So these are all Android's where you would pop the battery out, leave the battery somewhere safe to charge. So if the battery got popped, you'd just pay four or five hundred bucks for a new one from someone.

But if your phone got popped, that's like three or four grand you're paying to someone because phones would go for that much. So one day our room gets rated. They find a phone. They get into the phone. Someone gives up the pass code or they cracked the code that got into it. And they saw

a video of me getting choked out on the floor of our room. And We were just wrestling like we were screwing around, but one of my bunkmates in there was, like, choking me out wrestling. So they see this and they throw, they bring the whole room into investigation. They throw me in protective custody. I didn't have a choice. Like they hauled me out into the shoe and they wrap up the whole room in investigation. I end up, you know, staying there in the shoe during the summer, which was, I guess was good because there's no AC in prison or in Fort Dix and you're sweltering in the heat.

You have to put like blankets up. to literally like keep it cool. But I was in the shoe where it was air conditioned. I was there for three or four months. Then I got transferred. Three or four months in solitary. In solitary. Doing what?

Reading. I would read a book a dad. My parents sent me the New York Times. Trump had just got, you know, elected earlier that year. So I was reading about that every day. What books were you reading? I read a lot of James Patterson. I would later read that because I was in the shoe a lot, the Harry Potter series.

I would do all of these different things. And that kind of- An education? Yeah, I loved like fantasy or like nonfiction to or fiction to help stimulate my mind. And so I did that. And then they eventually were moving me to Danbury, the low security prison, which I thought was great because it was my hometown. And I got moved over to there. But it took, I had to stop the Philadelphia Detention Center.

I had to stop at all these places. They put me through literally diesel therapy. And I got to Danbury. Diesel therapy. Diesel therapy is when they send you from prison to prison just like going through it. You know, they, when they don't like you, they, it's not like a direct, there was a direct route from like four dicks to Danbury, but they put me to Philly where I was in the Philly shoe with a bunch of sex offenders who had just got busted at Fort Dix by the FBI. I was there for three months. Then I, you know, went back to Brooklyn. It took me like four months to get to Danbury. And this is only because you had been caught with a cell phone in your room, or was it more than that? I think it was a cell phone in the room.

Like, they knew, like, they didn't have any proof. Like, I personally did anything, but they want to screw with you. You know, when you're causing problems, I want to screw with you. And were you responsible for that phone getting smuggled into the cell? No, someone, I never did the phone smuggling there. I would do phone smuggling at the camp, but I would never do it there. And so I end up making it to Danbury, and I'm on the. yard for like a day and I thought it was great.

Like the Italian, this time I was getting treated right because I knew how to move. I was showing paperwork. I was talking the Italians. A lot of people knew me in Danbury because I was from Danbury. They knew my case. They knew I went to trial. The guards knew me. And not even 24 hours later after being on the yard, I got called the lieutenant's office.

They handcuffed me. And they bring me back to the shoe. And this shoe was like Alcatraz, the three tiers, bars on the windows. And after days of being in the shoe, they finally. tell me that I used to date a prison guard's cousin there, and he reported that he had been to my house before, that we were friendly, and that it was a conflict of interest. So they had to remove me from the compound so he can continue to work on it. So now I'm back in the shoe for another three months waiting to get designated to a new location. My points at this time, because I'm in

over a year, dropped down, so I'm able to make it to a camp level. I had found out that I never made it to the camp to begin with because they messed up saying I didn't have a GED or a diploma, which raises your points and then my age. If you're under 26, your points skyrocket too. So I finally make it to camp levels and now, you know, they say I'm going to Otisville or one of the guards said you're going to be going to a camp that starts with an O, which I thought was Otisville, which is the notorious federal prison camp where all the celebrities, go, Billy McFarlane went there. It's the sweetest camp ever.

Where is it? It's in, I guess, Otisville, New York. Oh. And it's ran by the Jews. And it's very well connected. And it's a great place to be. And it was a couple hours away from my parents' house. And I get to, like, they picked us up in the bus, and they bring us to the airport.

And I think it was Newark or Westchester or whatever, where there's one bus that takes you to Otisville. Another, there's like six buses that take you to different prisons. And then there's the plane for Conair. And they take us all off the bus, you're chained, you're shackled. The marshals literally, it's something like the scene out of the movie Conair. The tarmac's empty. It's just this one plane with blinking, you know, FBI martial cars surrounding it, like,

as a perimeter. And then there's guys with like M16 snipers surrounding the plane and everything. And then you have the actual officers that are instructing you. and they're escorting into different directions. They're calling names off a clipboard, and they call everyone for Otisville, and I'm not on that list. And instead, they call me to go towards the plane.

And I'm like, I think I'm supposed to be going to Otisville. They said I'm going to Otisville. They're like, no, you're not. You're going on the plane. So now I'm on Con Air. They put me on Conair, which was a crazy experience, being on this prison airplane. You're all chained up, you're shackled.

There's like duct tape on the wings. the marshals are, you know, they're like eating, like, fast food right in front of you, like in the middle of the plane. They have some woman in the front, which, like, you can't look at, like, women inmates. And you're next to guys. Like, the guy I was next to was, like, in prison for, like, life being transported for a bunch of homicides. But he had to do, like, a mental evaluation. There's no, like, classification of security in these planes. And again, you don't know why you're being put on conair? No, I have no idea where I'm going. Blind. Yeah. So, So then I get brought to Oklahoma City, which is like the transport center for, it's like a terminal that's made for prison transport.

The plane literally pulls up to this on the runway. And it's like the Oklahoma County Jail or whatever. And they have a federal unit there. And you're going through the same process. You're in the like the basement holding area hours and hours, you know, waiting to go through security, get checked in. You know, do your paperwork, everything. And then you're finally brought up and I was there going into the new year into 2018 now. And I was there for like three or four weeks.

And I got bused back on the plane flown to Chicago, stay in Chicago at the MDC where like R. Kelly was being held for two weeks. And then they finally picked me up and they bring me on a bus to Oxford, Wisconsin out of all places, which is a medium security and a camp. I was luckily designated to the camp. And that's where I would spend the last year in my sentence. And this prison camp was incredible. It held 120 inmates, but there was only 100 inmates there. There's only one officer watching it. There's no fence.

There's a track. There's tennis courts. There's a botchee ball court. There's a volleyball court with literally sand on the outside. On the inside, there's a gym. There's Ultimate Frisbee. We made like a weight pit outside of this like gazebo with like weights with cinder blocks and poles and stuff.

They're four-man rooms, two bunk beds in this little, like, cubby area. There's no locks or doors on it. But because the camp's so underpopulated, there's two, maybe three people in your cell max. There's a TV room in every wing because there's four wings that connect to, like, the main building. There's commissary. There's a big chow hall where the food is so much better quality because you have, you know, five or six inmates cooking for only like 100 people. They had a dog program where if you were in one wing, you were assigned a dog and you, like took care of the dog. And because it's a camp, there's cell phones galore. You know,

everyone has a cell phone. If you're walking down like one of these, you know, um, um, um, wings at night, you could just see the glow on everyone's phone. Guards are very laid back because it's like out, you know, uh, and out there in the countryside. You're literally in the middle of nowhere. And the amount of contraband coming in on the weekends, like guys would literally run through the woods to either meet up with their wives and leave before the count time or after account, run through the woods to get brought to it. Their wife or whatever would pick them up on the side of the road and bring them to a hotel. You know, one time I had my dad drop off like a big garbage bag to some guy at a hotel who brought the bag back for me filled with McDonald's or

protein powder. You could get whatever you wanted. If you said, hey, I want to have sushi this weekend. There was a guy that could bring you sushi that weekend. Wow. It was incredible. And so no punishment for those cell phones? Oh, there was if you got caught. But at that point, like, it's stricter now. But at the camp, you normally had no low enough points where if you got caught once, you were able to go back on the yard, but on the second time they'd ship you. But if you had just gotten there from like a low, like I had high points. So if I had ever gotten caught with a cell phone, I was going right back to a low, depending on your points.

And in some cases, the government can charge you criminally for, you know, having that contraband. It's very, I've talked to guys that have been charged. It's hit or a miss on what happens. But normally what would happen is if you get caught with the phone, you're brought to the shoe, and you have to wait for your hearing. And if you're guilty or not guilty, sometimes these officers make mistakes in the paperwork or the times or you could beat it or you can't beat it, you know, or if it was found in a common area or if it was found on you or whatever the situation is. I've had bunkmates that would get caught and they would come back. And I've had bunk bates that got caught and you would never see them again. So that's how I spent the last year of my time there.

And, you know, the biggest thing I always talk about was like that prison guard that, you know, tried to sexually assault me basically in the prison kitchen because I would eventually be McLevin who worked in the bakery there. And this guy literally tried to like butter my buns one morning. He was like taking a liking to me. Creepy, you know, young white guy. Very skinny. Always had his like pants, you know, tucked into a shirt, like really high up. Kind of smelled a little weird. and this morning he told like by bunk bait

who also worked in the kitchen that you know he didn't have to come in that day which was weird but I was like whatever and he was just me and him went on one and he had always let me like smuggle cream cheese out of the kitchen chow hall he would let me walk you know he would let me walk out with eggs

or do whatever get extra portions and this one morning I'm scooping muffin mix literally just standing there and he's like rubbing my elbow talking to me. And I thought it was a mistake. And I like look to the right and he like pulls it back. So I'm like, okay, it's a mistake. You know, nothing's going to happen here.

You know, it was a mistake. And I go back to scooping the muffin mix and it happens again. But now he's like rubbing my whole arm and that arm eventually moves to my thigh and it moves to my like butt. And he's like doing this like thing from elbow to arm to thigh to butt. And I'm just like, this cannot be happening to me right now. Is there anybody else that you're alone? No one's there.

There's no cameras in the kitchen. And I was scared because I was like, I'm not going to, it's my word against his. And in these scenarios, the guard always wins, you know. And I'm not, I wasn't an inmate. If I didn't stand up for myself at the chow hall that time, I'm not standing up for myself to a prison guard. So this goes on for like five minutes, me scooping the muffin mix, him doing this, you know, rotation. And then eventually, like, the muffins were over. And I'm like, yeah, I'm done with work for the day.

And I left. And nothing was said, ran into, I tried to avoid him as much as possible. called out a shifts a couple times, saw him at the chow hall, and people knew what was happening. Like I told people what was going on. They were like, maybe it was just a one-time thing. Let's just leave it. You know, let's not escalate this. And I knew that if I reported it, I was going to go to the shoe for an investigation.

So then a couple weeks later, he corners me in the walk-in freezer. Normally the freezer has a lock on it because that's where all the good stuff is, like the good items. And the CEO would unlock it and either walk away. and that's when we would smuggle everything out or unlock it and stand outside. This time I go in to get a tray of cookies to bake off and he unlocks it. I walk in, he walks in with me and shuts the door.

And I'm sitting there with this tray of frozen cookies trying to get out, and he literally forces me to walk out of this freezer. I'm holding the tray with my ass rubbing against his groin area trying to make it out of this, you know, walk-in cooler. And that was the final straw.

And, you know, that's when, and we ended up reporting it. Me and my bunkmate went, because he was witnessing a lot of the stuff. And then the investigators came up. They took it very seriously. They said, listen, you're not going to go to the shoe. At this point, I had a few months left of my sentence.

They removed him from the compound. They said he can only work at the medium during the investigation. He can only molest people at the medium security prison. Yeah, crazy. And to this day, I still don't have answers of what happened to him. I tried to sue. I tried to bring it up the ladder. There's just no evidence.

You know, it's inmates' words against. them. And in these cases, they always win. There's no cameras. You know, it's a very unfair system. So that was like the craziest thing that happened to me at that camp. Literally at every prison, it's always like a movie worthy story. Like every time something would always happen. And then I eventually get out. And in January 2019, I served about 26 months. They paid for a plane ticket back to, you know, Connecticut. And I left with like, you know, they gave me 30 bucks, which I gave to the camp driver because you have a physical inmate that drives like the Crown Vic or whatever, or it was a PT cruiser, inmates to the airport, which is literally the coolest job.

I gave him the cash in exchange. He smuggled out the cell phone for me that I had. So I had a phone to actually use on the plane. And I remember posting on Instagram, like I'm coming home. And I ended up leaving. And I flew back to Connecticut. And I started my stint at a halfway house for a few months, moved to home confinement. at where I was on the ankle monitor for a year,

and I got rehired at Whole Foods. I had known that, like, I wanted to work back at Whole Foods after a few months. The first few months I was trying to, of course, want to get back in the nightclub business. I sit down with the news times. I'm like, I'm back going to do another nightclub. I'm getting a book deal. I'm getting a movie deal, all of this stuff, which got me into trouble at the halfway house because you're not supposed to talk to the press or whatever while you're under custody with them.

but it just, you know, it made me, and those articles came back to bite me in the ass when I was trying to get off probation earlier because the prosecution's like, look, he's trying to do the same thing, this and that. So I ended up working at my friend's pizzeria for a few months doing deliveries. I got my license back. I'm starting to rebuild my life because my license had been suspended. And then I eventually cave in. I'm like, I need a real job here. So I get hired at Whole Foods back. they start me now their minimum wage is $15 an hour.

And, you know, for the next three years, I work my way up from a hot bar cook all the way to the team leader of prepared foods, helping them open in new stores. And I made, you know, $33 an hour when I left there. I was going to make that last year there in 2022. I was on track to make over 100K with overtime and everything because that was my life. And Whole Foods allowed me to get a car for the first time of my own name. and get a car loan and make the monthly payments and get insurance. And I got a dog and I got a girlfriend at that time.

And I got my own apartment. And I rebuilt my life so perfectly. And it was so interesting because I fell in love with working for someone else because I had never had this feeling of being so self-sufficient of having everything. Like, yeah, I owned a nightclub before and everything. But I had no money. I lived with my parents and I couldn't pay the bills. Now I had the sense of, okay, I could pay my bills,

have a little money left over and I'm paying some money towards restitution. And more and more as time went on, I was falling out of in love with, you know, trying to get my story turned into a movie or anything. Like eventually HBO would come around. I did the documentary and I did the vice documentary. But those never blew me up to like what you would see with Billy McFarland or Anna Delvey where like overnight they're massive hits and I have a million followers the next day and my life's changed forever.

I was hoping that would happen, but it never did. So I just continue to, you know, that just reaffirmed that, hey, I need to just focus on Whole Foods and just do this. And then COVID happens. We go through COVID. I get off house arrest. I finally get off probation in 2022. I have good credit. You know, I'm running a store.

I'm back in the Danbury location now. I moved to Long Island for a little bit for Whole Foods, but now I'm back running the prepared foods team in Danbury. and my good friend Mike Squires, who I believe you've met, and who was the videographer for Tuxedo Junction back in the day, who had all the footage that was in the HBO doc, and we have all that archival. He says, Ian, you know, you know of TikTok, right? And TikTok, because of COVID exploded.

And he's like, you know, you should really go on TikTok and social media in general and tell your story. And we talked about this for months back and forth. But then at this point, like the HBO doc was like just getting taken off HBO Max. For whatever, it got taken off. And I just had the vice doc. And you're like, Ian, you should start putting some fire under your story and start telling your story on social media. And keep in mind, I had a very small following.

I think I had a couple thousand friends on Facebook, 5,000 followers on Instagram, which a lot of them were from people from Danbury or from the HBO doc. No followers on TikTok. No following on YouTube. And he says, I think you should start telling your story. And, you know, I procrastinated for a couple months. I ended up buying the equipment. Like, I bought a tripod, a microphone, set up the HBO Max banner that's in my office at my parents' house, put the foam around. Like, I put everything in place, but I couldn't come to actually filming the videos.

And then one day I finally sat down and tried it. And I put together this, like, video of me talking about how Chief Keefe owed me money or another one about the club or booking tiegun. these different stories. And I called it like story time. And I posted one on my Instagram and Facebook. And I made a TikTok account one a day at like 6 p.m. And they got like on Instagram. It did a thousand or 2,000 views, which I thought were cool.

And then on my TikTok, the first one, did like a couple hundred or 400 or 500 views. Then it was like my fifth or six video. I get COVID and I'm really sick in bed. And I call my friend Mike. And I'm like, Mike, I can't post today. Like I'm not feeling good. I'm all stuffy. I'm congested.

I'm nasally. And he's like, you got to post. You got to be consistent if you're going to do this. And he knew about this. Why? Like, why was he the wizard of TikTok and social media? He's just in the artist, you know, business, social media business. He had TikTok.

He just, you know, and he believed in the power storytelling. And I make this TikTok about solitary. This is the first one where I'm actually talking about my experience in prison. And to that point in time, this is almost four years now after my release or three years. I never talked about prison to anyone. People would ask me and I was just like embarrassed to talk about it because there's like the stigma in the world that like prison is bad and you don't talk about that and it's an embarrassing moment in time,

which is why celebrities that go to prison don't talk about it. And I start talking about it. And this video is about me in solitary for those six months, what it was like, what I would eat, everything like that, and it ends up going viral. It does like millions of views overnight. And I doubled down. on it. I started talking about prison making these TikToks. TikTok was a predominant platform,

but I repurposed it on YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, three to five times a day. And within six months, or not even six months from like that August of 2022 or December of 2022, I had 100,000 followers on TikTok. I had, you know, 20,000 on Facebook. I had like 3,000 on YouTube. I had like 10,000 on Instagram. And I'm just talking about prison. And why do you think it resonated? Because you look like McLevin and you're describing some pretty harrowing prison stories or what? What I came to realize was that because of COVID, there was this whole market of like prison talk or prison YouTube where guys would literally go on the webcam or their phones and talk about prison. And all these stories are stabbing, you know, violent prison

stuff, gangs, this and that. So I was the first one that looked the way I looked, the glasses, the rosy cheeks. And I got catchy with the outside. advertising like, I spent this amount of time in prison or this is what you don't do at prison. So people would see that and they look at my face and they're like, there's no way this guy went to prison. And they would stop at that, you know? And then that would just make more intrigue. And these videos start going viral.

And then I mix in some club stories, the story about Chief Keefe, owing me, you know, money and standing me up got like two million views, all of these different crazy stories. And now I'm in the mindset where it's like, I'm leaving Whole Foods. Like this is what I want to do. And like simultaneously a casting agent had reached out to me from like MTV for some dating show. I thought I was going to get it. So that's why I left Whole Foods because I would have had it had gone out of the country for it. I didn't get it, got ghosted, but still quit my job anyways.

And I just doubled down on the content. And for months I was making no money. I think I made like $8 grand on Facebook in like five months, but nothing on any other platform. And I doubled down on that. And I started driving Uber. I even started an only fan to support myself, living off my car. credit cards too at the same time. What do you mean you started an only fan?

You know, like the sites where like girls go on and men too and they like sell nudes of themselves or this and that. So that's what you did. That's what I was doing. Guys would ask for like it was a mostly gay following. They were asking for like feet picks or whatever you know and I was just sending it and I made like

10 grand on only fans in like two months. No more only fans. A lot of people ask me if I still have that. That's been done. And I would drive Uber and I would pick up someone in the Uber, they'd be like, you're the guy from, you know, prison TikTok and this and that. And then eventually I got the idea, you know, January, 2023 now to start a podcast. And I didn't really want to start a podcast because I knew the market was oversaturated.

But then I also knew that I couldn't talk about my story. I was getting burnt out, waking up every day, going in my car, which is where I really made my TikToks predominantly, and talking about prison the entire time. I was getting tiring. Can't come up with a continuous amount of stuff. stories. So I come up with this idea for this podcast, and I find these guys to do it with out of Hyde Park and New York. And I come up with Locked in with Ian Bick. And how'd you come up with locked in? So it was actually that one friend that kind of created the name. And I said,

well, let's add with Ian Bick on it. And like it's a play on words. Like you're locked in. These are individuals that went to prison or have, you know, are locked into their environment or whatever. And I'm like locked in determined. So it was like, it all fits. It was the name. We had like 20 names. That was the one that stuck. Yeah. And so I start interviewing people.

I knew my plan was I wanted the same method that I applied to the concert business. You got people with big followings. In this case, it was people with big prison YouTube channels or big prison TikTok. I flew them out to the studio, paid for their hotel. I would drive them. I'd pick them up at the airport, drive an hour and a half to the studio, do the interview for an hour, hour and a half, and then drive them back. and the production team handled the editing and the filming. I did all the clips because I wanted to be the one that made the clips

and I knew how to clip at that point. And we focused on those stories and like we had like a thousand audio downloads the first week or two weeks, which had some legs in the first YouTube video. This was my first full-length YouTube video. Had like a thousand views in the first like three or four days. And then I just kept interviewing people. And at first it was really cringy. I would go in with like a sheet of paper of 100 questions.

I would come up with and ask question answer, question answer. And then I eventually would see comments and learn the art of interviewing, studied people like Jay Shetty, and start developing my own style. And then I go to two episodes a week. And then the pivoting point last year in 2003 was the brand no jumper. I did an episode just like this one where I was getting interviewed by my old producer. and I wanted to redo it with a more experienced interviewer like we're doing now, which is why we're doing this again.

But that story about the prison table, that story and mixed with me getting extorted by those guys from D.C. went viral on every platform after No Jumper posted it. It had like 20 million views. And that really helped expose the podcast even more. And then I go to two episodes a week. And then, you know, what really was another pivoting point was I found my purpose, was that my purpose is not to talk about my story and it wasn't just to interview,

just to interview. It was to give people who don't get the opportunity to share their story or given her voice or are invited by the Fox News or the CNNs of the world or the big streamers

to tell their story in this format. So I created this format where you could come in, it looks professional, and you're getting a mini documentary made about your life in your own words from your perspective.

Because when someone goes to prisoner gets arrested, it's one-sided story, unless you're going to trial and kind of getting yours out there. But even then, the press is spinning it how they want to. So in this, this, you get this, you know, hour, hour and a half long, two-hour-long episode that lives on YouTube forever, lives on these platforms forever. Now when people search one of these individuals' names, their video, their life story pops up. And yes, we use, you know, salacious terms or a salacious thumbnail to drive people to it. But each episode, episode, you always, we always start at the person's beginning, how they grew up. And we learn people

that have never been to prison before, learn that these people that got into trouble or, you know, and gotten battled in addiction are not so much different than me and you who came from normal families or, you know, or didn't go to prison. And you learn about their struggles and you learn about what happened that ended up in their circumstance. And we always, always end with, you know, how the person is overcom it, what they've learned from it, and what they've learned from it. And what they're doing in the future. And these are inspirational, you know, stories of these people from all walks of life. And I interview now people that went to prison, people that battled addiction, prosecutors, attorneys, investigators, law enforcement from everywhere. And it's grown

into this incredible brand. We now have, I now have my own studio now that I moved in last September. And, you know, we're sponsored by Mike Tyson now and Rick Flares Wu Energy. I've got to interview like Chevy Chase and Brandon Novak. But like the coolest thing about this whole thing is that these episodes that get, you know, hundreds of thousands of views in some cases and the clips do millions of views and literally every story I take

at least one of their clips will go viral is just normal people. It's not the same old celebrities telling their story again and again and again that you see on every platform. These are unique individuals that the world has never seen before. They're different looks.

different ways they talk and they get to come on and tell their story. And I just think it's incredible. And I love doing this and it's been so much fun. Yeah, you told me when we reconnected, when I moved back here, that you were like originally you thought prison was the worst thing that could happen to you. And since you've thought it was maybe the best thing that happened to you. Yeah, I would, you know, I would literally say that prison was the best thing. And that's a reoccurring theme of the show. You talk to these individuals, their trials and tribulations were the best thing that could ever happen to them. It brought them closer to their kids or their family or they developed a business out of it. A lot of the guys I interviewed that sold drugs, for example,

or had like a crime ring or are entrepreneurial at heart, but somewhere in the system, they were failed or something happened and they weren't able to use their skills to good use. And now they're out there after everything they learn, creating businesses or building something. And I think, you know, it's just so inspirational. And my show doesn't appeal to just one demographic. There are, you know, your grandparents listening to this all the way down to teenagers that like the prison war stories to middle-aged people that might be feeling loss or hopeless in life, you know, and they need something to pick them up. If you listen to these episodes and you can see how someone can literally, you know, go from a drug-addicted family to getting maybe raped

in prison to then be coming out and having a successful business, a family, kids, if they could get through all that and still be able to sit down and, you know, and share their story and say this is where I'm at today. I think that's super inspiring. It is. And so now you've got the show. You're going to be doing it five times a week if you're not already. Yep. We're doing five episodes Sunday through Thursday. I'm doubling down and I've increased. I'm doing longer episodes. Now I'm sitting down with people for an hour and a half to two hours because, you know, big feedback is, well, if you're doing more episodes, you don't want the quality to decrease. And I think that's where I'll win in the long term. I'm going to make sure the

quality doesn't decrease. I'm just going to keep at it. And the more stories I could pump out in full length and in high quality, the more it'll get people to be comfortable to come on and reach out and be on the show. And the podcast is succeeding and the audience is growing. But you're only 28? 29 now. 29 now. Yeah. Like you're still a young man. What else do you think you might do? It's so weird looking back. Like this is like literally my act two or maybe even act three, depending on the way you look at it. And if I'm in this many acts in life, you know, at this age, it's going to be interesting to see what acts I take next.

And I can definitely see this getting turned, like my show being like a reality type or TV type series, you know. I think eventually my story in general will get picked up like we're working on a book. We're talking to agents now and publishers and, you know, eventually, you know, I'd love to have a new documentary out there about my story that's actually live and is out there. I think the story kind of deserves that in a way or a TV series or something like that, but that's not the focus because that's not my business, you know. If someone comes along and hears my story and says, this will be great, great, let's do it, you know, but I'm not, before I was so fixated on every

producer that reached out or every hope that this could get turned into something. But now I have this in my sights and I'm learning like, you know, you keep your service. small, you focus on what you want to do. Like, I enjoy, like, I, I had a bunch of clients in an editing business and I wiped all that because I just want to do this. Like, I want to come in. I want to interview people. I want to talk to people. And I want to edit it myself and put it together and get it out there. And that's what I like doing. And that's what I'm good at. I don't want to do anything other than that. Even traveling, like, I've been doing a lot of traveling lately. I don't even really like the traveling aspect. Like, I just want to do this. This is what makes me

happy. And you find a couple good people in your life that you're close with and that you're you love and that support you. And you just keep growing. Like a night for me now, my perfect night is staying at home eating my Hello Fresh meals. I signed up for Hello Fresh. And I love, you know, making a Hello Fresh meal. I just watch prison break, finish that, watching series, you know. And that's what I do. That's my life, you know, and I love it. And, you know, I want to travel more like not work related, experience more of the world and, you know, just continue to grow this thing. because if I'm here now in a year and a half, it's a year and a half since the pod started, right?

Coming up on two years in January, where is this thing going to be in five years? You look at all the greats, Joe Rogan, you know, Thiel Van, all these guys, they've done hundreds and hundreds of episodes over the course of years before they blew up. So am I one of them? I don't know.

Could it happen to me? I don't know. We're going to wait and see. But I think the thing has legs. That's what I know. And I know I have to keep grinding it and doing it and can't stop. Yeah, I'll just say in closing that I met you when you were still working at Whole Foods before this became a thing.

And I really liked you. And I had a feeling that something like this would happen. I didn't know it was going to be a podcast, but a feeling that you were going to go on and continue to succeed. And so it's just been very inspiring for me to see your growth, to see the growth of the podcast, and to see how you've matured over the year. So, thank you, Chad. Yeah, thanks for opening up and being so honest. honest. And plug in your podcast, too, which we'll also have in the description. You are a podcast

host now, too. I am. Yeah, I make a podcast called Gone South, which is entering its fourth season starting in October. Awesome. And we'll have the description for that in the bio of this episode.