Locked In with Ian Bick - Inside a Criminal Conspiracy: On the Run from the FBI & Surviving Federal Prison | Daniel Mishiyev

Episode Date: February 16, 2025

Daniel Mishiyev shares his experience of getting involved in a criminal conspiracy, going on the run from the FBI, and surviving federal prison. He discusses the events that led to his arrest, the challenges of evading law enforcement, and his time behind bars. Daniel also talks about the impact of incarceration and his journey after prison. #CriminalConspiracy #OnTheRun #FBIManhunt #FederalPrison #TrueCrime #SurvivalStory #LifeBehindBars #JusticeSystem Thank you to ROCKET MONEY for sponsoring today’s episode!: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://rocketmoney.com/lockedin today. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Daniel Mishiyev: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniel_joseph_mishiyev?igsh=MW10ZWsyOXd6ZXFjeA== Support his business: https://furnituremattressplus.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabhVmgq-lenHyWjkRwYCEOiJiGaxluITl7_ZC0HnM9BIIlILHK8FsGpl-w_aem_v22bV66HAgSWlPmEncVfug 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 Exploring Incarceration and Injustice 00:09:06 Childhood Challenges and Family Dynamics 00:18:53 How Rocket Money Can Save You Hundreds 00:27:40 Early Life and Challenges 00:36:54 Returning to New York and Family Challenges 00:45:52 Overcoming Childhood Trauma 00:55:15 Life in the Legendary Hip-Hop Era 01:04:15 Encounter with Ghosts and Medication Struggles 01:13:48 A Troubled Past and the Path to Utah 01:23:14 Life in Valhalla Jail: Experiences and Observations 01:32:06 Life in the System: Stories from Behind Bars 01:41:21 Experiencing Prison: A Personal Story 01:50:22 Navigating Parole Challenges and Opportunities 02:00:00 Confrontation and Rights Violation by Police 02:09:14 A Night of Fear and Calling the Police 02:19:21 Understanding Family Estrangement 02:28:11 Inspiring Career Success Stories in the Furniture Industry 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

Danny, welcome to Lockton. Thanks, man. We've been talking about this for, I think, a couple months now. We were talking on Instagram and glad we could make this happen. It's a pleasure, you know? I definitely think that there's a lot that when it comes to situations like incarceration, I mean, you're doing this now because you were able to actually see what the hell's going on and a lot of injustices.

I mean, I'm sure when you did your time, you saw how most of the correctional officers are more crooked than the actual inmates, you know? Like, so you got to taste, and that's why you're doing it. And you gave me the inspiration to come and really share my story, because I got a hell of a one.

You definitely do. I was reading a bunch of the stuff. It's always interesting when guys start sending me like their paperwork and stuff. And I'm like, dude, I don't need it. I believe your story. Anyone that's willing to take the time, out to come out here and, you know, share all that.

It's up for the viewers to, to form an opinion. Right. Not me. I'm not one of those hosts that are demanded to see some paperwork on the shot on the spot. It just puts you in an uncomfortable position. And not only that, you know, something from because of the way I was raised, being just in doing something like this, just being in front of cameras is something that I'm, even until this day, still getting used to.

I can't get myself to consistently be able to, like, post or, like, share anything like that. I mean, because it was just the way that I was born in 1987, all right? So I'm 37 years old right now. And from when we, when I was growing up, you know, people want to be away from the cameras. That's, you know, that's the way I was, the cameras were the enemy. So it's being the transition into trying to. And now that I could actually say I'm a reform criminal, all right? So I could come on here and I could do this now.

And I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to, I'm going to tell my story. I'm not going to mention any, like, names that shouldn't be mentioned or anything like that. But, you know, I'm definitely going to, I'm going to tell you, you know, the whole, just the truth, man. That's what needs to be said is just the truth. and, you know, because there's also a lot of people that I was raised with that see all the trouble, right? And from a perspective, if you don't really know what's going on, but you just see the trouble, you know, it makes it. And, you know, I think that I deserve to be able to just come and get it out there just to, you know, bring awareness also to because that's the main thing. I really, you know, I don't know how, I want to see a change so bad,

but somebody like me with a criminal record like me, my voice, right? It doesn't mean anything. It's very tough. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, let's start. You know, let's start. I'll go from the beginning in, right? Floresiers, my friend.

It seems like you're already hyped up. Upstate New York, right? Orange County. A very iconic area, 1969 Woodstock in Bethel, New York. York was there. We got Newburgh, New York, Middletown, New York. We're the A4-5. So in the feds, we'd be the A-4-5 car, you know?

And, but yeah, definitely I would say iconic area and iconic time that I grew up in because when I grew up, I grew up into the, you know, I was very into cannabis, right? That's part of my, I would say, my entrance into the streets. And, you know, I started using cannabis at 11 years old. and my environment, I was blessed, I should say, to be able to grow up some really good people, you know? Experience isn't an experience without the people that's in the experience. And I was really blessed to grow up with some really, really great people.

I mean, also there's some shysters and everything, but the people that are close to me that I could say that I, that I love. I got to experience some real genuine people. So I grew up during the, let's say, $6,000 a pound sour diesel days and Purple Hays, you know. 1999, 2001, when the real sour diesel first just came out and it was $500 an ounce, 0.520s, you know, it's $6,400 a pound. So that's where sour diesel was going for back then. You know, right now, weed's going for $1,000 a pound indoor or whatever, you know.

So this is the days when people are actually really making money off of weed. And also Hayes, too. You know, we had the iconic Hayes, Washington Heights, right? First time I ever been to Washington Heights. I was 13 years old. I was with two friends of mine. And we're, what, an hour away from the city, you know? Never forget this.

I'm 13 years old. I'm with four white white. boys, right? Three Irish kids and me. I was born as a Russian Jew, right? And I'm in a Russian Jew and a shirt, wearing my friend's shirt that says, I love Jesus. And like some moccasins, right? And we go to this block and they're like, oh, this is the block. This is where the haze is. And they're all scared to get out and go get the weed. I'm like, I'm like, I, you know what? I'll go get it. Give me the money, right? So I get out of the car, meet this guy, right? And this is back when Washington Ice was crazy.

It wasn't a Fourth of July, but there was fireworks going off like on the block and shit like that. Like firecrackers being lit everywhere, you know? 173rd in Audubon, you know, that whole area over there. So that's, you know, Hayes back then, it was iconic. You know, everybody, that was it, the Piff, the sour. I grew up throughout that whole thing.

Cush. But when I had a, my childhood, I had a wonderful family, fortunate family. My mother and father came from Russia, and they had a very unfortunate life. My father was an orphan in Russia. My mother also had a very tough, abusive, you know, abusive life. Single parent, you know, she had a father who's abusive, I guess, left. And, you know, so when they did come, they do arrange marriages there. You know, my mother and father, they get to, you know, even know each other when they got married.

So, and my dad was also a Soviet Union military, their 1970s, you know, during that time, a sergeant in the Russian Army. And so he came to America and he started driving a cab in Brooklyn. Right. And eventually, within a couple years, they left Brooklyn, went upstate to Middletown. I have an uncle that came a little before my father that started in the furniture business. So my father was able to, he was blessed. My uncle put him on, right? And from there, became very successful. But unfortunately, when success comes, and there's no emotion. regulation, stability, and there's addiction in the family, you know, because from trauma

comes addiction. And my father had a traumatic life. My mother had a traumatic life, but their addiction wasn't drugs or alcohol. My father has like a gambling addiction. My mother had like a shopping addiction or whatever else, you know, she was doing. But nothing, nothing chemically. But, you know, it took me a while to really understand. I have to go through a lot of healing and learning myself to really understand the life that I went through.

You know, so once a divorce happens, and it's kind of unheard of from where we're Gorski Jews. I don't know if, from Azerbaijan, Baku Azerbaijan, which is on the border of Armenia, Turkey, is right there in the Caucasus Mountains. So we're Gorski Mountain Jews. and for a family to be split like that it's almost unheard of in a way because it's very cultural and when it did happen it was very

tough. I was around seven to nine years old and my father got remarried within two weeks after the divorce arranged marriage again my mother she was just wanted to have a life you know being able to date and try to find

find true love, I guess. So at these times, you know, my father, he was an orphan, his mother died, his father got remarried, they gave him away to an orphanage. So I guess the way that I look at it is

because it happened to my father and with his new wife, because she didn't accept us, he thought it was just normal to just be like, okay, you know what? It's, you know, to step back kind of in a way. But he was present there financially, right?

But I didn't have the, from around the age nine years old, I didn't have the pleasure of having parents sleeping in the house anymore. You know, so my mother was never home. She worked two jobs. And then, you know, she had her social life and stuff like that. So I became on my own from a very young age, very young.

So now to around 10, 11 years old, I would say sixth grade is when I would say I jumped off the porch, they call it. You know? And, you know, what's really important is marijuana, right? People don't understand now how back in these days people's lives really got affected. And my life was one of those. I lost my whole childhood from basically marijuana, put in institutions and everything.

So the weed, 11 years old, by time 12, 13 years old comes. This is in Gosha, New York, upstate New York, you know, and it's a town like a hippie town, you know. It was a high school where people were smoking, literally smoking blunts in the bathroom, you know? I don't know. This wouldn't happen these days, but it was like one of those type of schools where there was just, you know, people smoking cigarettes in the bathroom.

Like, and there was, you know, it was different. So now when I go to Tampa, Florida, which is my transition, so because of the lack of supervision that was at home, I was doing terrible in school, right? I was failing school. I think the last grade that I passed was fifth grade. Sixth grade I got forced pass. Seventh grade I got forced pass.

Eighth grade I got forced pass. So whenever I used to go to school, I was completely behind. And because of everything that was going on at home, I was always in the cloud. So I know school was not going to be my future, you know? I want to make sure I don't miss any, like, important points here. So I would say now when eighth grade comes, this is when I think that things really starting to get drastic because I had an incident where I actually died from alcohol.

The first time I ever drank alcohol, I'm at a party. And, of course, as a kid, you know, I'm a kid. I never drank before. I don't know how you got to drink it, how long it's going to take the kick in, right? I drink 20 shots back to back of Smyranoff Vaka. I think I was like maybe 85 pounds or 90 pounds.

Small kid, you know? And next, you know, next thing you know, I wake up and my, they told me a heart. stop beating. 0.36 blood alcohol level. And so the alcohol poisoning from there. And then at that party, there was like weed. And everybody stuffed the weed in my pockets.

So I guess the cops came, found the weed and a pipe in my pockets and shit like that. And so that was really like the first running with the law, but it really didn't turn into anything because we were so young. but then ninth grade comes and then there's something called this is very important. Now we're getting to the important part. I call it the training.

Okay? The training grounds for the justice system is the juvenile justice system. Family court. All right? Pins petition. These are all things that are, I, I really firmly believe are fundamentally meant for children to keep repeating back in and out, in and out.

And now, back then marijuana was looked as a drug, right? And you got to kind of look at it this way. As kids, now these are kids, we're talking about 13 years old, 12 years old, 13 years old, 13 years old. For a kid that's just experiencing with marijuana, right? Let's say if you put him into a substance abuse program, they're going to tell this kid that he's an addict. They're going to put him into any programs. And listen, I have nothing against NA.

I think sobriety is a beautiful thing, okay? But it's a little old school. All right. You know, there's people that that use cannabis for a medical reason. And if they went into Narcotics Anonymous, they're like shunned or they don't get the same respect as somebody else that's in there. Let's say that's our methadone. Right. And I think that has to be updated.

And I'm also a firm believer that whatever you tell yourself you are, that's where you're going to be. And to implant that into children, you're teaching them that you have to surrender, right? You have to go by this program. You are powerless, right? And you can't fight. That's what I was taught as a kid when I was going through these institutions. And the way that I got into these programs was not through pins. I went through pins for a little bit.

it didn't last long. What ended up happening was my mother ended up because things were getting so crazy my mother ended up sending me and I have a brother that's a year and a half older than me to live with my oldest brother that's 10 years older

in Tampa, Florida. And by this time you know, we jumped off the porch. Right? Let's say that. But it was just weed though. no hard drugs or anything. But it was just weed.

And when we get, and wait, this is very important too. Before we get sent to Tampa, Florida, we were friends with somebody. I think that's really important to mention that influenced our lives from a young age. Malcolm X's grandson, Malcolm Shabazz. He passed away in Mexico. So I was fortunate enough to grow up

with Malcolm Shabazz Jr. or the grandson, you know, Malcolm Shabazz's grandson, the one that allegedly burned down to grandmother's house in Queens. So me and Malcolm, Malcolm came on house arrest from that whole incident that happened. His mother lived upstate in Middletown, and he ended up going to Goshen schools. And when we were younger, to hang out over there was the mall. So in the mall is where all the gang like this is where the bloods were. Malcolm was a blood, right? And so that's where, you know, for I think it was maybe 11 years old at that time. And I was hanging out with Malcolm.

And, you know, my main thing is when I was a criminal, I just hustled. But when I was a kid, I experienced, right, with stealing one time. This is back in 2001. This is when Tony Hawk just first came out. I don't know if the first PlayStation Tony Hawk. Of course, yeah. Right.

There was a store called FYE. Yeah, we used to have one at the mall here. I used to love getting movie posters to put in my bedroom from FYE. Right. Oh, my God. Ian. Hey, Lockton, listeners. Let me hit you with a question.

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Money.com locked in today. That's RocketMoney.com slash locked in. One more time, rocketmoney.com slash locked in. Don't let these companies hustle you. Take back control of your money with Rocket Money like I do. Now let's get back into today's episode. And this is Before, listen, I know when I got sentenced in the feds, all right, they told me anything before the year, before 2012 that I can't. I'm not, I'm not guilty for anything. Whatever I happen, right? Isn't that how it works? You know what I'm talking about?

When you plead guilty in the feds, you're pleading guilty to any crimes. Whatever's in the indictment, yeah. Well, they can't charge you for anything before that, like if it's a conspiracy or whatever. So I don't give you. This was, I was really young anyway. All right. So we had bubble coats back then, right? You know, those big, like, fluffy bubble coats.

They had the things tighten on the side. We would go into FYE. And I was, this is, I'm like maybe 10, 11 years old. I'm like, small kid, you know, I'm really small. You never think anything of it. But with the big oversized coat, we go in there, we stuff in hundreds of DVDs, PlayStation games into the coat. And since it's tight on the sides, right?

They're not falling out. And this is back in the day when, you know, the style was big clothes, you know. I remember they were echo jackets, if I'm not mistaken. And literally, we would go in, boom, boom, stuff everything up and just walk right around the metal detector. And it wouldn't be, we did that for about a month. You know, this is a long time ago. But because there was so many people doing it, I mean, these bloods,

the blood kids were doing it too, right? Malcolm, his boys were doing it. Malcolm's dead, so I'm going to say Malcolm's name, you know? Rest in peace, Malcolm. And I would say hundreds of thousand dollars worth of merchandise. Crazy. I'm talking about CDs, DVDs, you know, PlayStation games, you name it. And we were going in and out, in and out.

And now there was one time, right next to it was a series. And I was with a best friend of mine that I grew up with. Um, his name is Upgrade. Upgrades, he's a, um, he's a musician. He does, like, hip hop and stuff like that. He's independent. Actually, I think he's not with somebody now, but he does, uh, like, uh, underground hip hop. So he was my, uh, my best friend growing up as a kid, and he was with me on one of these things that we, you know,

I was seeing like walkie talkies or something like that. And the reason why I was in the mall all the time, because my mother was a manager at Finleans, which was in the mall. So whenever she'd go to the, bring her, you know, she had to work and she was, you know, worked full time. She just leaves us and more. We walk around, you know, getting in trouble and shit like that. So that's what, you know, with the main reason that we were there all the time doing all this at that young age, you know,

I don't want people who think that, you know. But my friend, so we got caught, me and my friend. And I knew that this not what he, you know, this is his first time. I basically told him, was like, listen, he had nothing to do with this. It was everything was mine, whatever. They kick me out of the mall for like two, three years or something like that, right? So since then, never again have I stole from anybody, anything I don't steal. It's the worst thing that anybody can do, you know?

It's like such a low, low life thing to do. And I'm so against it. And especially because in my life I've been robbed, you know, so many times by so many close people to me. And I think it's just like the worst thing that anybody, could do, you know? So I'm happy that happened to me at such a young age, you know, but I was experiencing, I was around people, you know, where they say, monkey see, monkey do

kind of situation, right? And so after this goes on, whatever, school is no good. Now, I did also try cocaine for the first time in eighth grade also. Yeah, that was like, it wasn't everyday thing, but 13 was the first

time that I tried cocaine as well. So now, ninth grade, I failed. I get sent down to Tampa, Florida. Shout out to Tampa. I moved to a neighborhood called Carver City, me and my brother, David, and it was Jefferson High School I went to, which is a fucking amazing high school.

You got some of the best players that's ever came out of there. Fred McGriff. You got, what's his name, Caldwell's, Andre Carwell, Rashid Cowwell. I went to school with the younger one. and so we moved to a neighborhood there and now mind you, I came from the school in New York

where everybody's smoking blunts in the bathroom, right? And the demographics were a little different too. And the school that I was in in Goshen, New York, I'm a Russian Jew. I was a minority, right? Most of it was white, 5% black, another 5% Spanish. Now when I moved to Tampa,

it's the complete opposite. It's like 40% Cuban, 40% black, 5% white, 5% maybe Asian and whatever the case may be. So completely different. And so I went into this place thinking that I'm going to be doing the same shit just like in New York. Oh, I found out real quick. This didn't last long. Oh, man. And I should probably apologize.

to this kid on this podcast right here. You know, there was this kid, Ricky. He gave me some weed to roll up for him. And honestly, that shit was like the most garbage, garbage fucking weed I've ever seen my life. Tampa had some trash weed back in the day. Well, not it. It was the hood.

All right. And where I lived was Carver City. Shout out to Carver City, man. I know people are going to see me probably on this. So Carver Sea was an amazing place to grow up. I definitely shaped who I am as a person today and that's my

I call it my second home you know and so Ricky gives me a bag of weed to roll I go in the bathroom store and I open the bathroom store the fucking principals right there like looking at me and I forgot the fuck

I forgot to flutch the guts in the bathroom right and I just run right as soon as I run I throw the bag of weed to the left and I think I had I took some weed out of the bag I put it in a piece of paper and I put it in my underwear

for later for myself but then I threw the blunt and the other thing and then a friend of mine grabbed it but that was the first time that I got arrested in Tampa and they took me to the Jack Center they have a place called the Jack Center when you get arrested in Tampa is for juveniles they bring you there you sit in a chair they process you

and if you're going to be going to the juvenile hall, they take a bus from you there. If you're not going, then you get picked up by your parents or what a case may be. That time, I didn't go to the juvenile hall.

So they let me go. They put me on a probation for it. No big deal. But I want to apologize to Ricky because the next time I saw Ricky I fucking punched him in his mouth, you know, broke his braces and shit. And then I think he left the school from that.

And, you know, growing up now, I've really, feel terrible, ignorant for it, you know? And I just want to apologize to you, Ricky, if you see this,

right? And so now, this is where I also got introduced to, this area, this neighborhood was a crack area, all right? So this is when I started

selling crack in 2002. $90 a April. Back then in Florida, completely different than New York. You know, New York people would, bag it up in bags and stuff like that. In Florida, it was just like a square.

You cut it up with razors and you hold it in your hands and you just stand on a corner type of thing, you know? There was a Texaco by my house. And that's where I would just sit there and at the Texaco and I had a neighbor of mine that basically, you know, would show me everything how to do it. And that's how that started off.

But that's, yeah, I, And my brother, that's a year and a half older than me, ended up actually getting in trouble because of this. So, and I also want to put DRO back then, Hydro, Goodweed was not around. I brought Goodweed to Carver City, right? So everything back then was like mids, you know, with seeds and stuff like that.

People go to the projects. You know, projects in Florida is the type of, you go in, one way in, one way out. When you want in, you got 20 people, running up to your window trying to serve you type of idea, you know? So that's like the culture down there. But now my brother ended up going to a military school. And then something happened, man.

You know, I really, something fucked up happened. Now when I moved on my brother, my brother was in, is, uh, owned a nightclub. He was a DJ. So it was like I moved into a studio You know and just where everybody there smoking weed all the time So it was a right for me to smoke weed There wasn't a problem You know my brother didn't mind

But something happened where I think my brother went for child support And bro this is this is a really fucked up situation Now this is This is what a lot of people don't know about me. A lot of people know that I've been in trouble and everything like that. But the first time that I've ever really been to jail was over a child support dispute for my brother and my mother. My brother filed for child support

because my mother wasn't paying child support. My father was. And when my mother sent me there, she did it through a guardianship letter. She didn't do it through the court. So she still had full custody of me. that's where it made her able to do this. So in order for me to get into school in Tampa,

they required a letter stating that my brother had temporary guardianship, which was notarized. It wasn't done by the court. It was an illegal document. So when my brother did this, you know, my mother's not a smart person. She's from Russia. He's not educated.

And I can't blame her for this, you know? And I honestly, I know it was my stepfather, you know, because he was an American man. And the future things that happened showed me that it was him that really did this to me. So basically he had my mother lie and said that I ran away in order to duck the child support situation. They write this report in Orange County, New York, basically saying that I ran away. I have the paperwork in a car. It was like a situation like this.

I got sent down there in the school year of 2002, and by 2003 August, she wrote a report saying that I just left New York a year later in the report. and ran away to Florida. So they came and locked me up. They put, I went back to that jack center, right? But this time they put me on a bus to go to the DFI, Juvenile Hall. And, man, this was quite an experience. First place I had grits. I'll tell you that.

But what comes to, to my mind is how inhumane okay there were so many kids that there had to be three kids in a cell and the way that the cells were there was um like a bed on each side it wasn't a bunk but they were like you know those um things and they put the mattress on top of it almost like the porcelain. It wasn't metal but it was like an old school like you got a bed on each side and then you got a

mattress in the middle, right? So you got three kids in a cell and then in the day room when I got there I got there like 3 o'clock in the morning and I had to just pull a mattress up and sleep on the day room. The day room was filled also to full capacity with kids in the day room just sleeping on a

regular jail green mattress and a little thin blanket and in Florida at this time, I remember when we woke up the next day, they do showers, they make all the kids get butt naked, right? I think there was probably like 50 or 60 kids in this unit. And you have to stand up against the wall.

And they put five people in a shower at a time. And they, um, the CEO, one of the CEOs was a Haitian dude. The other one was a, a, Spanish dude that look like Marcus O'Reilly. What do you call from Gladiator? You know, the guy, Marcus O'Reilly is the Gladiator guy? I don't know if you were seen Gladiator.

I don't know if you're seeing like Bits and Pieces. I know what movie are talking about. The main guy, you know, he looked exactly like him. So you got this Haitian dude, right? They're screaming and all this shit. You got five minutes to take a shower. And the showers were just the sprinkler heads. But when you're lined up, I remember very vividly.

When I was lined up, the first time I got lined up, I seen a few kids' backs from the fire ants. Oh my God, bro. Welts all over their backs, all up and down. Like, I couldn't believe it, you know? I've never seen anything like that in my life. And it was just disgusting. They had no clean sweaters.

If a kid left, they would have to take the sweater from the kid that was leaving. and like you just smell it like it hasn't been clean in the fucking like five years like just disgusting shit you know so you go in the shower five at a time you come out

you sit on the thing they give you the deodorant the baby um baby powder you know sit in a row you put the thing and you know of course with the kid

in these juvenile um ones they don't got commissary you know you get you just a meal and a breakfast and your lunch dinner you get your yard um

And I'm, wow. This is where I, the first time I actually seen, like a CEO beat the shit out of somebody was here too. They have a gang in Tampa called the Drag Boys, all right? They were known to be out of the East Tampa projects, if I'm not mistaken, which used to be the Pink Houses, East Tampa. And they ran this juvenile hall, the drag boys. and there was this one kid he was probably

he was probably 15, 16 years old but he was a big kid maybe like 200 pounds CO fuck I don't know what happened but this is the first time I seen a CO literally smashing the kid's fucking mouth was bleeding everywhere the way he restrained him

and just slamming his face into the ground I was on the phone at the time talking to my sister too that you know I don't think that ever left my mom because, you know, you got to remember, I'm 14 years old at this time. I'm 14 years old.

And believe it or not, you know, just because I smoked weed and everything like that, I was a pretty innocent kid. You know, I grew up in a Russian Jewish home. You know, my mother was when I did have the experience to having, like, a really close family. And so I had like all, so this was a very shocking situation, you know? Very shocking. But I remember going to court.

my brother brought the guardianship letter shows it to the judge and the judge is paid in no mind my brother didn't want to get a lawyer he wanted to represent me my brother's a fucking he's that type of person just like a hardheaded

thinks he's so smart and you know we went to court three times and every time he just would not look at that guardianship letter so they end up keeping me there I think it was about like a

month and a half, two months. They end up, and I was waiting, this whole time I'm waiting for the Orange County sheriffs to come and get me, transport me back to New York. I get out of, about a month and a half, two months, my mother ends up releasing it, everything gets done. I end up going back to New York very shortly after this. My brother comes out of the military school. And when he came out, the people in the, people in the city.

neighborhood kind of almost like he started doing exactly what I was doing and it was it didn't take till later so people realized that we were two different people you know because we were so close in age and we looked like almost like twins um but my brother ended up getting arrested for a crack sale so like I like dodged that and then my boy uh John John also very short after that, conspiracy, distribute cocaine. Fuck, man. You know, good friend of mine also, and he had a really bad luck, man.

He did almost 10 years for that charge, came home, was home for six months. Another conspiracy, another 10 years. Those are federal cases? Ready or not? Summer is coming. And Wayfair's Memorial Day clearance is on now. Right now through May 25th, get up to 70% off everything

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Wayfair, every style, every home. State. Oh, state kids. Those are state Florida. And how old were you? Like a teenager at the time? At this time, I wasn't even involved in it, but they were just probably David 18. I'm probably like 16

Me and my brother like a year and a half apart Something like that I got my license in Tampa too at 15 years old Do you end up leaving Tampa to come back here? I do that's the thing Me and my brother end up separating Right So after that situation where I got

With the juvenile hole situation I ended up going back to fucking New York And I had a conversation with my mother Right She actually came to Florida And she was like know, I want you to come back and everything. I was like, all right, I'm going to come back.

I had a conversation around. I was like, listen, you know, can you not ask for child support? I mean, is it like that big of a deal? And, you know, they didn't, you know, I had parents that involved us in a divorce, involved us in everything. And I had a stepmother that would not like even want my father to bias anything just because he paid child support. and she was on her alienation and all that types of stuff and separation. So it was always constant. I was the youngest out of my mother's kids.

And I was always involved of the child support this, this, that, you know, like it was, it became, it ended up being the reason why I ended up getting arrested later down the road. later down the road. So when I came back, my mother agrees to me. I'm not going to ask for child support, right? I guess like two weeks goes by. My father calls me and tells me my mother's calling him for money. I blew the fuck up, right?

And at this time I'm 15 years old. So I end up getting removed from the police. They call the cops. Stepfather calls the cops. Cops removed me. They bring me to police station. the runaway charges get brought back up. Can't make this up, bro.

All right? They tell me you have court coming up three, four days. And at this time, I can't even, I can't stay with my father. My father lives 10 miles away. But because of the situation with his wife and because she was old-fashioned at the time, and whenever I went there, she really did, she made me feel uncomfortable.

You know, she would tell me my mother was a whore. My mother didn't want me. And I'm, you know, at these time when she was telling me there's a young kid, like, you know, so she was fucking me up in the head, you know, and I didn't feel comfortable there. So when the cops removed me, they bring me to the Greenville State Trooper Barracks, and they cuff me to the thing. And I remember this very clearly. And I'm talking shit. I'm a young kid, right? I'm like, I'm literally, I'm talking shit.

you know, I'm 15 years old. I'm fuck, but I was in the streets already, you know. So I'm talking to them pretty ratchet, right? And one of them comes up to me and fucking choked, puts their hands around my neck and chokes me out, bro. I swear to God. This is, you know, back in probably 2000. I, you know, remember to Janet Jackson Super Bowl where her titty fell out?

Yeah. All right, this is around that time. Because this is when I ended up going to Family Corps a couple days. after I ended up getting institutionalized so they decided to take me into social services cut whatever they call a custody right and they my first stop was the state hospital psychiatric center in Orangeburg New York Rockland County Children's Psychiatric Center holy shit man so what happens after that how long are you in there for all right you know

When I got in there, I was fucking pissed. Now, how it got me, how this happened, I went to court, and my mother goes on a stand and starts lying and saying that I was threatening to kill her. Did you? No. At this point, absolutely not. She was saying that I was threatening to kill her, and I was threatening to kill her husband, all types of lies.

and because I knew she was lying, the emotions in me, and also because of what happened just a few months before this, I got incarcerated, you know, down there. I picked up a pen off the table. I stood up and I looked at the judge and I says, if she doesn't stop lying, Your Honor, I'm going to put this pen in my throat. In your throat or her throat?

In my throat. So that's what got you institutionalized? Into the psychiatric center. They had plans to put me in a group home, but that got me first step right there to the psychiatric center. Okay. Now, why this is so terrible? Because I end up getting misdiagnosed, right? Because of the fact that, you know, my mother couldn't take accountability for the neglect and abuse and everything that I was going through through my childhood.

The psychiatrist got a story from her that protected her image. So they end up putting me on medications that I shouldn't have been on. And the first three days I got in there, I was bucking. I'm bugging out. As soon as I got in there, alarms, like, because I'm going crazy. So the alarms go off. They hit the alarms. Everybody comes.

They restrain me. Needle. Boom, right in the butt. Thorazine, I think they called it, right? Now this started, there was, now this became a problem. I'm going to tell you why. Every single time I woke up, I was in shock that I was there. and I would spaz the fuck out

and it kept happening. I'm going to take an estimate maybe three days, maybe three to five days until somebody came up to me, this kid that was also in there and told me, he was like, listen, you can't keep doing this, bro, if you want to get out of here, you know?

Now I'm starting to get schooled, right? The kid tells me he's like, just do whatever they say and that's what's going to get you out of here. He's like, and he gave me a cookie, you know? I remember that. And so that's when I started to learn. I'm like, okay, I got to do what I got to do.

So they put me on a Zoloft. They put me on a drug called Risputtol. And they diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. They diagnosed me with, I forgot what else. Something else. Some type of anti-s, I don't know what the antipsychotic was for, but I learned in the future that they definitely were false diagnosis, you know. And because I had marijuana in my system, when I got out of this place, I ended up going to like a rehab and stuff like that.

But so for the next month and a half, I'm in this place. And I'm seeing how everything's going. It's a fucked up situation, though, psychiatric centers with kids. Because they're designed to, like, make these kids not leave in a way, you know? And most of them are coming from broken homes. You know, most of it, most of these kids are in these places. believe it not, it's the fucking parents that should be in fucking jail.

You know what I'm saying? Because without neglect, without trauma, without abuse, most likely these things are, I know from my situation, you know, we had a very close family growing up and since I was the youngest, right?

I had a brother that was a year and a half older than me that fucking put his hands on me every single day of my life, you know? And I know how that affected me. You know what I'm saying? And I didn't really learn how much it affected me until the future until I actually started healing. But that's supposed to be brought up. Like, hey, listen, you know, keeping those secrets only make things worse, right?

So that's what I kind of, I've learned that most of my issue I've learned now that I've had complex trauma since the child. Since a child, I know I used to go to the doctors when I was a baby for night terrors and stuff like that. I remember, like, I used to have these nightmares that would make me cry in my sleep. And I still, to this day, you know, my girlfriends would tell me that when I'm sleeping, I'd be screaming in my sleep and crying in my sleep and stuff like that. And that's from trauma. And trauma is in my family so deeply because of everything that my father was grown up in a Muslim orphanage in the 19th. 1950s and 60s in the Soviet Union. Can you imagine that?

You know? And, you know, my mother, too, you know, their toilets were holes in the ground. And they shared a toilet with a community of 50 people and stuff like that. So they're, and it's hard because when you're coming from that culture, part of the culture is they don't believe in psychology.

They don't believe in healing. They don't believe in talking about your problems and healing the right way. So that's like a recipe for disaster, you know, especially in a place where, you know, in America and you make money and your family would never be together and healthy without any type of emotion, emotional regulation or literacy, you know. It just didn't happen. That was the main issue with my family. None of us had emotional regulation literacy. None of us knew what boundaries were. You know what I'm saying?

And those are really important things to learn growing up. So do you end up going back to live with them after? I don't. Okay. So I get out of the psychiatric center and I go to group home. Group home and this is a non-secure detention. I'm there for about three months. Then they send me to a place up in the cat.

By Kingston, Woodstock, Kingston up in that area called Never Alone. It's a 90-day rehab. And at that time, I was 15 years old. And in that 90-day rehab, they were going to make the decision where I was going to be going next. And from there, everybody was there for weed, first of all. All right? I can't tell you how much cannabis is not a drug. drug, okay? A drug is something that stops you from feeling. All right? Cannabis doesn't stop you from feeling,

you know? In fact, I think it actually gets you more in tune with your feelings and helps you even explore them. I mean, cannabis is a tool of tools. I mean, especially in prison. Oh, my God. That's when I learned I was able to smoke weed and work out and use it as like a motivation to be able to work out in prison, you know? Before that, I was like, I didn't know you could smoke weed, throw the headphones on, and go hit the pull-up bar, and it's the most motivating thing in the world, you know? And it's, it is. It's, um, it's not for everybody, though. Let's put that up front, right? It's definitely not for everybody. Um, but we do know that it heals trauma. And for, for so many years, the government has been traumatizing, right? Monetizing.

and taking away the cure or the treatment. You know what I'm saying? And punishing you for treating yourself, you know? And so I ended up talking my way out of this 90-day program and telling them I'm going back to Florida, right? Because now I didn't trust my parents to stay away. I'm not going away. There's no two ways in hell that I was going back there.

I went back to Tampa. I told him I was going to go to the same military school as my brother. And shit. And at this time, I think this is when I started probably using cocaine more, you know. So when I got down to Tampa, my brother and my buddy John John, bad influences. You know, we sniff and blow with girls in a hotel room for the weekend. and I had to take a drug test to get into this fucking military school

in Gainesville, you know? And deep down, I really didn't want to go anyway. You know what I'm saying? I was like, fuck that, you know? So anyway, I end up taking the trip and I failed a fucking drug test. My sister is the one that took me to the thing. I drove three hours.

I go back to Tampa and they're like, listen, you're not staying here, you know? Because I'm not going to front. I was a wild boy. You know what I mean? I was. I was a wild boy. I was in streets, bro, you know?

As a young kid, I was really kind of in the streets. And they knew I couldn't stay there. I also started experiencing with ecstasy also. I think the year 2000, the first time I ever took a ecstasy pill. So during this time when I was in Tampa, I was hanging out with like stick up kids. And I was taking these crazy green sunshine e-pills that were down there I was just fucking the size of alt-toids and shit.

I'm like 14 years old, 15 years old. And, you know, the people that I was hanging out with probably, it probably wasn't the best that I was staying down there. So I end up going back and I end up staying, going into like a homeless, like kind of situation. Now I'm moving in with, like, friends that I grew up with. And my pops did look out. He got me a little Cadillac DeVille, right, for five grand.

and that's when I started like that's when the hustling started you know like the real coming back to New York is when we really got them once I got the car and everything like that and met some really good people along the way and what are you hustling? Weed at this time mostly weed the blow was there also but it you know I'm just getting at this time schooled on the blow. my boy Diego Diego is a fucking legend All right

Diego came from Columbia Um He was a gorilla from Columbia Got deported like three times from America You know just kept coming back And Diego was also one of the people I think that first track hook came

When I was like 12 years old with too You know But So I would hang out with Diego every day And then I would also hang out it was a very See, we weren't segregated Growing up in Orange County, New York,

in upstate New York, you know, it wasn't segregated. You know, I was hanging out with all types of people. I had bloods that were my friends. I had Colombians that were my friends. You know what I'm saying? I got Irish people that were my friends, you know? There was no discrimination.

It was just really just like who you were as a person. And, you know, so at this time, you know, grams were I'm sure probably around $30 a gram, but what Diego would do is he would give me half grams for $30, right? And we would sell him for 50. So let's say I knew somebody that wanted a couple of 50s or whatever. He basically sell me to grant for $60 and then I end up selling the gram for $100 and make it $40, right? So this was like 15, 16 years old.

But at the time, the main hustle was weed, right? And then my first charge coming back from New York, I ended up getting arrested. I got caught with eight pounds a week coming back from Staten Island when I was 16 years old. And so that's when it got me back right back into the justice system, you know. And so it's like, you know, in and out road. But it was a lot of experience. This was 2005. So this was also a legendary time, right?

You know, this was like shit. young jeezie thug motivation 101 days this is when Big Meach was still out doing his things right before he got arrested

you know what I'm saying Pill popping was at the highest ever fucking everybody's popping ecstasy and taking Molly and you know nobody's dying off of fetton all and shit like that

and but quickly I progressed into selling other things so from the weed I started I remember there was this one customer that even till this day, I really believe he was maybe even like a CIA agent. I swear to God.

And the reason what makes me think this, okay, I got introduced to him by somebody and it was always a really weird strange situation. For weed, right? And this is at the time when I guess, like, percocets and Vicodin and oxycodone is just like, I guess, starting to get popular, but I still never heard of it. So I would meet this guy and I would give him like $50 worth of the weed and he'd give me a whole fucking jar filled with oxycan and bike it in and shit like that. And once I realized, okay, I'm giving this guy a $50 worth of weed and he's giving me like $6,700 worth of pills. Does he know that?

Like, because once people are telling me what it is and stuff like that, you know. So, which I really regret. The opiate hustle is, if anything, I regret in life, because I really don't have much regrets, right? I regret, for sure, ever being involved with any type of opiates. And the karma that came onto my life from selling these types of drugs lasted a very long time, you know? and I know that's what it is because when you're selling a drug like that

you're killing somebody right you're making somebody sick you're praying on their vulnerability and it's a terrible thing to do right and I also want to say that you know as a kid with no supervision I was very influenced by

of course hip hop music right when I'm in these psychiatric centers I'm listening to DJ Vlad fucking Tupac rock phenomenon and you know Tupac and Memphis Bleak and you know um so as a kid whenever you know I didn't have my parents around that's where you know Wu-Tang clan and stuff like that so I mean this is already known

where hip-hop music does but you know when I look back at it how much it influenced my life and influenced um the life that I thought that was the right life to go to to be cool and everything that. It's very, it can take over your brain, man, especially if you don't got a role model. If you're a kid looking for a role model and you don't got one, right? And you're desperate for one, that's where you're going to idolize. You're going to idolize like the music. You're going to idolize TV and shit like that. And, you know, I know I'm not the only one that's that's happened to. You know what I mean? Of course, living in New York with the music, the culture, you know, at this time, Jay Z, Nas and all this, you know,

but not having any parental structure to guide me. And, you know, I think that was really the, really got me really caught up into thinking that this is real life, right? And this is how I have to live. Because that's exactly what I did. And so at 16 after I got caught with these eight pounds of weed, I started getting my first experience with psychosis.

You know, psychosis is a big part of my story, yeah, unfortunately. And I didn't realize it until very recently, but cocaine and trauma are enemies. You give cocaine to somebody that's traumatized, it's not going to be good. Because trauma people already have problems dealing with fight or flight. And majority of the time, it's easy for somebody to get into the flight mode, right? So you do a bump of cocaine and you have complex trauma, you're automatically just going to be anxious. You're going to be worried. You're not going to be able to enjoy yourself, you know?

And I can't tell you the shit that I put myself with psychosis, you know? And, you know, this is important to say too, because not only even a lot of people who even know what this term. term is. I mean, shit, I'm not the first one that started hallucinating off of cocaine, you know? That's just been happening since back in the 80s since people have been smoking crack and shit like that, you know? So, but the term is called psychosis, all right? And it's, you know, drug-induced psychosis. And it could be potentially, um, very, um, detrimental. It could hurt somebody. You can hurt yourself. And, um, it's, that's part of the, you know, since 2022. I haven't touched cocaine since. And I, you know, I'm scared to death of it. And I know I'm allergic to it.

You know what I'm saying? So, but going back to 16 now, I'm not in school. I'm on probation, okay? I'm back on probation. Because of the juvenile history, they put me on intensive supervision probation. And I got charged with a defelony,

which is criminal possession of marijuana, right? De felony, which was punishable up to, I think it was like two and a half to seven years in state prison. I copped out to Oyo, due full defender. They gave me five years intensive supervision. And I was also with a best friend of mine. I'm not going to mention his name, right? But his brother was also my best friend.

His mother, these people were so influential into my life. his mother and his brother both passed away. And they were Irish, Irish from Brooklyn, you know, old school Irish from Brooklyn. And, wow, just amazing people. So he ended up, and he was a few years older to me, of course. You know, I always hung out with the older people, I guess, because you know what I was doing. So he was about four years older than me. But we were like, you know, best friends, brothers, we together every day.

So he ended up getting a county year. He took a county year in jail. I ended up doing the five years intensive supervision. And I'm home for a couple months. So, you know, at this time, I wasn't like doing cocaine every day. But now since probation, you know, I can't have marijuana in my system because it's in my system for 30 days. Let me try to do something that's going to be out of my system quicker. I mean, and it's like that's what they, probation knows what they're doing, you know?

They used weed in a way. way to, as a gateway to get people to use other drugs. And that's the way I feel about the probation system before marijuana was legal. And even till this day, which we're going to get to in a little bit, they're still trying to use marijuana to, again, and I'll get to it in a minute. But so my probably first month on probation, I end up going on, but my buddy Eric, who passed away, rest in peace. We're getting high right on April

And we're watching the Sopranos And They had a Christmas tree in their fucking room And I'm starting to see somebody behind the Christmas tree I'm getting high, I'm getting paranoid, you know And I'm thinking somebody's behind a Christmas tree And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And this is recently, I just got out of the, you know, keep in mind

I just got at a psychiatric center So I have all these different medications right, that they gave me all these antipsychotics and stuff. So I'm getting high. His mom is telling me, Danny, stop, you know, you're fine, you know, it's just the drugs, whatever the case we be. And I used to sleep over here a lot. You know, they gave me a nice, you know, I didn't have to a place to sleep and they really treated me like family, you know. So I was there all the time.

So we went, we go to bed. My best friend's in jail at this time. I'm with his twin brother, right? And I'm so paranoid, dude. I'm looking out the window and I'm seeing fucking ghost dancing around my car and shit like that. I go run downstairs. I grab a kitchen knife. And I come back.

I'm like running around the house. I'm bucking out. They're all sleeping. Okay? I end up taking these pills. Zyprexa? These fucking psychiatrists back then. they put me on so much medication that I was not supposed to be on.

And I just took a bunch of these pills. I go into the car with the knife and I end up, wait no, I passed the car and next to my friend's house is like a pond. I end up chasing these ghosts into like a river. All my clothes are soaked. I get in the car, right? I back out. This is 2006. I just got rid of the Cadillac.

I'll tell you about that situation in a second too. I just got rid of the Cadillac. I just got an Apollo. And I leave my friend's house. And I'm in this, like, I'm bugging out. I start driving up the road. I park at a gas station and I start fueling the pills. I fall asleep at the gas pump.

This is right in the fucking hometown of where they knew me. where I grew up and they like always harassed me and I get a knock on the window. The cops wake me up and I'm I'm completely out of it. I don't know what the fuck is going on? They're like, what are you doing? I'm like, uh, they're like, are you waiting for somebody? I'm like, yeah, I'm waiting for my family. I remember.

And they're like, what is your face bleeding for? I'm like, oh shit, I got a bloody nose and there was a jiffy loob receipt. I grabbed them and I just wiped my face and they seen I was fucked up. Right? And it just so happens. My mother works at the diner right on top of the hill. And I haven't seen my mother, you know, it's been a while. She comes down. They were going to lock me up. And, you know, working at a diner, my mother serves the police and shit like that all the time. They were going to let me go. And I turned around and I said to them, so do I have to get another car for you motherfuckers to stop harassing me again? They lock me up. D.Y.

Violation of probation. And then back to, all right, so they sent me to jail for a few days. Then they started experiencing me with all these different programs. They programmed me to death. For the next four years, I'm in and out programs. I'm still hustling. And at this time, I got more into selling less, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, crack.

And I'm gonna, oh man, this is a terrible thing. The first time that I've, oh, I don't even want to think of it sucks. I got pulled over about a police one time. I was with these two girls, Carly and Denise, all right? I was in the backseat. I had a bundle of heroin on me. This is when I first just starting to sell. heroin because I was already selling the pills and I met a Dominican kid that I used to

hang out with he put me on he's like here take this start selling this like this right so I'm selling the heroin I get pulled over I have the dope in my underwear I have and when they pulled me over I had a knife on my lap I had money on my on my lap and I had the viking is on my lap they came up so quick and they were like oh he's got something I I grabbed it, I got out of the car, I threw the pills, right? The only thing I was worried about is that heroin, because at that time, I know dope is bad. I don't know what a bundle is or whatever the case may be.

They found one of the vikins. They charged me for tampering with evidence and the controlled substance for the vikidin. I end up eating the heroin. I'm fucking 16 or 17 at this time. Damn, bro. Thank God didn't die, right? When I got into that jail, damn, I'm starting to like, you know,

I threw up the bags and I saw that they opened. My friend's mom became, no, no, my father bailed me out. It was like a $500 bail, but he didn't come pick me up. My friend's mom that I was staying with came and picked me up. As soon as I, it was summertime, as soon as I walked out, down them steps, Orange County Jail. The sun hit me. I collapsed. And I started throwing up tanglobs.

For the next three days, I had to keep. Actually, I had to be in front of an air conditioner. And I had to keep two gallons of water next to me and just keep drinking and just throwing up. So I couldn't hold anything down for three days, bro. Ooh, it was such a really bad situation, you know. It was scary, you know? And that just shows you what type of person I was at 15, 16-year-old. you know, how, you know,

it was pretty ballsy, you know what I'm saying? So that's when that started going on around that time. I end up make a long story short, getting programmed out.

What that means is, I'm in and out of programs. They, uh, I tried to move out of state, right? I did. I moved out of state with my son's mother. I have a kid.

I buy a house and Pennsylvania. They told me I had permission to buy the house. After I closed it in the house, they told me Pennsylvania didn't they accept my case. I had to move back to Middletown, get an apartment. And I was like, you know what? And at this time, I got to watch what I say, all right? Because I'm on probation right now, right? And I'm in the same probation department. And it just so happens that more probation officer from back when I was 16 years old is my supervisor from my case right now. Shout out to Ms. Anderson. So after being programmed out, I'm like, you know what?

Fuck probation. I'm running. So that's exactly what I did. I'm like, you know what? My son is like two, three years old at this time. And back then, probation just was, they really hold you back. So I took my son and my family to Florida. I left for about a month and a half.

They came, right before I left the Florida, they came to my apartment. this piece of shit because in the future he really before he retired his name is uh captain he was a sheriff

um shit we're gonna get to his name he's a baldheaded piece of shit once it comes to my to my head but he came to my house and they didn't have they had a knock warrant didn't have a body warrant so they couldn't kick in the door so I just laid in there waiting for them to go away

and then I got on a flight to Tampa of Florida as soon as I could. My baby mom met me down there. I got to spend some time with my son and my family. I came back, got into one episode where the police almost got me. I ended up running from them. And they took my son's mother hostage and another person that I was with. And so I ended up negotiating for me to turn myself in.

I turn myself in 2009. I get one county year in the county jail, in Orange County jail. And that's where Russia was born. Because of my last name. My last name is a Russian last name, right? And in jail, you know, naturally people call you better, you know, the last name or whatever, you know. So that's where Russia was born.

And that's when, yeah, wow, what an experience that was. And because that's when I got to see what the truth. the real jailing was about working, right? I became a trustee right away, a kitchen, eventually to the warehouse. And I learned early, every jail, if you want to run the jail, you get to the warehouse.

All right. So that's where I got. I lived really well. Fucking half pound cheeseburgers for breakfast, 10 egg omelets, like, you name it, you know? And that's also where I got into my first fight, in that kitchen. That's, yep, definitely

I fucking had a six, I hit a kid with a six inch pan and ended up fucking cutting my own fucking head, you know? And that lasted, you know, it was an eight-month bid, but Russia was born there. So I met,

that bid was important because during that time, a lot of things happened. My son's mother, there was a kid that was in there, right, neighborhood. My son's mother ends up somehow, I guess, when he was getting released, meeting with him, right? And when I get home, she tells me what happened. And then when I came

home also, my son's mother had a habit, a heroin habit. And things got difficult. But it made me want to leave like the street life, right? So I end up breaking up with her and I have a plan to go to Salt Lake City, Utah. I got a job out there. But I got a job out there. And, for furniture, selling furniture. And a few days before, my son's mother gets arrested for a home invasion down in South Carolina. And she was supposed to watch my son.

You know, she knew the plan. She went down in with three kids from New York, tied these Chinese people up down to Spartanburg, you know, kidnapping, burglary, home invasion, everything, you know. And she was facing a long time. And this is where the Fed stuff came in. So during, as soon as I got out of jail, there was an federal investigation, basically.

Into you? Not into me. Into a group of people, right? That my son's mother was associated with that ended up introducing me to. But I didn't know all these people. I knew one, like one, maybe two people out of 35, right? And I end up going, doing that job. everything's wonderful, right?

I'm living in Salt Lake City. I get a fucking call about FBI 6 o'clock in the morning. They tell me, hey, Russia. And you know, I don't know, I ain't heard this name in a long time really took me about surprise. And he's like,

agent so-and-so with the FBI, da-da-da-da-da. You got to turn yourself into the nearest federal or whatever. I told him. It's my uncle's birthday. I'm going to Vegas for the weekend. I'll turn myself in on Monday. Now, this story has to be said because, you know, the media, okay?

Fuck you, media. Whoever wrote the article for my shit completely lied and made me look like some type of fucking. And this, you know, this is the, I'm telling the God's honest truth here, all right? one I had no plans to turn myself in all right they were definitely going to have to send them wolves after me just like they told me they were and the way I did I had a good friend of my rest and peace that was working me on the sales name was Randy old man Randy right

I told him what happened he took me to a bus station in Wendover Nevada he didn't want to take me to Salt Lake he's like here let me take you over here and my goal was to just see my son before I turn myself in. That's all I wanted to do. I wanted to go back to New York. I wanted to see my child, right? And then I'll turn myself in,

just like I did last time. Now, let me tell you, this, before I went to the bus station, I've never done methamphetamies before. Okay? This was the one and only time. Somebody injected me with methamphetamies. This is after I got the news from the FBI.

I just remember sitting on a couch and being able to, like, where we are, and the walls there, the door to peephole, and being able to see through the peephole from sitting there like on the couch. So then from there, that's when I started to run. Go to the bus station, get on the bus. I got just a fucking big 50-pound, what do you call it, construction garbage bag of my shit. And I started taking a bus.

bus to back to New York and then when I get to Omaha, Nebraska I saw the agent before we were in pulling out of you I knew they were there.

I saw the Tahoe I seen everything. And at this time I'm, believe it or not, I'm still like fucking tweaked, bro. And this was already like I think a day,

you know? Because I, we already went to Salt Lake then we stopped in I remember Colorado but once we got to Nebraska. I ended up getting, they chased me.

I got away from them. I called my brother. And I told my brother, what was going on. He had to come, I told him like, listen, you got to come pick me up. He comes and picks me up with my friend, Danny, a girl, Lauren, and on the way home, we get pulled over in Illinois. This is how I know that they, whoever wrote this fucking article said I rented, I was, renting cars under false alias names and bullshit to make me look like that,

I'm not a fucking scammer. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to be, I don't have multiple IDs and fucking like, you know what I'm saying? They tried to make it look like I'm some type of crazy, you know? But that's how it happened. They pulled me over in Illinois,

and because I had an FBI warrant, they didn't arrest me. They let me go. That's how you know. When FBI has you under an investigation, if you get pulled over by the regular police, they're not going to do anything to you. I thought I was done.

How long were you on the run for at that point? I think about maybe five, six days, you know, and they knew where I was coming from. They knew where I was. They raided my brother's house. My older brother gave me up so easily. You're just so lazy with a little fucking bitch, bro. You know?

And my older brother, they found his weed, right? They couldn't do nothing to him because they didn't have a search warrant, but they were trying to make him flush. He had a few pounds there or something like that. And yeah, they gave me up real fucking fast, you know? But when I got back to town,

I started getting a lot of people upset because I was making it really, really hot. So, at this point, you know, I have PTSD really badly since a child, right? So at this

point I'm in fight-of-flight mode. Because I know I'm going away for a long time. And when I got back, my whole family was surrounded by the FBI, they were following him everywhere. I cannot get to my son, nothing. So now when I get back, after that shadow methamphetamine, that's it. Now I'm on the run mode. And it was just like life doesn't matter anymore, you know? So I end up going into a friend's buddy of mine's father's trailer. He was in prison at the time. And I was with a girlfriend and somebody, left my brother's house and got arrested for a warrant.

And, you know, I don't know this as a fact, but I know he's the only one that knew I was, right? And I know because he's a bitch-ass motherfucker, you know, he cares about his friends more than his family. He told him where I was because they got a tip. And, yeah, they came, kicked in the door, you know, beat the shit out of me. And, you know, it's crazy because the night before was, first time I actually overdosed the night before.

Night before I overdosed right in the fucking kitchen. You know, I was in a really bad place. I was scared to death, you know? At that time, I would say I was 20 something, you're 22, 23 years old. And the way my life already had went, I, you know, I did not want to go back to jail, you know? So, I remember before they came in, I'm in the bathroom. I hit a door get kicked in.

The guy had a dog. It was a trailer. So, you know, at the end of the trailer is the master bedroom. The dog was in the trailer. They were in that room with the door closed. They came into the bathroom when I was laying down on the tub. They didn't even see me. And they were about to shoot the dog. They were like, oh, we're going to shoot the dog. And I just surrendered myself. And, I popped like 10 volumes, right? And they basically fucked me up. They were really upset, you know, brought me to the FBI station.

And I'm so zooted at this time. And they know it. And they're like showing me pictures of people. I'm like, and mind you, and the people in the case know, like, you know, because I got to meet. of these people in jail because I had to be in there with them. And most of them were wonderful people, you know.

But I wasn't supposed to be there, you know? And they're showing these pictures. I'm like, I don't know these fucking people. Like, you know, they end up taking me back to Valhalla, right? And I woke up like two, three days later. I was fucked up. I remember in the new jail. And now let me tell you something.

Valhalla? Jail? turned up. Yeah, isn't that, that's a federal holding center, right? They do. They have a federal holding center, but then they also have their county jail. So they do. They have in the Fed, when I was there, the pen, they had a Fed block.

And then they also had a couple of units where they have federal inmates. But I'm talking about how the jail was ran. Dude, this is, there was more. And I think also when I was there was a pretty iconic time, I would say. I was with the Elm Street gang, Sloban gang. They were in a war at the time. Big Puerto Rican indictment. There was big, you know, good people there.

You have to remember, in federal prison, these are just not criminals. These are geniuses. You understand? But the only thing is that I noticed that we all had in common, we all got too greedy. You know? When it comes down to it, the greed is where everything gets fucked up in a way. Greed makes you loose thought of being safe.

Like, you know, instead of saying, hey, I'm okay taking this amount of money, trying to take every single thing that you can get, right? Instead of being grateful. And then you're messing with people that, you know, you don't even know, shit like that. That's the type. greed and it's not even with a drug situation.

I had a best friend of mine that was in federal prison. My biggest, I would say, inspiration and mentor was a doctor, a Russian doctor named Boris Satchikov. And he had a Medicaid fraud, right? 30 million or something like that. And he took it to trial. They were trying to offer him like 30, 40 years.

Got 30 months. You know, basically that's basically beating it. You know what I mean? But he told me. He was like, you know what? I could have been fine. I would have never got caught if I was just doing here, a few million here, a few million there. Wait, so why did you get arrested?

Why were they hunting you? Conspiracy to distribute cocaine, heroin, marijuana. So what were you caught on a wire or something with your wife's or girl baby mama's associate? So check this out. The main dude of this case, piece of shit. His name is Robert Givens. His name was go to fucking doughboy, right? He was a kid that had a phone.

People need, like he, it was just a phone, a trap phone, right? He ends up going to the Bronx, coming back, getting arrested with like a lot of dope. They turned them right there into an informant. So what they did was, they started tapping people. I mean, what got my warrant to be into there,

was they called me for a gun. Okay. They called me for a gun. I didn't. It was a funny situation too because I didn't even answer it. Like once he was like, oh, do you have, I remember vividly. Hey, you got that, still got that 357? And I was just like, what?

And then I hung up. But during the course, later, you know, I did end up selling a different gun to somebody else. And I didn't even know him. Like, it was a situation. were like, oh, go meet this guy over here. It was just the person that I knew, right? Go give it to this person over here. Da-da-da-da-da.

So I didn't even know the person I was giving it to, you know? And I ended up getting a two-point enhancement for that, you know? So how much time do they end up giving you in total? I'm going to get it to there in two seconds, all right? Because this is really important, this federal, because I wanted to, this is United. This is the Southern District of New York. This is the same district as Diddy. All right?

and I want you to try to get to understand my case was probably the worst case and what I mean by the worst case there was no evidence the only thing they had was phone tabs and a conspiracy to sell kilos of all this and that

they had no drugs bro when they did their raids didn't find anybody with drugs barely any money one or two guns you understand and what they did was because it's such a small town they took people

that were getting money in the town that let's say that they couldn't get right individually and made this indictment and was just like all you guys are bloods all you guys are working out of this place called a sneaker store and a studio which I've never heard of and never seen them in my life

and that's how I knew I'm like you know what when I woke up and I've read this indictment like, sneaker store, studio, because I was supposedly being alleged to be working out of these places, never heard of them in my life. And that's when I realized, I'm like, okay, just because I gave somebody a gun

doesn't mean that I'm in conspiracy to be in their mafia into their organization. You understand? There was so many other people that would just like me, that would call up, just get drugs, right? To conspire means that you have to actually actually agree, sit down, and organize

to work together. That wasn't this type of situation. Most of the people that was on there were just like, don't even know the person. They got this phone number. You call this number, whatever the case may be. But I mean, I knew the one guy who turned informant, right?

And he brought down his whole gang. His whole fucking gang, dude. And when I got in there, I seen the situation. Holy shit, man. What a, um, you know some people there was one kid that didn't even sell drugs

that was on there was just a pizza delivery guy and um one of the head guys on the case I guess didn't trust the guy that was calling the phone and gave him fake crack he was like hey yo go meet this person for me he didn't even sell drugs

and the guy goes and does it and it's a fucking undercover fed they had the video of him doing it and everything he didn't take it because it was fake but he still got charged and he didn't have get charged of blood also and you know I didn't get charges of blood but this is how it worked with my case they started throwing out offers because of this was a fucked up case and the way that it was going on they were fighting each other inside you

know and what's really important that you should know about federal holding centers there's agents on that block multiple you're on telling you in jumping suits. Okay. I'm, um, the type of person I am, I'm a very like, um, over empathic in a way. I'm very able to feel things. And I'm very able to notice things. And I'll give you an example, right?

Out of respect, don't you think that if people are talking about their case that maybe you should walk out the room? Like if you didn't know them, right? I mean, if I'm sitting here with a friend of mine and we in jail and it's a 12 person pod that we used to and we start talking about things and you know that how conspiracy works. Like if you know something, maybe you could be brought up in it, right? Like wouldn't you not want to hear those things? But you would see certain people would be sitting and listening and watching and taking everything in.

So, you know, trust me, they're in there. they're watching. And it's crazy. They're in jumpsuits. They'll have probably like four or five in there. And they'll look like the most trustful. Like I'll say one of them. There was this guy O.T.

His name was O.T. You're with a pod. They put most of us on our case in the same block. You know, I guess the ones that were snitching or whatever, they took them off, put them in different jails and shit like that, right? But majority of my case, we were all on the same. block, right? So I got to know these people. But there was this one guy in our pod.

He's in the corner. O.T. He's been there forever. Never seen him go to court. Never seen anything. And we were there for almost 12 months. But you know what I did see? That motherfucker was in there. Everybody's business trying to give advice, right? And those are the people that are going to be showing up against you on trial. if you go to trial. You understand? There was also another Latin king indictment when I was there.

And it was a kid that was offered 15 to life. And he was getting charged with murder, capital murder. And the only thing he was was just the weed dealer. He went to trial. He beat it. The only thing that he got charged was the marijuana that he was selling. But they were trying to give him, like they offered him. 15 years, you know?

The way that, and these are things that they know. The prosecutors, no, they know all these things. They just have no, they lose their soul in corruption. Corruption is, I would say to a lawyer, if you're going into law to do the right thing, right? Don't ever become a prosecutor. Because that's when you're going to end up being corrupted. And that's when you're going to turn into a bad lawyer. You know, I have these lawyers.

Oh, I used to be a DA. Oh, you've been corrupted. You know what I'm saying? Because they do some foul shit. And so now, there's a few things that I really want to point out with the feds because I've never seen anybody talk about transportation with you. And I got to tell you my experience for transportation.

So I was the first person to cop out in my case, all right? They were offering me. They ended up, there's B1A, B1B, B1C, B1C, okay they started throwing out offers B1A B1Bs and B1Cs they gave all the people that were

gang members B1Bs and then majority of the people that weren't gang members I believe they offered B1Cs they offered me 57 to 72 months because of my

they go by the chart and plus the enhancement so your past criminal record is what determines. A B1C is zero to 20 years. So it could be anywhere to zero to 20 years, but you have your recommendation of your sentencing for your guidelines.

So my sentence recommendation was around 52 to 72 months. And when I went to court, my PSI is what I would say had the judge have some compassion for me because of the fact that I was homeless as a young kid, because I did have, what do you call it, addiction treatment facilities, like it was proven that I had, what do you call, addiction problems and stuff like that.

So those are the things that help, but I think really mainly was the way I was raised and all that stuff, because that's been very detailed in a PSI. So I get sentenced. Now, I go to Brooklyn. How much time did you end up getting? I end up getting 36 months.

Okay, three years. 36 months. I guess sentenced. Oh man Let me tell you something bro I go to Brooklyn They put me on a fucking eighth floor

I don't know if you know about Brooklyn Or I read out Eighth floor is the zoo They put me on like the worst floor Ever Now when I get into the jail I first get in there on the block Right

Of course I got my sally This is gonna be a iconic iconic Is Sally introduction I get on the block Somebody knows me from Valhalla That was there this kid red Right Puerto Rican red kid

So I'm going in I'm going into myself And there's a kid that runs into myself Pulls a fucking shank on me Right And these shanks were made You know the fans the big commercial fans right In Brooklyn they had a lot of those Like the cage

They rip the cage And make them into bars And then shank them up and you get like a fucking 14-inch, you know, with the wrap the round, you know what I'm saying? So he pulled the shank on me. I'm my first day, I'm like, yo, he's like, yo, where's your paperwork?

I'm like, it's mailed here, it's coming here. I just got here. He's going to take a couple days to come in. Red comes. Red's like, yo, I vouch for him. He's good. Da-da-da, whatever the case may be, right? And this is how psychology is.

Pay attention. This kid was from Connecticut. Right? He's still fighting his case. What fuck is he doing? Brooklyn by himself without all of his indictment right eventually I'm like what's going on here why you holding a knife like that we're scared for right that's what I'm thinking in my head so now I'm also in Brooklyn when Sandy happened the hurricane remember that shit when the whole

Brooklyn battery tunnel everything dude we lost power for three I had to smell my celly shit for three days the toilet's in work we were locked in the cells are crazy so this kid gets in a fight with somebody on the block. He left the fucking gun in the cell somewhere. I end up finding out that he is a rat from his case, he was an island boy. There's a gang in New Haven, Connecticut, called the Island Boys.

I don't know if you're familiar. Is New Haven an island? No. Where's the island? No, there's no island. No, there's a hood on the water. Oh, like Bridgeport area, maybe. I know

It's on the water And it's like one of the New Haven is on the water I think it's one of the Ghetto's areas of Connecticut But I know it was a game called Island Boy He showed me his tattoo Right

I have an island boy tattoo So I've written And then once that word They told me Everything made sense You know My paperwork came Everything was good

I ended up getting a new Selly Gambino guy Right Fucking amazing guy one of the funniest people I've ever met. You know? I think he was an associate maybe. I don't know.

But they fucking all with rampsacking my fucking sell for that shank. And, you know, at 36 months, I don't want that shank anyway. You know? So I found somebody to be able to sell it to. I was like, hey, take it. I don't want it. Boom. Got rid of it.

Got rid of that liability, you know? And so the, what do you call? my cellie, he comes in, he's like, hey, listen, I need the bottom bunk. I got a bottom bunk pass. He's got the sleep at me a machine, you know? And I'm like, oh, don't worry, man. I'm not going to give you a hard time.

You got the bottom bunk. You know, it's not a problem. I get on the top bunk. Me and this guy end up becoming really good friends and talking and stuff. What hilarious guy. He was an electrician at the post in Queens over there. That's where he did as a job, you know. But he was a good guy.

and he told me that the spot that I was going to, finally when I found out the spot that I was going to, he told me, he was like, it's the land of milk and honey kid, you know? I'm getting so excited, all right? Because at this time, there's a war on the block between the Spanish and the blacks. Also got Albanians, crazy fucking Albanians

that are like, fucking six, seven, 300 pounds, all going crazy, screaming atmosphere. In this, Brooklyn, you have to wear your boots to the shower. Let's just put it that way. And, um, so I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there, right? Number one.

And so I'm all psyched up for this land in milk and honey. Dude, as soon as I get the school kill. All right, let's talk about the transportation because this is important. This is wintertime. When they transport you in the feds, you wear, um, a scrub. It's like a hospital kind of scrub. No underwear, no t-shirt, your butt naked. When I got transferred, it was just around Christmas.

The layover is Canaan. When I got off the bus in Canaan, it was negative 15 degrees. And you're basically naked. They made a stand outside there in like 20 minutes in a negative 15, 20, that I will never forget that moment in my life. Like 20, 30 of us sitting out there, you know, tremble. Holy shit, man. You know, I've never heard anybody talk about that

because I know people have felt that. Whoever's experienced that, I know they would never forget that. Up in those mountains in PA. And then when I get in there, I'm supposed to be there for two weeks. A fucking prison guard gets stabbed. 2013, they locked the fucking jail down.

So by time I get the school kill, I made it, right? Somebody from the 845 there, right? We connect. I pull out my paperwork form We hit instantly We're from the same neighborhood He's from Newburgh

I'm from Middletown He's from the indictment before me We know some people that know each other Great Three days later They call me to the fucking What do you call it? We're a tenant's office

Yes You got warrants Da-da-da-da-da You can't be on the camp Oh man I was Pest So I get to the hole

And you know how the hole is You got one phone call month And the only thing you could do Is fight with that pen Right So I'm in this hole I got a certain amount of time Now these charges

Were charges that were already Taking care of And I didn't even have a warrant from One of them There was two charges Okay So The one charge was from like 2007

And it was already taken care of I had to just write Wallkill and my lawyer get that taken care of. The other one, when I was in Salt Lake City working, ended up getting a fucking D-Y, bro. And, oh, my God, that was experience in itself, you know. I met this Mexican girl. She's with two Mexican guys. I'm in downtown Utah.

I'm fucking pissed drunk. I'm driving her car. I get pulled over. The fucking two kids, and there was a girl in the back, just open the door. and just bolted out. The girl stayed. I end up getting a DUI, right?

And then the girl calls me a few days later when I get out of jail, asking me to pay for a fucking thing to get taken out. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, your friends fucking ran out of the car. I wouldn't even got a DUI if that didn't happen. You know, I guess they were illegal or something. I don't know.

Pretty sure, you know, that's what the case happened was. So anyway, this caught up to me because I never went to court because I got indicted, right? When I was in Salt Lake City, I was supposed to go to court. February I got indicted. Missed my court date. So now I had to fight that case from the hole.

I ended up managing to do this, bro. I fucking made it happen. I ended up, I think within three or four weeks time, there was no way I was not going to fucking hit the land of milk and honey and I have to go to a low, you know? So about three weeks, I know I spent Christmas in there. I spent New Year's in there. And they end up releasing me, bro. And you stay on the camp the rest of your sentence?

I stay on the camp the rest of my sentence. Wow. And the best... You got lucky. Dude, did I get lucky? Let me tell you. Ian, if I never went to this camp, and I wouldn't even be who I am today.

And I'm going to tell you why, because I told you earlier, I didn't go to school, shit like that. I didn't have a role model. Going to this camp was like Harvard for me, bro. I'm not even kidding you. for free. And I took every single advantage that I can. I took this time that I had at that camp

to focus on my goal, which was furniture. Furniture is my life. That's been my life. It's, you know, what I wanted to pursue. So to do that and also to take any class that I can. So instead of taking the routes that I used to go and trying to get myself into mess and trying to start hustling

and, you know, getting on the cell phones. As soon as I got to the camp, you know what I did? You know, I reached that, I was ready to 845 car. I reached that out. I'm also a Russian Jew. I got right into the Jew car, right? And I ended up becoming basically like the head of the Jewish car. You know?

That's funny. Yeah, and let me tell you, we have some iconic people in there, bro. I was with the inventor of Travelocity, the creator. Frank Kogan was with the owners of Ink Brothers, Inc. Magazine. We had the doctors. A couple lawyers. The guy that founded Jiffy Loop. He was teaching a lot of classes.

You know, some really smart, smart people. You had senators. There was a New York senator in there. A Boston senator. you know, it's really, really, really smart people. So I stuck, and then there was the New Jersey's wife's doctor, Dr. Rand, awesome dude, man, really smart guy. And I stuck around these people, but I also, you know, I'm a jailer, you know.

So I had to, you know, make sure I had my self taking care of. I had to make sure I have a hustle. And I had to make sure that my people were taking care of, right? So when I got to the jail, I met some really good people. I pulled my paperwork out, so that was allowed me to get to the right people on the jail. I got right to the warehouse, right? And this is for anybody, God forbid, if you have to go to federal prison and you're a good guy, right? Get to that warehouse, man, because if you get to that warehouse, you run to jail.

In school kill, I had two trucks. I had, it was two trucks and a flat bed. I touched everything that came into the prison first. Food, chemicals, socks, jumpers, boots, materials, anything that's jail issued, that came to us first. So that's the hustle, right? You got bananas, you got all that. But we also had it organized, I would say.

You know, one dude that became really good friends of mine. And his name was Smack. We had Smack. We had Y-O. Yeah, one of the Boston guys was holding down. And then there was an Italian guy. So it was all of us that ran this warehouse. We all had our position.

So I took care of my Jewish guys, right? You know, everybody had their own people that they, you know, Nobody stepped on the toes. Everybody had respect. You know what I'm saying? And we did our thing, bro. You know? And, you know, the stories you hear about, you know,

fucking people going off the fucking mountain. We're not going to say any names. Well, let me tell you something. School kill, we had it. Jump in. Jumping. Oh, fuck, man. You want to canoles.

You'll get canoles, bro. You know? Newport's only $20 a pack. You were living large. Live and large, bro. McDonald's. You know, my friends used to wake me up. Shake my ankle.

Fucking bottle of Hennessy. Still in the brown bag, bro. Still in the fifth bottle, you know? Amazing shit. And, you know, I also was the type of person because, you know, it's very segregated, right? I'm not a segregated person. And I'm not the type of person that follows trends in a way.

Like, you know what I mean? So I did social, like, you know, the Indians, like the Native Americans, right? I really, you know, spoke to a little bit of everybody. And what a blessing it was. I can't tell you how something so negative was able to turn into such a blessing because I got so much knowledge. I learned about stocks. I learned about trading stocks, charts.

We studied investor business daily every day. We had a class every day on it. You know, there was a lot, man. I had a lot of time to be able to sit in at law library. I never read fiction books with the fake books, whatever, you know, novels. And never again, again, have I touched that. I got myself into financial literacy books, you know, rich that, poor dad. You know, the Russian guy introduced me to rich that poor dad.

And then I read all his book, Cash World Crospection, everything. So, you know, that's why I say it was like a Harvard for me. Because if I didn't have that, I would have still came home to the same mentality, right? And I realized, like, the whole time I was doing it the wrong way, you know? There's, the opportunities are endless. But, you know, I also learned something that very important. When, you know how they say you talk, when you speak something, it comes to truth. All right.

So I came home, I did violate. I had one violation. And when I was in the yard and I was. I was talking to Dr. Satchakov, right? And everybody does the spinning, the walks, right? Everybody's walking. We used to walk a lot, and I'm telling them, we're talking about probation and parole.

And because of my experience, you know, I had a negative view. And I came up with a scenario to him. And I said, what if you're just one day, you decide to go to your friends to a bar, have a, you know, hang out. And there's an idiot there. And next thing you know, you get in a fight, you're getting arrested, you're violating parole.

Right? He says, oh, no, it never happened. Well, when I got out, all right? I ended up getting out in January 2014 to halfway house. I had seven months halfway house. And that ended up happening to me just like that. The night before Thanksgiving, I ended up going upstate. I ended up coming to the halfway house in the Bronx.

I stayed my whole time in there, believe it or not. I didn't want to do home confinement. I didn't want to go back upstate and I got a job right away as soon as I came home and I ended up becoming the number one salesperson out of the whole company and things were going great.

I bought a BMW three months into the halfway house I couldn't even bring it to the halfway house and then I started getting hatred from the people that were running the halfway house and shit like that, you know? So, but the hunger and everything was paying off, you know, the choices that I made to stay away from the negativity

and to, you know, that fire that is in you, when you're in prison, that's starving, you can take that and turn it into such a positive thing. It's such an advantage if you know how to use it. There's certain people that will take it and go into a depression, get miserable. But then if you know how to take it and use it as fuel, What an advantage you have, man, you know? I love that. Yeah, it is.

It really is. It's a blessing in that way, but you also got to realize not everybody has the opportunity to be in a camp. Some places do have to be in that USP where, you know, every day is a struggle, you know, and you got to have a knife on you every day. You don't know if you're going to make it. But the same lesson could still be learned from those facilities. Absolutely. You know, and it's whatever you put yourself into is you get yourself into.

And I learn about respect in prison, too. I think anybody that goes to prison will really learn about respect in prison. I would say that's where I really learned about it. And that's really also what makes you shape, you know, as that really shaped me as well. So what does your life look like now? So since then, I did violate, right?

I got another year from that. Had to go in front of the same federal judge for violation. And because everything was well and I had, you know, no dirty urins, everything was, it was just literally one issue. She actually congratulated me, and she was like, listen, I'm going to count it, run it concurrent, and a few months later, I ended up getting off of supervised release early.

And then after that, during that time, my father had a heart attack, you know, and I had plans to go back to Queens. something told me, you know, I had to go back and work with dad because that's where everything started. And so I went back there and just caused a lot of issues, man. I caused because of my childhood trauma in, and still because of at this point, I still haven't even really got to really heal. I was able to retrain my brain.

But that's not healing in a way. It's a part of it, but trauma works in crazy ways. So from 2012 to 2018, I was completely sober. I got out of jail from that violation. I came back, worked. I broke my foot. and fuck man I got prescribed to oxycodone

and because of I think all the shit that was going on in my life at the time also I mean financially I was doing the best I've ever done in my life but you know what they say when more money more problems right and at this time is when I was really learning about betrayal I guess and for the people

that I thought that I would be able to trust to be able to have my back, really, you know, kind of, it turned into kind of a thing where, you know, fucking cryptocurrency came, you know, a lot of people in my family made money off of cryptocurrency. And there was like a lot of envy came around. And I ended up buying a house with this girl. and this is where I end up getting more civil lawsuit knowledge, you know. I buy a house with this girl and I put up all the cash. And because I bought a house before, I couldn't take advantage of a first-time home buyer's program.

So we agreed to put just the mortgage on her name and I put the cash up. But contingent I made a contract. I made sure that I had a contract made just in case she didn't put my name on the deed or things, know. So it was to protect both of us and she breached the contract right away. She called the lawyer the day before told him to keep my name off the deed that came into a traumatic situation that really, really a lot happened. So during that happened, I had the police kicking my door, all right? When this started after we closed on that house, I find out about the deed about two months later when it comes in.

I don't tell her about it. I call the lawyer. I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? Why is my name on out on the deed? We had many meetings about it. I paid you $800 extra to make this contract where number one on the deed says they were supposed to both be named as tenants in common. You are very aware.

And then he came out to me and told me that the day before closing, he was advised to keep me off of the deed and that I'm going to have to pursue in legal action. So for six months, I'm fighting with this girl. And because I didn't have any emotional regulation and literacy

and I didn't know how to really soothe my emotions, I started using drugs to cope. And during this time, my sister ends up dying from a fucking fentanyl overdose dude from a fake Roxy in Texas, you know. So there was a lot of traumatic shit going on where I basically was losing my mind and all of her family was going through a lot. And so I end up serving this girl with a lawsuit.

Three days after I served with a lawsuit, she went and served a false order protection to get me removed from the property. Okay. New York State sheriffs show up to my house and the guy's name is Larry Coton, right? Baldheaded, retired piece of shit. Larry Cotone.

from the Orange County Sheriff's Office they come to my home they read me order of protection I don't fight the order of protection I tell them give me 10 minutes I have my dog I have my kids stuff

because at this time I have custody of my kids and my son and I just need to grab my stuff but you're not coming in my home and this is on camera right and they tried to strong on me in my house. And if you could picture, right, when I'm in jail, I am the type of person.

I am a, if what's the words they say, I'd be bucking, right? I be, I, when I go to jail, like, let's say, I'll give you an example. When I was in federal prison, I'm a Jew, right? On a holiday, somebody stole my fucking, prison meal, I took the microwave and I slammed the microwave on the ground. Nobody was eating, okay?

And it ended up being one of my co-defendants playing a fucking joke on me. I end up getting 90 days in the box, going to the old jail, all right? I end up getting another 90 days because the sergeant comes through. There's a problem with my toilet and she doesn't want to get the plumber to come and fix my toilet, as soon as the doors popped open for my shower, I threw the, I threw the fucking mattress on the fucking tear, everything. I'm one of those, I'd be fucking bugging. I'll flood the fucking unit, all of that.

I really don't care. When I'm in there, I get in a different type of mode, you know? And, um... So the cops show up at your house? Yeah, they, wait, which, this is, uh, when they're giving you the order of protection. They show up in my house. They strong army. They start fighting me, two of them.

And they, it happened so quick. The only thing I remember is we're on the ground and I start yelling, you're violated my rights. I got this on the ring camera. I get up. I go to run upstairs. They shoot me with the fucking taser. But then they start running outside. I pulled the fucking dart out of my arm.

I felt myself like dropping. Like I've never got shot with a taser before But that's exactly what it feels like It makes you lose complete Like you just drop like lose energy So I was able to pull the taser out So now I go on top of the roof And I start this fucking big thing

The tanks are coming And this is from the same jail that I grew up in So everybody knows me The tanks that they're coming Or all the correctional officers And everybody that are the turtles Right So I'm telling them now I'm having a conversation with them

I'm on top of the roof I climb on a window I'm like you motherfuckers You you you violated my rights you came in my house You know you're not allowed to do that you know So I have a standoff with them for about three hours This is where the baldheaded piece of shit comes into play Okay my mother like I said was the diner He worked at the diner she knew this guy's father who was a captain in the sheriff's department And this is who I was having to beef with at the time

My mother's in California and I'm calling her. I'm both, I'm like fucking barricaded in my house. And, um, there's a hundred cop cars in the tanks. And so they're trying to negotiate with me to come out. And so now they got Mr. Coton calling me. He's like, hey, and I speak to my mother. He's like, listen, I talk to him, just, you know, try to trust to me. You know, they're not going to hurt you. And honestly, the most thing that I was fearing was that they were going to kill me if I came outside. And, um, so he tells me, he says, come outside. Don't worry. I'm going to meet you. there, everything's going to be okay.

Da-da-da-da-da. And at this time, all my girlfriend's stuff is out of the house. All my stuff is there. I have over $35,000 in cash and the safe upstairs. I go to the door, I open the door, fucking 20 red beams shining on me. He's no, he's not there. I close the door. I call him, I'm like, yo, motherfucker, you're lying to me, bro?

Like, seriously, I'm like, you know, he comes and meets me this time. And now you have to keep, I have PTSD. D, I just got like Taze basically fighting this. This is a very traumatic like situation for me, you know? So when he gets me in custody, he takes my keys. He puts me in the back of the cop car. And he comes up to me and he says, your mother's worried sick.

Give me your phone. Unlock it. I need to call her. Right? He goes into my fucking phone. The door's still open. I'm sitting in the back of the sheriff's car, but the door still open.

and none of these people had body camps. None of them. And he starts yelling to a couple of his officers. How do I get into the ring camera app? Oh, they wanted to delete the footage? They did delete the footage. This is what you're on probation for now? No.

This case got dropped. Oh, this case got dropped. I better believe it, because one of the videos, they forgot to erase the video of them. When I was on top of the roof, I grabbed one of the cameras and I brought it inside. So I got a video of them searching my house without a warrant. when I told them not to.

Wow. So that ended up getting the case dismissed, but I ended up having to pay all this money for a lawyer, right? The same lawyer that I fucking was supposed to protect me from my girlfriend, from getting me removed from the property, gets another $3,500, right? I get traumatized. I lose $35,000 in. I got robbed, bro.

Those sheriffs, I don't know who did it to this day. It was either the ex- fucking bitch or it was one of the sheriffs. because my 35K got lost. It never ends, huh? No. They gave my keys to the girl, which had my keys to everything on there, my safe, everything.

And then when I was able to come back to the property, everything was folded nicely in my pickup truck. All my shit, they moved in the house, fucking motherfuckers, bro. Wow. You know, so that gets dropped. Now, during this time, you know, the main thing that I think that I want to, try to bring awareness.

And also, there's a case going on right now that's making everybody's talking about it. It's the kid down in Ohio. Quentin Nixon. I don't know if you heard of it. No. Okay. There's a kid in Ohio. He's representing himself.

Okay. He was in a situation where he had to basically kill somebody got killed. They were all in psychosis. episodes and two people had guns and basically tried to either rob him or whatever happened, but he ended up getting one of the guns in a struggle fight and shooting the people, and they ended up locking him up for the murder. So the same tactics that they used in this kid's trial, they used in my trial. That's where I'm going to talk about coming up.

So during this time, after all this, right, I end up getting into a really bad mental state. for about a year and a half after my sister passed away and during this time the people that was supposed to look forward to be able to go to and stuff like that they were all devastated as well

so it ended up turning into a very abusive family relationship and so what I was doing at the time I was getting high right, feton all, cocaine, and basically staying up for days and, you know, getting into these psychosis episodes.

And it sucks, man, you know, because this is, I don't know what it is that's going on, but the cocaine that is going around right now is different than back in the, I don't know if it's the cut or whatever. I mean, there's still good pure cocaine out there. It's pure, whatever. whatever, but something is causing people to have these psychosis episodes because it's becoming very common.

And because I'm in treatment. I'm in, I'm like very engaged in treatment, mental health, substance abuse, five days a week, like almost, you know. So, and I'm seeing how popular it is. And it's very dangerous. And with my case, okay, it was a situation where I was in a psychosis episode for a few days and Ian I'm not the type of person to call the police you know but at this time I was in a home with two people that I that I love very much but endured a lot of unnecessary pain from so I

think that with complex trauma and cocaine for somebody in my type of situation, it would make me feel like that my family's trying to kill me. And that's exactly what happened. I was in a very, very bad psychosis episode. And I end up calling the fucking cops, bro, right? I tell them, I'm a fear of my life. I want a cop to come here and I want to leave this home. I took myself there with an Uber.

And when I get there, it's me, my mother, my stepfather, and there were some conversations that were had that there was some things that were said earlier in the day. And then when I brought it up to my mother and asked her why they said it, why this was said. she didn't give me an answer and she just started crying. So what it did was it turned, it made me think that

that was going to be my last night living. So I call the police I no longer want to be there anymore right? And this is in the same living room where my stepfather you know, had me

removed over a child support check. He starts saying, hang up the phone. I don't want the cops at this house. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? You're telling me that? You're calling the fucking police on me my whole fucking life. And you don't want the cops here?

They don't come. Okay? I have to call the police back. Excuse me. I have to call the police back and I tell them I am not hanging this phone up until there is an officer here and I'm in fear of my life.

Cop gets there. One officer walks into the house. I try to explain about the day, earlier in the day. And then the early in the day basically consisted of full-blown psychotic symptoms, which was I was hearing voices. I was actually, it's crazy, but I was hearing my girlfriend being raped in my head. And I was thinking that it was real. And I was also thinking, and I was also seeing people.

So earlier in the day, I was in certain. places in public chasing invisible people with weapons and they were able to confirm this because there was cameras in the area, right, of the places that this was happening. So when a cop comes in, I tell him I'm in fear of my life. I tried to explain to him the things that I was going through. but what I found out was before he came inside my stepfather

manipulated him he got to him because he knew I was calling him so during this time somehow he snuck outside with the dog to walk the dog caught the cop outside right gave his own narrative

to try to make me just look crazy because my family hides a lot of the shit that shouldn't have been hidden right and what that did was that made the police officer not take my claim seriously and

it came to a situation where the cop said that he was going to call backup you know things they wear right here it's like I don't have any service on here and I have to go outside to call backup and I asked him to just get me out of here and I told him

I will go to rehab tomorrow. That's my plan. I don't want to sleep here. And right before this, my stepfather gave me a handful of Xanax to take, to try to get me to calm down, which was the worst thing I think that he could have did. So he says, okay, let me go call back up.

I'm going outside. And he's, if you could imagine, the black, I mean a glass, you know, the front door, right? And then they got the glass door in front of it. That's kind of like that swings open to get into the door. You know, you go into a front house. You got the glass door that's like the first door and then the main door.

So just the glass door was there. The main door was open because he came into the house. So when he, I told him three times when he was leaving, please don't leave the house. Please don't leave. He leaves. I hear a glass break. I pick up a fucking knife I hold it up to my mother

My stepfather comes to grab me And somehow My mother and my stepfather Both ended up getting stabbed And from there I went into a complete mental Only thing I could remember Was that I dropped on the floor

Was screaming and yelling I thought my girlfriend was in the attic. This whole time I'm screaming for her to come downstairs. My mother and my stepfather, a stab, laying in the garage, screaming, Danny, Chris is not here, Chris is not here. And I'm yelling, I don't know what's real. I don't know what's fake.

You know, I'm going, it's such a fucking, it's such a, only way to explain it is your brain gets hijacked. Imagine that. Imagine your brain gets hijacked. You no longer have control of thoughts in your head, and you no longer can tell what's real or what's fake. That's a fucking scary situation. Did they survive? Thank God.

Yeah. Thank God, man. And what happened? You ended up getting arrested? I did. Yeah. Now, this is a really important part, too. Because this is where the justice system comes into.

play, right? These police officers wrote this police report up to protect themselves. They wrote it in such a way where on the pick, on, does it say, there's questions that says, does it look like he was having any mental issues? Does it look like he was on drugs? They put no, no, right? They put that I called and asked for an ambulance when, And the police call doesn't say that, right?

So they basically manipulated the police report. Then they manipulated my parents, my mom. That was the police's fault. I don't know what the procedure, if there is a procedure for mental health or if anybody that's in fear for their life. But I know that if I was a public servant, I mean, I'm not, but even just in general,

if I know that there's somebody scared for their life and they're telling me not and leave them, I'm not going to fucking leave them. Like, you know. And it, um, fuck, man. It turned into a fucking, you know, you always got to look, you know, I have to look at it this way. This happened on January, um, I mean, December 24th, 2012. Two years ago. Christmas. This was on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or something like that.

Right? You know, my mother, I'm not going to let that. I have to let that be my resurrection. I was in such a bad place. I didn't know what my main core, you know, there's a core issue always to when it comes to addiction, any type of use, any type of addiction. and from my learning what I've learned from me it's been trauma bro and not learning healthy ways to cope with the trauma or learn the skills to learn the skills to be able to get yourself to a point where you don't let a trigger get you into flight or flight because with complex trauma or PTSD

you have within seconds from the time that you get triggered to be able to tell yourself in your mind I got this, you're okay, everything's right, before you fucking snap. Because that's, you know, that's what happens. PTSD, you snap, you lose control. That's what is.

You lose control completely of your emotions, right? And nothing good comes from that. Do you feel like you're in a better place today? Oh, my God. I'm emotionally stable. I'm emotionally like literate also. So now I'm able to tell the difference of what's going on. You know, and the main thing,

I always have to look at myself first. Accountability is such an important thing in life, right? If you can't take accountability for anything, you're not going to be able to heal for anything. And if you're in a relationship with somebody that can't take a gallantability and it's affecting you, you got to remove yourself. It's your fault if you continue to deal with something like that. You know, you got to pull yourself, remove yourself from it.

But yeah, definitely 100%. I would say that I'm in a well, very, really great place. It's the first time in my life that I was able to say, hey, you know what? Money's not important right now. you know um i need to work on myself uh you know i i want to be able to be there for the people that i love and i want to be able to have a relationship where i'm not blaming somebody for the way that i'm reacting how's your relationship with your mom now i chose not to have one um so the court just got finished very very recently um i'm still on probation but

within two years, there's, there was order protections, of course, and stuff like that. But until, because of the emotional literacy I do have, I know better than to be able to engage with my mother again and have a relationship because I know she hasn't healed. And she doesn't know the skills or she doesn't even really realize what's going on. And I tried to instruct her to try to go get the, you know, get the knowledge, you know, and there's a lot of family issues that are going on.

And when parents don't know how to deal with these issues, they'll put a band-aid on it and just let the thing get bigger. And something I want to be involved with, you know. But it's really important because when I got locked up for this, I got these charges, right? Assault first two times, assault, criminal possession of a weapon, two times, I'm facing 50 years.

And I knew right away that I knew right away that if I wanted to take it to trial, I would have been able to take it to trial and I would have been able to beat it. But I also have to look at it that this was a situation with somebody that I love. And instead of taking it to trial,

taking accountability, instead of putting everybody through the pain and everything like that. I would rather do that, learn from it, grow from it, heal from it, right? But if this was a justice, justice system, you know, the judge, I feel, should have been like, oh my God, what the hell happened here, officer? This kid called twice. why does it say he wasn't on drugs? He was in a psychosis episode

and he even admitted to you at the scene that he was taking drugs for a few days. Like that's not how things are supposed to go. And in a system where there is justice, I would imagine because of the way that the officer, professional officer that's trained handled the situation and two people got stabbed,

that they should be held accountable for it, especially because of the fact that I called. See, that's the main thing. If I didn't call the cops, then it's a completely different story. But I called. I did the only thing that somebody is able to do any situation like that.

And then because of the way it went down, where there was actions that could have been taken to be avoid that, which the officer decided against from believing the words I was telling him. And then, of course, they used my parents to, you know, go along with them. And instead of my mother and my stepfather being able to see what really happened and to be able to hold them accountable because I wasn't able to contact them. And during this time, I had an open case.

All right. This is another thing that needs to be brought up before we end this. I got charged in Clearwater, Florida, sober with a DUI. You hear me in? I got three DUIs in my lifetime. Two of them, I was fucked up. I was in psychosis, one of them. The other one, I was with those Mexicans, right?

This third one, I was sick with strep throat. I just went to the doctor earlier that day. I went to get my Z-pack because I'm allergic to penicillin. I go home. I take a nap. My mother tells me to go get honey. I get pulled over by the fucking Clearwater Police Department. They pulled me out of the car.

They had me do it. And I'm telling them, I got the paperwork in the car showing that I'm positive for strepdoll. I was there earlier today. They take me out of the thing to do a sobriety test. They accused me of drinking alcohol or being on some type of stimulant with the red eye thing. I think they were saying a stimulant or alcohol or antis suppressant, whatever. I offered the blow. They didn't let me blow.

After the sobriety test, they locked me up. And I tried to fight it for two. years, I demanded trial. They brought up false charges against me. False felony charging. This June, the world comes to Los Angeles. Kick off FIFA World Cup 2026 at the

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kicks off in Los Angeles. Tickets. You answer just $10 and kids under 12 were free. Get yours now at Los Angeles FWC26.com. Against me. End up fleeing guilty to the fucking... And that never ends with you, Danny. Dude, I'm telling you, it's crazy. Well, what matters is that you made it through it.

You know, you're here now. There was a positive outcome. And you just got to keep pushing forward. Right. You know, and the main thing is, is hopefully we see a change, bro. You know, I really, really do. you know, the 13th Amendment. 13th Amendment

is an amendment that is really hurting a lot of people. And it's an amendment that's taught to us in school, right? In a complete opposite way than what it really is.

The 13th Amendment they tell us in school was to abolish slavery. It was to make slavery illegal. But it's the complete opposite. It was actually the amendment to make slavery legal just under the cases where somebody commits a crime, right?

What are all these undocumented immigrants doing as soon as they come through the border? They're committing a crime. America's not the land of the free. There's a pipe, a price to pay. See, all these illegal immigrants, they don't know what's happening to them. They don't know that most of these people

are going to be turning into slaves. Our jails are at all-time low. Somebody's got to fill them. Vanguard, geo-gris. right? These are the people that are, their beds are low. It doesn't make sense to bring these traumatized people that have been living in poverty to this country to get DUIs, right? All these things.

Got to see what's really going on. There's a lot that needs to be changed. You know, what's really going on, man? But if that 13th Amendment, just imagine if there was a prison, if there was a justice system where inmates were able to make minimum wage. Can you imagine that? Imagine if people were actually able to make a minimum wage

and be able to feed the families or if somebody went to jail for child support for those 90 days they were there to be able to pay their child support, you know? The reason why I wanted to come and talk about this is because I want to, I want so bad to see a change. Terribly, you know?

And I feel terrible for the kids that are going through it right now. You know, I really do. Well, thank you, Danny, for coming here today to share your incredible story. No doubt, yeah. I appreciate you bring me in. Of course, man. Keep your head up. Keep pushing forward. No doubt. You know, you got a lot of life in you. So put it to good use.

Yeah, you know what I've noticed to is that God, right? There's very special people that go to prison. God puts people in these situations. Not everybody is built to be able to go through a life that I went through. And for me to still have compassion, right? For me to still not be bitter and not to be able to really change, right? You still be me and be the good, hard person than I am. God creates people and puts them in certain circumstances.

and there is modern day prophets all over the world in prisons. And they just, they should be recognized, you know? Like Khalif Browder, poor kid. I was able to make a change from his death. Suffered greatly. But yeah, keep doing your thing, Ian, man. You know? I really love what you did.

You came out and, you know, you're a great inspiration for people that are in their right now to show them that they have somewhere to go, you know? I'm in the furniture industry. You know, so that's what I do. You go to Furniture Mattressplus.com, right? Right after this, I'm going to the furniture market. And that's what I love to do. And, you know, I'm going to keep doing it.

Awesome, man. Well, we'll have that link to your furniture shop in the bio. No doubt, man. Thanks, bro.