Locked In with Ian Bick - Inside an Addict’s Bank Robbery Spree – Drug Addiction, Crime, and Consequences | Mason Balbier

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Mason Balbier shares how drug addiction led to a shocking bank robbery spree, the high-stakes moments, and the consequences that followed. From desperation to incarceration, this is a real story of crime, addiction, and the fight for redemption. #BankRobbery #AddictionRecovery #TrueCrime #DrugAddiction #CrimeStory #PrisonStory #OvercomingAddiction #Redemption Thank you to THE PERFECT JEAN & NORDVPN for sponsoring today’s episode: The Perfect Jean:  F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code LOCKEDIN15 at https://theperfectjean.nyc/lockedin15 #theperfectjeanpod NordVPN: To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan - go to https://nordvpn.com/ianbick which willalso give you 4 extra months on the 2-year plan. There's no risk with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Connect with Mason Balbier: https://www.instagram.com/mason_t_b?igsh=MWFjaXdpanE5NjA1bQ== Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://convictclothing.net/collections/convict-clothing-x-ian-bick Timestamps: 00:00:00 From Felonies to Entrepreneurship: Mason's Transformative Journey 00:05:25 Early Life and Family Challenges 00:11:09 The Ultimate Travel Test: Relationships and Adventures 00:16:54 Struggles with Addiction and Descent into Drug Abuse 00:22:38 Growing Up in a Jewish Neighborhood 00:28:14 Reflecting on 10 Years Clean: A Journey from Addiction 00:33:59 How NordVPN Protects Your Online Privacy 00:39:20 Plotting a Drug Deal Heist 00:45:10 A Series of Crimes and Arrest 00:50:51 The Bank Heist: A Personal Account 00:56:51 False Accusations and Deception 01:02:34 Life Inside North Carolina State Prison 01:08:28 Transformative Encounter in Prison 01:13:12 From Work Release to Reselling Sneakers: A Journey to Success 01:18:28 From Construction to Sneaker Business: A New Path 01:24:25 Successful Store Launch and Vision for Expansion Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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pleasure having you on the show, man. Thanks for having me. And thanks for being a listener of the podcast on YouTube. You're not a Spotify listener. You're a YouTuber. I love, yeah, man, I just love a ratchet prison story, man. So you came up in my algorithm on my feed one time. It's been, I don't know, it feels like a couple years or something.

And yeah, I just, you know, I've been watching ever since. That's so cool, man. Well, I appreciate you reaching out to me, you know. For anyone that's listening that doesn't know, you can literally just DM me or email me. on, you know, on Instagram, social media, I respond. You come on the show if you have a cool story to share. Yeah, you know, I didn't know if it was cool, but I've been arrested a lot. And, you know, I remember one time I was in this like little jail in Henderson,

Hendersonville, North Carolina. And my lawyer brought me my criminal record. And it was like, you know, it was so, I couldn't believe how bad it was, you know. And at that time, I was up to like 75 or something. And it ended up at 97. 97 felonies. Wow. And now you're an entrepreneur.

You own your own businesses. Definitely plug those in and what you do now. So my wife, Becca, and I own three retail stores. Follow the stores. So you have DG Reserve MD for Maryland. That one's near Baltimore, Maryland. There's another one called DALY's D-A-I-L-S-Towson. It's like cozy stuff, sweats, hoodies.

We designed a line of clothing ourselves. Everything's made in L.A. It's all L.A. brands, but it's on the East Coast. And then we have another DG.Reserve. DG. Dot Reserve. That one's in North Carolina. Awesome. Yeah.

Very entrepreneurial. And we'll have the links to those. Do you do at an online store at all or no? Yeah. Yes, we do. Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll have those in the description of this episode for you.

Nice. Thank you. And anyone listen in those areas, check out Mason's stores. Mason and Becca, yeah. I got shout out my wife. She runs the show. She didn't want to come today? I didn't know I could bring a guest, you know, when you told me about that drunk

guy, you know, around like fish tailing. Yeah, I was like, my wife has a cool story too, you know. She does? Oh, she went to prison? No, not prison, but, you know, we met in 12-step meetings, like through a friend. And so, yeah, she's got her own tales to tell, you know, for sure. I'm sorry about the guest thing. Yeah, you could have brought a wife. Yeah, what I meant was no friends.

She would have been stoked to come, man. Yeah. We had a little incident with one of our guests on the show. I almost got banned from Spotify. Yeah, well, when you said, like, don't bring any guests, I was like, God, what did someone do? Like, you know, I figure like once you're, like, out of prison and you're doing a podcast, I figured you'd be like. A little more professional.

Behaving yourself, you know? I should have known it was a red flag when I got, like, five texts every day leading up to it from him. and then asking if he could bring like five or six guests with him the day of him. I'm like, dude, it's not live. They can watch the episode in a couple weeks. Like, it's at Spotify. We can't do this.

We're not like, we can't do this. You know, I'm not a big celebrity. Sure. I don't have a poll like that. Yeah. But oh, well. Did you grow up in California or where did you grow up? No, I grew up in South Florida, Brad County, Fort Lauderdale area.

And I lived there until I was like 23. And I'm pretty heavy druggy. use, you know. That's where I started my like criminal careers. It's like misdemeanor, misdemeanor, misdemeanor. It's fine. I can like track the severity of the crimes like by how bad my drug use got, my addiction, you know. But yeah, man, I thought I would escape and go to my sister was in college in North Carolina at this small school in this town called Hickory. It's called the Nor Ryan College. And she's like, yeah, come come stay with me. So I go stay with her.

And when I got there, it looked like the middle of nowhere, you know, and I thought, I mean, it literally looked. I thought I was in like farmland. Now, you know, some of the, it turns out it's not that small of a city. I mean, but when I looked around, I was like, there's no way they have projects here or like hood to go buy drugs at. And I quickly found out that that was not the case. There was like so much hood there. So much, it was like almost worse because it was like such a small town. And I think like proportionally like a larger portion of it was actually sort of like

drug areas, you know, where you could go by. Yeah. Was it just you and your sister growing up? Yeah. And then when I turned 18, my dad had been remarried for about a year and I turned 18 and my other sister was born. So she's technically my half sister, but we just, I'll just call her my sister. So I have Amy.

And then Amy, Amy, Amy's four years younger than me and Emma's 18 years younger than me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, your parents together all 18 years and then got divorced? Yeah. My parents got divorced when I was like, right before, right after my bar mitzvah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I grew up in a Jewish family, not like religious, you know, to Hebrew school long enough to learn, like to recite the stuff in Hebrew. I didn't know what I was saying, but like, you know, I did the thing and got up on stage and read the Torah and, you know, had a big party. And yeah, that was about it. You know, my parents got divorced, like, not long after that. And really, that was like right when my life took a pretty, pretty sharp left, you know. And I started using, like, heavily. I was in middle school and our school was connected to a high school. And I remember I would leave the middle school area, walk over to the high school and just skip school all day with high school kids and smoke weed and drink 40s of like weird flavors of Sainide Special Bureau.

I don't know if you've ever had that, but there were some pretty terrible flavors. I never drank beer in high school. I'm still not a big beer guy. It's not even beer. It's like pineapple malt liquor and fruit punch flavored. It tasted so good. But like I know in reality, like it was. really awful.

Like a four logo type of thing? Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, but worse, I think. Yeah. No, like, none of like the Red Bull factor in there, but like definitely. What did your parents do for work? So my dad, my dad owned his own business. He did custom cabinetry.

He was in the furniture business. He had a 60,000 square foot factory in Delray Beach. And he did like really high on stuff. Like he did Dan Marino's house. he did Sophia Lorenz house he did the owner of Bacardi and so I would get in trouble at school a lot and I would get kicked out

and my dad would take me with him to work and I'd build skateboard ramps you know that was my that's really cool yeah it was pretty cool man and while I you know when I ended up I went away to college

I didn't go to class but when I finally started working the only thing I knew how to do was like swing a hammer so I did construction I would just start my own business. I worked for some people for a couple years here and there, but I always just relapse, dude. I'd get some money, and I'd, like, fuck off and, you know, go get high.

And when you don't show up, people don't like that, and you can't go back, you know. What were you going to college for? Did you have, like, a goal or a dream? What, like business, you know, like... Half of America. Business, yeah, like, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, in my mind, it was like...

Maybe think of stepbrothers were like he's going to go into the family business, you know? But the family business was like an actual business. And I was in no place like to do anything. And my, so actually my, I kind of misspoke there because when my parents got divorced, my mom hired a lawyer who froze all my dad's business accounts. and my dad paid all his guys on a Friday, went home. I mean, he had like, I don't know, 50, I think he said 50 employees or something. It was a big place, man. And they all went to cash their checks.

And the bank told them that the account was like frozen or closed or whatever. And they all went back and broke into the business and like stole all these tools. And when my dad came back on Monday, there were chains on the door where like, a judge had court ordered for an accounting firm or somebody to come in and like figure out where the missing money was. It turns out my dad wasn't hiding anything, you know, and he lost the business. And it was like a big messy divorce for sure. Reason number 100 not to get married.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, when I met Beckett, man, you know, there was no woman you could put in my life that I'm like, I want to marry that girl. And then I met Beck and we hung out and like, I don't know. It was like the first, it was just like felt like we were best friends, you know, and we were both working on ourselves, you know, and it just felt like a healthy relationship, which I had never experienced before, you know. Never been anything too crazy other than me, like getting high and stealing all my girlfriend's shit or like stealing her car, renting her car out to

drug dealers and shit like that. But so, but yeah, man. And then Beck and I met in 2018, 2018, yeah, like September, 2018. And we moved in together, like, I don't know, like a year, maybe like a year later. And then I wanted to go on a road trip. Like I hadn't done, I haven't been around the whole country, you know. And so we had a Toyota Prius and our dog peanut. And I was like, let's hit the road.

In the Prius. In the Prius. And we did the whole country. We went like Nashville, San Antonio, San Diego, all the way to Seattle, Vegas and back, 9,000 miles. And before we left, I was like, man, if we go on that, because I was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, like, when is she going to become a psycho? Or, like, when am I going to just decide? I don't like this person. And it just wasn't happening.

And I was like, you know, if we go on this trip and nothing happens and negative, like, I don't really want to be with anybody else. And, you know, she had never mentioned marriage, but I was like, you know what, I'm going to ask her to marry me if we could. And we, for a month, dude, we were side by side together every minute and I had a freaking blast. Not one argument. And we still rarely argue.

We've never raised our voices at each other. It's just like, I don't know, man. We, uh, she's just one of, she's just like so kind and, and giving generous, uh, she puts others before herself. Like, she's a wonderful, wonderful woman. And, um, yeah, I'm not just saying that because I'm on your podcast. I mean, actually. She's going to love it. They say, um, if you could travel with someone, that's like the ultimate test.

Yeah. I don't want anybody else to travel with. I've tried it, dude. Yeah. Yeah, you'd go on a flight with someone, see how they behave on there. what kind of person they are. I think she almost divorced me when I kicked my shoes off one time on a flight. What she thinks is like the worst thing ever.

But then we flew somewhere with some friends. And they took their shoes off and I pointed at them. And she's like, I don't fucking know you guys. That's funny. All right, guys, I have officially found the best pair of jeans I have ever worn. And no, I'm not just saying that because they're sponsoring the show today. The Perfect Gene has completely used. change the game when it comes to denim. Listen, I used to hate jeans. They were stiff,

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Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. your khakis and get the perfect gene. Now let's get back into today's episode. So after college, had you gotten arrested or anything up at that point? So I'll tell you, I went to, I went from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa. My idea was I'll go to Hillsborough Community College for a year, get my grades up, and go to USF, where some other people that I knew were going. And I got there, and I remember there was this dude, Jonathan. I don't remember how I knew him. But, it was like then first or second night I was there. And he was like, there are these two girls.

We're going out. Like, it's like, all right, cool. And I went over to his house. These girls pulled up. And the girls were driving like a really nice. It was like a C-class Mercedes or something like that. But I, you know, not too many kids at my school had cars like that. I didn't go to like a bad high school.

But anyway, she looked like a rich girl, you know. And so we go out and I am sitting in the backseat with this one girl. And he's in the front seat with the other girl. And the driver girl turns around. She says, do you party? And to me, I'm just like, do I go to parties? Like, you know, I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I party.

You know, like, I don't fucking know the answer. And she turned around with a bag of Coke. And I was like, oh. And I was like, yeah, hell, yeah, I party. Like, I love getting fucked up. But up until that time, I think I had done Coke once or twice. And it didn't really stick with me. And I tried it.

And it didn't even smell like Coke, man. I don't know what it smelled like. It smelled like cut. You know, it smelled like shit. And I was like, what is this? She's like, this is the best shit in town. And a light bulb goes off in my head. I'm like, I know where to get shit that will be way better than this best shit in town.

And so I went to orientation at the Hillsborough Community College. Then the weekend came. I left. I took every dollar I had. I think I'd like $3,500. And I went to the straight, I mean to the fucking hood in Miami. I knew this guy. I had sold him a dirt bike or traded a dirt bike for 10 pounds of weed or something at one point in high school. But I knew he sold Coke. And I brought back $3,500 and he gave me seven ounces of like yellow, like amazing Coke. You know what I mean? And I like, I was so scared because I'd never had more than like a gram or two, I think. And I remember I wrapped it up in like a trash bag. and I put like, I think I put like petroleum jelly around it and then wrapped it again because I didn't want, I was just like, I thought dogs would smell it.

And then I taped it to the inside of the bumper of my Honda Civic and drove all the way across the country and across the state, I'm sorry, from Miami back to Tampa. And I called this dude, Jonathan. And I was like, hey, man, I was like, you got to come over. We're going to cut this shit up, whatever. And he went to the head shop and bought like these. It was like a long box like this, but it was those tiny little gram bags. And I mean, it was just like, you know the scene in Breaking Bad and Walter White's telling the guy that he runs into in the story. He's like, you don't buy it all at the same place.

Yeah. He buys a digital scale, fucking baggies, like a tray, like all the shit you need to cut up drugs at one head shop and drive straight to my house. And dude, it popped off, bro. $50 grams. Like, I was the man. I had people throwing rocks at my window. at like three, four in the morning, you know, trying to get more. And, but I was doing more, you know, and I was drinking a lot.

And it took, it took about two years before I found myself, like, in my apartment alone, looking out the fucking blinds and my nose would, like, barely work. I'm, like, using, like, nasal sprays to try to clear a passage to get something in my bloodstream. and it was just like, that's when I, I remember I called my mom. She was living in Boca Raton and I was like, I think I need to come home. I wasn't going to school. I had been making some money, but at that point I was like trying to scrounge up enough to like buy another ounce, you know. You're supposed to like get more and more and more and make more money and it just went south.

You know, I had always done like more drugs and drank more than everybody. but this was like the first like bottom for me you know like emotional mental now i know like spiritual you know i'm not a religious guy but i like to think of myself as a spiritual person and man i was just like dead so i remember i i drove back across the state and i had a shoebox where i kept my shit i had like a couple hundred bucks a digital scale and like a quarter ounce of powder in it and i met my mom at this deli for lunch and I brought for some reason I brought the shoebox into the restaurant and I sat on the table and she's hey you know how you've been she said what's that and she grabs it and opens it before I could say anything you know and she was like what you know my mom

knows what coke is she's done plenty of coke you know and uh I was like I think I need to go to rehab and um there was that was the one time my family paid for rehab. It was this place in Boca Raton called the Watershed. They had like massages, fucking aromatherapy, a swimming pool. It was nice, dude. They had like a cereal dispenser with like eight different kinds of cereal. I'm a big fan of cereal. And it was a nice place. And I remember went through that. That's where I got introduced to like 12 steps up for the first time. I left and like three days later, I was high again. I was high again. Why do you think that place didn't get the job done for you?

Because you wanted to go there. Like, you knew you needed help. Yeah. I think, like, my entire personality and, like, who I was was, you know, for so long, you know, really since middle school was just, like, structured around drugs, drug use and sort of the lifestyle of getting fucked up, you know. And I don't know. I mean, I know why it didn't work because I didn't do anything they told me to do, which was, like, go to meetings, work steps, get a sponsor, all that shit, you know, that I do now. that I do now and like I didn't do any of it. Nothing, you know.

Something in my mind and, you know, I think it's like my disease of addiction, alcoholism, what, you know, is it was, knew that that was the solution and was like, no, fuck that. You know what I mean? There's no way that can work, you know, not for you. And either I was better then or I'm not good enough. You know, it's just that sort of one, one, one. or the other of that spectrum of, you know, like how I felt about myself, you know. What did your dad think about your drug use or was your relationship not as close as it

once was back then? I mean, my dad and I have always been pretty close, you know, I'd say really close. Back then, he was pretty cool about it because my dad had, you know, he lived through the 60s and 70s. He's done a lot of drugs. He's not a drinker. And I never was a really big drinker, definitely more of a drug addict. But until I started smoking crack, then some of the, like, the consequences were so great and so public.

And like, yeah, it just, you know, that's when he really started getting pretty pissed off, you know. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I didn't have any, there was no off switch for that with me, you know. And it was like, I think it was like embarrassing for him. I think about it now. Like, I'm not embarrassed, but like, you know, you're like a suburban family living on a golf course or whatever. And your kid's smoking crack, like at least, you know, just do blow. You know what I mean?

Like, you know, at least that feels like a little more civilized. you know, because there's such a stigma around, you know, crack meth, heroin. Or even anyone that gets arrested, you know. Like I never remember the stigma around my family when I got arrested and I was in a Jewish community and, you know, in Danbury, Connecticut where no one gets arrested. And when the feds were outside my house, it was the talk of the community group online, you know, like the Facebook group. Yeah, that, so you grew up in like a... Yeah, it was actually, we had a synagogue right across from my house. My dad's a Brooklyn Jew.

Like Hasidic? No, both of his parents were Jewish, but they didn't, he had his bar mitzvah, all of that. He, you know, went to the temple, but I never did all that. But we grew up celebrating Hanukkah Passover and Christmas, like both sides because my mom's a Catholic. Okay. But the whole community is literally Jewish, like, Hasidic, like on a Friday, they would knock on the door and say, hey, can you turn off our stove because it was left on because they can't touch it. You're in the middle of it, man. Yeah.

Yeah, so, but that's a, it was Brooklyn Jewish firefighters that founded that community. And that's where I grew up. Yeah, and no one was getting arrested. Yeah, for sure. That's how it was, I wasn't really much in the newspaper or on the news until like some years later, you know. But I remember, so I moved to North Carolina with my sister quickly. You know, I sort of briefly touched on that before. and then I ended up moving it with this girl.

My dad moved up to that area to Western Carolina, like Boone, Asheville area. How old did you during this? Probably like 20. I moved up there when I was like 23. And this is after rehab. Several rehabs. So it's funny because the next rehab I went to in Florida,

I mean, that first one, I had never smoked crack before when I went to that. Excuse me. I'd never smoked crack before. And my sister was in college in Florida at Barry University. She had a full soccer scholarship, I think. And my friends were still like, hey, you know, can you get some blow? We'll go to South Beach, whatever.

And I was still, you know, still get fucked up here and there. But I went to see her one time. And I stopped at a gas station down there. And her school was in Miami and not the best neighborhood. And I was at this gas station. I saw this dude. And my normal co-connect was like, responding to me or whatever. And I was like, hey, man, you know where to get any powder.

And he was like, yes, yes, I do. He's like, meet me on the next block over, six house on the right. I'll never forget that guy's fucking name, Jules. And he had his hand bandaged up. And I later, like, realized his hand was bandaged up because he was pushing a crack stem and it broke in his hand and probably sliced his hand open, you know. So I went to, I went over to his house. He's like, yeah, come on in. I don't have like 150 bucks on me or something like that, maybe 200 bucks. And he's like, I'm going to call my guy, Madman was the guy's name. And I'll call him over and he'll bring you whatever. And he's like, you just break me off whatever. Like, all right. So Madman comes over. Huge, huge dude. And he's like, what do you want? I was like, you know, I got 200 bucks. And

he hands it to Jules and Jules hands me this bag and I could see it from across the room. It was like yellow. It was like almost brown. And I was like, I've never seen cocaine that color. And when I got in my head was like hard. And I had got a Coke before that was like bricked up and you had to like smash it. But this was like really hard. And so he's like and Jules said, yeah, let me grab a razor blade.

Just give me a piece. And I'm like, I don't understand. I was like, do you? is this powder? And he's like, oh, no, you know, I cook everything up. And the only thing, like, I had heard about crack from Master P, you know, that was about it. That was like my experience with crack cocaine was that Master P cooked crack cocaine. That was like it.

You know, I never considered like, I need to step up my Coke game and smoke some crack, you know. But I just spent all my money. There's no refunds, I imagine. So, like, the dude's like, here, come in here, I'll show you, Jules. And that was like a moment in my life that, like, fucking changed everything, man, you know? And went in his room and he had like 20 pipes. And I gave him some. And he's like, here, you know, hit it like this, whatever, don't talk too hard and, you know, all that.

And so I hit it and I blow out and it almost felt like nitrous. You know what I mean? At the first time, it was like, you full. I felt great. And he hit it and went straight to the fucking window. And I was like, are you expecting someone? You know, like, I didn't know. I didn't realize what it was going to do to me later on in life, which was instant fucking paranoia.

You know, this dude's peeking out the window waiting for the fucking CIA or whoever's out there. And I'm just like over here like, you know, seeing stars, you know. And I left him another piece. I took it with me. And then for some reason I had, I think I had my mom's car. She had this like two-door BMW. And he gave me a pipe and I'm smoking, crack, just on the way from Miami back to Boca Raton. And I realized that I was looking in the fucking side view and rear-view mirror.

And I was like, what the fuck, dude? You know, I had been paranoid from cocaine before, but it took days and like no sleep, you know? And I was, I found by the, like about halfway through the trip, I was literally just driving, looking in the fucking rearview mirror. whole time and I was like, yo. And I couldn't stop smoking. And I didn't really know how to smoke crack at the time. So like the pipe is just breaking, breaking, breaking. You know, like, uh, if you put too much fire on it, it just breaks, you know? And I didn't know that. And it's just like dripping in my mouth. Bro, it's fucking awful, dude. I was just like, and, you know, looking back on it now and I was talking I have this fucking amazing therapist. Shout out Sam. I was talking to him about it the other day.

He was like, tell me about that first time, you know, because I just celebrated 10 years on Monday. 10 years clean. Thanks, bro. And he was like, tell me about the contrast between your life then and your life now. And so he ran me back to when I first got, you know, when I first smoked crack. And I was like, I felt like a fucking, I really felt like an animal. Like I was living at, I was like at an animalistic level. I felt like I was prey and there was a predator out to get me. I don't know who it was. I don't know what kind of car they drove, but like they were out there and they were coming to get me, you know. And I disappeared for like two days. I had a fucking eight ball crack for like a first time crack smoker. And I was just like driving around. My mom's calling me, leaving messages crying. You know, I think that was still when I had like Nokia the phone with the snake game on it. Snake game.

I had Nokia games. I don't remember Snake game. I'm 29, but I had the Nokia flip phone and then I had the Nokia slide up. This was like the big Nokia with like the hard antenna. But it had this one game. It was called snake, you know. But my mom. mom was leaving, leaving messages crying, my girlfriend crying. We're calling every hospital. And I'm

literally like driving around my neighborhood and my mom's neighborhood, just smoking crack. And I finally just, it was like 48 hours straight. I was, so the car was about to run out of gas about halfway through this whole crack, crack escapade. And I was scared to get out of the car and put gas in the car. I got like a $20 bill, I think, for gas. I think I pulled to like three or four gas stations before I went to one where like no one else was there except for the person inside. I was just so scared, dude. And later on, like, I figured out how to smoke crack properly. How to smoke crack properly.

And, you know, just like a little bit of flame, you know. But I still felt I just wouldn't back to back to back, you know. And I mean, it's just like the, it's funny because I want to say like cracks the worst thing that ever happened to me. But before I smoked crack, I had no work ethic. Like, you know what I mean? I learned how to hustle because I got high, you know. But you were entrepreneurial kind of like before, you know, that first time you sold drugs and working construction.

I was not good at it, though, you know. I learned, you know, I learned a lot about myself, you know, and that I have it in me, you know, to like push past. because, dude, some of the shit I did to get high, like, I never would have done any of those things. You know, like pushing TVs out of Walmart, robbing banks, you know what I mean? Crawling military style across, like, from my room through my mom's bedroom, stealing all her fucking jewelry. You know, I was like some of the things I, to any lengths, you know what I mean? I would do anything. So were you high throughout all of your crimes?

What did you say? I would say actually, like, I probably wasn't high. just wanted to get high. Like, I probably ran out most of the time. I wasn't like, let me hit a crack rock real quick and like running the store. It was like, damn, I'm out of crack. I need a TV or a PlayStation or Xbox. And you just walk out with it? Yeah. So Walmart. Bring us through like your first Walmart jacking. So on I-40, it goes through North Carolina, east and west. And I would, when I got high, I would always drive. You know, for, I always had a car. I would buy a car working and then I would relapse and sometimes I would lose everything and sometimes I wouldn't lose everything. But I didn't get high much unless I had my own car. So I'd get in the car and I'd drive. I'd pick up. I'd drive some more to the next town where I knew somebody. I'd pick up, pick up, pick up. And then I'd run out of money. And then I would

start going back to all those guys like, you know, what do you need? You know, because I would just boost anything. A guy would say, you know, I need, there was this one guy that would buy as many pairs of 4xl Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts as I could get for half price, and he would pay me in crack. And one guy, his wife was like really into scented candles

and he was like, I need every scent of Yankee candles that you can get, you know? And there was another guy that would buy anything in his size that said Polo Ralph Lauren inside of it and had a horse. But I'll tell you, I think, actually shoplifted the first time, I think, in high school, with the money for the shit in my pocket. I think everyone's done that once.

And got caught. And my girlfriend at the time had already bought me those shorts. It was like a linen pair of Dolce and Gabana pinstriped cargo shorts. I don't know. They seemed like the coolest pair of shorts in the world to me. Shout out Kelly. Yeah, I, you know. But the first Walmart one.

I was in Statesville, North Carolina, which is I was in Western Carolina. Statesville is going a little more east on 40. And I go in Walmart, and this is when flat screen TVs started really coming into being a popular thing. So was that like 0,7, 08? Yeah, probably in there. Maybe even a little bit earlier than that. Maybe 2005. I don't know.

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guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description. Stay safe, stay connected, and unlock the internet with NordVPN. Now let's get back into today's episode. But, yeah, I went straight to the electronics department. They had them on the shelf, and I realized quickly I could fit three. But, But like sticking out of the cart, I could fit three in there. So, and once you put three TVs in a cart, like they're watching you, so you kind of have to get to the door pretty quickly. So I put the three TVs in the cart and I head towards the door. And when I came in, I saw there was this nice old lady greeting people, you know. And she also checked your receipt on the way out, you know?

And I'm walking towards her and she starts smiling. Like I'm about to hand her a fucking receipt. And I just straight by her and, sir, sir, I need your receipt. And I just start, you know, really kind of like moving a lot quicker. And that's when the two dudes sort of pop out and they start coming. And I just, I think I had a Subaru station wagon. Oh, I have a good Kmart one before Kmart close. On the receipt thing, you know, I go into Costco and BJs.

There's no way that they're actually looking at every item because they don't give you bags. No. Barely do you get a box. So it's all stuffed in there and they pretend like they're, it's so silly. I think it's just like a preventative measure. At one of our stores, we have armed security full-time at the Baltimore store. And he's like a 25-year veteran of the Baltimore, like city police department. Great guy.

We need him on the show. Yeah, Ronnie, dude. Ronnie's a goat, man. And super, super, nice guy. And you should see him when someone pulls something. He gets in his kung fu. you know, he's like ready to, he's ready to go. One time a girl was checking out a couple pairs of like Travis Scott, Jordan Wans, and I happened to be in town in Baltimore. And like I knew something

was going on. She's like calling someone and acting like she's on her phone. And they were in the shopping bag on the table on the counter, like, but closer to the checkout person. And she grabbed him. And I juked her, bro, and wrapped her up. And I was like, where are you going? There's like a guy with a gun there, you know. Yeah, this Spotify had a security that sat me down the other day was a head. He was a detective in LAPD and he was telling stories about pulling over Snoop Dog and all these famous people. I'm like, dude, you got to come on the show. He's like, you have law enforcement? Hell yeah, dude, you got to come on. Hell yeah. That'd be a good one.

The Kmart story. Oh, this is, do you remember the chirp phones? It was like Boost Mobile. Nextel, right? Next time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, or, next hell and the whole hood sprint yeah yeah the whole hood had these phones and all you needed to do was get a prepaid card or whatever and so uh at first i went to walmart and stole a really baggy pair of dickies and i put them on over my other pants and i went to kmart because they had them unlocked like on an encap and i went in and i put four with the plastic and everything down each pants leg and i was walking out like this you know and as i'm getting towards the door the guy comes out of

of the little security room and I'm like, fuck. And I did like a zoop, zoop and spun. And I hit the door and I didn't realize that those doors that open, like parallel have an emergency feature where they just flop open. I hit the door and the door like, I thought I knocked it off the hinge. And when I went outside, there were like six Kmart employees all out there like, you're not going anywhere. We called the cops. And I just, you know, crackheaded myself out of that shit. You know, did like pull the Tyrone Biggams on them.

So how do you evolve into robbing banks from doing like this crackhead type robberies? So at one point I started like, well, I got, there's only so many Walmarts, you know, and I never really left that area because that's just where I lived in Western Carolina, you know, for the majority of this. I had robbed a few drug dealers. I kind of run out of stuff to rob, you know. You graduated. You would need to go to the big leagues. Yeah, yeah. And well, so... Do you have a good Robin drug dealer story?

I have one. Okay. Give us that one before the banks. So I was in... All these towns are like, you know, kind of lined up next to each other. So I was in the next town, a couple towns over in Lenore, country sort of town. And getting high. And there was this guy, he was kind of like skinhead type dude. And we were hanging out getting high. And there were a couple people there in that house.

They had like a wood stove. it was kind of like a shack, kind of. You know, the way it was built. It was probably built in like the 20s or 30s. It was freezing unless you got by the wood stove. And I had a black Toyota tundra at the time. And I was like, hey, man, I think I can get this kid to meet us, like on this sort of long country road who sells dope. I think I can tell him that like I have like $1,000 or $1,200.

and he'll come meet us with it. And he's like, well, shit, let me get the pistol, dude. And I was like, okay. I was like, all right, well, I guess we're doing this. So we drive out and the, what is, anyway, we drive out and we pull off into this gravel area. And this kid, he was probably like, I don't know, 17 or 18 years old, had a red two-door Cadillac with one of those like sort of rag tops. And the guy had hopped out of my truck and into the bushes.

So the kid hops out And I go to get out of the car And this guy Mike comes running out He's like, get on the fucking floor, bro He's like, we're taking all your shit Fuck you. We're taking everything. He's like, yo, come home, chill, chill.

Don't kill me, don't kill me, you know. And, you know, he ran his pocket It's grabbed his money, grabbed the dope. He's like, come on, man, leave me an eight ball So I can get back on, you know? And I was like, bro, you just got robbed. Like, no one is cutting out like a fucking eight ball ball to give you back.

And so, So Mike took his cell phone and car keys. This was the worst part. Like I was like, but I guess he kind of had to do it and just chucked them into the woods. And it was like 3 o'clock in the morning, dude. So this kid's outside. It's like 40 degrees. No way to turn the heat on in his car.

No way to call anybody. He's miles from any kind of civilization. No cars are passing by, you know. And I feel bad, you know, I feel bad about that one. You know, that was a shitty one, you know. But I mean, dude, you're sorry. selling crack and like you met two crackheads, you met like crackheads in the middle of the woods.

You know, like, what the fuck did you expect? Yeah. The, so a lot of like, I always went back to, so I'll tell you, I went to the first one that was watershed was the first rehab I went to. It was like super nice country club.

The next one I ended up in was called HAC in West Palm Beach, Homeless Assessment Center. That was like the trajectory of my addiction was like, you go from the country club to the fucking crack house, you know. It was pretty, it was, it was like a, it was like a quick slide from like where a normal person lives to like the bottom of existence is how it felt. And the, so I was in North Carolina, I got to know a few drug dealers and some of them were like, dude, what are you doing out here? Like, you don't belong out here.

You need to go home to your girlfriend. You know, don't you have a business? or, you know, anyway, so there was this one guy who his nickname was money, the nicest, like, a really nice crack dealer, you know what I mean? Just the nicest crack dealer you ever want to meet. It seemed like he had a real heart, at least when it came, you know, when it came to me, he was, anyway, he had lent me some money for a hotel room. and gave me a bunch of crack, you know, over like a few day period.

And I disappeared. I just went home, you know. And I went home, and then I left home, and I ended up getting 27 felonies at one time in Morgantin, North Carolina. I had driven off the mountain down to Morganton, went to the ATM, and my girlfriend at the time. disabled my debit card. We had a joint account. She disabled my debit card. She knew my history.

I mean, she'd stuck with me through like a bunch of bullshit, you know. And so I'm downtown Morganton, where I usually go to the ATM. And it's like a town square. It sounds like a brick wall and a little statue. The police station's here. The courthouse is over here.

City hall's here. And on the other side of that square, the town square, is like stores, and then it goes down another street of stores. So I had a gold Honda pilot, man, I remember. And I went over to the wall that surrounds Town Square and kicked it until a piece of a brick came out. And I walked across a flat screen TV again, dude. I saw these two flat screen TVs in a real estate office.

I opened the trunk, folded the seats down in the pilot, and through the brick, through the fucking window, and snatched these two TVs off of the stands they were on. on got in the car and I'm driving and I see it. It says like computer repair store, but they had a stack of, I think they were Xbox 360s and in the window. And I was like, you guys are fucking idiots. And I had taken the brick with me from the previous place and I threw it through that one. I threw all the Xboxes in the car. And then I got back in the car and two stores up on the right was a store that sold Red Wing Boots.

and I was still in construction at the time and I was like, fuck it, you know, I'm already breaking windows out. So I went in there and I grabbed a size 11, red wing boots, and there was like 20 bucks in the register that I grabbed. And so I went to the guy, money. And I was like, hey, man, I got TVs, I got Xboxes, and I got $20, you know?

And he's like, what am I going to do with all this shit, man? And so I went around town selling the Xboxes, came back to him a few times. I think I owed him like $1,500. And I ended up getting arrested at a hotel that I stole a fucking TV out of. I was big on the stealing flat screens. I rented the room and then I stole the TV out of it and the room was in my name. I was in the newspaper on the news in Morganton for like as like dumbest criminals, like stealing a TV out of your own room.

And then going, I went back to the hotel. And I remember when they came and got me, they were beating on the door. And I looked out and I said, you know, that stripe on their leg, you know, the black pants with like the gray stripe on the cops. I was like, fuck. So I rushed to the bathroom like, you know, smoking this little bit of crack I had left. And I finally opened the door and I just got on my knees, you know. But so I owed, I went to jail. I got bonded out.

My girlfriend, I think, bonded me out. And they let me go to my dad's house. And so I'm at my dad's house. He lives at the end of a cul-de-sac on a dirt road so far out in the middle of nowhere. Like, no one knows where he lives. And he said, you're going to paint my house. So I'm painting his house. Well, I was probably going to go to prison, too.

But because I had broken into, it ended up, they charged me breaking into a total of nine places. each one carried three charges. So it was 27 felonies that I ended up pleading to all eventually. So I'm painting the house. My dad's at work. My little sister was in like, I don't know, fifth grade or sixth grade at the time.

And I see this minivan coming up his really long gravel driveway and there's this red minivan coming up the driveway. And I don't recognize it. And I'm like, maybe it's the mailman or something. And fucking, money jumps out of the passenger seat with like a gun in his waistband not in like a threatening manner but i got off the ladder i went over to him like dude what the fuck are you doing here this is

my dad like you can't be here like my you know like my dad might shoot you if he sees you i don't know and he's like listen you know somebody got arrested they told me on the phone they're going to snitch on me if i don't bond them out i need that money right now And I'm like, dude, I just got out of, like, I just got out of jail. I'm painting a house for free, like, to live here. I was like, I don't have any money. And he's like, well, where can we go get it? Because I need it right now.

And, uh, kind of hype me up a little bit. You know what I mean? I was like, fuck, I guess we're smoking crack, you know? And, uh, or like robbing somebody or something, you know? I still, dude, like when I watch a, like a heist movie, you're pretty hyped up. Not that I want to go out and rob somebody, but it's like, you know, um, my wife's like, why are you always watching these crime movies? I don't fucking know.

I'm sick, you know, I guess. And so I grabbed a jacket and a hat because that's like my robbery get up, you know. I'm going to. And so we're riding around Avery County, North Carolina is like literally Andy Griffith land. Like it is so, it's like mountains. It's good old boys. It's like chicken fighting, rebel flags, shit like that. Like, it's like the country, you know?

And at first I thought, like, where can I steal something that I can sell for $1,500? And I couldn't think of anything. And then I said, if I could jump over the counter in a pharmacy, I could, and find the pills, the good pills. Like, I can sell those. And we pulled up to this pharmacy, and it was a, this. tell you how middle of nowhere it is. It was a half pharmacy, half bank. That's where I was at, next to a gas station. And I go in there, and it occurred to me that, like, they definitely have the money on the bank side. You know, this pharmacy is kind of a crap shoot. But when I, there was a dude,

I swear, he had to be like six, eight, three-fifty, massive dude with like an apron on. He's like, how can I help you? I was like, okay, I'm good, you know, and I left. And I said, take me down the street. And we stopped at like two more banks. And I think so this old lady was driving who who got high. I knew her from, from Morganton. So it's you money and the old lady. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm in the backseat of a minivan and I grabbed her sunglasses. They were like big, you know. And I had the hat like this. The jacket popped up like this. And I had taken a pen and a small piece of paper and I wrote, put the money in the bag, no die pack. And there was this bank that was sort of like closer to the crest of going down the mountain, closer to the county line. And there was a, the road went like this and the bank was just here. And there was a hill in

between. And I said, pull off in the gravel right here. I said, if you leave, I don't owe you any money. No matter what happens, don't leave. I was like, I made him shake my hand, you know. If you leave, I don't owe you any money. He's like, bro, I'm not leaving. We're not leaving. just go get my money. So there were some, like, plastic grocery store bags in the back of the seed. I grabbed those. And I grabbed one of them. And I went over the hill and I walked around front and I walked into the bank.

And this really nice lady said to me, hi, how can I help you? And it was her and a lady at the drive-thru lane. and I pulled out that piece of paper and I put it on the counter and turned it to face her and she's like, what's that say? And she went to grab it and I grabbed it back

and I pulled out of the other pocket I threw the plastic bag over the counter and I said put the money in the bag no die pack and um sorry um like the look on her face I dude I could see it like it was yesterday man

it was like just like fear you know fear like recognition of what was happening in fear you know and she pulled the fucking drawer out dude and just started loading it up loading it up and then she pulled out another drawer under it that had larger bills in it started loading it up and and the lady at the at the drive-thru lane is curious now she's like hey what's going up oh do you want my drawer too i said yes i do and i said i said yeah and she ran over grabbed her drawers And, you know, and I forget how long, you know, when we got like the discovery and everything, I was, they thought I was a professional bank robber. I was just so scared. I think I was in there for like less than a minute or something really, really short period of time. So I have this fucking shopping bag full of cash, lots of ones and fives and tens, you know. And I hit the door. I'm running. I run up to the top of that hill. I'm running so fast that I got to the top of the hill. I didn't hit the bottom of the hill. I slammed into the side of the minivan on like the top of it.

and like hit my ribs. And I'm just like, go, go, go, you know. And I jump over into the very back of the minivan. I was like, don't speed, don't speed. And so we're driving going towards the road that goes down the mountain into Lenore Morganton area from Avery County. We're driving down the mountain. And I had taken the jacket off, the hat and the sunglasses, and I like tied it in a ball with the sleeves. and I reached over the passenger money and chucked it over an embankment because I thought like that was evidence or something.

I don't know. I had never robbed a bank before. And so I'm laying down in the back, in between the seats, on the ground, ripping all the paper wrappers off all the bundles of money and like shredding it into little pieces. And on a minivan, the back windows go like this. And I'm just like sprinkling them out the window. You know, I figure, I don't know what I thought. like, yeah, they find you with a bag of money with no paper on it. It doesn't mean it's still a bag of money, you know.

So I gave her like $750.50. I gave him like $2,000. And I had a lot of fucking money left. Like, I didn't know how much, but had a lot. And I had them drop me at like a T crossing. I walked to the left. They made a U-turn. As soon as they crested the hill, I turned around and walked to this.

place where I knew people got high, you know? And I was like, I'm going to go here. And then I'm going to call someone else to pick me up here. I'm trying to like separate myself from the whole thing. So I go to that house and surprise. I bought some crack, you know. What else are you going to buy, you know? And I had money in my shoes, in my socks, in my front pockets, my back pockets, my waistband.

And I called this dude. And I'm going to call this guy out. I called fucking Brad, man. I called Brad. And Brad was an older dude who smoked crack, you know, like me. And I said, Brad, come pick me up. I'm down here in Freedom, which was the little area, it was the name was called. Down here in Freedom, come scoot me up, you know.

Let's go to Charlotte. I got some money. He's like, I'm on my way, you know. And so he pulls up. We go to Charlotte. We stayed down there for, I don't know, a week. and I told my dad that Brad was a responsible adult and that he had got us a job

and I'm doing some work down in Charlotte and we smoked crack until we couldn't fucking see straight until I didn't want it anymore. You know, it was just beyond. I never had that much money getting high. I didn't know how much money it was until I got... Ever feel like your concentration is slipping in a world full of technology?

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Tyraq.com, the way tire buying should be. At the discovery, it's $42,700. So this is before they started taking the trays out It would only keep light bills. I guess. Yeah. Because most bank robbers in recent times don't get that much money. This was like, I think that I could Google it.

I want to say, what year was this? Let's see. Eight. I got out the first time in 2013. I did four, maybe 2009, something like that. But so I go home. Right? No one's looking for me.

I'm waiting for my dad. I'm calling my dad. Hey, you know, I'm working. Anybody, you know, anybody call? Nothing. No science, you know? And I called my girlfriend at the time. I was like, hey, what's going on?

She's like, someone robbed the bank up the street. My dad said it looks like you in the paper. It was really funny. I'm like, oh, I'm in Charlotte working. It was, you know. She was like joking. It was me. They had like one blurry fucking security camera image.

And my ex's dad. said it looked like me. That looks like Mason, you know? So I go home. It's about 10 days or two weeks. And the guy Brad called me, he's like, yo, man, come on over, man. Let's go, let's go party.

I'm like, ah, you know, I'm trying to be good. He's like, no, no, come over. He's like, I got like 500 bucks, man. We're going to go. I got you. I'm covering you. Last time you covered everything. And I go over there and he has a newspaper

sitting on his table on his coffee table. And it's got my fucking picture on it. And he's like, bro, you didn't tell me that whole time. You didn't tell me. And I'm like, tell you what? And I'm like, fuck, dude. He's like that this is you. And I'm instantly like, fucking antennas up. You know, I'm like, that's not me. He's like, what are you talking about? That's definitely you. He's like, you called me that day with all that money. And I'm like, what? I'm like, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. And I just fucking left. Well, come to find out, this dude Brad had gotten some charges, really low-class felonies. I think he was like cleaning someone's deck with a pressure washer, took the lady's

debit card to Lowe's and charged like more stuff than he was supposed to. And so he was facing probation. And this dude drove to the sheriff's office in Avery County and told them that he knew who robbed the bank and that I had told him that I robbed the bank. And, you know, there was wire under his fucking coffee table that they were trying to catch me saying that it was me. And I didn't say anything. And so I'm driving to my girlfriend's house, to her parents' house with my girlfriend at the time. And it's like a curvy sort of mountain road. And I see down the road a little bit in front of us the undercover Durango with the fucking

tinted windows. and I'm like, the jig is up, dude. You know, and that was it. And instead of turning into her parents' driveway, I kept going. She's like, where are you going? I was like, let's go down to Morgan's. Let's go to Walmart, you know? And she's like, but why?

We're supposed to go. And I'm like, let's just go, you know. And I get to the end of the street, it tees off. And there's two fucking sheriff's regular sheriff's cars right there. And I'm like, fuck. And I made the left, you know, to like I was going down the mountain. and I got to the top of the hill and I'm looking and I see him fucking pull out. Like, shit, dude.

Right at that exact moment it started fucking raining, like pouring rain. And here come the two marked cars. Here comes the undercover car, the detective's car. And my ex-girlfriend was actually like distantly related to the sheriff, like the head sheriff of the county. He was actually in one of the cars, like the sheriff of Avery County. you know, and they all get out and they're like, hey, yeah, and I'm just like, she's crying. She's like, what did you do? Did you rob that bank?

I was like, I didn't do shit, you know. They take me to jail and they're being real nice, you know? They take me in the Sally Port. They're like, yeah, you know, we already know everything. You want to smoke a cigarette before you come in? I smoke a cigarette. We go into the sheriff's office and he has about 20 images laid out that were printed out. And he's like, Mason, why did you do this?

I'm like, dude, do what? He's like, that's you. I was like, that's not me. He's like, well, the State Bureau of Investigation says there's a 99.99% chance that that is you from facial recognition. I was like, well, it sounds like there's a chance that's not me, you know? And I just wouldn't admit it, dude. I stayed in jail. It was a, I think it was like a 10-person jail with or maybe 12-person jail.

I stayed there for 366 days. Wow. And finally, my lawyer said to me, it wasn't a paid lawyer. It was a public defender. But the public defenders there are signed. They're private lawyers. They just rotate the public defender circuit. And he said, listen, man, you're not from here.

There's no real evidence against you. But do you really want to go in there and maybe get 25 years? or do you want to take this plea deal? And so the plea deal was, it was like 80 months, split in half, and five years of probation in the middle. And if at any point during that five years of probation, I violated, I'd go back and do the other 40 months. And during that five years of probation, I'd have to pay back the $42,700 plus court costs and whatever else. So my dad's there. And my dad's just like, just take the time, man.

You know, and I was having the same feeling. And I mean, I did rob the bank, you know. And I had just, I didn't, 25 years, that was like the rest of my life, you know. And so, you know, 40 months, I'd already done like 12. Yeah. And so I said, fuck it. Let's go to prison, you know. So I signed.

And, um. Why didn't make him a Fed case? I don't know. they charged me with common law robbery, which is like the implied threat of violence. I also don't know if they wanted, I actually asked my lawyer that. They said they had, when it first happened, they had 90 or 180 days to come pick up the case. And they just never did. I remember the first six months. I think it was six months. The first six months is sitting in jail. I was just sitting there waiting for the wondering if the feds were going to come, what day. You would have got the same amount of time, though. A lot of the bank robbers I met in the feds. It was, five years for the note. Yeah. I think that was a mandatory minimum.

You know, um, state prison in North Carolina, if you're in medium or minimum custody is really not bad. Cakewalk. The minimum custody is actually kind of, kind of dope. It's like summer camp, you know?

Um, when I, I ended up, so anyway, I take the time, you know, I go to prison, uh, and work my way down to minimum.

custody. And I, so this is funny, man. When I, when I broke into all those stores, they arrested me at that hotel. And when we were walking into the Burke County Sheriff's Office, this, this cop, his name was Daniels or something like that, one of the investigators. He said something, and I said, I bet you take these fucking handcuffs off. I'll outrun you, you fat motherfucker. And they told the jail that I was an escape risk. And so that was all. That was all. on my record forever. So they had me in like a four-man cell the whole time I was in that jail where at night like I'm locked in by myself. And when I got to minimum custody, that shit was still on my record that I was an escapist. So I couldn't get it took a lot of like writing

requests and letters to get out of the prison because you could go work for a department of transportation on like the yellow trucks and fix the roads. And while you're out there, You could smoke cigarettes, eat fucking bojangles, pizza. Like, you know, dudes were having their girls meet him in the woods, you know. Dudes were bringing back in dope. And the first time around, I don't know if they do it at the feds, but like all of the religious organizations bring services to the prison. Yeah, I think they're required to.

By, you know, I don't know, who knows. But where I was that part of the country, that part of the state, The only people that came in were like kind of like Southern Baptist. They're great people, you know? And I was like, I had tried the 12-step programs. I had tried therapy. I had tried abstinence. I had tried just like work really hard and make a lot of money.

And maybe that'll like solve all my problems. And none of that works. So I was like, shit, I haven't tried church yet. Let me try this. So I got involved. I read the Bible. And it worked for me for a little bit. So I got out.

I went to a homeless shelter because, like, no one would fuck with me. They would talk to me, but, like, my dad wasn't going to be, like, come back to the house. This is 2013 now. 2013, the first time I got out, yeah. But you've been sober 10 years now, right? Yeah. So this is almost at it. So you got sober before you went the next time.

I'll lay down. Yeah, yeah. So I got into, like, religion. and I remember I went to church when I got out and the pastor was like he had come to the prison so I went to that church and he was like can I share your story as part of my sermon? I said sure man, go for it.

You know, I'm a civilian now. I'm out here. You know, maybe some girl think I'm a badass, you know, and like, you know, come up off something for me. You know, I don't know. And he shared my story and the next day I started getting phone calls. I was volunteering to build the set for the Christmas play. I was volunteering at the youth program.

I went to bank. I went to prison for robbing a bank, not fucking child molestation. They called me. They're like, hey, we don't need you here. We don't need you here. Maybe you should go to the singles Bible study. And so I called the pastor and I was like, bro, what the? He's like, yeah, they heard your story and like they don't feel comfortable with you around their kids.

I'm like, all right, fuck all of you. I left, dude. I never went back, you know? And I went back to. to if I make, like, find the hottest girl that will have sex with me and make the most money that I can, you know? And I ended up relapsing. And I remember my probation officer was pulling down the driveway to my house with the task force to search my house again. Because they, I tried to tell her, like, I'm an addict.

Like, I'm not a kingpin. Like, you don't need to bring guys with AR-15s to, like, tear my fucking house up. And she kept doing it. And I was tired of watching them throw all my shit on the floor. like pretty regularly. So I backed into the woods, they pulled in, and I sped out. She called me, she said, you know, what are you doing?

I said, the door's unlocked, go ahead. I was like, I'm not gonna watch you tear shit up again. And she's like, you can't leave or you're violated. I was like, all right, then I'll see you on Monday. And she's like, yeah, right. So I drive to Statesville, smoked a bunch of crack. And that was like December, that was like the last couple days of November

and maybe like the first day of December. And then it was the first day of December. The first day of December, I drove, 2014, I drove back from Statesville to Wataga County. I parked my car down the street because she was like a notorious tear up your shit. So I knew she'd tear my car up. So I parked down the street and put the key on top of the tire. I walked to the probation office. And she wasn't there yet.

So I was just sitting in the lobby of her office. And on the way up the hill, I remember I threw the crack pipe out the window by this rock quarry. That was the last time on December 1st, 2014. And I'm sitting in there. She walks in and she just her jaw drops. She couldn't believe I was sitting there. I was like, I told you I'd be here, you fucking bitch. You know, because that's what I really wanted to say to her the whole time.

Mary Hodges. That was her name? Just so, just such a, such a sad, mean woman, you know, for no reason. You know, but you can edit that out if you want to. Surely she won't come find me in California. And if she does, I'm now a law-abiding citizen, so you can go fuck yourself. Nothing wrong thing on. But so anyway, so I go to jail, you know, and I woke up the next day, December 2nd, and I sat in jail for a little while.

You know, I had to wait for my court date to come up. And I went to court, and the judge was like, blah, blah, blah. I was just take me, let me just, let me just go to prison. My restitution is no longer due. I don't owe you shit. You can't hold me for anything. When I get out, I'm free and clear. So I go to prison.

I go through processing. I get to craggy prison in Asheville where I ended up living. And I saw this dude that I saw in the first part of my bid, this guy, Wes. Wes was like me. He was like, you know, pretty out there in the world, he, you know, he had a pretty crazy story too. You know, lots of drug use. He was an addict like I am. And I saw him and he just looked different, dude.

He had a crispy white tea. You know, like, if you have like a crispy white tea, like you paid for it or you know somebody, but like you got your shit together. Your fruit of the loom white t-shirt. It's not like yellowed out. You know what I mean? Like just like the dog shit from the clothes house, you know? And I was like, yo, what's good? Blah, and I was like, what's going on?

He was coming from the chapel. So I thought to myself, oh, he got some religion. And I was like, what are you doing over there? He's like, no, I work at the chapel. He's like, I get free coffee and cookies. I go to AA. There's a meeting tonight. Do you want to go?

And something about knowing how he was before and seeing him, and him saying that, it was like some wires got twisted up in my mind. And it occurred to me that that might actually be the solution to my problem that I've been having essentially my entire life, you know? And I went with him to a meeting. And it was like for the first time I heard the 12 steps as. an instruction manual, like an actual, like, and it seemed like realistic. Like, this could actually work for me, you know? I've been to hundreds of meetings, maybe even thousands. I don't know, over, over a 15 year period. And that was the first time that sitting in a meeting and hearing the readings and hearing people share, like, it just, it just hit different, dude. And he was my first

sponsor. We went through the steps together. It's funny, dude. On your fifth step, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the 12 steps when you're fifth step you know you would share some of the things about yourself that maybe you're not proud of or things that you know may have happened to you in your past and so you share it with you know another person and I didn't want to tell him because I didn't want him knowing all my shit then if we fell out then he's like telling everybody all my shit so I was I told him I was like I want to tell the chaplain so I go and tell the chaplain my fifth step thinking this guy has never heard a fifth step in his life and uh it's funny when I got out, I moved to Asheville, and I go to a fucking meeting, who's sitting in the

meeting, the goddamn chaplain, dude, he knew exactly what I was doing, you know? So the chaplain was, he, he had been in AA for, like, decades, you know, and it's funny because I was, like, explaining to him what a fifth step was, you know, and, yeah, dude, we walked a track. I read, you know, I read the book. I did the, I did the written work, you know, to do the step work, and I felt better in there than I had. had felt, the only thing that I could like even liken it to was like my childhood at summer camp, you know, like the dudes that were on the yard crew, the grounds crew would cut the grass and I would walk the yard and smell that fresh cut grass and I literally felt like I was at

summer camp. It's peaceful in a way. At a medium custody prison in North Carolina, you know, and it was just, yeah, I'd finally that, like I'd just been given that gift, you know, from, I guess, you know, my higher power. How much time did they give you on that violation? No extra time. I just had to serve the rest of my sentence because I didn't have 40. Yeah, it was 40 more months, I think, somewhere along those lines.

So I ended up getting out in June of 2018. And you hit the ground running. Well, so I actually, like my plan was like keep it humble. Don't rush. Don't go try to meet a woman. don't try to get all the money you can as fast as you can. You know, all the things that I had done before, I had laid all this stuff out, and I knew my patterns.

And my dad picked me up, and he said, where do you want to go? I said, take me to this meeting. He was meeting my sponsor, not Wes, a guy that was a volunteer that was bringing meetings in. And I was actually on work release for, like, over a year there. And I don't know, I made like 30 grand, and I left was $600. They took all the fucking money. And so, yeah. I go to this meeting.

I meet Pauley, my sponsor. I'm like, hey, you know, and I went to, did you guys have passes where you can go out with people to, like, church and stuff? At the halfway house, not at prison. So in prison, in minimum custody in North Carolina, you know, when I was there, people could come pick you up and take you to church, religious things, or 12-step meetings, anything that they can get approved for, they'd take you to. And so the church people were there. and someone, I think my bunkmate, told the church people that I was Jewish. And he's like,

yo, these people really want to meet you for weeks, dude, for weeks. And I, like, kind of had, like, a sour taste in my mouth from last time, you know? And I was like, fuck it, man, let me go up here. So I go up there, I meet these people. And it was this couple from upstate New York that came with the church group. Hey, I'm Mike, and I forget his wife's name.

And they were like, blah, blah, blah, you know, and telling me about, and I said, said, well, I'm Jewish. And they said, well, so was my Lord and Savior. He's like, man, that's awesome, you know? And I was just like, you know, I respect it, you know? And so my home plan was to go to this homeless shelter in Lenore, figure out what I'm going to do and just like take it, just chill. I'm not going to rush. And these people contacted me through my case manager. They wanted me to come stay at their house. And I was like, I don't fucking know you. You know what I mean? And just like kind, truly kind, generous people with no ulterior motives.

They didn't try to make me go to church. They didn't, you know, and so I went and stayed at this house of these retired people. My boss at my work release job, I had gotten a raise about a year before. And I said, don't put the raise on my check. Keep all of the raise separate. And I had enough money. And while I was still in prison going to work, he had found me at 86, 4. Bronco like OJ style, it brought it to the shop, the furniture shop where I worked at. And I was like,

I would like sit in and eat lunch, you know, and I was so proud of that Bronco, man. And so I had the 86 Ford Bronco. I had 600 bucks and just trying to figure it out like the guy, Mike, whose house I was living at had gave me some older tools. I went downtown. I was like going to every store. Hey, can I, I can fix anything you have, whatever, you know, just trying to keep it small. And I quickly realized I didn't want to be in that town. I wanted to be in Asheville. And so I found a in between two single wide trailers. Someone had converted a storage shed into an apartment.

And it was 600 bucks a month. And it was a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, barely what you could even call a kitchen. And in between two single wide trailers. And I remember the trailers across the street, the dudes had like flashlights on their hats, mowing the yard at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was just like the mess spot, you know. And I was so happy to be there, dude. I was just, I was so happy.

And I made flyers, you know, like handyman or, you know, remodeling. And I would just stick them in mailboxes. And I went to an AA meeting and I saw this dude, Dane, with these Jordans on. I had never seen before. I missed all the beginning of like the reselling stuff in prison and getting high. And I was like, dude, those are the most fired Jordans I've ever seen. It was like, off white Jordan. one. I said, where'd you get him? He said, well, I got them on the drop, but you can go online.

They're like, $1,500. And I was like, shut the fuck up. What do you mean? They're Jordans. It's fucking $1,500. He's like, yeah, no, you go on this website and you can see how much they're worth. And, like, it was that same thing. Like, when they told me they had the best Coke in Tampa, and it was dog shit. And I went back. And I, that guy said those shoes were 1,500. And someone paid 200 for him. I was just like, man, that sounds like fun. And I grew up in the Jordan era, dude. And like, you know, 90s hip hop and I always love fashion and streetwear and sneakers. And I started reselling shoes, you know, in 2018. And next thing you knew, like, I had $100,000 and like a room full of like really high-end

shoes. This thing took me like a year, year and a half or so. And I had never been that successful financially before. and I was having a fucking blast doing it, and I was still doing construction. And that's when Beck and I were living together. I had filled up one bedroom. And then we had another bathroom.

I filled the bathroom up with shoes. And then I started stacking shoes in the living room. And she was like, yo, chill. She's like, you're not putting any shoes in this fucking living room. You're going to do something else. And we went on that road trip. And when we went on that road trip, I stopped at every resale store in every city.

And what I didn't know at the time that I was doing was like research, like market research. See, like I don't like this. I like this. I like the way this is set up. Your customer service is shit. You know, we were, and she was doing it too because I think she saw where the whole thing was heading. And we got back and actually we were out when we were out here in California, COVID was just like barely being in the news. Like there's this COVID thing.

We got back the whole fucking world shut down. And online sneakers went crazy, dude. I was making, bro, I was making so much money online. Values of shoes went crazy. People were going apeshit. And I like, I said to Becca, I said, listen, I don't want to do construction anymore ever again. I had almost cut my thumb off with the chop saw at a job. And I was like, I don't want to do construction anymore.

She's like, what do you want to do? I don't know, open a shoe store. And so we started looking around at spaces. And like in my mind, we needed to be down. downtown Asheville. That's where all the people were. Right. And let me pause for a second. It got warmer in here. The, the thermostat went from 72 to 75. I think it fluctuates. I got the breeze over here. Did you? Yeah, I've said over here, freezing. You're over there hot. I'm like roasting. You can take your name tag off too. Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway. Fiji airway sale is on now. Fly nonstop round trip to Fiji from just 748. Or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia with round trip fair starting from 839.

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They got you in the hot seat. Yeah. So downtown Asheville, you open up there. I go downtown Asheville. I'm looking at this space, and I see this space downtown Asheville, and I can just imagine it in my mind. like people coming in like fucking loud music outside barbecues and shit and um the uh the landlord didn't want to rent to us and i couldn't figure out why and um my last option was to go into the

mall i did not want to be in the mall i thought the mall was corny i thought no one shopped at the mall and um so we took the space at the mall it was like 900 square feet we did all the work ourselves painted the space. We did the clothing racks, the racks for the shoes, all the, you know, checkout counter and everything. Posted on Instagram. And it's January of 2021. And it was like 15 degrees that night.

And, you know, we had a goal to do $50,000 a month. That was what we needed to sell to like be good. And, um, I pull up to the mall and there were like 20 kids outside camping for our fucking store opening. And I was like, holy shit, dude. Like these people, like, we built this and these people are outside like waiting in the fucking cold for this shit. And it was like, it was just such a gratifying feeling, dude. That whole day, from the time we opened until the time we closed, we had at least 50 people in line.

We did $37,000 the first day. Wow. We wanted to do $50,000 a month. It was incredible. It was just so like... Better than robbing banks. So much better, dude. You know, so much better.

You know, we had created something. And I was like, hey, I think this is cool. You might think it's cool. And they're like, it is fucking cool. Like, what a, like, I don't know, man, validation. Like, all the good feelings that you. You can imagine, like, man, it was like, it was just, it was incredible. And, and then they kept coming and coming and more.

And, you know, it's a buy-sell trade store. So people were bringing us stuff. And the back room got full. And we rented the space across the hall and filled that space up with inventory. And we're looking at the space down the hall. In the first 90 days, we knew we had to move to a bigger space because we were missing out on money. And we built out the space down the hall.

We spent $70,000 on the buildout, which, was crazy. I'd never spent $70,000 on anything, you know, and that store was, and that grand opening wasn't awesome, too. We did, we opened that one November of 22, or maybe it was November the same year. Anyway, that one popped off. And then my friend Dustin was like, dude, you have to open a store up here in Maryland. No one's doing it big, bro. You got to open a store up here Maryland. So we go to the DMV and Beck and I looked at I think 17 malls in like a three day period. We went to every mall. We walked every, you know, looked at every available space. Some of them we did not get out of the car. One mall we went to, there were two separate

incidences with cops arresting people in the fucking parking lot. We're like, let's just keep going. And so we found this mall, which was the mall that Dustin had told us to go to. It was, there was one in Delaware, and then there was this Tauson Town Center Mall. And we went there and there was a 5,000 square foot space that the rent is $30,000 a month. The rent at our other stores, $4,000. These mall rents are crazy. Oh, so, but I'm thinking to myself and my friend Gabe, a great guy, just like a pioneer in this space of, you know, really like leading the way and just like shining, you know,

his stores are a real example to really like, you know, go by. He helped me a lot, man. He gave me so much advice. I would call him. And I even asked some questions that I wouldn't expect most people to give me the answers to. And he helped me, you know. And one of the things was that, like, you pay more in rent because people spend more money there. And that store, we did the grand opening.

And I think it was close to $60,000 in a day, you know. And then, yeah, that's our best performing store right now. We just opened actually, so that's DG Reserve MD. We just opened our first retail store. So it's not resale. It's just regular retail. That one's Daly's Towson. And it's in the Towson Mall also on the fourth floor.

Beck and I had an idea like if we opened a store in L.A. by the beach, what would it look like? And then take that model and put it in the Northeast. East and no one, because like, what are you going to say? Pack Sun is really about the Pacific Sun? Like, fuck no. That place is corny as shit, dude. Like, we did an actual L.A. store. It's all L.A. brands.

Everything's made in L.A. Dalysthausen is a model that we love, our customers love, and that's what we really want to scale. And, but D.G. funded the whole thing, man, you know. That's awesome. It's been like, it's been like a dream, dude. You know, really. I cannot believe this is my life. Like we live in Venice Beach.

You know, all our businesses are on the East Coast. And you're out here vacationing year-round. I mean, we, Becca does a lot more than I do for the businesses. You're out here doing podcasting about your ex-criminal life. Today, you know, like, I'm doing that today. But, like, you know, I do a lot of buying out here for the stores, to be fair. You know, I do a lot of buying out here. You got to help me pick out a good pair.

Meakers. Both. Yeah. Like, I'm actually, right now, I've been on a, like, A6, Hokas, On Clouds? I love Hokas. Bro. That's my shoe that I wear at the gym. I don't wear them out because I get made fun of.

What do you got on today? Today, these are some Nikes. There's some Blazers on. Yeah, these are pretty good. That's a good pick. Yeah. But I need more stylish shoes. I only have about three pairs of stylish shoes.

Well, I'll tell you, people come out here to visit, and Becca can come up with a whole itinerary of fun things to do. Disney here. They're there, like eating, you know. I'll come busy. You can next time I'm here. My tour for people is the shopping tour of L.A. Like, you want to go fucking shopping?

Let's go. Yeah, and spend a fortune. I got that covered. Well, you cover all, you know, all the bases. You know, you can go to, you know, it's wild, dude. There's this one store I shop at. I still get a little star struck out here. The people that are from here are like, yeah, I'm walking.

My friend Elmo's me and the ribs. I'm in this store. And I look up and fucking Kanye's watching. talking tore me. I met John Malcovic there, Keanu Reeves, all at this same store, man. And that's where I buy stuff there. And I'm like, yo, I smoke crack, bro. Like, do you know, like they, you know. It's a full circle moment. Bro. It's been, I feel like I've lived like three lives, you know, I've had, I had a great childhood until my family, my parents got divorced. Then I had this insane criminal crackhead, drug addict, just like nightmare of a life.

and now I'm living this like life of gratitude and joy and like peace and serenity. And it's like, man, I just, I don't know. I just feel so, I'm just so grateful, dude. I'm grateful for the shitty times too because like, how could I appreciate this? I'm with that, dude. Like, you know, having been like this seems, you know, this might be normal for some people. I feel like I'm on top of the world, man. What do you think is the biggest life lesson you want people to take away from your story that you've learned?

you know, I wrote my dad letters the whole time I was in prison. He never would write me a fucking letter. Never. He'd pick up the phone. All I wanted was to get mail call. I wanted them to say my name and I wanted it to have my dad's name on the return address. And it was about six months before, no, a year before I got out, they called my name

and I look and it's my dad. My dad sent me a fucking letter, dude. And I go over my bunk to read it and I'm like, man, you know, I wonder. You know, this is like a long time coming. The first bid, he sent me no letters. This is my second bid. And he sent me a letter and I open it up and it's a blank sheet of printer paper and it has one sentence on it. It says, dear Mason, you're smart, but not smarter than everybody else.

Love Dad. And I will never, ever forget that. And, you know, I guess like other people know, other people know, things that I don't know. I didn't believe people that, you know, doing the 12 steps of the sponsor would work, you know, I just didn't believe them. It just didn't make sense, you know, but it turns out they know exactly what the fuck they were talking about, you know, through this sobriety of 10 years, you know, listening to other people and taking advice and suggestions from other people has gotten me further than anything else. And then giving back. Like my wife and I, I don't like to talk

about it that much, but like it gives me such a feeling that I don't really get any other way as like giving freely, but was given to me. I feel like this shit was like handed to me. The, you know, the peace, the joy, the financial part, like, I feel like I hit the lottery, you know, and I owe it to whoever the next stranger is that needs it, you know, to like give it to them because it's not really mine anyway. You know what I mean? It's just, I'm just a steward, you know, for the, for the moment. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mason, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today, man.

I love your story, man. It's incredible. You're an awesome person. Thanks. Keep in touch for sure. Yeah, definitely, bro. And, yeah, we'll definitely get together next time I'm out here. For sure.