Locked In with Ian Bick - Inside Hell: Surviving the Brutal Nightmare of a Dominican Republic Prison | Michael Wittenberg

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Michael Wittenberg, a U.S. citizen, shares his harrowing experience of serving nearly two years in a Dominican Republic prison. Recently released, Michael opens up about the brutal conditions, the corruptness within the system, and the challenges of surviving in a foreign prison. He reveals how corruption impacted daily life, from extortion to unfair treatment, and the mental and physical toll it took on him. Now free, Michael discusses his journey toward rebuilding his life and shedding light on the realities of incarceration in a corrupt system #InsideMyHell #DominicanRepublicPrison #PrisonSurvival #TrueCrimeStories #LifeInPrison #InternationalPrisons #SurvivingHell #PrisonNightmare Thank you to FACTOR for sponsoring this episode: Visit https:/factormeals.com/lockedin50off to get %50 off your order PLUS free shipping! Connect with Michael Wittenberg: Website: http://www.michaelscottwittenberg.com Phone #: [phone] Email: [e-mail] X: @msw070981 TikTok: @msw0709 IG: @msw07091981 Facebook: Michael Wittenberg (Facebook.com/msw0709) 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://www.ianbick.com/shop Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:07:32 Lawsuit Over Inheritance Dispute 00:15:57 Touring with Adult Industry Stars 00:24:20 Arrested in the Dominican Republic 00:33:18 Experiencing Prison Life and Corruption in the Dominican Republic 00:41:51 Life in General Population and Unexpected Realities of Prison 00:50:40 Navigating Legal Challenges in a Foreign Prison 00:59:43 Struggling with a Corrupt Legal System 01:08:25 Encounter with Special Agents 01:16:32 Legal Issues with iPhones in Jail 01:24:36 Facing Trial for International Narcotics Trafficking 01:33:21 Court Testimonies and Witness Accounts 01:41:59 Inside Look at Prison Life and Corruption 01:50:00 Navigating Legal Woes Before Returning to the U.S. 01:58:00 The True Meaning of Friendship 02:05:32 The Power of Storytelling and Overcoming Criticism 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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Welcome to Lockton, man. Shout out to why did I just drop the name right off the top of my head. I have no idea. Kyle? Kyle, yeah, Kyle Overmile. Ma Overmire, who is a shit corrupt sheriff on the show. He's connecting me to quite a few guests. And now here we are.

He's a really good guy. And you just got out of prison. Two weeks ago. I remember he called me and I thought it was going to be much longer. He's like, hey, I got this guy. He's right now in a foreign country, Dominican Republic, right? Yeah. He's in prison there, but he'll love to do your show.

I was like, yeah, just have him reach out when he's out. Send me an email. And then like a week later, I get the, or a few days later, I get the email from you. I'm like, oh, that's fast. And you just happen to be on Long Island. Yeah. He told me that you were in Connecticut. So I was like, I'm in Connecticut all the time.

I go to Mohegan and Foxwoods that do a lot of business out there. And he told me that you were in Connecticut. I was like, we're in Connecticut. He was like, right on New York border. I was like, cold on easy. Yeah, he made it seem like you're still in Florida and staying there. So I didn't think it was going to happen this quick. I came to New York for the holidays because my kids came to New York.

So we met in New York. We did the family thing. And now we're going back to Florida. We're going to Florida on Thursday. Well, I'm escaping the cold weather. Right. It's 25 degrees. Yeah, but it's like 45 there.

It's not much better. That's better than here and not snowing. So did you grow up in New York? Yeah. Long Island. Born and raised in Valley Stream. Went to Valley Stream South High School. And yeah, I've been in my New York, my whole life, I had a place in Rhode Island for a while.

in a place in Connecticut for a while, but always New York. Who'd you grow up with? What do you mean who I grew up with? Like, you know, your second person that asked me that today? Normally everyone always understands it. Now it's zero for two, like parents, siblings, all that. My mother and father, until I was about 16, 17, my father, and my mother got divorced, and really stopped talking to him for off and on for 25 years.

As a matter of fact, when I was in jail, my mother reached out to him, and we started talking and I get this phone call and he helped me out a little bit and stuff while I was in jail and I get this phone call from his stepson that he just died one night like I spoke to him two days before and like we were just trying to establish a relationship but it was just straight bizarre he just died in his sleep one day no idea I spoke to him two days before how do you feel about that I don't know I mean we went so long without talking and then he started helping me and stuff like that. I mean, it was a shock. I was super close with him when I was growing up, but it felt strange. You know, it was like the day after I got arrested, my mother got diagnosed

with breast cancer. And then I got divorced. And then, you know, it was just, and then my son, my oldest son had to be taken out of school. So it was just like shit on top of shit, on top of shit. It was insane what was happening. But yeah. What do your parents do for work growing up? My mother owns a beauty salon. Still does. And my father, owned a process-eving company, surprisingly. He sent his people to serve legal papers for lawyers. So did you guys have money growing up? Upper middle class.

You know, we weren't poor by any means. We weren't wealthy, but upper middle class. And you went to public schooling? Went to public school. I went to private school from kindergarten to second or third grade, and then I went public school for rest. Any problems in high school or pretty normal? No, I mean, I was a podhead, but that was definitely.

about it, you know, just, you know, I mean, was I a straight-day student? No, but, you know, no, no problems, yeah. How would people describe you? Were you like an outcast or were you sociable? No, it was popular. I was popular in high school. I was popular. It was very strange because I always fit in with like my primary group was kind of the metalheads. And then I fit in with the jocks. I play football. And like, I always fit in with everybody, but, and I always hung out in big groups, but I never had any, like, issues with anything. No, it was, you know, I was always, I was always a popular kid, had a lot of friends, you know, I'm personable, I think, you know, with these looks, you got to be personal, you know?

What were your aspirations? Did you want to go to college? What were you thinking career-wise? I was never a school kid, you know? So actually, the story is I went to, I went to high school, I was going to high school. And in 11th, no, in the very beginning of 12th grade, I met the mother of my children. And she, we went to, that was 98, yeah, 98, September of 98. And we went to the city. Have you ever been to the Halloween parade in the city? No, never.

So we went to the Halloween day parade on the city. And we're walking and, you know, freaks, geeks, and weirdos were all over the place. And this lady that's dressed in plain clothes starts following us. Like this older lady. And it's like two or three blocks she's following us. And like blatantly staring, my ex-wife, very attractive woman and very attractive girl at the time.

And she was wearing this little red riding hood costume. I'll never forget this. And she like nudges me. She's like, this lady's following us. I was like, all right. So I give it a couple more blocks. And I turn off. I was going to turn around and say, like, what's up?

You know, what's going on? And she immediately whips out a business card. And she was like, I'm from XYZ model management. And ends up that the modeling company that she represented, she was an agent for the modeling company, represented like Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss and Stella Tennant and all like the big Victoria Secret Girls. My ex-wife was 5-9-120, beautiful.

girl. So she started modeling. So me and my ex-wife were getting really close. She was, you know, she was 19 and I was 17. And I was never much of a school kid. So I was like, fuck this, I'm dropping out of high school. So I was in my senior year of high school and I dropped out. So I would go to the city with her every day. And I got a job in the city. And I would go to a city every day with her while she was modeling. And that's my education. you know, and then I started working, you know, and that's how it went. Hey, everyone, it's your host of Locked In, and I want to thank you for tuning in to today's show. Remember by leaving a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or leaving a review on Spotify and Apple

goes a long way to helping me put out and produce consistent content. I also try to respond to as many comments as possible, and yes, it's me actually responding to them. So keep dropping those comments. I appreciate all the feedback we get. and the love and support. Now, before we get further into this crazy episode, I want to thank Factor for sponsoring this show. Head over to FactorMeals.com slash locked in 50 off

and use code Locked in 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. I'll tell you more about Factor later in this episode. What were you doing for work? I started working. She wasn't a big fan of modeling. So I just took like a job in the city, I think it was out like an ice cream shop. I don't know what the hell it was.

So she wasn't a big fan of modeling. So she left. And at the time, subsequently, I sued my father. What happened was my mother and father got divorced. I stopped speaking to him. And I get this letter in the mail. And it was from, do you know what an UGMA account is? No.

It's a United Gifts to Minor Act. And it was from Merrill Lynch. and it said that I had this account, like this United Gifts to Miners account, and it was like 10 grand dinner or whatever it was. And I called him up. And I was like, you owe me $10,000. He was like, I don't know, you shit.

And he was like, it was your grandmother's money, who passed away, his mother. And I used it basically as a tax shelter. So you ain't getting shit. So I served them with papers, and two weeks later, I had a check in the mouth of 10 grand. So I had a little money, and my ex-wife, Melissa, the mother of my kids, loved Connecticut. We loved Connecticut. So we got a place in Connecticut up in Windsor.

And I started working for this company, RDP Group. And RDP Group produced conventions. So I was actually working on a dog and cat show, like a pet expo at the garden. But there was this guy in the corner. And he like had a partnership with the owner, but I didn't know how it worked. But he was working on a porn convention. So I was like, that's really interesting, you know. So 9-11 happened.

and 9-11 happened and like I guess when something like that happens, even though we didn't have any family in the buildings or like that passed away from it, we just wanted to be back home. You understand what I'm saying? So we wanted to be back home and I was the type of person that was like, well, if I could work for a company doing it, I'm going to do it myself. And by the way, I want to do porn because that guy was doing it and I'm 20 years old and that's fucking awesome. So I started a sex convention at 20 years old.

And I'll never forget, it was called the San Francisco Sex Expo. And you could Google this. I did it at the, on Market Street. You ever met San Francisco? Maybe when I was a kid. Yeah. So I did it on Market Street. So Market Street's the center of the LGBT world in San Francisco.

So I didn't do much research on the dates, but subsequently it was the same weekend as the gay and lesbian pride parade in San Francisco. So I'm thinking that if I have representation from that segment, I'll get more of a crowd, right? You would think. But I get there and like you can't walk in the streets. I don't know if you ever been seen something like this, but the gay and lesbian pride parade in San Francisco. is like bigger than the Macy's Day parade and Thanksgiving. You know, it's ginormous. So it took me, I was down the block for my convention center.

It took me two hours to walk to the convention center. And the worst feeling in the world for an event producer is to sit in an empty hole. And I did that my first time around. And, I mean, I had vendors that couldn't even get there type of thing because all this shit was going on. So that was my first experience. So now I was broke because I put it all on this. And I had no idea what I was going to do. So I went and started working for a investment company.

I became a stockbroker, essentially. I started doing that. Why San Francisco for your first one? Why didn't you just do that out here? It was surprisingly. It was really hard to get a venue that would take it. You know, that, you know, I needed a hundred, thousand square feet, you know, in a public area in a major city that would take a sex convention.

And nobody wanted to. So I started calling around. And San Francisco has always been like a really progressive market, you know, so I said, why not? You know, L.A. had a hundred of them. Vegas had them. And I thought San Francisco, because why not, you know? There's a really good meme I like that I came across years ago where it's like, don't

expect this, which is a crowded room. If you've never expected this, which is an empty room. And as a concert promoter, you know, back in the day, we've all had those nights. You put everything on the line and there's no one there. At least in my day and age, back then, we had online ticket sales by that point. So you knew it was going to be a tank night. But when I first started out, it was just there was no online ticketing. It was just if a snowstorm hit or rain, you were done.

Right. But there would be nights. I sold no tickets and 1,500 people would show up and it would be good. It's still like that. I mean, like, I've been producing conventions since. then and even it's still like that i i've had 25,000 people at a show and i've had 2,000 people at a show it's no matter what you do you could advertise a bunch and get nobody and you could advertise a little and get 20,000 people i mean in some respects it's a crapshoot you know the

weather and what's going on that weekend and everything else in the world you know but it's a fun business you know i've been. I've done 100 shows in my life, and I love doing it. I mean, on my business card, it says CEO, executive producer, professional socialites. I sit around and I travel the world and I take people out to dinner and I introduce people for a living. I think that's awesome, you know? Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah.

So you go into the investment world. So I go into the investment world and I get my license and I start working for an investment company. And I start doing really, really well. and I'm making a ton of money and I don't like working for people. So I said, screw this. I'm going out of my own. So I went on my own and I opened up in office and I hired six or seven brokers and they're working for me and I'm making $350, $400, half a million a year and I'm in my mid-20s,

you know, I'm like, I'm doing well, you know. And I used to have this one client. All my clients were based out. out of state most of them, but I had this one client in New York, and we would go out to lunch every time. He was the general gambler. He loved the market. And we were sitting at breakfast one day, and I said, I got to get out.

He said, what do you mean you got to get out? You're making a stupid amount of money. You're in your mid-20s. You have a fantastic business. Where are you going? You know? I said, I just don't like going to work anymore. Like, I just don't like fucking going to work anymore, you know?

He said, well, what are you going to do? and I wanted to do a sex convention in New York. I had this in the back. I had to do this. I couldn't get it out of your life. You had to try. You had to see it through. So I pitched him the idea.

He was like, well, I have a lot of ties to New York. So I'd rather not do it in New York because of the industry. Can we do it somewhere else? I said, he said, well, what if I see somebody I know at the show? I said, well, you're investing in the show. He's at the fucking show. Who's the bigger pervert? You know, that type of thing.

So he told him he turned around. later in the conversation, she was like, would you take private money? I said, fuck, yes, I would like to take private money.

So he wrote me a check for 350 grand. Really? Wow. So I did, I opened up a brand and I started ecstasy. It was E-T-E-T-A-C-Y.

That was the name of it. And we had our first show in 2010 in Chicago. We had 20,000 people there. And it was the first time something's ever been like there in Chicago. since like the 80s. It was incredible. But we had, I mean, we had full nudity.

We did a fuck a fan. You know, like, we did a lot of things that, like, mainstream, like the Avian Awards won't do. So I did that for, between conventions and, like, doing, like, tours. I did tours for porn chicks and we went to different adult shops and different strip clubs and did feature tours and the whole thing. Did that for about off and on about eight years. years, nine years. So fast forward, my ex-wife, the mother of my children, really wasn't crazy about that industry, to say the least. So I got out and I started working for cable vision.

You know cable vision? I've heard of it, yeah. Yeah. So I started working for cable vision. I was that guy that if you went to Fios, I would knock on your door and at six o'clock in night while you're eating dinner and say, you want to switch back to cable. Great job, by the way. It was the, if you're going to work for somebody, that's the job you want. I worked pretty much four hours a day, made $150,000 a year. With the RAM Declaration of Deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the American people, with great deals on the RAM 1500. Back with the legendary Hemi V8 and the RAM heavy duty.

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Air weave is where ancient wisdom meets state-of-the-art technology. Discover more at air weave.com. They paid that much? Well, it was, yeah, their big thing is acquisitions. So we were like the crem della crem of the sales force because we were door-to-door guys, you know? So, you know, we went to people's houses, and that's when the Fios and Capovision Wars were really going crazy.

We went to people's houses, and we would knock and give us. Give them everything we could for free. And for that, we just got crazy commissions. Like, there were times that I was making, you know, six, seven, eight hundred bucks of sale, selling cable, saving them money from the kid. It was the best job in the world, the best job in the world. So, but again, I wanted to own my own business. I'm not, I can't work.

I'm a terrible employee, terrible. So me and my ex-wife at the time were having a lot of problems. and we were just about to get divorced. And I quit Cablevision. And I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do at this point. So we get divorced. And I just quit smoking. And I just quit smoking.

And I was hanging out in this vape lounge. My friend, I became friendly with this guy. And it wasn't like a vape shop where you go and you buy a shit and you leave. It was like a bar where, you know, you would go in. They had a pool table there. And we would always be joking around. We would order food there. And it was just like I would go there and kill a few hours.

And I became friendly with the guy. And so he was like, I bought this. And he made his own juice and stuff. And he was like, I bought this booth at a vape convention they're doing in Jersey. I know you used to produce conventions. And I've never done a show before. So could you kind of like tag along with me and help me? I was like, sure.

I'd love to see this anyway. So I go there and it's at the New Jersey Convention Center in, right over the bridge over there. And I walk in and it's just a fucking disaster. I mean, nothing is happening the way it needs to happen. You know, it's just, it's a disaster. The mayor actually came in on the Saturday and stopped the entire convention for indoor smoking. So it was a fucking disaster. So I was like, I'm going to do a vape convention.

So I said, where in the Northeast could I do a vape convention where I could smoke inside because everyone's not smoking? And I said, well, the casinos in Connecticut are really the only places because it has a ton of people and you're allowed to smoke inside. So let's do that. So I called up Foxwoods. And again, I don't have a, I have, I barely have rent money at this point. I called up Foxwoods and I get a rep on the phone.

And I was like, how much do you need to? secure dates. They were like five grand. So I got off the phone. I begged barred and stole until I found five grand. I sent them five grand. And I'll never forget, one of my buddies, one of my, one of my friends came over with her laptop and I had my cell phone on my laptop. And I grinded the phones for hours every day, me and her. You know, we just grinded the phones. And I got my first big sponsor. And six months later, I had my first show. We had 17,000 people at my first show. And every three months after that for eight years or so or seven years, I did a convention. And we always had good conventions.

My biggest conventions were always in Connecticut because that was my home base. So, COVID hit. And it was two weeks before my biggest show, we moved to Mohican Sun because they just built a big convention center. It was a big show at a year for me. I have 25,000 people coming to this convention. COVID hit. My rep calls me up. I never forget, I'm going to visit a client in New Hampshire.

And my rep calls me up. He was like, you hear about this? I was like, yeah, I heard about it. What are we doing? He was like, well, I think we should bump at two weeks. And a year and a half later, a year and a half later goes by, nothing, you know, two weeks

started into that. And we're in gloves and waiting online for toilet paper, you know? So I came up with this idea. So I was instantly out of business, you know. So I started, I'm really into poker. So I started a, you know, those online poker clubs. I started one of those. And I stopped the poker bros clubs.

And that got me through COVID pretty much. But I had to get back to business. So I said to myself, I said, where can we do an experience like this, but not involve consumers because we can't have consumer events and where could we kind of make the same connections. So I'm talking to my friend and we're like, well, why don't you take buyers, people who own distros or retail shops and take vendors who make, who manufacture goods and go to a really cool location in the Caribbean, you know, go to an all-inclusive resort, and have one-on-one meetings with the buyers and the vendors and just party and hang out and,

you know, drink for a week and everybody makes money. I said, that's a fucking awesome ideal. Let's do it. So I went on my own and I did it. Now, I went on my own and did it. And it was super, super crazy successful. It was great. And we were doing, I think four or five a year.

We were doing them every two, three months. I mean, they were great. know, we had 20 vendors, 20 buyers. No, I didn't have to worry about getting 25,000 people at a show. I had, I knew who was coming, and that's what it was. We would go to, go to DR, we would go to Chicago, no, we would go to Jamaica, and we would go to Mexico, and we would go get 60 rooms at an all-inclusive resort, and we would go there, and we would just hang out and drink and party and chill for, you know, weeks.

Now, during COVID, the vape industry and the marijuana industry kind of merged. It became counterculture, not vape, or not marijuana. It just became counterculture. So glass came into it and weed came into it and then Delta 8 sprung up as more states were getting legal. So we had both vape. We had both vape vendors and then like Delta 8 and Glute. glass and smoke shop vendors coming along with smoke shop owners and distro's coming. So seven events went really, really well.

And we were at the eighth one. We were about three days in. And shipping my vendors shipped like samples and promo items and hats and t-shirts and bullshit to the shipping company who was based in Miami who had an office in DR, who I was introduced to through a vendor, to. to, and they would all ship it. And then the shipping company would palletize it and ship it to the resort. Cool.

I told my vendors, I didn't see a box or pack a box or anything like that. Told my vendors, don't ship anything illegal in DR. We're cool, you know, like I'll go sign for it. It went through customs. It's not like I was going on a fucking banana boat, you know, just going through customs, you know. So I go to sign for it. and I have 20 Dominican DEA agents pointing machine guns at my head, you know. And I'm shitting my pants because I've never been in a pair of handcuffs before my life, you know.

It's intense. And I don't speak the language, you know. And so they arrest me. And they bring me, I don't know if you have, they ever been to the R? No. So Punta Kana is on one end of the island where all the resorts are, right? and Santo Domingo is the capital, which is about four hours away,

three and a half hours away. So they bring me, they drive me from Punta Canna to Santo Domingo in like a convoy in the middle of the night. I have no fucking idea what's going.

Zero. I have two guys with machine guns that next to me, prosecutor in the front seat. It's like mayhem to four or five cars, you know, in a row. And they bring me

to this drug enforcement it's called the DNCD, and they bring me to this drug enforcement like holding cell. So we're there for the night, and my ex-wife, my second wife at the time, she's in DR, and she has this, her father has a best friend whose wife, whose wife is Dominican. And the wife has an uncle who's a lawyer. So my ex-wife calls me up and says, well, so-and-so has an uncle that's a lawyer. He's a big lawyer in DR. We're just going to let him handle it.

It shouldn't be more than a couple days. So we have to go. The next day, we go to the prosecutor's office in Santo Domingo. So it's the cops, the NCD agents bring me and my ex-wife and my travel agent with the lawyer go to the prosecutor's office. So me and my ex-wife are sitting at one desk with my travel agent. And my lawyer and the prosecutor are sitting at the desk right in front of us. And we have no idea what the fuck is going on because they're speaking Spanish. So long story short, they bring.

me out in handcuffs and I was like, am I leaving? Am I staying? What exactly is happening here? So I get brought to this other jail. Now, just as a prelude, I haven't cried in 25 years. I'm not a crier. I'm a sensitive guy, but I'm not a crier by any means. And I'm hysterical this entire time. I have no idea what's going on. Zero. And I go to this, like, you know, right because you know right because i don't it's like a it's like a before you go to real jail it's like a county jail type of setting like a county like a holding type of thing yeah and i get put in there and again i don't know nobody speaks english zero and they're kind of like showing me where to go and whatever going through the motions but i don't know what's going on so my ex-wife either i i get to

call her, right? I call her and they're saying that the prosecutor said to my lawyer that if we give them $140,000, this all goes away. Like the fucking wild west, right? So I didn't have 140 grand at the time. And the lawyer was like, no, fuck this. I'll see you in court. We're going to get this dropped. So now, in Dominican Republic, you're supposed to see a judge in 48 hours. Well, we went to court 48 hours after this happened, but we didn't see a judge because there was no translator assigned for me. The court didn't sign a translator, so I have to know what's going on. So now they rescheduled it for a week later. So now I'm in jail nine days. I have no idea. I have no idea. what I'm being booked with.

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slash Locked In 50 off and use code Locked In 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's factormeals.com slash locked in 50 off and code locked in 50 off for 50% off plus free shipping. Trust me, your body and your schedule will thank you. And guys, let's be honest, 50% off is way too good of a deal to pass up to at least try it. So give it a try, head to factor. Now let's get back into this absolutely insane episode. Were you safe in there? Like where the inmates are looking at you any type of way? I was the gringo, but, and later in the story we'll get to this, but it was very apparent that they could extort me and they could charge me more for things, but they couldn't touch me. It was very, that was kind of the rule, you know, they weren't to touch me.

It was not to get harmed because they knew that's when the embassy would get involved. So nine days and we have this lawyer and I don't know what's going on. So we go to court and I thought, this is where I thought I'm going home. This is, I'm going home now. So we went to court and we have, we finally have a translator. they tell me I'm being booked for international narcotics trafficking. I had D.8 pens, man. I had D.A. pens and a few gummies.

They weren't even mine. So the judge gives me two months in jail for like, for the, they didn't give me bail because they thought I was a flyer risk for the prosecutor or the DA to, prepare their case. So that's where we are now. And so we go back to this, I guess, Rikers Island type of place. And now when I went to jail, I'll show you pictures. I was 323 pounds. I was big. I was a big guy. I've always been a big guy. But I wasn't eating because number one, I've never been in jail. Number two, I don't eat that. You know, that's not what we eat, you know? What was the food there? What was that like? It was dirty and it was

just like a lot of rice and like weird looking meat, man. You know, like I don't, I don't even know what it was, but I wasn't eaten it. You know, so I, you know, they had a little tiny commissary in there where you put $40. My lawyer would put $40 a week or whatever it was. And I would buy crackers and cookies. And that's what I would eat. You know, that's what I eat. So about three weeks, I got really friendly with this guy who was being paid off by my lawyer.

He was a prison guard and he kind of watched me and that I wasn't. and getting killed or hurt. Embassy still hasn't been there, by the way. So about three weeks later, I go to court. No, I go to, I get a call. Everybody calls like, we're being transferred. Now, I'm freaking the fuck out because I don't want to go to like a big prison. I'm scared.

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm crying, you know, like that's what my life is. I spoke to my kids a few times. I didn't know what's going on, you know. So the guy, the guard, whom I'm friendly with, says, don't worry, your case is not going to be delayed or anything. Because I didn't know maybe if I go to a bigger prison, maybe my case is going to be delayed. Maybe this is turning into an actual case. Wait, I screwed up.

While we were at the two-month hearing or whatever that first court appearance was, my lawyer at the time goes on television. He calls all these reporters in Dominican Republic and goes on television, reporters waiting in the courtroom and outside. And my lawyer tells them that the district attorney tried to extort us for $140,000 and planted ecstasy in the in the in the in the in the palette. Now, I don't know much about Dominican law, but that's not good for us. because, I mean, you take a corrupt country and you add accusing a corrupt district attorney of planting drugs, I can't, under any circumstance, I don't see it being good. So now we're going to the big jail. And this guard is telling me, don't worry, they have smartphones in there.

and you could you could smoke pot, you could smoke cigarettes, and, you know, it's a lot easier of an atmosphere. All right, but I'm still not thrilled because I want to go home to my kids, you know? So I go, we get to this prison, right? And, you know, I told you, I was up and middle and come coming home.

And when I was always doing the shows, I was going to five time and resumed. sorts. And I was doing really well. I took my, I had a $150,000 wedding, you know, like I lived an okay life. I wasn't wealthy, but I was very comfortable. So I was always more of like a Ritz-Cranton type of guy instead of, you know, this. So we get there and there's cockroaches the size of your feet, you know, like rats, like house cats, you know, like that type of thing. And like, the first jail was cleaner than the second jail. Whereas, like, for six months I was reusing plastic spoons type of thing.

Like, there was not, like, it was bad. So we get there and we get, they kind of like bring me through the process. They questioned me. It was like an intake kind of thing. And this guy comes, and his name was Montero. He was, so at this jail, there are, there's like a packing order with, like, security guards and like, whatever. So there was this guy at the top who was five stripes. He had five stripes on his collar.

Then there was, and he was the director. He was the top guy. He ran the prison. Then there was two guys under him that alternated weeks who had four stripes. They were subdirectors. So when they were there, they were basically in charge of day-to-day stuff. So Montero was a four-stripe. So Montero came, and again, I don't speak in Spanish.

So Montero brought this guy Roy, who spoke English. And Roy is going to basically carry us through the rest of the story. So Roy spoke English, and he introduced me to Roy. He was an inmate. So Montero said, the way this goes is Roy is in general population. But before you get to general population, you have to go in like observation for two to three weeks. And I'm freaking out.

I'm like, number one, I shouldn't be here for one, two, three weeks. And number two, what the fuck is observation? And number three, where my, like, who's in a, like, is there anybody there that I could speak to? So they put me in, in the observation area, they called it the plancha. So it's kind of like the section of the jail where like it's kind of like the whole type of thing like that division. So Montaro's sitting there and I'm talking to him and he's letting me use his phone like on Google Translate because we don't we can't understand each other. So he's like, all right, let me think what I'm going to do. This is guy in maximum security in a section of this where I'm going of the jail.

he speaks English. I'll put you in the separate room. It's still in the same section of the prison, but you won't be an observation. It's a lot calmer, and it'll be maximum security, so just stay there until I can get you into general population.

Fine. So I meet this guy. His name is William. And William, he was in, I think he got deported from the U.S., but he was in there. It turned out to be a real dark bag.

So at this time, my ex-wife at the time, you know, she was already back in New York. My mother, the day after I got arrested, my mother got diagnosed breast cancer. And all I really have is my non-English speaking lawyer. And this guy, William, who I don't know from a hole in the wall. And I have no way to even get money. You know, like I can't get money in my commissary because it's not like the United States where you go on a fucking app and you put money in commissary. for somebody, you have to bring money to the jail.

And this jail was three hours away from Senator Domingo where my lawyer was so he couldn't even drop off, or two hours away from San Diego, so he couldn't even drop off money for me. So I had no money. You know, I didn't know what to do. So we figured out a way that if we sent, if my mother, Western Union to William, money, he his family would put it in my commissary and I would be able to eat cool seems good right so my mother or a friend or whoever my ex-wife at the time I did that sends William 200 bucks well I saw $50 you know so I'm getting ripped off already I'm just starting I'm getting ripped off

and you can't leave this room because it's maximum security. So we couldn't go outside. We went outside once a week. And like it looked like a scene out of like silence of lambs. Like when when we were walking around the basketball court or on the basketball court, there were 10 agents with machine guns watching us, you know, making sure we weren't leaving. It wasn't for me, but that's where they stuck me because of this guy. So now I go to the director. And the director was really sympathetic to my situation. Montero and the director kind of understood that I shouldn't have been there.

You know, like they kind of understood that this was just all a fucked up situation. So I said, look, I said, could you just put me in general population? We're about 10 days in. I said, you could just put me in general population. At least I'll be able to walk around. I'll be able to go out. I'll be able to, you know, like kind of have some sort of leeway. Now, mind you, phones aren't legal there.

but everybody has one, right? So he said, all right, I'll put you with the, I'll put you at Roy, make room in a cell, I'll put you at Roy, and he's a good guy, and it'll kind of show you the ropes. Now, I don't know how it is in prison in the United States, but it, in prison there, at least in this prison, there's four buildings, like General Pop buildings. And each building has a guard, one guard on it, who checks on the building from time to time. We'll get into that soon too. But there's no guard in the building all day.

They kind of hang outside playing on their phones. It's absolutely fucking insane. So I get into this set. I get into this building. And the doors are open from six, third, like, you're not locked in yourself from like 6.30 in the morning till, 10.30 at night. And the building is open. You can go to different floors and stuff like that all day until 7.30 a night. And the building itself is open from like 8.30 a.m. to 11. And then they close for lunch. And then from like 1.30 to 4.30. And then they close basically for the night. And in your building.

but you can still go from floor to floor and whatever. So I get in there and I see, I mean, everybody's smoking pot and doing coke and smoking cigarettes and everybody has a phone. I was like, what the fuck is going on here? This is not how I pictured jail. I mean, it's very third world, though. It's very dirty. It's very, I'm not racist at all. I'm the only white guy there.

You know, I'm like, that's it. You know, I'm it. Everybody's staring at me, you know. What are you wearing? Crocs and shorts and a t-shirt or tanked up. Your clothes that you came in with still? Uh-huh. Yeah, I've heard about that in a lot of foreign countries.

Yeah, there's no presidential clothes. Yeah. You just get capped with that the whole time there. Yeah, and people could drop off clothes and stuff like that. So I say to Roy, I say, well, is there any way I get a phone? he said, yeah, you can buy a phone, you know, like you could buy a phone, but just know that the cops catch you. Not only are you going to get the phone taken, but you're going to go in the hole and like

the real hole. All right. So, but Roy said, look, I'll help. I'll help with that whole situation. We'll have, you know, a hiding spot. And, you know, when everybody, when the cops are called in the building, when the, when the cops come in the building, everybody screams, you know, screams Leo, you know, like wearing that everybody's, that the cops are in the building.

All right. So get me a phone, you know? So he gets me a phone from whoever had one at the time, not from like one of the drug dealers, because that would have taken a few days. I wanted a phone then because I had to call my kids. I had to call my mom. You know, I had to call my wife at the time. And so I got a phone rather quickly.

And we, I started to make phone calls and like, it was very like high pressure because even if the guard was to come in the building once, it was like hang up the phone, put it away, pretend like you're jerking off. And, and, you know, just, you know, that's the way it was. Now, I'll show you a picture also. one of the things I also saw is all the inmates, they carried around these fucking machetes. This, I mean, the size of my arm, that they would make out of the beds, the bunk beds. So they would cut off a piece of the metal,

and they would file it down to make these big machetes and then wrap it with the elastic from your underwear at the bottom. Like it's a handle. It was fucking wild, man. And, like, and again, I've never been in prison. So I'm, like, really intimidated by this because all I'm looking at is violence. And I look different than everybody else and I don't speak the language. So if I wanted to understand anything, Roy had to translate for me.

But at the same time, he's not going to be there all the time. He works for the kitchen or whatever it was. And I don't even trust Roy because Roy is in jail. You know, Roy got the story where Roy is, Roy was part of the, this organized crime syndicate in like drug syndicate in New York. He did 14 years federal time and he murdered people. He did 14 years federal time and got deported back to Dominican Republic and then was in Dominican Republic for five years, hit his daughter or something and then got 10 years in DR. This summer AG jeans looks to California wine country for

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Conditions apply. I'm supposed to trust this fucking guy, you know, from what I know at this point. And you're not even sentence or anything just mixed in with all. All these people. Unpreventative. Yeah.

So here's a little fact. In DR. So in this jail, it was called Nahu 20. In Nauio 20, there were 800, just shy of 800 inmates. 500 of them are pretrial, preventative. So these people haven't even been trial yet. And everybody's mixed in. So not only was I sharing a room with him, but I was also sharing a room, a cell.

with a guy that was doing 30 for murder. You know, like there was no separation, you know. I was bringing vape pets, you know. That's, you know. So now I get a phone and I could at least call my mother. I could at least call my kids. I could call my ex-wife. And we were starting to have a lot of problems.

So I go to, so I'm freaking out. And I don't know what to do. And I don't have any. access to money because my soon-to-be ex-wife at that time was basically hoarding it because she didn't know what was going on. And so I was calling my mother. My mother got diagnosed with cancer and she was starting her thing soon. So I didn't know what to do. Like I was completely lost. I tried to call a few friends like that I trusted. And there were 17. vendors that send stuff in that palette.

Now, just to give you a broad overview, and we're getting into the story, obviously, not one of them during the entire time that I was there, picked up the phone, called my mother, or answered my calls when I did finally get their number, or say to my ex-wife or my mother, you know what, here's five grand, he's in there because of our shit. Let's get him the fuck out of there. that didn't happen so my mother you know my mother's

73 years old she runs her business but she's not wealthy she's you know she just manages you know that's what she does you know so she doesn't have a ton of money but my mother's an absolute rock star so she didn't even like pay attention

to her own cancer she was more consumed with the fact that I was in fucking jail in a third world so So we go to, so now days are going by and I'm counting the days till this next court, you know. And the embassy finally comes about two or three weeks into me being in this new prison. These two guys come.

And one is going to be my regular rep. His name is Jose, who's a Dominican citizen, but I think he has dual citizenship. He speaks English. He knows kind of the world over there. But he's Dominican. And, you know, he's kind of like, I forget what his position was, but he's like kind of, he works for the embassy, but he's kind of the intermediary between Americans and Dominicans that are locked up. So he brings another person who's American, who's white, you know, who's like an American. And they sit down.

I'm literally bowling my eyes out. crying to them saying, what are you guys going to do? You know, how could you, you guys have to help me. I told them the whole story. I said, you know, I don't have a record. I'm a taxpayer in the United, I run a straight business. You know, I don't know what to do. So they say, well, we can't do anything.

All we could do is that you're, we can't interfere with this country because it's an independent nation. And all we could basically do. is come here, make sure you're not getting hurt, you're not getting mistreated, and make sure that the legal process goes according to the legal process. So I'm alone. You know, I'm alone. I got, and they brought me this little bag and it had like hotel soaps. I never forget this. They had hotel soaps and it had like a deodorant, like a small trial size deodorant, like, like a roll of toilet paper.

And I looked at the guy and I was like, I don't want your fucking toilet paper, man. I get my own toilet paper. I just, I want to, I need your help. Well, we can't do anything. We can't do anything. Now, just to pause for a second. Did you hear during COVID about these three Haitian green card holders in the United

States? I don't think so. Okay. So there were these three Haitian brothers who moved to America with their father. They were in Florida. And during COVID, they went to Santo Domingo for like a vacation. The story is, this is the story. They rented a car. They went to a gas station. The gas station saw something underneath the car, called the cops. Cops showed up. They found three pounds of weed underneath the car. got arrested. The father called up a congresswoman or a news reporter or whatever it may be, but it got on the news and a congresswoman got involved.

These three kids were out of jail in two weeks. But that's a congresswoman in the state department. So why can't the embassy help me? Right or wrong? So I tell this to the embassy. Well, there were different circumstances without. What different circumstances? They got caught red-handed with drugs.

I was signing for a package. And didn't know what the fuck was mine. Well, they're claiming that that wasn't theirs and it was under the car when they rented it and this, that and the other. Well, I'm not claiming anything. You saw me sign for a package. It wasn't even addressed to me. It was addressed to my vendors attention to my group. So why can't you help me?

And I'm begging for their help. we'll see what we can do, you know, the checks in the mail type of thing. And so I figure out that in jail, especially for a gringo, everything's money, everything. And it's not like it's a ton of money. So like, so they sell, like, there's drug dealers and stuff like that and they sell everything. but like they have little 100 peso bags of cocaine. I don't know if you know, the peso, 100 pesos is like $1.50, you know, like,

but, you know, every time somebody, you know, did something, anything, picked up a cigarette fee. You had to give them 100 pesos worth of cocaine. You know, that's how it was because I was a gringo. And I was, I was well, so their impression, I don't know if you know this, But their impression of the United States is, if you're from America, you're rich. That's just the way it is.

You know, everything, you know, you go to America and there's just trees with money on them. And that's what you do, you know. And that's how it is. So everybody looks at the gringo to kind of like milk him for everything he's worth. And this is not just other inmates. This is lawyers. and this is judges and this is everybody. So at this point, everything I want to do costs money.

Like if I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, not only were the cigarettes more expensive for me, but I had to get somebody to go get me the cigarettes, which also cost me money. So everything was money. And I had to pay somebody to take my phone when they called that the cops were in the building. And I had to pay somebody to hand wash my clothes because they didn't have any

washers or dryers. And I had to pay somebody, you know, to clean the room, you know, and I had to pay somebody. Everything was just money and money and money. So I'm having a lot of problems with my ex-wife, soon to be ex-wife at the time. And she's talking about money and this than the other. So the story is she hacks into my social media account. and sees things that she wasn't supposed to see. And in my opinion, she uses this as a scapegoat to leave.

So not only does she leave, but she calls up my friends and my vendors and my buyers and just tells them that I'm the biggest fucking dart bag in the world because I supposedly cheated on her and this, that, and the third. Now, mind you, my lawyer is friends of that family, right? So I'm faced with the fact that I'm getting divorced and that's tough to swallow, but it is what it is at this point, right? I have no choice. It is what it is.

My concern is getting home to my kids. So now my ex-wife cuts off all communication with me and her stepfather takes over. So in my ex-wife's family, it's a hierarchy. The father and the mother are the bosses, even when we were married. You know, they say jump, you say how high, and that's just the way it is. They're European, so that's, I guess, the culture. So now the stepfather doesn't allow me to talk to my lawyer directly. He has to be the intermediary between me and my lawyer.

lawyer. And that got awkward real fast, you know? I mean, not only did it get awkward, he don't like me, because I cheated on his baby, you know, or his daughter, but now he has to kind of inconvenience himself to be the intermediary between me and my lawyer. But I told him, I said, let me talk to my fucking lawyer, stay out of it. Well, he doesn't want to talk to you directly. I'm going to talk to him. You're going to talk to me and I'll answer any questions. This is how it was. So this made me more anxious because not only do I not understand the language and I'm in this place and I'm being extorted and threatened by everybody, but now I can't even talk to my fucking lawyer. So me and him have a huge blow up one day through text messaging. And I said, fuck you. I'm getting another attorney.

I can't live like this. And I kind of knew this was building up. So I started talking to this guy. His name was Santana, right? Right, like every other one. And he tells me that he has the ability for $50,000 to make a deal with the judge, to make a deal with the prosecutor. And all this goes away at,

my next hearing. Okay. So my next hearing's like two days away, so I don't have time to do it then, so I would have to do it the next one or whatever it is. So my next hearing gets there, the two months are up, and my bus to the court was two hours late, so they postponed it. Right. For another two months.

It was another two months. So now I'm fighting with Johnny I get this guy Santana who's putting this shit in my head that I'm getting out. I'm getting out. So

he tells this guy Santana now my mother and me and like we're on this mission to raise this 50 grand because we don't have it

you know like we don't have it. We're already into Johnny the first lawyer for like 30 that I had, you know, that I came up with between my mother and me, whatever it is, you know, before me and my ex-wife started fighting, she put, you know, she put in some money I had.

And now it's another 50. So we're running all over the place. Now, you can't do, I don't know if you know this, but you can't do a wire to, from America to Dominican Republic. You can, but it takes two weeks. There's no instant wiring system. It's a third world fucking country. the banking system is third world also.

So if I wire it today, it's going to get there a week from next Tuesday. You know, like, that's how it is. So not only do we have to figure out how to get the money, we had to figure out how to get the money there. So we figured out that we could send Western Union. But we can't send Western Union. We can't send 50 grand Western Union. That can't happen. We have to send $1,000 50 times or $1,500, 50 fucking 30 times.

So now, not only are we begging people for money, but we're trying to find people to go with my mother to Western Union to send the fucking money. So now, if my timeline's correct, it's somewhere two months, two months. It's like November, right, of last year. And of 2020. 23. Okay. Yeah, it's 23. And the date's approaching, and we finally get the money.

And we get 25 fucking people to send Western Union. So my mother comes here. My mother comes to the R. And she brings the last 10,000, because you can bring 10,000 on a plane without them saying anything. So she brings the last 10,000. and meets the attorney. The attorney says, everything's done.

We got to deal with the judges. We got to deal with the lawyer. We got to deal with the prosecutor. We're paying them the money. Everything's Gucci. My court day comes. My bus is two hours late again. And my lawyer is not at the court when we get there.

And he told my. mother that he doesn't want that judge or he wanted a different problem. Something happened where he even wanted to postpone it. So now I don't have my lawyer with me and they're trying to explain to me in Spanish that it's getting postponed, but not only getting postponed, it's getting postponed until January 15th. So now I'm missing Christmas with my kids and my son and my kids' birthdays. So I am absolutely fucking hysterical, hysterical. And I get back to the jail and I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

You know, like, I don't understand what's happening here. So my mother comes to DR for, she finishes her chemo. And she comes to DR for six weeks. she wanted to she wanted to kind of be there and she wanted to figure out everything and she wanted to basically be there through the holidays, you know,

for me. So two days after the court appearance, I see this thing on Facebook, on Instagram. And now remember the guard I told you about at the first prison? That was nice to me. referred me Santana.

And he said, he's going to get you out. But I see this thing on Instagram, and I didn't know what it, so you know when you put a picture on and it has like words in the picture, you can't use Google, translate to translate that. So I'm trying to figure out how to translate that. And Roy wasn't around and I see this. And something didn't look kosher about this. So long story short, it turns out that Santana dies with my 50 grand.

Does he actually die? Or you don't know to this day. My 16-year-old thinks he never died. But I know people that went to his funeral. I know people that say he didn't die either. So I don't know if he fucking, to this day, don't know if he dies. So now we have no money. And we're back at fucking square one.

Don't have a lawyer. And we're only three months, three and a half months into this thing, you know? So. Could have just paid the prosecutor off with that 50 grand side of good faith. Right. Right. But, you know, hindsight's 2020, you know. So now I'm sitting there and I don't know what to do because we don't, we've milked a lot of cows to get the 50 grand.

And I don't know, number one, where we're going to get the money. And number two, who we're going to use the representation. us. And number three, what the next steps are. It might deal even still in place with the judges and the lawyers and all this nonsense because now this guy's dead. I'm going to get to the court in January and this is all going to go away because he has this deal in place? Well, did he number one steal the money or the judges or the lawyers stole the money and told me to go fuck off because now this guy's dead and there's no proof of anything because everything was cash. So it's really close to Christmas. And my mother's there and she's coming. I got special permission from

the director at the time. Who is this lady that said my mother could come as much as she wanted? So she naturally came every day because she was in Dominican Republic for me. So every day if she wasn't going to interview lawyers, she would come to me. She would have to hire a driver and she had a translator at the time that she would have to pay. And she would come to see me. So I'm going upstairs one day to see her. And so I told you, there's four buildings. And the building across from me on the top floor, there's a maximum security section. But it's not maximum security because they did more extreme crimes because, again, I was with murderers that were doing 30.

There was maximum security because it was just more publicized or more in the eye of the public. So it was more protection for them, the prisoner, than it was for whatever. And those maximum security inmates were governed by these agents who were all dressed in black. Like you could tell, like there were security guards who handled the general public. And then there were these agents who were all dressed in black. They were like special agents who handled those guys. So there's like four or five of them upstairs. And that was normal, you know, so I saw them.

I always say hello or Ola. And I said hello and they turn around and they say, what's your name? And I told them my name. I thought it was just in passing. And my mother's not there yet. And they say, turn around. And they put me in handcuffs. Now, to preface this, while we're doing all this,

we're writing letters to anybody that will listen, congressman and, you know, more of the embassy and TV, like, you know, the news. Like, you know, the news. We're just trying to get somebody to listen to us and help us at this point. And I even wrote a few emails from my phone thinking that I'm writing emails to the U.S. government. So they're not going to tell on me that I have a phone in the third world country, right? You would think. So they tell me, they put handcuffs on me. and six of them are now walking with me,

and I don't know where I'm going, but it looks like I'm going towards my cell. I said, where is my mother? I'm here for a visit for my mother. It's just standard protocol, standard protocol, standard protocol. So we go to my cell, and I hit my phone with a friend upstairs, my drug dealer friend upstairs,

because I didn't have anybody to watch my phone, so I gave it to him. So my phone wasn't in my cell. So they bring me to my cell, and they're tearing apart my cell, tearing apart myself. Where's the phone? Where's the phone? Where's the phone?

I said, I don't have a fucking phone. There's no phone in there. So they can't find the phone. But the story is that supposedly, you know Chuck Schumer is? Yeah. So we wrote Chuck Schumer. And supposedly Chuck Schumer's office contacted somebody there and supposedly said, I wrote an email.

and that's where they got the idea that I had a fucking phone. So now they put me an observation again. Now, they didn't put me in the maximum security because I had a problem with the guy in there, and this was a punishment because they think I have a phone, but they can't find it. But they can't put me in the hole because they can't prove I have a phone. So they put me in this observation where all the new inmates go to be observed.

So now I'm an observation, and I'm an observation, and I'm, I don't, I'm in this little small room and there's 30 other guys in there and I don't know them and none of them speak English. So I don't have a phone. I get my hands on one of these little phones like the jail phones. Like, you remember the old Nokia phones? Yeah, I used to have one. Yeah. I get my hands on one of those to call my mother.

So we interviewed attorneys and I can't really speak to my mother. because we're taking turns on the phone and we're interviewing attorneys and I don't have much feedback. And at the time, my mother called my father and he's getting involved because now he has to help me with money because to get a new attorney, right? So I get my hands on these Nokia phones and I'm talking to my mother and my kids once a day. That's what I'm getting, you know? Meanwhile, before that, I was talking to them. I was talking to my kids two, three times. day when I was talking to my mother, you know, 100 times a day, because she was really the only, her and my best friend stuff are the only people that I could really, like, open up to. You know, I can't open up to my kids because my kids, my oldest son at the time knew I was in jail, but he's a really anxious kid. So I can't make him worry, right? And my, my 12-year-old, 10 at the time, he couldn't, he didn't even know I was in jail. We told him that I was having a problem with my passport. So he thinks, I'm chilling in a resort, you know, just waiting for my passport to get fixed.

So I can't open up to them. So I really only have my mother and I have my best friend. And maybe, you know, a few other people like every so often I would speak to. So my mother and my father end up hiring this like, I guess you would call them a Fifth Avenue attorney in America. But like this really high priced attorney. who I didn't like. I met him once. I didn't like them.

But they were kind of like, this is the best. Let's just get the best. And let's give them 30 grand. And let's just get them the fuck out of here. Right. So they hired this lawyer. And the lawyer calls the jail and somehow after six days gets me out of observation.

So I get back to, I get back to my. jail cell. Ed. I'm charging my phone in the front. So there's like this, I guess, you want to call it a living room area, but there's no couch or there's just a TV or whatever. There's concrete slabs that you sit on.

And I'm charging my phone. I walk away for a minute and come back and my phone's gone. So somebody steals my phone. And they tell me they stole it my phone and they're extorting me for 5,000 pesos, which is 100 bucks. But it wasn't the fact about the $100. It was just somebody's fucking extorting me for money now or more and doing it right to my face. So now I get my phone back and they have these.

So there's no outlets in the cells because there's no reason for an outlet in a cell, right? But there are these fans or if you're lucky, you get a fan. But Roy had a fan. And it's fucking hot. It's even hot. Like when I left, it was 90 degrees there. It's hot. And there's no air conditioning.

And have you ever sweat to the point where it hurts? I don't know about sweat. No, you sweat and it hurts. Like it feels like pins and needles almost. It's really terrible. This is what was going. This is what goes on. So there's this fan.

And in the fan, there's obviously like the wires to hook up the fan. There wasn't an outlet, but there was like copper wires took up the fan. So they learned that if you extended the copper wires outside of the fan while the fan was running, you could buy copper wire on the black market of the jail, like a spool of copper wire. And you can wrap that copper wire in garbage bags, right? and connect it to like a plug, like a block and have a cable and that will charge your phone. Right?

This is a fucking fire hazard waiting to happen. I didn't even want to touch the thing. We did crazy shit to charge it in the feds too. Right. And like the seal lights like this. Yeah. Was it similar to what I just explained? Yeah.

And then they would have, the MP3 player would be like a, the federal MP3 player. They would sell like the sand disk. Really? would be the connector piece that you had to plug into that, which that then plugged into the light. That was like the conduit. But was it, that was a legal item.

The MB3 player was legal, but the guys at the factory would convert it into this contraband charger. The cell phone was illegal. Okay. But the reason why they didn't have iPhones there was because you can't take an iPhone battery pack out. Right. So if you charge the battery separately, it gets popped.

You pay $400 for a new battery rather than $4,000 for a new phone. Right. I get it. So, yeah, so now we have these chargers and we have, I buy one to put in my room. But now, if they call Leo, if they call that the cops are coming in, it's an extra step. You know, it's that you have to disconnect the phone. You have to pull the fucking thing down. Sometimes there will be sparks flying everywhere.

It's all fucked up. And meanwhile, every time they call Leo, I don't know what the cops are coming in for. I don't, I'm shitting my pants because, you know, because now I have to move this. and give it to people and all this, that, and the other. Now I'm paranoid because if I give it to somebody, I might get stolen again. So the, so now, where am I? I lost my train of thought.

With the phone charger and then the law enforcement running in. Yeah, so the law enforcement runs in. So I find people, I'm paying more people to, to go, you know, to take my phone. Now, the way it worked was my mother. would send Roy, my friend, his family money, Roy's family would put it in my commissary, or just send it to the drug dealer who I had to pay. So they didn't have cash at the jail. They had tickets.

So even if I was to get cash, I couldn't use it. I had to get tickets. So what we would do is we would send the money to the drug dealers because they had a lot of tickets because everybody would pay with their commissary tickets. to buy drugs. So we would have to pay the drug dealers because I was buying cigarettes because they didn't have any vaping there, which were illegal. Cigarettes were illegal.

Everything was illegal. And so I would buy the cigarettes from the drug dealers, but I would also buy drugs for everybody who was helping me. It was costing me $200 a week to even fucking be there. And now I'm paying for protection. I'm paying it. I'm doing the whole bit. So we're now we're shopping for a turn.

We have the attorney. Great. And now the attorney is, he's expensive, but he's not corrupt. He's not paying judges. He's not paying lawyers. He's not doing anything. He's getting me off because he's a fucking great attorney. And my whole thought process is, I don't really give a fuck if he's a great attorney.

Just get me the fuck home to my kids. So I would call the attorney. And I'm not going to lie and say I didn't call the attorney too much. But again, it was the only person I could fucking talk to who I semi-trusted because, and I had a lot of questions because I really didn't know the system. I didn't know the process. I didn't know the system. I didn't know why I was still there. I didn't know anything.

So I would call the attorney and he would kind of tell me, you know, this is what we think is going to happen. And we think you could be out by. Um, by, uh, like June. I was like, fucking June. Fucking June. You know, that's a year, you know, like, what the fuck June? You know, I, I want to go home. I mean, for four or five months already.

I'm, I want to go home. So we get to, we're putting together the other strategy. And he's doing all his research, builds files, does all this bullshit. And I get into it. argument with him and I'm like, I don't think you're the guy for me, you know, he, because he basically is telling me not to call him. Like, just, you know, this is what the deal is and just wait. I was like, get me out of here. I need to be out of here. I'm being threatened every day. I did, you know, like, I'm, I'm, I feel unsafe. I'm not eating. There were days where I would

just pass out. Like, I would just almost get to the point of pass out because I wasn't eating. I was living off of Oreos and potato chips that I was buying from the commissary. There was no protein in my diet. And it was like, I couldn't, there were days that I couldn't get out of bed because I didn't have enough energy to get out of bed, you know, like I wasn't eating at all. I wasn't drinking. It didn't, the jail didn't have running water. So the jail would put on the water two times a day in the morning at like 6.30 in the

morning and then at night for 10 minutes each. Now, during that time, all the Dominicans were running in the shower room and shower. first of all, I'm not taking a shower with 40 Dominicans that have 14-inch cox slapping all over the place. That's not happening either. So I opted to take a shower by myself with a bucket, right? So we had to gather a bucket of buckets of water anyway because we had to flush down the toilet because the toilets weren't flushing.

So it was just there was no water, you know? So now I'm, you know, we're planning or whatever. it is and they're saying May June and I'm getting scared because I don't want to be here for another three months, four months, five months at this point. So I said, I'm getting rid of you. Right. So I fire that lawyer and my father allocated or somehow got his hands on 50 grand for me to do it. Now, this guy had 30. So this other lady comes along and. Her name was Capion. And she comes along and she says, well, I know the lawyers and I know the prosecutors and I know the judges.

Again, with the same fucking, you know, story, everybody's corrupt. We're all going to get out of this easy, easy, be easy. And if you give me 30 grand, no, first it was $10,000, I'll get you out. Next to court appearance you're out. So he said, all right, let's do that. I said, find out exactly what the deal is and let's move forward. So she calls me up and she's like, what they'll do is they'll do an agreement with you where you can get out now but have to come back to the country every month or two and sign, right?

Kind of like good behavior or early release or whatever it is. And that'll be like 12 or 15 grand. But if you want to go home, it's going to be 30 and stay home. So we had no way to get the money. We had no way to get the money. So we said, all right, here's the 12 or 15 grand. Just get me that. And I'll come back every month or two and just sign and leave.

All right. So we get to court. And I meet this other attorney who's willing to take the case for like five grand. And he's a really nice guy. Like he understands my case. He's younger. He's maybe a little newer, but he understands my case. And Capion wanted to work in the background either.

She didn't want to be in front of a judge. She just wanted to orchestrate the deals. So we hired this other guy who doesn't know anything about Capian. And he builds the case to make the argument to put on the show in front of the judge. So we get to court and Capillon's there. But just kind of standing with my. mother in the background, and the translator's there, and my lawyer's there, and we finally get to see the judge.

And the judge, and nothing happens. The judge just fucking postpones it again. So now I'm literally looking at nine months of postponement without even getting to see a judge or being heard or anything like that. So they postponed it. And now I realize Capriand's full of shit and I just lost another $12,000. So we say, fuck it. I'm the stick with this guy who's young.

I trust him. He understands the case. He knows how to argue it. So we go with this guy and I'm talking. And like he's even nice to the point where he would, he would like text me every day. You know, like, are you okay? You know, is everything okay? You know, could I do anything?

You know, could I bring you any money? Or, you know, like, he was just nice. He would get on the phone with my mother who had to get friends because she doesn't know how to use Google Translate or WhatsApp. So she would have to call, you know, go to her friend's house who spoke Spanish to call this guy three times a week to appease me to tell me that everything's going the way should be going. So we finally get to, after butts and butts of buds and buds. we finally get to now it's February of 24 and we finally get to my court date. This was pre-trial. We're going pre-trial.

We're going to be heard in front of a judge and the judge should be throwing this out. I should be able to go home now. So now the judge, my lawyer argues the points. We have my mother there. My mother's sitting bold with cancer. Right. So that has to be some sympathy. My lawyer's there.

I'm crying hysterical in court. And my lawyer's arguing. And my lawyer and the judge says, uh-uh, we're going to trial. Going to trial for international narcotics trafficking. So now it's setting in that I might be like, I'm facing 20 years. That's what I'm facing. That's the charge. I'm being charged with the same criminal acts as somebody smuggling cocaine from Columbia

to Dominican Republic. That's what I'm facing. So now they don't give you a trial date there. They say, go back to jail and fucking wait for a trial date. That's how it is. So now we start panicking, you know, because not only do I not have a trial date, but I'm facing a really long sentence. and we're writing more people. So we write the president of Dominican Republic, who I research, who grew up,

who is educated in the United States, he went to Harvard, he speaks English. So I write him a letter and send it to my father who's going to send it to him. So it doesn't come from me because I don't have an illegal phone. So I write up a letter and I kind of forget about it for a couple weeks because I don't hear anything. One Sunday morning I'm sitting in bed and they say someone's here to visit you. I say, well, my mother's not here. I don't have anybody here visiting me. Who's here?

I go upstairs and two kernels like presidential colonels are standing there and they start talking to me. And we're talking through Google Translate because they're. don't speak English. And they're like, I tell them my story. They have my file. And I tell them my story. And they were like, all right, we'll see if we could help you. Now, that was the first and last time I saw them or heard from them.

So now it's February. And I have no idea when I'm going to trial. I lost a lot of confidence my attorney because we're going to trial. And I don't know what to do. You know, like, I'm at Witt's end with this whole thing. So here comes this guy, Jose, who's another lawyer, right? And Jose's a real used car salesman. Like, he's just crem de la creme car salesman.

And he's promising the world over to my mother and to me. And we're hysterical. so we don't know what to do either. And he says that he'll get me a very similar to deal that Capulon, that Capulon's going to get me, where I would have to come back to DR. I'd go home right away, but I would have to come back to DR every month or two months, just a sign, and I could even take the same flight, same day flight back. Easy, be easy, fine, do it.

Let's do it. How much is it? So without drawing the story out even longer, we raise the money. We send the money. My mother brings money to hold the same thing. And we finally I hear a couple months pass and finally I hear that we're going to trial on July 3rd. July 3rd. So now we're a year and a month in, right?

So now again, I don't know whether I should be trusting this guy, Jose, either because he's just another out of the seven or eight attorneys I have by now. He's just another guy preaching the same fucking thing. I still have my original attorney. I'm the nice guy. But, you know, I'm using this guy kind of as let's back up type of thing. So. But with this. that being said, the embassy made arrangements because I was always late for court, the embassy

made arrangements for me to go to that jail that I first got locked up in because it was five minutes away from the court the day before. So with that being said, the day before, I was nervous. Don't get me wrong in. But like I had like a, like a little. sense of calm because I knew it was finally coming to a head. You understand what I'm saying. I was going to court. I was going to be on time for court. I supposedly had this deal and it was going to be over, no matter what, it was going to be over, right? So I get to court. My mother's standing there. My mother's driver's standing there. And my lawyer's standing there. My lawyer tells me, We're in the courtroom.

My lawyer tells my other lawyer that we're not going to have you represent him. And he's not going to represent me. But we want a district attorney. No, a public defender to represent me. And he knows this public defender. And we're like we're there. We're a trial. You know, like we're there.

So there's three judges. In Dominican Republic, there's no jury. So there's three judges. Instead, there's two women. And there's a guy. Now, I'm thinking to myself in the back, they give the opportunity to appoint this public defender that my crooked lawyer knows. And in the back of my head, I'm saying to myself, I'm sitting here crying. My mother's crying.

The two, I have to get to two women. The two women have to be on my side. They have to be mothers. They have to be some sort of, they have to have some sort of sympathy or empathy that this whole story is happening. So I'm hoping that I'm going to get their votes for me to go home. So the judge comes out. The judges come out and the prosecutor gets up and says, base, makes his own opening statement, says,

this is what the guy did. He wasn't, it's very clear that he's not trafficking. drug. He was, he did something wrong, but he didn't know what he was, he didn't know that he was doing anything wrong because he told his vendors not to ship anything. And please, please the court, give him mercy. That's the prosecutor saying this. They call three, and my, my lawyer's obviously saying the same thing. They call three witnesses. They call the shipping company, the guy who drove the truck. Now, these are all prosecutors. witnesses. And they call two DNCD agents who arrested me. The first witness was a DNCD agent that

came out and basically testified to the fact that when they arrested me, I was completely caught by surprise and had no idea what the fuck was going on. Then the judges took a recess for the case to the next day because I guess it was getting along, whatever it was. All right. So they bring me back to my jail, my cell. So am I going to be late the next day? I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. So long story short, to make sure I get to court on time. So I get the court on time.

They call the shipping. No, they call for witnesses. They called the shipping company, the guy who was the shipping company. And he comes in and he says, I spoke to the guy once because they, they spoke. because he spoke to my employees and my ex-wife to arrange shipping. I wasn't handling the shipping. They were just coordinating amongst themselves. I was just doing admin.

I was doing my job as group as the company owner to arrange a show. So they were handling the shipping. He said, I spoke to the guy once. He paid an invoice for the taxes. And that was basically it. He had no idea what was going on this whole time. And when we got there, because he was there when they arrested me, when we got there, he was completely.

quote by surprise, he had no idea what fuck's going on. Then they interviewed the guy who handles the dogs at the airport. And he basically said it came through US customs. It went here in a legal way. The dog sniffed it out. But it wasn't that hard to find since everything was fucking labeled. Like it was being sold in a store. It wasn't baggies or what, you know, like it was, they were in like display packs.

You know, it said Delta. eight on the fucking, you know, on the label. You know, it was very clear that, you know, he wasn't trying to hide anything. He was just, you know, they were just trying to ship samples to a resort that was never going to leave the resort that never had any non-U.S. citizens there, you know? So he testified for me. And then the third cop, the second cop, testified for me as well and said the same thing. so now all the

all the all the all the um all the witnesses are called and the judges the three judges go in the back and my heart

went into my balls at this point because I don't know what's going on so I'm talking to the translator and I'm saying what do you think my mom's saying to my mother what do you think

I'm asking the lawyer the judge the the the the the public defender, what does he think? And we're all, like, I pled guilty because I knew I was going to get this deal. And my lawyer, the public defender, saying, don't worry about it.

It's going to be fine. This is that and the other. This is what we're doing. But my translator thought something else and my mother didn't know what the thing she was hysterical also. What was the maximum penalty? Did they tell you? 20 years. It was 20 years.

Yeah, it was 20 years. Wow. So they come out about 15 minutes later. It was the longest 15 minutes of my life. And they start talking. And the guy talks first. And the guy said, the first words out of his mouth said, I want to let you go today. But they don't.

I'm like, oh, shit. And he says, and they all make their individual speeches basically saying the same thing. Look, you did something really wrong. But this is a first because if foreigners came here selling drugs, we've locked those people up. And we knew they were drug dealers. And they didn't knew they were drug dealers. But you're not a drug dealer. And you're not, you don't have a criminal record.

And you have kids. And you have, like, we had all this paperwork. My kids' birth certificates were there. Like, we had everything there. And, but we have to give you a punishment. We have to punish you for doing something. wrong in this country. So they gave me 18 months.

With 12 months time served already? Right. I have almost, yeah, I have 12 and a half months. So at this point, like, obviously, I'm facing 20 years, so I'm happy. I mean, I'm not happy that I'm not going home today, but I'm happy that this is going to end. And you have closure. Right. And I have closure, exactly. The worst thing is being in limbo before sentencing when you're just stuck in prison without an end date.

Right. For 13 months, you know, for close 13 months in a third world, you know. And so now I'm a giant flirt, you know, like if I'm not morbidly depressed like I was for the 12 and a half months, I'm a giant flirt. Even my 12-year-old is, though. But like, you know, I flirt with every. I'm very personable. You know, like, I like to laugh. You know, I'm a very happy person. So I felt some sort of closure and some sort of relief. So on the bus back, it was a funny story.

So on the bus back to the jail, so it was my jail, right? And next to my jail was another jail, men's facility. But next to that men's facility was a female jail. and there was this really hot Dominican girl on the bus. So my mother gets me pizza from across street. She did allow her to give me pizza. So I'm offering the girl pizza and I end up sitting next to when we saw flurting back and forth with the limited Spanish I know.

And turns out that this girl, you know, she liked American guys. And we were flirting back and forth. I was touching a leg. She was touching my leg. It was the greatest day of my leg. It was the greatest day of my last year. You know, flirted. I got closure.

I'm going home. It might not be today, but I'm going home. So now we're going home. We're going back to the jail. And we get back there. My brother has to go back to the U.R. a couple days later. But there's still a glimmer of hope that I get out sooner because you could file for, like, an early release.

Now, the worst case scenario in an early release is that I have to stay in the country, right? I might have to stay in the country for the five months I have left, but at least I won't be in that. So now this happens, and I'm laying in bed one night, and I hear people going crazy, right? supposedly there was this guy that had a cell in the next building and he was this big, big dude, he had to be like 6,8, he was ginormous. They called him captain. And he had a disagreement with one of his cellmates about the fan in his room. So he planned this elaborate story, he planned this elaborate plan, that when they locked the doors at 1030, he had his machete and he was going to kill this guy. So not only did he kill this guy,

but his other cellmate tried to stop it, and he killed him too. It took him 25 minutes to get down to the cell, to get this guy out of the cell with two bodies in his room to get, you know, to bring him wherever he was going. So that happened. And I'm more scared because this is just another murder that's happening here. And there's been multiple murders. I mean, I saw a I saw a, a, a prisoner get beat up in front of me by the guards. Like, you know, I don't know what to do. So now I'm like, all right, worst case scenario is I get in front of a judge. They put me in an apartment here.

I can live in an Airbnb for a couple months. I won't see my kids, but at least I'll be able to FaceTime them and I won't be in jail. And it'll be better than it is now, right? So I get, so that dicks around, we dick around with that for weeks and weeks and weeks. And it's just more and more apparent that that's not going to happen. And I'm going to have to write out my five months. So I'm facing the fact that I have to write out the five months. And I do.

So, but at the same time, I'm a lot more relaxed because it's coming to an end, man. You know, like it's coming to an end. So every morning I would wake up. My day was like this. Every morning I would wake up and I would text my kids. My kids would wake up later because when I first got arrested, my older son who has extreme anxiety, he had to be taken out of school because he couldn't deal with it. So we took him out of school and put him online school. So we took him on.

So I would text him and he doesn't, and he's because he's not. he's literally not sleeping at night. I wouldn't even get a phone call from him until about 12 o'clock in the afternoon. So I knew I would speak to my mother in the morning. So I knew I would speak to him later. And I would speak to my mother in the morning. And my son, my 12-year-old, I would message him also. And I was talking to him in the morning before school.

But now, as I told you in the hallway, my kids move to Florida because my ex-wife wasn't getting child support for me because I had no way to give it to her. So she moved to Florida. And the district that my 12-year-old was going to started getting a bomb threats. So they took him out of school also. So now both my kids are doing online school. So they're waking up a little later than normal because they could, right? So I go to.

So now I'm, I'm technically. I text my kids in the morning. I call my mother in the morning. I wake up. I have breakfast in my room. I have oatmeal. I discover there's oatmeal. And I discover that if you put oatmeal in a bowl,

but we only had hot water because we only had the water dispense. So we had hot water that we'd have to pour, like, water in and it comes out hot. But if you put, like, cocoa in that and you put peanut butter in that, it gives you protein and it's filling. And it's actually really tasty. So that's what I would eat, right? So I would eat that and I would go outside and I would walk from like 8.30 in the morning to 11. I would just walk around the basketball court and I would talk to the guards, you know, like I would talk to whatever. And then at 11 o'clock I would go in because they would lock down and until about 1, 1.132 o'clock.

And I would go out and walk again. So while I was walking, there was this guard. his name was Martinez. Surprise, surprise. And he turns around one day. And he was like on the newer side, like he was transferred from another prison. And he was on. And the woman director left.

So there was this other director who was really supposedly a hardest, but I got along with him because he knew I wouldn't, shouldn't be there. And this guy Martinez asks me for a million. pesos. A million pesos is like 17 grand or 18 grand. I was like, number one, I don't have a million pesos. And if I had a million pesos, I'm not giving it to you. So he doesn't ask me once. He doesn't ask me twice. He asks me three times. He tells me to go fuck my mother. And he tells me that I'm cheap. I'm a cheap gringo. So I go to the director. And I said, I'm being harassed by this fucking guy. He's asking me for money. What do I do? And the director who referred me to the sub-director told me he'll handle it. But again, they were banned the brothers just like the

NYPD, so I don't know if they're going to handle it. And I feel threatened by this guy. So I call up the embassy. The embassy, that's the one thing the embassy did was get involved in this, because this was just blatantly illegal. So the embassy, calls up to director and director gets involved and I don't see Martinez anymore. So Martinez ends up coming back, but he was told that I wasn't, he wasn't allowed to talk to me or look at me. So that's fine. That's, that's easy peasy. So now I'm riding out the last five months and I'm walking and I'm waiting and I'm waiting.

And I'm walking and I'm waiting. And the kids are just like now I'm at the point where I would call my kids up and every day, We're inside three months now. And every day I would call my 12-year-old up. And I would say, guess how many days? Guess what today is? You know, and I would say 90 days or 60 days or 59 days. And every day was the same thing.

And again, my 12-year-old doesn't know him in jail. So my 12-year-old thinks that daddy gets his passport back in 90 days or whatever it may be. And, like, things are a lot lighter. So now. three weeks before, the embassy stopped seeing me because I only have two months left and their job is done because I'm going home, right? They call me about a month after their last visit, which means I have about a month left, and they say, do you have your passport? I was like, my mother has my passport. Well, we're going to issue you a new passport.

What do you mean you're going to issue me a passport? My passport's fine. I did the research, my passport's fine. We're going to issue one because you were in prison for 18 months or whatever it was. So I said, all right. So issue me a passport. But I didn't feel comfortable with that because it didn't make sense, right? I even called up like the State Department and said, does this make sense?

And they were like, well, if your passport's good, your passport's good. So I find out, fast forward about a week, I get a call from a marshal at the State Department in Dominican Republic. And he says, you have something pending in Georgia. So right before, I told you I produced conventions. So right before COVID, I had this convention in Atlanta. And I had a balance with the convention center. And I wrote them a check.

And that check bounced. And COVID happened. And I forgot about it. So apparently, this guy filed charge of criminal charges against me in the state of Georgia. So now I'm finally fucking relaxed. I'm a month before I get out. And I find out that my passports revoked because I have a warrant in Georgia for something I completely forgot about. And now I'm hysterical about this now.

Am I going to get a red? The Marshall is telling me that I should divert my travel plans because when I land, if I go to New York, they're going to not only detain me, but they're going to ship me back to, they're going to ship me to Georgia two days before Christmas. So I get a lawyer involved. I call up the, I call up a lawyer, three lawyers in Atlanta, and three lawyers in Atlanta look in the system, and they say, we can't find a warrant for you.

We can't find a warrant. I call up the Atlanta PD. And they can't find a warrant for me. I call up, I said, well, if anybody has to have a copy of the warrant, if all those people can't find it, it has to be the DA in Atlanta, right? So I call up the district attorney in Atlanta, and they tell me that they see a warrant, but the judge, I don't know if you know about this, because I don't really know about this part of this, but the judge decided that they're declining. To prosecute? Yeah, that's possible. Okay, so the debt is declining to prosecute.

So basically we're waiting for the warrant to be exited of the system. But it's still a warrant. All right. I say, what do I do? Well, my lawyer says, go back to New York. If they detain you at Border Patrol, you call me up and I will get you bail in New York because supposedly there's some law that he could get me bail in New York. So now the day is finally come.

We actually, I was supposed to get on, I was my, my, the end of my sentence is 22nd of December. And that's a Sunday. So I was either going to get out on Friday, Sunday or Monday, but nobody gets out on Monday. But since the embassy, since the, since I'm an American, they're going to pull some strings where I get out on Sunday. They didn't want me to get out on Friday because they thought I would leave the country before my sentence, two days early. But they would, they would let me out on Sunday. Sunday. So all the paperwork was ready Friday.

Sunday comes. I go upstairs. My mother's waiting there. I get out. But now I'm shitting my pants because I don't know if I'm going to be arrested as soon as I land in America either. So the next day we get on the plane and we fly to New York. We fly to New York and I'm waiting on, you know, the customs line going through, you know, when you get off the plane coming from international. And I'm so scared.

And they go up to the border patrol agent, you know, the guy who checks your passport. And I give him the temporary passport that I was issued. I was issued an emergency passport by the embassy that's only good for five days. It's one way basically passport to get in. And they stop me. I go, fuck. You know, so they bring me into this little office. And the guy, the officer who.

who was there, and it's late. It's like 9 o'clock at night, 9.30 at night. And the officer was there. Happened to be Dominican of all fucking things. Could you imagine he was Dominican? So he's Dominican. And it turns out that he knows who the DNCD is because he used to work kind of helping them out

because he was a Dominican Border Patrol agent. So he told, he, they pull me in and he was like, yeah, you have this thing in Georgia, but it's nothing. Just handle it when you could handle it. And but you did time in DR.

I was like, first of all, how do you see that? Because I'm on American soil. I'm not a crime. I don't have a record on my. He said, Mike,

I see everything. He said, tell me about what happened. So I tell him the whole story. And he's asking me questions, but not only questions that he could put in the system, but he's asking me questions like for his own shits and giggles.

He knew where I was. Like, he knew that it was like one of the harshest prisons there. He knew that, he knew about the DNCD. He knew what I was being charged with. He knew everything. So we finally left and my sister-in-law picked me up with the kids.

And I thought it was going to be awkward. But I got to tell you, you know, you see your kids for the first time in 18 months and you're 100 pounds lighter and you haven't seen them. And they grew six inches and this, that, you know. But it wasn't really like awkward. You know, we fell right back into whatever. And we've been, you know, together ever since, just hanging out in New York and supposedly I have to go on Thursday to Florida.

and figure out my life. What was your first meal? Pizza, it was pizza at 12 o'clock at night. I didn't eat, but it was the greatest slice of pizza I've ever eaten in my life. It was fantastic.

Does it feel weird being back home, getting back into a routine after that amount of time? You know, I got to tell you, everybody said that it would feel a lot weirder than it did. I felt like I adjusted properly. I'm a little anxious. You know, I'm a little anxious.

And, like, I had a nightmare the other night. about it, subsequently about the wires. But like, I'm adjusting properly. You know, I'm getting back to business. I'm starting my business again. You know, I'm doing things, you know, with you. I have the other thing tomorrow, tomorrow. But like, I'm adjusting properly.

I'm seeing people. I'm telling the story a thousand times because everybody wants to know. It's weird, but it's not. You know, I feel like there's a part of me feels like. like I never left, but there's a part of me feeling like it's still surreal. You know, like it's still surreal. Like three weeks, two week and a half weeks ago, I was in a Dominican prison, you know, and that's crazy.

You seem pretty normal for a guy that just got out of a prison after 18 months in a foreign miserable country. And I think you're the first person I've ever interviewed that just got out so recently, you know? Yeah. And you're normal compared to guys that have done years in prison but have gotten out years ago, you know? But you have to understand. you know, when you get past the divorce, which was no big deal, and you get past everything, the only thing I really wanted was to get home to my kids.

So are you, do you have kids? No. So when you have kids, it's an unbelievable feeling because the only thing you want to do is get back to your kids. But once you're back with the kids, you're okay. You understand what I'm saying? Even the food, even the bullshit, even, you know, flushing a toilet and taking a fucking shower. and all the niceties that we as Americans take for granted is great.

Believe me, I had a great shower in the hotel before we came here, before we came back to America. I, you know, I was able to, you know, I was able to go get a shave and get a haircut. And, you know, like, they do think normal things. And that's great. And I had a bagel. It was dynamite, you know, and I had Christmas dinner with my family, but I had my kids. And that's all that mattered. So it was okay.

You understand like everything was okay. At this point, after going through what I went through, I feel like there's no, what's going to happen. You understand what I'm saying? Like, what's going to beat me down more? I have my kids. I have my mother. She's alive. Thank God.

She's cancer-free. My kids are healthy. I'm healthy from what I understand. I have opportunity in front of me. So really, why shit might be okay? You understand what I'm saying? That's kind of my thought process on it. What do you think is the lesson you learned from all this?

Like, what do you think it needed to teach you that life wanted to teach you that you now gain because you went through this? You know, somebody told me a long time ago, you learned who your friends are in prison or in the hospital. When you're in prison or when you're in a hospital. Before this, I had thousands and thousands of Facebook friends and I knew thousands and thousands of people. If you go through my phone, I have 5,000 names and numbers in my phone, right? And I did business with a lot of people, and I ran a nationally recognized brand in my world, in my space. But in reality, if you have the opportunity to get two or three really good friends and you have your family, that's all that really fucking matters. Because everybody else are unloyal pieces of shit.

And that's the honest to God truth. And I have a best friend named Steph. I mentioned her once in the story. And she doesn't, you know, they're hardworking young people. They don't have a lot of money. She's a little younger than I am. And she's married. And every day she would be on the phone with me.

And she would refill, because my mother didn't know how to refill my phone, my prepaid phone. And she would be on the phone me. And she was the other person that I could cry to, you know. and she's my ride or die, you know, and my mother, you know, with cancer, with stage three cancer, made sure she was in Dominican Republic and raising money and coming and dealing with life, you know, and on the phone with me a hundred fucking times a day, you know, and she's a rock star. And my kids dealt with it.

So the one thing I came out of this, two things I came out of this. two things I came out of this. Number one, have gratitude, you know. Everybody has shitty days, you know, and that's going to happen. And you're going to get throw curve balls thrown at you all the time. And that's fine. But there's so much to be grateful for. You know, there's just so much to be grateful for as an American, number one, even though I'm not happy with the embassy, but as an American, you know, in a first world country, you know, and be grateful and don't, and to shrink my circle, man, I don't want many people in my life.

I really don't. I learned that the hard way too, man. I keep it very close. Is it similar, is a similar story to mine? Yeah, I mean, I look at my life and I've always had waves of groups of people. Like when I first started in the concert industry, I had one group. Then when I left and did the nightclub, I had another.

group and then when I went to prison, everyone abandoned me. I had a couple close friends. I had two friends only that came to visit me except for and my family members. And then when I got out, I had a new group of friends, but no one really talked to me because I wasn't like doing anything cool. And then HBO does a documentary, all those people that talk shit on Facebook come out of the woodwork. Of course. Then they fade back into it. And then when I'm doing this, they see the cool stuff, the celebrity photos, this and that, those same people. I remember them that commented scumbag, went to prison, this and that. They're the ones liking the photos and sliding in the DMs and all that. But I keep it super. It's strange, isn't it? I keep it super small,

go to bed early, don't go out late, you know, I just do my thing. We've created this really cool space here. I got to tell you, when I was actually on the five of this friend, Dustin, And he's handicapped. He has, I think he has MS or something like that. And he can't, he has a lot of free time. And I was telling him my story. I talked to him towards the end of my sentence because I saw him online or whatever when he. And he told me about this, like you.

And I got to tell you, it's the coolest fucking thing in the world. I mean, what you're doing is very interesting. And it's like, it's locked up. abroad, but it's not. You know, it's, you know, it there's, it's very different because this is more, a lot more personal. You're getting, you're diving into what it is, you know, and the experience that, that is actually happening. And also these other networks, they can, they have the capability to do these interviews, but they don't. And they chop up your story into a million pieces and they only air segments. Yeah. That's why I hate doing those things.

Right. Have you ever done them? I did, I just a discovery channel. Did you really? which is coming out next month. But I did like at 12-hour interview, they're going to use 15 minutes of it, you know? And when I did the HBO doc, I filmed for three days, and I'm just in pieces of it throughout the interview. It's not on there anymore.

I have the link. I send it to people when they ask for it. Yeah, I'll send you the link. I was a one part of a 10-part series of like young crime stories. Sure. But they were the first ones that really shined a light on my story.

And now I'm in this weird position where like that didn't blow me up, the documentary. And I went, because I was working out Whole Foods, and I went and built this, which I built my own platform. So now there's no documentary except for like a vice one that's 10 minutes long on YouTube that has a few million views. Sure. So now like we're getting approach to do stuff and things are happening.

But I'm glad I was able to build my own platform without being handed one. Right. So let me ask you a question. And this has been burning in my mind since I knew I was getting out. The question is, I mean, you have people like Kyle, you know, who pursued that Avenue because he was. was in, you know, he was in rehab and recovery and this, that, and the other. And then you have people like you who did something completely out of the box with this, and that's awesome.

But your advice, after hearing the story I just told, to me, I don't know many people that have been in third row of prisons, number one. And number two, what's your advice to me as far as, you know, do I pursue something with this? Or do I just go back to life and start producing conventions again, which I'm going to do anyway? I mean, do I pursue this? What I've learned, and it took me, like, I wish I had learned it earlier, especially in COVID, because then I would have really blown up and made a ton of money and stuff. But I didn't because I was in my own way and had that same thought process of, do you talk about the most embarrassing, hard part of your life? And the answer is you run with it, you know?

You max that puppy out. You share it. you build a platform for yourself because the world's changing. It's a lot of it's all about personal brands. We were talking out there about like how I do all this on my own. If I just hired someone to help me, I could go start another business. But I'm not passionate about necessarily creating businesses.

I like what I do here, you know, whereas like other maybe podcasters create own businesses. So to get back to your question, it's like focus on using your insanely interesting story that only happens to a few select people in a lifetime. build the platform and use that platform to do what you're passionate about, which is maybe back into the event planning business

or anything. Because think you're going on a national platform, plug in what you're going to be doing next, your redemption part, you know, like what you plan on doing. So then people search your name, oh, this guy has an event, this is where I saw him.

Because people still remember me from that vice documentary or the HBO documentary, and they never would have known about me if I never had the courage to share my story. So that's the power and storytelling and sharing it. Now, here's the other part to the question.

And I like telling the story. You know, I don't mind telling the story. And I'm not embarrassed by it by any means. But, you know, all the shit, all the people that talk shit, you know, while you were in prison, you're a scumbag and this, that and the other. Does that resurface? I think it does. I mean, like, I'll look at my comments. When I first started, that was the hardest part to get over.

That was super hard. my guest struggle with that. I'll see them arguing with people in the comments, which is great for me because that boosts engagement. Now I just like it's pat on the back, like it's nothing. Like I'll see people will ask, what did this dude go to prison for and people will say fraud? And they'll literally copy and paste a section from a crappy

Danbury Local News Times article saying what I did or didn't do or whatever. That eventually goes away, but that will always be there. But look at your favorite celebrities in the world favorite actors. Right. Someone is always going to hate on them. Look at a president. Yeah. There's not one person that everyone loved.

Everyone's always going to have something bad to say. Of course. So I think that's the hardest hump about telling your story because you're going to have those negatives. Right. But it'll also attract the right people to your story. So what's, you know, what's the next step here? Like, I do you.

I do my national platform. And I think you wait and see what happens. Is that what happens? I don't think you should. What I've learned is you don't blow your load and do nine. nine million of them, be very selective. Okay. And see, you're going to have people that reach out.

Okay. You know, people are going to reach out bigger platforms in mind, bigger platforms than the one you're going on next. Right. They'll reach out. You buy your time, but also focus on building your business so you have something to promote. Of course. That's the biggest thing.

Yeah. You know, and you never know. Maybe there's someone that's running sex conventions again. There's like, I got to pick this guy's brain. Listen, I got my book agent because he was a listener of the podcast. Did you write about it? I'm working on it now. And I remember when I was in prison writing a book and getting out and I pitched hundreds of literary agents and only three responded. And they ultimately said no. No shit. I came across one of the biggest literary agents and, you know, in the area right now because he was a listener of the podcast, that one of my guests was able to connect me to him. No way. So you just never know who's someone is going to meet or, you know, my business partner is Chevy Chase's manager. I met him. randomly.

Yeah, Chubby came on the show. He was sitting in that chair. No shit. That wasn't. To talk about like child of trauma and addiction and stuff. And that never would have happened if I didn't go and film this thing in Texas who his friend introduced me to him. And he happened to be in Connecticut. No way.

So you just never know. It's a small world. Podcasting opens up so many doors, sharing your story, you know. They say that Trump got reelected on podcasts. 100% TikTok played a big part of it, all of that, you know. And just doing the podcast circuit. But it's really. you know, even though I ran a national platform, you know, I ran a national brand that people knew.

And it's still, it's weird because you see people with stories, interesting stories, not necessarily being in a third world jail, but, you know, interesting stories. And then you say to yourself, I mean, I speak to people that I know. And you tell them the story. And it's fucking mind. I mean, it really, I mean, it's mind-blowing, you know, it really is. It's crazy. It's an incredible story, man. You have something special.

You live through it. You survived. And, you know, you got to run with it, bro. No, of course. I'll tell you, it's weird because obviously it was the worst experience in my life. But you learn a lot. You really do, you learn a lot out of an experience like that. You learn how to deal with life alone.

You know, you learn how to deal with life alone. You learn how to adapt. You have to adapt. You have no choice. And you learn, I mean, you pick up a little language, you know, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an, it's an odd. It's even still, you know, you'd still feel weird, you know, like, do you have you, when you, when, when you were in jail, did you, did you establish relationships with anybody in jail? Oh, I still have, uh, some of close people. Well, I have my old bunk mate who just got out after like 10 years, um, watches the show. And me and him bonded over this TV show power. I love power. Yeah. And it was so cool. For him, he was watching it from prison, me interview some of the castmates.

I've had Gianni who plays Brayden on the show. I had Patricia Callumberg who plays Tommy Egan's mom. That's awesome. Michael Rainey Jr.'s going to come on the show. Yeah, so we used to sneak in hard drives and watch it. So to see that, you know, it was really cool for him. And he watches my content. He texts and he'll be like, this guy's a snitch or, you know, this or why are you interviewing

this dude? And then I've had some other guys that I was in prison with that came on the show to talk about their stories with me and life after prison and found success. And obviously there's guys you come across to end up back in prison. Of course. But I've met a lot of guys in my journey that are huge supporters of the show that are doing really well for themselves. A couple were like Billy Johnson, who was on my show and Cash, who was my bunkmate, who came on to. Well, even what's the Kyle's doing really well now. Yeah, exactly. He's doing what he's doing, you know. And he's really nice guy, by the way. Yeah, Kyle's a great guy. Just a sweetheart of a guy.

Everyone always makes fun of him because he wore the tightest shirt into that interview. He's a short guy too. He's a talking guy. But he was a good dude at that. I'm glad that like the interview recently was starting to go viral again for him. So he had a lot of people reaching out. He even asked me, he was like, call me when you get out and I'll introduce you to my co-author and stuff like that.

Because I definitely, not even for money, but I definitely have aspirations right in a book. Even for not even to even to get the story out number one, but more importantly, as more of like a therapy of my own, you know, just to get it out and tell every story and tell every, you know, each little bit and piece that happened. You know, I think that's therapeutic in a way, you know. Absolutely. But Michael, I appreciate you coming on the show today. This is incredible. I hope it was what you expected. Thank you so much. You're awesome. And absolutely. Thank you. We'll see what your kid out there thinks after watching. It's always interesting when people bring kids to come because you don't know if they're going to hold back or what. But I don't think

you held back, you're very honest. You know, I was always, I'll tell you, before we go, I'll tell you, when my, when I got in a car and he goes, you know, at this point, he didn't know what I was in jail. I told him the other day when I found out I was, when I booked the national platform and you, because I had to. I would rather him find out for me than that. And he said to me, and he said, we were sitting in the car and he goes, and I lost all this weight. I told you, I lost 104 pounds. and he goes, he goes, well, daddy, you should keep off the way it.

I said, I know. He said, well, if you don't, you have to go back to the Dominican Republic. I was like, oh, fuck you.