Locked In with Ian Bick - Lawyer Reveals Why He Went to Federal Prison, Life Inside & How He Got His Law License Back | Jeff Grant

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Jeff Grant, a former lawyer who served time in federal prison, shares his unique journey from a successful legal career to incarceration and back. In this episode, Jeff opens up about the circumstances that led to his conviction, what life was like inside federal prison, and the challenges he faced while fighting to restore his law license. Jeff's story sheds light on the realities of the legal system, the impact of incarceration, and the power of second chances. #FederalPrison #LawyerLife #PrisonReform #IncarcerationStory #LawLicense #SecondChances #LegalSystem #TrueCrime Thank you to our sponsors this week: MAGIC MIND: They have a limited offer you can use now, that gets you up to 48% off your first subscription or 20% off one time purchases with code LOCKED20 at checkout. You can claim it at: https://www.magicmind.com/locked Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Jeff grant: https://grantlaw.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/revjeffgrant FB: https://facebook.com/grantlawpllc IG: https://instagram.com/grantlawpllc Twitter: @grantlawpllc Progressive Prison Ministries website: https://prisonist.org Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction and Background of Jeff 00:07:00 Overcoming Academic Probation 00:14:04 The Shift in Lawyer-Client Dynamics 00:21:32 Redemption Stories Beyond Prison 00:28:26 Emotional Impact of a Vulnerable Talk 00:35:47 The Challenges of Sharing Prison Experiences 00:43:28 The Burst of the Dot-Com Bubble and Personal Downfall 00:51:19 Understanding Escrow: Checks and Balances 00:58:12 Unraveling Financial Troubles and Federal Investigation 01:05:52 Staying Sober in Prison 01:12:48 Navigating Prison Life: Trust and Legal Assistance 01:19:57 Navigating Prison Life and Unwritten Rules 01:27:10 Journey to Sobriety and Volunteering 01:34:04 Deciding to Return to Law 01:41:32 Rise to New Opportunities After The New Yorker Feature 01:49:10 Essential Financial Lessons for Entrepreneurs 01:56:50 Conclusion of a Wonderful Interview with Ian 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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Check in from anywhere. Get real-time safety notifications and capture every sleepy smile and good NightKiss. The best part? Those insights help you get more sleep, starting night one. Add it to your registry or shop at NANET.com. Jeff, welcome to Lockton, man. We've been talking about doing this for a while now. Where do we connect on LinkedIn, I think? Probably, but I know a bunch of people who've been on your show. Oh, awesome. So everyone was kind of talking, you got to do Ian. You know, you got to do Ian. It's all right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it was LinkedIn that we messaged on. I think that's right. I think it was. And then I think you might be our first attorney that went to prison and is now an attorney again.

There's not that many of us. It's very few, right? I think Michael Cohen's trying to do that? I'm not sure if he's, what his story is, but there's virtually no one in the country who came out of prison and became a white collar attorney. So, you know, I have kind of like this cool place where, you know, I have lived experience where I can relate to people. and they get like the truth from me, you know, which is rare for attorney, which you probably know. Yeah, well, now, I'm super excited to dive in today. Yeah.

I always start the last few episodes with these magic mind shots if you want when they're right there. It's a matcha energy drink. Not for me. Okay, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm 22 years sober. Oh, there's no alcohol. I'm very careful about what I put in my mouth. Yeah, these things are great.

They've been sending me them. And it's like a mind enhancer. It kind of keeps you focused, give you a jolt to energy, and it doesn't leave you with like that hangover crash after. I'm not sure if you do energy drinks or not. No, but prison pretty much did that for me. Did you have used to eat like those protein energy bars in there? Anything I could do to get protein in my body, I did in prison.

Yeah. So, yeah, anyone listening, you know, check out Magic Mind. These things, they definitely help. And when I do these long interviews, and so I do like one a day now, it helps keep me focused in violence. then, which is great. So, Jeff, did you grow up in New York or Florida where you live now? I grew up in Long Island. Okay. And lived in the metro area for my entire life, except when I went off to college for a little while. And she moved to Florida about a year and a half ago.

But I'm kind of Rye and Greenwicher at heart, you know, and so Rye is kind of where I went down. and then afterwards Greenwich. So, you know, the fact that your studio is right here and, you know, I could get here from Greenwich now was pretty cool. Did you guys grow up with money, you and your family? No, not really money. But middle class, you know, there was food on the table. You know, my parents weren't really together for a lot of that time.

And so it was kind of a weird situation. You know, I got forced to be. be the man of the house way too early. How many of you were there? Three siblings, younger brother, younger sister. And you were the oldest? And I was the oldest. And I would say it affected them the most because I was older and I kind of went off

to college, you know, earlier. But, you know, the one who, so the child who did the best out of all three who wound up going to prison. So you can just figure out how they did. Yeah. Do you feel like there's a lot of added unnecessary pressure from your parents splitting and having to become the man of the house? Yeah.

I think that that's true. It was true then. And it's kind of lasted my entire life in terms of pressure to succeed, pressure to be a provider, certainly to be a patriarch. And then the years where I couldn't really be the patriarch because of all. my criminal justice issues and things. And I didn't really know where that was going to go. But, you know, God in the universe had been good to me.

And maybe that's just because of the work I've done. I don't know. But I'm back in that position again. So it feels kind of good, you know? Yeah. It feels good to actually be able to take care of people in a lot of different ways, but also like to be the patriarch of my family. You know, it's nice.

It's kind of, it feels right. Yeah, I always talk about, or I always talk to people curious about how it is for someone that's like a middle-aged person with a family and established life to go to prison and walk away from everything for that. I mean, that's got to be really tough. You know, if someone asked me which decade is the right decade to go away to prison, if you had to go to prison, which would be the right decade,

I'm not sure I know the answer, you know, because maybe if you go early, then you have your whole life. But for me, I went to prison at 48 years old. And, you know, I only served 13 months in prison. And then, of course, there was halfway house and home confinement and probation. But, you know, I had a career and skills that I could, I could draw from that really helped me kind of navigate a lot of things and then, of course, be able to help people with. But I don't know that that was optimal.

It just is what happened. So, you know, I mean, thank God I've been able to use all that to be of service to people. So where do you end up going to college? I went to a state school, Brockport State College, which is out between Buffalo and and in Rochester. And I just had my 50th high school reunion this two nights ago. And I was shocked at how many people from my high school actually went to Brockport with me. And I don't, it was kind of like Long Island Jews wound up kind of funneling into up state schools.

And there had to be 10 of us who went to. Brockport. Not everybody graduated, not everybody stayed there, but it was kind of, it was kind of interesting. And what was your major? I was a business marketing major, economics, and I was definitely a duck out of water. I mean, because Brockport was mostly like a phys ed and fine arts school. And I got into better private schools, but my father had lost his business a best. about a year before I went to college. And so I had to pay for it myself, make my own way. And that was the only state school that I'd applied to.

So Brockport it was. And I made the best of it. Did you have like a career in mind that you wanted to pursue? I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. But I really didn't know what that meant. Because I didn't really know what being a lawyer meant other than kind of like being it on TV. And so a lot of my. college was was geared towards how I was going to get into law school.

And I did well enough on my boards. And after kind of a sluggish first year of college, mostly driven by partying too much, I got my, I got my shit together. And so you want to hear the story of how I got my shit together? Yeah, tell us everything. So I'm telling you, I'm sorry, it's like I had this tickle. Oh, you're good. I have this tickle. I'm sorry.

So I'm partying my entire first semester of college. And it's clear, I was like on academic probation, like, almost immediately. Because I was like loose, you know. You know, I was finally like on my own. But I knew this was like not right. So I went up early in between the semesters. I went up early. and some of the people there were pretty wild.

And so while I was up there a few days early before schools I was going to start, I dropped a hit of acid. And the Erie Canal ran right through the middle of the school. And that kind of shows you like, you know, what it was to be up in like the rust belt. towns where time had kind of passed by, you know. So I dropped this head of acid, and I'm sitting by the Erie Canal, and I'm staring at my reflection in the Erie Canal for like five hours.

And I'm talking to myself, and myself is talking back. And what I'm watching myself say, you know, because I'm kind of hallucinating, is like, dude, get your shit together. like this is it you only go through once and whatever you want to do with your life you've got to straighten yourself out now and I guess I took it to heart because from that moment on like straight A student

wow yeah my cousin would appreciate you because he does like the psychedelics and stuff and he goes to like you know secluded areas just to do his thinking and get his shit together and make his plans Oh, well, this isn't like mushrooms. I mean, this was like blotter acid back then, you know? But it's still kind of the same.

Oh, yeah, a little bit. I guess it is. I don't know. I'm 22 years sober now, so I'm not like into the whole new mushroom, new weed culture. Yeah. But back then, I only tripped five times in my life. And every one of them was an incredible experience. In fact, so incredible that I knew I could never do it again.

You know, I would guess I would have definitely just like my addictive personality would have taken over. So I just, I knew I had to stop. It's cool to see that even lawyers partied in high school and college, which also makes you think that prosecutors did the same thing too. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody. When I sit down with people my age, I'm 68 now.

So like when I sit down with people who were like 60s 70s, there's, was like just, and remember it was pre-AIDS too. So we could talk and we'll kind of hit it off and everything. And it's just a countdown to how long it takes us to start talking about drugs and sex. And because we all shared that experience back then, especially growing up on Long Island. Yeah, I bet. So what type of lawyer do you end up becoming after you go through law school? At the time, well, first, I went out on my own.

I never worked for a firm. And I formed the firm around me. So at first, it was anything that walked in the door. You know, I was a kid. But eventually it was mostly real estate and kind of sophisticated real estate refinancing. That was early co-op conversions in Manhattan. And then I moved the firm out of Manhattan and up to Westchester, where I had, moved my family a few years before. And, you know, instead of being a small fish in a large

pond in Manhattan, I was kind of a larger fish in a smaller pond. And it was just the afterburners kicked in. And I started just attracting much larger clients and becoming like their general councils and found my groove. And in some ways, it was fantastic. I mean, I was intellectually interesting, and the people were very wealthy, and they were relying upon me, and I was developing a lot of expertise. You know, on the other hand, there were like crazy real estate families, and I was kind of like, you know, I was a fixer. I was like Michael Clayton from the George Clooney movie, you know, like, so it wasn't like just the businesses. It was also their lives. and so if I wasn't refinancing their businesses or helping them grow their businesses,

I was also getting like phone calls in the middle of the night when one of their kids got pulled over, you know, racing their Porsche up 684, you know, with a bag of blow in the back seat. And then I had to go get him out of the, you know, out of the trouble in the middle of the night. And my ex-wife, you know, the phone would ring and my ex-wife would say, you know, she would look at me. I said, yeah, I got to go. So you became kind of like one of those family attorneys that we kind of see a little bit. I was definitely a wealthy family attorney.

And there were a lot of benefits to that. It was very lucrative. But I was on call 24-7? Now, back then, was it easier to start a practice versus now? Because I've heard it's, like, harder to come out of law school and start your own practice now. You know, I don't know the answer to that. Back then, pre-social media, you know, there was still a lot of power. the pavement. And it's an interesting issue, problem. For those of you who are starting

businesses now, when people took the effort to actually get in a car and drive to my office, or when I was still in the city, if they would, you know, get in the elevator and come up and they would be sitting in, sitting there, the closing rate was, I don't know, 98% because they were there already and they didn't want to have to go out and interview other lawyers and and and and um

but now because it's so easy just to connect with people on Zoom or whatever there's a lot of tire kicking and so the closing rate is way, way down. And so I don't know. You know, it's a, I'm not sure which one's easier or not.

I mean, you can spread the word now for virtually no money. Yeah. Back then, there was a lot of going to conferences and going to lunches and dinners and things like that. I'm still a little bit of that. But I don't know what's easier. I mean, I think that I think if you can sell, if you can market, then you can pretty much do it in any environment.

Do you think that billboards actually help? I see so many lawyers advertise with billboards. I don't know. It's not my area of law. You know, like I'm, I deal almost exclusively with people who are going through white collar prosecutions. So I don't know if that the billboards would help at all. Well, even there are criminal defense attorneys on billboards. But I don't think that's white collar driven.

Okay. Interesting. But my niche is being general counsel to people who are going through these white collar issues. So I'm not a criminal lawyer, or at least I don't appear in court anymore. You know, I'm more of a consuliary type. You know, I take people under my wing and the hole in the market really was that there was nobody specializing in all of these things that were kind of circling around people who were being prosecuted for white collar crimes. Because when you think about it, they're going through divorces and bankruptcies and child estrangement and partnership dissolutions and all kinds of issues that circle. I mean, those issues are, in some ways, they're bigger than the criminal issue.

But nobody really understands all of it. Or if they do, it's just not an area of law anybody wanted to get involved in. And certainly none of them had the kind of lived experience I had, having gone to prison, and very few of them had recovery experience, you know. And so taken all together, it's just this question. whole package that people could relate to. And I, and I knew that. It's almost like what the prison consultants have tried to become, but they didn't really, were able to become, like, because you're actually are able to move the needle and have the experience and are able to make things happen,

get the affairs, whereas a prison consultant doesn't normally do that. You know, the thing is, is that lawyers for them pretty much will, pretty much will only talk to other lawyers. You don't, you don't have the respect of the legal community unless you're a lawyer. And you also don't have the confidentiality and privilege. So once I got my law license back, it just opened up my ability to really be of service and to help people. And all around the country, really all around the world, because I'm also dealing with people who are going through extradition issues and things like that. Wow. I didn't even know this was like a role. This is pretty fascinating. I didn't know either. I didn't know either until I started to get into it.

And also there's been a lot of media around it. You know, so, you know, a few years ago, there was an article about me and about our white-collar support group in the New Yorker. And so I can pretty much, my career trajectory and the trajectory of the white-collar support group, you could pretty much divide into before New Yorker and after New Yorker. In fact, the first white-collar conference I went to, the American Bar Association of a collar conference I went to, was in Miami in 2021. And I had just gotten my law license back

and the New Yorker article had just come out. And so I went to this conference and I was dressed up in a suit and everything. Not such a good suit. I couldn't afford one. But a suit. And there were people from big law firms, there were probably a thousand lawyers there.

And I was scared to death. Like I was a guy who'd been to prison. in and I didn't know how it was going to be received, but I was in this white collar committee, and maybe there are 30 people in the white collar committee. And I show up, and when I tell you, I was sweating bullets, I was, like, so scared. And most of the people, most of the lawyers that are younger than me, you know, I'm, I'm already, like, you know, 60-some-odd years old. And I go to this thing and the chairperson of this room of 30 people basically says,

all right, why don't we go around the room and introduce ourselves? And so one-by-one people are saying their names, and they're saying the names of these large firms like Sherman Sterling, Scad and ARPs, White and Case, Paul Weiss. And then it comes around to me in the circle. And I said, Jeff Grant, I went to prison for a white college. crime, which was the truth. And with that, the chairman

stood up and pointed right at me and said, you're the guy from the New Yorker. And I said, yeah. And like everybody knew. And I'm thinking, here's my calling card. You know, it's like, I've got something going that nobody else has. and maybe it's not something I wanted to have, but I've got it.

So let me just make sure that I stay in that groove. And it's kind of worked out. That's so relatable to people coming out of prison. I mean, I found it. It took me four years of working at Whole Foods at a regular job to find it, but I found it. And here we are. Today's episode of Locked In is brought to you by Magic Mind, the world's first productivity shot. If you're like me managing a pack schedule of interviews, editing, and planning, you know it's

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Thank you again to Magic Mind for being a proud sponsor of Locked in, and I hope you enjoyed the rest of this episode. You know, when people said to me, you should be on Ian's podcast, and I researched you, I said, like, you know, here's a guy who found a groove and wanted to, you know, leaned into it. And that's what I relate to, because anybody who has any degree of success post-prisoned,

I respect and I'm going to help in any way I possibly can because it is hard enough to do it on your own. But if you've got a community and you can find one another, you know, this is what kind of God, you know, this is the opening that God created for us. Yeah, people need to hear those stories too because for so long they've been so, like, you know, hidden. I mean, look at now in recent times they even like air like Robert Downey Jr.'s

past because they used that as a redemption story. Yeah. But when we were growing up, there was no mention of his drug use or prison time or any of that. Tim Allen, same thing. He went to prison for drugs, too. You know, the whole way this happened really is that when my story is really, I'm 25 years into my story. So think about how many of my earning years, the years where I would have developed.

my career and everything, those, in a ways, those got sucked out of me. And, but also there was really no internet back then. And my family and I had to go through it alone. We didn't have any resources. We didn't know of anybody. So we got far enough through it where, you know, my ex-wife threw me out. And luckily, I was able to find love in AA. and she went through the prison experience with me,

and my kids certainly did, and my stepdaughter. And when it came out, we said, look, I want to, I don't want anyone to have to go through what we went through. You know, there's no reason for it. And, you know, I was kind of blessed that back then there wasn't really forfeiture. They didn't take away all my money. I had enough just to survive, you know, There were no frills.

But I wanted to help people. And after a couple of years of volunteering, I decided to go to a seminary. And I applied to Union Theological Seminary, and they accepted me. So, like, for three years, I went to Divinity School. And when I came out, I worked in the churches a little bit, even though I was Jewish. I don't know how that all works. Believe me, you know. I'm like a Jewish.

Jewish reverend. I don't even know. And do I have to know? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so, right? So it, it, what happened was is that I was living in Greenwich and I was 10 years in. And so anybody who came through Greenwich A.A. who was, like, who had a prison issue or criminal justice issue, everybody would say, go see prison, Jeff. He'll, he'll help you through. And so the math is kind of easy. I was doing that for 10 years, and maybe I helped 10 guys a year. So there were 100 guys who were like captains of industry and hedge funders and lawyers and doctors that I had helped through. But I was working in like the poorest community in the country as a minister. And so one day I get this phone call from, I'll give you his name is Lawrence Delis. And he was with, at the time, he was with hedge fund magazine. He's now with Thompson Reuters.

And he called me up. And he said, are you the minister to hedge funders? And I said, no, not really. I said, I work with hedge funders like in Greenwich in AA. And I minister in Bridgeport, but those concepts have never really come together. And so we arranged for an interview. and I like ran into the kitchen. I said to my wife, I think the big ideas come.

I think this is the one, you know. I really didn't know how it was going to happen. But we started a ministry for people, prosecuted for white collar crimes and their families. And it almost immediately exploded. Because not only was I on the conference circuit and I was doing sermons like all up and down the East Coast, But the press thought it was just like this super cool thing.

And it was, but it wasn't getting a lot of traction, you know, not in terms of being self-sustaining. But people were getting drawn to it because the more press there is, the more opportunity. And it was like every time, it was like ripping open a wound every single time. You know, it was like I had to be really vulnerable and really put my story out there in kind of this gut-wrenching way. Because if I did, then it encouraged people to do the same. And so I would be like on the stage, for example, at the Nantucket Project, this is like a decade ago already. Even though the Nantucket Project is this coming weekend, if anyone is going to the Nantucket Project, it's coming this week. I think we're taping on the 23rd of September.

And, but I will not be up there this weekend. But I was in front of like 600 people who could afford five or $6,000 a ticket. And I was telling this story that I had never told outside of an AA room. And, and so here's, you know, here's an experience where my wife and I were there. And I was talking about a suicide attempt and drug abuse. and being an early victim of the opioid crisis, even though I don't consider myself a victim, I was clearly into OxyContin.

And going through all of this, it was years before I was going to get my law license back and starting this ministry for people prosecuted for white-collar crimes and their families. and I was like anything I thought I could prepare for but I could not prepare for it was like I was struck by lightning on that stage

you know I was not like the cool funny storyteller I was just brought to my knees on that stage it was so raw and when I got off the stage I didn't know if I connected with anybody You couldn't hear a pin drop. There was no feedback from the audience whatsoever. And so I got off the stage.

I didn't even know I got a standing ovation. I didn't even know. I was like, I was so frightened. And so for the next three days, we walked around the conference. And of the 600 or so people who were in the audience, I kid you not, a hundred people came up to us over the weekend and gave us hugs and gave us their A.A. sobriety dates or told us about their kids that were in rehab and talked about their drug experiences and their mental health issues and

things like that. And we went back to our room at night and it became clear as my wife and I were talking like, this is what people need to talk about. But there was no real. outlet for them to do it. I mean, where do you talk about like getting prosecuted for white collar crimes at the time? And where do you talk about like the pain that your families are going through because your kids are in having drug crises and in rehab? And so we just saw it as our mission to open up that conversation. And that was the thing that just kind of happened. So just to finish off that little story. So there we are in Nantucket with all these rich and famous people

and I am on the balls of my ass. I couldn't, if they didn't pay for it, I couldn't even afford like the ferry ride up to Nantucket. But they paid for it because I was a speaker. So we get invited to this speaker's dinner up there

in a tent in the back of, in the backyard of the guy who's like the chairman of the board, maybe the CEO, of one of the biggest banks in the world. I'm not going to say the banks, and you would know the guy.

But there were chandeliers in the tent. And as well as I've ever done in my life, I'd never been in this kind of experience before. It's like, you know, like there's levels and then there's bigger levels. And we're in this tent and we're being treated like a celebrity in a way. because I was a speaker.

I was a speaker. And that when you go to one of these things, and you're a speaker, it's like you get treated, you know, like everybody knows who you are. I guess that's the story because I've been in front on the stage. And I sit down at a table

and they separate me and my wife. That's kind of what they do in these places. I didn't even know, right? So she's at one table. I'm at another table. And I'm sitting down. And so the host, meaning the CEO of that,

that bank, his wife is sitting next to me. Deliberately. I mean, you can see. And the people at this table I'd seen on TV and I'd read about. And I'm like sitting with these people. And I'm just like a guy who'd been to prison. You know what I mean? It's like, and she's sitting right next to me.

And I am telling you that you can tell, like, she's not even wearing. jewelry because she's like transcended the need to wear jewelry. You know what I mean? She's like ultra wealthy. And there was no pretense about her whatsoever. She was like stunning. I mean, not just beautiful, but just in the way she carried herself. And I'm thinking, what am I doing sitting next to her? I mean, why am I there? I mean, she's the hostess. Right? So this is why. So we do all the pleasantries and we're having a nice night at the table and everything. And maybe three quarters of the way through dinner, she just reaches over and she puts her hand on mine like this. And she says, can I talk to you?

And we kind of just lean out of the table together. And so we'd like turn our chairs a little bit and she talks so she could talk to me. And she said, my. are teenage sons in a rehab for heroin overdose? Can you help him? And I started to cry. I'm going to cry right now. I said, oh my God.

I said, like, this is what we've done this for. We touched this family. Can you imagine? And in like the most unlikely way, and that's when I knew we had to just lean into this and this is what this is what we've been delivered to do. That's awesome. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, and I bet you it was even more of a hurdle getting there because of how you grew up.

It wasn't necessarily socially acceptable to talk about these things. No, of course not. It's becoming more so in like my era, but not so much in yours. No, and I do feel really grateful and I do understand. that in a way I was a trailblazer. You know, I'm an OG already in this. But everybody's got to climb their own mountain. You know, you've got to get through your own hurdles.

I am grateful that hopefully I stand a little bit as a poster boy, a little bit as a beacon that it can be done. But you don't have to do it the way I did it. you got to find your own authenticity. You know, you've got to find it yourself. But, you know, honestly, if I could do it, anybody can do it. It's not like, it's not like, it's just like do the work, you know, do the service, show up. And if you show up long enough, good things can happen.

We have to send you to go talk to Governor Roland from Connecticut. I know him. Really? Oh, yeah, sure. Well, you should call him up after this because he bailed on the show. Yeah, that's too bad. Yeah, he was going to do it, and I sent him the questions and everything. And then he said he didn't want the news to pick, like the local news to spin it in a negative way.

But him sharing his story could help a ton of people. I can kind of understand that because he's definitely had been greeted with a lot of cynicism here in Connecticut. You know, we had a Tuesday night speaker series in our white collar. our white-collar group. And Jim McGreevy did the same thing with us, you know, and he had the former governor of New Jersey. And, you know, and he was pleasant about it. You know, he, you know, he, but I'm sure that there was something similar going on

because it's hard to put your story out there. Yeah, I agree. But I think the more like higher notable people do it, like not the ones that, not like the millennials or my age group that share their story, but like the older generation, like the use of the world, I think that'll, it goes along. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance.

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Why? It's a changing the narrative about prison. I think so. I mean, you know, people do not understand prison at all. You know, I didn't understand it before I went, you know, and even in the lead-up, you know, it was certainly pre-orange as new black, pre-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey-hous. Yeah. You know, I didn't know. I was really from just Shoreshank Redemption.

Yeah, prison break didn't even come out yet. I don't think so. So let's talk about the lead-up of you going to prison. If you were successful in your law firm and you had these wealthy clients, why did you go off that path. What happened? Oh, it was definitely the drugs. No question, it was the drugs. I had never really stopped

partying from high school, you know. I mean, much less. I mean, I had to get through a law school and I had to be a lawyer. But after I moved up to Westchester and I had this one big, one super big real estate client,

I had a sports injury. And after that, I got addicted to painkillers. And so for those 10 years, even as successful as I was doing, I was on painkillers. I was on demoral and then ultimately Oxycontin. And I had doctor friends who were just dispensing them at will. And that was kind of weird when I think about it now. But I'm sure I was manipulating them into giving it to me. I'm not blaming them.

No, there's no, there's no doctor shaming here, no victim, you know, like just, you know, I had a Jones and I, and I would do anything. And I needed refills like, you know, once a week, every couple of weeks. And I wasn't even paying for them. You know, maybe it was like a $5 copay on my insurance or something. and nobody ever asked a question, nobody ever stopped me. I hit it well. I mean, here's an example.

I mean, here's stories about, like, people who, who clean out bottles of booze, and they find, like, 50 bottles of booze, and they put them in paper bags, and they find a dumpster to go dump them in. I, I guess I was paranoid enough, and I thought my ex-wife would find, out. So I went through my closets trying to find the bottles, the vials of the pills, you know.

And I did. I had like a bag, a paper bag, like from Whole Foods or something. I don't really remember. And I found 70 of them just empty. And you would have thought, that that would have been enough information to tell me, okay, maybe there's a problem. And I probably did know there was a problem. But what would happen every week is like I would, like maybe a Thursday night, I would start to take a lot. And then by Sunday night I had to kind of like taper off so that I could get to work, even though I was at that point vomiting, vomiting up blood.

like, you know, I was really, I was really into it, like, in, in this sick kind of way. And I swore I would never do it anymore. But I would get, like, dope sick by, you know, Thursday maybe. So I went through withdrawal almost every week. And, like, there was no way I could stop on my own. How are you able to function as an attorney while battling this addiction during that time period? Well, for the first few years, first of all, you know, it's ramping up. But for the first few years, I was actually doing better because it was like a disinhibitor.

I was taking risks that I probably wouldn't have otherwise taken. And they weren't really reckless risks. They were, at first they were kind of like appropriate business risks. I went into real estate, real estate. I was in health clubs. I owned a restaurant. I was doing. I was on the school board at my kid's school.

I mean, I was on the school board at the school. And for six years, and the meetings were at night, and they were on local cable access TV. And I would wear sunglasses. And I was like the school board member who wore sunglasses because my eyes were all red. There was like no way I could be on camera. and it became like a local joke.

I was the school board member with sunglasses. You know, I wear my sunglasses at night. And like, I, and I owned the restaurant on the corner. So it was like, you know, everyone would come back and we would hang out at the bar. And it was just not cool. Did your wife and kids know? No. No one took your family, no one?

I don't know. I was just like the fun dad. And I was a very, very, very. loving father but I don't think that I was a good role model in the sense that I was teaching my kids you know life skills you know character life skills and and and the kind of things that they would need I was very overindulgent and enabling and you know my kids had everything they wanted you know we went on like five big vacations a year and I was spending recklessly you know

as my drug use was ramping up. And that's not something I'm proud of. You know, it just was the truth. And then I got past the tipping point, and then it got really ugly. You know, it got really ugly. I was becoming really reckless, and it was the lead-up to the dot-com bubble and then burst.

And I was way over-invested with clients and dot-com. And I thought like, you know, because I was like a major shareholder, because I was in founders, I was representing founders, and I was in startup. And I remember I was like sitting at my computer at my desk. And I had this big desk in this big office. And it was kind of rock and roll. I had stacks of amplifiers in my desk. guitars in there in my office and I would invite like clients to come play guitar and and you know it was

ridiculous but just like the way it was and I had these post-its all around my my computer screen old CRTs no flat screens back then right and I had these post-its and and I would say to my assistant I would say, you know, if any of these hit, I'm set for life. And she said to me, what if none of them hit? I said, oh, how can that happen? You know, I mean, there's like 12 of them. One of them has to hit. And then the bubble burst in, I think, March of 2020.

Or 2000 or? 2000. Yeah, 2000. Yeah, 2000. That's right a minute. 2000. sorry. And none of them hit. They all died. And then I was left with not having brought in enough cash because I had doubled down on all of these investments on, you know, on trading legal services

for pieces of these companies. And I was way into my addiction at that point. And there was no way out. So I didn't have enough cash to make payroll. And incredibly, because the business was doing really well, but we were cash poor. And I told my assistant, I said, just move some money out of the client escrow account, move it into the operating. And she thought I was nuts, and I was nuts. And the minute that happened, it was just, it was just a, It was a suicide run.

And she agreed to do that for you? She pushed back. But, you know, it was just like two buttons on a computer terminal. You know, it wasn't like, it was just like move from this one to this one. And she did it. Did you have partners or it was just you? It was just me. Well, I had named junior partners, but they weren't equity partners.

So if you had equity partners, do you think you would have been able to get away with at first? No. No. I think that I had no accountability to anything or anybody. And that was a mistake, especially given my addictive personality and everything. It was a mistake. Do you ever think about if you didn't have that sports accident and you didn't get prescribed

those pills, you would still be running that business today? I don't know. Because I don't know. It's like the chicken and the egg thing, you know. I don't really know. I really do think it was my fate to kind of get off that hamster wheel no matter what. You know, it wasn't going to end well no matter what. You know, the precipitating event was that sports injury.

But I had never really gotten out of that life sufficiently. And so I think it, I, I, I. Here's really the thing. You're really forcing me to be introspective here. I'm doing my job right then. Yeah, you're doing your job. I think that I found out that I had bipolar disorder. That's the thing.

And that I really been self-medicating. And the thing that I was best at in life was also the thing that wasn't best for me. you know, that kind of intensity and the all in, all or nothing, you know, a killer be killed kind of life that was not good for my, for my pathology and not. And there would have been a moment that it had to stop. And ultimately what happened was is that, you know, I threw a grenade into my life. I did get, I resigned my law license after all that ugliness. And I did it before I got to barred.

And then I took an overdose of the pills and then, you know, thankfully survived it. But I needed chapter one of my life to end. Now, did you decide to do that after an investigation into you started? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So tell us to tell us about how the investigation. starts and what exactly happened. So I was using the escrow account kind of as a wallet.

You know, I would make payroll with it and then I would put the money back and it happened a bunch of times. You know, I don't know, maybe a dozen times or so. But that's enough to get you disbarred. I mean, you can't do that. But there was no money missing. It was just that, you know, once you do it, once I did it once, it was. just easy to keep doing it.

Like you had good cash flow to be able to replace it. Oh yeah. It was just, it was like factoring receivables. Even though that because of my addiction, the business was drying up. And then what happened was 9-11 happened and I took it very, very hard. And maybe because I knew I was kind of like dancing, you know, with the devil. already. And about a month or two after 9-11, they were offering these SBA loans for businesses that had been adversely affected by 9-11. And they were advertising them on the radio and on TV.

And I knew my business had been affected, but I really didn't know if it had been affected by 9-11 or by my drug use. I really didn't know. But some combination had my business was probably halved at that point. And I was, and I had been investigated at that point for a couple of years because of the, of the escrow irregularities. And we were doing kind of well. I had hired an ethics attorney and I thought maybe I could skate through. and that was probably delusional. But I borrowed $247,000 from the SBA.

And when it became clear that I was going to lose my law license because of the escrow irregularities. And that was mostly because, well, I mean, without assigning blame to anyone, a business partner of mine, who I was in the health club business and in the real estate business with, he wrote a lengthy letter to them basically exposing everything that I had done.

So if he didn't do that, they wouldn't have found out about that. No, no, no. I mean, they knew about that, but this was like the, this was the thing that threw it over. And I don't blame him. I don't know ill will. I'm sure I was treating him very, very badly. At that point, I was out of my mind. I was treating every, oops, I think I think I screwed himself.

So I think I was treating him. treating everybody pretty badly at that point. So how did they even, what are like the checks and balances for the escrows? And can you explain what the actual escrow is and what money goes in there? Well, it's client money for closings. And, you know, there was probably a couple of million dollars sitting there, just waiting for people who, financing or closings or whatever the money was coming in and out. It wasn't my money.

But we're holding it for clients. I mean, I mean, so here's a practice tips, folks. If you're going to use a lawyer and there's going to be an escrow, it's healthy for there to be at least two lawyers in that law firm who are going to check one another. You know, I mean, I think there's a high incidence of people who get brought down who aren't accountable to somebody. So who's actually looking at that escrow to report it? Nobody. So how does it get reported? So what happened was.

was, in my case, there was this little tiny situation that developed. And I'm telling you, it was like somebody who got a check maybe for like $2,500, but became impatient and didn't get the check fast enough and called up the, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, the character committee or the grievance committee and called them up and said, look, I haven't got my money and I'm I'm pissed off. And so I got a call from I got a call from them and said like, you know, what's with the $2,500? I said, I don't know. It was just an anomaly. You know, sometimes things happen. We'll take care of it today. We took care of it like within an hour. But the way it works is if there is a complaint against you, no matter what the complaint is,

they want to see six months worth of escrow records. And there was no way I could give them six months worth of escrow records without it being completely clear that I was using it as a checkbook. And with that, I hired an ethics lawyer. And I was either going to survive it or not. And I was like, you know, and I was not even thinking clearly because of the, at that point because of the demoral, the oxycontin. But there's no way to survive.

There's, you know, the chances of surviving that were very, very small. But then I'm in this, this time period, like, what do you do? I mean, do I take in new clients? What's my obligation to tell them? Am I, am I in business? Am I not in business? And I'm not alone in that. It's like no man's land.

You don't know what to do. But, and my account. had been going downhill. I mean, it got to the point where I wasn't even showing up to work. You know, I was like, I was like staying home or going to like a friend's house and watching the golf channel. Instead of showing up to work. So things were getting worse. And then the 9-11 thing happened.

And at some point it became clear that there's no way I wasn't going to survive this. So I went to another lawyer who I respected in Westchester. who had a very good practice. And I said, look, I need to retire. I need to offload my practice. So when you take on my clients, we take on my staff, take over everything. And, you know, there's no payment for it. I just need to get out.

He may have suspected what was going on, but there was no reason. I mean, he was getting a windfall. He was getting a very active law practice. is for free, but he had to take over everything. And he did, you know, after a few months of negotiations or whatever. I don't really recall quite how that went. And so for the last, I don't know, three or four months, it was just me and an assistant sitting in my offices,

kind of waiting for the axe to drop. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was ugly. So who is the first law enforcement official that approaches you? So what happened was is that once I resign my law license, that same night is when I got my last prescription of opioids, and I overdosed that night and wound up on the floor and then went through detox and then I went to rehab for seven weeks. And I came out and I no longer had a career.

I no longer everybody, you know, I was like persona non grata everywhere in my community and the law practice. I knew I was going to lose my house. My family was in tatters who didn't. But I went from rehab right into AA and I was getting sober. And I found a home. I found like a way to do that. and I just became like a card-carrying member of AA for about 20 months and while we sold a house and we moved into an apartment in Greenwich and we were trying to just figure out how to survive

and I was about 20 months in and I got a phone call from a special agent who said there's a warrant out for my arrest in connection with the SBA loan that I had taken and I had misrepresented myself on the SBA loan application. And actually what I said was that I had an office near ground zero, which I didn't have. And I didn't even need to do on the application because my office in Westchester was in the bubble of counties right around New York where I would have gotten the loan anyway. but I needed to make sure I got that loan. Were they giving extra loans because of 9-11?

Oh, yeah. Just like now, just like COVID and everything. The same exact thing. For all these PPP and EIDA loans and everything else, when people are getting prosecuted, I went through it 20 years ago. So why do you think you made that lie if you didn't need to? Because I was out of my mind.

I was desperate. I was out of my mind. there was a little shard of truth in it because I did have conference space in that building. It's Donald Trump's building, by the way, at 40 Wall Street. And I did have conference space in there. So it wasn't like a complete lie, but it was a lie. And I had no economic loss whatsoever because I couldn't use that conference space. None.

How do you think they found you, though? They would have had to dig because on paper it would have looked normal. someone must have reported you. Well, two reasons. One, the guy who had written that letter about me, you know, he clued them in. But, I mean, I'll never know exactly the reason why. But also what happened was that they had a mortgage on my house. So when I, you know, to backstop the loan.

So when I sold my house, there was insufficient funds to pay off the loan. And as soon as that happens, they start an investigation. Wow. And so it took, you know, almost two more years to even hear. And I was saying, when I say denial, I didn't even know that I had done anything wrong. Now, they didn't call to question you. They just immediately said, we have a warrant for your arrest. Yeah, because they do their, the feds do their investigation before they contact you.

In the state, it's a little different. I mean, in the state, they'll arrest you or they'll indict you and, you know, before they've completed their investigation. They just don't have the funding. But in the feds, they have the case airtight before they even arrest you. But I would have thought they would at least want to question you get you on like a lying to federal officers or something and then, you know, go through it. No. How was your kids and wife dealing with the situation before you got arrested of just losing every. because you went from living a certain lifestyle to now you're it's completely different.

The rug got pulled out completely from under them. They were freaking out. And in ways I did not understand, you know, I was getting sober. And I knew or I had been told and I knew that I had to put the oxygen mask back on myself before I tried to, you know, before I tried to save anyone else. and I didn't know how much it had affected my kids. I didn't know how much it had affected my ex-wife. I really didn't know.

And once I did get arrested, it was like just a countdown of weeks, maybe a month. I don't know how long before my ex-wife threw me out. And so any money or access to money I had until I wound up, you know, I did get arrested at that point, and I had to turn myself in to the marshals and get it arraigned and all of that. And then it took another two years to get sentenced and go to prison. But every penny I had went to putting a roof over their heads. And so I literally went into my AA meeting in Greenwich in the morning and raised my hand and said, you know, when it was my time to share, and said, I got thrown out this morning.

The only thing I have in the world now is two duffel bags of clothes in the back of my car. And I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't even know where I'm going to sleep tonight. And the men in AA said, you know, you can stay with us, you know, either on our sofas or in our guest rooms. and for a year and a half, that's what I did. I lived really without a home until I went off to prison. But I had met this woman in AA, and I was rebounding from in my relationship,

and she was rebounding from her relationship. And her name is Lynn, Lynn Springer. And I'm married to her now, so I can use her name. And we got sober. together and we just found one another and um and so i so i can tell you that lynn did not marry me for my money and i was not a good bet i don't you know there must have been i mean i know what i saw in her you know she was kind and beautiful and and and just a you know a good soul and and uh going through a lot um but what she saw on me, you'd have to ask her.

You know, just, I was out of my mind. But I think that in my essence there, you know, of wanting to be a helper and a helping profession, and we connected. And then after I went to prison, you know, she came to visit. My kids came to visit. and things came together. But, you know, so from the minute I resammy a law license to the spring of 2006 when I reported to prison, that was four years.

Yeah, it's a very long process going through that. How much time did the judge end up giving you? 18 months. Do you think that because by that point, you had been in recovery, you met someone new, you were trying to rebuild. Hey, you there, in the baby registry rabbit hole. The thing experienced parents agree on, a Nanette smart baby monitor.

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Your life, do you think you needed prison to shape into the person you are now? I think the short answer is yes. I still needed to wipe the smirk off my face a little bit. But I had been in AA almost four years at that point. So I was very invested in in spirituality and the steps and in doing the next right thing. And, you know, you know just probably from a lot of people who have sat in the seat before me that, you know, if you're drinking or doing drugs, you're pretty much doing it right up to the prison door. You know, you know, people detox in prison. But, you know, I was a sober man when I went into prison.

And so when I went into prison, for example, there's AAA in prison, and there's NAA in prison. And when I went to my first AA meeting, which is about a week after I got to prison, now this is on a compound. I went to a low. I didn't go to a camp. So I'm on a compound of 1,500 guys. And it's basically 1,500 drug dealers, right? There's a couple of white collar guys, a couple of stockbrokers, a couple of doctors. I think I was the only ex-lawyer there at the time.

But everyone else is basically a drug dealer. So there's 30 guys there in this AA meeting. Out of 1,500 people who could use an AA meeting. And not one of those guys had been sober on the street. They had all gotten sober in prison. So they were using in prison. You can get anything in prison. And so when I got there, it was like, it was a little confusing to me.

And they taught me how to be sober in prison. And at that time, I was the only one there who had spent any sober time on the street. And they were all completely nervous about what was going to happen when they got released. Like, are they going to be able to stay sober, the temptations of women, the temptations. of gambling, the temptations of life, you know, life on the street. And I was able to tell them, like, how I was able to stay sober on the street. And then, you know, and then, you know, in the 13 months I was there, there were other people who came in who had been sober on the street. But at the moment, that first moment, and it was a, you know, it was a very profound experience.

What a prison did they send you to? And why did they send you to a low? not a camp. Well, as you probably know, when they, when they, when they designate you, they try to designate you to a facility within 500 miles of your house. And for me, it was just luck of the draw. You know, on the day I got designated, there were no beds available in the camps. And so I got a, I got to remember what it's called an administrative, a hold type thing. Yeah, there's a term for it. I can't remember. I'll think of it maybe. And not a variance. There's a word for it. And so they just bumped me up a security level. And I went to Allenwood Lowe. And when I got the, when I got the designation to Allenwood, you know, Allenwood is where Camp Fed, club Fed was.

You know, there was a golf course. There were tennis courts. But they had closed the camp a year prior. And I didn't know. You know, so I went to the website and I saw it. And I said, wait a second. There's no camp here. And it said, Alan would low, but I didn't know what that meant. And it turned out that, you know, I had to go to a low, you know, with controlled movements and bars on the windows.

And, you know, it was a low. But there were gangs and there was, you know, like I said, most of the people there were either drug dealers or they were or they had been stepped down from higher facilities and and I was scared to death but it wound up being one of the most meaningful and profound and fascinating experiences of my life and something that changed me profoundly and and I, you know, and I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I wouldn't go so far as some people say, oh, it's the greatest thing, you know, I mean, you hear this stuff. I mean, I say it. I thought it was good for me. Yeah, but you hear people say, oh, you know, it was like, it was like the greatest experience, you know, it was, it was something I really needed. Yeah. I would have loved to have learned those experience, I love those lessons in a less

harsh environment. But those were the cards I was dealt. Now, did people give you a hard time for maybe looking or being a sex offender? Did people think you were that? No. Because when I went to the load, that was my experience. So I was curious as like a middle-aged man, if anyone ever accused you of that. What really happened was that that I had confided because I went on Friday nights, I went to Jewish services. And I also went to Christian services as well. I went to every service you could possibly go to. I went to Brotherhood of Islam.

I went to all kinds of things. I was fascinated by it all. But I confided in some of the guys at services on Friday night that I had been a lawyer. And, you know, and I wasn't a kid. I mean, I had a lot of legal experience. So once, I didn't realize that the prison has ears everywhere, that there's no secrets in prison. Everyone finds out everything.

And pretty fast people found out that I had been a lawyer. And once that happened, there was like nobody thought that I was a sex offender or anything like that. I mean, people knew, all right, this guy's in for, you know, for something law related. I'm sure the inmates loved you because you have your jailhouse lawyers and then you have anyone that was an actual real attorney.

I was the only one there who had been an actual real attorney at the time. Were you turning it into a hustle at all? No. Okay. No. One, I didn't need to. You know, I, you know, I still had money. So I didn't need to. And I had been warned

even in R&D when I first got there. And I was there naked. And the guy doing the intake on me, so I'm standing there naked in my first, you know, the first hour, I'm in R&D. And he looked at me and he said to me, he's looking at my chart, I guess, and he said to me, so you're a lawyer?

And I'm telling you, as humble. as I possibly could be, I said to him, no, but I used to be. I had no idea that that was the right answer. You know what I mean? It was like, and he just looked at me and he said to me, look, people are going to ask you a lot of, for a lot of favors and a lot of questions. As long as you don't take money from any of them, you'll have no problem with us. and I got that. So I accepted no favors.

I accepted nothing. I told people, well, here's what happened, basically. You know, when you go to prison, you got to learn to shut your mouth. And you do a lot of listening and you don't talk. So word was out that I was the lawyer, but I wasn't saying anything to anybody. And I learned to keep my mouth quiet. And at that point, I was walking like 10 minutes. miles a day around the track. I was trying to get into shape and I was losing weight and everything.

So I'm walking around the track and and I have and I've learned enough at that point, like just the kind of, you know, enough of the lay of the land, right? So I'm walking around the track and and as I come around one of the corners, there's a shot caller standing there. And I knew he was a shot caller. You know, at least I don't know if I knew who all the shot callers were, but I knew this guy was a shot caller. And he's standing there and, you know, and he kind of like, you know, gives me a sign, come over here. And I know at this point, the thing to do is to not talk. Just give nonverbal communication. Do not speak. Okay. Folks, if you are heading to prison, I'm telling you, do not speak. Okay.

things will go much better. So he just says to me, so I hear you're the lawyer. And I just shook my head like this. And he said, so I hear around, you could be trusted. And the way I was trusted is because you don't speak, right? And I just said, like this. And then you just looked at me.

he said, all right then. And as soon as he said, all right then, I had been passed over. I had been passed on by all the shot callers. The next day, I'm walking the track, and people are coming up to me to ask me legal questions. It was just like that. And it was nothing I did other than to behave in a trustworthy way,

which means not. being in the gossip, not being in the chatty thing. And people came up to me. And I was not a criminal lawyer at the time. I was a transactional lawyer. I was a real, you know, I was a, I told you earlier, right? And so people coming up to me with their bankruptcies and their divorce things and, and, and their dissolutions. And there were like, and there were like hip hop record producers in there who, who, who, and their partners were screwing them on the outside. And this was like exactly what knew how to do. And they had lawyers on the outside, but, you know, they couldn't really communicate with their lawyers and things. And, and I'm thinking, I can really help these people. You know,

this is like what I know how to do. But I said, and I just said to everyone, listen, you know, there's cameras everywhere, there's guards everywhere. The only place anybody could talk to me is on the track. You come up to me and we talk on the track. You come up to me and we talk on the track. and I'll give you some advice about what to do. And I did. And for the next year or so, you know, maybe eight, nine months or whatever it was, I just walked the track with people

and just gave them pointers as to what to do. And what I learned from that experience is that these are people. Every single one of them, they have, they have, they had families and goals, and they were getting screwed and they had screwed people. And it was just like on the outside. You know what I mean? It was real life.

Everyone going through the same thing. They were just behind bars and they couldn't protect themselves. And I could help them out a little with the things I really knew. I mean, if someone came to me with the 2255 or they wanted to appeal, they wanted to know what to do in their criminal case, I just said to them, you know, go talk to the jailhouse lawyers in the library. I don't know anything about that. But if it was business related or it was family related,

I could help them. And it was, it just, it just, that's kind of what inhabited part of me that, that really made me want to just turn to service into helping people because it was just so clear that there was a whole universe of people who really needed the help,

but because of their life circumstances, they just weren't going to be able to be, treated the same way anymore. What was something you expected prison to be like, but it turns out it wasn't actually like that? Well, I thought it was going to be like in a cell. I thought it was going to be me alone. And what I didn't realize, it was like the least alone place.

I had been in isolation for years prior to that looking over my shoulder, you know, whether I was sober or not, you know, I was like, I was like looking over my shoulder for years while I was doing not such nice things in law and everything. And once I got in there, you know, people don't know. It's a community. You know, it's a big, like, robust community.

And you find your place in that community or it finds you. And I had buddies in there. I had it was like a really beautiful experience in a lot of ways. I mean, it was harsh and it was, you know, ugly, and there was a lot of crazy stuff going on.

You know, there were lockdowns and there was some gang fights. And I saw a couple of people get killed, which I didn't expect. But those were like anomalies. I mean, for the most part, there's no alone time at all. I was in a barrack of 180 guys, and they're snorting and snorting and snoring and using a bathroom all at the same time.

And, you know, it was completely the opposite of what I thought it was going to be. There's no peace and quiet. No. In fact, the only place where they're peace and quiet, for me, was two places. One is that I took 200 music lessons in there. I took 200 guitar lessons in there.

So in that music room, it was, you know, it was, it was pretty peaceful. And also because I had really turned into religion while I was in there, I was doing some chapel duty. And so while I was doing that in the chapel and all, I was actually able to, you know, kind of commune one-on-one with my, with my higher power, you know, which I didn't really understand what my connection to God was going to be at that point. And certainly not until later until I went to divinity school that I really kind of like connect with all of that. But those were two pretty quiet places. But everything else,

you know, it's like a high school cafeteria, like, or maybe more like a middle school cafeteria. People, you know, it was just, you know, chaos. Yeah, were you surprised by like the politics of like you can't sit at a certain spot, you have to use a bathroom a certain way? Was that interesting to you? It was so interesting. All right. So so here is what I tell people, okay? It wasn't, I don't know how much of it was my personal experience, but this is what I tell people.

I said, just, I said, let's pretend, for example, that it's your third day there and you're finally, let out of your unit and you wander over to R&D, you know, you cross the compound, you know, for those you, those you wouldn't get in a control movement situation, you basically have 10 minutes to get across the compound to go to where you need to go and then they lock the doors. And if you're stuck in the middle of the compound, maybe you're going to go to the shoe, maybe you're not. But it's like my, I lost my train of thought. So, I lost to make a bit of the politics aspect, what you were surprised about.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, so I go, I go to R&D. I mean, I go to, I go to REC. And, and if you're standing there at rec and you're like, there's like, it's like a junior high school, um, athletic fields. You know, there, there's track. there's there's baseball there's basketball there's people working out there's a weight stock and

I wasn't really expecting any of that so so so here so here's what I tell people so now you wander over to the basketball court and there's people playing basketball and and for me I'm like you know 50 pounds out of shape at the time so I'm not like running up and down a basketball court but there's people playing basketball and there's some bleachers over there. And the bleachers are like, like, bleachers from like an elementary school or, or, or maybe a junior high school. You know, it's like a three, a three, a three, a three level bleachers. And so I'll say to someone, I'll say, all right, so you see the little bleacher over there. Where do you sit? And they go, what do you mean? I go, I go, I go sit down. I said, no,

if you're going to go sitting that bleacher, you sit in the last row. even if there's nobody else in the bleachers and no one's sitting in there, you don't sit in the front row. And they go, why not? I said, because that's somebody's seat. Somebody had earned that seat. That's not your seat. Your seat's in the last row. You don't go to the front row unless somebody invites you to the front row.

If someone says, hey, why don't you come down and sit in the front row who's been there for a while, then you can sit in the front row. in the TV room, you sit in the back until someone says to you, hey, why don't you come up and move up? You don't touch that TV. You don't change the channel. I said, if you go into the TV room and it's the middle of the day, you don't even have, in the middle of the day, there's no one there. It's 400 seats empty, just you, and seven TVs up on there on the wall. you don't change the channel without looking at the entire room of vacant chairs and turn around and say to the empty room, does anyone mind if I change the channel?

Because you don't know there could be one guy sleeping somewhere in the back on three chairs. And if you change that channel and he happens to be listening. to that, that could be a dangerous place for you to be. So it's like the, it's like the stuff you learn in kindergarten, but you don't really know how to apply it. But I learned how to apply that. And I'm telling you now, I'm out of prison 17 and a half years and I still apply the same thing. I learned how to, how to be a respectful adult in prisons. It's pretty interesting, isn't it? It's amazing. It's amazing, right?

It's like, I'm telling you, it's like if someone cuts the line now, I could be standing in a McDonald's, and if someone cuts the line, we're all good. You know what I mean? We're all good. It's not my place to say anything. We're all good.

Everything's fine. Yeah. Yeah, I try to avoid confrontation over silly things because some people flip out about that in the free world, you know, I'd just stay away from that. Oh, I used to think I was important. Are you kidding? I don't you know who I am?

But now? And there's no question that my sphere of influence now as in doing what I'm doing, the work I'm doing and everything, there's no question that my sphere of influence is a hundred times larger than when I was practicing law. I mean, the money's not, but my sphere of influence is. And it comes from a place of service and humility, I think. I mean, that's certainly how I got my law license back.

Once you got out, were there a bunch of family members' friends asking you about prison and curious about it? And were you kind of reserved off from talking about it? Mostly nobody from my old life whatsoever wanted to talk to me. so I didn't have that much of that, even my family, even my extended family. I didn't really know why I was cast. I mean, I knew why I was cast off on an ice barge, but it was continually surprising to me the people who I was close with

and who wanted nothing to do with me. But in the AA world, you know, that's a whole, you know, that's a world of broken people, of people who've hit their bottoms. And so I was able to talk about all of this and share the stories. So I didn't really have quite that experience for the most part. But like in AA where they say, you know, stay away from people, places and things, that was easy because none of the people, places, and things wanted anything to do with me.

So I never really had to worry about any of those old influences affecting my sobriety or affecting my growth. How hard was it to transition and start rebuilding your life? I know we hear later on that you found that you were telling us earlier that you how you got into your current role. But what was that immediately, the immediate aftermath of prison like for you? Well, mostly I threw myself back, you know, almost immediately back into AA and back into the program. But I also had court-mandated drug and alcohol counseling. And so I was with this counselor. And he said, all right, so what's your life plan?

What do you think about doing? And I said, oh, well, I'm in AA. I'm going to, you know, get sober. I'm going to, you know, have sponsors, sponsors. I'm going to do my thing. And he said to me, you know, maybe you should do some things that you can actually put on a resume. And I'm thinking a resume. I never had a resume in my life.

Right. And he said, yeah, yeah. Like on a resume, you can't put like have sponsors. You actually have to do things. things. And I said, like what? He said, well, you're going to have to like get a job and you're going to have to volunteer. And I said, I didn't know what he was talking about. But I called up the rehab. I went to Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan. That was my rehab. And I called them up and I said, you know, are you accepting volunteers? And they should, sure, you know, come on over. And I did an

interview and I told them the truth about everything. And, and I, and, you know, I told them the truth about everything. and they said, all right, we'll have to run a background check on you. And I'm thinking, I just told you everything. There's nothing I left out. And I left there and I'm thinking, oh, my God, if I can't get a volunteer job, if I can't work for free at a rehab, I'm screwed. I mean, like, this is my rehab. two hours later they called me up and they said

you know you know come in tomorrow you can you can volunteer and that's where it really started because when they asked me what you know what do you want to do as a volunteer I said I'll collate I'll staple thing anything there's nothing there's nothing too low I won't do and I would say after two or three weeks there

what they realized was that they had an ex-lawyer who they could actually give projects to, and I would be willing to do them for free. I needed to get my life back. And there's no question through volunteering. The cream rises to the top real fast. I don't mean in terms of character, but it means in terms of people who were actually willing to put the work in.

And I volunteered there like two, three days a week, maybe four days a week. and and I was doing like seriously sophisticated projects for them that they needed done. And from there, I just said, this is fantastic. And from there I went to a, a diversion, a drug and alcohol diversion facility, a residential program where they sent people from the inner city who, if they put, if they got through that program, maybe the judge wouldn't sentence them to prison. And so I was with kind of like hardcore addicts and things in there.

And I was doing running groups and doing bed checks and urine checks. And they were locked down sometimes. And they would bring the dogs in, you know, the whole thing. But I was like not one of them. I was like a counselor. And so it was like on the other side of it. You know, I was with them with the dogs. And I said, this is what I want to do.

And I didn't really understand. I didn't know what my trajectory was going to be. But I was going to church with my girlfriend who was going to become my wife. And one of the pastors said to me, I think you should go to seminary. And I didn't even know what that was. And I was Jewish. And I didn't know what it was. But he said, you know, you go to a progressive seminary, and it's basically a place

where you learn about social justice and faith and about connection and God. And I was all in. And you're paid to go through that? Like, how are you supporting yourself? Well, again, I had some money. You still had money. You still had money. Right.

So it was like just enough to survive. And I did have, and I was getting paid like a stipend, a little bit of money from these places that I was working. And then I had to borrow money, you know. for like student loans. Hey, you there, in the baby registry rabbit hole. The thing experienced parents agree on, a nanit smart baby monitor. One camera, one app for video,

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and capture every sleepy smile and good-night kiss. The best part? Those insights help you get more. sleep starting night one add it to your registry or shop at nanit nant-n-i-t-com to get through to get through a seminar i went there full-time for three years how hard was it to get your law license back i i don't know the answer to that really because um i just had to kind of do what had to get done you know there was a there's an application that had to get filled out i hired a law lawyer to help me and the application process and getting through all the actual application

took about a year because there's this there's this voluminous list of things and I had been at that point I hadn't I think when I started I had been out of law for like 15 years so it's like 15 years of tax returns and 15 years of every single employer and 15 years of explanation and you know, the stack of things that I gave them was probably eight inches thick. And I had to write a narrative about what I had done and what I had gone through. And that narrative I wrote was 14,000 words long. So it was, you know, I said, I'm going to tell the truth. Every single thing.

And also at that point, we had been doing the ministry for a while. So there were a lot of articles and there were a lot of interest. interviews and podcasts and things I had been on at that point and and social media and they could have looked at any of it and I didn't want them to find any holes in the story any different between like what I had said to if I had had done an interview with Ian Bick but not told the same exact story on my on my application I didn't want them to say like my hearing well you know you said to Ian Bick this but you know on your application you wrote that. So I had to go back and listen and read every single one of them and find where the story

wasn't exactly the same. Because, you know, the stories change over time a little bit. That took a year and I submitted my application and I had to go through, I didn't do my continuing legal ed, and I had to take the ethics exam and all of that. And then I was in the process and COVID hit. and that slowed things down a little. And I had to do my hearing over Zoom. And the hearing went really, really well. I mean, there were, and I think it was because I had devoted all of those years to ministry and service in AA. And I could have applied for my law license reinstatement after seven years.

But I waited almost 10 more years after that. and they asked me, right in the hearing, they said to me, so why do you wait so long to get to put a reinstatement application? And I said to them, because I didn't know if I wanted to be a lawyer again. I was doing interesting good work. You know, I mean, it wasn't like I was biting my time to put my law license application back in. this is kind of the logical extension of how I could help people. And those lawyers on the committee thought like being a lawyer is like,

isn't it being a lawyer like what everyone wants to do? Isn't that like what you? And I said, no, not really. I said, it almost killed me the first time. But what I found out here is that the people I was working with, the people who have been prosecuted for white collar crimes, they not only needed like a spiritual and emotional help, they really needed a lawyer to trust.

Because, you know, they're cut adrift. You know, they're like a victim of the system. And imagine having a lawyer who'd been through the system who you could really communicate with, who understood. And I said, that didn't, that wasn't so obvious. to me that that's where I wanted to go. But once it became clear to me, that's when I put my law license back. And it was like, it was like a eureka moment, but I had never verbalized that before. Even I didn't understand that so much. And I think all those years of putting in all of that

service, I wasn't doing it so that my, it would enhance my law application. I was just kind of doing God's work. And I'm pretty sure that's the reason why that committee approved my application. And then we did find out that they had approved me. And then they sent it over to the court as a recommendation. And then I had to wait six more months to find out if the court was going to grant my motion or not. And which court, just a federal court? No, no, this was the second department appellate division of the Supreme Court in New York. So they have to approve it, too. Oh, yeah.

No, they're the ones who do get to approve it. You know, because I had to make a motion for reinstatement. And I can tell you for those six months, oops, for those six months I was shitting bricks. It was like every single day. I was on my phone and I would, at 4 o'clock every day, I would pull up the docket to see if my name was on it. And, you know, and so I'm sitting there, like, on my phone. And it's like, you know, and the writing is really small, you know, like, it was like, like, people versus such and such. People versus such and such.

And I'm looking for my name. And every day my name is not coming up. And I go, oh, like, and I would call my lawyer every few weeks. And he said, yeah, they're going to get to it when they get to it. So I am, I am literally sitting there like in a chair in my life. living room and four o'clock comes and I open up the thing and I'm looking at it and I see what I think is my name and like the chill like going up and down and so you know like on an iPhone you know it's like I spread it open and there's my name and it's a link and and my wife's in the kitchen and I don't

know what to do right and I'm I knew what to do but I'm like you know I didn't know if I should get her And I put you a link and it pops up and basically there's a little gobble to gook and there was one sentence. And what the sentence says is that the applicant has been restored to the role of lawyers. And what you meant was that I was already a lawyer again. I had been restored that morning. and I can't even I can't even describe and so

I hit air print you know and you know to print it out and I printed it out and I ran into the kitchen and just put it down in front of my wife and she read it and the two of us started just crying

and then she started dancing and she happened to be on FaceTime with my stepdaughter, with her daughter, who kind of saw this unfolding and she hit record. And so we have a, we have a video of us crying and my wife dancing around the kitchen. And that was like the moment of like I didn't have to worry about plan B anymore in my life. like this is what I was going to do and this is how I was going to be able to help people going forward. What was Plan B?

Luckily, I don't have to go so deep into Plan B, but I bet the ministry was going well. You know, we were helping a lot of people and we had hundreds of people and we had a white collar support group that we were running every Monday night on Zoom. and that was going to be fully plan B. I had no idea if it was going to become self-sustaining

or be able to even pay me a salary. I had no idea. But then what happened was about two months after I got reinstated, let me just take some water, about two months after I got reinstated, that's when I heard from the writer at the New Yorker who said, we want to write an article about you

and the White College Support Group. And then we just knew, like, if we have two or three months now to put everything in place we needed because we didn't know what the effect of the New Yorker article was going to be. But it was at least likely that we were going to double or triple the volume of people we were going to take in every day. And we didn't want there to be a bottleneck there. We needed to lean on some technology and lean on ways to manage all of that. And as it turned out, that all turned out to be true. And it also happened simultaneously with the law firm.

But it also kind of like gave rise to all kinds of other opportunities. Because once the New Yorker came out, then we heard from Hollywood. documentary producers and literary agents and, you know, people came out of the woodwork. All of a sudden, I was like, I was not a leper anymore, you know. And articles had already come out a little bit about the white collar lawyer who had gone to prison and had become a minister. And there was this whole story. And it was all kind of like bubbling to the surface.

and people were interested in it. And luckily, after everything I'd been through, like, there was like no ego involved in it. You know what I mean? It was like, because you know, it's like, it doesn't make, it's like you can't ride the roller coaster. It's like there could be like a really cool article and you think, oh, this is going to change my life.

And then nothing. right nothing like like what do you mean like that was going to be the big one um and the new yorker did turn out to be the big one but like not in any way i expected you know it wasn't like all a sudden like like huge opportunities were being dropped down from the from heaven but it was a slow burn i mean a lot of people wind up knowing about us like the story i told you about when i went to the conference and over time now it's been you know it's it's been a couple of years you know maybe three years since then uh it added it's like just so much legitimacy to what we're doing and um and i'm older now

you know it's like i you know i'm not i'm not looking to build a a big business or a big practice i'm not trying to get rich i'm i'm just trying to live a nice solid life do some service and, you know, and spend time with my wife. Did you owe restitution? And if so, did you pay it? I had paid restitution. I had the money. You know, it was a weird deal, you know. It was like I'd been a lawyer. And I had some money in the bank. So within the, like the organization of when I, after I got arrested, one of the deals was, all right, so we'll write a check and we'll make the restitution

payment, and that would get factored into my sentencing. Now, all these years later, has your felony affected your day-to-day life at all? Every day. In a lot of different ways. I mean, the, the, approaching it, like, just from an emotional standpoint, for the first few, years, it was like the helicopter scene in Goodfellas. I thought everybody was chasing me. I mean, literally, I walked out of my apartment in Greenwich one day, and there were three helicopters circling overhead, and I got like super, super paranoid. They're here from me. It didn't even, it didn't even dawn on me that since we only lived a couple of blocks from 95 that there was a tractive trailer accident on 95 and the helicopters were interested in the

accident and not on me. I mean, that's how paranoid for a while. And even still, it's like, you know, things have gone very nicely, but there are mornings I can't get out of bed. Like, I've been institutionalized in some ways and just, and just even the way I communicate with people and the way I connect with people. But there's no question that, you know, there's a felony penalty for a lot of things. Now, getting my law license back kind of revalidated me in a lot of ways. I don't really have that overtly,

but are there some people who are not going to do business with me or not be willing to do? or, you know, a place, we lived in Greenwich for a long time. And we just moved down to West Palm Beach about a year and a half ago. And there's a certain anonymity as to, like, living in a new area where they really don't know my story so much. Or if they do, it's like after the fact. You know, so they're like looking at me as a lawyer. They're looking at me as a guy who has a comeback story.

but we went to we were invited to some like holiday parties in Greenwich and people wouldn't talk to me and to this day I am sure that it's not because of what I did or what my story is it's because of their own insecurity about what they're doing or what they've done I represented a mirror on the on the on the soft underbelly of what is really going on in a lot of people's lives and a lot of people's business lives and things. And they don't want to come to terms with it. They don't want, I'm way too much a reflection of that. I mean, for some people, you know, they want to hear the story because, like, I'll speak to

law classes or I'll speak to business school classes at the end of, next month. I'm speaking to Emory Law, for example, on Zoom. And it's kind of a cautionary tale kind of story in a way. Or it is a cautionary tale story. But with business people or socially in a town like Greenwich or something like that, a lot of people. And also, there had been a 12-page article about my wife and me in Greenwich Magazine. And so, like, when you turn the page, there's, like, a headshot of me in Greenwich Magazine, and then 12 pages about my story,

and pictures of me and pictures of Lynn, and pictures of everything. And, you know, for years, like I would walk into a restaurant, and you know and you could just feel people like looking at me and pointing at me and the weird thing is that the only restaurants we could afford it was a diner

you know so like people there's no question that there was a barrier but not in the rooms of AA not in recovery but and frankly those were the only people in Greenwich I knew anymore but over time

it shifted again where I was kind of re-invited into some degree of polite society. What do you want the biggest lesson to be from your story? For people listening, what do you want the takeaway to be? It's like where I should turn to the camera and talk right to the camera. This is the lesson. Okay.

I'll tell you, there's three things. Okay. If I did give three takeaways, here they are. And not any particular order. Okay. One, live within your means. came. I thought, like most entrepreneurs do,

I thought every year it's going to be better than the year before. And so that was true for everything. I was spending more money than I could possibly afford, and I fell into the trap. And by the way, just for those of you who've gotten, like, sucked into the SBA PPP loan thing, a lot of people, the way they got sucked in to the problem was that we were in a real up cycle of business and and and and and and nobody really

expected the pandemic to come so people were like expecting the next year to be better and so they hadn't paid their taxes or they were or they were floating the 941s you know the in the 940s you know basically floating the the the the employee contributions and things like that I think no problem And by next April, I'll be able to pay it. Well, when the pandemic came, there was no next April. There was no next April. And then so they were caught with hundreds of thousands, if not more, depending on your business, of obligations from the year before.

So when these, when this PPP money came out and they really weren't given enough time to do their, to do their due diligence, to get their financial records, they were being told, for example, like, you know, the money's going to run out. You got to get your application in right now. They jumped, but it was like a cure-all to solve the problems from the year before. And that wouldn't have happened if they were kind of living within their means. You know, pay your taxes, make payment.

Like, live, like, you don't need, you don't need to be, have more than, and that was a rough lesson for me. And so that's one, live within your means. Two would be who you marry is the most important decision of your life. And for the people who are prosecuted for crimes, I can tell you that the divorce rate is much higher than the national divorce rate. And so for most of us, if we, we had good, solid relationships.

And I'll take responsibility. I mean, like, most of us have became, like, really bad partners. Wherever we were when we met our wives or significant others or spouses or whatever, you know, maybe it had been 10 years or more that we were hyper-focused on business and not on being a good partner. And so when we were being asked either by society or by our bosses or even our own drive to like go over the line,

I mean, what I wished I had been able to do and what most guys I speak to wish they had been able to do was I kind of go into the bedroom and say to their wives, listen, I'm being asked to do things that aren't like they're over the line or or or this is not, this might not turn out well. So instead let's simplify our lives. Let's sell the house. Let's get the kids out of private school.

Let's, you know, dump the cars, whatever it is. We can we can simplify our life instead of going deeper into this. And the reason why they don't. think is because they're afraid their wives are going to leave them. Because there's not a lot of connection left to what they've done instead is that they think their wives are only in it for the money. Because, and I have interviewed hundreds of the spouses, hundreds. And almost everyone has the same answer that they would have liked nothing better than

their husband to say they wanted their husband back or they wanted their wife back if it was the they wanted their spouse back they they missed having that life of and and the money was not a good substitute for the connection but without having that we just thrown into the abyss so that's number two, right? It's like who you marry and how you treat that relationship is, is the most important thing in life. And the third thing is kind of like an internalization. What I learned in AA is to do the next right thing. Okay. Every decision I make now, every single decision I make now, is how will this decision improve my character and bring me closer to God? Now, I just, I've done my best here not to like make this like a religious God thing.

I'm not trying to convert anybody. It's not about that. But so many opportunities have come. So many. And for anybody, I mean, but time is our greatest asset. and and the quicker I can say no to something that's a no and and and just kind of like sort no no no yes no no yes and not try to waste my time or or make compromises trying to turn a no into a yes I mean how many times does that happen to you right right I say oh but if only I do this

If only I do that, if it's a no, it's a no. Spend time on the yeses. And who knows? Maybe something will cycle back. Who knows? But life is too short to be focusing on the nose or to try to turn nose into yeses. And those yeses are always about, somehow about my own authenticity,

about what's right for me, even if nobody else sees it. And it may not make as much money or it may not have that kind. It's just about what is right for me and my character or my pathology, putting my mental health first, putting my family safety first, put that first. And it's okay if I don't make as much money. I mean, I'm not in it for the money now really anyway, but if I were 20 years younger, I'd be having to make these decisions kind of more on the firing line. If you do the next right thing, the money will flow.

If you do the wrong thing, then it's a ticking time bomb. So those would be the three things. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Jeff, for making the time to do this today. This was a wonderful interview, and I'm glad we got to meet and sit down to do this. Ian, this has been fantastic. Thank you. You make it very, very easy.

Good. I'm glad you had a fun time. Yeah, thanks.