Locked In with Ian Bick - Money & Drug Smuggling King Reveals How He Made Millions Using Car Hauling Trucks | Rich Laferriere

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Connecticut resident Rich Laferriere shares his story of how he made millions of dollars using car hauling trucks to smuggle cash and drugs across the country. Listen to Rich’s crazy and movie worthy story unfold in this epic episode of locked in. Big thanks to FACTOR for sponsoring this episode: FACTORMEALS.com/lockedin50 and use code lockedin50 to get 50% off your first box Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Rich Laferriere: Email [e-mail] Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:11:35 - Coming of Age and Childhood Influences 00:23:46 - Factor 00:35:03 - Breaking and Entering and Getting Into Trucking 00:46:33 - Making Money 00:58:12 - The Houston Deal 01:09:51 - Escaping a Sketchy Situation 01:21:50 - Smuggling Money 01:33:25 - Using Cars & Trucks 01:45:26 - Hauling Legit Freight 01:57:08 - Meeting Athena: A Dangerous Connection 02:08:51 - Meeting the Old Man in Canada 02:21:29 - Smuggling and Saving Money 02:33:14 - Close Calls and Busted Drivers 02:44:57 - Negotiating with the Government 02:56:38 - Making a Deal with the Government Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe, Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.

I mean, towards the end, dude, I was making so much money from so many different ways that it was almost uncalculable. I would trick people to smuggle for me, too. I would tell people that they were smuggling cash, but they'd have other things in their spare tires, in their fucking seats. I mean, I would take your car apart. Welcome back to another episode of Locked In. On today's episode, I have Rich LaFarrier here with me today, a fellow Connecticut resident. to share his story of how he made millions of dollars using car hauling trucks to smuggle cash and drugs across the country. Listen to Rich's crazy and movie-worthy story unfold in this epic episode of Locked in.

I'd like to give a big thanks to Factor, America's number one, ready-to-eat meal delivery service, skip all the meal prep hassle, and get Factor's delicious, fresh, never-frozen meals delivered to your door. head to factormeals.com slash locked in 50 and use code locked in 50 to get 50% off. Factor is my first choice for fresh, never frozen meals, and I strongly suggest you give them a shot. Big thanks to Factor for sponsoring Locked in. And I also want to give a big thanks to all those who leave a comment on our YouTube podcast episodes or a review on our episodes on Spotify and Apple. It helps us tremendously get the show out there to more people.

people, remember, you could stay up to date on all the exciting things we have coming to the Lockton podcast by following me on Instagram at Ian underscore Bick. Now sit back, relax, and get ready to lock in with Rich LaFerrier. Rich, thank you so much for coming on Lockton, man. You were on my good friend, Johnny Mitchell's show. Yeah. And you were supposed to do mine first, but I dropped the ball. I didn't know that you had applied to be on the show. Hey, you were up front in your disclaimer about the, you were.

It could be a month or so to get back. And so, you know, you were pretty much right on point with that. Yeah. And I had, when I reached out to you when I was going to the list, I called you or we got on the phone. And you were like, you saw me on Johnny's, right? And I'm like, no. And then you were telling me, I was like, holy shit, I just did that because I do Johnny's clips. That was hilarious.

I was like, oh, man, I just did this two weeks ago. I did his clips for it. Because I totally assumed his guy did the clips. I mean, that's the way we talked about it. You know, there. I mean, there wasn't. A small world. The world's very connected.

And, you know, I mentioned to my wife about that. And she goes, wow, you know, this is, it's not that crazy in my life. Like, weird things like that happen, you know, and there's so many of them. But that was cool. Yeah. And this is cool because this is, like, the first, I think, interview I've done where I kind of know the whole person's entire story and, like, the intricacies of it and, like, what exactly happened. But this is, like, a little bit of a different platform to give you kind of a chance to speak freely about, what your story is.

And your story is interesting because you never actually went to prison. You went through so much shit and you never went to prison. Hey, yeah. Is there like a comment section sometimes that people write into? Have you ever heard of those things?

You know, underneath the videos? You mean, like on YouTube or whatever? I'm talking about Johnny's thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, people don't love when you do things and then seemingly outside looking in don't appear to pay the price. Yeah, I mean.

One man's price is different than another's. Yeah. I'm sure you paid the price. price in different ways. Many different ways. And a lot of them started, you know, between five and seven years old. Yeah. You know, I've been paying it forward for a long time, buddy.

Yeah. I mean, and no one ever knows what the other person has went through up until the circumstances or this and that. Everything's different. Some people don't. It's like some people that get caught for crimes and other people that don't for the same thing. 100%.

100%. I think it's interesting when people who aren't. Well, you know, much like you say, aren't aware of the full picture, but, you know, can give you a full opinion. Was it weird to share the story and then see your clips do? So, like, you did billions of views on all platforms. I don't even know, man. I mean, I got to just be straight up honest with you, man. I'm like 52 in March.

I, I, my son turned me on to Johnny. That's how I even found out about it. My son's 20. So I wasn't aware I even blew up on TikTok. I wasn't even aware of it. I was watching, you know, I watched the YouTube numbers. You know, I watched them for, you know, like everybody does the first, you know, week or so. And they seem pretty strong.

And then, you know, you, you know, Johnny sent me an email because someone had reached out to him that wanted to reach out to me. And I said, is this for real? This guy who just emailed me? He goes, yeah, he's legit for real. And he goes, by the way, you know, the YouTube numbers are going to probably do well because you blew up on TikTok. And I'm like, what? And I went and looked and it was the Houston story. Like, go figure.

Like, out of all the things I said that day, that was that Houston story. I don't know, man. I don't know. That was a one of knocking at the cartels house. Was that the one? Yeah, the one where I almost got robbed. And everyone said, oh, he watched too much training day. You want to hear the honest of God's truth?

I saw the movie after. Honest to God. I mean, seriously, it is very similar. I watch it go, wow, that's crazy. but that happened to me. Yeah, I just started watching like the Sopranos and all these older movies because everyone would always make comments

to sounds like a scene from this and that and now I'm understanding what people meant because some of the stories people share do kind of sound a lot like some of these TV shows. You know, I have a group of friends of mine who are as straight as can be some of my best friends from, you know, 20, 30 years ago. And we go camping twice a year together.

We still do this. This is like our 40th camp. Crazy, right? Twice a year. These guys, I drop little gems on them here and there. And they just can't get their heads around it. And, you know, I feel like sometimes I got to just stop talking because the stories seem so fantastical that I certainly don't want the people I care the most about to think I'm a bullshitter. So I just stop and kind of let, like, you know, someone else, you know, pick up the conversation because I can see that I'm losing people.

You know, when I get too deep into it, they're just, they can't relate to the things I've done. Yeah. Has anyone in Connecticut that your friends with senior clubs and say anything to you? Oh, yeah. So I dropped a accidental plug from my old trucking company. So a bunch of my old drivers that I used to work with and dispatched and even had some dealings with and so on, called me up, Facebook message me. And, you know, they all went nuts over it. Because they didn't know.

You know, they weren't those kind of friends, you know. It was only about five or six people that had a pretty good idea what I was doing, but no details. Yeah. So was it weird that they found out about all that stuff? Like, and it's probably shined now in like a criminal type of way, you know? Well, yeah, it's weird because, you know, as you can imagine, you know, I, you know, I have in-laws, right? who, you know, I had to show up at my mother-in-law's door one night with the DEA in hand, talking about, we got to hide your daughter and grandson and your son's, your son-in-law.

You know, this is a woman that's, you know, very religious and very, just not like me. And, you know, so I, you know, yeah, I don't want everyone to see it, but I did it. So I didn't do it because I didn't think people would see it. You know, I didn't expect it to go like it did. I didn't. But, you know, a little bit of me was like kind of, that's cool. And it's good you're comfortable talking about it because that's what I want to change. Like the people that are ashamed of things that happen, you know, because it's all out there.

And we see like, I'm sure if your name searched, you see like a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office or whatever. Yeah, no, you don't see that with me. But people in general that do come on the show, they see that. Like if you search my name. and if it wasn't for the show and the platform, there's no other narrative. It's just their version.

So it's so important to share your story and be vocal about and not just hide behind it because then they win in that sense and you never recover from that. Yeah, I mean, I love that. For me, it's therapeutic too. I actually went to a psychologist just to tell my story

to somebody from start to finish the way it really, you know, like my wife knows a lot. But, you know, of course there's things about, you know, other women and such that I don't discuss with her. So there's Dietz that she's not aware of. But I wanted just to tell it to an outside person and pay him as a psychologist. So my words are protected, you know, that he can't talk about or anything like that. And I record. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer?

Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 30% your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

I ordered the sessions. Myself, that was part of the deal. I pay you, you let me record the sessions. And it took about six months. And I just went. And man, did it feel good? It does feel good to let it all out. Because I couldn't for over a decade.

You know, I don't know if you're a, aware, but, you know, my case went on for nearly 12 years, just under 12 years. And the way it started, the way it ended, and all the stuff in the middle is, like, you know, I didn't even touch on that on Johnny's show. I mean, there wasn't enough time. We got to the end, and I was already three and a half hours in. And I had barely just gone to Canada. He's like, dude, we're literally running out of battery and, like, sunlight and solar power.

The universe is going to end someday, you know. Cool, bad. You know, we'll definitely focus on that aspect of your story today, too. And, you know, for people that haven't seen Johnny's episode with you to definitely check that out, because that'll be a lot of like the, you know, like the bits where like the salacious stuff that Johnny likes to do. And then that's his thing. And, you know, for people to get that insight. But without further ado, let's start, you know, with your story today.

Where are you from? Where did you grow up? What was, like childhood like? So, yeah, I mean, my mother and father, I never knew them as a husband and wife. They divorced probably six months after I was born. My father's parents, so my paternal grandparents took me from my mother. My mother was only 17 when she had me. My father was, you know, 23.

Right. That was the Johnny joke, too. But, yeah, so he was older. My mother needed escape from her. She had an abusive family, alcoholic, you know, the whole, you know, angry life. She grew up very angry. And my grandparents took me away. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me because, you know, my grandparents were really my shining stars.

You know, they gave me a good safe place from one and a half years old until nine. My grandfather would die at five in kindergarten. And my grandmother carried the torch. And she, you know, my grandmother was great. You know, she loved me to death and I knew she was on my team. She showed me things. You know, she would, you know, steal me little matchboxes at stores and such. And just kind of, you know, she just wanted to, whatever, see me smile.

Maybe she didn't have the money for her, but I really wanted it. And, I mean, I know she could never know that those things would resonate with me. later. And I almost chose not to tell that story, but then I'm thinking I'm not telling the true story if I don't. And telling the true story about my childhood is crucial into how and why I did the things later. And I've been deeply invested with a good friend of mine, Dr. Dave Bonato. He's helped me write a book. And we're doing a lot of recording right now. And it's really dredged up a lot of lot going through all this stuff and trying to, the first psychologist, I said, it took about six months. That was at one session a week. We're already like 20 hours in and, you know, we're only at like

2006. So it's been eye-opening for me to dredge up all the old days, but they're so crucial to the current days. Yeah. I mean, childhood really affects everyone's decisions. And, you, you, you don't really reflect on it while you're going through it. It's always later on that you reflect on it. And then to take that to the next level, you start questioning, did you really have a choice at all? You know, we all approach forks in the road. You know, I'm a driver by nature, so, you know, I use a lot of road analogies here.

But we all have forks in the road, and you think you have a choice right or left. But the decision that you made or the things that you saw that went into the processing of the very decision-making, if those things are flawed, you never really have a choice. You were always going to go that way. And oftentimes, the choices only are shown to you in hindsight as well. It's rare to know that you're at a fork in your own road, right? I mean, it's rare to know. I've had a few where I did know, and I still made a decision that you wouldn't believe I'd make.

What do you think now that you've gone through the therapy and you've focused and and spend a lot of time reflecting on childhood. What do you think it was like that one pivotal thing that's happened in your childhood that affected your outcome? So I learned how not to be. I wasn't taught how to be a good person. I was shown how not to be a bad person.

And what I mean by that was I just was shown a different, I was, my parents and family around me showed me things that weren't necessarily conducive to a normal childhood. You know, I mean, I saw crime. I saw abuse, you know. You know, I was physically, emotional, verbally abused before the age of 10. I was a new kid in school, nine out of 12 years. Only child, by the way.

It's a two parents that don't really seem to show much interest in me. So I have to learn how to assess. assimilate, you know, nine times as a new kid, you know, and luckily I was funny. I had a sense of humor and I was athletic. So sports was my in. Like I literally would walk into a gymnasium and look at the strongest, fastest kid and that's the guy I got to beat. And that's been my M.O. my whole life. Always trying to one-up the guy who's doing better than me. How do you think your friends would describe you if we had one of your high school buddies. I know you just gave us your description of you, but how would they describe you? You know, I love it. Can I answer that with a,

like, if you want to hear the truer story, I'll tell you what a friend actually said about me. Give it the whole thing. So I'm at the height of my craziness, okay? I mean, I'm pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, but I'm still grounded with my clean friends. When I say clean friends, by the way, I mean, my friends from high school who aren't with me in this game. These are my real friends, okay? My clean friends are my real friends. But I still want to connect with them because of some level, hanging out with people who aren't in the game is so refreshing.

And one time we're sitting around a picnic table and I was dressed in really nice clothing. I was driving a nice car. And the guy camping next to my buddy says, hey, you're clearly successful, man. How did you do it? I'm not going to tell them the truth. I'm one of the biggest drug smugglers you ever run into. you'll never see you know like me of the rest of your life. So I'm looking at my friend and I'm like, hmm, like how do I answer this?

Like help me out, dude, help me. And honestly got my friend said, you know how he does it? He's got the balls to do the shit you don't want to do. And that's how I think my friends would describe me that the stuff I do and have done is balls, man. I mean, you got to, like, I didn't accidentally do the things I did. You know, I evaluated the risk, thought I was smarter. played the law of large numbers. So.

But when you were going through it, though, did you actually think you had the balls? Or looking back on it, it's easy to say, yeah, I had the balls to do and your friends are saying that to you too. Yes, it is easy to say those things. And it sounds cocky and like, oh, you know, shut up. But I knew when I was asked to, you know, switch products,

that wasn't something that I was really wanting to do. But I knew that I had the balls to do it. And, okay, yeah, you know, balls can be a terminology. I had such good transport and I'm a logistical genius. And I don't mean the sound. Look, man, you know, I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm not a surgeon. But let's not talk about those subjects because you're not going to hear a lot from me.

But in this stuff, you're going to hear everything you want to know. So I knew I had. transport laid down. And even though I amped my risk a thousand times by swapping products from weed to kilos, then I was, that took balls. So let's talk about the lead up to that for the people that don't know that you're this massive or were this massive drug and money a smuggler. Do you graduate high school with a diploma? Yes, I did.

I was emancipated. Like legally? Legally? Oh, yeah. I took my mother to court. So when I went back to my mother, if I could just back up just a hair. No,

tell how you want it. Nine years old, I moved back with my mother. It's chaotic. It's crazy. Alcoholic, abusive, didn't have the tools to raise a child. And then we talked about the moving around and such.

When I am, 13, I'm sorry, 12, I go to a foster home because the abuse had gotten so bad that I didn't want to go home anymore. And I told someone at school that I didn't want to go home anymore. And they got DCF involved and they took me away, put me in a foster home for nine months. This is seventh grade. Come out of foster home now, the summer of seventh grade. I'm moving back to my mother's now, beginning eighth grade. five doors down from us is a guy living there named Scott,

and he's running a carpet cleaning company, and he's looking for a laborer. Of course, you know, my mother says, oh, you know, go with Scott. You know, anything to get me out of the house, right? Scott would become my mentor. He was 20, he was about 10 years older than me, so he's 23, 24.

And he's a cool guy. You know what I mean? mean like he's got you know his own place his friends are cool he hangs out with hot chicks uh he uh moves a little bit of coke and um i start seeing this and he kind of he takes me under my wing because he knows my home life is terrible and he lets me crash at his place hang out over there you know and kind of hang out with the boys you know like i used to hang out with him and his buddy from miami and you know his buddy from miami and you know his buddy from miami would come up And instantly there was blow.

This was the mid-80s. I wonder where Coke used to come from. Someone told me. But I wasn't putting this stuff together, right? His friend, Jeffrey and I, we all became a little threesome. We all became really good buddies, you know, and they took me everywhere. It included me in, like, grown-up stuff. And that would include, you know, selling Coke, packaging Coke.

I didn't touch it. I didn't package it, but I would count his money for him. we would one time we went to go pick up some money and I would park outside in his Camaro because remember he was cool and he'd say Rich you I'd be right back and he went up to his third floor apartment

you know and he's you know he tells me we'd don't I go pick up money from Julio or whatever I look up and I'm hearing this rumbling around and look up on the staircase going up and this refrigerator comes flying off and almost hits the car I'm in. And I'm like, what the f? You know, I'm like 14, man, you know, I look up and Scott come walking on the stairs and he goes, he didn't have my money. He's like, yeah, well, his fridgeway

was right by the door and I had to make him pay somehow. I didn't feel like going all the way into the living room and grabbing his TV and marching it all the way out. So he threw his refrigerator out. I have to tell you, I absolutely adore Factor Meals. Not only are they incredibly convenient, but they also fit perfectly into my budget. They're even more affordable than constantly ordering takeout. What I love most is that every single meal is dietitian approved, ensuring that I'm not only enjoying delicious flavors, but also nourishing my body with wholesome ingredients. It's like having a personal chef create healthy gourmet dishes just for me, and I look forward to my weekly deliveries with eager anticipation. If you're a chicken lover like myself, I highly recommend

trying the loaded bacon shredded chicken. It's really to die for. Now let me tell you about Factor. They offer a convenient solution for those looking to eat healthier effortlessly. With their range of delicious chef-crafted meals, you can enjoy nutritious food without the hassle. Whether you're busy or just want to simplify your meal prep, they have you covered with over 35 meal options each week,

including keto, calorie smart, vegan, and more. Plus, they offer over 55 additional nutritious add-ons to enhance your weekly meal plan. Don't hesitate, start your journey to a feel-good week of meals today with Factor. Use my promo code Locked-in 50 at Factor Meals.com slash Locked-in-50 to get 50% off. Experience a convenience of two-minute meals with Factor. Enjoy restaurant-quality dishes that are ready to devour whenever hunger strikes. From snacks to smoothies, they offer a diverse range of effortless options for every part of your day, whether it's breakfast or a midday pick-me-up.

Factor provides a hassle-free solution for those seeking a quick yet upscale dining experience. Tailored to your needs, choose between 6 to 18 meals per week and easily adjust or pause deliveries according to your schedule. Say goodbye to meal prep and cleanup because their meals are fully prepared requiring no cooking or mess. So go ahead and head to factormeals.com slash locked in 50 and use code locked in 50 to get 50% off. Big thank you to Factor for sponsoring today's episode. So those are things that I saw. And he would always give me the don't do this stuff, Richie stuff. You know, he would always give me the you the, you know, don't do this. If I ever catch you doing this, you know, but he showed it to me. but he would be really you know he took me to my eighth grade graduation uh he stopped by just

randomly and i happened to be home he said what's going on richie i said not much he says uh what are you doing i said well i was going to go to my graduation but you know my mother's on a picnic table drinking with her boyfriend or whatever you know and he goes fuck that richie he goes get in the car he brought me over his house found some of the best clothes he had that fit me and he brought me to my graduation. And, you know, he stood up and cheered for me. And this is like a story in my life that was really important to me because I would have either just not gone or had I gone, there'd be nobody in the crowd, you know? So Scott was important to me, but he showed me this. You see the narrative. My grandmother's important to me, but she showed me something. Scott was very

important to me, but he showed me something. So several high schools, I got thrown out of a high school because I was selling stolen goods. You were selling stolen goods? Yeah. So I went to a technical school. after eighth grade and uh i still got the scot life going on okay in the summer of eighth grade i'm in hotels you know counting money in paper bags driving around town looking for rubber bands to wrap coke in i don't know what most people were doing in eighth grade summer out maybe maybe not that i wasn't running into any of my buddies but um so i was being exposed to some stuff and uh the same store that my grandmother used to snag me some little matchboxes, I would eventually start stealing Walkmans. Okay, I'm a mid-80s kid.

So Walkmans were a big deal. Okay, you are familiar with a Walkman? Of course. Okay, because I saw the other day. You didn't know what a fucking Triple Beam was, and I almost lost my shit. I didn't know what a Triple Beam was, but we had Walkmans in prison, so I know what a Walkman is. I got you, bro. Okay.

And I had one of those CD players that were the pop-up, like you put the actual CD in. Right. The CD Walkmans. Yeah. But those didn't come until after. We were cassette walkmans. And if you had the one with the equalizer on it, you've actually put bass in it, forget about it. So I was ripping off dozens of those.

And I would literally just go in the store, jacket it, throw it, walk out. I would actually hide a little backpack out in the woods. And I would go in multiple times. I'd fill my jacket come out, fill up the backpack, go back in, fill my jacket, come out. Either they ran out of products or I just did enough trips. and I would also steal cassettes too. So I was not only going to sell you the Walkman, but I'm going to give you the Dockin or Motley Crew

or Poison cassette too, dating myself there. You don't know any of those names. I know who Motley Crew. You saw the dirt. Isn't the drummer? Tommy Lee. Yeah, is married to Brittany Furlan.

Furlong, yeah. She has a podcast. I do the clips for it. Really? Yeah, she started on Vine. Oh, that's how she got big on Vine. Yeah. Yeah. She's a lot younger than Tommy, though.

Yeah. Yeah. She's cool, though. I do her clip. She's funny. I think she does stand up, too. Very nice. That's all. It's a small world that you brought that up. Yeah, yeah. You know, a woman I would meet in California down the road, she was friends with Tommy Lee's sister. They were both Greeks, and the people I hung out with were Greeks. And, you know, I'm not going to even play any met him thing because I didn't.

When they brought up, she's married to Tommy Lee. I was like the actor. I thought it was. Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, that's what I thought. I didn't know what fucking Motley grew was. Yeah. But.

So I got caught doing that in school because obviously I sold to somebody and they got caught with stuff and Rich did it. You had a criminal tendency very early on. So it wasn't like to put into perspective that wouldn't and that we'll get into. You weren't like an innocent white collar trucker that all of a sudden got wrapped up in. In something. Far from it. So you had that mindset early on. I really did.

I mean, I also enjoyed, again, you know, coming off of being, you know, the new kids so many times, towards high school, that sort of leveled out a little bit, you know, for one year. I actually got to complete a whole year at the tech school before they threw me out. Then I would go live with my aunt up in Sudbury. I'll just make this brief, but this is important because my aunt and uncle, My uncle was a very prominent doctor in Boston. She worked at a computer company, I want to say digital, or perhaps IBM, one of those. They were really wealthy.

And I mean, when I say wealthy, like, you know, maids and amazing swimming pool and this thing called a laundry shoot, where you throw stuff in it and it disappears and shows up clean. It's like a hole in the floor and laundry shows up with it. It's amazing. So I saw that life, and I was like, whoa. Like I just, I saw that life and I knew, man, right then and there. This is, I got a, they were rich. I mean, in my standards, you know, I mean, they were loaded, man.

Their house was beautiful. My cousins were so lucky. Oh, my God. They had rich parents that were both together. They were cool. They appeared to like their kids. So it was interesting visiting other people's families, you know. You know, seeing how the other half lived, you know, with parents that gave a shit, you know,

and would actually have Christmas for them and hot cocoa and stuff, you know. Do you think that motivated you to do the things that you would later do? 100%. I was craving. I don't want to say, well, I guess you could call it attention. I guess you could call it attention. I think my friends would say that. You know, I'm usually the guy, I'm usually the, I'm usually the guy at the party who's got, you know, the wildest things to say.

Or sometimes I'm the loudest in the room. and I got to just consciously tone it down and realize there's other people. But personality was everything to me. I think I learned how to mirror very early on. Mirroring was something that I learned about in the early 90s. And when I first heard what it was,

I said, whoa, I naturally picked that talent up without even knowing it. That's how I assimilate. I mean, you know, look at what I'm doing right now. to you. You understand what I say when I say mirroring, don't you? So it's very similar. Like I can do the things that kind of assimilate me into a group.

I didn't practice this stuff. Like when I heard about it, I was blown away. When I heard it, I got chills on my spine and I go, this doctor's talking about me. This is how I do it. It was really a revelation to me, you know. Eye open. It sure was.

and the psychiatrist and I went through that, you know, and he found it absolutely astonishing. I mean, he didn't, when I first mentioned that to him, he had never, he goes, that's what they teach psychologists and teach, you know, there's usually these, or it's also sociopaths, and narcissistics and dark empaths who also do this. Not that I know anything about those things.

Did you have like an aspiration of what you wanted to be? Did you have like a plan? So you know how I got into trucking? How? I got fired from a job. This is after high school. Yeah, after high school. So I do graduate high school.

I get emancipated. I graduate high school. Didn't go to college. Didn't go to college. But I graduated. And I went to school, by the way. You know, you're aware with emancipation. You know, you become illegal guardian for yourself.

And I didn't have to go to school. I didn't have, I was living in my own. I had my own apartment at the time, you know. From the drug business. No, I wasn't into drugs at all. This was just from, no, this was, no, this was just, I had my own. Didn't you make money? Yeah, I worked.

Okay. I worked at a furniture store and I ripped them off too. I made tons of money from them too. All right, so from the stealing business. Yeah, so I worked for an old company called Unclaimed Freight. I'm not sure if you ever heard of it. No. Okay, you know, Bob's discounted furniture?

Yeah. It's that stuff. It's the same furniture, but it used to be called unclaimed freight. Same stuff. Go to Bob, same stuff. Wait, what do you mean by unclaimed freight? That's the name of the store. No, but you said that kind of stuff like furniture or is it like off the stolen property?

No, no, no, no. It's a legit store. Like, think of it as Bob discount furniture. Yeah. Okay. I'm working at Bob discount furniture. I'm a guy who when you come by a couch, I help put it in your truck for you. I help you tie it down.

I carry stuff around. I stock shelves. One day, the boss comes up to me and says, hey, Richard, I need you to hang up these banners around the store, you know, the big sale banners, you know, they're like the size of like a bed sheet, right? And they say sale or waterbed sale or gun rack sale, whatever they say. And as he's telling me this, I'm standing in his office, which is the second floor and the one-way windows, he can see out but no one can see in. I look back at the back door where I work. That's my station.

I worked the back door. And I got a thought, if I hang this banner in such a way that has a way that has been, you know, that's a station. But he can't see that back door from this office. I've got the whole, I mean, that's the mother load, man. So it was a bit big of an, okay, so I stole a bunch of stuff alone. But then I started getting into bigger furniture. And I enlisted help from a friend of mine who had gotten a job there. So we were both, like, legit stealing, like, gun cabinets, mattresses.

Like our whole, all our families for Christmas got mattresses and, like, bureaus. And it's like bizarre. I bought my first car, not in cash, but in furniture. I walked into a guy's house, and he's like, I want 900 bucks for the Chevelle. I'm like, I don't have any bucks. But what kind of furniture do you need? Literally, and he's like, what do you mean? I go, well, I mean, what do you want?

What would look good in this living room? How about an entertainment center? How about an entertainment? How about a nice water bed? Yeah. And I'd say, I'll get you those five things were even. So I did that for all of high school. I mean, I'm sorry, the last two years of the high school I graduated at, I should say.

Because I had also gone to military school for nine months. I kind of glazed past that. But I went to military school between sophomore and junior year for breaking and entering and fencing off people's stuff. And, man, I didn't even mean to do all that stuff either. You know, like the people that live next to me, man, these kids, man, they were like being guys and they were bad at it. They were smashing grabs. You know what those guys are, right?

They kicked doors in instead of pick a lock or look for an open window. Like this is like the mid-80s. People don't lock their shit. I was in a prominent neighborhood, you know, right outside of University of Connecticut. So, you know, there's some dollars there. So I'm not going to sit here and say I started being eased to help these guys. but I'm kind of kind of say that they were bad at it

and I used to show them so I had really good experience in being ease because my mother used to lock me out of the house all the time so I used to start hiding like butter knives and chisels and stuff outside so I could jimmy the lock to get in to get my shit so I literally got practiced

breaking and entering my own house because I get locked out and it could be for because I didn't vacuum the fucking welcome carpet right or, you know, she was, like, loving to make me do chores, like feminine chores, like cleaning and shit. And I just wasn't into it, you know. No offense, you feminist. But you're going to be offended by that.

So, you know, crime wasn't, I got out of military, I got out of reform school and knocked over a convenience store five days later. Because the people who were allowing me to live with them, they said, you can live here, but you got to pay rent. And I said, cool, no problem. Five days later, I ripped off a convenience store. I stole rolls of lottery tickets. This was back in the day, dude, when you could scratch off tickets, and if they were under $200, you could cash them in anywhere who sold tickets. They would take your little ticket and put it under the register

and give you the $2, the $5, the $10. I stole like 9,000 lottery tickets. Thousands of them. It took us an entire deal. night to scratch it all off. Did you win big? Oh man, about probably 900 bucks. So you lost?

Oh, no, you didn't spend the money. I stole the tickets. Yeah, but 900 bucks on 9,000's not good. I don't know for 9,000 exactly. It was freaking rolls, man. There was three of us all night scratching. We had a pile of the scratchy stuff. Mm-hmm.

You know, the debris? Yeah. We had to vacuum. We stole my buddy's mom's car, so we couldn't do it at the house. So we stole her car, pushed her. out the driveway all quiet, down the street, drove into the woods, scratched all night. And I told these guys, you know, hey, I'll split it with you, you know. There's three of us in on it. One guy had the key because he used to work there and he had made a duplicate, but didn't have

the balls to rob the store until I showed up. And I said, wait a minute, you're telling me you have a key to a convenience store that you used to work at that still works? He goes, yeah. I go, get your friend Ben over here. Ben's going to be lookout. We're going to walk right through with the key. We're going to come right out. When I used to be an E, I used to do this all the time. I would make you wonder how I got in.

I would lock the door on the way out. That's a true story. You're a polite and respectful one. You know what I see? You want to hear what I used to get off on? You don't know how I got in. You just know your shit's gone. And you look around and you're like,

well, nothing broke. My buddies were smashing. and grab. They'd break windows or kick doors in. When you got home, you knew you were robbed before you got in the door. If I did you, you didn't know you were robbed until you knew. When your stuff was missing. Last house we did, the people came home mid-robbery. That was the last house.

That's what got me put in the military school. You got caught. No, I didn't get caught. Other guys got caught. So why did you end up going to military school? Because other guys talked. And my mother, they all got probation. But my mother was like, I can't handle this dude.

I can't handle him. Take him away. So I would go to court, the very same judge that would later give me emancipation. The juvenile judge befriends me. See something in me. I can't imagine what. And he gets me to this military school that in his mind was the best thing for me. And we would keep in touch until he passed away.

He would be at my wedding. and, you know, he knew that he had to get me away from my mother. That reform school was better. And so that's what got me away. The other guys talked about stuff, and I had hidden the stuff. I had all the stuff, the grab, everything we got from the couple houses. I had it hidden. So I had to bring the police to it and we returned the stuff.

On the last house we did, they got everything back. You know, we didn't break nothing. In fact, they didn't even call it. the police the first day because they didn't even know what was it for you to to do these things is it like the thrill of it is it the money aspect is it trying to fit in and and and and be with a group of individuals that want to be around you yeah you know uh i was an only child man and i don't want to keep on acting like you know there aren't you know there's plenty of only children out there who didn't do what i did um but again again the circumstances of my past play into the decisions of my now

which was then and then it it was just the acceptance of people around me. They were my neighbors. See, they lived upstairs for me. I mean, when I say neighbor, I mean upstairs. I lived in a, you know, we lived in like a four-decker condo, two on top, two on the bottom. So it's almost like if you want to hang out with your friends,

you go do what your friends do. Well, these friends broke into houses. And, you know, we used to sell stuff down at the ghetto complex in Willamantic. I'll drop it, too. Windham Heights. shout out. First guy to ever point in a gun at me was at Windham Heights. It was raining and I thought it was the tip of an umbrella so I blew him off. I was like, fuck out. The guy kept tapping and I looked and it was a gun at just my brain, rain. It's not a gun.

It's the tip of an umbrella. Like what an idiot, you know what I mean? Like I didn't even and we got all of our stuff taken from us at night. Oh, you know, you win some, you lose something, I guess. So. I was in high school doing all this, you know. So high school, you finish, you end up finishing. high school, you don't go to college. How do you get into, do you go right into trucking right away? Yeah, a friend of mine says, hey, Rich, I just been let go from this restaurant because they were

not doing so well and they were on the downward spiral. So I needed a job. One of my friends says, hey, I worked for unclaimed freight, the same company who I used to work for. In fact, it's even the same friend that I brought in. I told you. This guy now has gone on to work for the company. that delivers their furniture to your house. So you buy something in unclean freight, you set up delivery to your house.

This other company, not unclean freight, IGC management, they're out of business now. I can mention their name. They own the trucks in the warehousing. So, you know, I said, hey, that sounds great. And these are box trucks. And they're just under the limit that I don't need a CDL. And I take the job as a helper. back then a helper was a guy who read the map and got you to your 16, 17 stops.

You know, you got all these deliveries for all these people that ordered their fucking couch and their whatever bullshit they bought. And it's all low-income people, too. This is all cheap furniture. So, you know, you're delivering to like third floor apartments. You know, you're like humping like sectionals killing yourself and they don't even give you a tip. But so that's really how I got into trucking, was just random. Like, what if my friend worked at like a law office or something?

So that's how I get into trucking. And then I get my CDL. Was it lucrative back then during that time period? Like it is now? Well, I was just an employee. So I was getting, I think we were making, if I'm not mistaken, something around $16 a stop. Oh, so that's not that great.

And if you do 16 to 20 stops a day, you're doing all right. So they didn't just pay hourly back then? No, they pay per stop. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I've worked hourly for about 10 seconds of my life. And those are the jobs I just walked through and said, nope. Turned around and walked out.

That bit... With the RAM Declaration of Deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the American people. With great deals on the RAM 1500. Back with the legendary HEMIV8 and the RAM Heavy Duty. With the available Cummins Turbo Diesel delivering 1,075 pound feet of torque, all backed by a 10-year or 100,000-mile-powered power. drain limited warranty because nothing stops RAM. Hurry in for the declaration of deals.

Excludes B-EV, the plaza 26-mile gear vehicles non-transferable. Visit mopar.com for complete details and a copy of the power drain limited warranty. Comanche is a registered trademark of Cummins Inc. Ram and Hemley are registered trademarks of FCAUS LLC. Business was unclaimed freight eventually went out of business. And we all could see the writing on the wall. I mean, the stores were closing and the stores were very low inventory. And the soaps were getting more infrequent.

So instead of 16 stops a day, we're doing 10. eight. I see the writing on the wall and I respond to an ad in the paper that says four car driver wanted. No fucking clue what that was. Oh, while I'm at the unclaimed freight, I've got my experience in box truck driving. I get my class B license, which means I can now drive big box trucks, but not track the trailers yet. So now I got my class B. This business is starting to decline. I reply to the ad. Four car driver wanted, don't even know what that is. You have experience? Of course. Be right there.

I pull in and it's only about two miles from where I'm working. I go there on a lunch break and I see this big flatbed outside. Four car is a type of a flatbed that has a car on a head rack on top of you. Two cars behind me and I tow one on a wheelbar. I heard you reference Mazeluskis the other day. Modulaski's. Mazulaski's. Yeah.

You know them? I know everybody in this area in the towing. I was part of the TRPC. I'm light, medium, heavy duty certified. I ran the largest transport company at the time in the country. So everyone knows me in this game, too. I mean, I should preface that by saying 20 years ago. Now you're an old timer.

Yeah, now I talk about these big. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It is. It's crazy. But that's how we get into the car hauling game. and, you know, I met this Jamaican. While I was an unclaimed freight, before I take the car hauling gig, I met this Jamaican. And how dare I forget this?

Because this is where I meet marijuana. From the Jamaican? I'm 20. Okay. I don't smoke in high school, man. I'm a jock. I have most of my friends smoke. You know, we call them the grits of the rats.

And by the way, I come from a time when high school, we had smoking areas, just so you know. Like to smoke cigarettes? Like you could, as a student, there was an area you could smoke if you got to know from your parents. Yeah, we didn't have that in high school. No, they got rid of that right after. We were out. But, yeah, I would meet Kevin at Unclaimed Freight. I'm sorry, I jumped ahead with the job thing.

But Kevin is super instrumental because all my friends smoked weed. And I'd seen them buying quarters for $60. And it seemed normal to me. then I meet this Jamaican guy and he smokes all day long man and I instantly got to start smoking with him and I just randomly ask him one day how much does that cost that you just I mean we smoke like a half an ounce a day a day. So I go from not smoking to getting my brains blown out working with this dude like smoking nonstop between 20 stops a day working. I'm like whoa I find out it's fucking lucrative he's paying you know 60 to you know at the time was like 60 to 100 ounce.

So my area is 60 a quarter ounce. Right away, I'm like, whoa, I can do something with that. I mean, I can sell just a couple quarters and get one for free. And that's how it really started. Working with him for a while. Then I took the job at the car hauler place, but I still kept in touch with Kevin. And we still did some business.

And then I would ramp up with him using my truck oftentimes. I mean, I picked up weed in my car. But sometimes it was beneficial to pick up in a work truck because I always felt like when you're working, you're kind of the working man. You get ignored. And this is while you're working for someone else. You weren't working for yourself. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, this car company that I'm telling you about, this transport company that I take the job with, I stay with them for 13 years. And you were moving all that weight while working for someone else. While working for 13 years. But when you say all that weight, I got to explain that at this time, I'm just a little red dwarf. You know what a red dwarf sun is?

No. They burn less hot, but for a longer period of time. Okay. I was a slow burn. I made money, but not tons of it in the beginning. I was slow and steady. Only buying quarter pounds, half pounds, and pounds at the most for like six, seven, eight years. I didn't get huge.

And what were you doing? So you would just stick it in your truck? hide it and then just bring it to someone they would pay you for that. Well, I would pick the weed up because I was getting it in Hartford and I was getting it in like, you know, North and Hartford. Everyone knows what's going on there. But I was in with, you know, my buddies and I was welcomed into the, I don't know, I want to say the hood, but I was welcome into the fold, you know, I hung out with them there.

I met his mom, you know, and I was accepted and I liked it, you know. I've always been a friend of the brothers, you know. And, um, I, you know, I learned a lot from that. But I would mostly pick up in the truck because it was less conspicuous. And then I would bring it back to my job, get in my car and drive home. Like, you know, you're doing the worker thing. You're driving during work hours, you know, I mean, we still love smuggling in, uh, rush hour. I mean, you know, you don't want to be smuggling at three in the morning when you're the only car on the highway for miles.

that just gives the board cop something to do. And how much money were you making from this? You know, I was probably quadrupling my investment. So, you know, I was getting ounces between 60 and 100 bucks. And, you know, when I say 60 to 100, it's because the price is fluctuated. It's $60 for one ounce. For an ounce, yeah, 60 to 100. You know, if it was better weed, the guy would just charge us more.

You know, it's just how it works. If it looked better or smell better, they would just charge us more. I would eventually be getting QPs in the 250 to 300 range. I was getting pounds for like, you know, 16, 15. But I was selling those back home for 60. So I'm getting 240 an ounce for what I'm paying 100 for at maximum. So, you know, by the time I'm done with all, and I'm a smoker now too. So I'm now smoking.

I mean, and I got, I went from not smoking at all to smoking, you know, ridiculous amounts of pot with these guys. You know, we smoked so much weed. It's all we did after work, during work. So I'm probably making, you know, a couple grand, two, three, four grand, you know, a week on the side. Let's just say that for a long time. And it would fluctuate. Some weeks would be greater than others. I go on vacation or whatever.

And, you know, I get back and I load people up so a bunch of money comes in, you know, you're, you're weed rich and money poor. you know what I mean? Or sometimes your money-rich weed pour. And a lot of your money is out there. Like, you always have money out there. I mean, I'm sure you're aware. You know, when you loan things or, you know, anytime you're in that business, you loan things out.

And you sometimes wait for your money. But we were living good and I was working. Like, I wasn't, in my mind, it was never like, I want to be a professional drug dealer and forget this trucking life. Like, I was moving up the right. ranks. I was in corporate at this point now. You know, I mean, I don't want to fast forward too far, but I mean, I went in every, I've done every aspect of transport that you can do. I'm not trying to brag, but I've done it. I started in transport in 1993, 92, actually, 92, 93 at this job.

Do you actually enjoy it, though, like the driving aspect of it? Yeah, you know, I did. You know, what I liked about it was, you know, your boss isn't sitting right next to you. Yeah, you're kind of a little. Or, you know, the fat lady with bad breath. or whoever is in your office or whatever, you know, microwaving tuna fish and you got to smell it. Like, I didn't have any of that. But then, like, all things, you get sick of that, too. And then I felt like I was being wasted behind the wheel.

Like, I knew I had more to offer than... Yeah. But it probably kept you out of trouble because, I mean, you were still doing the baby smuggling, but, like, you weren't breaking into houses anymore. No. No, you know, and, you know, I got to also say, you know, I meet my wife, of course, in, you know, right after high school.

Was she a trucker too? No, no, no, no. No, my wife is very, from a really clean, normal family, you know. And you guys have been married ever since? Yeah, I've been together since 1990. We got married in 96. Wow. Yeah.

How many kids? One. One kid, okay. Yeah, yeah, he's 20. 20, okay. Yeah. So you guys have had a good. run together yeah I mean you know she's put up with a lot man I'm a I'm a

hefty personality I mean to be my no one can relate to my poor I say my poor wife I don't mean it but sometimes my poor wife you know this is a tough gig you put her through the ringer well that you know my personality man I'm always just I'm going to do what I'm going to do look I went on Johnny's show my lawyer told me don't go on Johnny's show. I'm even here today. Dude, you want to hear truth? What?

My lawyer and I severed our ways. Because what? He told you not to come? Because of this show right here today. Why? He just reminds me that he thinks I'm insane for what I'm doing and he doesn't get the big picture. What's a big picture? Well, I mean, I want the book deal.

You know, I want the book. I've been wanting to work in this book. Wait, hold on time out. I've been working on this book for years. Now we're really as close as can be. Johnny's show or your show, whoever called me first, was going to be my way to attract publishing, attract perhaps a literary agent, because I've got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours already recorded about my whole life. And we just got an AI program that's going to turn all that to text. Wait, so you can write everything.

Everything I've ever said, I can turn to words. So what do you do? You insert the word. How does you upload the file? Yeah, I have recording devices that have little SD cards put into my computer, download it, and I'll put it into this system, and it'll just turn my words to text. It'll write the whole book? Well, it's not going to write the book because it's not going to have editing and all that.

You can pay for Amazon or anybody to do the editing, but my whole idea is get the transcript written, get the elevator story done, get a publicist involved, and then, not a publicist, I'm sorry, a literary agent involved, and then they handle it from there. And then they write the book, so you wouldn't actually write the book. Well, they get it done. They handle the editing. They handle the promotion. They handle the publishing.

And then I will just get my whatever fee. But you're not actually writing the physical book is what you're looking to do. I mean, I'm physically not with my hands writing it. I am speaking it into a recorder. and I've been doing these recordings since 2012. I started them. So they're very extensive and they're extremely detailed and there's hundreds of hours.

There's nothing that I'm going to talk about here that's not on recording somewhere and it's not already. I have a lot of it transcribed already. My previous lawyer hired this woman just to transcribe every text I ever sent on dozens of phones. This was her job.

Can you imagine this poor woman? And you imagine the story she must have gone home and told people what these things I would transcribing to her? But you got to understand the lawyer's perspective. You just beat a case technically. You know, like you got it resolved. This was during the case. Yeah. But you get the case resolved and then you go, what, a couple weeks or months later onto a podcast to talk about how you were probably one of the biggest haulers of the country that's kind of throwing it in their face, no?

Well, I mean, look, the kids. case was, look, my case was dismissed. I can talk about it now. Yeah. The statutes of limitations are up. No, no, I, I totally get it. I'm just looking at it for the optics, you know. Look, I, my lawyer and I have a long history, and it's probably not over today, but. You're in a timeout. We're in a big time, time out. And here's the thing, man, you know, I'm a very, I'm an instant gratification guy. I want it now. I'm ready for it now. See, in my mind, I've already waited 12 years. So my lawyer should have been thinking, hey, he just beat his case.

He must be chomping at the bit. Let me get things started with him. But no, that doesn't happen. I got a call and I got a call and he's busy and he's got his, look, man, he's got a life going on. It's not all about me, right? There are supposedly other people around. So I just need somebody that can work with me fast.

I got it. That's all. And he's just too darn busy. He's a really great lawyer. He's a partner. He's a, he's well known. He's taking out a very high profile case right now that's in the news. Very high profile.

Just given that. He's a great guy. I'm not going to plug him, but. What the, the murder case? No, some kind of abuse thing. Some kind of, like 20 years of abuse. Oh, I thought that the Jennifer Dulo's case is in Connecticut right now.

No, but the one going on now, some, some foster dad or foster parent has been sexually abusing some poor girl for 20 years. and she's telling you the whole story right now. Yeah. Yeah, that story, whatever that is, he's doing that. Gotcha. So you were flying under the radar basically for 13 years. Why take it to another level?

Why change what you were doing? So you mean when I was working for corporate? Yeah. Yeah. I started making a little bit more money on the side. You know, in them 13 years, you know, I do, of course, network. and I'm, you know, Kevin's out of the picture now, so I'm forced to find other avenues.

I briefly find some guy in New York City that works out a few times, but that's risky and crazy. It's not truck friendly. So I'm trying to just replace Kevin. And I'm still, again, thinking, yeah, you know, I start making more money. That's it.

And, you know, when you start making more money, not working, you start giving less of a shit about people who expect you to do things at your real job. Like, you know, I started, I kind of was getting a little complacent. I was getting bored with it. But bottom line is I was making more money on the side now. And it just overtook, you know, do I need to get up at 2.30 in the morning to go in and set up loads for 15 drivers? And, you know, I can make 5, 10 grand a week and stay home and sleep late.

And how are you exactly making 5? to 10 grand by staying at home. Yeah, it's just flipping weed. I mean, that's all I'm doing. I'm not doing anymore. I'm not doing anything else. I'm just selling weed. I've got it down to a point now where I'm getting like pounds in the 1,100 to 1,500 range.

And I'm able to flip those for, you know, 25 to 3,500. You know, depending, obviously, you know, if you break them down into ounces and quarter pounds, you make more than if you sell a whole pound. It's what I mean by that. Are you the one physically doing all the work, or are you just putting up the money buying it and having someone else do it? No, I'm doing everything. So people are coming to your house to buy it? I'm delivering a lot, but my close friends are still coming by.

And this has nothing to do with trucks at all, this aspect to it. You're just selling pot. Yeah, once I'm done with the corporate trucking stuff, I'm done now. I now work for myself. I end up going to get my Class A license, and I start my own business. with probably the drug money. Yeah, well, it doesn't cost much to get an LLC. I mean, it costs much to buy trucks, which I did that over like a weekend.

I just went out and bought trucks one weekend, like literally. I talked about it on Thursday, and my driver was like, yeah, I think that'd be great. And I called them on Sunday. I said, dude, just bought a truck. What kind of truck did you buy? I bought a Freightliner Columbia, full-on condo. You know, it's huge inside. You can stand on the bed and do jumping jacks.

It's a condo. It's a 13-6 monster. over the road truck. And that's, you know, that happens around 2010. But around 2000 and before I buy my company, I realize I now need to start going outside of Connecticut for weed. The prices now have gotten, I've bottomed out. You know, I'm paying 1,100 at my cheapest, which is good. But I'm hearing rumblings of, you know, southwest and west and west and,

You know, we all know what's going on in California, but I end up with a connect out of Houston. And that's where I first get into the weight game and trucking and transport game, because I'm now being offered pounds for 600. The best I'd ever gotten out here is 11. How do you even find a connect like that if you're living in Connecticut? Yeah, so one of my drivers. His brother lives in Houston. His brother's neighbor sold wheat.

and he went over his he called his brother said hey one of my friends is looking for something can you put the word out and he comes back to him relatively quickly yep my friend john he says get him down here so do you fly or you drive yeah the first time i fly um i fly down just just to meet with them and just to kind of go you know talk about the scenario and uh that's only that's only a weekend i meet with them for a couple of hours and fly back home and say i'll see in a few weeks and get all my money together. And at this point, I need trucking. And my friend is working for a truck company out of Houston.

I mean, you can't make the shit up. And I start saying to myself, well, geez, you know, when you go back to Houston, you know, let me know because I'll send you down with some money. And then I'll fly and I'll buy the weed. And then I'll just mail the weed back home because the chances of him getting a load back out of Houston back is, you know, I'm not in control of this truck. So he says, yeah, well, I'm going back in a couple weeks. So this is, you know, a couple weeks later.

He's going back. He lives, my buddy lives in Maine. So he's in my area, right? He has to go through Connecticut to get out of Maine, you know, to get anywhere, really. And he stops at my house. I put, I think, a total of 50 grand in a little firebox, gave it to him. And I said, I'll see you in Houston. show up i get driven around uh we start looking all these different places for weed and it's

really sketchy i mean johnny's uh you know i'm in like a black neighborhood predominantly johnny's a you know young you know i don't want to use the word punk he's a good kid he's just a young punky kind of you know i'm older man you know like i'm in my thirties man you know like i you know this guy's like 20 and he's he's got gold teeth he's got of the Cadillac with fucking bullet holes in it because he got into an argument with a guy at a red light. I mean, this is what's going on. I'm getting driven around by these guys.

And my buddy's brother, he's not in the game at all. He's an old black guy. He's like in his 60s. He just has a neighbor. Like, that's it. So neighbor and him are in on it for 200 bucks for 100 bucks apiece, 200 bucks total.

So these pounds are really only costing 400. But I'm paying 600 because I'm putting my buddy's brother. and Johnny, right? They stand to make 100 bucks a pound times 60. So we're driving around and, you know, this is the, you know, this is the classic Houston story. I mean, the very first place we go is to this house.

You know, my cousin knows this guy. We stop and pick up Johnny's cousin. So now there's me, Clarence, who doesn't even know anything, but he's going along for the ride because he's in on it. Johnny's driving, and now we go pick up his cousin. So I'm a white guy in a car with three very black guys, uh, driving around the ghetto looking for weed with fucking $40,000 in my pocket, legit.

And yes, people, $40,000 fits in your pocket. I can figure it out. So, first place we, we, we pull into, we pull in. And it's a typical little shitty house and like a dirt yard. There's like a train track going behind it, fenced in. and no grass, beer fucking bottles, pit bulls and cameras all over the place.

We pull in and like right on cue behind us, this truck pulls in, blocks us in. So now I'm like, hmm, we can't get out. But, you know, I mean, this is just how things go in Houston, I guess. We go in and, of course, I always say, because it's true, I didn't really want to go in. I was really hopeful they would just come out of the car and I could inspect it and go. because I'm thinking, you know, like, if you were coming to, I wouldn't want you in my house. So, but they're like, no, come in. And the weed was terrible.

Seedy, garbage. I couldn't take it. So now I'm in a room with like, you know, maybe 10 dudes. Only one of them speaks English. Johnny and his cousin, Clarence, my buddy Clarence is, my buddy's brother, Clarence, has stayed in the car. And now I'm not buying it. And I'm like, I don't want. want them to like turn on me and just want to rob me. So I just start doing what I do. I just

start talking. I say, look, man, I just can't bring this stuff back. You know, this is just too seedy, man. I'll like, you know, literally get beat up, you know, like, joking with them a little bit. And they're just staring at me. And you know, when people who don't speak your language just stare at you, it's even more uncomfortable than someone who does speak your language and stares at you. And then they motion to the girls in the other room to get out. And I'm like, huh, yeah. So I start backing up, literally walking backwards to the door. Because I'm only 10 feet through the front door.

10 feet through the door, the weeds on the counter immediately to my right. Johnny's behind me, the cousin's in front of me. And I say, hey, man, I'm going to come back here all the time, man. We're going to do this. I'm going to come back every month. You know, we're just going to keep doing this, man. We're all going to make a lot of money. You know, I'm thinking in my mind, like, you know, I'm trying to just kind of convince them,

hey, look, dude, don't rob me here. This isn't the time. I'm going to come back and we're going to make 10 times, but you could possibly get out of my pocket today. And as I'm walking backwards, Johnny walks out. I walk out and, man, I don't want to turn my back. Like, legit. But when I finally do turn around, man, you know, I remember this like it happened before I got here today. I remember looking at what my.

escape route would be like if they start like just like shooting at me or like wanting to chase after me to rob me like i'm trying to think i can maybe can i hop that fence what if i jump over the hood like dukes a hazard and sneak over the side of the car to avoid bullets like all these things are going through your head man because you don't know why didn't they just rob me i mean 40k in 10 minutes and they still got their weed you think those dudes are going to help me you think johnny and his cousins are going to start you know firing back Adam. Well, don't they always say like guys like that, like cartel type people, they conduct good business? I was thankful that these guys were one of those guys because when they shooed the women out, I thought things were going to get crazy. I thought you were done. That happened, man.

And it was just like, man, I remember it like it was yesterday. Their kitchen had an opening through the wall that you could see into the living room so I could see the backs of the girls' heads all sitting at the table. They were facing the television, which was facing me. So they were facing away from you understand what i'm saying so i'm never looking at them and uh the blank looks on the faces of the guys when i turned it down i was like hmm i don't know this could be you know this could be the this could be the this could be the this could be the trip and do you ever end up going back to get from those same people no no so they're probably wishing you they robbed you now yep so to wrap that up we walk back to the car they let us get in the car we the car behind me back

out, lets us go, and I'm just like, I'm like, kind of waiting for the shooter drop still. But we get out of there. And yeah, so what I had said was, hey, guys, bring this stuff back. We'll be back in an hour, man. Just call me, bro. I'll be right back. I'm coming. I'm getting the car.

I'm like, we're never going back there. Don't fucking forget it. That's done. Take me somewhere else. Why don't you just go to your original connect that your friend got for you in Houston? Why do you have to go to these guys? So the guy. So, okay.

So I got to explain weed economics in Houston. The blacks in Houston don't run the weed game. It's the Mexicans. The blacks could never get me 60 pounds without doing it through a Mexican. Okay, because the Mexicans have the weight. Johnny could not buy 60 pounds from the same guy I bought it from for the same price. Johnny would pay more because he's local and they want to keep, I don't want to say. I mean, look, I'm not being racist when I say this.

They want to keep the blacks down. They don't sell them weight for cheap. If you live in Houston, you pay more for a pound than I do because I'm shipping it out of town. I'm not competing. I'm just showing up with money and leaving. They give it to me cheaper. So I could never have gotten those deals if I bought from Johnny

because Johnny would go to that same guy and he'd be paying double that. So you got to go to the Mexicans. They're the ones with the weed. and the cheap weed. Why do you want to explode the business that? You went from moving a couple pounds and now you're asking for 60. Because now I'm not working.

But you were making enough just selling a few pounds. It was the money? It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. Were you living beyond your means, too? No, I don't mean it wasn't enough in the sense that I was like, you know, risking losing my house. No, I mean, okay.

An accountant would say it was enough. Not for you. Rich says not enough. You had to keep going. My accountant lived in a little cabinet in my office. And I just kept putting piles in front of him. Cash? Yeah, that's where I, like, I couldn't bank stuff.

So I would build up enough cash. And then I would go take this trip. And I would, for the first time, buy. At Hyundai of Glendale, Lisa New, 2026 Hyundai Tucson SC Front Wheel Drive for 269 a month plus tax for 36 months. with owners' assurance in America's best warranty. 10-year 100,000 miles. Stubbed by Hyundai of Glendale today or Hyundaiofglendale.net.

36-month lease, 4,49 to its signing. Tax title license and dock fees extra. Plus government fees and taxes. 7,500 miles per year, expire 6126. Who available at this payment? PH 71529, PH7159. The wheat is so freaking cheap, dude. I think it was like 36,000 I was paying for 60 pounds.

Dude, I turned that into 90 on accident. I tripped out and fell out of bed and tripled my money. So that's trip. So that 60 pounds, time out. So we don't get the 60 pounds of those guys. We end up going to another Mexican and we got 60 pounds. That was my first trip. That was hairy.

I mailed all that back. What do you mean you mailed that you threw 60 pounds of weed at a UPS box? I threw 20 pounds, 20 pounds, and 20 pounds. And this was my method. I never lost. The only thing I ever lost in the mail, I mailed dozens and dozens of times, literally, was I lost money in the mail once

because I got lazy and broke my own rules. So I would go to like a staples and I would buy boxes. And then I would buy the little styrofoam peanuts, right? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I used to love those as a kid getting in the boxes. We'd throw them around, hop in the box, pretend it's snow, this and that. Awesome, right? I would get a box and I go to Staples, get boxes, get the little cyrofoam peanuts.

I would get the big roll of plastic and you just go around the weed. They came in 20-pound bricks, by the way. They were 20-pounders. So they were probably, you know, this big. Like saran wrap? Yeah, saran wrap with like two or three, four layers. I would wrap it with like 30 layers. I would make that box like this to try and eliminate the smell.

I would put hand sanitizer between the layers. I would put alcohol. We started using vodka. Vodka works really well. You're trying to fool dogs is what you're trying to do. Eliminate the scent as much as possible. I would do three of those and mail them out of three separate post offices around town. I would go to different post offices.

So me and my buddy's brother would just drive around. town and he point me to the post offices. We'd go drop them off, mail them off, and I'd fly home. I was mailing him to, one time my mother told me her neighbors. Hey, Ma, what are you doing today? Oh, yeah, I got to go next door and water my neighbor's plants. They're on vacation.

I'm checking their mail for them, too. Ding, mailed them there. Told my mother afterwards. It's going to be three packages showing up there. Take them and bring them home. That was, that actually wasn't that. trip but that's one of them that I did that too and this is 2010 no this is before that so this is 2000 and I I end my 13 years with the trucking company in 2006

so this is like late six early 2007 could someone still get away with that through the mail today you know I would say you can because you know what they're even doing now like there's an you can get I get an email of what mail is coming to my house they even scan the actual letters so if they're doing that i imagine they got to be putting shit through x for like a bunch of stuff right there's got to be a lot of security precautions you know i it's kind of be harder than what it used to be it probably is hard look man yeah again i'm 15 20 years removed yeah from literally mailing drugs i know with like the silk road that whole thing exploded the cell of drugs online and getting it mail people are like ordering like uh

like cocaine to their house. Look, I would literally mail hundreds of pounds, hundreds of pounds, hundreds of pounds before I got trucking lined up right. And the, so I get this weed back home. It all makes it. It's all 60 pounds make it. I had several different places I would send them, you know, and I make a kill.

killing. Now, I don't tell everybody that I just got back from Houston and bought the cheapest fucking weed on earth. I mean, I'm not letting people know that I got such a great deal because I'm still keeping the price pretty high, but it's relative to the prices around. I'm not killing anybody. So I'm immediately planning next trip. Like as soon as I get half my, I don't even, you know, half the weed's gone. I got all my money back and then some. I go down to make a second trip. What do you make on 60 pounds? So 36 grand, it was about, like, I would probably say safely turn that into 90 to 100,000.

So a 36 grand investment is turning into $100,000? I pretty much three times my money there. Because, you know, we're talking about transport. I had to pay Johnny. I mean, look, I put 200 bucks. Those pounds were really 400 bucks. I hope you saved some money after all this, Rich. I hope we got a little piggy bag somewhere.

I didn't show up here in my Ugo, that's for sure. But the... What's a Hugo? Oh, a Ugo, some cheap little piece of shit car. Oh, they call it a Ugo? Yeah, you'll remember... No, we call it, like, beaters. The Yugoslavian car, they came out of a car called Ugo.

It was like... Never heard of it. You're as well to not... Don't even bother Google it. I'm rushing to make another trip down there. and I'm ramping up my customers now because this is the first time I ever bought 60 pounds in. So I'm loaded.

And my whole thing is I'm never out. Connecticut experience used to experience droughts in the weed game. And it was always end of summer just before the new crop gets picked. So there's always a drought in like August, September, and October. So if you could keep. keep your product up in those months, you were doing really good. So now I'm involved in weight and I can now do that. And that pays off for me because you're able to kind of milk the market a bit when nobody has anything.

You're able to play around a bit with pricing, I mean. But the second Houston trip must be better than the first because that was pretty sketchy, right? I mean, like that was something, you know, that was a great story. I mean, yeah, okay, yeah, 10 years later, I can look back and it was a great story. Almost got killed and robbed or robbed or robbed and then killed. Who knows? But ultimately, that wasn't really cool. And I didn't want to repeat that.

So next time we go down there, they said, oh, man, we got a guy. He's really awesome. I've been setting this up. This is going to be so much better. That's a great. When can I meet him? Well, he doesn't want to meet you. first time.

Like, okay, is this another situation where I'm like got to like not see weed and like hand money to people and he disappear with it for a while because I'm not going through that? He goes, no, no, no, he'll let, he'll bring it out. He'll have someone bring it out. You can look at it and you can choose if you want it. I said, perfect. That's, that's all I want. So, uh, fly back down.

This time I have transport coming home. So this time the, uh, rolls are in reverse with the truck. I'm arriving in Houston while my driver is in Houston and he's coming back to Maine so now I just got to get money down and then I got transport for the weed back so I actually smuggled the money on an airplane that was hairy but I got it

how do you smuggle the money on the airplane oh man so I smuggled and how much is it I smuggled 60,000 and dude so here it is back then it was before you went in the scanner machine where you got to do this and the pockets got to be empty and they scan you. They didn't have that back then.

I'm literally, I don't sound like an old man. They didn't have that stuff back then in 2006, seven. And if they did, they only had one and it was hardly ever open because some airports I would see the thing. I'd be like, fuck, I hope I don't have to go through that one. But I never did. What I would do is whenever I would collect money

and such, I always collected hundreds. So if, okay, I collected hundreds. Because when I wanted to smuggle, I want to smuggle the most amount of money in the least amount of space. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, 20s, it's too bulgy. $1,000 and $20s compared to $1,000 and $100.

$40,000 in your front pocket. You're going to see a little bump there, but it's going to look like I'm carrying like maybe three cell phones. Because I would make my money in $10,000 stacks folded in half with two rubber bands in the shape of a plus sign. Always. My 5,000 stacks only got one rubber band, north to south, always with the faces facing out. I'm a little OCD with that stuff.

Clearly. My money in my wallet is always face out, highest denomination to lowest denomination. I can always tell if someone's been in my wallet, you know, if my kid pulls a 20 out of there or my wife accidentally drops my wallet and 50 bucks falls out. I always know. I know when they don't put my weed back right. I know when someone touched a lighter in my house because I put things specific ways. I don't just set my lighter down. I set it down so it's exactly square.

to my mouse pad. It's just a weird thing I do, but I do it. So I would take $10,000 and keep it in my front pocket. I put $10,000 in my wallet. You can actually do that. You can fit it, and it'll still fold, barely, but it will. Then you've got to take your shoes and your belt off, and you've got to put it in the little tub, right?

And you've got to put your wallet in there and all that stuff. So I would put my wallet in one of my shoes. in the tub and I had always traveled with a briefcase and I dressed pretty well. I tried to look like a corporate guy that I used to be. I spent a lot of money at Joseph A. Banks, a little Connecticut place. Hello, you're out of business now. That's why I can talk about you. I spent a lot of money in nice clothes.

And then when I quit the corporate world, I didn't have any use for them. So I would put them on when I would fly with money to look like a businessman with a briefcase. Like I was one of those douchebags. And I would put the rest of the money in my briefcase. And my trick, and I don't know, I can only tell you that it never failed me, fold your money in half. Do not ever have a flat open bill. The x-rays, for one thing, I've seen the x-rays. And if you are smart, you walk past the x-ray machine and you look back and you see the screens and you watch your own shit go through.

You can watch your own stuff go through the x-ray. Have you ever done that at an airport? Yeah, I've seen it. You've seen it. So you know what I'm talking about. I want to see. So like I'm actively looking because I'm. I want to see what my shit looks like going through.

What does it look like? I mean, they're seeing it. So I used to fold my money in half, and I used to put it between little packs of post-its. Because the money folded in half is roughly the same size of the post-it, and I would put them between post-its in my briefcase. That's how I did it. And it would look like a stack of post-sticking-out.

I guess so. Wow. Then you would get 60-gram. When I would see it, go through there, there were squares. That's what I would see. I would see it. I've watched it. They have a blue screen, they have a red screen, and kind of like a yellowish screen.

I mean, are they really looking for money, though? Yes. They are? Oh, my God. They're that much on money. Now more than ever. Really? You know, if you get pulled over today with $10,000 plus in your car, they can legally take that from you.

Yeah, but they're not looking for that is what I'm saying. I think they're more looking for drugs or if you're driving drunk or if there's anything suspicious. They're not like looking to see if you have an envelope somewhere, right? I mean, in an airport, though, money and drugs go through airports. And also the thing to remember, money goes west, drugs go east. So if you're an interdiction cop and you sit on the eastbound lanes, you're getting drugs. Is this actually a thing?

Yeah, this is a legit thing. Really? This isn't a richism. This is money goes west. It can go either way. Money can go one. What are you talking? It's not one or the other.

Dude, dude, dude, dude, I know. interdiction cops, actual interdiction cops, who their jobs are to do this. Money goes east, product goes west. I'm not saying, is there ever a time when money comes, I mean, but generally, the drugs are bought in the West.

Kelo's aren't bought here in Connecticut because they're made here in Connecticut, are they? They're not made here. So now you're in the big leagues. You're smuggling cash to pick up pounds and pounds. How does this turn into trucking? How does the trucking correlate with the...

So this is the last, trip that I will do without full control. Again, the previous trip, I had money, transport down covered, but didn't have transport back, so I had the mail. Second time down, I have trucking coming back, but not going down. So I had to fly with the cash, as we just discussed. I get down, we go and we meet this guy Shorty. Everything you said, it was going to be pulled up to the house.

This guy came out, showed us the stuff. it was great. Now, I, of course, memorize the address because I'm a numbers guy. I'm a logistics guy. I know exactly where I am. I know the road I'm on. I know his street address. Just before we get, you know, everything's great.

I hand the money off. The guy goes in, brings out the rest. Everything's great. I love everything. Just before, ready to pull out, Shorty himself comes out. And he puts his head in the window and he goes, you come back. And I said, yeah, I'm. I'm definitely going to come back.

I'll see you soon, you know. So I was really psyched that he did that. So transport coming back is pretty simple. Guys in a car hauler. He's working for this company. Then I would eventually infiltrate. But I'm not there yet. He's getting a load coming up to Connecticut and Rhode Island, and then he's going home.

So it's perfect. We put the weed in a whatever random car in there, put it up on the head rack, which is the highest point. for this hardest one to get to. And the weed gets brought back up and attract the trailer. I fly back home. I land first. I wait a few days.

He comes up. We unload right across the street from my house. I'm a little truck parking lot. And I'm in business again. I got 60 more pounds. I pay 600 again. Still got Johnny. Still got Clarence in the middle.

But I start thinking, I know these pounds are only 400 bucks. And I don't need Johnny. And I don't need Clarence anymore. because they made the crucial mistake of bringing me to the guy's house. And the guy did come out and say, come back. So I took that as an invite. So next trip, this would be the last time I would use the mail in Houston, out of Houston.

Next trip, I go down. I don't tell anybody. I don't tell my driver. I don't tell Johnny, nobody. I rent the car, drive right to Shorty's house because I memorize the address. drove right to his house unexpected couldn't call him ahead of time

he didn't have his number I just knew where he lived and knocked on the dude I just cold called him at like 11.30 in the morning like I'm hopping up for like an airplane and I just knocked on his door and the dude answered the door a fucking shotgun

and I'm like yo what's up dude I'm like hey it's uh you know rich remember I was here last week where's shorty around like you know don't shoot me and he's like, yeah, just a minute. And dude comes to the door and he looks at me and he's like, yo, and he was so excited to see me, you know?

And I was like, whew. Because I just cut two guys out. And I don't know the relationship between Shorty and Johnny. I don't want to come to Shorty and insult him and say, yo, I just cut your boy out. Fuck him. So the first thing I do is I say, hey, listen, man, I'm sorry to just show up like this. I know this is a little unorthodox, but I don't really know what your relationship is with Johnny, but I'd really like to maybe just deal with you, just me and you.

He's like, oh, yeah, dude, no problem, man. No, no, it's all good. I'm like, oh, thank God, I thought you were going to be all bummed out to us cutting out one of your brothers. You know, he's like, oh, fuck him, you know, whatever. He was ecstatic because now he's getting me direct too. Shorty and I would do a lot of business together. Some of it would be broken up into like about a year later, but that's the last time I would mail weed back because I didn't have transport because I didn't let my driver know. So I did the same thing I did before, exact same thing, boxing it the same way, three different post offices mailed it all back.

No problem. Everything went good. Get it back home. I'm killing it. I mean, you know, I just brought 120 pounds in in like a month and a half. and I'm now about to get it for even cheaper. So now I'm going to be approaching nearly four times in my money. And that's like getting attractive to me. But I need transport fucking nail down. Like I got to get it right.

Like I'm in transport. I'm a logistics guy like WTF, right? So I said to my friend and I start talking, and my friend who drives for the trucking company in Houston, and I go, hey, what do you say I apply for a job at your place as dispatcher? You can talk me up, you know, because you used to work for me legit.

He legit used to work for me, and I made him a ton of money, and I was a really good dispatcher at the time. I said, once you talk me up for a few days, and then I'll drop him a call, and I'll say that you recommended me call him. So I do. I set up a meeting with,

this guy, I fly down, and now I'm standing in this truckers, the guy who owns this trucking company in Houston that my buddy works for him in his office, about to get a job, dispatching the truck that my buddy drives. As you can imagine, I'm salivating at the mouth, man. I'm like, perfect opportunity. Oh, man, I'm just, I'm not going to ruin this, you know. We chat, you know, I say all the right things because I'm legit in the transport world. so I can speak it very fluently and very clearly.

So he hires me. Now I got this truck. And, oh, and you know, you're probably wondering, oh, he hires you. He's in Houston. You're in Connecticut. I convince him it really doesn't matter where I sit. I mean, if I sit in your office,

in your chair in Houston and make phone calls and load that truck, I can do the same thing from my house. And I give him a deal. I tell you what, just give me a grand a week. we're done. That's a really good deal for me, man. Really good deal. I get to work from home.

It's a win-win. I love making win-wins. That's how I did everything in my life, was a win-win. So I had to make it attractive for him, too. So I said, look, man, just pay me a grand. That's it. I'm not going to ask for more than that. Just give me a grand.

And he agrees. I fly back home, and now I'm on load boards, man, and I'm just swiping cars all over the, not swiping. I'm dispatching cars all over the East Coast that have to get to Houston. And then I'm getting cars in the Houston area that are coming back to the Northeast. But I'm in control of it all. So now my schedule coincides with the truck schedule. So I got transport down, hang around in Houston party a little bit, got transport coming home.

So next time I would see Shorty, I'd buy 100 pounds. Shorty was great, man. He always had the weed waiting for me. It was like there. It was awesome. I walked in the door. It would be there in the bedroom. Shorty's house was awesome.

It was like you walk in just a living room, a pool table that they just rolled blunts on. They had like a big piece of wood over the table covering it. A stripper pole and a fish tank. That was it. It was the only things in the house and big bags of weed. So it's like the ultimate like little just like little like drug storage house, you know, but it worked for me. So the very very.

first time I start booking cars is on this Houston trip. I start booking loads and moving them around and we get down to Houston with the money. Get the 100 pound, load it back up. It was so simple. You load onto the truck. Yep, load it right onto the cars. Where do you put it in? Into any trunk of any car. These trucks, by the way, carry nine cars. Okay. And these are this is an enclosed carrier. That garners more money because your car is not getting all the road debris. So we're moving high-end vehicles on top of it all, which is another added level of deception because high-end cars are generally good companies move those. It's not, you're not a ratty, like a little single truck guy. And you have access to all the trunks? You have the keys to each

trunk? Well, you pick up the car. Yeah. And you have to have the key. And the car is getting, you know, like a car got picked up in Virginia. It was out of the trunk. It was out of the car. dealership a guy in houston bought it at dealership has to ship it he puts his car up on a loadboard it says virginia to houston i see that i go fuck a berserk and i call and i tell him i want that car how do you come up with this plan well i'd already dispatched trucks for years so you just went i already had a black book with thousands of brokers on it i didn't like i didn't have to search the internet how do i find cars it's what i did this was literally like this is my wheelhouse this is what i did i'm only a few years removed from being in the game of trucking

so when it's you know hey rich from so-and-so auto oh hey rich how's it going hey i got my own thing going and working with this guy in houston hey i'll take a few of those cars oh yeah that's great now what would you say to the the person getting that car did it smell like weed like did you have to air freshen it out spray what would you do you guys do you know so i move weed in personal cars, man. I moved weed in auction cars and I never had a person say a word. Look, I'm also not the driver of the truck. So I'm not there to witness the exchange of, hey, take this car and, hey, receive the car.

And the driver's fully aware of what you got going on. Yeah, this is my friend. And how much is he, he's only getting how much? So at this point, I'm paying him $5,000 for anything he moves for me, from Houston to northeast. $5,000. So he gets paid $5,000. What do you make on 100 pounds to live?

Oh, man. I mean, I'm probably turning that into two, a quarter mill to $300,000. How do you get that payment? Does, do they give it to him? And then he brings it back to you. How do I get the payment for that, that quarter mill or $300,000? Oh, this is what I sell it for back up here. Okay, so he's just bringing it to you and then you're selling it.

And then, yeah, once it gets back to the Northeast, I'm selling up here. Wow. I'm not shipping it nowhere else. I'm only selling in Eastern Connecticut. I mean. But you're selling in bulk. You're not dividing, dividing 100 pounds into dime bags and sitting out of your house. No, no.

But, you know, one of the things Johnny found fascinating was how I still kept my small guys who were my friends who only bought ounces or maybe an occasional quarter pound. But it wasn't to sell. It was just have weed for six months. He's like, you didn't just give those people away to one of your distributors? And I go, they were my friends. Hey, hey, best friend from school. We've known each other for 30 years. You can't come to me anymore for weed.

Go see Joe. Where do you keep 100 pounds when it gets back to you? Like, what's that breakdown look like? When your friend drives it to your town, this is in Connecticut, right? Yeah. How does that exchange go down? What time are you guys meeting? Then where do you move it to?

How do you move it? Yeah, so at this point now, I own a little mobile home in a trailer park. My grandmother from previous story earlier, she passes away and unwilled this mobile home, right? It's a piece of shit mobile home. It's worth like fucking $15,000. But I store my weed there, long story short. I'm storing my weed there. And I'm buying these huge 15-gallon Walmart bins, those huge Tupperware bins.

And that's what I'm taking the weed. I'm unwrapping it from the cellophane wrap, you know, that I have it in. I'm unboxing it, unwrapping it, breaking the pounds up, making them look nice because they're compressed. And then we're bagging them up into pounds, and I'm storing in the refrigerator or just in buckets. When the refrigerator is too full, I just put them in bins, big 15-gallon Walmart bins, like Tupperware bins.

So that's how I'm breaking it down, and then moving it into pound bags. And my distributor, I have guys that take five pounds, 10 pounds. I have other guys that take more. a lot of my guys are just a few pounders. I don't have the big 10, 15, 20 pound guys at this point yet. And what about the money? Where do you store the money?

Yeah, so the money, at this point in time, money is always with me. So wherever I'm sleeping, the money's with me. That much money just with you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In the beginning, all my money was around me. I wasn't bearing money. I didn't have money houses yet.

that would come, you know, later when I had to keep my house clean. And so, um, money's rolling in like crazy. I got a lot of money out too. You know, my, my ledger now is, I can't remember it all anymore. There's too many names. I got too much going on. There's too many. Uh, I have to, I mean, I have to start doing a ledger.

I have to. I, like, I mean, no one wants to do that. I just couldn't remember it all. So there was, at this point, I don't think I ever got below like 50 grand being owed to me out there at this point. Wow. It was always 50 or more. And it would get crazier later on, but that wasn't now. How much do you think you made overall?

Overall. Doing this. Millions. Millions, wow. I mean, towards the end, dude, I was making so much money from so many. different ways that it was almost uncalculable. Because you start getting clients to smuggle for, too, aside from your own business. So, yeah, I would trick people to smuggle for me, too.

I would tell people that they were smuggling cash, but I'd have other things in their spare tires, in their fucking seats. You're just a professional smuggler? Oh, yeah, I mean, I would take your car apart. Does it get addicting, like just the art of smuggles? and trying new methods and doing different things and out-out-foxing officials and whatnot? Yes. Like, it's got to be like a rush, right?

Like, bringing a big load through. There's no cat without the mouse. You know, without the mouse, the cat doesn't come up with the schemes and, you know, the planning to catch the mouse. You know, the mouse trap is only created because you can't catch the mouse. Did you have any close calls getting caught? Like where a trucker gets pulled over and he's panicking and calls you? No. My logistic stuff was really solid.

Very organized. We would leave the East Coast at 6 a.m. And when I say East Coast, I mean my neighborhood. Okay. We would leave the East Coast at 6 a.m. And that's not because we'd just like to get up early, but 6 a.m. would get me about to the Mississippi without hitting a single-way scale. you can time them properly and you missed them.

And if you slept in the same place for the same amount of time, you got fuel in the same place, you ate at the same Burger King, I almost said McDonald's, eat at the same Burger King, the trip becomes predictable and simple to plan for. You know, I know the trust is going to arrive on Tuesday at X amount of time and we can do it in the safest way possible.

There's only 2 24-hour at the time, 2-24-hour way scales in Denver, just before you go over the mountain. It's good to do a chain check. Make sure you get your tire chains. That never closes, so you've got to go through a check. But as long as you got paperwork, dude,

the cars are legit. This is legit freight. Every car has a bill of lading. A legit person's legit shipping it. There's a guy on the other end receiving it. We're clearly hauling it. Your paperwork's right. Your driver's shit's right.

you're going through. So you always had to have a product moving with you simultaneously. Like you never just hauled drugs and the trucks empty and it's just drugs. Oh, no, my God. There's no bigger red flag. Trucks do not drive around the country empty. Unless it's making its return trip or is it always picking something? Well, not all the way from California or Houston.

You're not deadhead for 17 or 3,300 miles without me saying, how are you doing that? What are red flags for a truck to get pulled over? because sometimes I'm driving on the highway and you see a truck pulled over by a state trooper. What triggers that? Oh, man. So his IFTA stickers could be out of date. If there's your International Fuel Tax Agreement sticker. They're color coded per year and they have a little date on them.

They're currently green. They say 2024 on them. So if DOT sees one of those go by and a sticker's not there, visible, or the wrong color, you're getting pulled over. If you don't have the proper placards, if you're hauling any kind of hazardous material, you've got to have the proper placards. And even if you do have the proper placards, they want to check you out. So you never want to haul hazardous material if you're smuggling because they legit check you guys out all the time. Because it's hazardous material. Make sure you're doing it right.

So I can't be having people opening up boxes. You're packing this stuff in here, right? Can't be having that. So you haul cars. And also, cars is like four, I'm for, it's plausible liability. I'm removed four times from that car, me personally. I don't own the trucking company. I work for this guy.

We'll call him Joe's Transport. I work for this guy. It's his company. It's his driver. It's his truck. It's his bill of lading. It's his insurance. It's the owner of the guy's car.

car we picked up in Virginia, and then it goes to a guy or girl in Houston. There's so many people in that group that could be smuggling them drugs, and none of them are me. So car hauling is great for that. Any legitimate freight is great. Like I also smuggled in refrigerated trailers, frozen seafood, hundreds of pounds in frozen seafood, from Connecticut to California, California back. Now, if say you were to get pulled over, right? Are the cops, like, in the movies, they're like breaking open crates and stuff?

Are they allowed to do that? Yes. But, dude, it's got to get to that point. And it doesn't get to that point if your paperwork's right. Okay. So if you're double-checking everything just to prevent yourself from getting pulled over. I'm hauling legit freight. So when I'm hauling seafood, I'm picking it up in Rhode Island.

It's frozen crabs, right? And it's going 12 stops, ending up in fucking, I don't know, just say LA. There's 12 stops along the country, all along the route all across the country. And you're getting paid about $7,000 for this, by the way, legit freight. Like legit freight, it pays about $7,000, which is pretty light. It's a little over $2 a mile. Not great. But I don't care. And I'm going to pick up hundreds of thousands. So I don't give a shit what it pays. I do it for free. But, yeah, it's a legit freight. You know, you get that bill of lading and it's got all your 12 stops on them. you're making those stops, you're doing it.

When you think about it, it's an genius. Like what you pulled off and the trucking aspect, and it's not something that's really been done in that sense. Well, and my history in dispatching trucks all across the country plays into the game, too, because I don't have a lot of memories of truckers getting pulled over and harassed for drugs. Like none of my drivers ever caught me with,

dude, you never guess what just happened, dude, they ran the dogs around, they pulled the truck apart. unsealed all the boxes like those stories happen but I had never experienced it myself so I'm like Jesus I've dispatched hundreds of trucks for five years straight

that's thousands of loads man thousands and I don't recall one story of getting fucked with for drugs if your paper works right in your haul legit freight so if this was all perfect how do you get caught how does it go down

so you know why it was all perfect was because I was in control of 100% of it. And as soon as you give up control, same thing that happened to me. I, you know, I'm familiar with your story. And the second I stopped doing my little teen parties and did the work and hustled and everything, everything went to fucking shit. Well, you know, I got so big that I couldn't do it anymore. I needed.

I mean, let's transition now into, I mean, you probably want to get into the gory stuff. I mean, we'll get into the gory stuff. like gory meaning just like the I always talk about these days as my small days one that just described to you like I only bought 60 pounds and people are like you know that's a lot right and I'm like uh huh yeah sure I would then meet a

I would meet a Greek down here so Houston goes well everything's bang bang bang in and out I do shorties two or three more times I don't need to tell every story because they're all the same I bought 100 pounds two or three more times I think a total three times 100, one time 60, and then the 60 before shorty. All of those go well. I'm still infiltrated into that trucking company.

I work for them for over a year. And I'm making the guy legit money, by the way. Like, I'm legit loading his trucks and getting stuff I need to get done too. Okay. So not every single load that I load on that truck is for me. I'm only going out at this point, you know, maybe once, twice a month maximum. Because I start buying such big quantities, it takes me longer to sell. So my trips get a little less frequent, right?

Because I got a lot of product. As I'm bringing more weight in, I'm expanding into not just the friends I had and the distributors I had, but the people that were above them back when they used to get. So, hey, man, I need you to turn me on that guy he used to deal with who used to get your 10 pounds from. I need to make him an offer. I got to try and meet people that are bigger players. now. And, you know, I mean, I'm a networker. I'm a talker and people want to do business with me because I say what I do and do what I say. So I start ramping up these people, you know,

probably within six months or so. I'm now moving 100 pounds a month, like a month, like legit, right? In my, I mean, I used to joke around with people like, I mean, in Eastern Connecticut, like, you probably got with. weed from me. I mean, you probably, you probably have like a better than 50% chance that for, you know, 10 years or so in Eastern Connecticut, if you got weed, you probably got it from me or my people. I mean, there are other players in the game, too, but once you reach a certain level, you start meeting all the other big guys in the game, too, because they hear about you.

So you can kind of start gauging who your competitors are based on who wants to deal with you or doesn't. and I always try to be real quiet and not get too loud but weight tends to speak for you weight gets loud and I would meet a Greek distributor friend of mine good dude we hit it off, we're very similar

and he would introduce me to a Greek from Montreal and this is where things just get bad shit crazy I am about to make my first trip to California to meet a Mexican out there on my own without the Greek. I have an old roommate of mine. Remember I told you I knocked over that convenience store for rent? This was my buddy's mom that I got the rent for. So I was roommates with this friend of mine.

And he now lived in California. And I always kind of joked around with him about, hey, hook me up with somebody if you ever run across somebody. Come on, you're in Cal. You can spit and hit somebody with weed out there. blah, blah, blah. He hits me up. I got a guy.

Come on out. I go out. I meet the guy. I want to be in California, by the way. Like, I want to be there. It's where the money is. Yeah. And it's, yeah.

So Houston's fine, but I know that Houston's my step. They're a step. I go out to Cali. I meet the Cali Mexican. Super good dude. He's not even in the game. He's just got cousins. He works with my friend at this company, the big national company.

And he's going to let me stay at his house, wait for the weed and all that. Super friendly, cooking me dinner. It's awesome. His wife. First time I go out there, again, I say I keep it small, but I only do 60 pounds because it's my first time. And I mail that back because I had gone out there just for the meat, but I ended up buying. weed. Like I ended up buying weed. I brought money, but I ended up buying weed.

So I mail this junk back. Now I meet the Greek. And he says, hey, my friend from Montreal is coming down. You guys should meet. You have a lot in common. I said, cool.

He goes, I'm house sitting at this address. Come here tomorrow night. And my friend Nick's going to come by. I said, okay. I show up and I meet Nick. He's like my age. He's, you know, mid-30s. So Greek.

So from Montreal. And he's got 10 pounds of cush. Now this is, I'm dealing still in the Mexican bricky stuff. And we're talking about early 2000s, believe it or not. It's crazy that I sold that kind of weed for so long. He's got some cush. Now, I know what good weed is. I smoke good weed, but it's too expensive here in Connecticut that make money on it.

So I'm not selling it to my people. My people are buying the shit weed and they love it. But I'm aware of good weed. That's why I want to get the cowley. So I meet this guy. He's got 10 pounds of cushion. He's trying to unload it. And he's joking around with me immediately saying, you're buying this.

And I'm like, I look at my buddy. I'm going, who the fuck is this guy? I'm fucking buying this. He's like, I'm not leaving here with it. You are. And I'm like, all right, whatever, man, you know. So we go back and forth. And I, you know, it's nice, but it's not awesome.

I'm not blown away. And his price is high. So I'm like, nope, I'm not taking it. And it's only because you're so cocky about me taking it that I fought him. I finally get him to lower the price. And he says, tell you what, I'll even front it to you. You pay me whenever. And I go, well, dude, I don't operate like that.

Like, I don't want to, I don't know who you are. I don't want to owe you money. tomorrow you come by I'll take care of it no no no I'm I'm not going to be here tomorrow I insist take it you don't have to pay me now you go how long do you think it'll take I said man I don't know man fucking a month you know a month you know don't sweat it when you got the money call me so whatever he leaves and you know we talk a little bit before he leaves a timeout he we talk a little before we leave he understands I've got transport he understands I've got customers I know he's selling out in Cape Cod, down in New York City.

You know, he's talking. So after he leaves, I said to my buddy, I'm like, this dude's cool, right? I mean, this guy is like a legit. He's like, no, no, no, he's legit. I used to work with him and this and that. And I said, all right. I move his stuff in like two weeks. Call him up.

I tell him I got his money. He said, I'll be there in three hours. He was out in Cape Cod. He says, hey, so talk to me about this California stuff. He goes, I got a girl out there. She's fucking hooked up. She's got fucking, she's hooked up. She said she'd take care of us.

I said, all right. He goes, I also got this guy from Long Island who's relocated out there. And he said he'll take care of us. Can you get money out there? And I said, well, sure. Can you get weed back? I said, well, sure. I got transport both ways.

So he's like salivating at the mouth because he can't do this unless he does it himself in a car. And that's what we call cowboying it. when you just run out there in a car. And, you know, I've done it. So, you know, I know what that looks like. It's fucking reckless, to say the least. But there's rules. Never drive at night.

Don't fucking never. Dude, especially if you got two males in a car. Two males in a car, nothing good is going on. Two, no, nope. If you're not in rush hour traffic in the HOV lane at 6.30 in the morning or 3.30 in the afternoon, I'm pulling you over. So we come up with a date. I give him his money.

He says, nope, you keep it. And he gives me another $20,000. And I've got about $120,000 saved up that I'm going to go back to my Connect in California that I just met and buy more weed. And I'm going to meet his Connect and maybe buy some from her and maybe buy some of the other guy. But I don't know about all this stuff.

I only know what I have going on, right? This guy hasn't done anything yet, except for ask me for shit. So we make a plan that I'll take his money out along with mine. And if things work out, we all, you know, we all come back happy. You know, I'll meet his people and maybe things work out and everything's going to be awesome. So we both make plans. We fly out separately. He lands first a couple days.

I come in, hit him up off the airport. He's already at Athena's house. Athena is this girl that he's been talking about who's like this famous Oh, you famous. Very well known in the Montreal Crime neighborhood.

I don't want to name it, but it's a very distinct neighborhood. And what, fuck it. It's called ParkX. Park X is a pretty rough neighborhood. And the way he always told me was she's a smoking hot blonde.

You used to drive this little red corvette and drive all the guys fucking crazy. She dated gangsters, mobsters, fucking hell's angels, guys. She's connected with everybody. So this is what I'm hearing about her. So I land, and he goes, hey, come on up. And I don't even get up to stairs. And Athena opens the door, and there's just Kismet instantly.

Like, she just comes out and gives me this big hug, and she never met me before. And she gives me the once over, and I'll give her the once over. And we're both like, all right, I can work with that. I said, this is all right. And within about 10 minutes, Nick becomes the third wheel. And it's the Rich and Athena show. And that's what it is for like five days. And I can see, you know, Nick is like really warning me, yo, be careful.

This chick is for real. She's no fucking joke. You don't even know what she's got going on. And I'm like, well, we're going to find out. So to get all this. So to get all this money out. I have to, you know, book loads and coordinate. I fly in before the truck arrives because he's got multiple stops across the country.

So we have three or four days of downtime waiting for the truck to even arrive. So we're meeting around and various friends and Kinexie has and Angie's calling people for us. We're trying to buy some O.G. Cush, which is top-notch. Best fucking bud in the world. and we end up going up to Simi Valley, which is north of Hollywood about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. And we meet with this guy, Ronnie. He gives us the okay, yep, everything's great, and we say, Ronnie, me, the money, the weed, same room.

There's no handing you money running down the street for an hour. did none of that. If this isn't going to be the way it works, fucking tell me now I got other shit going on. Oh, no, no, bro. It's all good. So we make plans to go back and move the deal. The money comes in.

It arrives on time. No problem. We show up to meet Ronnie at this Chili's parking lot. Never forget it right off an exit ramp on the 210. And he shows up and he goes, all right, there's a little bit of a problem. I don't know. Like, here we go.

I'm looking at Nick. And I'm like, here we go. You know, fucking this is, this is this, this is what I'm talking about. Again, this isn't my guy. I'm going here on Nick's fucking deal. So he's like, look, man, the dude doesn't want to meet you this time. He wants your, make sure you're real and you make a purchase legit before he meets you. And I said, okay, what does this mean?

Well, he's about a mile away at a storage facility. He just wants me to bring the money and I'll bring the weed back to you. And I'm like, absolutely not. No fucking way. I don't even know Ronnie. I just met him yesterday or two days ago, right? And Nick's like, you know, I don't know. So I'm fighting it.

The guy said, well, how about I give you my license? And I'm like, dude, you're fucking for real. I'm going to give you $180,000. And you're going to give me your driver's license. They're big shit. Yeah. And then he goes, oh, how about my car? He's got this Jaguar Supercharge.

I'm like, boop Your car's not worth $180,000 And what am I going to do with it? You know? So him and Nick go aside And they're talking to each other And the dude drives off. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Does he not want to do it? He goes, no, he'll be back. The fucking guy comes back with his five-year-old daughter and is like, all right, dude, if this doesn't prove I'm going to come back, I don't know what does.

And I look at Nick, I'm like, This is what we're doing. He leaves you with the daughter? Yeah. In my big giant Cadillac we bought because we needed big trunks, literally. I know it sounds so cliche, but I'm literally in a DeVille because I need, you know, I'm buying 100 pounds from this guy and we've got to get it from Simi Valley back to where we're staying north to Hollywood.

So this guy leaves and now I got a five-year-old in my back seat in Chili's parking lot in a Cadillac, two fucking 30-something-year-olds. And I'm like, man, I have a kid. You know what I mean? About the same age at this time. I got my cell phone out and I'm playing like tick-tac-toe games. I'm playing like whatever little games I can with the girl trying to, you know, ease her mind. Like, yeah, like I'm uncomfortable too.

You know what I mean? And she's all with, you know, where's my daddy shit? And, you know, I'm like, your daddy makes bad choices. He'll be back, though. Long story short. The things that people will do, see, Donnie was making $20,000 on this deal because it was actually 80 pounds. We were supposed to buy 100, but it only ended up being 80. And we're paying 1,400 a pound.

So I think that's like $112,000. You know, the 180 we brought with us, but his portion was 112 for this move because we only got 80. And he comes back, you know, look, everything worked out great. It's just that's not my most amazing moment, you know, having to, like, hold a five-year-old for like 30 minutes over 100 and something. thousand bucks and but you know it wasn't my five-year-old that guy has to live with that that's his deal like he chose to use his daughter as fucking leverage so his daughter

literally was worth 112 000 it wasn't 180 000 well that's what we brought out with us we're supposed to buy more from him but i still want to buy from my mexicans i'm not blow my whole load on this guy and angie still wants to try and hook us up i'm sorry i said angie Athena wants to try and help us hook up with OG cush so we got to save a little bit of money for that So how much do you make off of this deal where you're spending $112,000? Yeah, so these were $1,400 that I paid for, and this is kick-ass weed, by the way. The brickies now, I'm almost done with that now. That's pretty much, once I buy this 80 pounds, I don't really go back to Brickies,

and I don't go back to Houston for a while yet. And I pretty much only buy her from the Mexican in California one more time, and then I'm done with the bricks. I still got people back home that like the Mexican Brickies, though, and they want to pay that cheap. They want to get that cheap bullshit, you know. And you're hauling it all the way back to Connecticut. Holding all the way back.

So you drive there and then haul it back? Well, we have trucks. I have a truck. So the truck's driving it out and I'm flying. Okay. At this point, I'm always flying. Okay. I do take a trip in the truck one time.

This will be my next trip. But I only do that for fun because I just actually want to do the trip across the country. So you're never caught with the drugs or the money. in the truck. No, no, no. When I was in charge of transport, it never failed. But when you put your trust in someone else that failed, then that's how you got caught.

Yeah, yeah. So now I'm kind of in with the Canadian now. This is successful. We end up getting, I think, 10 pounds of OG from Athena, and I don't even go see my Mexican because there's just no need. Get back home. and now I've got to get into the market of the good weed because I've been doing the brinkies for so long.

So I find that to be quite easy, actually. I thought it would be very difficult and sit on the weed for months, but it didn't happen that way. When you just put shit weed in front of somebody and then put something nice in front of them, I guess they go for it every time, apparently. So, yeah, so I'm selling those pounds back here for $3,000.

So $1,400 to $3,000. Now $14 is what I'm paying, and I'm selling it for $3,000. So from $1,400 purchase to $3,000 on each one. So I'm doubling my money. Of course, I have a little bit of transport in there. I'm paying my driver. Now my driver's making $10,000 a trip because we're buying mega weight.

It's great money. Yeah, $10,000 a trip, both ways. Money and weed. So he's making $20,000. $20,000 round trip. Wow. Yeah. For a couple days worth of work.

Yeah, for about, well, it would turn out to be about two weeks. It takes a long time to buy drugs, apparently. in California. Nobody does shit before 11 a.m. And they don't start doing shit till after 11 p.m. Now that driver

was that the same guy that worked for you the entire time? Yeah. And would he be the guy that gets caught that flips on you? Yeah.

He'd be the first one to flip on me. And there was multiple people that flipped. About a half a dozen. How did he get caught? He broke the rules. What do you mean?

He broke the rules? He didn't follow your program? He didn't follow. Well, so this is what happens. We have, have 75 pounds. We were supposed to have over 100, but our connects didn't come through. So we were coming home with 75 pounds and money left over, which was the first time I ever had to

smuggle my own money back to me with weed in the same vehicle. You don't want to do that. Money and drugs, you never put them in the same vehicle. But my trucking fell through. My return load didn't work. The timing failed. I had to improvise and I cowboyed it. I just rented a fucking minivan and put my driver in it

and loaded it to the fucking ceiling with duffel bags and money and just prayed. And that didn't work. And went really well until Ohio. Vermillion, Ohio.

Exactly where it was. Yeah. I mean, you know, when things happened, you remember exactly where you were. I was standing in a line at Walmart buying big screen TVs for my very driver for the safe house I just rented because the trailer wasn't big enough anymore and I needed an actual house.

And I figured my driver could live in it while we were storing stuff. So I'm buying him furniture and TVs and shit and I get the call from him that he just got out of jail. He spent the night there and everything's fucking done. They took everything? Yep. Who booked them? the state police.

And did he say why he got pulled over? Yeah. So he sent me, you know, the little ticket that they give you, which I would later find out exactly how all of this stuff really works. But at the time, I got this little receipt that you get that says your name and you got pulled over and they seized these things from you. It was like a little fucking square piece of paper. And he, I don't remember how he even gets it. to me faxed to me or was in town. I had a friend meet him, I think, maybe. I got the thing. Because he needed me to believe he didn't steal from me. And I didn't want to believe he stole.

I believed he got pulled over. But, you know, I want to make sure. I want to make sure he got busted, right? So about a day later, he says, go check out this website. They just posted it. So I go on the Ohio state police website and there's a pictures of my weed and you know I told me I'm very meticulous about my money it was full it was my money and that's a big bust for them it was my money it was 75k in my fucking vacuum seal pouches crisscross fucking perfectly folded perfectly fucking labeled mm-hmm um and 75 pounds of weed all vacuum sealed and shrunk down and put in hockey bags and uh so boom done I knew I knew he was toast But I'm not toast.

I mean, I got all kinds of plausible deniability, except my name was on the rental. But even still, I've rented a car before and someone else drove it. I mean, the guy asked me to rent him a car, man. The fuck, I helped him out. He was in desperate need. His father died in California. I rented a car for him.

Well, he goes deep with the DEA, and he talks. And he talks about everything. He talks about things that he didn't have to talk about because he got caught with something and that's what you... But until you're in a police station or a DEA room or an ICE Border Patrol room with no doors and windows, until you're in those rooms, I guess you can't really speak for what people will do.

So during all this, after this trip with the Canadian goes well, I cut Steve off. I can't. That's the one that got caught. I got busted. I have to cut him off now. I mean,

I can't work with him anymore. I can't tell him what I'm doing anymore because I have to assume the worst. That he's working with the feds, which he was. Absolutely. So shouldn't you be shutting down your whole operation? You know, we jumped around to the bust.

The operation was so big when he got busted. It's hard to just shut it down. It's hard to just shut it down. It's hard to walk it around. I walk away from it. You start thinking that, I don't want to use the word invincible, but I've done things so calculated and so right so many times that I just thought I was going to just continue to, hey man, getting bused is part of it. People get busted all the time. And the organization lives on.

You know, people don't shut down the first sign of problems, you know. They have to figure out a way to persevere. What year did he get busted? 2009-ish, 10. And how long did it take for them to catch on to you after that? About two years. Two years. And I exploded in those two years.

So they went from, if they had gotten me the day, they got him, I wouldn't have been facing half. I wasn't in the Coke game yet. And I wasn't working for the mafia yet. Yeah. and the angels and other families and Dominicans and I mean I was working for so many people

it all started from Nick in Montreal after we get back from that Cali trip he tells his people back home look I got this guy he got fucking transport rolled up he's got it it's all fucking he's got everything we need I don't know this stuff's going on

and then one day he comes to me and he says, I've been talking to some people up north, and I don't know how connected he is or who he's connected with. We're not at that, like, resume bullshit. Like, you know, we're not doing that. My people are looking for a warehouse. Do you think you could help us out? Something that could take track of trailers in.

And this is like 2000 and late 2007, right after this epic first California trip with the little daughter and all that. him and I would make two or three more trips. But now I know that there's Canadians and I know that there's other Greeks connected to him and they need a warehouse. So that literally, not joking,

that same night, I go to one of my distributors' house to do some business with them. We get to talking. I said, I'm looking for a warehouse. One of my distributors' customers comes in, hears this and says, I know a guy who has a warehouse. It literally

happened that night. I'm like, no, no shit. I go, where is it? He goes, it's right down here. It's only like six miles from where I am. It's perfect. You can bring a truck in, turn around, and out. It's huge. The guy only wants $2,500.

He's underwater with the town taxes. He's desperate. Jesus, man. Like the fucking stars are lining up. And I'm a trucker. right, or in trucking. So we got on a look at it the next day. I call Nick. He said, this is fucking great.

He calls up north. They said, this is fucking great. They sent one of their representatives down from Montreal to come look at it. He loved it, went back, told the people it's great. Two weeks later, I'm getting tractor trailers with 250 pounds in them twice a week for almost two years. Oh, wow. It starts that day. Like the day I found that warehouse.

house. So now I'm working for these people, but I haven't met them in Canada. Nico's not letting me meet them because he's the go-between. Yeah, Nikki, he's not letting me meet them. But eventually they want to meet me because I'm blowing it away. I mean, like, I'm on time. I got, when the trucker shows up, I take care of him. He's cool. I get him dinner. I help him out. I order takeout for him. You know, I hook the guy up. and they're legit teaching us how to unload the tanks.

They're coming in fuel tanks. And the very first time they show up, the driver teaches us how to remove it and put the tank back together because he don't want to do it every time. So he shows us. We're getting $6,000 each time a truck shows up. Nick and I are splitting it 50, 50,000,

apiece twice a week. All our job is is to unload the truck, organize the weed based off of the, markings on the bags, X goes to one customer, zeroes, go to another customer, twos and threes, whatever's marked on the bag. And then some Canadians would come, pick the stuff up and go distribute it, and come back with money the next time, and we'd empty the weed again, but this time put money in going back home, right?

So the first time was just weed, next time was weed, and then we put money in to go back up north for all the money they collected from the weed they sold previously. Little by little, the Canadians start, getting sloppy. The customers don't love them. They're not on time. They're coming into the neighborhoods around here in Canadian plates.

People don't like that. So I start getting asked, hey, can you help out our delivery guy? We got one going to East Providence. Would you mind taking 50 pounds each Providence? And, you know, we'll give you, you know, $2,000 for that, whatever the price was. And I'm like, sure, yeah, no problem. least providence, no big deal. And then it'd be, hey, can you do one down to Yonkers?

Can you do one down to Long Island? And eventually, the Canadians that used to come down, just they faded off because crossing multiple times is dangerous borders. You can't just keep crossing without getting red flag. Like, I got red flagged at a point where I went in that special room every single time. No matter who I was with, my mother and I sat in that special room one time. My girlfriend and I, several times, me alone, many times. Once you cross, you're finished.

You can't smuggle anymore. You got to cross legit. So after probably six months, no more Canadians are coming down. I'm now delivering everything. My buddy Nick, who was involved, he splits. He just disappears one day, gone. Didn't hear from him again for years. So he just came.

I met the Canadians. I met Athena. I met Ronnie and then Nico splits. He has a problem and he takes off to Greece. I don't see him again for, like I say, about two years. But I keep all the people because, you know, I got the warehouse. I got the trucks. I'm the one now stuck unloading everything and delivering everything.

And I'm still doing all this alone, dude. Are you kidding me? I'm delivering. Okay, I'm also getting weed coming to me in trunks of cars. Sometimes legit, 8,000. I'm sorry, 800 pounds a week. Like, I get 250 in a truckload twice a week. And then I get a couple trunks with 100 pounds in it coming in from the bikers who were with my group.

The bikers, the Italians, and the Greeks were all together doing all this. It's all a big thing and I'm not aware of it yet. I get a phone call from old man. He says, we want you to come up. Somebody wants to meet you. And he wanted to meet me too. Nobody met me yet. So when I go up there, I'm Andy.

I introduce myself as Andy Peterson to everybody. Nobody knows I'm Andy Peterson. That's it. So I'm Andy for the rest of this story in Canada, always. I get my passport. I go up. Now, while I'm gone, I've now enlisted employees now, other than my driver who got busted.

I now get a couple of my best buddies from a long time. ago to help me take the deliveries now. They got to meet the trucker now. They got to meet the trunk full of weed guys now. Bring it to my safe house. Put it away. Wait for me to call them and tell them where to deliver it. Sometimes they're picking up money.

Every weed delivery I delivered, weeks later, you go back to pick up the money. So I finally get up to Canada. And I'm dealing with this really old guy, man. He's like 75 plus. We just call him old man. and he's an old school smuggler man this guy's been smuggling since he was out of the womb dude like I think he smuggled himself out of his wife's vagina

out of his mom's vagina he uh he just knew so much and he'd been doing it for so long and he loved me him and I had a great relationship he told me a lot taught me a lot I used to stay to his apartment

in fact I got my own apartment above his and I found out they own the whole building and he said, I want to take you down and meet this guy. We're going to go to his bar, and I meet this guy. He's obvious Italian, obvious. And I meet the trucker up there, the trucker who sends down the truck. So he's the me up there. I meet him at the bar with representatives from the angels from the Italians and the trucking and the Greeks and me are all in a room.

And we're all meeting each other now. Like, now I know the stuff in the trunks are the angel stuff dealing with this other, you know, with this representative. The Italian stuff is the stuff that goes to this customer in Cleveland, this customer in math, this customer in, in, in, uh, Carolina. The bikers got Cleveland. They got Philly. They got, you know, whatever. And, um, I'm starting to piece it all together. And I'm also starting to understand my value with these guys because I'm doing.

it all now. They used to send four or five guys down a month or women to smuggle within the states. So I'm saving them all of that. All their money and all their weed is running through me. I'm banking it, storing it, holding it, separating it, distributing it, reallocating, smuggling it, and I'm getting paid for all of this. I mean... All by yourself? I'm doing it by myself up until this trip. I've now had to enlist a few people to help me while I'm gone. I'm going to be... I'm I'm in Canada for an un... I don't even know how long I'm going to be there for. They're probably pissed when you went out of business.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I made them a lot of money. So the meeting goes great. And he goes, well, this isn't the meeting you actually came up here for. And I said, oh, where to next? And he goes, you're going to meet our boss.

I'm like, okay. So I go meet this gentleman. and honest to God on my son's life, man. I don't know who I'm sitting in front of. I don't even know till months later. Because in no world does transport smuggling drug transporter ever get to meet Don Corleone, does he? Like, Luca Bratzi gets to meet Don Corleone because his daughter is getting married and he only is there on a functionality. but in the real world he never goes into Don Corleone's office and discusses the day hey guess what

I broke two fingers today for that 50 bucksie guy owed you so I don't think I'm sitting in front of the guy that I'm actually sitting in front of I don't realize it the guys says to me he goes I've been hearing from some of the customers that you have down there and they said they don't want to deal with me anymore if we don't use you they love you so much And I go, huh, that's great. That sounds like a compliment. That sounds like a compliment. And he's like, but I'm wondering why do they love you so much?

I'm like, yeah, man, I don't know, man. I'm pretty good at what I do, you know, like I show up on time. Like I kind of don't really know where he's going with this. And he's like, well, they were telling me that you talked about California one time with one of the drivers that showed up to pick up from you. I said, maybe. what about it? Like I go to California, I've been there, and I might have talked about how I've been there.

Well, you're not trying to, like, go behind and get their business. I go, no, of course not. So what I don't realize is, as I'm having these exchanges with this particular customer, and we're having this little small talk, you know what I mean? Hey, how you doing?

Oh, weather's good, huh? He's reporting all of this back to his boss, who's calling my boss and saying, thing we're talking about, which is nothing, but he thinks it's something. So by the end of the thing, I'm thinking maybe this isn't like a high five, you're doing so great, you know, like I'm wondering, this guy's got a problem with me now. And he's like, no, no, no, everything's going great, but just please, for now on, when you see the customer just high, buy, that's it. I go, okay, I can do that, no problem. But you're doing great. I'm like, okay. So little do I know

Are you where in my story? Do you know who I was sitting in front of? That's some of mobster, right? The guy, not some guy. And who is the guy? That's just a random, hey, guess what? I heard I saw this guy. And they were Tony.

Who's the guy? So he's the leader at this time of the, the Rizzuto family, basically. Not basically, the Rizzuto family. Not basically. But this is in Canada. In Canada. His father had just been killed. Okay.

I mean, and when I say just been killed, I mean, And at the time I'm up there, unbeknownst to me, I don't know this is going on. I read about this later. I don't even know who I'm sitting in front of. I think he's my boss. He's above my guys. But certainly he's not the guy. Certainly not.

No way. And you are moving weight for those guys. Yeah. So it's all weed and money. But then when things get crazy was one time they said, after you do these money pickups, I picked up $1.5 million. I remember.

Of cash? Yeah, for their weed. So I was picking up, so, I mean, we had accounts, you know, you had Eric Kenori on here. Yeah, I like Eric. Okay. He would call me the other day.

Okay. Well, Eric and I need to get in a room because I took over for him. You took over his business? He talks about having across the East Coast. You know about all of stuff? You took over his clientele? No, no, no, no.

Hold on. I didn't take. over his clientele. Did he rob him? No, I didn't rob. I didn't even know Eric existed. But here's what I did know. I knew about the girl that ratted him out.

That biker, that downhill bicyclist chick that he had that he tells the story about, that she's the one that did him in. She was the famous skier, right? I knew who she was. What was her name? I don't know what her name was, but here's what I know. When they needed my warehouse, okay, because one had just gotten busted, that was his place. He was the guy before. I am making a leap, but I'm like really quite, no, I'm not making a leap.

I replaced him. Those accounts he had along the East Coast were not necessarily his accounts. He serviced them. When he was talking about the girl and the Blackberry PGPs, I knew who he worked for. That's why I called Johnny was watching his episode. the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I heard him tell his story because that's my story. He told it a month before me.

I mean, I was right after him. He got popped in 2009. He says that right on the show. In 2009 is when I took over everything for them. I literally took everything over from them in 2009. And then you got popped a couple of years later. And that, yeah. And so all these accounts where I bring weed to,

we would later on go back and pick up cash for it. So I was now rounding up the cash as well, smuggling it through the New England, you know, the East Coast and storing the money at my safe house and the weed was still going to my mobile home. I had two mobile homes now. I was renting one from my stepbrother that was just for a mass account to pick up their weed from.

They used to pay me $6,000 to not deliver their weeds of them. Ficked up as that. They would pay me six grand because they didn't want me coming into their neighborhood. they wanted to come to a safe place that I had. So if I provided a safe spot for them to pick up their weed, they pay me $6,000. Wow. And I provided that safe spot for about, you know, 80 bucks a month. I mean, nothing.

It was like a room. I rented a room. You were really like this master hall or? Well, you know, so again. What did you call yourself back then? Okay, so. What's your title? Oh, like how do people refer to me?

Well, the people in California refer to me as Hammer. The people in Canada refer to me as Andy. The people at Western Union, I've only heard of Patrick. You kept Western Union business. Yeah. That and the prison system. Yeah, I was, you ever see American Psycho, Christian Bale? I've heard of it, yeah.

Well, in the movie, he plays multiple personalities, and that's what I use for my names. I use Patrick Bateman and Paul Allen. Your store really does need to be, you got to get the book done, man. Well, you see, as we get deeper into stuff, you see, this is when I start, when I'm at my campfire, you don't have enough time to put it all in a podcast. It's not, it's not meant for a podcast setting. No. You know, you get the gist of it with the hauling and the smuggling and working for it, but you have so many characters.

It's hard for the audience to keep track of that, too, you know? And we're working real hard to get this manuscript done, man. Yeah, you got to push that out there and get that book because I think, Like that'll, and then you go on the podcast and you market it and you tell the individual descriptive stories and the salacious stories, you know. But to try to put the whole thing out there, it's tough unless you go and do your own and you break it down. But then it kind of dilutes the value. The value of the book. Yeah.

Okay. This is the last show I'm doing for a while. Yeah, I would take a break. Yeah. Seriously, pump the brakes, you know. I mean. That's something like I'm doing, like I don't really go on pods right now. I'm taking a pause.

Like I don't do Zoom. Don't do Zoom interviews at all. I would pause Zoom interviews. I haven't done any of that. It's not even worth Johnny right now. That's it. Keep it that way. Yeah.

And then, yeah, don't do that and just wait. You know, like right now, that's the same thing. Because once you keep telling your story out there and getting it out there, then it's like, what's the value, you know? No. And, you know, when I first recorded the first show with Johnny, I left there saying, man, he only got like 30%. But then my buddy's like, no, that's great. That's a plus, you know? He goes, you know, when you go on your next show, don't tell him shit either.

Yeah. No, like there's a whole, like we could be here for another two, three hours talking about your, all the other shit, you know. We just got into Canada and you're probably looking to wrap it up. Well, I mean, we're on a time limit because of my cards for storage, you know? Okay. So we're already two hours and 40 minutes into this puppy. Oh, shit. Well, okay.

And I want, I want you to tell people what you've learned from it and kind of like the legal experience and how this kind of ends for you, you know? So your friend gets busted. How does that convert into? Yeah, so we'll jump. I mean, you know, I eventually get asked to start smuggling kilos, and that's where my world fucking crumbles, because once you start moving kilos, your value as someone to narc out goes fucking through the roof,

dude. As soon as you start moving hundreds of kilos, I moved over 500 kilos on over 10 trips to California for these people. Not. I made millions of dollars in just transport of kilos alone. And when you do something like that, you are everyone's get out of jail free ticket card buddy anyone who knows yours even randomly bumped into you and heard of you if they ever get busted you're you're you're the guy

because you're such a fucking fish in a pond you're you're a big fish little pond guy and that's what was happening so my driver got hit he was working me but i wasn't giving him information but i was giving him enough what was happening was they were pinging my phone after my driver got hit a couple years prior and the investigation took some time to catch some traction of course you know the government's fucking slow and pathetic but once it started catching traction they started pinging my phones now i'm switching phones all the time but i'm still keeping in touch with my ex-driver because i don't want to just ghost him because that's not the way the deal was set up like you feel bad well yeah and i don't want to like i want him to know bro i'm here i got a lawyer for you

Oh, no, no, it's not that bad. But I kind of know. And, of course, you know, I got Discovery. Discovery Channel? No, I mean, discovery. Yeah. I mean, have you ever read Discovery? I mean, were you, did you get in trouble by getting narched out?

Yeah, I went to trial. So you got Discovery. And it said who narked you out. It didn't show their names, but it just put a little number on it. No, I saw the names. I saw every FBI statement. Okay, well, they're not supposed to show you the names of the people that narc you out. No, because I went to trial, so they have to reveal.

Oh, they did. You went to trial. Okay, you're right. I didn't. Okay, so the Coke stuff happens. The weed stuff is taking a bit of a back door, back room kind of. I'm not going to say a pause, but I'm splitting my focus. Weeds still coming down in hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

The truck thing got burnt. They lost their truck at the border going back home. They found the hide spot, but nothing was in it. So the truck just got burnt. So now I'm only getting shit in trunks. And it's fucking come in three, four, five cars a week. Trunk's full. Open up the trunk.

The shit fucking accordion flies out all over your fucking lawn. You've got to like scramble it around. Just look at people around. Another guy gets popped for the Canadians trying to smuggle some of the kilos that I put into his spare tire. An old 80-year-old that they used to send down to go to the casinos. And he would, I would meet him at Applebee's. I would take his truck, bring it back to my warehouse, take his spare tire out, take the tire off fill it with 17, not 16 and not 18, 17 kilos fit, and put it back under his truck

and he was running him back and forth over the border. Wow. He got caught a couple days before Christmas, 2011. He ratted me out. Another guy in Connecticut, not too far from me, ratted me out over a DUI. He was going to go to fucking jail for six months for DUI. He got pulled over for DUI. but rat it out, someone he knew was a big fish to not go to jail for a DUI.

Another business owner out of Eastern Connecticut ratting me out because he got caught in the parking lot doing donuts in his mock one Mustang super snake and had a joint and some weed he just bought from one of my friends. So everyone's rat. He ratted me out. Some guy who wanted a paving company who got caught with heroin. he ratted me out. I didn't even do business with him. I didn't even do business with him, but he knew guys I did business with, so he'd just rat him out. So, I mean, we'll just get to the, we'll get to the bus. So I go down in New York City one morning. I'm about to meet what we call a pot agent. A pot agent is a guy who knows a grower in northern California. This guy was hooked up

and you pay him a percentage. He introduced you to a grower, and now you got the intro. So he's a pot agent. I go down in New York City to meet him. I'm clean. I don't got nothing on me, but a couple joints. And I pull into parking garage park. Him and I take a walk around the city, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's some plans. What we're going to do? He's got a backpack on him, and he's carrying 60 grand in it, but I don't know it. Why would you go on a walk around town with a backpack with 60,000 bucks in it, just to be coming right back home anyhow? To me, that seemed, maybe he had a plan. Maybe he was going to go somewhere else. I don't know, but he's walking around with $60,000 in the backpack.

We get back to the parking garage. All right, hey, dude, see you later, man. You know, nice chat. We'll be in touch soon. Get on the fucking ground now! And I don't get on the ground because they're not talking to me. I mean, don't... I'm in New York City.

No one even knows I'm here. No one knows I'm here. All your ducks have been in a row. Yeah, so I'm just standing there, and I'm like, do, do, I'm like, man, someone's fucked. And then they come out of, like, from around the corner, and they're like, you, get on the ground. now and I'm and I'm still, they're pointing at me, but I'm thinking, all right.

Yeah, maybe because clearly they don't want me. So whatever. I get down the ground and everything and I realize they're there for me. I'm like, what the fuck? The other guy next to me, he thinks I smoked him out. He gets popped with his 60 grand. You know, they go through his bag. The cops think the 60 grand's for me.

I don't know, I don't know anything about 60 grand. I don't know anything. I'm not there. I'm not there to do business. We're just talking. So I'm like, man, it sucks for you, dude. Yeah, that sucks. He's like, did you fucking set me?

I'm like, of course, no one even though it was here. Of course I didn't set you up, you asshole. Of course not. I'm thinking, you set me up. But he just had 60, he just had 60 grand taken. I don't think he set me up. You know. So long story short,

they have to let me go. They search my card. There's nothing in it. They serve my purse. I have nothing on me. They have to let me go. go and they just played off as a mistake that there was a uh this is what they told me well yeah we pulled you guys over we uh we came and got you guys because you matched the description for a bank

robbery okay so i'm driving back home they missed a joint in my center console and i'm smoking on my way home i'm like man that's a fucking close call dude you know to deal to myself i'm no one's with me i'm like man that was a close call it sucks to be that dude And I go home and I go to my safe house, put my head on the fucking pillow. And I'm fucking done thinking about it now. Next morning, man. Fucking 10, 15 cars, like 20 cops, fucking dogs. All kinds of shit.

Fucking whacking on my fucking door. I got my mother there, my brother-in-law. I'm taking their spare tires to load it with kilos. And I'm going to fucking have these poor unwittingly other people who don't know they're smuggling for me to smuggle them up to Canada for me. And they let my mother out of there and my brother-in-law because they really weren't a part of it. I was just using them. And I said to my mother, I said, well, it's over. It's all over now. And so I get to my car. Well, so, wait, first off, they busted my driver.

with the kilos the night before. Like, how can I even tell my bus? The day I got busted in, the day before when I was in New York City, okay? The day before, when I'm in New York City, when they're busting me, what I don't know is at that same time, they're busting my driver right here in Danbury. Oh, Danbury, Connecticut? Dude, they got him coming over the line. Oh, wow.

They waited for him to cross the border. This is not the same driver, not the one that got busted. I now have another guy, the Greek guy that introduced me to. the Greek Montreal guy, he took the job as driver. Remember I said I had to enlist some guys to help me, some of my distributors. He was one of them. They had been tracking me across the country for this last trip, and they hit my driver, and he's got it in the back of one of my personal vehicles.

We had the cowboy this because it was too much money to fly with. My trucking for this one wasn't ready, wasn't right, and we just went out with a car with $1.4 million and came back with 55 kilos at $22,000 a piece. So that's what we paid for them, whatever that math worked out to be. Like 1.4, maybe 1.1, whatever. They pop him in Danbury.

The reason they do that, why they don't pop them anywhere else across the country is because Connecticut doesn't want to share. They don't want to share the glory. Like they don't bust me in, they don't bust them in New York because then they have to share with New York. You understand what I'm saying by that? Connecticut DEA is on to me now because I'm a Connecticut resident. They're the ones that are working my ex-driver.

And so while I'm in New York City, they think they're busting me down there, but they actually made an error. They thought I was delivering product or picking up money, but I was doing neither. So while I'm getting popped and let go in New York, my guy is getting busted, but I don't know it. So when I get back home, the next morning, my driver shows up and delivers the truck to me like he was supposed to. But the DEA's with him, but we don't know it. I pay him for his transport because that's how I do it.

I pay you. You come with the stuff. You get paid on the spot. I gave him $17,000 for that run. $17,000 he made. and little did I know he had to turn that right over to the DEA about a mile up the street and half of the group stayed with him while the other half came to my house and got me. Okay, so just to break it down how it actually went down.

So they already knew what was in the trunk of my car that was in my driveway. It had just been delivered. But the officer serving the warrant wasn't privy to the case. If that makes sense. the officer that got the warrant hadn't had anything to do with it. So when he popped the trunk, he thinks it's weed

because where we are in eastern Connecticut, there certainly isn't a guy who transports hundreds of kilos right here in that little town. It's probably weed. And he goes, how much weed you got in there? And I'm like,

oh, man, I don't know, man. There's a lot going on in there. And he opens up the thing and he's like, whoa. and there's people all around. So, you know, most of the cops, they are new. Okay, when I say cops, most of the, all the feds knew, the local cops didn't. Whenever the feds do a bus, most times they'll enlist local cops to come in and help,

especially a DEA organization like Connecticut where they're so small. They don't have the budget of a New York or even a Boston. So they legit take in detectives to come work and represent the DEA. Okay. But when they do a bust in any town or city, it's pretty much general knowledge that they let the local police know, hey, we're coming into your area to do a thing. You want to have one of your guys come by, you know, to represent. So just to give you a little background.

Not everybody at that house that morning knew what I was being bussed. for. Some were just bodies. Plus they want to show up with 20 people, too. You know, they love that. And it looks so cool to all the neighbors. So just as I'm getting handcuffed and walk to the cruiser, fucking school bus goes by,

you know, with like school bus driver knows me. My son rides that fucking bus. And, you know, so now it's out to the town what happened because I, you know, I'm getting, well, I mean, the streets littered with police and dogs, and I'm coming out in handcuffs. So that got out within probably 15 minutes.

It takes 45 minutes to get from where I've been popped to get to the DEA headquarters. And in that 45 minutes, I've got to craft the story of a fucking lifetime. Because I know what I got caught with. I mean, I know. You know, I know you don't come home from that. You know, I'm, you know, it's,

minimum 10 for that. Anything five to 150 kilograms is five, a 10 year minimum. It can be more, but it can't be less. So my whole move, man, in a nutshell, was in the beginning. Hey, man, let's try and get these guys to feel as sorry for me as possible. I played a game about these 200 pounds that were left with me that I couldn't sell. You know, what you try and do is you try and minimize how big you were.

you try and make it seem like, dude, I'm really in a bad spot. I owe these people a fucking lot of money. I was just about to be all paid off. And then you showed up. Now, of course, this isn't an original story. I'm not bragging. Oh, oh, you mean you denied? You did it?

Oh, that's a real great story. No, I mean, I couldn't deny I did it because I had it. But what I could do was build the premise around why I had it and get any level of sympathy. But other than sympathy, I also was letting them know. that I was calculated and I was intelligent. And I thought that that would be the only thing that could probably save me. And ultimately, my goal was, what could I do short?

Like, I couldn't rat on my people. They were too big. I would have been killed. So that was never an option. I don't get as lucky as my driver Steve that time when he got popped in Ohio and he took the pictures of my drugs and I got to see it, right?

So I got to know Steve didn't rip me off, right? That's how they proved it. That Steve didn't rip you off. Look, here it is. They police. Here's all your shit. Yep, okay. I was begging the government to do that.

Hey, please let Canada know that you busted me. Can you fucking, can we make this happen? Nope. And I'm like, well, that'd be really great because they think I stole. Now, I still have my BlackBerry PGP, that they're allowing me to keep because they want me to be in contact with these people and I know they want me to be in contact with them

my people are like yo so when you get in here and I have to put them off because for one thing the government's telling me don't tell them you got busted yet I'm like well what the fuck they're going to stall them you got to fucking stall them So I told him, I said, hey, look, guys, I can't do the transport right now. My guys backed out.

Give me a couple of days to figure shit out. I'm going to try and realign some guys. And, you know, this isn't exactly an easy ask. It's not out of the realm of possibility that somebody might say, yeah, I'll do something. And in the last minute, they cancel out. I mean, you're talking about, you know, life. You're talking about dangerous things here. I mean, if people back out, they get scared.

So the whole time, what I'm trying to do is I've got to get the government to tell these people that he didn't steal because now as time goes by they're not believing me i warn a guy one of the transporters for the hell's angels i warn him i call from a burner phone and i say because i i really liked this guy he was one of my he was one of the best guy that they had working for them for them i said bro i got hit if anybody calls you and says they're me or if i call you and somebody makes me call you don't do anything with me ever again passed the word. So I'm really hoping that this word gets back

and gets to my people, which it does. But they're like, yeah, no, we need proof. So I'm under seal. Do you know what under steel is for the government? I mean, you should know what that is. You can't talk. Well, but you also, there's no paperwork. Oh, that physically under seal, yeah.

Your indictments under seal. Yeah. That paperwork that I have with me today, I didn't have that then. It didn't exist yet. It literally didn't exist yet. So I don't have any proof that I've been busted. I'm now telling them, look, man, I was fucking busted.

The government won't fucking say shit, but I got popped. Stop fucking calling me, leave me alone. They now think I stole. And they're sending me texts about how they're going to handle this. They're going to send guys down through a spot to come. I'm handle this in the very detailed version of what they were going to do exactly to my family and I. And I'm pleading with them that, listen, I didn't fucking steal from you. You guys ought to know that, man, I returned $18,000 to them one time that they overpaid me.

So I'm like, you guys, I didn't, like, this isn't who I am. Well, we need to talk to your lawyer. You say, well, this is simple. Have you have them call your lawyer, right? Your lawyer will tell them. my lawyer was too fucking scared to talk to the mom he wouldn't fucking let me

and I had a super lawyer like a legit fucking high ranking lawyer I went for one of the best and he wouldn't talk to them I was like really he's like no good now they know who I am I'm like okay so you know after you get your

so the day they busted me they seized all the drugs they seized $120,000 in cash and one of my cars, a crash of 300, that the Canadians had bought me as a gift. That was the nice of them. To use the drive around and pick up their money. I made them buy me a car legit.

So about two weeks later in the mail, no, maybe more than that, time out. Let's go more than that. Let's say more like a month goes by. Now, for this month, the Canadians think I steal, the government won't say I got busted. The government now is hiding me and my family, I can't even see them.

They won't allow me near my own family because of what's going on. But they won't fucking release this information. So about a month later in the mail, I got DEA seizure forms that you get. When the government comes into your place and takes your, you probably have stuff confiscated. No, I didn't have any assets. Okay, you didn't. Well, had you had so many, they took them, you would have gotten a letter from the federal government. DEA saying what they seized right down to the penny and what date they seized it.

So I'm like, fuck, I have proof now. Like I have fucking, here's the paperwork they've been looking for. So I go to my lawyer and I say, hey man, I got this paperwork, man, we should we should send it. And he's like, yeah, but the government told me to tell you not to do that. I said, but I'm doing it. And he's like, yeah, you should. He goes, you just can't do it from here. So I reached out to these people one last time and I said, listen, I got the paperwork you're looking for.

I sent it up to them and they still weren't convinced. They thought I could fake that paperwork. It was legit my paperwork. I didn't fake it. It was legit my paperwork. And I said, I don't even know what to do now. I go, how about I'll send you the email that I got from the federal probation guy. You know, I got put on a federal probation.

Even though I never saw a probation officer, they still technically put me. Yeah, super by pretrial release or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So I had a legit guy. And when you get your little email from the government, your mugshot comes up. So is this you? You're supposed to check yes.

And you've got to answer some questions. Have you broken the law? Have you smoked weed? Have you done that? You know, you've got to do that every month, right? To report. I did it once. But I took a picture of that page and I sent it to them.

I said, look. So now they're starting to kind of come around that maybe I didn't rip them off. But the government is pushing me hard on money. Because they know I have money because the people who have ratted on me have all talked. Dude's got buckets. You got buckets all over the place. Look, you know, when people say, well, why did you tell people? Well, I mean, what the fuck?

I have buckets in the woods. I mean, if I tell you I have buckets in the woods, you don't know where they are. You know, and people would always ask me, what do you do with all your money? Buckets. Home Depot. Home Depot bucket. I got homework buckets. with fucking vacuum seal money all over the place.

So did they ever formally charge you? Oh, yeah. So I was just charged with trafficking, what they called five or more kilos. So when I went before the judge, first of all, they snuck me into the basement so I wouldn't go through any media. Nobody would ask me any questions about who I was.

When I went into the courtroom, they cleared it out. There was just us and the judge. And they didn't want to tell the judge, this actually happened. They didn't want to tell the judge. that I got pop with 55 kilos because they thought he may not want to let me out or he may make the bail so fucking high that I couldn't get out. And they wanted to get the bigger fish.

They wanted me out like 10 minutes after the court case. So they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to tell him you got caught with five or more. And that's what they wrote legit on my paperwork. Now that's all they have to write because it falls within that limit. Five or more is how you would actually write it out. They don't need to know the exact, but they just made sure they didn't tell them. Does that make sense?

So just, you know, to tell that, that's how they, that's how I avoided media. I avoided the newspapers. They snuck me in, snuck me out. My paperwork was under seal. I was never on a docket. But they want me to inform on the group I work for and the bikers and the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans and everything. And I tell them, I can't do that. I'll tell you everything I did.

I'll tell you how I did it. I'll tell you every hundred different ways I smuggled. But I can't do that. So I go back and forth with the lawyer, him and I talk, and he says, why don't you give them some money? They keep asking me for money. I know they keep asking you for money, which they're hounding me for money every meeting. And I'm still denying it.

Look, you got all my cash, man. You know, remember I'm playing the kind of, I'm sort of just this hillbilly to get kind of whooped up into this big, fancy old crime organization. I didn't really know what I was getting into, and I owed them money from this weed I thought I could sell. But I guess they're not really kind of, you know, they know. So my lawyer and I came up with a figure. Now, you know, when you get your paperwork,

it tells you what your crime gets you. And it says X amount of years and or $10 million fine. That's like the maximum fine that it could be. We kind of interpreted that as, maybe they're saying that we could do jail or a fine. I mean, they wouldn't have put the two in the same sentence in the same paragraph, rather, if they weren't related to one another.

So my lawyer and I craft an idea that let's offer them money. I don't talk about my people, but I'll come work for you. How do you talk about the people but work for them? them. So we enter into an agreement where they want, so basically they're going to hire me to, the government's going to hire me to come work for them and consult with them on all levels of smuggling. Like I'm teaching rookies. I'm going into classrooms. I'm telling guys my story. I'm doing two and a's. They would inject me into cases that they already had ongoing. And literally, that's what I did for them for over a decade.

I mean, I was one of the most prolific. I guess you want to... This was my downside about doing your show. I'm going to be honest with you because I know that this doesn't sound like, you know, I know a lot of your fan base loves doing the crime and they also did the time. And I didn't do the time and I found a way around it. You saved yourself. I was offered a deal that I couldn't refuse.

I was offered no jail. You're going to give us $5 million. I gave him $4.75. In cash? In cash. In buckets. I took them right out to the buckets. Yep.

That was six buckets. So, you know. And the deal was, I don't have to rat on my people, but I work for you for an undetermined amount of time. They would never give me an outdate. Until they released you. Yeah. And you know what I ended up being? Exactly what I would have gotten in prison.

Ten years. Little over ten years. I did it for 11 in change. Did they pay you for it or no? Couldn't get a penny. So you had to work another. job. Here's what they paid me. They would pay me when I would go. I mean, I went all around the country for them. I worked with agencies from here all the way across the country. Did you help them seize a lot of? Oh, yeah. Millions and millions of dollars. Did you ever hear from the mob again?

Okay. So once they, once they knew I got busted, I never heard from again. They just ghosted me. It was done. Cost of business. And oh, I lost all that. I lost everything. And I legit stayed out of the game. No, but it's a cost of doing. business for them. Oh, they took a loss. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was a big loss, man. It was a big loss.

You also made them a lot of money. Look, 22 grand. They're paying for kilos in Southern California. Those come up to Montreal. It's not even a joke to say that gets turned into 80 grand. How do you think they feel that you talk about it publicly on shows? Well, so that's what everybody asked me. But who did I talk about today?

What guy? Who's pissed? No, no. You're right. The organization, I mean, all I said was Italians. I know. They kick in any legal trouble. but still the organization.

You're putting their business out there. Yep, but here's what I'll tell you about that. And I didn't send these emails to you, but I'd be happy to. All the info that I just gave you about the family is all on the internet. They all got popped years later. Nothing to do with me. They were already hot before me. Their warehouse just got popped.

Okay, they weren't telling me how hot they were either, you know. It's not like they said, hey, Rich, this is great. Come on board. By the way, we're wicked fucking hot, so heads up. It didn't happen that way. It was like we're smooth, we're cool, we're careful. So, I mean, talking about it now in generalities, I mean, to me, it doesn't seem like I'm hurting anybody. I mean, I didn't say, like, there's 10 articles out there that show the list of people that all got indictments, right?

And they all beat the case, by the way. If you ever want to read a crazy story, you read about how they beat the case for all the smuggling and brutality that they, did up there, all because the government wouldn't release how they broke into the PGP BlackBaries. When it came down to discover, this is, you can read about all this, dude, Project Clemenza, Montreal Gazette, I just gave it to everybody. Go read that article. You're going to hear and see, they even name me in the article, not by name, but they say this organization was able to effectively transport through the states with an American ground transportation company. That was me. Not being named because Canada never had a case against me.

They wanted me. But the states had no, the states don't give a shit about Canada. They're not going to help them. It did nothing in it for them. So they never offered me up and I never would have gone anyhow. They never would have come home. But, you know, in the beginning. So I don't know that I'm, you know, I don't feel like I've said anything that hasn't been said in articles and newspapers.

You can Google all this stuff and you can read it. There's 10 different articles on the family I worked for. There's 10 of them. And I've not said one thing more except for the details of what I did personally. And that was part of the deal too. Very similar to Eric's deal. My lawyer said the exact same thing to me that he mentioned. I remember when I heard that, I was like, wow.

The lawyer said, you don't have to tell him everything you did, but you can't lie about anything. Yeah, because Eric got a deal to pay the money to get out of that too. I wish I could have got that. I know. You got a bad deal. They spent more, they spent millions fucking prosecuting me and my shit's only, you got a bad deal. You got a bad deal.

You got a bad deal. You know, I watched your father's interview, which I thought was awesome. You know, I wish I could, I wish I had that opportunity. But,

I learned a lot about your case, just hearing about that. And it sounds like they went out of their way. You rubbed them the wrong way for some reason. They're like that white privilege kid that deserves to be. taught a lesson. I think they just got the wrong idea of me, you know?

They just don't. People that know me understand me, you know, and people from the outside don't. So, I mean, I get it, but it gave me this. It gave me, I created a business from it. So maybe everything was supposed to happen that way and that was my purpose and that was always a plan. Dude, maybe it was supposed

to happen that way. That's what I was talking about earlier, man. Did you really have decisions to alter the way things actually, like, you know, So that's what fascinates me, man, is was I always going to do this? I think the answer is yes. Yes, I think so too.

Like the universe is like sets you up for that, you know? Like just like me, like I was born for this. Life brought me exactly to where I was supposed to be. And when you hit that fork, you think you're making an educated decision. But in truth, your educated decision is faulty to begin with because of your experiences and trauma. Those things indicate, they dictate the way you make the very decisions of left versus right. Now, if you could do it all over again, would you?

God damn, that's a good question, man. Because I loved being the man. You know, I left out all the gory Hollywood partying and hanging out with celebrities. For the book, my friend. I missed, I skipped all the money spending, the Tiffany's shopping sprees, the fucking multiple women. I blew fast all that. I loved those days. Being the man is so goddamn addictive.

And you know, I used to always tell a joke that I heard from this old guy. He said, you know, the women really love us drug dealers, man, you know. We're better than the actors and we're better than the rock stars because rock stars are junkies and they got fucking venereal diseases. Actors are full of themselves and they're really actually dickheads to women. But women love us drug dealers, man, because we show up in town. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. We got weeks to blow. We just want to find cool stuff to do and hot chicks to fuck.

And they, I exuded that life. Like, that was, you know, I hit heavy in my 30s. If I had to hit heavy in my 20s, I'd have gone to prison. I wouldn't have been smart enough to get my way out of it. I wasn't smart enough yet. So would you do it again? The real answer is yes. I would.

So you see, now that's a, so, so would I do with it again knowing what I know now? Because that changes things, you know. If I could do it again with the knowledge I have today, I'd like to think I never get caught. Yeah. But that's dangerous. But I probably do. That's a dangerous thought. I know.

But I probably do. Here's, here's what I can answer easier. If I don't get busted that day, I for sure keep going. As far as looking back now, sure. Sure. You know, when I say, yeah, I'd do it again. I'm also saying, yeah, I'd put my wife through what I put her through. I would have my wife and kid have to hide for, you know, my kid was young enough to not know he was hiding from like literally getting murdered. He was young enough that we could tell him. It was because we had mold in the house. You had to go live at Grandma's house for a while. But the truth that matter is was they were in hiding because I had a hit on me for a while. And it was super fucking scary and I couldn't even see them and be near them. And I was living in hotels and friends couches and, you know, so maybe I wouldn't do it again because the post-bus days were awful. I despise what I had to do.

I don't love me for what I did. I don't love that I helped the federal government. The only solace I can take from that, and I know to all you, you know, prisons, time-serving people, I know. But I did hurt people and I ruined people's lives. I didn't know them. I never hurt anybody who did business with me. I never ratted my friends.

I never ratted my distributors. I never ratted the bikers. I never ratted my people. In fact, I talked from Johnny's show. New York came up to see me. And they showed me pictures of all my people up north. I knew every fucking one of them, but I wouldn't recognize any of them.

That happened. New York was, New York was on me hard because all the weed was getting smuggled in through New York borders. I have my own border smuggling area that I found. So when I talked about that, they put a border patrol there, by the way.

That's thanks to me. They legit, you know, you can't Google map it anymore and street view it. That's because of me. one dude in 100% they put an actual like your energy rich they put a legit border patrol building on the spot that I used to smuggle through rich I'm hungry thank you for coming on the show you gave me a long one today man that was almost four hours you know that was almost four hours dude this is what I do man imagine my poor buddies in the campsite what I put them through

Rich, thank you, man. We'll have you plugged in with your email for people listening that want to get in touch with you and think that they could help get your story out there more. You never know who's watching or who's seeing this could be a movie producer or a literary agent or whoever. This is why I'm here. Yep, and we'll have that plugged in. And I love doing your show. No, really. Thank you.

Because Johnny was great too. Johnny will always be my first. But the second's the best. Sometimes. And this one, in this case, this is fantastic. This is great. Yeah, because you had the comfy chair. Thank you for having me on. Of course, Rich.

I really appreciate it. Anytime, I'm sure we'll do a part two eventually because you got more to share.