Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - $100M Deal Goes Wrong & Lands Him in a Bahamian Prison

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Try MyHeritage: https://bit.ly/MatthewCox and use the code MATTCOX to get %10 off. And as a bonus, you will receive a free 30-day trial for MyHeritage's family tree history research feature.⁣ ⁣ Just a reminder the legendary Chuck Norris is a whopping 84 years old and yet has MORE energy than most of us — he discovered he could create dramatic changes to his health simply focusing on 3 things that sabotage our body as we age. Watch his method by clicking the link in the description box here: https://ChuckDefense.com/Matt ⁣ ⁣ A seemingly legitimate business trip to the Bahamas turned into a legal nightmare when a family-run talent event was misclassified as unauthorized work, leading to arrest, detainment, and a stint in the notoriously harsh Fox Hill prison for Terry Foster. Despite assurances from officials and extensive efforts to follow the rules, the situation spiraled due to local corruption, miscommunication, and systemic failures.⁣ ⁣ Connect with Terry⁣ TV Show: https://wvexplorershow.com⁣ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/wvexplorer⁣ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terry.foster.714655/about_life_events⁣ ⁣ Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This was the first $100 million of a $500 million deal. He said, you guys have families. We know people. You were going to regret this. And I have to say they were right. We ended up with a franchise acting and modeling school. What we did a road show, and this was in the summer of 2011. What happens at these?

You promote them and what people bring their kids in because their kids want to get into commercials or get into acting. So how does you, up in the Bahamas, like how you went to the Bahamas, like how does, obviously, we're here on a true crime podcast. So it obviously went wrong. Right. It definitely went wrong. So the whole family went down and just backtrack to the process. I mean, it was like pulling teeth trying to get information about what do we need to do to do this event in the Bahamas? I mean, it's like I called the U.S. Embassy. I called the Bahamian

Embassy, made a contact there, Bahamian Embassy in Washington, D.C., contacted the marketing company in Miami and ended up working with a company called Carter Marketing in Bahamas. And every one of them was, what do we need to do this business trip and make this event?

Make sure that we're covered, and we got all of our eyes dotted and our T's crossed, that we're not going to have problem. Well, there was never that satisfaction of, yeah, I got it covered. But the main thing was I was working with the Wyndham Resort in Nassau. I think it was called Cable Cable Beach. And they, I was working with him saying, okay, am I covered? Do we have everything that we need? He goes, well, you know, you need a business permit. Well, no, you don't need a business permit. Well, I talk to so-and-so, and one of the, one of the chain emails,

that I have came from the representative from the Wyndham Hotel. And you know, this is a small in a country, a small island over there. A lot of people know each other, which is also a detriment to what happened to us, was led to it. But when they said, oh, we talked to so-and-so

at immigration or traveling tourism, don't remember exactly what the department was. I think they talked to somebody in immigration, and I've got this in writing in an email, I said, you do not need a work permit. are doing something to benefit the island and the citizens of the island. All you need is a letter of intent submitted for what you're doing. Well, I had that. I've been sending that out since the first week we started booking the event and everything. So it's kind of like,

okay, well, I guess we're good to go, but never did feel real easy about it. I partnered with My Heritage to take a DNA test to find out more about my ancestry. My Heritage sent me a DNA kit, And all I have to do is swab the inside of my cheek, put it in the container, and mail it back. While waiting for your results, you can enhance, colorize, and even animate your old family photos. It's like bringing your family history to life. And I've always been told that I have Native American blood in me. And so I'm curious to know what the test says. You are.

Is this me? 33.5% Norwegian. 27% English, 12% Scottish, and Welsh, Irish. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Six more, wait, okay, six more. Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, I think. Because this is right, my father was raised in Georgia, right? My mom was raised in Jacksonville.

Like, this is the general area. So this is a specific area of Norway. Pretty interesting. The results were pretty much exactly what I, what I expected with the exception that I had been told that I had some Indian blood in me. And so, you know, I'm going to have to ask some hard questions, you know. But I'll get to the bottom of that. When you test your DNA with My Heritage, their technology compares your DNA data with the DNA data of others

and identifies possible family members. If you would like to find out more about MyHeritage, you can scan the QR code or click the link in the description box and use code Matt Cox to get 10% off. And as a bonus, you will receive a free 30-day trial for MyHeritage's family tree history research feature. But you think about this, we're taking our three kids on the first weekend there. Because after the event, we wanted to take them out and spend a day or so before we had to fly back out to L.A. So everything went okay. I went there, did the event, saw the 120 or so kids or more, and then ended up working with about 30-some, signing them up, scheduling them for classes.

in the workshops until the agents come back. But the biggest problem that I made was we were getting ready to like the last day there. And my wife there was talking to a couple of local girls. She goes, I think we've got our teachers. You know, we basically had to teach acting and modeling. I said, I don't know about that. You know, I grew up in a small area where people know everything that's going on. You know, she grew up in northern California in the Bay Area where, like, you don't even know your next door neighbor.

So I kind of had a better understanding about, you know, you don't pull this in with all this, keep the locals involved in all this, thinking that you can really have a quality, you know, acting and modeling coach to train these kids that already know half the family. So I said, we're only a hop, skipping a jump from Miami. We can just fly in the coaches to work with them on the weekends. and then they fly by. I mean, very inexpensive flights. You know, we're already into this to, you know, several thousands of dollars. I mean, we spent $7 or $8,000 just on the advertising alone. So we planned to do it back in the around 2010 or something.

We felt a show that was successful was about $30,000 or more of gross. So when we did try to do about one a month or something like that. So if we did 30, 35, 40,000, we knew that we were going to have a decent profit out of that show. So I said, I don't think we need to do this. Let's just bring them in from Miami. I mean, there's got to be, there's some great, it's a great industry over there. There's definitely going to be some good acting and modeling coaches. Let's just bring them over.

Oh, no, we're going to save money. They're already here. And this, that, and the other. And I just kind of reluctantly gave in, which I should never have done that. because we basically, we hired thieves. So the process was four weeks. First weekend, everybody, the whole family's there. About two weeks later, I fly back down, you know,

make sure everything's going okay, collect cash and collect payments and different things like that, those that weren't paying online or whatever. And then two weeks after that, I come back with my oldest son, which coordinates the showcase, case, the two lady talent agents from very reputable talent agencies in LA, and then Andy was the representative for the talent convention that brings people in from all over the world, either to

L.A. or New York or Las Vegas, and for these really nice conventions where they see 70 or 80 agents and talent managers and people and other people in production and stuff like that as well. So that last weekend, go down, get ready for the showcase, and I'm sitting there kind of looking over the payment schedules and the spreadsheets and everything and had one of the three girls, there was three girls we had hired, one of the one of the girls I said, she was kind of like responsible for collecting the money because a lot of people were paying cash for the payments. So we spread them up into payments for them. So I'm sitting there and I'm saying, okay, okay, I got this, this. just, okay, there were about $15, $1, $1,600, $1,700 short. And I said, I looked at her, I said, well, where's the rest of the money? And I'll never will forget this, Matt.

It was like, it's just like these words, I'll never forget these words. Oh, we decided to pay ourselves extra. I said, oh, we did. We decided to pay ourselves extra. And I thought, well, that's interesting, you know. And it's never discussed. Not exactly how it works. No, that's not how it works.

And not any of that, we paid them well. I mean, they weren't for, especially for the, on Bahamian standards, there was very good pay, what we paid them. So it's like, oh, we did. So a couple phone calls. I was back and forth with my wife a couple times. And I said, well, there's no need to, you can't go to the police. You can't do anything like that. So my decision was, which she agreed upon was, okay, we're just going to tell them to leave before the showcase.

starts in a couple hours and just get out of here. Well, I knew that was, I knew that was going to be a problem. So I called the hotel management. I said, look, I don't want these girls here. And I mean, I was their customer, not them. Right. So they came and escorted the girls out. And they were just like cussing.

And it's like, you're going to pay for this. You don't understand what you've just done. You know, so I was literally threatened as they were being escorted out. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm the one in the right here. stole for me. I'm not asking for the money back. I didn't go to the police. That'd have been a joke anyway. So we're there doing the showcase and so why not go to the police? Like are they just that? Oh, I already knew that that was not. I mean, I already kind of got a feel for the island and how they operate over there. Very lackadaisical. I mean, we were, I mean, we're used to doing these

events and we go and we say, oh, we need an extra table. We need another row of chairs. We need we need a projector. We need a screen. We need a backdrop. I mean, everything we need, we were just like used to them, especially in the States. I mean, you ask for it, you'd have it 20 minutes later. Right. Sometimes faster than that. Well, anything like that that you do over there, it's like, it's just law, what is it phrase, laissez-faire or whatever, where it's like, okay, when we get to it, we'll get to it. It could be, you know, four hours later or not even get it at all or not until the next day. So I just saw how they function and they operated. And I started to realize how a lot of them knew each other and everything.

And I said, you know, you don't go on somebody's home turf and then try to dictate what they want to do, how we're going to do it. I kind of, the understanding to me, and this through the whole process of the months that I was stuck there was they didn't really care for Americans. But they knew that we were, we spent a lot of money over there, the tourists and everything. Or either they were just so unemotional about everything. You know, I know when you go to the beach and stuff like that, it's all nice and sweet and everything. But when you're doing business there or you have other intentions there, that's when you really run into situations where you never, you would never expect to happen.

So I knew that just getting a feel for the people and how they operated there and everything that I was outnumbered, there was no way that I was going to try to recover $1,600, $1,600 and be and go to the police. It would just never worked out well. And the way they were talking on the way out is we know people, you were going to regret this. And I have to say they were right. Right. They were right. So we finished up the showcase. and I'm sitting there at the end wrapping everything up, kind of putting stuff together,

putting, you know, pulling paperwork and everything back together. I had a little like a little workstation in the back of the room. And then all of a sudden, a couple, there's three or four guys standing around me and one flashing, flash on their badge. So we're with the, we're in immigration department. And I'm saying, okay, what would like to see your paperwork and your work? work permit. And I said, well, I don't have a work permit, but I have the paperwork that I submitted in to get approved to do this event, which is basically a letter of intent telling us what the event

was and while we were there and what we're going to do and how it benefited the country. It was kind of like what our letter intent was, but that was acceptable through travel and tourism or whatever the name of that department was in the immigration department. So because when we went there, if I backtracked when my whole family came there on the first event, which I believe was in July, you know, I'm not, I didn't want to put my whole family at jeopardy. So they held us up at the airport. They said, what's your paperwork, passports, and any type of paperwork? Why are you here for? We're here for business. You know, we're not going to fake it and say, we're just here for a weekend vacation, when we're going to be there for a month. And so I give them the paperwork that I had prepared and

submitted into the legal departments including the Bahamian embassy in Washington DC which that was a joke absolutely no help at all from them they they went back to their office came back about 10 15 minutes later and handed everything back said you're good to go and I'm like this you know I'm thinking we're good to go we're here never felt comfortable 100 percent but I felt like because I'd been through the ringer so much trying to figure out this process, which was really just ridiculous. Right. Because it should have been much more simpler than what it was, getting whatever the paperwork,

whatever the work permit or whatever that we needed. So they let us in, but in the, and then four weeks later, we're arrested for not having a work permit. Okay. So they said, we need your permit. Right. And you said, here's my stuff. Here's my stuff.

And then what happened? This was stuff. Okay, so we were escorted back to our hotel room. So Randy and Andy and Jared, my oldest son and myself were in one room, and they had the girls contained in another one, obviously the girls had a separate room. That's the two talent agents. So when we were there, and then one of the head man men from the immigration department

came into the room and started talking to us. And I remember his last name was Bastion. And it's kind of like just starting, it just kept getting escalated. You were doing this, you were doing that. You're defrauding the people. He just kept getting escalated worse and worse and worse. Like, wait a minute, that's not what we're here for. I mean, we spent eight grand advertising where we were all over the islands advertising.

Everybody knew about this event. How are we here to defraud you when we plastered all over your local media? You know, we're here, a talent search, and everything like that. So then they're coming in and trying to accuse us of all this other stuff that we were not doing. Well, I understood the process later. You know, I'm still, you've got to think I'm still operating in this naive state, you know, just based on my upbringing in West Virginia and everything like that. I'm still, you know, a little naive, a little bit too trusting and everything.

And then he would go out and 20 minutes later, he'd come back in and bad. just uses of everything you're doing this you did this you did that and I'm below this you're facing you're looking at fines and jail time he'd go out and no 20 minutes 20 30 minutes and come back in well this went on for like three or four hours you know from like maybe seven o'clock to 11 o'clock or midnight and I didn't know at that time I didn't I mean I'm not silly enough or naive enough not to have a sense that okay I could probably dish out a few hundred bucks and be done with this whole thing. But I'm thinking on terms as an American in our process and system here in America. And it's like, if I do that, I could be in a lot worse trouble.

Well, as soon as he said, you're facing fines, they'd be like, well, how much are the fines? I'll pay them right now. That's probably what he wanted you to say. Oh, yeah. Well, it's a $1,000 fine. Well, I can pay that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was. Take a check. That was. Or cash. It's got to be cash. Yeah, I was, and then I was kind of bouncing off of Andy, and of course, Jared's young. He's 20, 21, but it was kind of like, well, where do you think? What's going on here? Like, we're like the first couple of hour, just kind of like, look at each other with a dumb look on our face.

Like, well, you know, peculiar, bewildered look. What in the world's going on here? You know? So this went on for about four hours. And then when Bastion realized that I wasn't going to dig in my pocket and up any cash, then we were taken from there to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, jail facility there at cable beach close to where the resort is for the Wyndham resort and so spent one night there and then after that first after that night the next day they took us to

the immigration detention center and then we spent two or we spent two nights there because we were from the time we were arrested until we're sitting in front of a magistrate judge three days I mean, how do you have time to prepare anything in three days? So is this just you or your whole family? No. At this point, it was myself, my oldest son, because this was my third trip. My wife and my two other kids didn't come back for the third trip. She was actually doing an event in Hawaii that particular weekend.

Right. So I went with my oldest son. Again, he coordinated the event. You know, he lays it out and does all that. And then the two LA-based talent agents, we fly in to look at the talent. And then Andy, the representative that was with the convention. So there's five of us, you know, three males and two females. So we were being interrogated in the one hotel room.

And the girls, I don't think they were being interrogated because they knew it was my business. Right. They didn't really care about the rest of them. They knew it was my business. So they were basically coming after me. So they take us to the jail there and we spend the first night in the jail. Then the next night, I mean the next day, next day they take us to the immigration detention center, which was an experience all in itself.

I was going to say, how was the jail? The jail was nasty, didn't get a bathroom break. I mean, unfortunately, had a bottle there. No water. Hot, you know, here it is July. Well, at that point, it was September. September in the Bahamas hot, you know, it's kind of like, just kind of not very good, right, obviously.

There's three of us there, and there was a local Bahamian kid, nice kid that was in there with us kind of giving us the wraps a little bit. I mean, we were looking to try to get any information that we can. And Andy was like kind of a high-strung, kind of a nervous type, and, you know, he was always asking everybody, goes, what are you going to do to us? And I knew from the very beginning that I had to be the, I had to have, I had to present stability and strength. You know, and it wasn't going to be, it wasn't going to be Andy. And, you know, my son at that point is barely 21.

And I'm bigger than both of them. And I knew that I was going to have to be the one to step up and just, just be strong. Have you ever wondered what happened to the legendary Chuck Norris? I recently saw a video he made and I was shocked. He's in his 80s and still kicking butt. and working out and staying active. What's even more shocking is he's stronger, can work out longer,

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Watch his method by clicking on the link in the description box below. Or go to chuckdefense.com slash Matt. And, you know, not show any weakness because we didn't know what was around the corner. So from there, and again, keep in mind from arrest to court three days. So, you know, basically in this country, in a lot of countries like this, you're basically guilty. and then you're proven innocent or if you can prove innocent. But the whole racket is to get you to pay a fine and plead guilty. Right.

And then it's supposed to go easier on you once you do that. So that's how the whole system works over there in a lot of these foreign countries that people don't understand. You know, your rights aren't there. You're arrested. They're assuming you're guilty and everything is. up that you're guilty and then they want you to just make their process easier. But if you plead guilty and pay the fine then, you know, they don't really have to put up a case against you because they're not really, pathetically, I was so shocked at how their

court system worked over there and how incompetent they were. That's why you never want to go to foreign court. I don't care where it is. I don't care if it's Europe or anywhere else. Is you do not want to be, because your assumptions are going to be wrong. And I don't care if you get a good lawyer or what your assumptions are going to be wrong. You think the immigration, the U.S. Embassy is going to be backing you up. Your assumptions are wrong. Yeah. You mean that there was a senator that didn't jump on a plane and fly down there to try and negotiate and make sure you were being taken care of?

Absolutely not. No, like what was the, what's the MS-13 member in El Salvador right now? senators are flying down there to have make sure you're okay and it's like this is even an american citizen no you know me guys i've met that have been locked up in other countries and the embassy comes in they'll send sometimes they'll send somebody to basically you're an american citizen you're arrested in a foreign country you're facing prison time they might send somebody from the embassy to say there's nothing we can do you have to go through the process you can't get me out of here No, no, you have to be tried and you'll be found guilty and there's not much I can do as long as they're following their laws.

But their laws are flawed and they're going to give me 20 years for something I'd get five in the U.S. Or I wouldn't even face charges of the U.S. Yeah, I know there's nothing we can do. But then this guy jumps on a fucking plane for somebody who's not even an American citizen. Fucking insane. No, no. Our case really wasn't as attention grabbing as a lot of, as a lot of. lot. You're still a U.S. citizen.

Yeah. But, I mean, wait until you get to my friend Steve then I met there. Wait, wait until we get to there. Now, you talk about abuse. At least I'm alive. Let's put it that way. I'm glad, definitely glad to be alive and I've gotten out of there as well as the other people that got out of there. Because I was given six months and the rest of my team was given three weeks. So they got out in three weeks, but I had a six-month sentence. But I did get out early on a technicality. Okay. Okay.

So go ahead. So let's just move for. So you were locked up three days. You get in front of the judge. What happened? Well, first of all, I just want to tell you a little bit about the immigration detention center. Okay.

I mean, this was so vivid. I mean, here it is. Now it's already, it's already dusk. It's already getting, which actually by the time we get there, they get us there, it's already dark. You know, we have to go through the process of our luggage and everything and taking it to the immigration office. And it's kind of like, I mean, everything is just slow.

my thought and not even not even it just seems haphazard I mean there's there's no do do do do step one step two step three it's just kind of like haphazard and we all were there we're there on island time basically like okay what's what's next what's next what's already dark well we we come out of the immigration office I never will forget this because it's just kind of like I mean it's one of those things where you just nod you experience this and you feel like you're in a dream or a movie because there's you know We got the fence and the razor wire at the top and everything, and there's this long gauntlet with the fence and razor wire at the top.

You've got to walk down to the main barracks. There was four barracks back there. Actually, there was three barracks. And so we have walked down this, there's basically a gauntlet. And then all I remember is I remember hearing the crunch of the gravel under our feet because we're not saying a word. We're just like, you know, we're scared. You know, we are, we are.

And I'm like, well, I got to, you know, I got to go show Tah. I got, you know, I got to stay strong for everybody else. And, of course, everybody's asking me questions because they're blaming, you know, they were quick to blame us for putting them in this situation. Well, you didn't do this. And it's like, well, wait a minute. You, you don't work for me. You were, you are a guest.

You work for this talent agent. If there's any, if there's any additional paperwork, that's your responsibility. It wasn't ours. Now, I did feel responsible. but what came down to blame. I mean, we paid everybody's fine. We paid out like $18,000 in fines. And you felt you did your,

you felt you approached everybody you were supposed to approach, ask what you were supposed to get, you got the documentation that you were supposed to get, you were told everything was okay, now that you need a permit. And here we are in this situation.

Well, and once again, needing a business license or a permit doesn't mean you go to prison. Like you say it's not like here in, you know what I'm saying? If I go rent a space down here at wireglass mall and I open a store and I functioned for six months selling tennis shoes. And one day the county shows up and says, hey, man, you need a license. What do you mean?

You need an occupational. You need a business license for this. I do? Oh, I had no idea. I'm sorry. I signed a lease. I thought I could just know. Oh, well, how much is that?

Well, now you've got to pay the $300. And there's going to be a fine. The fine is going to be $150. You have $450 and you have three days to come up with that money. Okay, gosh, I'm so sorry. At no point do I think that guy from the city is going to say, I'm calling police, turn around, you're going to jail. You can get two years for this. You can get, motherfucker, that's a fucking fine.

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to pay you the $300 bucks plus the $300 license fee or $200 license fee and the $150 fine. Like, that's all you're getting. You're not taking me to jail. Yeah, yeah. Well, we dropped eight ground on advertising plus airfare and hotel and everything. And, of course, renting the ballroom space and everything, you think $250 for a business permit would have satisfied any heck no. That's what I was trying to uncover all along before we ever went there.

So in the immigration detention center, that gauntlet is, you know, we're walking down. We're not saying a word. there's five of us and a few other men, I believe, that we're going to be stuck in the barracks there that night. So this is, we were arrested Sunday. I was supposed to fly out 6 a.m. Monday morning. Obviously, that didn't happen. So this was Monday night already. We're headed into immigration detention center.

So walking down this gauntling, hear that limestone crunch under your feet. You know, you're in this mist of this humidity in the Bahamas. You're looking around. You're seeing the, you know, the bugs flying, and you're looking straight ahead, and you see three barracks and guards with their AK-47s or, you know, other rifles and stuff like that. And we walked down through that gauntlet, and we're headed in there. There's three barracks. There's this one on the left.

There's a one in the middle and the one on the right. Okay, well, the one on the right had about 60. 70 men in it. And they're all curious. You know, they're like, who's the new people coming in here? And Andy being, you know, not the bravest person in the world, he grabs me and about pinches my, you know, flesh off my arm, said, oh my God, oh my God, you think we're going to get stuck down there? We can't get stuck with those guys because, you know, there's about 50 Haitians in there. And Haitians are pretty, you know, they're dark-skinned people. And it's just the fact that we're sitting there watching all these guys look through the fence and we'd see their

eyes and it's just kind of intimidating. Like, we don't want to go in there. Well, here's what they do. This is funny. Now, when you think about it, we go through, they open the gate. Now we're in the main yard area in front of the barracks. Each barracks was partitioned off with fence and razor wire because you couldn't go from barrack A to Beric B.

But they march us up to the third one. And Andy goes, oh, boy, we're going to go in here. There's nobody here. There's nobody here. We can't go, if we go up to this third one, we're going to be okay. They're going to stick us in here all by ourselves. And so what do they do? They stop us and frisk us.

If we turn from the barracks up on the left, we come down to the center barracks. They open the door. The two girls go in. There's about maybe seven or eight girls in there. The two girls, the two town agents go in. And then they march us down to the barracks that has about 70 guys in it. And Andy, he about freaks out. And my son didn't know what to think.

I'm just thinking, okay, you know, I just got to be calm, got to be cool, got to look like, you know, I'm in control. So we go down there and they open, they open the door and this big, Russ meets us at the door. Now Russ is kind of like the resident immigration guy there. Russ is a, I called him a white Cuban, big guy, you know, and he is real, he'd spent most of his life he'd spend in, in Florida near Miami. But he went back to the Bahamas. He was from Cuba, spent, you know, several years in Florida, came back to the Bahamas, married a Bahamian girl. She got a little bit, they had some type of spad or whatever, and she turned him in. So they stuck him in immigration.

He'd been there like six months because you think Russ was not a U.S. citizen, had no Bahamian paperwork other than the fact that his wife was there. but she held the cards. And then he had no paperwork from Cuba. So he was kind of like there was nowhere for him to go. He was just waiting for immigration to work everything out that he could at least go back to Cuba. I was going to say, how does that work out? You know what I'm saying?

Like you should just stay in the United States. They wouldn't send you back to Cuba. That's just it. It's just kind of like you're just caught between everything and nothing's working in his favor. Great guys. though and big you know pretty good size guy six two two 40 or something because it was kind of like we want to be his friend right you know we you know we speak the language and everything you know

he was really good with english and everything and he kind of told us his story and what his wife had done to him he was stuck there couldn't get out waiting on immigration well you're waiting on island time immigration for them to get to it when they get to it and it's already been like six months so he was like the local resident like the team leader of this barracks and so soon as we opened the door and let us in. I just felt big relief because what he did, he talked to one, he said one, he called one of the guards by their first

name and says, hey, we only got two extra mattresses. We're going to be sleeping on the floor. We didn't get one of the bunk beds, but he said, hey so-and-so, we only got two extra mattresses. Can you bring us one more over? I'm thinking, well, if he can talk to them like that

and that chummy with him, I said, we're got to be in pretty, you know, we should be okay here. Yeah. So, We spent two days there, hot, I mean, just nasty hot. Toilets didn't work. You know, if you had running water, you know, that was a blessing. And, you know, this situation over there is you basically fill up a five-gallon bucket if you do have running water to flush your toilet.

Right. So showers was just, and that was not even thinkable, really. And then these guys were transient. You know, they were living in there for typically a few days. we just happened to be stuck here for like for like six weeks six months oh yeah you're right six months or more who knows i don't know i got it we got out before before he did so but that while we were in there the hathians had a little bit of an uprising and there's almost a fight had almost broke out on the on the on the second day and you remember there was like 50 Haitians you know so

they were like obviously they were kind of clannish working working standing together but the one guy that they were the one of the biggest Haitian guys there that was going to fight was this little German little scrawny German dude. His name was Hans. Hans has a story that blows mine away. And Steve's story blows both of our stories away when I get when I get to that. But Hans almost was like Andy was like a member I said he's one is like asking all kinds of questions, trying to get to know the people and trying to predict what's going to happen next,

you know, looking from a fearful perspective rather than like, let's just wait and see. So Andy got to know Hans a little bit better than me, and he came to me, he said, you know who he is? You know what he did? He's a German drug runner. I said, really? Really? So I said, okay. All right.

So Hans, we know there wasn't a whole lot to do. So he was like one of the ones would just kind of like walk laps around the barracks. And I got to talk to him a little bit. First of all, he's kind of standoffish. but I'd been in the sawmill industry so in wood wood products in West Virginia and Tennessee and North Carolina

and all that region, Appalachian region with lumber industry and everything and I've seen a lot of people even though I've worked in that industry for about a year as I traveled these sawmills I'd go one week

and I'd come back a week later and a guy would be like missing a hand and he'd be back at work and he's like third generation fourth generation sawmiller and he'd like I'm just back to work I said, oh, man, what happened?

Well, I got a little bit too close to the gang saw. Lost my right hand. No big deal. You know, fingers missing and stuff like that. Well, I struck up a conversation with Hans, and he had, on his left hand, fingers were, half of his fingers were gone. I said, okay. And I just, this is before he even knew what he actually, he was a drug runner.

And I said, hey, did you work around, were you in a sawmill or something? He goes, nah, he just kind of walked away. And then after, from that point, Andy hadn't already made his rounds trying to talk to everybody that spoke English and everything. And he came back, he told me that Hans was a drug runner. He ran drugs from Columbia. And he would rest in the Bahamas and head on into the U.S. or into Europe with his big, long cigarette speedboats.

Yeah. Yeah. So the next day, you know, got to be a little bit more friendly with me and everything. And so I asked him again about that. So I heard his story. So I heard his whole story why he was, he was, he was coming. He had already served his sentence there in the Bahamas. He was coming out as we were coming in. So he's waiting to be deported. He's waiting to be, waiting for it to be, you know, leave, leave the country. Yeah, back, to Germany. And his story, well, I'll go by, I'll tell you his story about how he got arrested.

Okay, so he was, Bahamas was basically like his halfway point. He would go 24 hours nonstop, high speed, 60, 70, 80 miles an hour from Columbia to the Bahamas. He would sleep 24 hours and get up and complete the trip after he had slept for 24 hours. Well, this particular trip, which was about four, well, at least three and a half years prior, because he got a five-year prison sentence for trafficking, which he only did three and a half, like 30, three-and-half years of that. If you pay the fine, they would reduce it like a third. So I didn't do the math exactly.

Oh, yeah, it's real generous of them, except for us. We paid the fine and still did the time. So anyway, so Hans, he was in this time, he had two sons, fairly young sons, and his wife came down. They were going to meet him in the Bahamas. He was going to spend a little extra time in the Bahamas. before he finished running his load. Now, we're talking about 2006, 2007, when he would have gotten arrested,

he was telling me that his load was $5 million-plus dollar-wise, and then he was making about $350,000,000 every time he ran the load. And he was just like, I mean, money really didn't mean anything to him. He goes, I got money stashed all over the world. I said, here, there, everywhere. I said, I really don't do this for the money. I do it for the thrill. He told me a little bit later, he said he was 47.

I was 49 at the time. He said, I'm going to probably retire at 50. I said, oh, okay. You're going to retire at 50. What's your pension and your 401K like? You're going to retire at 50. He said, I, you know, I've probably done enough now. But anyway, his family was there with him.

They arrested him. obviously they had the evidence on the boat and everything and they coerced him just basically like us you know plead guilty you know we don't want to go through a trial on all this it's going to be worse for you make it easy on us just plead guilty just plead guilty that's typically how they operate so plead guilty and then you'll get five years you'll pay a $25, $3,500 fine we'll reduce that to we'll take a third off and then you'll be out of here and he said that And they all had they were threatening to include his wife if he didn't just go ahead and take the deal, but they were going to basically arrest her.

He said, and they did a dog and pony show with his drugs and stuff that he had on the boat. And he said, yeah, I saw that. And as I heard, he said, you know, that all of a sudden the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, like, five and a half million dollars to about, uh, three million dollars. So the rest of it just surprisingly just disappeared in the Bahamas. You know, under the guys of the police department and immigration and everybody else, you know, you know, just happened to disappear. He said, yeah, when he said this, we captured so many, so much weight and, you know, they do the weight and the amount. And he said, yeah, I was only about half or two-thirds of the load that I actually had. So the rest of it just disappeared.

But back to him, him missing his four fingers. He finally told me the story of this, and he said he was running his typical route, Columbia, to the Bahamas, then he was headed into Florida coast. Well, seven miles is, after seven miles is international waters. So he's running this load into Florida. I don't know exactly what part of Florida he was coming into. I'm just going to assume probably the Miami area. And he gets out of international waters into the U.S. waters, and sure.

Here comes the Coast Guard. Well, empty, there's no way they could catch him. But with a load, he didn't stand a chance. So he pushed it up as fast as he could go. But he still wasn't there. They were coming after him and closing the gap. So he knew he had to do something. So what's he started doing?

Throwing the load over. Throw the load over. Yeah, he emptied his boat, threw it over, got away. They never caught him. didn't get arrested or anything but now he owes he owes the columbians yes however many millions of dollars worth of uh or you know worse of uh drugs that are gone yeah and then and and and usually pretty understanding oh yeah they're very understanding hans was like he's just i mean you could tell he was just so entrenched in this in this lifestyle that he's

basically tells you a story without any emotion at all he's just telling you a story just like i'm I'm telling you what I'm going to go to the store and pick up in 30 minutes or something, just tells you the story. So I said, okay. So I said, oh, I kind of went back to the fingers. He goes, well, yeah. So you lost that load. He said, the only, the biggest problem that I had, he said, if you lose a load,

especially coming into U.S. waters, it almost always makes the news. So this was like 2006, 2007. Well, this story never made the news. so he had no proof that he was being chased by the Coast Guard. He had to drop a load into the ocean and get away. So he said, well, I had to go back to Columbia. I said, you what? You know, I'm like, what in the world?

You went back to Columbia? And he said something I'll never forget. He said, there's absolutely nowhere in this world that I can go, that they will not find me. So I just had to go back to Columbia and face the music. That's not his words, but that's mine. So we went back to Columbia and so whether they whether they believe you or not, you lost a load. You know, you lost five plus million dollars a product.

So his consequences is, you know, you lay your hand out and whack. They chop off your fingers. And so he had just stubs on his left hand. I'm like, okay. Yeah, I was going to say, the guys that I've known that have lost loads, like typically with the cartel, they'll, first say,

if the cartel thinks the authorities have taken it, and you can prove the authorities have taken it, then they'll give you an opportunity to make up the load. Like I've had guys who have lost money before, met guys that have lost money, and typically they'll just let you make it up. So if you've, but he's like,

like, once. They're always like once. They're like, you know, like if the authorities grabbed it, then we'll let you make it up. The authorities keep grabbing it, or if you show up and there's a load and it's gone and I got nothing.

I don't have a business card. I don't have a seizure. I don't have anything. He's like, that's typically going to be a real problem for you. And sometimes they'll let you make up the load. If it's not too much money, they'll let you, okay, well, you'll make up that load over the next three loads. You have to pay us this much. You've got four or five, you know, in the next three.

You just got to hope nothing goes wrong again. Because if it goes wrong again twice, that's it. It's over. You're done. They're going to try and kill you. Oh, yeah. You know, and here I am and all this stuff that I'm experiencing now is stuff that I would see in movies and TV shows. Right.

I mean, we're just a little small business, family business, making a trip to a foreign country to do a small, you know, business. Not a large amount, you know, $37,000 is probably our gross sales at that event. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'll never meet people like this again in my life. Right. it's like and I hadn't even met Steve yet. Right. And so here I am, you know, talking. And the guy was, I mean, what was funny.

It's funny who you like when you know that some of their beliefs are just totally against what you believe in. You know, starting talking about his family and Hitler and stuff like that from Germany. I thought, well, you know, okay, but from here, we're going to be friends right here, you know. I'm not going to mean. It's just the environment, the environment that you're in a situation like, that creates a whole different dynamic with the people, with the people that you meet, whether they be friend or foe. Sometimes it's going to be totally opposite of what it's going to be when you're, you know,

just doing your normal life out in, out in your own, your typical, your typical environment. But I liked, I liked Hans. Hans was a pretty, he was, he was interesting. He was absolutely afraid of nothing. I mean, the big, the big guy that he almost got into it was probably six four, two 20, 225, he was the biggest one of that group of Haitians. And then Hans came out of prison probably 5,7, 145 pounds. Right.

He's a small little guy. He may have been bigger when he went in, but he was telling us all the stories. He had Randy, Andy, excuse me, he had Andy just, you know, about to pee his pants with the stories of what was ahead for us in prison. And then Randy was just like, he was like one of those, he was a glutton for punishment. You've heard that phrase. He wanted to know everything. Well, what's going to happen?

Where are you going to go in here? You're going to have a cellmate. And this is going to happen. And you better not do this. You better not do that. You're going to pee and poop in a bucket. And you know, you're not going to have any time out. And Andy would come to me and do like, oh, you said, we're going to do this.

We're going to do this. We're going to do that. We're not going to be. I said, okay, just calm down. We don't know what's going to happen yet. We haven't been to trial or whatever. But we got away. We went from there and met the immigration.

not, I'm sorry, our embassy. They took us to another facility, some room, and we went upstairs in this building, and the embassy representative came in and talked to us. We were all five sitting around the end of this big, long table. You know, felt like a scene out of a movie. And we were like, yes, we're going to get something accomplished now. I mean, now we're going to meet with the big bad U.S. embassy,

you know, little country, big bad U.S. and little towns. tiny Bahamas, you know, we're going to get something accomplished here. And he came in and talked to us. We said, well, what happened? I said, well, we didn't have a, they said we needed a work. They said we needed a work permit, business permit. And then when we came in the country, they led us in the country without one. Now we're arrested. And his comments were we sat and talked for maybe 30 minutes. And he said, oh, I wouldn't even worry about it. He said, you know, nobody. I said, I've never even heard of this before.

This is so small of the stuff that we deal with. They're probably just going to, you know, just let you go. They may have to pay a fine. I said, well, I'm prepared to do that. We're prepared. You know, my company's, my wife was facilitating, you know, sending the money to pay the fines and stuff like that. So we're ready to do that.

And I said, so we were eased, put us at some ease with everything. But absolutely. everything he said was absolutely the opposite of what happened. Right. I mean, it's kind of like

you had so much faith in the country that you're a citizen of, even in a foreign country, you think they would have some type of pull there. Right. And it's like,

you said nothing, this was not a serious matter. We were not, I mean, we may pay a fine, he probably wouldn't even going to pay a fine. He'd probably just go ahead

and release this and let us go, catch our flights, and get out of there. you know it would then here we are this that's day two and then the next day we're going to be in court well on the way back from that that that that trip we come back they let us they let us stop and we bought some candy and stuff because we wanted to help give it out some of our our new friends in the immigration detention center bought a few things about some candy and stuff

and um came back and they let us they let us keep a little bit of our money or give us a little bit of our money because we knew that we were going to go downtown and meet the U.S. Embassy. And so I knew everybody had to go on back and gone back through barracks, and I had to come back a little later and meet with our attorney because we had hired an attorney at this time. And met with him, and he went over everything and got all the told him about the documentation, and we could email them, this, that, and the other, and in coordination from our home in L.A., we were able to send him all the information, told him the story and everything. thing. And again, he said this was just a small case. Shouldn't not be a problem. I think his fee was

like, we paid him like $5,000 to help us, to help us out or get us out of that situation. When I was leaving, I looked over and on the desk, one of the desks of one of the officers in there, I looked over and I saw the newspaper, the Sunday newspaper. And we were front page of this Sunday news. newspaper top fold in a talent company in california arrested for fraud blah blah blah so i don't remember exactly what the headlines said but i said oh crap i said this is serious business i mean we made the newspaper at the very i mean we were the lead story on the sunday newspaper there right and so i went back into the barracks and didn't say a whole lot about that because i didn't want to I just didn't want to stir up and get anybody else nervous or excited about it.

And then we were talking because our barracks, there was only a fence between us and the ladies' barracks. So the girls would come over and we would go out there and talk to them a little bit. What's happened? Why are we here? Did you do the right thing? Did you follow the right paperwork and everything? I said, yes. Did everything we were told to do?

everything from the Bahamian embassy in Washington, D.C. to all the departments in the Bahamas, to a marketing company in Florida, to the marketing ad agency that booked all of our ads in Nassau in the Bahamas. And then the hotel was a kicker because they said, we did not need to have the work permit, because they talked to somebody at the immigration department and said we were okay based on the type of,

of event we were doing, did not have to have a business, business or work permit. I'm using those interchangeably. But obviously, none of that worked out and none of that, none of that was true. So we go back to the barracks and then the next day we're taken to the bus to the, to the courthouse. And, you know, there's cameras, you know, there's the perp walk and all that, you know, And the news is there and the girls that had had us arrested were there yelling at us. And we told you you were going to do this.

We were going to do this and do that. Let's just get in here and get this over with. Got in there in the courthouse. And we were before magistrate level judge. And our attorney started, they had a representative there that was, you know, fighting for the state. And then we had our attorney. None of us got to speak at all.

And every time he started presenting the case, she just shut him up. Well, we know that I've got this email that he sent and they were told that, you know, that's not it. You know, don't want to hear anything about that. And she just laid into us and accused us of everything just like the immigration department had done to us. You're trying to defraud the country. You're trying to do this. You come over here trying to make us look like fools and just laid into us.

just like, we were just like the worst criminals. We'd come over there and murdered 10 people or something, or something like that. So we literally got the, everyone was fined, $2,500 for everybody, but mine was $3,000 because that was, you know, typically, you know, the ringleader or the business owner. And then we were told in immigration, we got a lot of information because a lot of these guys

already been in jail and stuff. We said if you pay your fine, you don't, you won't do the, you won't typically won't do the time. But if you can't pay the fine, you're going to spend time in jail. Well, we paid everybody's fine, but they still sentence us as well. Now, they gave me six months, but I found out later that that could have been three years for this, for this, what I consider a small infraction. So, so we needless to say, we're sitting there in court and like she drops a bomb on us. Okay. You, the calling everybody's name and the other four, three weeks in $2,500 fine in three weeks in Her Majesty's prison, or they call it Fox Hill. Listen, they hadn't gotten to me yet. I'm thinking, oh, Lord, what's up for me?

Then mine was $3,000 in six months. So here we are, you know, just kind of like again, again, you feel like you're in a dream. This is like, there's just no way. This is just absolutely crazy. They're looking at, you know, spending, you know, the next several months in a foreign prison, you know, not knowing what to expect when we get in there. Right. So we go in, from there, we're taken directly to the prison, you know, and it looks like an old prison. If you ever look at it, I would look up pictures on the internet and stuff like that.

Foxhill, they finally, it was considered one of the worst prisons in the Western Hemisphere. And I think they found they either renamed it or they built something. knew because it was pretty old and dilapidated as it was. So we went into the intake department and we were there for two days waiting to be assigned to a cell waiting for space to be available. Well, they didn't really care about space. They just crammed in anyway. So and like all of a sudden here we are, we're sitting in a small cell, me, the three of us, the three men, myself and Andy and Jared, and then there was another the local Bahamian there was in this small cell with us.

And I literally thought that I was going to just dehydrate. Because the four of us, you know, whatever, the temperature and the humidity there, outrageous, you know, and then they give us, we had one gallon of water a day to split between the four of it. So at night, I didn't even sleep on a bunk. Well, there's only two bunks anyway, and I think there might have been another mattress, but I just slept on like a piece of cardboard in front of the door. obviously bars just to get some air a little bit of airflow because i'm a heavy sweater

the other guys didn't sweat near as much as i do but i just like i've always just heavy sweat so it doesn't take me long to deplete my whatever water's in my system because i just i just sweat a lot so we were there um in that two days um the embassy made another little visit check on us you know what are we doing there what's it no don't worry You know, just trying to, like, pretend. It's one of those situations where they pretend like they're doing something for you, but they're absolutely doing nothing for you. We're working behind the scenes.

Yes. We've got calls in. We're just waiting. Yeah. Well, this should never. This is the prison that FTX was locked up in the Bahamas. Hama's jail where FTX, San Begman-Fried reportedly heading in harsh, rat-infested State Department. It's infested with rats, maggots, and insects.

I'm pretty sure that Foxhill is the prison that Mike Hudson's brother escaped from. And when I say escape, they basically paid a guard to open a door, leave a door open, that he could get out in the middle of the night and he got out. And then when he got into a cigarette boat, they tried to catch him. So it's like it was a setup where it's like we got paid to leave the door open. there's a boat that the cartel had left there for him he got out got in the boat

and when he's taking off they already had their little Coast Guard waiting for him and so he still gets away from them they shoot up the back of the boat it's a whole fucking thing but it was it was that he talks about Fox Hill his brother escaped from two different

prisons I think maybe is it two or three I think it's two the other one that he didn't escape from this was a Cuba he was locked up. Do you remember when Jesse Jackson ran for president? And he flew down and talked to Castro and convinced

Castro to release like 30 Americans. Mike Hudson's brother was one of those Americans. He'd been given like seven years for drug running or something. He'd been locked up like a year or two. And I mean, he was like it's horrible.

Like his mother was flying in once a month. They would allow you to bring like 30 pounds of food that you could draw. Like If you don't have family, like you're just, you're just, oh, wow. And he was like they would feed you like once a day they came and they had like a troth where they threw like food in and you had to go and grab food in a bowl. And these guys were fighting and he's like they all hated the Americans. Yeah.

Horrible. Yeah. But you, so Fox Hill, not a great place. Not a great place. But I can understand the incompetence of all levels there. I can understand how somebody could probably break out, especially bribing somebody because everybody had their handout. Yeah. That's what a lot of people don't understand when they go to these countries.

Everybody, especially if you get beyond that safety zone of the beach and the resort, and you know, that's when you can run into situations where you should have no business being there in the first place. But we were in the intake there and, of course, felt like I was going to be dehydrated there because it was just hot, nasty, no airflow, and just try to get a little bit of a breeze, I'd sleep right on the door and try to get some air to be able to sleep and rest throughout the night. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above.

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And then the reason, the first time that I met Steve, which will lead into a horribly, horrible situation and a totally unbelievable story when I tell you about what happened to him. But we had met Steve, we were all in this little common area. We're outside of intake. And that's when Steve came up, said, you guys are Americans. I said, yeah, yeah. He goes, I'm from New Orleans. Well, he actually had been several years back in Indonesia in Jakarta.

But I was just thinking, yeah, I didn't think much of it. And I said, you know, he just was, at that point, was kind of frail. And his clothes were way too large for him and everything. I was, you know, you always try to size somebody up a little bit thinking, who is he? And why is he here and everything? And he had already been there probably 12, 14 months. and I'll get into that story a little bit later as to why he was already just not. He wasn't sentenced.

He hadn't even completed the trial at this point, but he was just sitting there wasting away in prison, and he was in the remand area. So they hadn't even sent them to a cell at this point. Okay, so the next day, the three of Andy, myself, and Jared were, they're taking us out of intake and going to take us to our cell. And Andy being the brave soul that he is, I've already told you about him. Here we go.

We go out and he goes, where are we going to take us? I don't know. Well, where are we going? So they don't tell you anything. They just lead us out. Then we go into like an open courtyard area near the entrance. And we're walking. They're walking us a certain direction to our, to a little bit to our left.

And we look up maximum security. it's like Andy pisses his pants at that point. He's it, oh my God, we're going into maximum security. You know, and I'm not saying the word. I'm just like, hey, I don't know what's going to happen once we get beyond those doors, but I know we got to stay strong and be prepared for anything that can happen. So they take us into the maximum security. They take us down the long haul.

We end up in this, they call it the bulkhead. The bulkhead, what I found out later, it was I measured it roughly about eight foot wide and probably about I'd say 30 35 feet long what was the old shower quarters but they had taken out all the plumbing and everything else but you walk in there it's full of them I'd already had probably 17 18 people in that cell and just you kind of get grasp and kind of get a look at everything and look down at the end and you see like a curtain old blankets stretched out at the end of it, you know, like for some like a little private area behind there. Well, we get greeted, you know, but it goes pretty well in coming into our cell. Now these, these bulkheaders, they kind of reserve these for the foreign nationals. They try to keep most of the foreign nationals together when they come into the prison over there. And then we did have a scattering Bahamians in there.

And one of the Bahamians was a big, you know, a big. good-sized Bahamian guy end up being like, he kind of knew the ropes in and out, and he kind of helped us out a little bit, and he liked us and everything. And we found out that, you know, they don't typically come after Americans too bad because they kind of think that we, you know, do have resources and have money and stuff like that. And they'll kind of look out for you to some degree, not that you should ever feel safe. And I found that out the couple weeks before I got out of there. But you did feel a little bit of ease.

And then you realize that this is kind of like a revolving door for the locals. You know, they just stick them in prison and then sort out the situation after they got arrested. Like one of the guys was arrested. He was accused of rape. They just stuck him in the jail. Well, he was just a situation where he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. And then even his wife had bailed him out. So I only talked to him for, you know, a few hours or maybe a day before he got bailed out.

And you just understand that the system is they just stick you, they sort it out after they just get, they'll just stick you in prison and decide whether you're going to get bail, whether you want to go from prison to court. Now, us being, us being foreign nationals, you know, we went from immigration detention to court. but the locals, they'll just stick them in prison and then they'll sort it out after that. But the whole key is they want everybody just to plead guilty and then they'll get their fines and then it'll make it a lot easier on their system because their system's terrible. Right. Even when I tell you about what happened going to the appellate court, that how I got released a little early on a technicality.

So it wasn't that it wasn't such a desperate situation as we didn't feel threatened just as was as we walked in and everything because, you know, there were people there from all levels. Yeah, there was murderers in there and stuff like that and people that had been involved in some illegal activities and stuff like that, but some of them really didn't even deserve to be in there, especially from the locals. But, I mean, it was an international holding area because, and when I first got into there, there was five Dominican fishermen that got arrested for being out of their fishing in Bahamian waters they got arrested for that they became really good buddies and one of them kind of like they kind of like we'll pick somebody and kind of like one of the

two or three of them just felt like they they kind of like adopt you and one guy that kind of i'll say adopted me was a guy by the name francisco francisco delva he was he was he was dominican resident but he was born on the other he was originally born on the other side of the island which is Haiti, but he lived in the Dominican. So he was of Haitian ancestry, but became a Dominican fisherman. But what happened with them is they were caught in Bahamian waters, and then the fishing company just kind of like, you're on your own. Right.

You know, they probably might have been their mistake. Probably was. But they just on their own. So they all had a year, I believe. They couldn't pay their final. So they all, they had, they all had a year. Being in the wrong. Yeah.

International waters. Just being in the wrong spot. Okay. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, it's a money grab too. Right. You know, whoever, how many was on the boat, you know, to get, it's a nice little money grab for these countries. But if you can't pay the fine, they're just, they're just going to stick in, stick in prison.

But they also know that somebody like me is going to probably have somebody that's going to help them out with commissary as well. So that means candy bar. and cigarettes and different things like that, I'm able to hand out to my new, my new, my new, my new buddies. So, but anyway, the Francisco was, he was just felt like he wanted to look after me a little bit, which was fine. He wasn't, he wasn't, he was smaller than, than me, but he was a boxer.

I mean, he had, I mean, he had more calluses on his knuckles than I've ever had on my whole body in 63 years. So, but it was, but really worked out well and everything. I tried to take care of him. if I got something. And they took care of me because you go in there, you don't have a bed. You don't even have a mattress. So they gathered up some cardboard for us.

And then we, you know, whatever blanket or sheet or whatever they had, then they just gathered it up and helped us out a little bit, gave us something we at least we could sleep on and lay on halfway, halfway, not comfortable, but at least better than right on the concrete. So now, and after three weeks, Andy and Jim, Jared and the two lady town agents, they were released. But of course, I was not released. So they got out in three weeks,

but obviously I was there for maximum four months at that time, but I got out a little bit with a little bit less on a technicality. Because you were appealing the decision. Yeah, yeah. I'll go ahead and jump ahead of that, but if I can backtrack and feel. you a little bit about meeting Steve and them coming into our cell and his whole story. But obviously if you paid your fine, you were reduced a third of your time.

So when I went to court, I didn't hear from my attorney for weeks. And he came back and this was about almost three, almost three months in. And starting my third month. And he goes, I'm going to, I got a court date set, we're going to go and we're going to rest for bail. Well, I even knew that was fishy because foreign nationals did not get bailed. You did not, if you're a foreign national, you could not get bailed out. It's too easy to get off that island. Right. So we went ahead and went to court and now said, if it's going to take, if he doesn't set it up within a week, I'm not going to go. I'm just going to wait my time out because I was

facing just by going to the appellate court, this is how these foreign systems work, just by going there. I was risking more time. Three year sentence. Right. So did I want to go from six months to three years? Absolutely not. So I thought, well, I'll just wait out my last month rather than

even go to court. Well, we got a court day. We went. And we're sitting there in court and they're trying to argue the state, whoever's representing the state's arguing against me and my attorneys arguing for me. Well, there really wasn't much of an argument because there's three appellate

courts, you know, they're black robes. And, you know, they got, they're from that English system. So they have the white wigs and everything. It's kind of like, you know, this is kind of weird. But I'm looking at, at them. And one of the judges said, well, okay, and we understand the charges. Where's the paperwork? Oh, we haven't gotten it yet. Who? Your lawyer. The judges haven't gotten the paperwork about my case. Here I'm sitting in front of them in court. the magistrate level judge never sent the paperwork to the appellate level judges. This is literally, this is basically their Supreme Court. Yeah, this is just how incompetent.

Just didn't even send the paperwork. So they're sitting there thinking. And one of the judges said, okay, well, we're going to delay this. And it was delayed about 10 days. Then I would come back. Okay, they come and get me again. Okay, you got a court date, come to the cell. I get up, I leave, go out, and no, I'm going to be traveling to court down.

downtown. Then I get there and see my attorney, go in, sit down, and the appellate level judges look at each other, and the state starts arguing against me already, you know, without even really being prompted or asked. And then what's the charges? And then did they go, where's our paperwork? They still didn't have the paperwork. So did my question was, did that Magister level judge was she bold enough trying to appease her friends that obviously sentenced us because she must have known some of the girls that we had hired to work for us or whatever her string of attachment was. Does she refuse to do it? Or she would just that were they just that incompetent that didn't say she didn't get my paper they didn't get my paperwork at all. Why isn't your attorney making sure that the paperwork was forwarded?

Like why isn't he making a call? Hey, we had an issue last time. He's kind of, he's kind of stuck in the same system. Yeah. Just like we, it's like I am, but he should have known. Yeah. Should have known better. But they go into court not knowing what to expect almost as much as we don't know

what to expect. Right. So you pay all that money, and I'm, I feel fortunate that we only paid five grand. Five grand to a bohemian, you know, a lawyer. That's a lot of money. Like for them, that's a lot of money. Well, I mean, I've heard of a lot worse. But anyway, but he didn't hardly know what was.

going on either. All he had was my paperwork that we submitted to him letters, letters of intent and different things like that, and email responses. I gave him all the chain of emails and everything of all of our correspondences and everything. And that we weren't there to defraud the country because we advertised all over the islands and everything with radio and TV. So there was nothing. We weren't hiding anything, unlike the typical unscrupulous businesses that come there and try to do business, you know, under the table and everything like that. So they said, okay, well, what we're going to do was we're going to release him on time served. And their excuse was that my sentence was disproportionate to my cohort, the other four that was with me.

They got three months, three weeks, I got six months. And they just said they based on disproportionality of my length of sentence based on what they had received. So how long were you in, four months at this point? Three, a little over three months. So I saved about a month and got out about about a month early. Okay. Would you hang out for a couple weeks and hit the beach? Not hardly.

No, I was under, you know, I was not not be allowed to go away to do anything. So basically I went to their holding cell, holding tank there at the courthouse. And there was a row of sale. cells, maybe five or six cells, and they put me, and there was two other other people in my cell. And here, I mean, just like talking about a revolving door for the locals, the local, the local guy was, the guy, one of the guys in my cell was buying a subway sandwiches for one of the guards. Oh, Joe, whatever his name was, when you go, bring me a sandwich. I'm hungry. I'll, I'll pay you, I'll pay you back.

I don't think he had money on him. He said he'd pay him back, and the guard comes back and gives him a sandwich. He splits it with me. I said, yeah, that's pretty chummy. But there was another guy in America, just to show you why you don't mess around in foreign countries. Because you never know what's going to happen. Again, I use that three block barrier from the beach and maybe really only be two. If you go somewhere and I'll never bash the Bahamas for a vacation or anything like that,

because most people don't go there to do business. where they don't have ill intentions of being there. But if you stay within that couple blocks, three blocks, you're going to be pretty good. You're not going to get into too much situations. But this younger guy was in our cell with me, and he was just kind of like out of his wits, you know, just like didn't understand. Just like my first few days there under those circumstances, he was arrested. He was on his honeymoon, on a cruise ship, and bought a joint. from somebody off the cruise ship well soon as he got the port guess what he was arrested right so

they uh he had a five hundred dollar fine had to go had to go to go to court um and he was to ruined his his uh his whole honeymoon the wife flew back to the states and he was he was there facing you know court in jail time and fine for um you know buying literally buying a joint on on on on on the cruise ship from somebody he thought was just another another passenger but he got he was set up um i went to jamaica one time and the girl i was in jamaica we got into a taxi and said hey just drive us around like you know we want to go other places that aren't just tourist places and we drove he drove us through some place you know and then we were like oh what's the closest you know city or

other town over and he was like oh it's such and such and we were like oh let's go there let's go there he's like no we're not going there i'm not taking you there we were like why why and he said they'll rob you again we will we'll just drive through we won't get out of the car he said no they'll stop us they'll rob you they'll see you in the back they'll rob you there they're two white people no they're going to rob you yeah and it was like holy jesus we're like how far away is there it's like oh it's like five miles from where we were and that's and they's like there's you can't go there he's like you can't go i just told took you to the few places you're going to be okay but i'm not going to bring you there yeah and i'm well is there another place he's like

oh there's another place we can go drive through like a little neighborhood little town you'll be okay here he said but you know you just can't go into these there's too many places in in jamaica you just can't go you need to stay in the tourist areas they're protected yep it was like wow exactly yeah because i saw the backside of this leaving fox hill prison and traveling through those areas and stuff like that. And I said, this looks nothing like the resort at all. It's like in Mexico. Yes.

You know, same thing in Mexico. You stay in the areas that are designated. And if you go outside of that, well, then you're going to get robbed or your bad things could happen. Yeah. That's why, I mean, my warning, and again, I never bash anybody that's, I've known a lot of people that's traveled and vacationed in the Bahamas. You know, they go to Atlanta and stuff like that. Fine and dandy. but stay within your limits.

Yeah. And do not interact too much with the locals in bars and different things like that because one accusation will put your ass in prison. Right. And they most likely see you as a victim. Yeah. They see you as a target. Yes.

Somebody who's, these are rich Americans that we don't really care for, that we, they have what we want and how can I get it? Yeah. They basically tolerate us. They don't, they don't really didn't like us, but they tolerated us. because we go with her and spend spend a lot of money. But that's my warning. You know, if anything from this our talk here is that's one of the main things I want to

get out is, you know, go on vacation, but do not interact too much with the locals, go out and party with them or do anything by any illegal substance. So I know people that got thrown in prison because they had a casing. they forgot to take a like a little 22 caliber bullet out of their luggage. I mean, it was like five-year sentence for that in the Bahamas. Don't get caught with a gun, but the local hoodlums, I don't know if you'd really say call them gangbangers or not, but they all wanted a gun and they wanted a bottle of Hennessy.

That was their thing, you know, party in and I got a gun, you know, so that was their big thing. But what was interesting about the Bahamas, I got to tell you, a shakedown story. story of how this local Bahamian ended up in my cell with me there. But it's hard to get away with a murder on that island, obviously. You know, it's very small. It's not a very big island at all.

There's, what, 220,000 people at that time. I don't know what the population is now. But I found out that the Haitians are the hitmen. They'd fly them in from Haiti. They'd knock somebody off. They'd be flying back out the same day. They'd never get caught. So one of the guys was in for murder.

It was a Haitian guy that actually a fairly nice guy. I don't have no idea what turned out in his case because I was out before him. But that's how they run the operation over there. If you want somebody to take it out, you just bring you hire a Haitian to come in and knock them off. And they're in and out and out in the same day. Does they still have the death penalty over there? I don't know. I really don't know.

I didn't know if they did back then or not. I read a book, which is horrible to say. It was Stuart Woods. And it was like Jack Barrington or something. It's a whole series of novels that are horrible. But he talks about at one point, I think he goes to the Bahamas. I think he kind of explains the sentencing structure was like up to one year or a fine could get you out of it. and then it was like between then they had it where it was like between five and 10 years

where you actually had to be incarcerated he said typically and then it was anything above that was basically if you were going to get more than 10 years they basically hung you or shot you or something like he was like a three-tiered system where it's like you know and it was it was funny the way he explained it i didn't explain it very well but he explains what falls into each category He's like everybody's trying to stay into that middle category because he's like, because the, the difference between getting 10 years is over 10 years. They basically, they feel like you're such a burden on them. They're like, yeah, just hang them. Yeah, and it was for, you know.

But it was, it was interesting. I don't know if it's true or not because it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, um, Stuart Ward's book. So who knows? But Jack Barrington was one of his, his, he's really actually of a lot. I used to compare those books in prison. You had some books that were basically like they were almost like sitcoms. You know what I'm saying? Like there were serious books and then they're the sitcoms.

He had a series of sitcoms. But they were great to read. You had to read like five or six of them and then you could move and read a serious book. And then you jump back to some sitcoms. You know. So anyway, but I was wondering if that was true or not. Who knows? Yeah.

You know, one thing I really thought was interesting about their prison system over there is like Hans, for instance. If he was caught in the U.S. per se with a boat load, you know, five plus million dollar payload. Oh, he'd be some serious time. Yeah. And there, five years. Yeah. And then out in three and a half or so, one third off of that. Look what a horrible situation too, though.

Yeah. As much as they want to, they throw people in in the prisons over there and everything, most of them are good. given something that wouldn't even be small compared to what would happen over here. I mean, he had got 30 years here probably for something like that. What's funny is I had my mom when I was locked up sent me an article that was called Bring Back the Lash, Lashings for prisoners. And they talked about a survey that they had done, which was, would you rather take like 20 lashes.

You're making a lash people like you're cutting through your skin. I mean these guys are like having to be stitched up. I mean, lashings were brutal. And they were like, would you rather do five years in prison or take, you know, 20 lashes?

And they talked to multiple, something I don't know how many inmates they surveyed. And almost unanimously, they were all like, I'll take the lashes. Like I would rather be brutally beaten and lashed than have to do the five years. Yeah. And so it's like, yeah, is the Bahama prison horrible?

As long as I don't think I'm gonna die, I'd rather do the five years than do 20. Yeah. You go, no, no, no, but you'll be in a better situation in the 20, I don't give a shit. It's not, it's not the conditions, it's the 20 years. That's the agony. Exactly.

People don't realize that, they'd be like, oh yeah, but you were in federal prison. That would stop it. It wouldn't matter if I was in the Ritz-Carlton for 20 years. It's a horrific experience. You've been removed from your family. You're, you don't, you've never, people that have never had their freedom taken away. They just don't understand.

You have no contact. You have no. What doesn't matter if you say, well, you get to be in this nice room suite. Locked down for 22 hours a day or fed through in your suite. It doesn't matter that I'm here. I'm locked in this room for 20 years or even if I get out and I can walk the track and it's around a nice area. on the beach it doesn't matter that's not what matters it's the time exactly that's what i would say these prison sentences in the united states are are just draconian they're just brutal prison sentences

it doesn't matter i would rather get a five-year sentence and and stay in a real shit hole or even have to work you know you're working like on a chain gang for five years then have to do 20 years and you're treated well i know i'll pass exactly most guys like i said guys are saying no no i'll take the lashings. Right. Jesus. Yeah. I mean, it's your perspective on, I mean, even like I was looking at six months.

Right. And that did, that just seemed like an eternity to me. Yeah. And not only that, but people don't realize that all the stuff that you do on your day to day basis, you know, we had a family business and everything we were running and all the things that I was responsible for that somehow had to get done. Yeah. Because I'm not there to do it.

Well, you know, I would say like it, a lot of people like, if the problem is is when someone says, oh, okay, well, we're going to give the guy a year or six months. It's like, okay, well, you have to give him halfway. Oh, he only got a year. It doesn't matter. By the time he gets out of, in nine months, he's lost his apartment or his house. All of his clothes and everything are gone because your family will strip you dry. People are always shocked.

They're like that, you know, something happens and like their own family members will come in and take all their stuff and steal it and sell it. And you're like, are you fucking, like a lot of people do that. So you're getting out, your car is gone. Your credit shot. You got bad, so you go, well, I get out and get an apartment. No, you won't. Because as soon as they pull your credit, they're going to be, my God, you've got a 500 credit score. You owe $40,000.

You've got a repo. You've got cellular bills. You've got electric bills. Like all kinds of stuff. Everything's showing up on your credit. Like you have a massive amount of bad credit. And it's not like it's bad credit 10 years ago. and it fell off or it's five years ago, no, no, right now things are still going bad.

They're going bad this month because you only did nine months on 12 months or whatever. And you're like, okay, so we have to give them halfway house and give them the ability to go get a job and work to put together some money to get into an apartment of some kind. And it's just if you don't have anybody in your life that can help help you and you do even a short sentence, it's a revolving door. You're just going to go back. You're going to end up back in prison. What are you going to do? Push come to shove. If you're on the street, most people are going to commit a crime to get money to survive.

You will. Oh, I'd never commit crime. Yes, you would. You've just never been in the position where you would commit a crime. You will. Under the right circumstances, anybody will commit a crime. You know, oh, I'd go to my sister. You don't have a sister.

You don't have a brother. You don't have anybody that will put you up. You don't have. You're going to live in on the streets. You're starving. And you don't know how to live on the. the streets some guy who's been homeless for 20 years he can survive on the yeah you're starving to death yeah you're now asking this hobo how do I get

some food yeah you have to become an urban survival yeah and that's that's that's tough yeah it's a shitty situation oh man and you what makes it worse is um what makes it worse is guys that you talk to that didn't do anything they go to prison and they didn't do anything they never saw it coming you know what I'm saying like you never under any you never saw a situation you never saw a situation where I'm going to end up doing four months or three months in prison. Like, how would that possibly? I can't imagine a scenario I could get myself into that that would happen, like for most

people. Yeah, absolutely. Well, back to, I think I did a description of the bulkhead that we were in, which is about 8, about 32, 34, something like that. And then they had this partition at the end, these blankets that were holding over a rope. Well, that was our bathroom. Right. Because we didn't have, we didn't have working.

bathrooms in our in our in our cell so we had five gallon buckets and you know what one thing I think about and I have thought about over the last 12 13 years about this is the ingenuity like most these guys were in and out fairly quick especially the locals but what the ingenuity and what's being passed on the like the next generation what you learn to do in there like these guys where do they take they they they would get the the plastic bags and they quarter them up they come up and quarters. Well, that was literally your bathroom. You know, you did your business and you tied it up and you stuck it in the bucket that had water and piss in it. Right. You know, so, and that was, that was like our private area, basically. But one time we had, they brought in like 12 guys in the

middle of the night. So we had like 30 some people in that cell. So we were literally, literally nose to toes. I was turned this way and another guy would be turned the opposite. way and we you know his toes was in my face and my toes was in his face right so we were just packed in her like sardines and everything was with the buckets were running over and everything like that so that was just got got to be pretty nasty we were comfortable we with about 15 it started getting crowded about 17 or 18 because there wasn't enough room to sleep for everybody to and of course we were all laying laying on the floor but that was our bathroom we were there 23 and a half hours was in the cell during the week. We had a half hour around 10, 1030 in the morning

to go to the shower area again, if they were working. Again, there were toilets there in the shower area, but the same scenario as in immigration detention. You better have a five-gallon bucket or else it's not going to flush. So that was a flushing mechanism of the toilets over there as well. And then on weekends, once you came back in after your little excursion out, if you want to take a shower, spend a little time in the yard on Friday morning, then you weren't back out until Monday morning. So the weekend, you're 24-7. You get to do nothing, never don't get to go out of yourself. And of course, we all slept on the floor. We were on concrete and we used a cardboard or whatever we had. Now I want to use that, this transition into Steve.

was a guy that asked us if we were Americans when we met with, when we were in intake, and we met him in this little hallway, like a little court, not the courtyard, but just a little meeting area outside of intake that we met him. He asked, we were as Americans, he was, had more or less grown up in the New Orleans area and went back, went to Indonesia and opened up businesses and Indonesia. And from Indonesia, he ended up in the prison, the prison there. But again, when I met him, he had already was down to probably 140, 45 pounds, looked pretty, pretty skinny and didn't really even look healthy at that point, but we still had a fair amount of energy. So we get escorted

over backtracking. We got escorted over into maximum security, got in there, got settled. And about two days later, here comes Steve and Yufu and Tanabe. They're two Japanese nationals. And Steve, they come to our cell. So they went ahead and moved him out of remand for, you know, just that holding area, and then went ahead and moved him into a cell. Now, the differentiation between whether you were still not sentenced versus being sentenced was, you know, whether they cut your hair off or not. So I finally got my hair cut off to, you know, shave, basically. And Steve and them never did get a haircut or they never did get sentenced in like 20 months of being in that prison because they kept going to court. The story with him is if you backtrack, because obviously you spend three solid months with somebody, you hear a lot.

Well, they were born in Indonesia. Their dad was Dutch heritage. So they're Dutch, Dutch and Dutch ancestry. I think his mother was, I think he said his mother was half Chinese. So they were born in Indonesia, which was the Dutch East Indies. You know, so that was originally the colonies there that the Dutch had settled, and they still had plantations up until him. I don't know if they may even have them today.

Well, Steve and his brothers and sister, you know, basically their early years was on that plantation in, and Indonesia. And then from there, when Steve was probably, I don't know, maybe seven or eight or so, they moved to Netherlands or Holland and lived there for a number of a few years, and they moved from there to Oklahoma. And then from Oklahoma, they settled in the New Orleans area in that area down there. So he was already a traveler, you know, and already experienced a lot of stuff.

Obviously, he was fluent in Dutch. spoke English because he basically grew up in New Orleans area. So he came in and we started talking, everything. He had no idea. I mean, you just meet these people and what's so unusual, Matt, is these circumstances that you meet these people in. You never will meet people like this again in your life. Right.

Because it's all about the circumstances. And then there's a multitude of other people that have met over there. You know, Canadian guy doing fraudulent credit cards in the Bahamas and just, of just story after story after story. It's like, good gosh. So, but anyway, Steve, they were doing a business transaction in the Bahamas. Now, Ufu and Tana Be were Japanese residents. Steve was an Indonesian resident with also dual citizenship in the U.S.

And a lady by the name of Carol was a banker in Boston that came to the Bahamas to help facilitate this deal. So a level of that magnitude of $100 million, you have. to partner with Bahamian business interests in order to pull that off and open up your foreign accounts and everything. So they'd partnered with a Bahamian business guy and they were all scheduled to do this $100 million deal. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank saw all the paperwork.

So I saw the actual draft of that check in our cell. So everything Steve told me, I mean, he could have been the biggest con man and always kind of wrestling in my head. Is this guy for real or is he just a con? But we were in the cell one time and he pulled out all this paperwork. Here's a copy of the draft. Here's the account that you can draw this $100 million off of. Here's officials.

Get this. He had Indonesian officials, legal IDs, Philippines, and Japanese. He had copies of all their officials. Because all these countries were involved in this deal because it involved a gold mine in Indonesia. And they were trying to get in on this. And Steve was kind of facilitating. He was like the, I just call him the Navigator,

because he spoke all the three Indonesian languages. Just a brilliant, just a super smart guy. In fact, his whole family, I've gotten to know his brothers as well over the years. And they were all like the engineering, technology, just really intelligent type of a family that really understood this type of stuff. They showed me all the paperwork, so I said, dang.

And every time I would, you know how you, when you're talking to somebody and you kind of want to, you don't want to offend them, but you want to test them a little bit. You told me something the other day about and you kind of just see if the stories are consistent. Yeah. Well, every time I ever like, you know, a little slight challenge of his story and everything, everything fell right into line. Nothing ever seemed fabricated. Nothing ever seemed, you know, fraudulent or something that they, they, they. was going to be made up. So this $100 million, what happened was, similar to my situation, only on a much

hugeer scale, is that he got pissed at the Bahamian business guy. Bahamian business guy was trying to shaft him. So he kicked him out and said, you know, we're not doing a new business with you. I remember Steve was a guy that could speak some Japanese, all the Indonesian dialects, English. so he was kind of like the middle guy for all these transactions for this transaction. Well, what happened was his brother, brother Jerry was there with him as well, and his Jerry ran a business in Indonesia for a few years also. Now, Steve has had restaurants.

He was a chef. So his brother had just left that morning. This was back in probably 20, sometime in 2010. And so he got, he got, things got kind of crazy. He said, Steve, I'm leaving. He said, if you're smart, you'll just go with me. Let's get out of here. This is getting too crazy.

You know, hang on. Steve was one of those types that he just felt like no matter what he get into, he'd be able to get himself out of. Right. You've met people like that, I'm sure. No matter what he got into, he always felt like he could get out of it, no matter if he was in a foreign country or what. So he was sitting in the lobby of one of the banks over there, and they were supposed to meet

one of the bankers or something and he was there with Carol, the Boston banker lady that was there to help facilitate the deal. And either Yu Fu or Tanabe, one of the Japanese guys, I think it was Tanabe, the younger one,

was there with him. And lo and behold, they got arrested in the lobby. I was a Bahamian guy had already told them, you know, you're going to pay for this. And, you know,

you should know, you should have known better to cut me out of the deal. however the conversation went. So he had them arrested in the lobby of the bank. You know what they were charged with? The charge was they were accused of trying to cash a $100 million fraudulent check. Okay.

So how many people do you think ever go into a bank and say, I want to cash this $100 million a check? Yeah, nobody. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. First of all, banks doesn't have a whole. banks doesn't have $100 million in cash. No, they don't.

That's not possible. No. So they were all the, I've got a bunch of newspaper articles and everything talking about how they were accused of fraud and defrauding the banking system and all this. Well, all they did was just kick out the Bahamian business guy, which was a crook anyway. Right. And then he was just like the girls that got me in prison and my group in prison because they knew somebody, was able to have some weight and carry, and to get some.

somebody that was going to do them a favor. And that's what happened with Steve. They got arrested in the bank, accused of trying to cash $100 million check. And we know that was a joke. That's just pathetic. So by the time I met Steve, September 2011, they had already been in there for over a year. What would happen was, and I remember Steve's getting frail and losing weight this whole time. So what would happen was they would go to court and then some technicality would happen.

Witness wouldn't show up. He'd come in back to the cell a couple hours later, cussing, I can't believe this. They said a witness didn't show up, so they delayed the court another two weeks. Two weeks he'd go again. There'd be another technicality. So they'd delay it again, three weeks, four weeks, whatever. Then they'd go to court again. Well, he went to court probably about once every week or once every two weeks.

they could only I guess they could only fake these delays for so many times well the whole process was waiting for Steve to die because he'd already been poisoned something already something already happened to him that what they said was his problem was not even close they said he'd fell he'd fall on a bus and he'd supposedly cracked his tailbone that's why he was in a lot of pain but it was dropping weight like crazy from like 200 and when he died he was probably about 117 pounds or something when he finally did die. But what they did, whatever they did was not very effective, so it just stretched out for like 20 months before he died. I got out in November of 2011. He died in February of 2012 on February 9th,

because I kept checking the internet to see any updates on his court case. Because we've become great friends. You know, I was supposed to go to Indonesia. He wanted to do business in the entertainment industry in California. You know, I want to do this, I want to do that. And I was sitting in that what little bit of paper that I had, what little bit of legal paper

and a big envelope I could unfold and write on. I was writing out business plans. Right. Yeah, we had this, he was called, he wanted to call it, Jap Indo Industries, Japanese and Indonesia, and this was going to be this entertainment system that he was going to, you know, work. No need to go into all the details on that. but since I had some experience in entertainment at that point, you know,

it helped pass the time a lot, we'd set and write these business plans up. And another thing that he did, which I still have this, again, didn't get much paper, so I didn't have, I was able to write, I had about four sheets of paper,

like legal paper and in this envelope that I filled up on both sides. But Steve being a chef, we're talking, and I said, you know, I like create, I do love doing creative stuff.

It's mostly like how, projects and stuff like that, but I said, I would, I would, I would enjoy cooking if it just didn't take a lot of time. I could do it quickly. So he said, and he gave me about 35, 30, probably about 30 recipes of meals that you can make real quick. And I'm sitting in there writing down all these little details about these meals. I've made some of them since over, over the years. I've, I've made some of those just quick, quick meals that he showed me that I could make quickly. So every now and then I pull that out and just think about the time that I sitting there was writing down these recipes that he gave me as a chef and told him I wanted to make some quick meals. So we became real close in that time.

And he was the only one that they brought, he was so sickly that he was the only one that they actually brought a mattress in in our cell. And so he came, he was like second person down from the end wall. then there was the door, and then I literally slept in front of the door, again, to try to get some air. So he slept on a mattress. I slept on the floor, and everybody else obviously slept on the floor all the way up to the other end. But again, he was the only one that had a mattress, which was about four inches thick. But they did bring medication regularly. He got medication all the time.

The two Japanese guys got medication because they were. talking about illnesses that they had, whether they did or not, I don't know. And there's a few other, few other the guys, they did try to keep him medication. But what they'd done to Steve, they were just fake, they faked whatever they said his injury was because when it was all said and done, they said he died from prostate cancer, and which was never diagnosed. Every time he went to the doctor, he came back, and I knew the whole lowdown of what had happened never diagnosed with anything to do with this prostate so when he died in February

February 9th they immediately were released the two Japanese guys that was in my cell they released Carol from the women's side of the prison they they all got out and um they would not let his brothers or his family bring his body out of in out of the Bahamas back to New Orleans. He had to be cremated there. What? They didn't want an autopsy? Nope. Nope.

No toxicology reports? Nothing. No. So that's how they hid the poisoning. But what did the embassy? Nothing. They were no fucking help at all. Not at all.

They're pathetic. I even try to contact them on his behalf when I got out. There's about a two month, a little over two months span between when I got out and his his death. Because we had already planned I was going to go to meet, he was inviting us over to Indonesia and everything. I was just waiting for him to get out and check on his condition and everything. I knew he was sickly, but he was functioning.

Some days he was better than others. And when I was talking to one of his brothers a couple years ago, they said, well, yeah, we talked to him about two days, and he was doing okay, still talking about he's going to get out of here and this, that, and the other, and what he was going to do. Then two days later we found out he's dead. So evidently they gave him something that just finally, finally did him in rather than him suffering for 20 months with whatever they gave him that was probably more than like it was supposed to kill him a lot.

They probably didn't want to kill him too fast, but they wanted to process to drag out whatever they did to him. So it would look more like a natural cause because they wrote, they reported it as he died from prostate cancer. And you think it had something to do with the businessman, the Bohemian businessman that, yeah. He told him he wasn't, he told Steve he was not going to get out of there alive. He already told him he was not going to, he's not going to, he would never get out of this prison unless he was dead. And that was actually, actually the case on that. And you have the articles and.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've got a one of the, one of the Bahamian articles even said foreign, foreign national murdered in at Fox Hill, One of them even specifically said that he was murdered. We all know. And then just those of us that had spent the time with him, and I immediately started contacting his family, talked to his brothers, and they wanted to know how he was doing and everything.

So I'll talk to them for a few while. Then it kind of spread out. But one thing that really knew that it was a bad situation, Now, I didn't find this out until like about a year ago, that that $100 million deal was the beginning of a $500 million deal on this Indonesian gold mine. And the reason that Steve and even his brother was involved in this is because they had access, once they got this account and everything established in the Bahamas with the offshore account and everything, the money was going to Europe. because Europe has a whole different lending process than the United States has. They'll lend seven times what you have on deposit. You can roll that money over like seven times.

So if you got $100 million, you can literally turn that in to like $700 million of operating capital. So his brother Jerry told me that, yeah, this was the first $100 million of a $500 million deal. That's why Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, the U.S., you know, and obviously the Bahamas, there was five countries involved in this and not counting either Holland or the European country that was going to be actually be the, end up being the banking facility. The money once it was establishing the Bahamas was going to Europe, and that's when they were able to

collateralize that money and bring more money back into the system for their project. So I said, 500 million. 100 million was a lot, but we're talking $500 million deal. So you can imagine the people that wanted their hands on part of this. His brother also told me that several months after Steve's death, that that money did get circulated, that $100 million didn't get into circulation and through another channel. But I saw a copy of the bank.

Steve called it a bank draft. It was written out as a check for $100 million. is J.P. Morgan Chase. Do you think J.P. Morgan Chase came to his defense at all? Absolutely not. So, and I saw the bank account that, and they'd only, the drafts of only, like, it'd be like four, five, six years. The bank account went back to like the 1970s account, and there were only so many drafts off of that account in all, and all those years. So J.P. Morgan Chase did not come to his defense. the U.S. Embassy was an absolute pathetic joke that they just let him look. And then in the articles that I have from after his death and everything,

they tried to defend themselves. Oh, we did our regular visits. We checked on him regularly. We made sure that he had this and that. I don't know why they just could, they backed off of this just as if they didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. But I was talking to the brothers about a year after his death, and they had already done local news interviews in New Orleans and everything and other types of interviews and everything.

And Robert, the brother that wasn't in the Bahamas with Steve, had a colonel that he knew from the Army. called him up and said, hey, I saw this story that you did about your brother. He said, I need to meet with you. But I don't want to, we can't talk all over the phone. Where can we meet? Well, they were from, they were in the Army together at one point. This guy ended up being a colonel.

And so, so Jerry and Robert met with, with this colonel. And, um, met at some restaurant. And he said, look, I know I see what you guys are doing. advice I know something about this I'm just going to advise that you just drop it leave it alone don't pursue this he said now this wasn't a threat this was a friendly warning from something that he knew he wasn't directly involved in it but he knew what was going on he said you guys have families he said you do not want to pursue this you're just going to open up something and start something that's going to be detrimental to you

and it's not going to turn out well. So they were warned, advised not to pursue this. So this was 2012. You know, we're sitting here at 2025. So there had to be about a 10-year gap waiting period before we all had to go-ahead. And his family was okay with even me pursuing doing this story and getting it out more. They said, yeah, we're good. good now. This is about two or three years ago, which had been about 10 years in. He said,

yeah, we want this story to be told and we feel like enough time has passed that it should be safe to tell the story. So what is your, what is your hope for telling that? Well, I think that this story has no closure. And I mean, I was in a predict, myself, I can tell, I can tell 90% of the story, you know, other than what his family would add. Because I, I mean, I was in a predict, I was in a pretty, I can tell, I can tell 90% of the story, you know, other than what his family would add because I experienced everything and my my objective is I believe I want to see somebody pick up this and run with it and get closure to his death I mean I just think it was just absolutely ridiculous and unfair that they were just left alone over there and just like even even even in our situation you know all nothing this is nothing you'll probably they'll just probably

just let you go you're not going to have any any situation that has nothing's really going to happened. Well, then now look at my situation, and I can't even begin to compare to what Steve went through and the magnitude of what they were involved in and everything. You know, I mean, they said we were trying to defraud the Bahamian people, but guess what? We never had to refund one penny to any of the Bahamian people that we worked with over there. You know, they just wanted, they just wanted more money from us, as obviously they did from that $100 million that Steve was was overseeing and in charge of. So I just, I believe that this, there's need to be some closure with this because I think that

it really will open up a larger can of worms because anything, this is, this is not a standalone incident, you know, and what was the magnitude of how large this could go into other situations, you know, what would this shed light on in itself? I mean, to me, $100 million or $500 million dollars is a huge deal. deal. But what else is going on that happened either in the Bahamas or these other countries that, you know, that become foreign hubs for money and business entities to be established and everything like that? But I just think it's just absolutely ridiculous that he didn't get out of their life. And I think somebody needs to pick up with run with this because the story itself

is noteworthy but where does it go from here you know i can't i can't give you an ending to the story as far as you know what happened i can tell you that they had a they they had a service from him at the yacht club there close to new orleans and you know i've got a video of you know the service and everything like that but that doesn't bring any enclosure to anything you know here he was living in indonesian had had a daughter and an ex-wife and New Orleans and a wife and a son in Indonesia, you know, everybody was just left hanging. Just because somebody was bold enough to go out and do something out of the ordinary. I love creative people as people that'll take a risk.

My risk have always been fairly calculated, you know, other than me being naive to do business in the Bahamas and thinking that everything's going to turn out okay. But, you know, I've just, the type of people that are willing to take these huge risks. Now, another thing, Steve's restaurant in Indonesia also became a, like, a meeting point for CIA and other people that they wanted to meet with. You know, he was like an established, before he, earlier I said he spoke all three Indonesian language. And Steve was languages. He got to know government officials, people that come into his restaurant.

Well, that became a meeting point to interchange. A hub. A hub. Yeah. And he didn't go into a whole lot of this, but he talked about, you know, him, the CIA coming to him. And I confirmed this with Jerry that also did business in Indonesia. I said, was the CIA involved? He got, oh, yeah.

You know, they use these places to, you know, run their deals. and they knew Steve spoke all the languages and anything that they wanted him to, he could coordinate. Well, you think about coordinating the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, all together working on this deal. You know, that meant, and U.S. money was involved in it too. So where was all this supposed to go?

You know, who was actually owning this gold mine? Was a gold mine just going to be a front? that they could pump $500 million or a billion dollars into at some capacity. There was a lot more there that you would just scratch your head and think, you know, first of all, my main thing is he did not deserve to die over there.

You know, I never meet another, but the most interesting person I ever met in my life by far. And, you know, somebody I thought I was going to be a friend with for the rest of my life. But in my situation was just peanuts compared to what he had been involved in. He told me stories of other situations because he ended up in jail in the Bahamas as well,

but he was just like on a hold for like three or four months. Well, Steve being the type of guy that would, you know, he's always cutting deals and say, when I get out here, I'm going to do this for you, I'm going to do that for you, I'm going to do this. Well, they knew that he was a chef. So he became the chef for that jail in the Bahamas. I'm sorry in Indonesia.

And he had free rain to hop on a bicycle and go down to the market, buy whatever he needed, come back and cook for everybody. As long as he wasn't, he wasn't gone too long because he knew that he was going eventually be, it was three or four months he was going to be out of that situation. So, but he just, they just gave him like free reign of the, of the jail because he, he cooked for everybody. But that was just a typical example of what he did. They called him the, um,

charity chef because he cooked meals for a lot of the underprivileged people in Indonesia. One of the biggest things he talked about, which he thought was just super valuable and interesting to him was the roadside vendors for the food. He said you'd walk down the street and somebody would be cooking something there. They'd come out in the evening and be selling food. He said, for a couple of dollars, you can go down and sample all these different foods from the roadside vendors. he thought that was one of the coolest things. He'd get ideas to cook and everything like that.

And he just thought that was great that, you know, so cheap you could go down for, I mean, probably just two or three dollars. You could buy four or five different plates of food and sample all of them, decide what he'd want to add to his menu in his restaurant. But he had a Dutch with a Cajun style of cooking. mixed with Indonesian food and that was

that was became his fusion yeah fusion of restaurants but just to re go back to that question I just think there's I think the whole story

is is worthy I've actually got a I don't have a script a movie script but I've got a movie treatment which is like a scene by scene lists all the characters and it says scene one

two all the way to end the scene 63 you know we're just not that we're I mean we're doing a like a reality travel show in West Virginia so it's it's not quite to that level and for this for this type of story to be told it really needs to be in like six different countries you know you did you really you need to go to the Bahamas you need to go to the U.S you could in the U.S. you'd probably need to be in for my part part of that would be in West Virginia uh Steve lived in an over Oklahoma. Steve lived in New Orleans, you know,

into, you know, like a documentary? Well, either that or a docu-series or just, or just a movie, you know, but if it's going to be done right, it's not a low, low-budget project like some of the stuff that we worked on in West Virginia. You can't get it done for a few thousand dollars, because if you do it right, you really need to travel and incorporate all these different. So you need to be on a plantation in Indonesia. You need to be in Holland, you know, you need to.

to be in New Orleans it's just it would be a big an big undertaking to put together something like that well and you what do you do now you got up production studio yeah we're working with uh we have the west virginia explorer it's been a an online magazine for 25 plus years and then i hooked up with the the creator of that the writer and editor of that that travels and does a little short videos and stuff like that and we we since we connected we decided we decided to turn that into a full-fledged TV series. So we call it the West Virginia Explorer, which is a TV version of that show, as we're just in the big, we're at the past the promo stage and the first year production right now. The TV version of that magazine?

Yeah, West Virginia Explorer. He said TV version of that show. Yeah, well, TV version of the magazine. West Virginia Explorer has been a magazine for 25 plus years and now we're taking those stories and interesting people and turning it into a reality style travel travel show because Steve Steve has a personality. I've learned enough in LA and with acting and everything that you've got to have either a certain type of personality or enough acting skills to pull something off like this and and Dave has these capabilities to do that.

So he has a acting experience. He's done a few movies. did drama and everything. And so as the editor and writer and the guy that's been going out for over 25 years doing stories and articles, that we decided to develop this into a reality travel project. And it should be half-hour segments geared for TV, not just the internet. TV like national, like network TV or like a network, streaming network.

Either, either or depending on which, what doors open first. Our goal is to produce the first year, at least eight episodes, which we start in May. We can have eight episodes done by the end of the year. And then then we would start streaming, but from the streaming,

we would look to get network or cable deal from that. So ultimately you would want 12 episodes, right? Because it's every month or? Well, well, I mean, streaming, obviously people binge watch. Right. So we have to. We wouldn't draw, we would drop four at a time for the first year, four and then four.

But, you know, most of what I've heard is you can do 10 to 12 episodes and it's not going to air all year long, but, you know, be prepared. It'll just run for a season. like that but that depends on the network or the cable or you know regular TV network what type of arrangements what type of deals we can get you know something like Discovery or A&E or there's a different lot of a lot of different opportunities in there as well it just does biographies it does just documentaries is it doc is it I heard it the other day that paid some

kind of paid you pay like $30 a month or something it's nothing but documentaries. I don't know the name of it though. This, yeah. Doc to you. I don't know. Yeah, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we put two years of just development into the rights type of style because we almost went scripted comedy. We felt like we could pull that off with the personalities that we had.

But we need, we, we were, we're advised to stick with what we, what we do, what we know and what, what we would do. and that's more like reality or documentary style. So I'm pitching this as reality, but, you know, with its documentary content. But we're looking for, with the personalities that we have, Dave and the other people, we believe it would draw a larger audience

than this is your typical guy that wants to sit down and watch a documentary on travel or something like that. A little different, a little different with that, you know, with the personalities and the style an interaction we'll bring we'll bring a flare that reality flare with that kind of like if you think of the um um american pickers you know they they get they hop in a van and they go and they look at all these antiques and all these different places and stuff like that i mean i i believe we got a way better concept than they do and they've been on the air for a number of years already

there's just there's just two guys in a van and they stop at some warehouse that people's got junk that they haven't wanted to get rid of in 20 years they got one girl in the office that's always on the screen or on the phone she never leaves the office or just set a camera right there in front of her desk or a table or wherever she's at and it's a little bit similar to our concept

but we've got the content is not a problem the interesting people the beautiful places I mean our our burial shots our drone shots are

I mean, you talk about the New River Gorge and places like this. I mean, it's just beautiful, it's a beautiful state. So it's going to open up, and we already know all the travel and tourism, people in the state, and everything like that. So they're all for it. That doesn't mean you get the kind of funding that you really need for. We're going the private route for that. They'll back us up, but they're not going to, they only have so much allocated. You know, this, this economic development or this, this regional county travel tourism departments, you know, they don't have, they don't have large budgets to, but they support us wholeheartedly with it.

But as far as to do it and do it like the level that we want to do it and the quality that we want to do it, it's going to, it requires, you know, investors. And with the West Virginia Explorer shows under the umbrella, which I've also placed. this prison stripes and paradise because that's what the my story has been branded as prison stripes and paradise and then uh that's also packaged underneath what we call new mountain films so we've got a lot of projects that could could unfold with the right with the right people right people getting involved because a lot of the industry is moving out of LA a lot of they're not filming as much nowhere near because there's so much the cost to do it there.

I mean, just I think about a music video that my wife did years ago, where they had to have like a full-time fireman had to be on set. And they just have everything. I mean, it costs, you know, 20 times more to film something in LA than it does in our market in West Virginia. So we think that we can draw a lot of people that are interested in doing some quality productions outside of LA in a smaller market

and take new mountain films. Our goal is to take that to a public status where the investors invest in a public film company in a smaller market, but still with huge potential. Right.

Because we're a few hundred miles from every, you know, you think Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., I mean, all these areas are within. That's why our travel shows, the reality travel show, you know, most of Dave's subscribers to the magazine are the biggest percentage of them are in the D.C. area, Pittsburgh and New York. So they're not even within our

state. So we, to the reach, what we can reach and bring into our market, we feel will be, will be very, very successful. Yeah, I know that Oklahoma and Nevada are taking, stealing a lot of the a lot of um hollywoods you know studios absolutely everybody's moving to those states to start opening up stuff oh yeah Fayetteville north carolina Atlanta's exploded i mean it started with like the music industry and hip-hop and music videos and stuff like that but it's exploded steve's one of steve's brothers in new orleans um that i've been in contact with they do some extra work and there's multiple studios in new orleans now and they've reopened a lot and building that.

So it's starting to filter out across the country where it's a lot more feasible, the logistics. And then even like we were talking about editing earlier before we started sitting down here at the table, so much stuff doesn't have to be all localized. So it just opens up doors that you can really do a quality production, even in a state like we have. our film guys are really, really talented, and they currently do all their own editing. And you can imagine most of their projects are commercial-based or promotional base

because one of the videos that they did is a whitewater rafting company, which is huge in West Virginia. So they did a complete probably a three-minute video on that. They edited everything themselves, drone shots a whole nine yards so that's the type of work they're going to bring to our west virginia explorer project hey you guys i appreciate you watching do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so get notified of videos just like this also we're going to leave all of terry's links in the

description box you can check out his travel reality tv show we're going to leave uh his email in case you want to get in touch with him and several other links uh so that you can follow him and follow up on any of the information that you found that was interesting. If you would like to find out more about MyHeritage, you can scan the QR code or click the link in the description box and use code Matt Cox to get 10% off. And as a bonus, you will receive a free 30-day trial for MyHeritage's Family Tree History Research feature.

Once again, thank you very much. I appreciate you watching. See ya.