Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - $140 Million Scam: The Rise and Fall of a Real-Life Gordon Gekko

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

Protect Your Most Valuable Asset! Get FREE 30 Days of Triple Lock Protection & FREE Comprehensive Title Scan/History Report using our exclusive promo code MATT30 at http://www.hometitlelock.com/mattcox⁣ ⁣ Ross Mandell is a former Wall Street leader who faced a $140 million scandal but turned his life around.⁣ ⁣ Ross's Links⁣ https://rossmandell.com/⁣ https://shop.rossmandell.com/pages/sign-up⁣ https://www.instagram.com/rossmandell/?igsh=MXFtYnNhdHU0b3gxdA%3D%3D⁣ ⁣ 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 ⁣ ⁣ 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news⁣ ⁣ 🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit ⁣ 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt⁣ 🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/re⁣ ⁣ 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

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I was like the real life Gordon Gecko. I had 10,000 millionaires as clients. Supposedly I stole $140 million. Everything was a scam. All the numbers, all the books were cooked. AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, every one of these banks. Thanks. And they died at me. The story was Ross Mandel's back with a flare, buying politicians and selling stock.

I say it like this on my children. I haven't told you guys a lie. I'm looking right in the camera. The things that I was accused of doing wrong never happened. People say, so what are you known for? Who are you? I was the first American to bring a regulated American business public on the London Stock Exchange. And I did it twice before anybody ever did it once. created that footprint and now 200 companies and the biggest companies in the world guys like KKR or followed my footprint and used my approach took themselves public in on foreign stock exchanges

and then registered the shares in broad and public in the United States say boatloads of money boatloads of regulatory hassle and accounting hassle you got twice liquidity and I actually created that so that's something great but on the eve of my first IPO there sky capital holdings like I took public a Wall Street stockbroking company, what they called a broker-dealer. And they wanted to see if any skeletons would come out of the closet because I'll get to it. I've had a lot of complaints and problems because of my drug addiction and my alcoholism. I was very abrasive and very aggressive and borderline abusive. On the front page of the biggest selling business newspaper in London, on a Sunday, the business section, they said,

Gordon Gecko style investment banking is coming to London, is coming to the UK, in the form of Ross Mandel, with his, you know, very aggressive business model. It's called Sky Capital Holdings. And then, of course, you know, in the second movie, what does Gordon Gecko do? If he gets his daughter's money that he's stationed in Switzerland, he goes to London. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was there before him. So I was born March the 18th, 1957 in Brooklyn on a very stormy, snowy, blizzardy day. My dad was 30. My mom was just 21, and she had a tough labor. And then, of course, she was rushed to the hospital. And my dad was in New York City at his office. So right away,

I was a problem for my mother and for my parents. It took them half a day to get back to the hospital to see me. I was already born, which I believe that's the way it should be. I have two children, and I was in the room, about times with my wife. And I was. like, I wish I could unsee some of these images that I saw, but, you know, they're ingrained in my head. So, you know, I like the old movies where, you know, they go down to the bar, they have a drink, they smoke a cigar, and then congratulations. You have a daughter.

You have a son. Yeah. But I like to say that I had a pretty normal childhood. I was a real jock and a real good student, a learner. And I wasn't the brightest pencil in the drawer, but I certainly wasn't the dullest. And I was blessed because my dad liked to read. So he was always a member of all these reading clubs, and he was going to get books all the time.

And I was the oldest. I have a younger brother three years younger. And we used to tag along with them all the time. We were kids. And we all would pick out books. And I was blessed with this addiction to reading. And I feel badly for people that, you know, don't read. I mean, the Netflix generation.

and the prime video generation. I mean, when's the last time people read books? And all my life, I like reading books that I like to read. I read the popular novels, mostly. And I literally look at the bestseller list and I read the top 10. But then all my life, I said, one day I'm going to read the classics. One day I'm going to read Chaucer and Shakespeare

and try and figure out what's so great about some of them. And God granted me that wish. he locked me up for 90 years, four months with absolutely nothing to do. And I basically read everything. So, you know, it's funny how God works, right? Be careful what you wish for, somebody once told me. And I didn't realize the wisdom in that. So I'm in high school.

I'm on the football team, on the wrestling team. I'm a good kid. I like to say it was normal. You know, I'd go out with the guys and we'd have a couple of drinks. grab a bottle of booze from the parents house. One day, a guy brings a little bag of and we try. And, you know, I didn't really care for

any of that so much, but I was just being one of the guys in the neighborhood. You want to hang out, you want to be a part of, you're experimenting, you're learning about all these different things. And I've been at a girlfriend. I was 16. And then September the 27th, 1973,

my father, Dropstedt. He dies. Never sick a day in his life. How old was he? He was 48 years old, and my mother was only 38. And it was a big night, by the way. It was the best day and the worst day of my life at that time. I was, we had a first full scrimmage for the football season, 1973. I was 16 years old.

And I ran for like 190 yards. I blocked a punt. I scored a touchdown. I was just killing it on the field. And my dad was so proud, and he was there with one of his friends. And I'll never forget after the game, he took me another one of the guys, took us to Carvel. We had a Carvel in the neighborhood, soft, you know, vanilla ice cream with sprinkles and all that kind of stuff. And I was just so proud of myself because he was so proud of me.

I knew I had a good game, but like a lot of times throughout the course of my life, I it's important to me what other people feel and if I'm killing it but nobody knows and nobody's happy for me it's not as meaningful to me can you relate to that bro are you kidding to me relate to that my narcissistic friend Colby's heard this like if people if somebody recognizes me in public it's so important I'm like it only matters if my wife is there right if somebody else is there to be like I can't believe you how good looking you look and I look like I look like My first thing you said is, I wish my wife was here. God damn. It only counts if it's somebody there that you can...

I understand. It's like if a tree falls down in a forest, does it really make noise? There's no one to hear it? That's so horrible. Right. So I was so excited because he was so excited. And my father's friend came to dinner. It was Jewish New Year called Rush Ashuna.

And I just saw, it was just unfortunately, 50, 51st year anniversary of his death last week, September the 27th. And at dinner, never sick a day in his life, big hearty man, full of personality. When he walked in a room, everybody noticed. And he thought he had indigestion, went upstairs. Two hours later, they called an ambulance. He doesn't feel good. And he dies in the hospital. I never see him again.

And I don't know what happened to that good normal kid. I just went crazy. It's the only explanation I can say. I was just very angry. I learned the following week after he passed that my family was living the American dream for real. What does that mean? Everything was mortgaged, borrowed, or leased.

And we actually owned nothing. And all of a sudden, all my plans for the big college and this and that went out the window. And everybody was worried just about surviving. And I just got very angry. I was very self-centered. You know, I mean, the world can't revolve around. around you because it revolves around me.

So, you know, it can't happen like that. And I just went nuts. And right after the funeral, my cousin says, Rossi, come with me. We take a walk, takes out a pack of Marlborough Reds. And I was, I need the smoke. But he takes out a joint. And I'm like, ah, he goes, come on, you need it.

And I took a hit. I held it in. I exhaled. And all of a sudden, everything felt better. By no means was I okay. but it was better. I have now found medication for this pain that I was feeling,

this depression. And for the next 17 straight years, I was stoned every day. Now, some people exaggerate. And I'm prone to some exaggeration. I'm a sales guy. But when I tell you, I was stoned every single day,

I'm understating. I smoked, I took pills, I snorted powders, I did everything. There's nothing I didn't do. I use women. I use money. I use cars.

I just did everything I could do not to feel what I was feeling inside. In fact, I can't even tell you what I'm feeling inside anymore because it was a period that, you know, the end of high school, college, it's like a blur to me. Everybody says I had a great time and I was a really cool guy. And I believe that. I believe that. But I don't have, I have very vague memories. It's almost like a dream. and because I was like a kid that didn't give a fuck,

I had been an athlete, a wrestler, a football player, had a good body, wasn't bad looking, and I had no inhibitions. So guys, regular guys would be inhibited. They'd see a woman. I don't give a shit. And so I got a lot of women because women sort of like that bad boy. I don't give a shit attitude, especially the best-looking women,

because everybody else's, you know, finds them unapproachable to me. I don't give a shit. Yeah, they're timid. and shy and you walk up. I'm a fucking animal. I really don't give a shit. Right. But I'm also a good sales guy and I love people.

So I was very good at that. So therefore in college I was like a popular kid. I was had a hot girlfriend. If me and five guys went out to the bar and there were a bunch of five girls sitting on the end of the bar, I was always the guy that went over there, broke the ice, said, hey, what's happening, ladies, what's going on? What are you guys doing? Let me introduce you to my friends.

They were dying to meet you. I was the guy that I always talked his way into the club. I was the guy that always got it to the VIP, all these kind of different things that really mean nothing in the real world. But they were very important to me. And when I talk to certain guys, they get it like. And it's hard. I've actually said this before is that until I was probably,

I was 17 years old, like I couldn't even approach a woman. And I eventually met this, a buddy of mine who would literally like, stop the car. I'd stop the car. He'd jump out, walk right over to a group of girls, and walk right up to a girl and be like, hey, my name's David Simpson. And I remember after seeing him do this, after seeing him do that. So many times, I was like, bro, aren't you embarrassed? Like, aren't you? And he was like, I don't know her. I'll never see that chick again. If she laughs at me and says, get out of my face or I would never date you. He's like, what do I give a fuck? Like, I don't, I'll never see her again. Right. But you know what the funny thing is when you have, when you have that

sort of bolsey approach. Almost nobody insults you. People are like, well, they don't know what to do. Right. What a guy. I mean, you know, holy shit. It's that overwhelming. And so it took me a while, but I adopted his approach.

And it worked so well, it carried throughout my entire life. Well, you got those blue eyes or those Michael Douglas looks. I mean, the teeth. I mean, listen, bro, who's going to say no to you? Who's going to say no to you, but maybe a federal judge? What's so funny? And he was attorney. The Michael Douglas thing.

Like we were actually, Colby and I were looking up before you got here. I was like, this guy's Michael Douglas. Look. He looks like. Like in, you know, and we were showing pictures. But anyway, so. I was like a real life Michael Douglas. Yeah.

Oh, no, exactly. I know that. More than you know. No, I know. The story, I can tell just from the American greed thing that that's where the story's going. Okay. So now I'm, I'm just stoned.

Um, I was always sort of hooked up with entrepreneur. Let me just say like this. it's it's it's very expensive to be stoned all the time it's very expensive to do designer drugs to smoke to do all these kind of things and I was in college where'd the money come from my mother had no money my family had no money luckily I got a scholarship to go to school but um so I was always very entrepreneurial

not because I placed value on money but I needed what I needed I wanted to go out I wanted a party I wanted to make the scene I went to go to the best clubs. I just wanted to impress people. And that takes money. So I was always with the crowd. We sold drugs. We dealt with.

We used to throw parties. We were the guys in school that would rent out a club on like a Tuesday night or a Monday night, which was dead, and create these invitations and run around and get everybody in the school to show up. And you'd have like 2,000 kids show up paying $10 or $20 to get in. And we would get, you know, half the door. some of the bar. We make a few grand that night. But as fast as I got it, I spent it. And because of the guy that I was, a lot of guys, you know, were sort of wanted to be my friend. I was invited into these sort of cool groups with what I call fast guys, guys that were very ambitious, guys that were

chasing money, chasing business, chasing success, and all these different things. And I sort of was just to long for the ride. I mean, intellectually, I knew these are cool guys. I want to hang with them, this and that. And ultimately, we got out of college. What do guys like this do? We'll go to New York City because we'll grow up on Long Island or in the New York area. And we go into Manhattan and we sell something. There's a false idea out there that credit monitoring or identity theft protection will protect your home's title from title theft. And that's simply not true. I'll give you an example. home's title can be transferred into a synthetic identity's name, that synthetic identity can then borrow against your house, and the new loan will go on the credit of the synthetic identity

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Ross Mandel here. I know you're a busy guy. I don't want to skip too much of your time today, but from time to time, do you play the stock market? Are you interested in making money, have your money work for you? You know, this and that. And prior to the very early, 80s the late 70s, you wouldn't, investments were never sold over the phone. Financial products were never allowed to be sold over the phone. They just never were. It's not like there was a law against it, but there was no law that favored it. And money companies, banks, brokers, dealers, that sort of thing.

They're highly regulated. So a bunch of very ambitious guys that worked at a company called Lehman Brothers, which in the Great Crash that we talked about ended up going insolvent bankrupt. and they called the Federal Trade Commission of Washington because prior to being able to solicit over the phone, you basically sat around the boardroom, waiting for rich people to come in and say, listen, I own a big ranch in Montana,

I am an oil guy from Texas, I got big milk farms and 100,000 acres here and there, and I got all this money, and I want you to help me make a portfolio and show me how I can do some financial planning and all that. And a bunch of very ambitious young men, guys like us, said, you know, I don't sit around and wait anymore. And we want to call people on the phone. Ha! You know, impossible. Like the four-minute mile. It was impossible to somebody did it, right? Right. And so-

And then immediately, six more people do it in the next year. Right. It's all year. Yeah. So they call up the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, and they created some documentation, and they were now approved to Cold Call America. So Wall Street, which, which was simply the domain of the really wealthy and the generational families and a generational wealth, et cetera, all of a sudden, young, aggressive men were able to pick up the phone and say,

Mr. Jones, how are you? My name's Mike. I'm a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers. I got something for you today. You wanna make some money? People are like, sure. Yeah, who says no to that? Nobody knew at the time that, you know,

Nobody was talking about the risk involved. And nobody had been burned yet. So everybody's like, really? You really like that? Oh, yeah. Listen, I just got out of a meeting. And we love the earnings. And you have no idea the deals these people are doing.

The CEO, he's got two winners before. I mean, we could buy this stock at 22, and I'm pretty sure this stock is going to be 80. And nobody's seeing the movie boiler room yet. None of that came out yet. Right. Or Wall Street or Wolf of Wall Street or none of that. And all those movies are based on true stories.

Right. This is just people are completely babes in the wood. Right. So I'm a good sales guy. I'm working like crazy because I'm now, my partying has become more expensive. I was at University of Maryland in College Park where, you know, a drink was like a dollar. And now I'm in Manhattan and the disco era. And, you know, a night out was a couple hundred bucks. And then if you want to do a little, there's some quailudes. I mean, things cost money. So I'm a sales guy. I'm working my tail off, and I'm making like 150 grand a year. I become a full partner in this firm, a ladies handbag firm,

and I knew nothing about it, but I could sell. And I'm driven, and, you know, I never really took no for an answer with anything. Because I'm an addict. And addicts don't understand the word no. Right. And I'm traveling nine months a year, doing things that other guys don't do. That's how I made my 150. I had an American Express card on the company to enable me to travel.

I was banging that out for $4,000 a month. Plus, they bought me a nice white Mustang and paid for it and paid for my insurance and paid for my garage in Manhattan. And I'm living a dream. I'm 22 years old. And my closest friend from college, we were going out one night. And he's picking up the bill. I said, what's going on, man? His name was Howie.

I said, you must be made. I get some cash, right? Some coin. She's, yeah, me. Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games

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Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come down to precious metals. I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment. Technology companies. Solar energy. Robotic pollinators might be a thing. A wrestler to face a robot,

that will have to happen. So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it. at WealthSimple. Start now at WealthSimple.com. 400 last year. I said, 400. 400,000?

He goes, oh, yeah. He goes, I'm on track to do like 800. 800,000? And I'm thinking, I said, you're making like 60, 70,000 a month? He goes, yeah, it made like almost 80 grand last month. Not unlike the Wolf of Wall Street, where Leo DeCaprio meets Jonah Hill in the diner. He goes, if you show me a stub that says you made 70 grand land. month, I'll quit my job.

I quit my job right now and work for you. That's what happened to me. I love that. When my friend said he's doing this, I practically assaulted him. I said, stop it. And he explained to me everything. I said, what do you do? How do you get that money?

He goes, you travel, you go to the office in the morning and I basically drink coffee and I talk on the phone all day. I could do that? I could do that right now. And like, listen, there was nothing exceptional about this guy. Right. I mean, he's a smart guy. good sales guy. He's a real schister type. His father sold aluminum siding in Brooklyn. But,

you know, I didn't think it was anything better than me. I'm a very big believer in monkey see monkey do. If you could do it. Yeah, how hard can it be? Yeah. I can do it. I might not do it as good as you. I might have a different style. If you fall short of a guy making 800,000, you make 600,000. Right. Right. So I'm like lit up and I start doing a little research. But because I had a big drug problem, and I was a party guy. My closest friend from college refused to help me. I said, bro, you're hooked up.

Yeah, you're the firm. You're a star. You're doing this and that, right? And he wouldn't recommend me. Wow. Because I was f***ed up. And I got in my feelings about all that. I didn't think maybe I'm f***ed up I should change.

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, but you got to understand. Like, I'm not going to jeopardize. He's not going to jeopardize. Right. He's got a good thing. What he's got. And I'm thinking, I'm not thinking what's wrong with me, that my closest friend in the world won't recommend me.

He's the problem. He's got a problem this guy, obviously. I can't. And so I end up, because once something is in my head, and I want it, I'm going to get it. It's just who Ross is. I've always been like that. And I reached out to every contact I could figure out, and I found out that he came out of the Merrill Lynch training program, got licensed, went to Lehman Brothers. I went into the EF Hutton training program,

which was the top one or two training program in the country at the time. And I, everybody in my clear, I had 12 people in New York, 12, like 100,000 people were trying to get in. They everybody was, there were three lawyers, three CPAs, two MBAs, and more.

A drug addict that just talked his way into everything and just, I bullied my way through an interview and I get in. And I'm immediately outclassed by everybody. These guys were professionals, CPA, these guys, you know, license, they do taxes, they know all about securities. Lawyers, they went to law school, they studied corporate law and all kinds of different things, case law and all these different things. MBAs, they study business. And me, I studied clueludes, hot women.

And I could handle my own in the party scene. But when it came to securities, I didn't know shit. And they offered me $150 a week. Now, mind you, I'm making, you know, close to $15,000 a month all in. I gave that, I walked out of that business for $150 a week. I'll never forget my mother came because she was very proud that I was a young salesman doing really great. in the handbag mark in Manhattan. And she's like, what are you doing?

I said, Mom, I'm going to be a stockbroker. She goes, how much are they paying you? I said, well, they pay me $150 a week until I take my exam. And if I pass, then I go on straight commission. That sounds even worse. She goes, what do you mean commission? You're not getting a salary? I said, well, no, because, you know, you eat what you?

You know, it's a commission business. She goes, well, how are you going to make money? I said, well, we're going to call people on the phone. She goes, you don't have any money. You didn't come from family money. Right. How are you going to make money? What do you know about stocks and bonds?

I said, right now I don't really know anything, but they're going to train me. And she was, let me understand something. You're going to call people that you don't know, that don't know you, and you're going to sell them something that you don't really know or understand about and you don't have any background in it. And this is what you're going to get a commission? Sounds like a winning plan. got a nervous breakdown.

No, she did. She had a panic attack right there. And she went home and didn't get out of bed for like, you know, a month. Oh. And they just waited for Ross to fail. Oh. But I was determined. Yeah.

And I needed to. That might have been the energy. You know what I'm saying? That might have been the... Truthfully, my additions really drove me mostly. But yes, when people tell me, you know, Dana White, I love what he says, you tell me I'm going to fail. You tell me. You tell me, go f-f-yourself.

Watch this. You're right. You know, Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, all these amazing human beings in their particular, you know, sports, their wheelhouse. One thing they all had in common

was they were able to use anything from the external world, any doubt, any negativity, and say, you, watch this. And I have that sort of rage in me where I, you know, when I'm faced with, you know, a doubt, you know, to me a doubt is the enemy of success.

Doubt, doubt success. You got to go in and you got to know. I'm okay with failure. Right. I'm not okay with not trying. Correct. You know? Like if you try, if I try over and over and over again, I'm going to win eventually.

That's just numbers. You would have been a great stockbroker. Thank God we didn't find, you didn't find Wall Street. Neither one of us would probably be still be in jail if we'd met. We would have both been on the front page. But, so. So I, but I was intimidated. And as I started to learn about this stuff,

I realized I really, what the fuck did I get into here? And, because I had easy money. Ladies handbags are like, you know, you go to the buyer, you tell how good-looking she is, you take her out for drinks, maybe you give her an envelope, and you get an order. It's very easy. But it's personal selling and all that kind of stuff.

And you just find good bags to sell. And you, you know, go to a manufacturer and say, listen, I don't know who's selling your stuff, but I love your stuff. I can do a real job, but, but, but. This is very different. You're sitting basically on the phone all day, pitching people, and smiling and dialing, they say.

And, you know, there's a formula, and I shared it with the Wall Street Journal on March 14, 1996. The biggest story in the history of Dow Jones published a story on me. They used me and my story as a way to indict the regulatory system of the stock exchanges. They used me.

They put my picture up, my high school year book quote. They went around and knocked on doors in my old neighborhood, went to my high school. I mean, I learned things about myself that I forgot reading about this. And it was a very ugly story meant as a hit piece on me, but also on the whole to indict the industry. Because, you know, Wall Street, it's a self-regulating organization. Right. You know what it's like the mob. No need for the police.

We see somebody hijacking on our streets. We got you. We'll take care of it. Right? They self-regulatory. It's a joke. Right. And so they felt that I, by this point, I had racked up a lot of customer complaints, arbitrations.

I was suspended by the New York Stock Exchange for six weeks, all for things that occurred prior to 1990 when I end up getting sober. Wait, wait, are we still on track with the? I'm going back and forth a little bit, but I'm trying to give you some, you know, things pop into my head. I'm in this EF Hutton training program. And I'll never forget, I passed the test. One guy failed at a 12. In those days, you took it number two pencil. They said, we're going to tell you if you passed to come in in two weeks.

If we don't call you, you didn't pass, bye, don't ever come back. Right. Now you take the test nine times. And I actually, eventually, I actually had a woman take it nine times. Eventually, she passed. So to make a long story short, I'm learning. how to sell. I'm learning about stocks and bonds and all this kind of stuff. And it's getting to the point where I get my license and they put like 130 of us. They brought people from all over

the country that were in the same training class as me. There was only 12 in New York, but 1.30 around the whole country. And they put us in a big boardroom. And they set up a big bunch of tables in the front and had 12 senior brokers from E.F. Hutton in the room. And everybody had a number. I was like number 18. And you would just dial. They would give you a bunch of. bunch of leads out of the phone book. And when somebody answered the phone, you raised your hand, and they had the ability to pick up the phone and tap it, and they would listen to you. And they were grading you. They were rating you out of 1.30. And so big balls to the wall broke a Ross Vandelle. I'm dialing. Finally, a guy answers. And I'm like, uh, and I hang up the phone.

I had so much anxiety for maybe the first time in my life. I am stressed beyond belief. I don't despondy much because as a wrestler, I always made weight, my body worked good, whatever. And all of a sudden, I'm clammy. And I'm practically shaking. But I'm looking at all these guys, the lawyer next to me, raises his hand.

Oh, he sounds amazing. I'm listening to him. And then, you know, you had to get 10 leads. Then this woman next to me, she was an accountant. She sounds great. I'm like, oh, fuck. And I said, I get your shit together and dial again. And, you know, you die on sometimes 10 times before somebody picks it up.

Yeah. So I want to talk to you. And the guy picks up again because we're calling him at home. This was an evening. And I hang up the second time. What is going on? What happened all that confidence? I've choked.

I'm choking. Bad. And I'm a game day player, but I'm choking. And the guy next to me is on. He raises his hand. Another guy. Meanwhile, I'm not on the board at all. I don't even have one attempt.

And all these other people are, you know, raising their hand, this and that. And I realize I got to get moving because they're grading us. I haven't even gotten to giving them a call to grade. And eventually I get a guy in the phone and I do my little pitch. And he's willing to be a lead. He wants to receive my business card and information on my firm and, you know, something to establish that I'm credible, right? And I promised to get back to him.

This is just to get a lead. I'm not selling anything yet. Yeah. And I raised my hand. The guy listens. And, you know, a guy goes like that, whatever. So after like a week of that or 10 days of that. that they release a scoreboard.

One thing about Wall Street, everything's transparent. Everybody knows what you make, how many accounts you open, how many leads you get, how many hours you work, everything's rated and graded and public, because they want you competing with the guy that's number one, number two, number. They want you know where you're staying. So out of 1.30, I'm like number 80. I'm not top 10. I'm not top 20.

I'm not top 30. I'm like between 30 and 40. I'm like, are they firing half the class? No, this is just training. This is sales training. And, you know, they urged us that we're not in the top, like, 25%, to walk around and listen to your sort of classmates how they sound. Maybe you could learn from listening. We do role playing and all that.

And I walked up and down the aisles one day, and I'm listening to these people that I'm competing with. And I'm like, oh, shit, these people are so good. They're slick. they have such a command of the language that they've done so much work and studied all this and that I don't know anything and I had to really suck it up and so and then comes the day

where we all go into production nobody had me ranked in the top 25% all through my training except me and there was a couple of cute girls in the in the class so I started to get my my feet under me. I started to get a hold of those big balls I used to have. All right.

And we go into production, meaning now it's for real. Now we're calling. We're getting our leads. And then we got to open accounts and try and do business. We get no salary. If you don't eat, you don't pay the phone bill. So the past few weeks, you're making $150 a week right until we go into production. Okay.

But I'm starting to understand a little. bit about the psychology. And at first, I try to be somebody that I'm not. I try to be a little slick like the lawyer and like the accountant and the business guys. And I realize that's not who I am. I'm never going to be like that. I'm never going to be good enough to compete like that. Right. But if it's one thing I've learned in my life, if I'm just me, just authentic Ross, people take to me. Yeah. People will always buy that guy.

Not everybody, not for everybody. But I'll always have my guys, my following, et cetera, just like podcasting. If you try and be someone you're not, people know. It's not authentic. People can feel it. People know. Something in the human brain senses when something's true. I can't explain it, except other than that, that when you speak truth,

it's intuition. Yeah. People have intuition. People know. It's like a chemical reaction in the brain. and so I decided to dumb it down so many times on the phone people say you're Italian

you're from you from the bra you're in the mob like I speak in a very common way you tell there is no mob exactly I speak to the common man I don't try and put an air about it in fact I like to dumb it down a little bit so I'd rather you think me

think less of me you never see me coming like that and at The end of the first year, well, actually the first 10 months, I was number one at a hundred 30 people nationwide in opening new accounts. Okay. And I was number two in gross commission. I made several hundred thousand.

And the only one that beat me out of that class of 130 was a guy named Stephen Schott, whose mother happened to own the Cincinnati Reds and who just had a huge trust fund. And all he would do is basically trade his own money. He had like three accounts himself, his mother and his grandfather. father. So you'll lag up. Well, he just traded his own money. It was nonsense. Right. Right. He's just charging himself commission to look out on the board. But I made real money. I created real business with real customers. So instead of trying to be eloquent, you went with the blue collar, Hey man, I know you're busy. Uh, listen, uh, you know, here's what we're doing.

Bro, I'm gritty. Yeah, yeah. I'm gritty. I'm talking to you. Yeah. I'm talking with you. I'm not talking at you trying to spend. And there's nothing wrong with it if you're really good at that. Yeah. But I realized I was never going to be great at that. But I'm great at being me. You know, I'm great. Even when we speak right now, it must come across.

And I'm just sort of like, I'm like a man for every man. You know, you Ivy League is way to hear my story. But I'm not trying to impress anybody. Right. I feel like that's the opposite of Joe Vitale. super slick on the phone and answer for everything very slick very and all bullshit right like just just total spin spin spin and then he would he would try and jam and then he's high pressure you know oh well let me talk to my wife you got to talk to your wife you you was your wife dress you but it was almost like

he would almost bully people into but we did a podcast on him great podcast not the same story as yours but anyway but he was he was great on the phone right away But it was very, he's very, very slick. Right. A lot of people are slick. I've managed to produce results that were pretty much second to none by being myself. Right. I've been called a bully in business.

I've been called greedy. I've been called pushy. The government says high pressure sales tactics. They said I'm a cult leader at my trial. I've people that just follow me, whatever I say, whatever I do, et cetera. and probably all that is true. There's truth and all that. It's just the way you frame it.

You understand what I mean is how you frame it, what the context is, et cetera. And the government's pretty good at owning the context, right? I feel like you're sitting at the defense table going, stop it. My lawyers wouldn't let me testify. It was a big mistake. It was a big mistake.

I got 12 years anyway. They're doing nothing wrong. Now, I've done plenty wrong in my life. I have done plenty wrong in my life. I'll get to that. but when it comes to the actual crime that I was accused of, allegedly committed and was convicted of, it didn't even happen.

All right, well, we're going to get to that. We're getting that. Bro, it was fabrication. We're getting there. I mean, it was complete fabrication. I believe you. No, no, it's not important that you believe me because right, when the government convicts you

and you lose your peon and it's in the book, it happened. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The government told the story, that's it. It doesn't matter. It is now true. There is no other truth. No matter what I say, no matter how I address it, no matter how much fraud was involved on their end,

how many, they admitted all these different things. But still, as long as that conviction stance, it's truth in our world. And I live in the world. So I'm not trying to say to live in the world. I'm here because if you're talking about inside true crime, I'm a true criminal according to the government. According to American greed,

the finale of season nine called The Sky's the Limit because I created Sky Capital, Sky Capital Enterprises, Sky Bank, all these different Sky companies. And I was CEO of two public companies in London while I was residing in America. The problem was I resided in America. So we'll get to that. So now I'm at E. F. Hutton. I do like 300,000, 325,000 in my first year.

I'm not satisfied. I'm not satisfied because on Wall Street, there's a context. You graded like on a golf course, you ever play golf? You know what shooting par means? Yeah. Shooting par means a golf course is designed by a professional. And that's what a professional, what they call scratch golfers, should be able to complete that 18 holes in.

Par is usually 71, 72, 73. And every other stroke over that is your handicap, right? Plus 1, plus 2, plus 3. And pros have to be able to shoot par, better than par, break par. on Wall Street, par is earning $100,000 a month. I make about $325,000 in my first year. So I'm making it like around $30,000 a month a little less. But I'm capped out and I'm frustrated.

And but what happens is I'm partying more than ever now because I went from getting zero salary. Yeah. Living tight. All of some money's coming in. But I'm working 15 hours a day. I'm literally dialing my phone. 300 times a day in the formula in that business, you dial 300 times a day.

Over time, 100 people will pick up. You'll actually hear someone's voice 100 times out of 300. Out of those 100 calls, 90 are going to say, go f*** yourself. Slam the phone down. What's your name? I'm calling the police.

What's your name? I'm calling the SEC. You. But, but, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, 10 people, on average, it's a statistical fact, 10 people will be receptive to receiving your track record, your introductory mailing package, your business card. And that's what you call a lead.

And the idea of getting a lead is to qualify them. And I became a monster caller because I asked the top guys on the street. Remember, I'm out every night. I'm really rolling. I'm in the bars. I'm in the clubs. This is Manhattan in the 80s. What a place. Studio 54 is seen on Magic, the underground, the roller discos. I mean, it was wild, qualoons. I mean, everybody was partying, and I'm out and about, and I can afford now to go because I'm not saving a penny. I've invested all my money into partying and having fun, but little that I know, it helped further my business career at that time.

because everybody's getting to know Ross and people would come back because of this guy, he's drinking Don Perignon, he's got the hottest chicks, he's doing great. I mean, we're going to get this guy over here. Right.

On Wall Street, that's like a badge of honor, I hate to say it. So I'm frustrated but because my manager was a $300,000 producer. And what I've learned over time is you'll never do more than the guy that's managing you

for a variety of reasons. But I became, come like a hot commodity. I'm a young hot broker, and my strength was I was able to open accounts at will. I would open two, three, four accounts a day. Most brokers, if they make 10 a month, it's a decent month. I'm open three. I open, in the first 10 days of the month, I have 20, 25. I'm starting to master this whole thing. You know, I'm really like doing it in my sleep. And because I'm an addict, anything that requires a lot of mindless repetition, I love. because I could just keep going.

When you get tired, you quit, I'm just an addict. I'm addicted to the phone. I'm addicted to the pitch. I'm addicted to the whole thing. And then I'm going out all night. Today, I need to take naps, and I need to be in bed early, and, you know, this whole thing. Aging is something else. But so I get drafted by a whole bunch of firms.

I go into view all these different famous firms, and I go to Oppenheimer Company. Jordan Berlin is my manager. Jordan is a $600,000 a year, particularly. producer. 600, sometimes 650, but really right around that. And to be a senior vice president on Wall Street, you got to do about 600,000 a year. All right. It's 50,000 a month. It's right. To most people, that sounds good. But I didn't understand this theory. Otherwise, I would have went immediately to work for guys that do millions. I didn't know. So I go to work for Jordan, and I'm at Oppenheimer Company, and I'm good. I'm okay. I'm good. I get up to

40, 50,000 a month, I crap out. I can't get through it. 40,000, 42,000, 48,000, 52,000. I can't get through that number. I don't understand why. You're breaking my heart. Right, but I'm frustrated. But listen, just as fast as I'm making it, I'm spending it. However, income is one thing. When you're on the inside of the market, you get start to make connections. You start to know, get to know who the traders are, the syndicate people. You get invited into deals. You get tips. You get information.

And I started out at E.F. Hutton, and I had $1,500 in my own stock account. And just so you guys know, by my 30th birthday, I turned that into $30 million. Off of $15? $1,500. $1,500 went to... From 1983 to $1987, I turned $1,500 into $30 million. Jesus. And then by 1990, I had $4,000 and I owed a million.

You know, this is the game. But of course, I was nuts because of my addictions. My addictions cost me a lot. But in the meantime, I'm on the come-up in the Wall Street business. And I'm at Oppenheimer, and then I'm doing, you know, what you do over half a million year, it's pretty good. You're still not shooting par. and I'm not a million dollar guy,

but, you know, people could see the come up. People could see on a curve. They said, this guy's going to be a stud one day, right? So I start getting, you're always getting recruited because here's the way it works on the street. Once you were just certain level of production right around a half a million, anything that you're doing business,

you get half and the firm gets half. So the firm is making $300,000 a year on me. Right. Okay? So a lot of firms, want that kind of action, especially because I was newer in the business. I'm sort of young. I'm not a career guy doing these numbers. You can see I'm on the come up, right? And so I get off at all these big time positions at Lehman Brothers, Basterns, different big, big, big, big substantial

firms. I go to work at the least substantial of them. I went to work for a guy named Morty Davis at D.H. Blair, 44 Wall Street. Why? Morty is, his real name is Jay Morton Daviditz, Orthodox Jew, and today he's like number 30 on the Forbes billionaire list. Why? Because Morty looked at my, everybody's offered me $3,000, $500,000 up front. Morty said, I'm not going to give you anything up front. Zero. But I'm going to give you an IPO every week, and I'm going to give you 100% payout on your first million dollars.

Okay. I go, well, it's going to take me two years to get a million dollars. I don't have to split $50,000. 50 with the firm. Whatever I do, I get 100%. Yeah. He goes. But he's saying I'm going to give you the IPO.

It's going to take you wait faster. Ross, in four months, you'll be doing over 100,000 a month. You'll never do less. And I'm like, you know, nobody spoke to me that way. Right. And this guy had a reputation. He was representing the Teamsters. He's one of the great money managers of our time.

And he was literally doing two or three IPOs a week, his firm. But he was going to give me one. Right. As much as I want. So I know what an IPO is. Correct. But so you're bringing people public. We're taking businesses to the stock market for the first time.

We're actually creating stock. Okay. We're taking companies public. And Morty has been a mentor to me and showed me the inside of the stock market. Now also, just so you guys know, this is, this is 1986, early 86. There's no NASDAQ at this time. There's a New York Stock Exchange, the Amex, which is really a poor sister, and everything else was over the counter. Eventually, in 87, they formed NASDAQ, after the crash of 87, like 1988, which was electronic trading.

And the two people responsible of creating NASDAQ were Morty Davis, my mentor, and a guy named Bernie Madoff. I knew Bernie. And I knew, no Bernie. I met Bernie a few times. And I was in jail with his brother Peter. Okay. And not a nice guy, but, you know. So I decide.

Forget the $300,000 up front, $400,000 up front. This guy convinced me. He looked at my money line, my business that I was going to bring over all my clients and the amount of monies they had and the stocks they own. And he laughed. Like, he goes, you know, bro, you're going to be doing, within four months, you do $100,000. Okay. The first month, I did $52,000. The second month, they did $72,000.

And then the third month, they did $100,000. I never earned under $100,000 a month, ever, ever. Because something happens to you in that business. You learn, you achieve a certain level, and that's just where you go. And people used to say to me, how do you make $100,000 a month? I said, really? Tell me, please. I said, well, we have 20 trading days a month.

I do $5,000 a day. But the deal I had with him was I got 100% payout. So, meaning, I did 100. How's he making any money? He making money on the IPOs, bringing these vice public. Every deal, he has warrants inside stock. We're taking those deals. We're making him rich.

Okay. So he could actually bet against the company. It's a second he goes public, he locks it in a profit. It's automatic. He was doing two, three, a week. But I became a master of that deal. IPO and it would go on to provide a body of knowledge for me down the road that became invaluable because you find brokers that are in the business 20 years, they have no idea to structure a deal,

what an option is a warrant is, the idea of creating stock versus just buying stock and selling stock. And when you became the manufacturer of stock is real money. because it doesn't matter if you sell for a penny or $100, you're creating it through your own sweat equity, your own hard work. So I instantly became this very successful stockbroker. But we were really living in the speculative end of the stock market.

You know, new issues. Some of them worked. Most of them don't. Right. It's a shot. It's like a lot of ticket. You got a shot. You know, it's legit.

it's a there's actually a name for it this speculative end of the stock market you know these are these are not blue chips funny thing is wall street is a great marketing machine a blue chip is still a high risk item but they say it's blue chip you don't have to worry about it nonsense nron worldcom lucent these companies all went tits up right zero it out these were the bluest of blue chips aig insurance company beast insurance company in the world on a wednesday they held a press conference And they announced A plus rated by Moody's and Stansmore. They announced to the world, if we don't get $108 billion, by Monday, we're out of business. So all the numbers they've been publishing was a lie.

You understand the point? That was too big to fail, the big bailout. Nonsense, right? But, yeah, the shit happens. And then guys like us go to jail. The big boys are robbing hundreds of billions of dollars. They get fined. And then they round up the usual suspect.

Look for the guys that are unaffiliated independence. and they arrest us and they create big press releases and big public announcements and they go on TV and say, we got Ross Mandel. That's why the economy, that's why they told my jury, that's why all of you were out of work. This is the guy that caused the crash in 0809. I swear to you. That wasn't inflammatory at all. That wasn't.

No, God forbid, you know, that's not prejudicial. Jesus. I mean, yeah. And then when I get a letter from the London Stock Exchange saying that I behaved appropriately and there were no violations against me. They just said, this is too prejudicial. We can't let it in. I swear to you.

So now I go to D.H. Blair, 44 Wall Street, maybe 150 guys, investment banking, IPOs every week, literally, two or three a week. So one group of guys, 10 brokers would do one IPO, another group of brokers, 15 guys would do another IPO. And it was like a party, okay? This is all before the crash of 87. So I come into the business in 1983.

I become licensed in 84, and the market's doing nothing but going from a thousand. The Doward Jones was a thousand. Just, you know, just broke 42,000. It was 1,000, and it just went up to 2000. That was my experience so far. Right. So because I am an animal and I'm an addict

and I'm working like a maniac and I'm good on the phone and I'm pitching and I found my balls and my footing, I'm killing it. And everybody's making money. I'm not making, I'm making money, but everybody's making money. Right. Not the stocks, everything went straight up. Yeah, it's going up.

Until March of 87. Yeah. And that's when reality set in to the market, to the world, et cetera. It was the first major correction since 1929. Bad timing. Bad for us. It was good before that? You saved all that money.

Well, I didn't. I didn't, actually. I let it ride. and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, all the things I would do now, but, um, allegedly. And, um, it was, it was brutal. I, I couldn't believe it. I sat there and I watched my client's money at about 200 million under management go down to like 30 million. Every single over the counterstock went to a dollar. Is this just because the market crashed or because people were pulling out? This is just, you couldn't even really pull out. Okay.

because they stopped answering the phones at the stock exchange because there were no buyers and nothing but sellers. And it was a combination of inflationary pressures, sound familiar, high interest rates sound familiar, all the things that are happening today.

The only reason this market is not crashed vehemently is because there's two reasons. One, it's an election year. Right. And the White House is controlled by the Democrats, and if they let the market go, they're going to be run out of Washington. So they figured out if we can keep everybody happy.

You know, the Democratic Party now is the party of the elite of the very rich. Just so you guys know, it's crazy. It's flip-flop from when I was growing up, when the Democrats were the liberals and they were, they represented the common man. And the Republicans were the elite. It's all just somehow flipped. It's crazy. I feel like the whole world went crazy when they locked me up. It did.

When I got out, it was just, it was insane, just having a normal time. You can't have a normal conversation with people. They're all nuts. Yeah. I'm constantly warned by my closest people who just shut your mouth because you are, there's politically correct, there's politically incorrect, and then there's you. There's you. You could wait the living dead.

That's what they tell me. Because I'm so authentic, crude. I'm old school. I don't know what happened. All of a sudden I became the old guy in the room. All my life in business, my lawyers, my accounts, my taxes, my advisors would say to me, Ross, you got to get a gray hair, a couple of gray hairs on your board because for optics, you know what I mean?

And all of a sudden, now I'm the gray hair, and everybody wants to be on their board. It's really funny. But that's what happens if you get lucky in life, right? Things flip-flop, right? You were a spokesman now. It used to be like a thief in the shadows. Now you're frigging out there with spotlights on you and on film and cameras, right? It's crazy.

Yes, it is very beautiful. It's strange. Can you see the smile? I just want you people to know, he doesn't have. a hair out of place. It's like unbelievable. I just want to touch it like a good looking boy. Let me just tell you something. And I tell a good looking boy, he's, I don't want to say how old you. I'm right. I'm 55. At I hop, you get a senior discount. Oh, listen, you know, it's funny we were driving by. My wife and I were, there's a like a community, like a really nice community.

I said, I said, man, I said, we ought to move in there. And she goes, she said, that's retirement community. And I said, oh, okay. And she says, we can move in there, by the way. And I went, why, she was 55 and out. 55 and over. And I was like, yeah, but you can't. She's, no, no, I get, she says, I can because I'm married. She's grandfathered in.

Right. She goes, I'm grandfathered in. The bad news is the next place is the old age home. You know, I have an AARP. Was it? AARP. I had the card. When I got the card, because I got it for the free whatever, towing or whatever.

And this is when, and I've had it. So when my wife saw one day, I pulled it out. she went, oh my God. She was like, do you really happen? It's so crazy. Right? Getting older. Because she's 18 years younger than me.

I hope so. Yeah. That's the way to do it. Mine is 16 years ago. Exactly. That's, you know. I get it. I don't know what these guys are thinking.

You know. Your wife's your same age? They're living in old age home. What are you doing? Yeah, exactly. You have to trade her in at some point? Does she take her teeth out at night? I'm just wondering.

I'm curious. Oh, God. So let's get back to Wall Street. now the crash happens. All the illusions that I sort of my addictions allowed me to live were being stripped for me. I no longer had all this money. I'll never forget, I still had like $3 million.

And I thought I was broke. In this world, you know what, you know what flat broke means? You're down to your last million. But I felt way under. I felt like I was flat broke right after that crash. I was it. And in 1988, I discovered. What's going on? And I thought it was one of the greatest schemes in history.

And I spent the next year doing some clinical testing. Right. And I smoked. And I had to move neighborhoods because all the street people would come up and wait outside my luxury apartment. And I had to literally leave the neighborhood because I couldn't even go out without a bunch of, you know, fat girls called Wanda. Ross, Ross. I got a dime. You know, like all these different things

and crazy people in my life. And I just, I switched firms a few times. Now, the funny thing is, I did get October 1st, 1987, I resigned from D.H. Blair. I had some sort of instinct or sixth sense that something was wrong. Things were getting a little crazy

and people were still chasing me because now I'm a million dollar producer. I'm doing millions in business and I'm supporting deals on the market. And Prudential-based securities made me an offer. They offered me $350,000 up front and the offer to take my whole business in and protect me legally.

And I just had a very uncomfortable feeling as all I could say. And I left D.H. Blair and I went to work at Prudential, October 1st, 1987. and October 19, 1987, my customers haven't even been transferred over yet. We didn't have like the kind of computing we have now. Everything had to be done with mail, snail mail, and processing, back office stuff and this and that. And October 19th, 1980s, all my customers stuff, including my own stuff, because I had a big account, was in transit.

You couldn't buy. You couldn't sell. And that Monday we came in and the stock market traded. down and it just kept going down and it kept going down and you're waiting for the mail you're waiting for the mail to arrive but literally and i had i watched 200 million dollars turn it to like 20 million or less but you couldn't buy or sell because first of all i didn't even have the positions there secondly the stock exchange all the traders the floor traders just said there was no buyer so they just stopped answering the phone literally literally so you couldn't even sell my customers is screaming

could sell you got to sell the market i said i don't want to talk to i'm on hold i'm I'm on hold, I'm on hold. Nobody answers the phone. And this went on for almost a week. So the Dow was at 2000 roughly. It went down 520 points in one day. Now, today they have all kinds of measures, emergency measures. As a result of this event, the market can never just go down 25% again. They would stop at it. They have circuit breakers that come in if it goes down 10%,

and if it goes down 15%, they'll let us shut the market down. Right. Then the government will get involved. But this was, nobody ever seen anything like this. Nobody knows what was going to happen. I mean, a guy named Edgar, a lovely black guy who was my only friend at this prudential office. He had a big office next to me. And between us, there was a plexiglass wall.

And he was sitting like this over his desk. And I just thought he was, you know, he passed away. He had a heart attack during this. All his money, all his family's money was in the market. And he died at his desk and no one knew for hours. Oh, wow. No one who's like really until the end of the day when we all went out and commiserated with each other. And he was sitting there.

And he just, he literally lost everything. How old is he? He was only like 50, a young guy. Young at the time, you know, he was older to me. Yeah. I was 30. Yeah. You know, it's more than a half a lifetime ago.

So I sort of wandered aimlessly through the industry. I couldn't find my footing. And how long was this? For a few months. In 187 through 88, I was giving up on the market. I lost my belief that the stock market was real. And I was going to go, my brother lived in Israel. I was going to go to Tel Aviv and buy a disco for $100,000.

I actually entered into a contract. This was my big solution. I'm going to go and I'm going to just take it easy, easy does it and go to Israel, and I'm going to own a discotheque, because I'm still getting high, and there's a lot of beautiful Israeli women. and they left the party there and you could buy a whole huge place

at that time for $100 grand and I had the money and a guy named Stephen Sands calls me up he was him and his brother Marty Steven Sands, the Sands brothers were given the franchise to open up a New York office

of a place called Rodman Renshaw which was an old line a Chicago institutional firm publicly trade on the stock exchange very sort of quiet classy type firm. That changed pretty quick when they came to New York.

So the Sands brothers had this office, the franchise, this office. They were managing it. And they went to all the headhunters and said, we need some real guys. We need some big guys. We'll spend some money with you.

Who can we get this? I think Ross Mendeau is available. And I had a big reputation, believe it or not. You still had a good reputation? It did. After just... I'm going to tell you funny stories. Meandering for...

In 1990, I got sober. I went to a 28-day program. I went to rehab, and I came back into the industry completely clean, and nobody wanted to hide me. You weren't fun anymore. Correct. I was a freak. If you were in AA in 1990, you were considered a freak.

I considered you a freak. I thought that. I didn't go to rehab. When they wanted me to go to a meeting, and meanwhile, I'm tested positive for 11 different drugs, 11 different substances. I was called a, the guy's called me a garbage head. and I was a poly substance abuser.

I thought that was classy. When I got back from the doctor, they said to me, you were garbage head. I was insulted. It's all in marketing. It's all the way you're expressing, right? It's how you frame things. You know, we know that today.

But back in the day, who knew? But I get clean and nobody wanted to touch me. One firm took me in and gave me a $5,000 a month draw. These firms were throwing a half a million dollars at me, $350,000. It was nothing. But they love big balls. Ross Mandel, we're going drinking.

We're going to go party. We're going to get some blow. We're going to hit the clubs, the limo. I was taking private jets in 1985 and 1986. There were no rappers doing that at that time. It was me and a bunch of billionaires. And I met a bunch of clients on private jets. I'd spend $100,000 flying down to the Boka Beach Club for the weekend with a bunch of guys,

a couple of working girls, you know, rent out a bunch of cabanhas. On me, stupidity, right? And just drinking and snorting and hanging out. But so I go to work for the Sands Brothers. He talks, he's a great salesman, this guy, slicker than slick. It talks me out of buying this discotheque. And I go and I start learning the risk arbitrage game. So it's another stop where I was able to gain a lot of knowledge.

And this is when I come to the attention of Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and all that. What is risk arbitrage? Risk arbitrage is so back in those days, you had a lot of people, you had Mike Milken created these junk bonds, right? These debentious, these debt instruments. So companies could raise all kinds of money, okay? And some of these had very risky rate, low ratings, so they called them junk. Okay. but all this debt that these companies,

he created this whole market for it. So you're a company and you want to buy, or you're a guy, you want to buy U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel's trading at $30. You make an offer for $40 a share. But contingent on getting approval from the board or the shareholders, right? There's going to be a vote.

So the stocks are 32. It goes to like 37. There's a $40 offer, but it has, they might have even accepted it. but it has not been approved by all the shareholders and all that. Okay. There is a risk, a chance it might not go through. But if you buy the stock at 37 and you've done your research and you hold it,

you know you're going to get 40 as long as it doesn't fall apart. That's risk arbitrage. Okay. me an example. They said, Europe was a very settled place. And when the, when the explorers came to the New World and they were met at the river, at the East River, by all the traders and the Indians and all that, there was, America was unexplored, really. And it was, there was an abundance of animals and furs and beaver and mink and fox. And there were just, there were pelts everywhere. And in Europe, there was already fashion there.

There were no animals left because they had already basically, it had evolved. Right. You know what I'm saying? So it was hard to find a mink coat. They would trade 12 mink skins for like a bottle of alcohol, you know, and a couple of beads, the Indians like, whatever. And so they would take, buy the pelts here for nothing and bring them to Europe and sell them for real money. Right. So that's, you see, you're taking advantage of an economic dislocation caused by a lack of supply, increased demand, all these different things.

So no one cared about the pelts in the new world because they were all over it. You just go to the woods, an animal. Skin it, you got yourself a pelt. In Europe, in Paris, in London, these things were expensive commodities. And that's arbitrage, taking advantage of an economic dislocation. So is it almost like, so basically it makes me think of like an option. Like, I'll buy your thing for, you know, I'll buy your stock for $40, but you've got to give me nine months to try and put this deal together.

If not, well, then you walk away and I walk away. And if it works out, well, then here's your 40 bucks. It's something like that. You know, it's, it's, you know, there's a real generality, but it's taking advantage of the different markets. Okay. You know, in one market, you're a seller. Okay.

And I'm a buyer. That's what makes markets, right? You want to get out. And I think it's time to get in. So, you know, we both have different perceptions. And it's the same kind of thing in the stock market. So, you know, I made a bid. I'm general dynamics.

I made a bid for Lockheed Martin. The stock goes up 10 points, but it's still three or four points below the deal because the deal hasn't happened yet. Right. So what's the risk? And then there's ways to measure the risk. And then you then represent it to investors. You want to make a quick 8%, you want to make a quick 12%.

you want to make a quick 14% on your money. It's like, it's just every, all returns are attached to some sort of risk. Right. In the financial game. So you have real money. And remember during COVID, interest rates were basically zero. Right. You know, mortgages were 2, 3% at some point.

So imagine if I can show you how you could make 12% right on a deal with a little risk. You'll say, all right, I've got 10 million for you. So, so you start doing this? I'm learning this game. I'm building a business, and I tried to sort of clean up my act. I knew at this point I had a problem with drugs, and especially, and I just can't stop. I would go like a week without it, and then I'd wake up. All of a sudden I'd come to, and I'd be in my house with an eight ball, and I'm sniffing,

and I'd missed two days of work, and I just couldn't stop. And it got to the point where my addictions were so bad, I could no longer go to work. I lost my ability, my edge to trade, to talk to customers and all these different things. I had a tremendous anxiety, had tremendous fear, all these things that all my life didn't bother me. And so I decided I'm going to go get help. Okay. And so I voluntarily, with the help of friends, check into the Silver Hill Foundation, which is an incredible hospital rehabilitation center in New Canaan, Connecticut. And that's very fancy.

Yeah, I was going to say, is this kind of place that they bring you? $1,000 a day. Truman Capote used to go there. In fact, I stayed in the Truman Capote suite. Joan, the famous, you know, the author, the literary guy. The literary guy, true. They did a show and a book about him. Yeah, yeah.

And sure of Capote is. Yeah, he won't put a prize. And Joan Kennedy used to go there and dry out a couple of months a year very quietly. And so if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for Kennedy. It's good enough for Ross Manda. So I make sure I get in the best room. I had an American Express card, had great insurance. And the Wall Street firm I was at said, we want you to go.

Yeah. Like, everybody was like, you got to go. I mean, the bars that I hung out with after we got clean, the manager would run over to me. And they say, oh, I think we all prayed for you. Thank God you. I used to play in a mafia run a poker game. We used to play pinocco poker gin for big money. And I used to play with guys like Mickey Rourke.

And, you know, it was all night stuff in Manhattan. They have little apartments they set up. and you go and there's drugs, alcohol, women, people, and you play in these crazy games. Even the mafia said to me, we don't know whether they can you or offer you help. Because I would rent bills of $100,000, but I had that kind of credit with them because I always paid.

And so even they said, we don't know what to do to help you or to kill you because you're a problem. And so finally I go, I get help. Now, I didn't go to get well. Right. I wasn't that far gone in my head, you know. I just knew that I needed to dry out for a little bit and figure out my next move

because life was becoming very difficult. You know, in the program, they call it the 12 steps, right? Everyone knows the program of recovery, A-A-N-A-C-A, the 12 steps of recovery. And the first step says, we knew that we had a problem with alcohol or drugs and that our lives had become unmanageable. I don't know about the problem part.

I knew I had trouble with some drugs, but I knew my life was unmanageable. It was either pay my, file my taxes, we'll go to rehab. That's what I come down to when. And I said, I can't do it. I can't do my taxes. I'm going to rehab. So I go in and I tell them, I think I have a problem with drugs specifically. I just can't stop.

But that's it. I just want to dry out. And they like had a good laugh. They take my blood. They take my urine. They take my hair. and they put the hair under an electron microscope. Apparently, I came back,

I tested positive for 11 different substances, and they were so panicked about the level in my, the toxicity in my blood, it took them 21 days to detox me. And I had a couple of seizures. But when I went there, I just wanted to go to a place where there was no, no happy hour.

Right. No open bar, no hookers, no limo drivers, all that kind of stuff. And so after my first week, I'm already detoxing. I'm starting to heal. And they knock on my door and they say, Mr. Maynard, come on, everybody's going to a meeting.

I said, really, I'm a little tired because I'm detoxing, you know. And I say, what kind of meeting? They said, oh, it's AA. All the people from the neighboring towns, Greenwich, Connecticut, New Cana, this was in New Canaan, Dariate, Connecticut, fancy, high-end, wealthy areas, all these recovering alcoholics come to the institution every Tuesday and Thursday night. in there's different meetings. I said, well, A.A. is not for me. They said, we really want you to comment. It's strongly urged. I said, sir, listen, I'm a New York stockbroker.

I live on East 63rd Street. I'm a big guy. I'm not going to go with these people. Yeah, you go there and you realize that you probably know 20 people there. And some of the big, probably recognize half the people there. You're like, holy shit. There's a word. They call it grandiosity. I suffered from real grandiosity. Lack of humility. All the things we talked about earlier. And they said, you have to go. And I said, I'm not going. Now it became pushed to come to show. I said, I'm just not going. What are you going to do? Make me? They called security. And I saw that. It got very serious. These two big guys show up,

Mr. Mandel. Come on. All right. All right. So I go. And by the time I go, the room's packed with like 150 people, 130 people, a big number, big room, fancy. And there's like only a few chairs left in the front row. But when I walked into the room, I noticed something. Everybody's eyes were open and clear. And everybody looked you're right in the eye. They had like this clarity thing going. And everybody was hugging each other.

And everybody was really genuinely happy to see each other. Like there was joy on people's faces. And I hadn't felt this way in the inside or the outside for many, many years at this point. I was just living in my little world when I was basically miserable. And like what they say in the program is when you started using drinking and using drugs,

you're like this, the top end of a funnel. And if you really suffer from this disease of addiction, of alcoholism, et cetera, the funnel starts getting smaller and small. And what started out glamorous and fun ended up becoming, you didn't do drugs because you wanted to. You did them because he needed.

to. You didn't drink because you wanted to. You drank because you had to. It's a very bad position to be in. And so I'm sitting there and there's a speaker and it's a guy. That's the way he looked like you. Handsome, clean, you know, uh, uh, elegant. I mean, a real guy. And, uh, he's telling his story with such utter confidence and poise. And it hits me in the middle of his qualification. He's, I feel like he's telling my story. And this whole thing has been engineered to try and get me to, to join this. You do have granularity, don't you? I am sick as, I am so nuts sick. And I really believe this. And then, you know, it's all well and good. And then they start passing a basket. I mean, everyone, you put a dollar in it too, you put whatever you

want it, but people, most people put a dollar in, but it's not a requirement. So then I'm starting to calculate how many meetings there are in the area and how many dollars is. This is really just a for-profit scam. You know, I'm thinking of all these things. Barely covers the coffee. Correct. The amount of money. I had, I, I've come to understand how sick I was.

I was really well off the deep end. So you're doing, you're doing everything to figure out what the scam is and not realizing these people all just have a common interest of staying clean. What I have discovered in my life since then, is that if you look for bad in this world, you look for drugs, you look for trouble, you're going to find it. Yeah.

The universe is going to respond like this. Come on. This is so much bad, so much darkness. On the other side, if you're looking for goodness, good people, humble people, well-meaning people, people that are willing to give of themselves

for nothing, no return, you'll find like this. It's even great. greater than the negative. There's so much goodness in this world. But the thing was, so I get out of, I finish a 28-day program, I'm clean. I'm now missed the program. I am now addicted to the program like I was addicted to drugs and alcohol.

I'm determined I'm going to stay clean. And when I go back to Manhattan, they tried to keep me there. I was released against medical advice. They said, Mr. Mandel, there's no chance you're going to stay clean. Right. You're going right back to your apartment, to your life. Forget it. You're doomed.

We want you to stay 90 days. Now, listen, I had great insurance and I had American Express card. I had no other money. I was in a million dollars in debt at this point. But I said, no, I've got to get back to life. I'm determined. We made a big plan. So when I get released, they drive me right into the city.

And they take me to an AA meeting. I'll never forget it's called Midtown, Park Avenue and 60th Street. It was like on a Saturday night. that was released on a Saturday. And I stood up at the beginning of the minute of me and I said, my name is Ross, no last names, in front of a room full of stranger, 50, 60 people in that.

I just got released from drug rehab. I was at Silver Hill for 28 days. I live in Manhattan. I don't know anybody in this city that's sober. Everyone I know is a drug addict, a drug user, is someone I drink with or a prostitute or a limo driver. or troublemaker. If any of you will be kind enough

to give me your phone numbers, at least I'll have somebody to reach out and call if I have an issue or I have a problem. 15 people came running over to me. Call me, call me, call me, call me, call me, call me, call me, putting their arms around me, bro, it's going to be okay. Women being so nice, me, I'm like, what? I could have, I never seen anything like it.

That went from 6 to 7. At 10 o'clock, I was taken to the 7th Street Workshop, First Avenue at 7th Street in the church basement there. Big meeting, very famous. I watched that next to Elton, John there, Alec Bold. I'm not supposed to name names because it's anonymous, but all kinds of famous, famous people, the most famous go there. And again, I stood up and I said, I don't really know it. I just went to a meeting at 6.

It was released from rehab. My name is Ross. I'm an alcohol addict. I need help. If anybody's want to maybe take me out for coffee or give me their first. phone numbers, it would mean a lot to me because I really have no life. I want to create a sober life for myself. And like, again, 15 people come running over to me, including a bunch of women. Three of those women, I ended up in serious relationships with over the next two years.

I mean, you're not supposed to date anybody for the first year. I said over the next two years, but that's true. And the truth is, you're not supposed to get involved with them. You can have sex, but you're not supposed to become emotionally involved. Okay. I didn't. I don't. I, I, I, I, I, Listen, I violated that rule anyway. Yeah, I was going to say. But that's a legitimate rule. It was you're not emotionally on solid ground yet. Yeah.

And then the two of you end up using together a few. Oh, I know a bunch of guys that are. My dad was in AA. It was the only time he ever got sober. Yeah. And this is after going to rehab, after rehab, after re-get-out. You know, because they don't all, the only ones that ever seem to work are the ones that are tied into AA.

Right. The ones that, no, no, we don't do AA. We do this and the stop, stop. You know, then he's drinking again within a month, you know, or it's fine, when they finally ended up going to this one program that was tied directly into AA, and that was their support group after. And he did like 60 days or 90 days. He did a ton of time in this one because they, they'd stay farm at the company work for it. They put them in through so many. They were like, this is the last one.

That was a maniac, too. Two things hook me on AA. Okay. And I want to say it for the crowd so they know. First of all, people don't know. Alclaw's Anonymous is the name of a book that was published in 1935. They call it the big book. And it was written by Bill Wilson, who is a New York stockbroker.

And Dr. Bob, who is a physician, a medical doctor from Macburn, Ohio. I'm reading about Bill's story. It's the first story in the book. And Bill is a New York stockbroker. I'm a New York stockbroker. Right. How could I not, you know, go for this? I felt God was talking to me.

God was talking to me. And right away, I connected through that. But more importantly, even before the first chapter, which is Bill's story, is a preface. And these guys were smart. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, the guys that wrote the book, was smart. They knew that it's just a book. they figured the only way they're going to get real recognition it's going to be respected is if they got a medical opinion.

And so what they did is they created this program and they got over 100 people sober. And then they went to the medical doctor and they showed the medical doctor, their medical records and everything else. And this was one of the most famous medical doctors in the world at this time, renowned worldwide out of Europe. And he said, I don't know what to say, basically.

But with these people, when they put alcohol or drugs in their system, a mental obsession is triggered. Somewhere in their brain. They're like an allergy to it. And they just can't stop drinking. That's what they think about it and infiltrates it. And that the change, it's a spiritual solution, is remarkable. And so the book is really about what Bill and Bob went through, what they did, this program, how they stayed so. where they were the first two guys in AA.

They created it from nothing. And the story, it's a book of 150 pages of stories of the first 100 people that got sober. So I went to Silver Hill. The medical doctors wrote an opinion in this book in 1935. And it's still, a lot of people still think, well, you know, you people have no self-control. You have no self-discipline.

I can stop drinking. I don't need the meetings of the program. And, you know, we say, What part of your sick brain are you going to use to fix your sick brain? But let me tell you how I discovered alcoholism and drug addiction is really a disease. When I went away, it was $1,100 a day at the Silver Hill Fathers, probably is much or more now. My insurance company paid for it. Insurance companies don't pay you because you're weak.

It's a weakness. You have no self-discipline self-control. They pay because it's a disease. You're sick. Right? You can't, the insurance company is not going to pay a bill if it's not a medical issue, right? It's got to be certified, et cetera. They pay. And so that made me realize I'm sick. I'm not soft. I'm not weak. You know, because all my life I was told, you know, you have to be a man. You know, you don't tell, you don't talk about your feelings. You don't, you know, cry, you act hurt. You know, if, if, if your life's not going right. take responsibility. Don't ask for help. What kind of man asked for help? My life changed instantly when I stood up in those rooms that first night and said, my name is Ross. I need help. My life changed. And, you know, since 1990, I've helped thousands, and I'm not exaggerating,

of people. I've helped them get sober. I've sponsored them. I've run meetings and sponsored meetings, all these good things. It's part of my story. And you see the light go on in some people's eyes. And there are people very close to me, by the way, that suffer from this disease. And, you know, you have to use what's called tough love. And I'm waiting for a couple of them, specifically one family member, to say, can you help me? He won't. And I'm watching him spiral into the abyss. I went to prison for nine years and four months. I've been fighting the government, the FBI rated my place in 06. It's 2014.

I'm still on probation. I had to get permission to come here and sit with you. Right. To leave my district. He goes, let me get this straight. You're asking the probation office. You're currently on special supervision for fraud. You want us to approve you leaving the district and going to see this guy, Matt Cox, and they

pull up your website. It says, I'm a liar of three. if I'm a criminal, I'm a fraudster. I rob banks, institutions, and other people. You want us to give you permission to sit with this guy? I said, well, since you put it like that, I understand the... Sounds a little crazy. Right, but you know what?

Because I'm transparent and I said, listen, this is part of my healing, my recovery, I'm coming back into the community. I'm an educator now. I want people to hear me speak and to hear my story, I'm sure just like you do. Yeah. And you're helping people now.

You know, I hate to say it, even though he looks like a kid, he's not a kid. You know, you get to special at IHOP. The senior discount. Oh, my God. You know what I'm saying? You're no longer a young man. You know, middle age.

Me, I'm almost 70, so I'm an old guy. Middle age makes you sound like I have at least half as much time left as I've had. And I don't think that's true. Well, you know, you don't count the first 10 years because you were trying. then you didn't really understand anything. And you can't count your last 10 years because by then you'll be in diapers, you don't really understand that either.

And then there's 10 that I was missing. Yeah, hopefully you kept us a little younger. But so to me, the 12 steps would answer for me. You take 12 steps. Can I ask you a question? Sure. You went from basically meeting to meeting to meeting

because you just didn't want to basically go home and be alone. Is that what you were afraid? If I go home, I'm going to... That's part of it. But, you know, I love what, you know, I'm in the program now 35 years. And I see guys, when I was early, I would see guys, you know, they go to meetings every day. Yeah.

And I would say, you have like 35 years sober, right? And they said, 40. Right. I said, you mean to tell me you've been sober for 40 years? But you still come to this meeting every day. He goes, yep, can you explain to me why? Because I was new in the program. I figured I just do a couple of meetings and that's, I'm good.

Right. And he said, you know what, Ross, it's a funny thing. You know, over the years I've come to realize that I only need two meetings a year to stay clean. Only two. I said, so why do you come every day? And he looks me in the eye and he says, because I never know which two they're going to be. And, you know, there's so much wisdom in some of these things. I mean, this guy's looking at me in the eye.

He says, I don't know which two I need. You know, A.A. is, you know, alcoholism addiction is a disease centered in the middle. of your brain. And just when you think you got this thing beat or you got this thing, like you're acting out, even if it's not with alcohol, you're acting out in certain ways. And, you know, I've come to understand that it's become a big part of my wife. And I would say to you that aside for my children, it's the most precious thing in my life. But I wouldn't have children, if not for it. Because when I went into Silver Hill, one of the reasons I got clean. I gave you a bunch of reasons that are like superficial in a way. But the big thing was,

I'll never forget, I was invited to a big, a party. A friend of mine got married and he was having a party at his house, a wedding at his house and all these different things. He just bought a house and he, and this guy was a guy from my high school. He was just a nothing type of guy, regular guy. And by my standards, I've come to know he's a beautiful. man. But by my standards, he had like a regular job. He was making like 70,000 a year. It worked for people. It wasn't his own boss, whatever. And he married a social girl. She's not, she wasn't great looking or anything. And it turns out she's a beautiful person. But I was very superficial. Right. I still am to a degree. That's a sick thing. And I'm invited, and this is an old

high school guy and a lot of my old high school friends have done, I want to show off. It's very important that they thought that I was cool and I was the man and all the stuff. Right. So I went out and I went shopping and I bought like a $10,000 outfit and it looked silly. And I didn't have any particular girlfriend

and all the women I knew were really cheap and everything else. But I found a girl from a strip club that I knew and I basically paid her to come with me. Cleaned her up. Don't talk about. I gave her some money for a dress. She connived me out of some money.

And I got in my Mercedes, my little two-seat of Mercedes, right? And I drive out to Long Island. and you know I want to talk about all the things I have or the money I make and all these different things and how hot you know Tiffany is over here and they're all like these lovely real people and there's kids are there and other friends have come with their kids and their wives and they know at best one of the couple of these guys that make like a hundred grand year I'm like a million puss a year and I'm miserable and I'm insecure and I'm anxious and I see them like hugging and kissing each other, like they really care about each other, and they're laughing. And I'm staring at Tiffany with her, you know, fake tits and all these different things. And I'm like, I felt like this big. And I wanted to make a big splash because nobody gives a shit.

Everybody's got their own world. And these people crafted a nice world. You know, today they have, you know, they have a, you know, four-bedroom house in the middle of nowhere on Long Island, which is now probably worth $3 million or $2 million. They paid for, like, you know, they paid $200 for. you know, 35 years ago. Right. And they have, you know, 2.2 kids, and they have two cars. They probably take two weeks vacation a year,

and they're happy, and they have grandchildren, all these different things. And I knew that I needed help. I was jealous of their life, and I could have bought everything there, but I just wouldn't. And I knew I was up. And that started thinking,

me what's wrong with me i couldn't understand what's wrong with me i wasn't normal like and i i you know i in my mind is like you know you have to be if you want to really be a big earner you want to be a a big wall street guy you got to make sacrifices that was bullshit right i just made excuses what's the word you use before justified yeah justify right you know you're not taking a hundred grand off a guy you know mortgage company's gonna take care of me he's the banks are stealing anyway so what the hell right that's what we do so i ended up getting clean coming back into Manhattan. And then the funniest thing happened. Ross Mandel was now clean, clear. I just want to go to work. I owe a million dollars. I got to pay back this money. I got to everyone

saying, no, no, no, you declare bankruptcy. You write it all off. That's what everybody does. But now I'm into the program. I'm going to be honest. I'm not going to, I am too frightful now to go into bankruptcy even though it was a smart move. Right. I went to work. Nobody would hire me. Yeah, I was going to say, nobody wants to hire you now. No, companies that I took public, wouldn't eye me. Are they not wanting to hire you because you're clean or because you were in so much debt or because you... I had a lot of complaints pending. I got into a lot of trouble and I did an interview with Forbes and I was honest with them.

That was a mistake. You have to be honest with a journalist. You know, I said, you know, I was one of the bad boys of Wall Street in the 80s. So this is you did the Forbes. article after you got out of rehab. I was already clean. I was public all these things. And you said, I'm going to do it. Next thing you know, I'm the bad boy. No, no. What's happened to me, when you go to Wall Street, the first thing they tell you is make your money, lay low, stay humble. Any press is bad press. And they were right. But I, I'm a big personality. I was whacked out.

And still, I managed to stay out of the press. But I got in a lot of trouble along the way. But I was a big earner. So the, just like athletes, get in trouble or movie stars, the studios take care of them. They have connections and they get the best lawyers and this and that. So up until I got clean, I had people taking care of me, all these Wall Street firms, right? But I was racking up a serious amount of issues, you know, customer complaints, arbitrations and all that. And when I went to get clean, Rodman Renshaw did some The people that ran Robin Redford did some bad things to me. And I got blamed for them.

I was in lockdown rehab, but the customers just complained, and they named me. And then the firm went against me. I ended up suing the firm, and several years later, I collected big money from them. But they basically put all these complaints on my record and said, he's a bad guy. He's a drug addict. He went to recovery. It's the same people that told me to go for help, then use that against me. Okay.

And so now I've got a bunch of complaints, parents. and, and, and, um, and, um, no job or no job prospects. No job, but, you know, the people that knew me the best that would have hired me were like, I don't understand. What do you mean you go to AA? What does that mean? Well, you know, I'm going to come in. I'm going to work.

You know, I'm a hard worker. Well, you know, the old loss was hard work. We don't know what you're going to do. And then you're going to go to AA from 12 to one at the Trinity Church. And you're going to come back and you're going to work. But then after work, you're going to go to AA again. What about when we have a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a. function, the front function, you're not going to have a drink? No, I don't drink. I don't

understand. People don't understand. What do you mean, not going to drink? Today, it's almost cool not to drink because it's unhealthy and it's full sugar and all these different things. People looked at me funny, and I felt funny. Right. I didn't know how to socialize without cocktails. I didn't. I didn't. I used to say it in that when I was in the hospital, I used to say, let me get this straight. I get married one day. I had no prospects, but I was just trying to be argumentative. Yeah, yeah. telling me that I'm not going to have champagne in my own wedding? And they would say, no. And it just so happens that I met the girl of my dreams. And I ended up getting married to her. And we

had Martinelli's apple cider at a wedding. And she doesn't have a problem, but she doesn't like alcohol. She has one sip and she starts yawning. I'm tired. I'm drunk. Right. One sip. She likes to be completely in charge of her faculties. So it's, but in my mind, everybody drinks. There's no such thing as life without alcohol. Right. And so I used to, for, for, for, for, for, for, you know, for, about two years, I used to keep alcohol in my apartment and drugs. Because that's how I connected to women and stuff. And I used to go out and I used to tell the waiter, if I told the girl a meter at 8 o'clock at this place, I'd go at 7.30.

And I tell the waiter and I tell the bartender, listen, I want you to give me like ginger ale in a glass. It looks like scotch or alcohol. And I'm going to ask for, you know, scotch and soda. You're just going to bring me ginger ale. So I actually put on a whole show, you know, I went through this whole thing. Right. I couldn't, I felt very strange.

And I realized that when my father died, I was 16. I had one girlfriend and two girlfriends prior to that. I had never done one single thing as an adult where I wasn't stoned or under the influence of something. All of a sudden, I'm 33 years old, and I have to call call again, and I have to go on dates with women. I've never been with a woman since I'm 15 years. years old and when you're a kid, it's different. Without alcohol or some sort of drug. So it's like, what?

I mean, I was lost a little bit. And I was reliving life, like feeling everything. And it was very scary. And I had nowhere to hide for my field. I didn't sleep for one year. When I tell you, I didn't sleep more than two hours in a year. I was taking 20, 10 milligram volume every day at the year. the last couple of years, just to take the edge off.

People said to me, the edge off what? I said, I was stopped. I was on all these drugs for so long. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And they teach in the program, it's a progressive disease. You know, more is better. So I'll make a long story short. I finally get a job.

A bunch of guys hired me that I work with the DH player. Okay. The same guy that hired Judy Belford originally. Right. The name is Michael Fork. Today he's a billionaire. Has his own island in Palm Beach. Helicopter in his backyard.

You know, mansion in New York City, mansion in Chicago. On the cover of Palm Beach Magazine, you know, that kind of thing. Great guy, very successful. And he was making $500 grand a month back in 1986 and 1987. So Michael, shout out, bro. Sorry, I'm giving you up like that. And he's the one that brought Jordy, Belford in is a co-caller back at 44 Wall Street at D.H. Boyle. And my boy, Stevie Frifer, was like

his best friend and a partner. Stevie's one of my partners now and one of my closest friends. Throughout my whole bid, he was there for me. Nice. You know the value of that, right? Oh, yeah. So I never had to worry. Before you got here, I was finishing up a letter to a guy that I just ordered a book for online because he'll write me up, hey, how's everything good? I sent him pictures when my wife and I just went to Bay Vegas, print the pictures out, because I know that's important, sent those to him. He's a night? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, he'll be out in a few years. You're a good man. I've done that with a bunch of people. Listen, I don't know anybody. Colby's the only person I know and hang out with that hasn't been to prison. Right. Even Wade.

Well, Wade only did a couple days, right? Because they eventually dropped his chargers. But, yeah, all my friends are guys that are in time. I understand. And that's a crazy world we live in. that that's so many people right it used to be that around the time that i got clean right 1990 you know if you were charged with a federal crime you don't want nothing to do with you everybody today it's almost where it's trendy i mean you know it's like we're making we got

a true crime podcast everyone wants me they'd tell me okay i just did this podcast that podcast you know ian bick this one now everybody wants to talk to me and this and that they want me to do tv and all these things. And I'm like, bro, I'm still in probation. Relax. I need permission to do anything. You can imagine I'm a probationer going to Las Vegas. They said, Mandel, this is the one town with probation is really not allowed most of the time. Could you pick like another city? I said, Brad Lee is in Vegas. What do you want me to do? I, you know. Five years, I did the exact same thing. I'm right. I'm filling out my travel request. Correct. Where are you going to go? Who's picking up? What kind of car? Where are you going to go? Who's picking up? What kind of car? Where

You staying. Of course. Who's paying for it? They want to everything. I'm like, I got, mine was, they needed at least 10 days, I think is what I got it. Mine is 14. So I always give 21 days. Oh, okay.

So yeah. So yeah. So yeah. So yeah. I'm freaking, you know. It's always got to be work related, you know. Yeah. And on my probation officer, I'd explain why doing the podcast was work related.

Correct. I have a book. This is how I sell my book. This is how I pay my restitution. Now, if you don't want me to pay my restitution, I understand. No, no. No, no, no, no. I had a similar conversation about coming here today.

Yeah. So it's about, but it's also by getting our stories out, bro. Yeah. You see, we don't have to go out and commit new crime. There were always, there's, we're law-abiding citizens right now. We're doing the right thing. And if you're listening to this or watching this, understand you don't have to make the same mistakes we made. Make new mistakes. No.

You know, but be on the right side of the game. You know, the one thing I always said, you don't want to get indicted. Because once you're indicted, you're pretty much toast in this country. Yeah. The government never since we're sorry, oops, we made a mistake. We spent a lot of money researching you, and we found out that you're really innocent. It doesn't work that way. You know, once they get your name, you're done, you're toast, okay, unless you become a disgusting informant and they keep you out in the world.

And you're just those bastards. Rating people out and carving them up, right? But it's, you know, it's in scripture to be that sort of guy is a fate worse than death. Oh, it's the worst. In the next life, you're finished. So you're rot in hell. So now I'm living a righteous life. Okay.

I'm working. These people hire me. They're so unsure about me. They offer me $5,000 for two months. And I have no money. Right. I owe a million dollars. I literally had $4,000.

$1,000 cash. I'd be evicted for my apartment. But, you know, I'm a crafty guy. Right. And I'd done a lot of good when I was wealthy and when I was rolling, I took care of a lot of people. I helped a lot of people. Most people that a take has disappeared. Yeah. They say when you're buying drinks, everybody's with you. As soon as you're not buying, the bar's empty. But there were some people that are good people that remember what you did. And I mentored a lot of guys on Wall I'm credited in some books with being, you know, there's one one book that's out. They talk about the history of Wall Street, and they talk about all the different guys that came into.

And they said, I'm credited with making more Wall Street millionaires than anybody else in history. Nice. I would never say that. But who would know such a thing? It's crazy. But I can tell you, Facebook is lit it with many, many millionaires today that worked for me, that I mentored, that I tutor that I took in. And so, you know, I know that I did have a great interest.

for wants on a lot of people. So when I needed help, and I learned how to ask for help, that was the big thing. Guys like us asking for help is a tough thing. I mean, he's really letting the world know you're not okay. And, you know, to us, image is very important, right? I mean, you've got to see his hair. I mean, I love it, bro. Image is everything, right?

And, you know, that's really crazy that I cared what people thought about me. And more than what I didn't even know what I thought about me. even thought about it. I just do, go, move. And so you got a job with the firm? I get a job within two months. I've opened up 75 accounts and my third month, because now I'm off draw and they want to get the money back. Yeah. I do $100,000 in business. Nice. Never go under. And now I'm the biggest producer. Now I'm taking down IPOs like the old days and I'm doing them, but now I'm sober. now I'm clean. And it was still weird at first

because I never made a cold call my life unless I was on something. Right. And I was always going to something, on something or recovering from something. And now I'm completely clear. And I find life easy. And I find the business easy.

When you're living with this stone all the time, life is much more difficult. I mean, everything's a hassle. Everything is, you know, you're losing your mind. But when you're, you know, when you're half in the bag and you're still getting shit done, when you're clear and you feel good. So I would basically work six days a week. I would get up five in the morning.

I was at the office no later than seven. I'm on the phone straight through to noon. At noon, I'm running to the meeting, the A.A. meeting down at Trinity Church, 12 to 1. On the way back, I grab a sandwich, a hot dog, something, and take it back to the office. Now I also decide to manage my diet. after work, I work the office till six, I leave the office, I go ahead up to the gym, I work out until about 8 o'clock, and I go to the Greek diner on 1st Avenue at 7th Street, and I have the house special because I have no money and I'm spending $10 a day for dinner.

And then I go to the meeting from 10 to 11 because I wasn't sleeping. And I would work out with weights five days a week and run five miles on the treadmill after the weightlifting workout. and I became like a house and I became like a machine. And I was very, very, it was very important for me to be the big guy again to get that back. Because I like that. And this guy that I just spoke to during the break, he was at the firm. It was a manager where they came back, you know, they hired me after my release from rehab.

And he went to work at another firm and he offered me a deal. I'll give you a half a hundred percent on your first half a million. Okay. Like Morty gave me on a million. And I said, okay, because now I know within six weeks I had, I earned that half a million. Nice. And then I was doing a few hundred thousand a month. And I discovered something.

When I came back into the business, I looked at the business. I looked at the industry. I started to, you know, my mind's working now. I'm thinking about other things besides women and drugs. And you're looking at a macro instead of a micro. And all the guys that were at my level before I crashed and burned, now had their own firms, their own hedge funds, ran banks, and I'm sitting here,

cold calling starting over again. And I was frustrated. I was frustrated. And I was really studying the industry and something appeared to me. Just like cold calling was approved in America, right? I told you in 1980, in the late 70s, early 80s, Wall Street met Main Street.

nobody was calling other parts of the world where they didn't have it. So, you know, I've learned over time the greatest wealth is created not by innovation, but by imitation. You take something that works and you bring it somewhere they don't have it.

Think about Starbucks in Russia. Think about Kentucky fried chicken in China. Think about McDonald's in France. We knew they were successful models here and just taking them somewhere, they don't have them. It's almost a guaranteed success. So there were parts of the world that spoke English that didn't have telemarketing securities like the United Kingdom. Right. London, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia.

They all speak English. I can communicate with them. Right. But nobody was calling them. Why? I did some homework and I found out how to make that legal. Right. I was going to say, are they allowed to buy stocks in American companies in the U.S.?

They are. Okay. They just never approached in that fashion. Okay. And each country has very specific criteria if you're going to solicit over the phone. Okay. Like it's illegal in the U.K. Unless certain things happen,

that we made happen. Okay. And we made it legit. Like it's a U.S. was like opening the company there? No, no, no. You just had to have certain documentation order. Oh, okay.

And once the prospect signed that documentation and returned it to you, then he's basically saying legally, I solicited you. You didn't solicit me. Okay. So you just have to disclose certain things to the person. Yeah, there are, there's just processes. Right. And it's always ongoing.

There's always new, like there's, and all of a sudden there was do not call us in America. So, you know, you've got to always stay ahead of it. But amazing, all these potential investors around the world, they speak my language. Right. Everybody's interested in making money. And nobody was calling them. So I began solely when I got clean.

In 91, I got clean. I started doing real business in America. And I said, this. 92, I started doing nothing but prospecting other parts of the world. Okay. Within a few short years, I was recognized as being, I was the number one exporter of United States investment opportunities. I had the most foreign customers of anybody in the country,

recognized by Wall Street Journal, by Forbes, all these different things. And at one point, I had 10,000 millionaires as clients, 10,000 accounts with me. And this was Sky Capital, which eventually they invited me for, which was a complete scam. They just wanted to steal my business. That's a whole other story. I hope we're going to get to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I'm really killing it.

And I opened up a brokerage firm. My first firm, I bought it for $2 million from a guy named Jerry Roth. And he was a horse breeder. He had a big house in Bedford, New York. He had like 30 stables, all these horses. And his favorite horses were the Roan color. I never heard of this, Roan. It's a color of a horse.

And so we called it Roan Capital. And my name is Ross. R.O. So everyone thought Roe, who's the A.N? You know, all these different things. People are funny. But it was just the name he picked because he was a horse breeder. And he was a limited partner at Spearleads Kellogg.

And he tried opening a firm. He was no good. I had no personality for it. I opened up this firm. I brought in three young men that I knew and mentored, gave them each 9.9%. Gave my attorneys 9.9%. And bam, I had the hottest small new boutique brokerage firm in New York. In less than 20 months, I make like $40 million.

And I sell out. That's the first time I retire. I should have stayed retired. Because at that firm, a young woman walks in, and I said, I'm going to marry that girl. She was a dream come true. I never spoke to her yet. But she walks off the elevator. She's wearing a cat suit one.

piece where this is a bit down thing built like nobody's business five foot six five seven she's wearing high heel shoes she looks like she's five 10 five 11 blue eyes that i saw from like 50 feet away real blonde built curvy the whole thing and sweet as sugar and uh so she worked for me i heard her right away she was don't you want to know my name i said you have one she said yeah it's not important she goes who am i going to work for us and you're working for me she was what am i going to do i said we'll figure it out and so you know i like to say you know she worked for the boss she slept with the boss and now she's the boss. All right.

That's just a story of my life. Now I open a firm. You sold it? I meet my future wife. You sold it? I sold it to the partners. And then I parked my business. I'm done.

I got plenty of money. I'm cool. I'm clean. I met this young chick. I'm in love. I want to start a life with her. So a couple of my friends owned an investment. I know everybody on the street.

You understand? I was a real. I did Wall Street. Stone and drunk. And then I did Wall Street. All Street, clean and married. So, like, I, you know, all the different pockets of, and so a couple of my friends board an investment bank, had it in a big Manhattan co-op, a Brownstone, right across the street

from my co-op, where I lived, and I could actually stare at the office from my window, in the middle of Manhattan, beautiful area. And so I had, when I sold the company, I had a 12-man team that just handled my business. And I was that bad. I had 12 guys just handling my business. And I wasn't selling my business. I just sold the firm. So I took my tall guys and parked them at this little brokerage firm called Thornwater.

Okay? My friends owned it. And they basically did one IPO a year, made like $20 million, and then they just took off the rest of the year. They would little do one deal a year. Right. They would go out for lunch for three hours every day. They would drinkers and scar smokers and really like a type.

So Stephanie and I traveled to the country. We have all kinds of fun. We ended up getting engaged. And we get married in 1998. My guys are at Thornwater. My 12 guys. I'm just really not working. And then one of my guys, my main guy,

who ran the group of 12, comes to me and says, listen, Ross, this is bullshit. We're working here. We're doing all the business, and we're giving half to these stoops that don't even come to work anymore. Right. They do one deal a year. And they're living off our money.

So let's just say, my team does a million dollars a month. $500,000 goes to Stonewater. The problem is Stonewood only had like five people. And they didn't do anything. So he's like, why are we giving them all this money? They don't do anything. And I said, well, you know, what do you want me to do?

They said, we want you to do what you did at Rone Capital. We want you to buy a firm and we'll run your firm. I said, I don't want to do that anymore. I did it already. It's too much. This is a lot of work. They said, well, we can't take this anymore. And they said, would you help me buy the firm?

buy a firm. I thought about it good and hard because this guy's a little bit of a dope. He didn't have what it takes. He's an okay number two guy, number three guy, but he just not a, he wouldn't want to be on a plane

if he was the pilot, let me just say. And he, but I agreed. And I helped him. I got him the lawyers. I structured the deal. I showed him how to raise the money. I helped him every step of the way.

Of course, years later, the federal government says, secretly owned Thornwater. Right, right. Why would I secretly do it? I absolutely owned Rhone Capital. I'm transparent. Why would I have to hide behind the scenes?

At that point, all my issues were cleared up. I had no issues, none. Right. I was in perfect standing everywhere. Perfect credit. Rich, everything, did everything by the book. Why would I secretly control Thornwood? Right.

Robert Grabowski owned Thornwater, ran Thornton, and she didn't have customers and ended up doing all kinds of frauds. And then they blame me. So what did I need to do this for? I'm a wealthy, retired type guy. The whole thing was disgusting and stupid. So, but I did the right thing to help the guy. You help the wrong guy and it comes back to bite you. That's the way it is. Because he did some very bad things, unbeknownst to me, I would never allow or approve it. And at trial, he even told, he said, I did this, Mandel didn't know anything about this. He cheated the widows and orphans fund from 9-11, stuff like that. We'll come. We'll kind of sleazy asshole would do something like that. He's making tons of money and he's lying on

forms and cheating and doing all kinds of bad stuff because he's he's petty-minded. He's stupid. He's small. I elevated him because he was attached to me. He did very well. But the second he went on his own, he sunk to his own level. I can't explain it. So that sounds like that does explain it. Yeah. I'm trying to be, uh, uh, but you know, the government. Said not was all Ross Mandel. Ross Mandel was retired and it made millions and was legit. But he was secretly doing these stupid things. So you helped him.

You said, okay, here's how you do it. He sets this thing up. Then these guys start running. They bring in extra people. They have you, but they're bringing in extra people. He raises, I showed him how to do it. I structured the deal for him. All I did was help, like a consultant.

And I got paid a consulting fee. And he raised a million dollars initially. And he bought the firm that he was at from my, guys, my friends, the guys that own the firm. Right. I paid them a million dollars. Now he owned the firm. And then he raised another $2 million. I showed him how to do that. And he used that money to run the firm and to get into a bunch of deals. At that time, my interest was, this is the end of the 90s now.

You remember the dot-com era. I don't know if he would. Yeah, I remember. You remember, he wouldn't remember it. You know, yeah. Basically any company that had, they just started adding dot com to the end of their, this was in the internet. It was just blowing up. And so everybody started coming up with these different schemes on how you're going to make tons of money on the internet or they were, you didn't even know what they're doing. They're just adding dot com to the name of their company and people are, well, there was a lot of fraud, but there was a lot of real companies. Right, right? Like Amazon was a bookseller. Jeff Bezos raised a million dollars from 44 guys. Everyone said, no, it couldn't raise a million dollars and he started selling

books online. So imagine the beginning of the internet, anything, and now all the frauds just came around because all these companies were going from zero with no sales to, you know, worth a couple hundred million dollars. Right. So the frauds has just said, you know, dot com and they put that on the market. And that's the way the game is. I mean, when they invented the automobile, there was like 150 car companies. Right.

How many survived? Yeah. Okay. It's the same thing with the die. Any, any, this AI is now a big deal, right? AI is going to change the world, for real. As much as the Internet did, as much as the cell phone did, as much as the personal the computer did. I promise you, there's going to be four or five winners in AI, and there's

going to be 50 people that go to zero. That doesn't make it fraud or a scam. You don't know until the natural order of things. Right. It's everybody, every hustling, you know, a creator, inventor, ambitious guy is going to run in and is going to put a, is going to put a pony in that race. So there's tons of speculation. There's a huge bubble and boom, it bursts. Correct. And that's coming, by the way. That's coming. Yeah. In this space. Everything is war-inflated right now. 1987 again, I'm just telling you. So remember I said that?

Everybody, remember I said that? You heard it from Ross Mandeau. Well, let's hope it's only 1987. It will be because there's no more free market. The government is now running the ocean. They're just not going to let it be a complete collapse. No, in fact, you know, when the 0809 happened and literally every bank went under, and it can give you people, if you want to get a great example,

I'll give you staggering, staggering example. they can understand. Citibank at net worth of $50 billion. Citibank's a major bank, right? One of the biggest banks in America and it's covered by every analyst,

every brokerage firm itself. Even if they don't trade it and make a market in it, they cover it because it's a bank. It's a major bank. City bank is worth big money. And on Friday,

a Friday, they were bailed out. They were given $50 billion was wired in by the United States. State's Treasury. That was their bailout package, $50 billion. A lot of companies got $50 billion, by the way. They got $50 billion. This is Citibank. One of the most widely scrutinized banks, everybody knows their name, in the world. On Monday morning, Citibank was worth $20 billion. Well, wait a minute, you said they just got $50 billion on Friday. They did. And the bank closed on Saturday and something. How could it be worth only $20 billion? $20 billion on Monday morning. It was just a bad out, that one flooded to go to pay back their bad assets.

You tell me, it was worth minus $30 billion on Friday. It was a bunch of dollars. It was worth minus $30 billion. Everything was a scam. All the numbers, all the books were cooked. AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan, Stitt, every one of these banks. And they indicted me. Right.

My company, Sky Capital, didn't need any. cash from the government. We had capital. Guess what? When I sold that company, it was capital aces. And the new buyers, after I left, put in 10 million fresh capital. Okay. So why was I indicted? Listen, I got you. So we're going back. Okay. So now, Thornwater is now doing deals. We're doing quality deals. So dot com, yeah. So I was the, I was banking a deal called ticket Planet.com. At Thornwater, I was a broker and I was an investment banker. I was, that's what I really did. I didn't secretly own the firm. In fact, if I did, Thorntwater would still be around today, just so you know. And I was looking for deals to do because I had a lot of money. I was stick.

Now, with the love of my life, planning on a family and getting married and all these good things. And in fact, when Robert bought Thornwater in June of 98, that's the month I got married. That's the month I got married. And the month I bought a house for my wife. She wanted a house as a wedding present. I bought her a house on the beach along that one. Nice present. Yeah.

And so we start doing some deals. Real deals. We don't have to do shitty, scammy deals. But even real deals, not every deal works out. Right. So back when the beginning of the internet began, there was a lot of a lot of screaming and yelling in a good way, that you could now travel. You could go from the privacy of your home and book an entire trip, airfare, hotel,

and never have to interact with the travel age or any human beings. Right. It's called a booking engine. And the first company that came out with a booking engine was called Travelocity. And the next one was, I can't think. of the name, it doesn't matter. I was the third company in the world with a booking engine. We took this company from $40,000 a month of business to $400,000 a month overnight. It was called Ticketplanet.com. I bought an adventure travel company that did wholesale airfare

prices because they were to call it Consolidator. It's the whole thing. And I got to technology guys and we created a booking engine. It was only the third one on the internet. And we started to really grow this company. But I ran into a lot of problems. Why? Because the regulators were all over me. They were all over me

because of this famous story that was written about me. March 14th, 1996, this is what changed my life. I was, I was, this is the, this is the, this is 1994.

I'm back now, sober. I'm killing it in business. Everybody wanted me. I'm at a firm, and I get a call from a guy named David Bleck. David was the son of a rabbi. On his 30th birthday, Merck gave him a check for $300 million. For a company that he founded at his mother's kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York. $300 million got him on the Forbes 400.

Okay. He took that money. He also worked with Morty's. Davis. And David took what he learned from Morty, and he was a brilliant venture capital guy. Brilliant. He ceded 20 companies today that are on the New York Stock Exchange at a billion dollar companies. He created them. But then he handed them off to Wall Street. And he sat back and he watched how much everybody was making on Wall Street. And he was jealous and greedy and envious. He was probably worth three-quarters of a billion dollars at the time. And that's when

three-cores, but there's a lot of money back in the 90s. You know what I'm saying? Today it's, you know, today they were in trillions. I mean, you know, it's crazy. And David wanted that Wall Street money, what they called the retail money. And so he took a bunch of his money and just hired like a thousand brokers. And he picked me to basically run the whole thing. Okay.

But he didn't have to listen to anybody. So what happened was I was with my 12 people This is before I did a Rhone Capital This is part of my story I left out Okay It's important that you hear this And so I I was running my group of 12

Before I bought Rone Capital Running my business doing like a million bucks a month Okay And I used to have to speak I would sit with my 12 people And I would tell them what's happening in the market What we're doing, what we're buying, what we're selling, and giving them updates on where our positions are, et cetera.

And I got everybody very motivated. That's who I am. I'm like a motivational coach in life and business and all that. And David comes to me. Now, we had Nobel Prize winners working at the firm. Lasker award winners, which is a Nobel Prize in chemistry. Some of the biggest bankers, you know, ever, people that are in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, covered.

And he comes to me, he says, listen, I need your help. I said, David, anything. He goes, I want you to speak at the morning meetings. We used to have two a week, like Monday and Thursday. I said, what do you want me to say? He said, I want you to say, just like you speak to your 12 people, but I want you to speak to the whole firm. It's 1,500 people.

Three different cities, everyone. We used to have these, these squawk, it's called it a squawk box. Yeah. You know, like a speakerphone. he goes, I want you to get everybody excited. I said, what do you mean? He says, well, we're doing this deal. I want you to get everybody excited and hepped up.

So we would have these meetings where the trading department would get on. David would speak. The Nobel Prize winners would speak our annuists. And at the end of the meeting, they wanted me to get on for five, 10, 50 minutes, whatever the time was to speak. Like I speak to my 12 guys. And I said, all right, he goes, do me a favor. And I said, okay.

So we have this meeting and then they said, well, Ross Mandel wants to say a few words. So I got up and I started doing my thing and I get all crazy. I was really excited about this deal and I want everybody to get excited. And apparently I got everybody very excited and the deal went up like 10 points. And so after the meeting, that was on a Thursday on Friday. We had like a record date Thursday. And on Friday they called me in. I'm like, well, what's going on?

the whole board of there, the company was run by a board with David. David said, we want you to speak at every meeting. I said, what do you want me to say? We want you just to say, we want you to do what you did.

You got everybody very motivated, very excited, everybody could feel your patch. David's like, I got excited. And I had a great day. He goes, and I'm ready to say,

come on, it's too much, you know. And he goes, we're going to give you $50,000 a month. And I'm thinking, $50,000 a month to be a motivational speech.

at a place I'm already working at that's I'm already making friggin, you know, I'm taking over half a million a month. And so he's 50,000. I'm thinking it's eight meetings I got to speak at. That's over $6,000. And I'm speaking for 10, 15 minutes. I said you drive a hard bargain, David.

But I'll do it. And so I did it. Eventually, he stopped, he lost his mind a little bit. The markets went against him. A lot of his deals. A lot of things happened with him purse. So it's a long story. But a couple of, he cheated a couple of brokers.

of money. These brokers wanted to hurt David. So they used to tape all these meetings. They sent the tapes to the Wall Street Journal, sort of like so they could expose David Black and what's happening at D. Black. And the Wall Street Journal listened to all these tapes. And after hearing them all, they was only interested in one person, me. They wanted to have me interviewed. And they wrote in the article. It's on the front page Wall Street Journal. The whole right column. And then when you open up the paper, two full pages, 5,250 words.

I'll say it again, the biggest story in the history of the Wall Street Journal up to that time, which was the biggest selling paper in the world. I mean, what? This is what really sort of launched my notoriety in all these things. And it was just what an amazing person you were, right? Well, I was like the real life Gordon Gecko, according to the. the Wall Street Journal, according to Forbes, according to the newspapers in London. They said they got excited, listening to the tapes. I wanted it. They all got excited. I went out right then and bought

them. And they write this huge story, but then when they did some homework on me, they see that back in the 80s and early 90s, I've umpteen complaints, umpteen arbitrations. I've changed firms umpteen times. And it's because I was a drug addict and alcoholic. And I was very abrasive. And I was just, you know, doing what I do. And, you know, I was one of the biggest brokers at the time of the retail brokers in the country. And, you know, when you have thousands of customers, you're bound to have a bunch of disagreements. Right.

And instead of curing them and saying, listen, Matthew, look, you told me to buy, my understanding was you gave me the order to buy 10,000 shares, and the stock didn't perform well. And now you're saying, I didn't give you full authorization. And we have this back and forth. I mean, there's a, this, let's just figure out how we can resolve. to everybody's interest. But you would tell me to buy it for real. I heard you, you know it.

But I should have been more of a, I should have had tact, like what politicians have, like diplomats have. Instead I said, bro, you gave me the order, and fuck you. Right. It's disgusting what you're doing. And then you would say, well, fuck you.

I'm going to sue you. And I say, sue me. I'll see you, I'll see an arbitration of five years. And guess what? At the arbitration, five years later, you say, remember you said, I'm going to see you in five years later? five years. And I won mostly all the arbitrations. Right. And so I had to make settlements and

all that kind of stuff. But it was pennies based on what I earned, but it was stupid. Right. Because it's sort of pattern of abuse of abrasive behavior. But since I got clean, I never had one problem. Not one. Not one issue. My record was clean. Because I handled things like a gentleman. And sometimes I ate the bullet. You know, I made good. I said, let's work it out. You know, we could figure this out. because frankly, you were wrong anyway, and you know it. So you're willing to work it out rather than be single for yourself. So here's the thing. When Jordy Belfort, they likened me to Jordy Belford's case.

When he, of course, he made a plea deal. He wore a wire. He gave them 50 cases. You know, we did 22. He outright stole 100 million bucks plus and, et cetera. I did none of that. I didn't wear a wire. I fought like crazy.

I maintain that I'm not guilty. When he got out of prison, he had 200 lawsuits against him. For less money, he was charged with less money. And he made a plea deal with his friends with the government. I mean, you know, he did a lot of work for them. And they begged a lot of people because they were both innocent and guilty. With me, I get out of prison. Supposedly I stole $140 million.

Convicted of four. You know how many lawsuits I have? Zero. Zero. When you cheat people in America today, when you cheat people today, period, you get sued. People see you even if they don't feel like they're not going to get money. They just sue you. I have zero.

Zero. Because I didn't rob anybody. I didn't hurt anybody. And, you know, I speak into some people now that were formerly big clients. And they said, yeah, all the agents, one agent came and knocked on my door, called me six times. I said, I know Ross Mandel. I'm a big boy. I'm a grown-up.

We did business. It didn't work out. And none of them complained against me. Not one of my guys ever complained against me. Wouldn't come to the court. He wouldn't come and testify against me. Okay. Yes, sir.

You sold the company. You're now at the new company, right? The guy opened his own company. He's doing his whole thing, right? Right. With thorn water. Yes. And so how's that moving forward to Sky?

Okay. So I'm watching Robert do things I don't like. Right. And Robert starts throwing his weight around. He goes, I own this company. Oh, yeah. Now he's the big shot. Yeah. And I don't like it. Yeah. It's not that I don't like my position because I'm wealthy and I don't give a fucking. But I don't like what he's doing. And I see that he's going to blow up this whole thing. And he's going to cause a lot of pain to people that worked for me.

The only reason they stay with Robert is because they were my guys. Yeah. They came for me. And a lot of them left. But what happened was I said, you know what, Robert? I asked him not to do certain things. I felt like he was committing fraud and being doing a few things, right? I didn't know exactly what he was doing because it turns out he was doing it with a lawyer that worked for the firm who thought I was in charge. You know, that was his testimony.

He was disbarred for 18 months. And the feds got him on wire saying that he did bad things with Robert, not with me. Right. And so I said, you know what, Robert? I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to sell you my whole business. I'm out of here. I'm out of here.

He goes, what do you mean? I go, you know that book? He was paying me like, I don't know, 250,000 a month, whatever it was. I should keep it all. You give me $70,000 a month for one year. I'm out of your hair. I'm done. He made that deal in two seconds.

$70,000 a month. In court, they made it sound like it was an inside deal. And he benefited hugely. And as soon as I walked away from that firm, like this, like a ski slope, straight down. Right. And straight down. And so I'm at the beach collecting my money, and the dot-com crash happens, March of 2000.

So he goes under, like the Titanic, right? Well, he's on his way down. Yeah. It was a slow death because he was committing fraud. I wasn't even there. And he was lying on all the capital sheets and all that. But I'm sitting there in my study at the beach house. I bought for my wife when I got married.

And my little daughter, I'm babysitting my little daughter. The crash happened in March of 2000. She was born in February of 2000. She's like a month old. And I have CNBC on. She's in a bassinet. I'm just keeping an eye on. And I'm watching them parade person after person after person on CNBC,

talking about how this is just a quick downturn in the market. And you should buy this. the dip and I'm like watching all these guys being paraded, trying to get people to buy stocks at this point thinking that this is just a little glitch. And I'm like, does nobody understand what the fuck is happening? This is the end of the market as we know it right now. This is a correction, which is very healthy. I learned my lesson from 87. I'll never ever sit back during another downturn. Where there's violence, there's opportunity. I live on that. If I Like, I'm going to have someone paint me a mural one day.

Where there's violence, there's opportunity. All you have to do is look. And that segues into my story later. But I'm going to stay linear. I'm going to stay, you know, with the dates. He's very strict, everybody. I mean, I've been on many podcasts. Nobody knows how to run a podcast like this guy.

It's not Matt. That's very strict. Yeah. It's the comments. Yeah, the comments will be like, I can't follow this guy's story. He can't tell the story straight. Did you guys hear this?

Jumping all around. Do you guys see how? Considerate he is. I mean, I'm, you know, you have to know your audience. I never read my own comments. Yeah. I love it. I love it.

All right. So this is great. Throwing me off. So I sit there. I'm getting frustrated listening to these morons on TV. And I'm looking to my little baby and I'm playing with my finger. And I say, you know what? I'm going to do something.

And I take out a pad. This is how I operate. And I sketch something out. It's an old habit. And I call up a lawyer, I know. And I said, Rick, I want you to do something for me. Anything, Ross. What can I do?

I said, I'm going into business again. It was, what are you going to do? I said, take out a pad. I said, I'm going to call this company Sky Capital after my little baby. Her name is Skyler. Okay. And I'm going to create an entity. I'm going to bring in the top guys.

I know on Wall Street. And we're going to form a broker-dealer. And I'm going to take a space on Wall Street. It'll be a Wall Street broker-dealer. Okay. And then I'm going to buy a firm in London. I'm going to take it public on either the NASDAQ or stock exchange in London. He's like, first of all, first of all, you're never going to get the name Sky Capital.

It's a wasted time. Okay. I said, what do you mean? You think there's no Sky Capital? there's probably six of ones like Sky Capital. I said, Rick, I just got a feeling. Do me a favor. I want you to check.

He goes, secondly, this is going to cost a lot of money. I said, Rick, I've been toying with the numbers right now. I feel like I need $9 million. That's a lot of money. I said, I did the firm. I did Rhone. Back in 95, cost me $2 million out of pocket. It's going to cost $9 million.

and here's what we're going to do. I'm going to issue myself. Sky is going to issue me 7 million shares. It's going to issue another 7 million chairs of which I'm going to sell 6 million and I'm going to give a million away. That's how I'm going to attract all my talent. And then we're going to sell 2 million to the public and take that public. And I'm going to use this entity to buy a bank over there

or to fund the bank over there. He goes, where is it? is coming from. I said, Rick, do me your favor. Check and see if we can get Sky Capital before we do anything. So he calls me back like a half hour later. He says, you're not going to believe this. I said, why? He goes, we got Sky Capital. He goes, it's unbelievable. I already served, I saved the name.com.com, dot net, dot org, all these different things. And skycapital.com, I tried to get it, forget it. They won a million dollars for the name. I said, how could they not be a sky capital, but there's skycapital.com is taken.

He says, well, you ever go to the airport? I said, come on, you know, I travel all the time. He goes, you ever hear of the skycaps, the guys that take your luggage? They have a union. Skycap.com, they have Skycap.com, they have Sky Capital. They have all of it. I said, okay, eventually I bought it from them. What did you pay for that?

A lot of money. Okay. It was a lot of money. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I'm not, it was a lot of money. That's the way. It took me a while to swallow that pill. But I really want to SkyCAP.

So I have Sky Capital. I form Sky Capital Holdings, Sky Capital LLC, Sky Capital, UK, everything with Sky Capital in the world. There's a great story involved with this. Later on, I'm jumping. I go public in London. And right before the offering,

I get a call for my attorney. He goes, he's sitting down. I said, I'm sitting down. He goes, you're about to get sued by Rupert Murdoch. I said, what? Rupert Murdoch from Fox? He goes, he owns Fox. He also owns Sky Broadcasting, Sky Channel.

It's the biggest broadcast, next to the BBC, it's the biggest media company in London. Okay. What's wrong with that? All right. And he says, you're infringing on his, what's the word? Not as, on his goodwill. So goodwill is a word called goodwill, right?

You guys would think it's just goodwill, but it's an accounting term. It's actually on a balance sheet. Goodwill means it has value. Yeah, yeah. It's a percentage. It can be added into a percentage of whatever your company has a certain amount of goodwill just because it's been around so long. Right, because it's a brand.

He has a tremendous. And he says, you're going public using his name. And you did this on purpose. And you're deceiving a lot of people in the UK. They all think you're involved with me. And he's finally like a 115 page lawsuit. I wouldn't want to be involved with it. And I said, and he goes, why did you pick that name?

So I get on the phone with my English lawyers. and my solicitors and my Washington lawyers, my New York lawyers. And I say, my daughter's name's Skyler. We call us Sky. She was one month old when I started this process. They said, can you prove that? I got a birth certificate.

I literally had to produce the birth certificate. Right. When I produced a verse certificate with the story, Rupert Murdoch fired his entire law firm. Every one of the lawyers, and he went against them for negligence. It's a famous thing. He sued them all. because of what they did to him.

And they embarrassed him. They embarrassed him. Worse, I now, everybody thought he was my partner. That Sky Capital was part of the Sky, Sky Broadcasting and all that stuff. Sky B2B. There's a million Sky companies under his name, but I grabbed a ton of them. Right. And I grabbed a ton of them in the UK, too.

It wasn't lost on me. Right. You know what he said. I didn't, but the truth is I did it because of my daughter. I didn't even think about him. Yeah, yeah. That probably entered the picture later once you start. But at some point you had to realize there are the,

other companies, but that's got nothing to do with me. I'm fine. Then I remembered when I was in, and I spent a lot of time in England, and I used to turn a TV on, it's sky everywhere, sky everything. And a lot of people did think I was connected to him. Ruthven Murdoch, R.M. Ross Vandell, R.M. It's their fault. R.M.R.M., raw media. Is there a connection?

Yeah, I'm trying to work with you, bro. I love it. Okay. I love it. So, so, uh, I, uh, I, I, I, I take an office. I take 12,000 square feet at 110 Wall Street. and I start to raise some money. I put up some money, and then I go to raise some money. And I told the guys my plan,

guys that worked for me at Thornwater, guys around the street, and that people laughed at me. They laughed at me. They said, bro, good luck. Good luck. No, Ross, we wish you the best of luck. And they said, you know, we'll think about it,

this and that, but I was told that they were all laughing at me. Right. I'm making jokes on my parents. He's so desperate. Look, this and that. You know, he made a mistake. He walked away from Thornwater. He gave up all this production, all this money, and now he's up. And so I took this big office.

I hired one lady, this girl, Mary Rivera, Mary, what's shaking, baby. And, young Puerto Rican girl. And I started, I put up money. I started raising money. And I started bringing real talent. And the stock market is going like this every day. And I have this. fresh story, this big, beautiful space, and I'm bringing real talent is coming in. And all the guys

at Thornwater that laughed at me now start coming around and saying, listen, bro, can I get in? How do I get in yet? Because they had a shitty little office at 44 Wall Street. Robert was destroying everything. And the market was just getting crushed. Remember, I started it because my proposition was you were in a real bare market, a severe downturn. And it was even worse than I postulated. But I said, I'm going to go into this business. I'm going to raise a bunch of money. I'm going to get my Bredee license. And I'm going to buy assets from the bombed out stock broking sector for five cents on the dollar. And I did all those. I put nine firms. But I didn't buy the firms. I bought the assets. I bought trading desks. I bought contracts from different traders,

bankers, arbitrage, auber ters, a bond guy, stock guys, all this and that. And I put together a monster team. And at some point, every guy from Thornwater wanted to come work with me. And I found that some of the guys that really made the biggest jokes. And I said, sorry. Right. And I said, sorry. I didn't get the joke then. And so, you know, and I filled it up pretty quickly.

Of course, the government came up with this theory that I had planned the whole thing from the get-go. That I somehow destroyed Thornwater, which was doing like 25 million a year. And I took a haircut from getting $300,000 a month to getting $70,000 a month. And went and started this whole big thing with the idea that I was going to buy Thornwater, which I refused to buy because I knew Robert was committing some kind of fraud up there and doing some bad things. Right. You don't want to take out for his liability. But I knew a lot of the customers over there.

They were my former customers. I didn't want them to get hurt. So I made sure they all had a home. So it looked like he went under because the market was going. The market went, was getting. crushed. This was when Amazon, the Amazon, you guys know, went from $330 to three in 45 days, to three. The biggest company in the world, WorldCom, biggest company in the world, biggest company, went to zero fraud. The fourth biggest company in America, the biggest trading

company in the world, energy trading company in the world, Enron, zero fraud. Lucent Technologies, a bell company, bell to A plus rated, 82 to zero. Fraud. Do you know Walt Pavlo? I do know Walt very well. He's written 15 stories about me. And just so, you know, his birthday was yesterday. Oh, was it?

Yeah. Okay. And just if you speak to Walt, he'll tell you he built his whole reputation and his whole column on me. He's written two stories on me. Yeah. Two or three, two or three on the Forbes. He called me up when I was going through my motion practice. I went to trial.

Right. We had motion practice for a long time. And Walt came to my trial every day. And he called me up one day. Everybody's calling me. Every newspaper, you know, I've been in all the newspapers. I've been on the front page of all the newspapers. And this guy calls me up.

He goes, my name's Walpavlo. I got your number from a guy I met in Starbucks who worked in your fight league. I owned a big fight company in Tampa. but by the way, here, used to throw fights at John Prisco. We owned, I forget the name of it now. I bought, and I rehabbed at least to throw fights where the Tampa Lightning play. Okay.

We did 12 fights. I got them on TV, the TV contract, on more Cuban cable channel and all that. They gave us a million to. I mean, we, I was, I just remember this. I used to say it the Hard Rock, because the Seminoles owned Hard Rock. and Kevin Winn, Kevin, what's shaking, baby, was the chief's personal attorney.

And he came to work for me and all this and worked for this fight league. So if you Google me, you'll see a lot of stuff attached to fight. You should Google Ross Mandel facing life. And Ross Mandel, welcome to my world. And a lot of the things we're talking about today is substantiated. So Sky Capital, you opened it. It's doing great. It's kicking ass.

You got everybody in. I actually open it. I'm buying up. everything. You stepped on the throats of a few guys that had bad balance. Just like I proposed in my private placement document, I'm going to buy a UK bank or stockbroker's firm. Which one did you buy? Well, I made some calls and they wouldn't even get on the phone with me. They wouldn't give me a meeting. I said, what do you mean? So one guy finally gets on the phone, nastiest is a shitty little firm. And I heard rumors that he was for sale because remember everybody was getting murdered. The

The market's toast. I mean, it's gone down now straight for a year straight. And I'll tell you what happens. I want you to wire 10 million pounds into my lawyer's escrow account. Then I'll take the meeting. I need to know you for real. I said, go f*** yourself. It's going to come back now.

So now I get approved finally by FINRA, what used to be, is FINRA now used to be the NASDA. They turned me down initially. I have to hide the biggest lawyer in all of Washington, D.C., in the regulatory world. and I get approved after hearing and all these different things. And what happened was March of 2000 is when I start. The market's getting...

And then it just starts to settle down for a minute. And there's some activity. And bam! Trops out completely. 9-11. Oh, right. 2001. Bam, right?

That's in like the middle of the... Then close the skies over America for a week. They shut down the stock market for a week. In two world wars, that never happened. Meanwhile, I own this TicketPlanet.com. We're doing a million a week, and I have all these airfares sold, and boom, they shut down the skies, and everybody wants a refund. There goes ticket planet. Now I have to put it into bankruptcy.

Okay, but that's a side story. Then all the... There's no IPOs on either side of the Atlantic between New York and Lanky. London. And just as it's starting to hear, bam, the market's finished. They almost destroyed the whole stock market. The market survived. One cable was not destroyed. One cable. They never even had like a fallback spot. Now they have all kinds of contingency plans and all that if something happens. There's a center that clones everything on the big board in NASDAQ in New Jersey. And every firm has to have these. Then there was no one who would ever have seen something like that.

Right. And so now the market's crushed again. But worse than ever, no one knows what's happening. Are we at war? They shut down. There's no power in Lower Manhattan. I had just received $2 million of network equipment from Dell, their latest stuff. Remember, I had this big space.

I'm building my company. I had the money. And now nobody has anything in Lower Manhattan. They have big giant military trucks to provide power and stuff. And meanwhile, I have people offer me 50,000 a month just to, they get tap into my backup generators and all these things because I had a big plan. And you need a big network to achieve that. Today, everything's in the cloud. You don't need any of that stuff.

But this is, you know, how things go change. So now I want to go public with my little company, but I want to buy a broker deal of first in London. I can't get a meeting. Can't even get a meeting. So I hire a I have a couple of guys Remember I was doing nothing But representing foreign money at this point

So nobody understood my Rolodex was crazy They don't use Rolodex anymore My family laughs at me when I use that My contacts So I had a member of parliament Half the House of Lords were investing with me Over time, I'm into everybody And so I went over there

And I convinced Two very smart men to take me public. Well, how do you take you public? In London. Yeah, but you said you haven't bought, you were going to buy a bank or... Right, but I couldn't even get a meeting.

So you don't even... That doesn't happen. You just go public in London. So I say, I'm going to go public there first. Then I watch what happens. Watch how the sheep come to Papa. Okay. Because then they know you're serious.

You've got a ton of cash and hey... Nobody's gone public in two years. Right. No one's gone public since March of 2000. Anywhere. So now with this, this, fat, loud-mouthed Jew is going to come over here and he's going to do a deal. It's never been done.

In fact, they kept saying it can't be done. Like the four-minute mile, I used that. I was in a meeting with the top law firm, and I said, is it never been done or it can't be done? It's two different things. I said, what do you mean? I said, the four-minute mile, you never heard of that? They said it couldn't be done for a thousand years. Guess what?

As soon as somebody did it, everybody does it now. Oh, wow, a young man, we invite you to go back to the airport. Just forget this whole plan. I didn't. I gave that law firm zero business. Nicholson Graham and Jones, I was paying these guys a half a million dollars a month for five years. So, fuck you.

So there's the top of Tower, 42. So I pull off a deal. I go public in London. My stock's up 25%, 28% the first day. There's been no deals, let alone a deal that's so profitable. It was so oversawled. return money. So for every dollar you wanted to buy, we returned 40 cents to you. That made people want to buy more. Right. And so they started buying it on the market. The stock was going up,

up, up. It was so successful, I get a call. The stock exchange booked you for nine minutes on national television. I said, what? They said, you had a great day. You had a historical day. we want you to go on the show and tell the country how you did it. What? I'm public for one day. Right. And it's a famous clip. My guys post now on Instagram, stories and TikTok, all these different things.

And I was on Bloomberg TV and the BBC on CEO on the hot seat, national television for nine minutes. And I didn't realize it. So I thought they were going to try and, you know, mess with me. Yeah, yeah. They did the opposite. they made me to be like a savior and they put up a big graph on the wall like this, straight up. But it was so misleading.

I'm only public one day. Yeah, yeah. But they wanted to use me to show the investing public in the UK. The markets are back open. Yeah, it's a feel-good story. Right. The dot-com crash, 9-11, it's over. This guy is here.

He's making it happen, and the markets, it's safe. Come back in, buy stock. They don't mention the old complaints, the drug addiction, the Forbes article. They did bring that. So they made it deal with the producers that they would stay away from that. Oh, okay. And the first question. So let me ask you, Mr. Mando.

It's been reported in the Wall Street Journal, amongst other top papers that you're a addict. So how could the British public put his trust in you? And I said, you know, I didn't know what to say. because we had agreed that that was off limits. Right. That's how trustworthy the media is. And I came up, I just said, look, a lot of people have colorful pasts,

myself, especially so. But I think what people are more interested in, what's happening today, where are we going? What's the future? Who's leading in this industry? And it was a great answer, apparently, and they liked it, and everybody started buying my stock,

and it was going higher and higher. But they used me to get, just like, in 1996, how the Wall Street Journal and the government used me to indict the regulatory system by making that huge article on me, 5,250 words, citing every complaint I had, citing all these other bad brokers, none of which I knew were involved with that all get kicked out of the industry, showing how the industry is not policing itself, et cetera. How could I still be in business?

And now they're using me in England to promote the capital market. Like it's an amazing thing that I accomplished and I did. Okay. So needless to say Even though I'm sober, my boys are not sober and we went out and we partied that night and I don't drink. I don't I never had a drink in England. I used to go there all the time. Never did a drug and one day I would like to do that. But sorry guys, but that's how I feel. And they we had like an all night. The guys were out. I eventually went home because I was tired and I was sober and it It's boring when you're not. If I use it's in a box, so forth, it's like weird.

Okay, but do not disturb on my phone, and I go to bed, feel pretty great. Pretty great. Phone starts ringing like crazy, nine in the morning. I'm like, what the, I, it's, Mr. Mandel, it's the whole port. The whole port is like the concierge in Europe. I have it, do not disturb on my phone. Mr. Mandel, I know, I know. I know, and I'm so sorry, sir.

I know you had a big day yesterday. And, but there's some gentlemen here to see you. Now right away, I'm scared. Am I in trouble? I just went from being like a hero. What's, what's happening here? Who's here to see me? They said, I said, am I in trouble?

They said, no, Mr. Mando. In fact, frankly, it's the opposite. I wouldn't bother you, except I think you want to, you want to come down here and meet these people. I said, how many people are there? He goes, sir, there's quite a few. I'm like, what the fuck? I throw a suit on.

I never forget. I didn't even take a shower. I was debating. I was just so nervous. I put water on my hair. I just put a suit on. I go downstairs. Four of the brokerage firm slash banks that told me to fuck off. Right. All show up at the Dorchester Hotel two days after I'm public. The morning after I'm on TV that night.

And they say, Mr. Mandel, congratulations. On a job well done. We just wanted to, you know, sit down and chat with you about your request. I said, what request? They said, well, you know, we all saw the news last night. You know, you mentioned that you're interested in buying a brokerage from a bank. And I'm like, how damn, this is crazy. This is crazy.

And the guy shows up from this bank that I was the shittiest of them all. The one of the 10 million pounds. Who told me he wants 10 million pounds, or I should go off. Right. I said, you know, I should tell you to fuck off right at the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel. And he was like, he felt like this big. As you sort of told him, put the 10, where's my 10 million? You want a meeting?

Where's my 10 million? Yeah, you know, he almost gave me his firm for free just, you know. He was so desperate to get out. But meanwhile, this is why he's a bad business guy. Yeah, I'm a legit guy with plenty of money and pull over there in New York. And you're disrespectful. And he don't even want to take the. A meeting.

You know, now you're on the balls of your ass and your ego's so big. You don't even, what? I mean, I never understood people like this guy. But it was very interesting. And then, so I was going from thing to think to thing to thing. And then a couple of lords called me up and said, listen, we have a deal for you. You know, and I made all these guys money in the deal. These guys were all my comp.

I gave them stock for 50 cents to the most anyone ever paid was $1.50. and that first day the stock closed at almost $5. And it was liquid like to see. Buy, sell whatever you want to do. If you want to buy a lot, it was too high. There was too much demand. Nobody really wanted to sell.

But if you wanted to sell, there were buys everywhere and all that. And so I ended up buying a company called Everett Financial, which was a, at a bank, full banking license, full member of the London Stock Exchange, in a place called Wonsworth, which is right over the River Thames.

and this little business had done 500 million pounds in revenue the year before I bought them. They had 100,000 active accounts. Okay. And I think I paid about 102 million for them. I gave them 20 million shares of my stock. And I gave them all jobs. And they ended up selling all the stock, getting their hundred, And they all worked for me for a couple of years.

And now I had completed what I sketched out on a pad with my attorney, Rick Gruda, that I'm sitting in the room that day. Right. And it was hugely successful. And then I went ahead and introduced the first pipe transactions in the UK. A pipe transaction is, pipe is an acronym for a private investment in public equity. never been done in London. And it was a piece of financial engineering, which was very sophisticated even in America.

But like I told you, the greatest money, the greatest wealth is accumulated not through innovation, but to imitation. You take something that works and you bring it somewhere. They don't have it. They didn't have any of this financial engineering in London. And it was very racy.

And the United States government intervention, I found out much later. This is what they basically convicted. me of manipulating the London Stock Exchange while I was in London with UK investors. And it's the craziest thing out because the London Stock Exchange came to my trial and said there was no manipulation. Right. They didn't commit any violations.

But a couple of prosecutors in Lower Manhattan decided that I committed these violations while I was in London. They knew nothing about the stock market. They proved nothing at trial. and a bunch of out-of-work people that were on the panel that said, three of them couldn't even speak English, but the judge said they understood it,

even though they couldn't speak it. Because when they were able to tell him that they don't speak any English, but they understood him when he said, okay, but you still understand it, don't you? They're just nodding the head. They'd no idea. It was this scariest, craziest thing

of you ever saw in your life, my trial. And every newspaper was there. Walt Pavlo was there every day. And they all reported that this is a, it's like a comedy. Every single guy they get up on the stand to testify on course examination had to admit that they lied. So how do we get to that point? Okay. How do you get to that point?

So now I have Sky Holdings and I have a brokerage firm and a bank in London, in New York, and I'm expanding, open up a trading operation in New Jersey, an office in California. We have this huge office. I made a lot of friends on my way up. And the biggest market maker in the world gave me 30,000 square feet in the heart of the city of London, the most expensive real estate on earth for nothing.

He had sold this firm, and he had this space who didn't need it. I just paid the taxes on it, what they called the rates. So I had 30,000 square feet prime space in London. I had a license to open up anywhere in the EU a notification basis, not application basis, meaning I didn't have to apply.

Yeah, just open up. I'm going to be here next week. Open up a bank of 30 countries. Right. That alone was worth more than everything I did. It doesn't exist anymore. Today you have to apply. And every application is one or two million dollars.

Takes months or a year. You got to pay off people, depending on the country. It's a nightmare. I had this grandfathered in, the last notification only, that the EU ever granted. And so, life is good.

the second you open up a bank or a brokerage firm, every deal guy in the world shows up on your doorstep. I got a deal for you. You got all these brokers, you got all these markets you make. I got a deal for you. I want you to look at my company. I got this.

I got that. So I started looking at everybody's deals. People flying from all over the world and come to my waiting area. They wanted to work for me. Like what you saw in the Wolf of Wall Street when it was that one story in Forbes. Yeah. I have a hundred stories written about me. I'm in every newspaper magazine.

I'm on TV. I'm on CNBC, CNN, MSM, everywhere. Everybody, I did a tour eventually because people wanted to see what I had accomplished who I was on to come up all these different things. And I started to look at all these deals because I did have all this muscle and it was time to do some deals. And everything I saw was like shit. And I said, you know, back when Robert ran Thornwood and I was banking, I came up with great deals.

great deals. And so I said, all right, I'm going to start a fund because I could. And I'm going to do my own deals. What do I need somebody else for? I have, at some point I had, at some point in 2005, I believe, I had 4,100 people on my payroll. I had fixed costs of $3.2 million a month, never missed the payroll. That's fixed. Some months we were paying out $10, $12 million, because we're paying commissions too.

That was variable. But my fixed costs were $3.2 million. And I had a big operation. And so I raised, I think $30 million, and then I raised close to a billion dollars. I bought eight companies. I'm moving through the story a little quickly. Right. Went into the Homeland Security business.

I bought a publishing company in England. I bought a medical device company. I bought five to six. I forget how many homeweight security companies here in America and put them under one umbrella and the idea was to provide because of what happened after 9-11. I had a congressman.

I had a senator. I had two members of the United States cabinet that presidential appointees here in America. If you watch American greed, it shows a list of a lot of these guys you're going to be blown away with who was working for. me, police commission of New York, number two guy at Homeland Security, was probably going to be head of Homeland Security under Trump if he wins Tom Homan.

And I was just killing it. Forbes wrote a great story about me. In the magazine, in 05, a big pictorial, I agreed to do this interview only because they're going to put me on the cover of the magazine. That to me is like, that would have been the peak. And we did a... photo shooting everything and it was good and then a week before it was supposed to come out they called me up and apologized to me they said you you probably know this but bill gates just stepped down as the head of Microsoft right and we now have what's his name yeah the new guy the new guy and he's agreed to do a

so we have to put him on the if we put him on the cover yeah but we owe you on so they did a big pictorial in the magazine and um that's when i believe the target was placed on me when i did that story because it says right away just made $45 million in this deal, which was true. And, you know, all these different things about it was the story was Ross Mandel's back with a flare, buying politicians and selling stock. All true. Doesn't sound good. It doesn't sound good. That was the point of the story. And then something, something really fascinating happened after my fund went public. I want you to hear the highlights of my life, you read the low lights in October of 2004 after my funding on public in March, I was a CEO of two public companies, which I didn't know at the time, got the ire of the

SEC, the Department of Justice in the U.S., how could you be running two public companies in London and you live in Florida and you have a place in New York and you're out on the beach on Long Island, all these different things. You know, a lot of jealousy and stuff like that. And I was invited to speak in Parliament at the House of Lords. It's an American greed. Begrudgingly, they talk about it.

The richest guys in the UK say, you know, I've been a multi-millionaire for years. He goes, I've never been invited to Parliament until Ross Vendell invited me. And I spoke in Parliament, and there's some rules. are just protocols. So the first protocol is it's going to be during the day.

You're going to, we're going to allow you to invite 125 of your closest friends, family, and associates, clients. How big is that, Rome? What do you hear the story? 125 people, but there will have to be vetted by security. Who knew I put in a list and find out there was a couple of arms deals on there, you know, a couple of moppy guys. We didn't know.

We're just, where they're brokers, you know. But I allowed each broker to invite a certain amount of people. because it was good for business, obviously. And, of course, all the Lords were there. So I was invited to speak in the House of Lords. Much like America, their Congress is a House of Commons, which is like equivalent to a House of Representatives. Their United States Senate is the House of Lords.

They still have an aristocracy, you know, a king and a queen and princes and all that stuff. It's a different sort of government. And so October of 2004, I speak at the House of Lords. They say, you can invite 125 people. There'll be food, a buffet, and of course, drinks, but there'll be no tables and no chairs. What are you talking about? I said, I don't understand. There's going to be nowhere to sit and no tables, but you're going to provide food and drink.

Yep. Well, how are they going to eat? Standing up, uncomfortably. the first time you appear in the House of Parliament, that's what you get. Take it to leave it. Like, of course, we accept it. We go, and I speak. I spoke for about an hour.

I get a standing ovation. People are screaming in the middle of my speech. I'm buying 10,000 shares of Sky Capital. I'm calling my broker right now. Now, a whole bunch of these lords, a whole bunch of these lords were clients of ours and we're friends, you know, over time, you know. Good guy to these guys. and I was making a lot of people out of money. Right.

And so it's very popular. And they were buying the stock. They were calling it in America. That's, fringing, grossly illegal. But this is their country and they run the country. And so I get like a standing ovation. But, you know, like you, I'm full of myself.

And I thought I did great. But they're very polite over there. And they never tell you what they really feel. But they have like a receiving line, right? And everybody got to come by and shake my hand and all the different laws, this and that. But at the end, the very last person is this old woman, and she's been running the parliament, the House of Parliament.

She's responsible for the whole thing. And she's been doing it for like 50 years. She's like a 70-year-old lady, 75-year-old lady. Lovely, you know. And she comes to the, I come to the end. I can't wait. I just want to hang out with all these guys and say hi, but we all have to shake hands with everybody.

It's like, at a wedding. I'm like the groom. And she says to me, come Mr. Mandel, what that was? It was. Well, I have to say, I've been here 50 years. That was like, we've never had anybody like you. Because I'm like this authentic, really different type of cat, right?

And so, but they're so polite. I figured, you know, okay, it doesn't matter what happened, they would feel that way. So it's amazing. It's on TV there. I'm in all the newspaper. Two days later, they send a bunch of guys, you know, the famous guards that's stand outside the castle there. Yeah.

And people go like this. Yeah, yeah. And they don't move and they have the giant hats and the red coats. Yeah. I forget what they call them. Yeah, yeah. Two of those guys come marching into the Dorchester Hall lobby. Well, I'm holding court in my spot.

And the Dorchester Hotel is a very famous spot. They say that more deals get done every day in the Dorchester Hotel. They get done anywhere else in the world. And I can confirm that. Right. It's a truth. Wild. It's one acre under the most magnificent setting.

Now it's owned by the Arabs. But I'll say this to you. So they come in and I'm sitting with one of my guys, his name is Tom McMillan, Charles Thomas McMillan, University of Maryland, 6'11.5, all-American, youngest man, youngest person in history, the youngest athlete in his day on the cover of Sports Illustrator magazine, first round trap pick, played in the NBA 11 years. he's a road scholar

so he's going to Oxford while he's playing in the NBA in the summers his roommate is Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton was his roommate so there's a swing on that but Tommy six so these two guards come in

and they ask for Ross Mandel Tommy stands up 611 and a half like 260 even though he's older and everything but he's a big boy what's this about it feels we're here on on the business of the parliament you know the British parliament

they said it's Mr. Mandel here I said all right I'm here and uh they hand me this like gold plate and this envelope and they asked me to open it while I'm there so I open it up it's very fancy and I was invited back

to address both houses of parliament now on May Day of 2005 I want you to remember this May 5th of 05, I was speaking immediately following the queen. The queen of England who recently passed away. I never knew any of these things. Every spring session, what they call May Day, she comes down

and she opens up both houses of parliament for the spring session. And then after she opens up parliament, they all go to the races with the great hats, You know, and the great outfits. I had to buy like two tables for like 50 grand each, 100 grand I spent that day. But so I'm invited now back to Parliament for my second time. But now it's both houses of Parliament, House of Commons, House of Lords, following the Queen of England. Do you get to invite guests?

Now I get to invite 250 guests. Chairs and tables. Now we get chairs and tables and full waiter service. Nice. That's what I said. And this was big time now, right? Now I had a few people in from America. I hired a PR for him to handle things, all these different things.

But I said, what happens if I get invited back a third time? They said, ah, Mr. Mandel, now you're talking. I said, tell me, now you get the Saturday night ballroom. You can have 500 guests, black tie, full dinner, the whole thing. Following that, you'll be knighted by the queen. Oh, my God. They said, what? Nice.

Yeah, and I tell you what, I'm looking into the camera right now. I'm coming back for that. It doesn't matter if you have a break of 15 years or 20 years. If I get invited back one more time and it's my intention, I want you all to know that, I would like to be knighted by the queen, really the king now, because we have a king, and I'm going to do everything in my power, and things are already in motion. You're working on it right now. That I can't talk about.

Yes, they're already in play, just so you know. And it was the highlight of my life. And so I brought in a bunch of people and they opened up for me because now it was like a whole big day there. We have many more hours. And I got to meet the queen. And I'm in what we call the green room. It's like an ante room. So she goes out and I'm figuring out right, I got to get 20 minutes, half hour.

She goes out and she comes back in less than a minute. She was, Mr. Madeline, I'm exhausted. I trust that we're in your capable hands. And I'm like, what? I wish there was a witness to that, you know? I mean, it was an unbelievable thing. But they took pictures. You can't have cell phones or anything because of security.

There was a photographer, a house photographer that handled all that. And right before I spoke, and they built a dais for me, and I stood up on a platform with a microphone, all these different things. And that was on the River Thames. And I closed my eyes, and I thank God. And it was a real moment for me of humility. and I had something come over me like this is going to be the biggest moment of my life, of my business life.

And it happened just like that. Because after that, things started to happen that I didn't understand. And that's because in the behind the machinations of the government, they started to very quietly come after me without me knowing. And this went off for, you know, more than a year. Subpoenaing bank records, stuff like that. What sparked that?

I can tell you exactly what they say. I have my own belief, but I can tell you what the actual record would show because, you know, I went to trial. Right. Unless you go to trial, you don't see the evidence. They have to, you know, under the rules of discovery, provide certain evidence to you because you go into trial.

And they, that's all sketchy too. But, you know, they were forced to turn over this evidence that they don't want to turn over because it shows mostly the good, bad, ugly. Of course, they withhold a lot of evidence that would make me, you know, there were words for it, but make me look better. And they've now admitted that they withheld evidence. But put that aside for a minute. I had a guy that worked for me, that not worked for me, worked for Robert at Thornwater that left in the middle of night and stole all the custom clients, the customer accounts.

And we sued him and all that, but he just opened up a shop in New Jersey and just started calling and hiring brokers and acting like he was a broker. But he was completely unregulated, completely unlicensed. It was just complete fraud. All right. His name was Mario Figueroa, Herve, H-E-R-V-E, Mario Figueroa from New Jersey. Chris Christie, you know, Chris Christie who became the governor, he was the attorney general. Chris Christie said he was the most important witness in the history of New Jersey.

Okay. Mario was a fat, overweight, a glutton for food, glutton for women, glutton for gambling. Every single one of the seven deadly sins, Mario was on steroids, yeah. And gambling and borrowing money and getting in trouble and all these different things. He was an effective broker, but he left, he stole all the documents, and then opened up his own shop, was in a multi-jurisdictional, They came in, raided his place, and took everybody, locked everybody up.

But him especially, he robs, they say $52 million. Okay. He claimed he was a broker, a broker dealer, completely unlicensed, Scotland Yard, Interpol, the United States government, the Royal Canadian Rocking, the Canadian Mountains, all, the Royal Canadian Mounties, what they call them, the Mounties? They all was like eight, eight different law enforcement agencies. They robbed everybody and just took the money. and they said you're facing 30 years,

you've got to give us some information. And he set up, you know, show the Sopranos. Yeah. The real-life Jersey family. He put them all away for life. Okay. This guy, Mario. In case you guys want to know who did it,

it was Mario Figueroa and Chris Christie. And basically, he started giving evidence and everybody and everybody was a gambler. I remember, loan sharking and extortion, and he was doing mafia deals, all these different things. And drugs. How to, in your name? He worked for Thornwater, and so he had a guy who was a childhood friend, who he introduced to me and to the guys at Sky Capital.

Mario never worked at Sky Capital, never knew anything about it. But he knew this guy, Philip Akelle, who's on American Greed, admitting he wore a wire and he ratted everybody out because he felt like he was going to do the right thing. It's because he sold to an FBI agent who was undercover. And the FBI was undercover because Mario said, I'm pretty sure my childhood friend is a bad dude and he's doing bad things, which he was not at the time, except he had a drug problem

and he cheated on his wife with escorts and things of that nature. But he was a pretty honest guy. He never had a complaint. He had a clean record. And this guy, Mario, hung out with him once a week or twice a week for nine months. And the whole time he kept saying,

Ross Mandele doesn't do anything wrong. Sky Capital is completely legit. We, bro, we're legit as for nothing. If we found that one thing, he's all on tape. Audio and video. And then Mario was crying the blues saying, listen, we've been friends' childhood. The feds got me.

They took everything. I lost my wife. I lost my house. I lost all my money. He was, but I withheld a few whales, a few big investors, and I know you guys do deals. Do me a favor.

I give you my guys, put him in some of these deals, and kick me back half the money. That's illegal. Okay. It's really not illegal. It's an industry offense. It's like a violation of industry practice. You can lose your license.

You can't get to jail for that. So at the end of nine months, finally, Phil says, all right, I want to help you out. He gets on the phone with this guy. He thinks he's an investor. He's an undercover FBI agent. And he says to Phil, he wants to put money in. He's got millions of dollars. And he puts $25,000 into a sky private placement, $25,000.

And Phil oversold. He didn't lie. He didn't cheat. Nothing to cause an arrest. But he did oversell. But he gave Mario, the commission, the total commission was $1,250 well within bounds. And he gave Mario half in cash. $600?

That's it. Now. So then the guy said, what about Mandel? And Phil says into the camera, the force Mandel knew what I was doing. He'd throw us in the street. They said, yeah, but we have a lot of money. We can get, we could do some business with Mandela. I wouldn't even meet with the,

I just had a bad feeling, so I'm not even interested. So they, Phil, they came to New York, and they were going out with Phil. They came to Sky Capital in the conference room, and I wasn't in town, and I didn't want to meet with them anyway. And they said to Phil, well, listen, we're here for the night. You know, well, we can get some party materials. You said, we're going to take us out. We're going to have some fun.

And this is, they're wired for audio and video. He goes, I got a couple of grams on me now here. Goes into his pocket. This is a guy making like $2 million a year. Right. $20 million network. He goes to the FBI agent. Yeah, there's two beautiful little rocks here.

Just give me $100. And he goes, don't worry, I can get you as much as you need tonight. Anything you need. I get the best connections. I know everybody, whatever you need. Okay? And that's where the transcripts end and the tapes end. He must, I guess they arrested him that night.

Right. And that following Monday, he comes to Sky Capital is wearing a wire. So suddenly you became, suddenly he said you, he decided that you had done all kinds of things. All of a sudden, everything we're doing was illegal, even though he says on audio and video that we have most legit firm and we've done anything wrong. And that I'm, because I'm Ross Mandel and I've had issues, I'm being regulated by the FSA, all the regulators in London. Right. The securities regulators. and by the stock exchange, because I'm running two public companies.

But I'm also being regulated by the SEC. The NASD, because I also had an American broker-dealer. But I was supervising none of it anyway. I was the CEO. I'm running around basically shaking hands, making speeches and all that. I had guys in place doing all these things. Somehow it was all my fault. Everything was focused on me.

So he's wearing a wire for about three months coming to work every day. They get zero on me. I don't say one thing wrong. The one thing you'll see on American Green, they played it to try, was doctored. And when you hear the whole tape, everything was in context. But there was a few guys like Grabowski, like the lawyer, Stephen Altman, and a few others, that said stupid shit and admitted that they did stupid shit on tape. Nothing to do with me. But so they arrested a bunch of us.

And they came in and raided Sky Capital November of 2006. Where? And my office in 110 Wall Street. Okay. And when the London Stock Exchange called up to Southern District in New York, they said, we can't comment. They said, are you going to arrest these guys? They're going to die.

They said, listen, if the special fraud office of Scotland New York raids a public company, they're getting shut down. They're all getting arrested. You don't just raid a place, the guys running public companies. There's hundreds of investors, thousands of investors involved. You're not going to make a comment. So my stocks are trying to. trading publicly on the stock exchange.

That is spent trading. They never reopened. Because the Southern Dishner wouldn't make a comment to give any comfort. In the meanwhile, they would judge, jury, and executioner. They made a decision, and they're not going to go back. So that caused a lot of people to lose money. It wasn't my fault. What did I do?

Right. Nothing. No one gets arrested. No one gets indicted. Nothing. So I go to sell the firm now because after a year, year of this, it's too much. So I make a deal in September of 08, October of 08, about a year later to of 07, right? It was November 06, they came in, October of 07, 11 months later, I sign a letter

of intent to sell the company to our biggest investors. They do all this due diligence. Then they go over to the Southern District to New York in March of 08. The beginning is sort of the world's falling apart. Right. Oh, yeah. Right. Worst possible time to sell. I never forget.

I was away. I was at a convention in Ohio. My phone rings. That's my criminal lawyer. He says, I have the U.S. attorney on the line. He says if you are, you know, you are the buyers of your company, the potential buyers, they're not going to buy if they're going to indict you and the brokerage firm. And so they went to the U.S. attorney.

They're there now. And they're asking, hey, by the way, they said to these are all highly respectable people. They represent institutions, big money. You know, I'm talking about lords and all that. They said, if Mr. Mandel can answer three questions to our satisfaction right now, we'll give you our word. We're not going to indict him. We're not going to indict the company. The sale can go through.

So the first question they ask is, we have on tape, Mr. Mandel, claiming that he has been doing deals with Goldman Sachs. And he's been talking to them, and he's got relationships there, and he's done. some deals with them. Is that true? Isn't it? I mean, doesn't everybody? How do you? 100% true. Not only true, I said, I got proof. I had a whole email file. I mean, I have hundreds of emails with all partners there and everything else. I spoke in Coleman Sachs just so you know. They paid me to speak there. How do I want public in London? I sent them an email. He goes, oh my God, this is amazing. Number two, it was repeated to them that you, are in talks at times with different banks about a potential takeover.

Is that true? I said, of course. Of course, Barclay's bank offered me $300 million. I've been talking to an Icelandic bank that wants to do a deal with me. I mean, what are you kidding? Boom, send it over. And the third question was even stupid. It was so easy.

I answer all three. I'm on hold. He's half a minute. He comes, he goes, he goes, you know, I've always treated you like a big boy. I've always been brutally honest with you, my lawyer. I'm going to tell you right now, you could say, sleep tonight. Congratulations, it's over. Those are just two questions.

There was three. The third was even more stupid. I forgot. Something about, you know, the House of Lords or whatever was just, all three things I was able to send email files. It was like, the government said they're not going to charge me, and they're not going to charge the firm. They March 31st of 08,

the deal went through. The monies were wide to my account. April 1st. I was out of sky completely. The new owners were white shoe, A plus rated people. institutions and all that stuff, they then wrote a check for $10 million and put it in the company. So Sky Capital now had funds,

had new ownership and new guys running everything, and we had capital when I sold it, but now we had an extra $10 million. I mean, that's real money to have. Because remember, everything was paid for. We had no debt. So that $10 million was just for money to trade, to operate, et cetera.

Plus all these multimillionaires as an institution to own it. I was done. April 1st of 08. I was already in the fight business. I brought a fight league and I was running that up with Don King, Dan Lampert, and other people.

And doing a reality show on that for HBO with Don King. And go to Ross Mandel facing life. You'll see the video. You'll see the sizzle reel. Every single network wanted it. And they also filmed ABC. They did Welcome to My World, Ross Mandel.

check it out and so this is March April 1st oh wait I'm done right this is the first week of March I have to call with my lawyer and he's on with the United States not even the AUSA was the Attorney General

the U.S. Attorney I should say and I don't hear a thing it's over as far as I'm concerned he told me it's over July 2nd 2009. That's my birthday, by the way. Happy birthday. I'll never forget this day. My youngest daughter, Sydney, is in a drama club. She had a very high-flutant type of life in Boca, and she loved acting

in theater. So she was a little girl, and she was in this show, like Aladdin. And I was at the show, and I'm sitting there. We're getting ready to launch the following week was U.S. 100 in Vegas, George St. Pierre was fighting Tiago Alvis, the number one contender, and the UFC fighter of the year. And they were fighting in Vegas. And at that event, we were having a press conference. Don King made an announcement, and like a hundred of the biggest press in the world responded. They were all coming. We were going to announce the launching of our fight league, the AFC. And July 2nd, My lawyer calls me and he says, I haven't heard from this lawyer.

I haven't seen, is it, Jeffrey Hoppin comes up on my phone. I'm in the show, my daughter's show. And Stephanie goes, what's wrong? I said, I don't know. He goes, what's wrong? And I'm sitting there trying to be patient, wait until like half time in the show. And she goes, what's wrong? I said, she's whispering to me.

I said, Jeff Hoffman just called me. He says, Jeff Hoffman, you haven't heard from him? I said, in more than a year. And he owed me a lot of money, but I didn't care. I was just happy to be rid of this. He owed me like $75,000 that he had never used. She goes, go take the call. So I get in the car.

I go outside, and I call him. I'm in the car. I'm so nervous, have a very bad feeling. And he says, listen, I've always talked to you. I says, I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm just going to come out with it. I just got off the phone with the United States Attorney for the Southern District in New York. He goes, you're going to be indicted. I said, what?

Because you're going to be indicted. I said, are they waiting at my house? They said, no, no, no, no. They're allowing you because you've been so cooperative. Right. You're going to allow you to report to come. You have to fly into New York next week on Tuesday. They need all the flight information.

and I'm going to pick you up Wednesday morning at your apartment and I'm going to take you to FBI headquarters. You're going to be arraigned and I'll represent you at the arraignment but after that I won't be able to represent you. I said, what? I already paid this guy almost a million bucks. Yeah.

He says my guess is that they're going to freeze all your money and everything and you'll have no way to pay me. And you're going to have to figure out a way to get another lawyer unless you could figure out someone. If you have someone else, they could send me like a half a million. And I'm like, what? I don't get it. I said, what's indicted me? He goes, well, you're going to be arrested?

I said, I thought you said, it's over. They said, that's what they told me. I said, are you kidding me? I was in shock. I had no idea. I had forgot this. It was out of my life, out of my mind. I'd sold the company, I'd gotten the money.

The buyers were running the company, but of course by this time, by July of 2009, the market, once they closed, April 1st, 08, the market went straight down, straight down, from 14,000 to 6,600. I really sold at the top. Right. And I only sold because it was too tough to do business

with the FBI raiding me and calling every newspaper in New York, everybody knew it, who wants to do business with me? So who would want to be on the other side of a trade with me, thinking the FBI is going to come in and they're not going to get paid? Right. It was brutal. I fought, I fought, I fought, but I say, there's too much. And the institutions we deal with, the biggest investors,

they said, look, it's too much. Take the money, and they made a deal. They made a, I asked for a very generous amount, and they met it. They said, you picked the number. we know you're reasonable, gave them the number, and they agreed. And I got paid and I was in touch with them all throughout the process because I actually a hedge fund and I had an interest in all the companies that were in the fund. And they wanted to buy me out of everything. And so I get indicted.

In the following week, I fly into New York on a Tuesday night and he picks me up at my apartment on Wednesday morning, 6.30 in the morning, and they take me to FBI headquarters. And they had two people come in in my case every hour. So over three hours, there were six of us that were indicted that day. We were all handcuffed and chained and read our rights. And then when I was sitting in the office, they had two beautiful female agents come in. And they said, would you like to see the indictment? It's the same five-page shitty indictment that the complaint that I had against me when they turned me down at the NASD for Sky Capital, like I told you earlier in the interview.

They tried to disallow me to be a broker-deal or hide the most expensive lawyer in Washington, and then I got approved. It's the same claim of nonsense. And then they say I stole $140 million and they list six trades that were like $2,500 in the complaint. It just not have it made any sense. Right. And the lawyer, I posted a $5 million bail. No bond. And they made me segregate money.

So I couldn't touch any money that I had. Now, they said that was a condition of bail, but it was a lie. If they would have froze my money, if they could have froze my money, they would have. Right. If they could have taken my money, they would have. But they couldn't do any of those things because they had nothing really. And their case came from, I guess. against this guy Phil that wore the wire that sold the Coke to the FBI agent and to another two guys that had pled guilty in the case where they found crimes and the, their dockets were sealed.

But I didn't know. How would I know any of this? I was told that nothing's going to happen. But they were looking to make cases. And the SEC blatantly had press releases saying that they looked at a make case. They made the record number of cases in 2009 in response to the markets failing in 2008-09. The problem is they arrested a bunch of people had nothing to do with that. And all the people that failed just got bailed out and they paid a fine. So to make a long story short now, I'm on $5 million bail,

going front of the judge, plead not guilty, and there was some talk that I might be remanded right there. But no, they didn't remand me because they couldn't really. But my lawyer obfuscated everything

that he wanted to accomplish by saying this was a condition of bail. A, I had $250,000 in weapons, okay? And they were legal. And I was in business with a federal gun dealer. Well, he made it so the FBI had to take my weapons. I could have left him at the gun dealer and sold them. Instead, I had to give him to the FBI for whatever the reason.

That would have been money. I could have had liquid as gold. and they would have sat with the federal gun dealer, the guy bought them from, and they were all appreciated in value times five. And they took my passport, they took my wife's passport, they took my children's passports,

and they put me in the house. I'm trying to think they made me wear a monitor that I had a transponder and an acomata. Yeah, I had no curfew. Okay. Okay. And when I went to the probation guy, after I flew back to Florida, I went to Palm Beach Probation, the guy said, this is strange. There's no curfew in your order.

So they're just tracking you. Yeah. He says, I don't understand. He says, I have 94 people on my case list, and everybody has a curfew. Maybe the judge made a mistake. He calls the judge, calls the clerk, whatever. No, it turns out no curfew. Mr. Mandel is being tracked, but he could do whatever he, go wherever he pleases,

as long as he was in the district, right? All right. Okay. I find out years later that do you know that in certain states, if you're on home confinement, if you have an acomata, pre-trial or post, but pretrial especially, and you have a curfew for every two or three days that you're on that, it's a day of good time. Oh, okay.

And the state of Florida included. This judge wanted to make sure I didn't get that good time. Okay. That's the only reason to give me a curfew. You understand he did it on purpose? He knew these kind of things. Even the probation guy didn't know because I ended up being on probation from 09 to 14. Okay.

That would have been, I would have had like two years good time. Right. instead of one day when I went in in 14. We went at two years down. Right. Think about how career, or maybe more, maybe three years, two and a half years.

So, okay, so now I'm fighting the case. Do I want to run? Bad idea. Right. I have an expert on the field. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sitting with an expert.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, how many guys? Well, you were in, you went to a camp, right? Well, no, I got a 12 year bid, so you have to be 10 years net or under. So you went, first you went to a lot. He purposely gave me 12. So, and then they put a management variable on me because they, the, the, the, the, I had a consultant, the federal president's only says to me, listen, in two and

half months, you can apply to go to the camp. And of course, they did. And they said, oh, no, you have a management variable. They tried to keep, they kept me there for another three years. Well, what was I going to say is that, you know, everybody with this whole take off on the run. Well, first of all, go to a country where they won't have. extradite you. That doesn't mean they won't come get you. I know people that have gotten.

Yeah. You meet him in prison where it's some guy who's been in his own country. They go over their head and they wake up and they're thrown into a court and the judge says, oh no, you're here now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know about all that. Right. But you're here right now. And you're indicted. So that's something the U.S. attorney needs to look into. And then they, it's just like a big ha-ha-ha-ha-he. Many guys like that. Yeah. So that that whole idea of, especially with someone like People talk about the guy like P. Diddy, right? Right. They talk about, oh, he should have this.

Stop it. He would have left, though. He would have left. Yeah, he would have left. But even if he went to a non-extradition country. He would have to go to Russia. Yeah, exactly. We talked about that.

He'd have to either go on another podcast. We were like either North Korea or Russia. Neither one do I want to live in. But Russia would have been a good place for him. If he had money. He has money. I'm saying, what if he couldn't have moved the money? I'm saying you would have to show up with money.

He has money offshore. I can tell you with certainty. But what I want to say is that did you see the bail packages they turned down? Oh, yeah. Twice. $50 million. Yeah. No, he's not getting it.

That was his ticket to leave the country. But again, where's it going to go? Like you said, people don't know what we know, that there's nowhere safe. Yeah. Unless you have, you with an enemy of America. Yeah. Or maybe you just, I can't even imagine the amount of plastic surgery you would have to do. And you'd have to live in some little shit hole country.

somewhere and you'd have to, it'd be so much work. Right. And then what? You're going to be 70 years old and they do get you? You go do 20 years and that. I agree. So I'm not going to run. And personally, I didn't do anything wrong.

And then, you know, they said to me, listen, the government would love you to give up a senator or a congressman. You don't have to go through all this. And I talked to my wife and she said, is this what you want to do? you want to ruin somebody else's life because, you know, you're being jammed up, you're being blackmailed. I said, I was between a rock and a hard place

because there was a couple of guys that they would have liked that were nasty to me in the press and all that. And they were lying to the government. And I had proof, documentary proof. And these were guys the government would have loved to have a dirty senator a dirty congressman, a dirty number of parliament, all these different things.

But no, at the end of the day, I took the righteous path, and I'll say this to you. I paid a real price for that. I was going to say, bro, what do you, what, which, which, which congressman do you want? Right. Which house of that, I got, I got this guy, I got, I had about a dozen guys that we could have had. Yeah, no. And I just was like, you know what? I'm, you know, God's watching.

I'm going to do the right thing. I disagree. I think you didn't do the right thing. But can I say? I agree with you now. Looking back. The other thing is you're also still under the misconception that you're innocent and that that means anything. Correct.

If you're guilty and you go to prison, if you're guilty and you go to trial, 100% you're done. If you're innocent, you got about an 80% chance to being found a guilty. I'd say like 98%. Yeah. I mean, it's that I learned one thing from my attorney in this case. He said that there's also something as innocent in the law. you're guilty or not guilty. There's no innocent.

It's very interesting. And these illegal theories like, but I'm not guilty of the charges that were brought against me. I'm going to say it again. I've been saying it nonstop. And I'll say it probably till I'm dead. And I didn't do what they said. Now, I've done a lot of things in my life.

I've done some bad things in my life. And back in the 80s, like I said earlier, I was probably one of the bad boys of Wall Street. I was very arrogant. I did things that I regret and that I had no business, but I was under the influence of a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol, and I'm not trying to cop an excuse. When I said I did some bad things, I did some bad things.

However, the things that I was accused of doing wrong in the case of the United States government versus Ross Mandel, Sky Capital, et al, never happened. Never happened now. It turns out, and I learned this at trial. I learned this at trial that some of the guys that worked for me were doing some shit. doing some bad things, and I get it. And rather than them go to jail for 25 or 30 years,

because they were debt to rights, they were guilty, you know, on video, on audio, et cetera. They'll have to live with all this. One thing that I, now that I'm out and I'm free, and I paid my debt to society, I did my time, and I did it like a man. I did like a stand-up guy. I didn't sit and moan and cry and, you know, all these different things.

I did positive things. I became learned it. I read. and I became an educator in prison. Let's go back. Yes. Let's go back. Let's go back.

We're going to fight the trial. You haven't got through the trial yet. Okay, so first before the trial, you get indicted. And that was in July of 2009. And then all of a sudden, we're going back and forth arguing some motions, which is really just my lawyer's way of churning me and getting legal fees out of me. Okay. And all of a sudden, a miracle happens, I thought.

There's a case, a stock market case, that comes out of Australia. But that was heard in the Southern District of New York, which was the Wall Street District. The Wall Street District were my cases. Right. That's the N.Y, lower Manhattan. And a guy named Morrison is suing the Royal Bank of Australia for fraud. The Royal Bank of Australia bought a company,

a mortgage business in Florida. Probably one of yours. And they were... exaggerating their earnings, community fraud. And so the Bank of Australia was incorporating their earnings into its earnings, because it was a legitimate subsidiary. Bank of Australia bought this mortgage company, and this mortgage company has made tons of money, crazy money.

And so it would affect the price of the bank's stock. And so the stock became a high flyer on the Australian stock exchange, because the numbers were so great. and they looked like geniuses because they had the wisdom to buy this mortgage company in Florida. Turns out that the mortgage company in Florida was committing fraud. They were overstating numbers, lying about different things. And so when that fraud came out, the Bank of Australia's had to get revised numbers instead of earning money or losing money.

And this guy, Morrison, lost millions of dollars in the stock market because he was buying this conservative bank. And it turns out the numbers are bad. Morrison sues brings a case against the Bank of Australia and others in New York City, in the Southern District of New York. He's an Australian guy suing an Australian bank that treads on the Australian Stock Exchange in New York. That seems strange. Okay. And he wins.

He wins. Well, how do they even allow him to do that? That's what happened. I'll explain to you. Then they appeal. They appeal. The bank appeals. And the appellate court, which is my appellate court, second circuit, they upheld the judge's

decision. They upheld it. Okay. Because our government thinks it's the policeman of the world, which they say in black and white, in my case, that's their position of my case. They're policemen of the world. They're responsible. Right.

Then it goes to the Supreme Court. And a guy named George Conway, who's married to Kelly Ann Conway, was a divorce now. He was an anti-Trumper, and she's a pro-Trumper. Kelly Ann Conway, I don't know if you guys follow this story. But George Conway is a partner, a senior partner, at the highest earning per partner law firm in the world in Lower Manhattan. He goes and argues the case in the Supreme Court and has to do with the extraterritorial rights,

extraterritorial statutes of the United States securities laws. And he argues in front of the Supreme Court that when Congress enacts securities laws, they apply to our markets and our securities, not to the securities on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Right. Or for that matter, the London Stock Exchange or any other foreign stock exchange. Right. It is assumed that, now he brings up examples like the piracy laws

that are maritime laws under maritime law and the terrorist laws which apply world acts of terrorism against, let's say, a German base in Europe. Those are written specifically to govern those territories. But the securities laws have to do with American securities on American stock exchanges. And the Supreme Court rules against Morrison. It's not that he doesn't have standing here. That's what we would say, because what the hell is this? Australian guy

doing so in an Australian man because our courts have allowed that. But the truth is, our laws don't apply to the Australian stock exchange. Right. And so what is it? How could we're not, we're saying it would be wrong in America, but we don't know if it's right or wrong in Australia. There's nothing to do with our laws. Okay. So we can't even rule on that.

So we have to overturn Morrison, loses in America court and the American law because there is no extra territorial reach of our security laws. I get sued in a two-count indictment that was unsealed July 2nd. Okay. Securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. We're going to get technical here. I have a very complicated case, and it's a case of first impression, and that's why I got bailout in the appeal, and it went up all the way up to the solicitor general,

because I'm accused of manipulating the London Stock Exchange with non-residents of the United States, no Americans, and the London Stock Exchange. However, in London, it's agreed that I've complied with every law properly, committed no violations. Okay. So if I did something in London, I complied with their law. So my lawyer's argument was like this, Your Honor.

how come the government didn't take away Mr. Mandel's driver's license? And the judge says, what does that mean, Mr. Hoffman? When Mr. Mandel was in London, he drove on the wrong side of the street every day. How come they didn't take away his driver's license? It's the same thing. Right. What is my doing a pipe in London have to do with American securities? Nothing to do with America at all.

Right. What is the jurisdictional issue is that, okay, Okay, I had, there's a nexus. I had an office on Wall Street. I lived in Florida and New York. And I did business in foreign countries from my Wall Street office. But I'm not guilty of violating any law over there. Right.

So what are we doing giving me an indictment for breaking the law here? And break the law here. I'm in perfect compliance here. Right. So now we apply to have my case thrown out. Upon the release of the Morrison decision, the United States government had about 140 foreign cases like this. They dropped 138 of them. They literally dropped these cases.

They kept my case. Was yours one of the 138? No. Otherwise, well would I be here, right? I would have been a billionaire. But no, they kept my case and they kept another case. about a guy, in his case, even worse than mine, he didn't lose anybody any money.

Everybody made money. And they said that he violated some law from another country. And he donated $100 million to the Metropolitan Opera House. And they took his name off. It's a famous case, but it's not to do with mine. The bottom line is why on earth did they continue to maintain the case? There's a theory that the government wanted to create some case law. so that they could use it,

and it comes in handy down the road. Yeah. They have a, it's like a put. It gives them, they get rid of all of this. There'll be a lot of people that might, you know, do business from here and do some bad things over there. And they're free to hide in America while they're robbing and breaking laws in the foreign places. The problem is I didn't break any laws over there.

I didn't have any complaints. I was constantly being ordered and I came, not even a slap on the wrist. I comply with everything. So now the government, rather than, and the judge should have ruled it on my favor and thrown it out, but he doesn't because this judge is a government guy. If you go to Judicial Watch, to this day, he's never ruled against the United States government, ever to this day. I still check on a judicial watch.

So the Morrison case is a big bearing on my case. Right. So now instead of them ruling. my favor in dropping the indictment, they file a superseding indictment. I'm like, this is new to me now. What the fuck is this supposed to be getting better for me now, right? Everybody's, the front page New York Times said, I'm about to have my case thrown out. Make this whole argument. And they supersede. I learned this from real life pain. They hit me with wire fraud and mail fraud charges now. because that's their go-to.

Yeah, yeah. It's a huge. It covers a tremendous amount of... All they have to do is show there was a wire and that there's an email. And they can convict you. So they get the conspiracy law. Yeah. I have a wire for fraud.

Right. But you know, that's a go-to charge when they have no other evidence. So the government figured that my securities fraud and my conspiracy of security is fraud, we're going to be thrown out. But my judge, he's not thrown out of anything. He was never ruled against the government ever, ever. I'm sure he's very proud of himself. There's only two judges in that district that have never ruled against.

That's why they didn't make it to the circuit court. You know, that's why they're on the appellate courts. That's another story. So, you know, I go through, now I'm going to trial. So we lose motion practice and now we have to prepare for trial. And the trial gets delayed and this and that and this fighting over the evidence. government doesn't want to present the evidence, all the documents, the tapes, interviews of all,

because there's a lot of stuff in there that would say, I'm an honest guy, I'm a sober guy, I didn't cheat anybody, and steal from anybody, and they mislead anybody, and I run an honest business. And they don't really want that. So the way they hide that is they send over five million pieces of evidence. Right, they bury you.

And they say, okay, figure it out. No, we said you everything. Right. Five million pieces of, you're going to go through everything, every tape, they cloned all the computers, they said all that's evidence. I mean, it's really, they really have it figured out. It's the last bastion of real fraud, I think, in this country, is a federal system.

I really do. Because even in the states, you can bring cameras into the court. That forces them to be somewhat reasonable, somewhat fair. And that's why you see some of these high-profile cases. defendant actually wins to the point. I mean, I think of OJ, the whole country watched. My feeling is he probably got those people. Yeah.

But I was going to say, it's funny too, because just recently did the FBI start taping their interviews with people. Prior to that, they're, oh, no, no, we don't tape our interviews. So there's two FBI agents interviewing one person, and there's no tape recorder. No. So whatever you guys say I said is what happened. Right. And they fill out of form and they only put down what they want. Right.

The 302, the famous 302. Now, I don't know they're now agreed to the tape. That's great. Yeah, now supposedly they're now taping everything. I'm sure only because there's so many inconsistencies. Right. Yeah. FBI fraud.

They commit fraud. The FBI now is under the auspice of everyone sees what's happening now with Trump, the investigations, all the different things that happen. the assassination attempts, the slow walking of everything, people are starting to realize just how corrupt the agencies are. Terrible. I knew since my case, because everything in my case was a lie. I'll give you an example.

So the head agent, Kurt Dangler, Special Agent Kurt Dangler, works at Goldman Sachs now. He gets on the interview stand. He gets on the witness stand. We're course examining him. He states that Philip McHell, the reason they got a search warrant, to search my firm is because he stated an sworn affidavit,

and he's a special agent, he's a lawyer, and he's special agent FBI for like 12 years, okay? Top guy, that we were getting paid 50% commission. And the government said, what does that mean? Well, if you mean to tell me, if a guy put in $25,000, the broker's got $12,500, he said, yeah. That's not true, right? How's that possible?

He testified to this. That's what that's, this is the affidavit for the search warrant, that we were paying 50% to our brokers. That's criminal. Yeah, I was just that it's not possible. He said that. He testified to this. It's in a sworn affidavit. Okay.

Under course examination, it turns out, no. We're charging 3%, the brokers get 50%. percent of three percent right so they get one point five percent of the investment and he said 50 percent in a sworn affidavit and my lawyer called him a liar and the judge won my lawyer i get hit with the contempt charge because i blew up i got 10 thousand dollars and fines for contempt i was bad boy in court because it was outright lies outright fraud he says yeah you know i was i was mistaken now i know different that renders the whole search illegal but what's the basis of the That was the crime and he testified on a sworn affidavit under oaths.

Under penalty of perjury. Did he get charged with? No. Did he see, I made a mistake. I didn't lie. He made a mistake. And that's why Mr. Mandel's been indicted and charging you've ruined his life because you made a mistake. So this is an example of shit that you don't know about my case.

And they don't throw out the entire search warrant or all the evidence that they gather. No, but there was no evidence there anyway. They left with 300 boxes. Right, but if that had all been thrown out, then there's have no evidence, but they didn't do that. There's no evidence anyway. Just so you understand. I understand what you're saying. But it's a scam.

The whole thing's a scam. I'm saying in general, if you obtained a search warrant under, under. It's the false fruit of the poison tree. Right. It should be. But that's actually, in the federal system, that doesn't even exist. Right, I understand. So.

But they would never throw out that search, even though it was a bad search. Right. It's a bad search because you have a David's bad. Right. That was the basis for the whole indictment, basically, is that, you know, they're getting 50% commission. Right. They're getting 50% payout.

Right. The commission is always between 2 and 5%. So what? So, all right. So that's an example of something that happened, you know, ongoing. How long was the trial? The trial was five weeks. Five weeks.

They came back with guilty verdicts on all four counts. Okay. And when the jury was interviewed after they rendered the verdict, they said that it a tough call because we believe that all of the witnesses were lying. And they were admitted a lot. My lawyer was so good on Cross, he got them to admit that they were lying. Right. They had to admit they were willing. One guy, the United States government read him his rights in the middle of the hearing because he said he had a special deal with the government. Right. That he wouldn't get prosecuted if he told them the story. And the government went

crazy and the judge, judge called up the government and says, you know, a hostile witness. He goes, did I, did we made you a deal? He goes, well, no, but you know, you said it was like a deal. Right. It was unbelievable. Of course it was a deal. And he didn't go to jail. But the thing is, he's, now he's on the stand telling the jury that the government made him a deal.

If he says this, then, you know, he can't go to jail. He's a moron and he's a liar. And he would say whatever he had to say, whatever he thought. So they had, they read him his rights while he was on the stand, testifying against me. So this is crazy stuff. I was going to say this is, and this is happening. So over and over again, they're having to admit that this isn't what happened. I lied about this.

Correct. This isn't exactly true. Right. Then the best one was this guy, Kyle Clyburn. A young black kid, I hired, I never met him. I helped him. He was the biggest source of complaints and fraud in our firm. We had many problems with this guy.

I eventually fired him. And he's very practiced during his testimony. He keeps looking at the jury. his tone. My loyces, Mr. Clyburn, you're very, very good as a witness.

Thank you. Because my guess is you've practiced, right, you've rehearsed this with the government, right? He looks over with the United States attorney. She goes, goes, yes.

He goes, let me ask you a question. Have you been in this room before? Yes. Really? So you've rehearsed this testimony and you've rehearsed in this room, apparently.

Yes. You said, why? Don't look at the, don't even look over there again. Like that's... How many times, Mr. Clyburn, have you been in this room, rehearsing?

You know, I can find out. More than three times? Yes. More than five times? Yes. Mr. Clyburn, have you been in this room rehearsing this testimony?

More than 10 times? I think so, yeah. This kind of thing. Right. Just so... sketchy, so scammy. You know, I mean, it's just like, it's theater. I realized halfway through the trial, it's theater.

Oh, yeah. No matter what happens, I'm going down for something that didn't happen that I didn't do. That didn't even happen. Because they have created this story and they got these guys to stick with it. Now, the funny thing is, there was one at my operations guy. His name was Stephen Shea. Stephen Shea played guilty right away. And they brought him in and he said, I'm guilty.

I'm admitting my guilt. It's because of me this happened. And the government said, what do you mean? Because Mandel and Harrington had nothing to do with it. It was me. I made deals with the brokers, and I manipulated the operations,

and they paid me. And it's my fault. The firm went down and everything. They said, are you telling us that Mr. Mandel and Mr. Harold didn't know anything about it? it's the truth. I'm telling you the truth. You're refusing to accept responsibility, Mr. Shea.

How's he refusing to accept responsibility when he's admitting it's him to jail for 30 months to a camp? But all the guys that admitted guilt that pointed fingers at me in Harrington that actually got caught stealing, selling the FBI drugs, they spent one day in jail just a daily indictment. But because this guy didn't point at you. Correct. He didn't go with their. story, which was completely fabricated. Right. And it so happens, Shea was the one that controlled us. I was all around the world. I wasn't even in New York after time. Hardly ever. All this shit happened between him and these brokers.

But that, not Mr. Mandel. Mr. Mandel knew everything. He ran everything. Mr. Mandel really controlled Thornewater. The guy gets on the stat. I control. Tollwood. Nothing to do with Thornewater. This is what happened in my trial. Believe it or not, I say it like this on my children. I haven't told you guys a lie. I'm looking right in the camera. I just want to say this. And I've maintained that. Now, I insisted on testifying. And I had so many witnesses. Like guys flying in from Europe. I had guys that have never had a complaint in their life,

the compliance office, the CFO, all these real guys. My lawyer calls one witness. The judge says his testimony is unreliable. He's been licensed in the business for 27 years, never had one complaint, still licensed, working for firms. All the guys he said this real testimony are liars, convicted liars, admitted liars, and all have complaints and issues, in negation fraud. But these guys that I brought in, these two guys, and then my lawyer, he goes, I'm not letting you testify.

We're resting right now. And he spoke to my wife behind my back and to my co-defendant, his lawyer behind my back. They said, Mr. Medley, you won. You cannot lose this case. Even if they find a guilty verdict, an appeal is overturned. But there's nothing. They have not one single thing. There's not one single instance where you can broke a law.

There's no law by right it. Nothing. How could they see you manipulate the London Stock Exchange? Who are these people? They don't work for the London Stock Exchange. They're not with the London Stock Exchange. They're not with the London Stock Exchange here. So he pressured me like crazy.

And I'll tell you why. All along, when this first happened, November 6th of 2006, after they came in a raid of my place. The very next day I insisted on going to get to the government. I wanted to talk to the SD&W. I find out what the fuck going on. If there's something wrong, tell me, and I'll work with them and we'll cure it.

And that would have worked, I think, because they had evidence. People were doing bad things. And if I would have been brought to my attention, I would have taken action. And they know that because they said on tape, but this lawyer wouldn't let me go. He did everything he could.

and initially I thought he was maybe giving me right advice. Because anything you say is going to be in a record now, and this is going for five years, you might want to change your testimony down the road, and you can't because now they got you. I said, I didn't do anything wrong. Right. Okay, turns out the way I got him,

I had a corporate lawyer who worked at his firm. The corporate lawyer has been charged with the SEC with wrongdoing, bordering on criminal wrongdoing. the corporate lawyer was my corporate guy who remember I told you that Philickel came back and he was wearing a wife for three months right philicel got this corporate lawyer in a bar doing coke and drinking admitting he did all kinds of wrong things criminal things on tape I didn't know this until we're going to trial and my lawyer kept it from me so your lawyer doesn't want you to get on

the stand and maybe mention that? Because all I'm going to say before the trial, I'm talking about the day after the rate in 06, my trial wasn't until 11. The things that I did, if there's any question, this is the lawyer that gave us this advice. I have bills going back years every month, 20,000 a month, 30,000, 15,000, every month. I would you know on advice of counsel this is what we did at this point they raided us we didn't know what was going on we just knew they came in actually the search warrant what's the problem this whole story that they were over time that developed okay that whole story that developed was all centered around some

testimony i believe it was the lawyer so to make a long story short his name would have come up 15 times. Right. And I didn't know they had him on anything at that point. My feeling is he had a conflict of interest, my attorney. Right. The government knew it the whole time. And my feeling is they threw me to the wolves. Right. And that's why my corporate lawyer, who the hat on tape, was never charged with anything. They charged five other guys. Two other guys on the tape were charged. My lawyer's admitting all these criminal acts. And he was guilty, by the way. And he was very quietly disbarred suspended for 18 months after I went to prison

disbarred for 18 months. And he was a real crook and he still is. And he was, they were working for the government. Somehow the government got their hooks into Jeffrey Hoffman and they made a deal of some sort. Because if I go in,

I'm an open book. You see how I am, right? I'm talking. I'm giving your names. I can give you years and dates and events. What am I hiding? Right. I'm the real deal. I don't have to steal. I don't have to lie and I don't have to cheat. I know how to persuade. I know how to spin.

I know how to sell properly. I'm good at what I do. I'm sober. And I'm not going to friggin do some crazy nonsense. I was already wealthy when I started Sky Capital. I came out of retirement, if you remember. Right. So, you know, that's what happened.

I was, pressed me, pressed my wife, because I wanted to understand and answer the questions. My feeling is, if I'm a juror, I'm sitting there going, you know what? I know they're instructed not told us against me, but that's bullshit. The government goes into this whole elaborate thing. They mentioned to the jury they spent $40 million in five years in this prosecution.

Their teams, three shifts of eight hours working on my stuff. Okay. The jury's got to be wondering that when we said we rest and I'm not going to testify, the whole jury was like, what? because I was already, I was testifying in the courtroom. I was, I got, found a contempt of court for $10,000. It's $1,000 each charge. So I was very evocal about the lies that went on and the nonsense and the bullshit stories

and some of the crap that happened. And so, there were a few, there were five mistrial attempts, all five should have been mistrials. One of the witnesses gets off to stand. looks at me and he goes like this in front of the jury in the whole courtroom. There's an uproar. Judges like, silence, what's going on? I just gave, my lawyer jumps up.

This witness just gave me and my client, the bird. What does that mean? I didn't see anything. Clerk, do you see anything? I didn't see anything. I can't rule on this. My lawyer demanded that he'd be retained. He was an English investor.

Not even my guy. One of the brokers, it was one of his clients. Not one of my clients was called to testify. They were all called. None of them would testify. None of them. They all said they've been contacted numerous times. They said, you never did anything wrong.

You always treated us right. And we don't understand what the whole thing is. I spoke to a member just saying, you know, of the London Stock Exchange over the course of the last two months. They would like me to begin showing them deals again. They said, we looked at your case 100 times. and we could find nothing wrong with it. I said, would you put this in writing to me?

Because I don't trust anybody right now. They said, yes, we will. And they did. So what did I do wrong? Right. But you're found guilty. Convicted? Right.

Sentenced a year later. Here's the problem is that I remember, and I've mentioned this a couple times, whenever somebody makes a mistake or go in trial, is I have a guy named Andrew Levinson. And Andrew Levinson was, he was doing business opportunities. Okay. Anyway, it's funny because when he went to trial, and they, during the voir dire, you know, they're going through picking jurors.

And one juror stands up, and when they read the list, like, can you, can you, you know, once you've seen the evidence, can you, blah, blah, blah. They go through the whole little thing. And he goes, no, I don't think so. And they went, well, why do you say that? And he goes, well, I mean, I think he's probably guilty. And they go, well, you haven't heard any evidence yet. And they go, yeah, but they, a grand jury, you know, you charge him with 30 counts of wire fraud. He did something wrong.

And that's it. That's what. And of course, you know, they say now you're excused. And he's being honest. But, and I was like, what an idiot. And I remember when Andrew told me, I go, what an idiot. He goes, no, he says, I appreciated him. Right.

because he's being honest. He has the other people sitting in the jury already decided that I'm guilty. Right. He said because he said he only said what they had, they were thinking. Correct. He said, but because when you saw all the evidence, he's like,

everybody got up there. He's like, I hadn't done anything wrong. They didn't have me on tape saying anything. They didn't have, you know, he just went on and on. He's like,

I was found guilty. He's actually found not guilty on a ton of charges and found guilty on like one or two. But that's the whole thing. They feel like you feel like you feel like you feel like you. Right. That's how they feel. But if you end up getting. found guilty on one or two, guess what?

When the sentencing, they bring all the other charges back in. Wrongfully, but they do. Right. Right. They didn't say, well, your honor, don't forget. He did this and this. Yeah, but he was found not guilty of that. Yes, but you can consider it.

Well, then you might as well. Right. You know what I'm saying? Not anymore. Now they change the sentencing guidelines. Oh, okay. Just this is new, though. Yeah, well, this was.

And they still do it anyway, probably. 15 years ago. Right. But anyway. This is a brand new thing this year. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Yeah, they call it a acquitted conduct.

You can't be found guilty and have acquitted conduct. Oh, okay. They used to weigh it in like, you know, he's probably guilty. There's something there, you know. Yeah, oh, I got found guilty of wire fraud. Oh, but your honor, don't forget, there was a death in his case. Right.

So you can take that. Oh, okay, no, he was acquitted of it. Right. We'll give you 30 years. Right. 30 years, I can only get five for the wire fraud. Right. Acquitted conduct.

They can't do that anymore, but they've been doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway. They call it relevant conduct. Relevant. That's what they were calling it. So you, so you've been, you're found guilty.

I'm found guilty and what was that like? How did you feel when they said guilty? It was 50-50 that I was going to be allowed to go home and a bunch of people including a lawyer and other people say if they're going to remand you it's a problem.

They're getting right into jail or you know but if they're if he's going to let you come back for sentencing that means something too means he probably going to want on appeal or this and that whatever and so they said I was free to go go. The government made a strong case. Mr. Mandel was a man of means. Flight risk. International banker. He's going to run. He's got money all over the place.

It's not the other thing. And the judge said, no, no, no, we'll schedule sentencing. I wouldn't sentence to a full year later. But now they up my bail by two millions. It was not $7 million. And they made my conf- my confinement. My confinement more stringent. Okay. Still no curfew. Yeah.

Because I could have had used that as a good time. Can you imagine that they knew that? It was leaving a couple of inmates that, you know, inside, the lawyers inside that... Figure that out. They knew every little angle. They do nothing but read these books, you know, the law books and all that. They knew such a thing. Because if I would have known, I would have demanded a curfew.

Right. Where am I going? Where am I going? I'm fighting for my life. I'm married. I'm in bed at 8.30 anyway, huh? Correct. It's the craziest thing.

So it was really a crazy time. And even when I was found guilty, my wife almost fainted. I heard her like, and Kobe's looked at some of these videos. My wife's a magnificent looking woman and very gentle and, you know, a good person. And she knows I'm a good person. And it's just appalling what's been done to us. But she, like, I heard. heard of, she was right behind me, you know, in the first, in the real first row behind me.

And I, I couldn't really worry about me. I was worried about her, you know. And, uh, the judge let us, let us leave. And the theory was, we're going to want on appeal. Right. And so now, now I go home. I'm trying to live my life as best I can. And, uh, um, a year later, I go back and I'm sentenced. And the, the, the, you know, you have the PS, the PSR, the pre-sentence report, the interview and then the report and the probation lady wrote a great first draft but she goes listen it's not the final but the first draft they interviewed my wife they interviewed a couple of business people um all the different things and then it was pretty good reasonable what to say how much time no she doesn't make that recommendation she just writes about who i am as a person okay

what she's learned from, I really am Ross Mandel. I really was born this day. I really lived here and there. I really was licensed. I was educated. She interviewed a few people that were in my life. You know, like the wife, the mother-in-law, a few different people in my life. Found out I'm not abusive to my wife.

I'm a lovely husband. I'm a great provider. I'm a good father. All these wonderful things. All right. We get the final PSR. The government says life is too much to ask for Mr. Mandel. But 30 years is more than reasonable.

Now I'm 57 years old, or 55 years old at the time. I was out for another two and a half years. 55 years old. With all the stellar things written about me, everything's sort of buried. Everything's sort of cut off now. All the good stuff is, you know, it's just such a terrible, terrible business they're in. And so they're demanding 30 years. And then eventually when I go to sentencing, the government gets up 30 years.

Anything else is a travesty for justice. It's a disaster. It's crazy. And I spoke for 40 minutes of my own sentencing. And, you know, they read some victim impact letters. There were three letters by people I never heard of.

They bought 100 shares of stock that lost their money because the government's actions because they refused to give the London Stock Exchange an honest report that no one's getting indicted so far. They're not shutting down the firm, all these different things. So the stock. She had no business, but to keep the stock suspended until they had some, you know, being public means you're transparent.

Right. An investor, a stockholder, has the right to know within reason what's going on. Our government refused to do that. And they say, I broke the law. They broke the law in England. Right? They broke the law. Forced, you know, a thousand stockholders to lose their money, unreasonably.

I mean, really, it's just a terrible thing that happened. And so I go home and I'm out. I get this sentence of 144 months. $50 million in forfeiture. There's no restitution because the government can't figure out who I owe money to, how much you're where. Well, then what's the forfeiture? The judge says. Mr. Mandel, this is a complex securities case.

The government can't figure out laws within reason. And we know it's at least 100 plus million. They've alleged 140. I know it's at least 100 plus. But because we can't give you an exact figure, I'm just going to put it $50 million for a charge. Under the law, you have to specify every penny. Right.

I've never seen one case in all my studies and then when I spoke to where it's an exact number of 50 million. Right. Well, you can't arbitrarily just determine. Well, he did. Right. Because it can't, because restitution and forfeiture, it can't be a windfall for the government. Correct.

What are they going to do with that? Well, they've done that, just so you know, my case. And the restitution, they admitted they couldn't figure it out. So they're supposed to hand in the numbers within 90 days of the sentencing, and they didn't do that. And then the judge wrote the order wrong, so it's a little and void. Oh, nice. Yeah. So you got no forfeiture.

Well, no, the forfeiture is $50 million, and that's satisfied. I've been told that's satisfied. Remember, I owned a bank, brokerage of all these different things. So they sold all that stuff. Whatever they did, they took a lot of money for me and all these, all the bail money is gone. Never got it back, even though I complied. But here's the interesting thing. So I've been told a little long I'm going to win on appeal because of the Morrison decision.

Okay. The judge got it wrong, which he did. Yeah. The government admits it eventually. And so the judge, we're worried that. they're going to remand me. They're just going to give you 45 days to get your affairs in order, which you're going in. And my lawyer says, well, we're going to be playing for bail pending appeal.

And he says, you have my answer right now. Denied. But he didn't file the papers. Okay. But thank God this guy's incompetent. He's not. He's very crafty. Oh, okay.

He's sneaky. 45 days later was a Monday, like June 15th. Okay, or July, July, I think it's June 15th, 45 days from the end of my sentence. I was the end of my sentence. I think in May. And June 15th was the deadline. I had a report to Petersburg, Virginia, which is all my family was in New York and Florida. So they put me in West Virginia, Petersburg initially.

And that's where I had a report on that Monday, June 15th. We prepared a real great appellate paper. Okay? But they can't file it until the judge files that he's denied my request for bail. Okay. Because it's still in district court technically. Right. It shows that I'm appealing, I'm requesting bail and he hasn't ruled,

even though he gave me the answer, the day of my sentencing. He files the paper on that third. Thursday night. Literally Thursday night. We were watching the docket every minute because we know if he doesn't file it, I have to report. Thursday night, 10 o'clock at night, they file that my request of bail pending appeal was denied. And then Friday morning, my lawyer files bail pending appeal. Right.

At the second circuit. And it was the summer. So it was a holiday schedule. So it was a different panel than normal. morning. They get it Friday morning and Friday night. I'm already packing to go over the weekend to go to Virginia to report that everyone says I have to go. Otherwise, the marshals come get me, always different things. It'll hold it against me. Friday night at 10 o'clock at night, the Second Circuit stay, gives me a one week stay. I don't have to report on Monday to jail,

to prison, federal prison, which is the law. in Petersburg, Virginia. Very tough place, by the way. My defendant, co-defendant, was so sure that, you know, we were going and he went right in. I get a one-week stay.

His lawyer said, there's no way we can win anything. So, I call my lawyer. My lawyer's very happy, because he don't have to report Monday. He goes, we got a one, I said, what does that mean in one week's day?

He goes, well, essentially, the appellate court is giving us they ordered a hearing in one week. I have to draft your entire appeal and present it at a hearing in one week. I said, is that possible? He says, no, but we're going to try. Right.

And so we get to one week's stay. He files the papers. I wasn't a hearing. They just asked for papers. At the, that following Friday, they get the papers, and then they order a hearing for a month later. So now I'm out again.

I'm still out. Right. Meanwhile, my co-defendants in prison when he, we reported. And a month later, it's like July 15th. He goes to a hearing at the appellate court, and the panel rules that I receive bail pending appeal throughout the dependence of all legal proceedings leading up to a final decision in my case. Okay. Nice. And that goes on for another two years and nine months.

So now I'm out. But again, more bail, more this, more restrictions, more that. And now my co-defendants in prison, he has to get out of prison. He's filing the results. It took him two weeks to get out of prison, even after they ruled that we don't have to go to prison. And so we're on appeal. We're out. And we filed an amazing appeal.

And I went to the oral arguments now. So he files this appeal. And then I get a call from George Conrad. way is the guy that represented the Morrison case on behalf of the bank of Australia in the Supreme Court of the United States and won. He says, and we become sort of friendly with talking, and he says, would you be open to would you be open to the Bar Association filing an amicus brief on your behalf? saying the judge got it wrong.

Yeah. And I says, what does that mean? All this is new. Yeah, yeah. Supeseding indictment, indictment, an anarchist brief. I don't know what any of this shit means.

I'm constantly learning and reading and all these different things. It means friend of the court in Latin. It's a disinterested party that has become interested because of some aspect of the case. Whether they know me, the case, the law, whatever. In this case, the New York City Bar Association. filed an amicus brief on my behalf. It is the biggest association of attorneys in the world. At the time, 23,000 practicing attorneys all in New York.

Essentially, if you're a lawyer in New York, you remember the bar there. Including my judge, including the lead FBI agents, including my prosecutors, all members of the New York City Bar. I said, what the fuck, George? What are they going to say? They're prosecuting me. You're saying they got it wrong. Right.

Well, no, I'm not saying that the Bar Association is agreeing that they got it wrong. We have to ask them, the members of the bar. And they all had to be recused from this decision. So the association that they're members of and another 23,780 lawyers, whatever no, is, and they're like eight lawyers, they disagree. But all the other 23,000 agree with this decision. Right. They got the law wrong and I must be unconvicted.

And it was an amazing thing. And then the law journal came out and said that the judge mishandled the evidence in my case. And he delivered it in such a way that the jury had to convict me. That was all wrong. Constitutional error. Constitutional error. And at the end of the day, he can't fight City Hall, I guess. Right.

They still rigged the appellate court, this remand panel, and they congratulated my attorney on writing the most amazing brief that lost. And at the end of the day, he attacked the prosecutor and said, Ms. Coltsin, you've read the Morrison case. You do understand there has to be Americans that are harmed here. Without an American being harmed, where's the nexus? Right. This was a crime that occurred allegedly in London with non-Americans under UK law. I don't understand what we're doing here. Surely the government must have made some provision.

Yes, Your Honor, yes, Your Honor, we're on it, Your Honor. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you three days and you're going to produce a five-page document explaining where this nexus is, which Americans got hurt. It goes to my attorney. I'm going to give you three pages. I want him in three days. And he goes to Michael Bachner, who's a famous attorney who represents my co-defendant. I'm going to give you three pages.

So the two of you, the defense gets six pages. The government gets five. No more than five pages, Ms. Goldstein. Am I clear? Yes, Your Honor. I expect these on my desk in three days. The government submits a 355-page document. I am not exaggerating.

Look at the record. This stick. doesn't say one thing about anybody that was harmed. All it does is basically have every one of my financial statements in there from the broker-dealer in New York. And it shows wires going to and fro from suppliers, people that we order stationary from, people that we order tickets from, people that all the different things, money coming in from private placements.

There was nothing specific showing how anybody was harmed by the actions that they tried to convict me of. zero. And in the end, they deny my appeal. Solicitor General says, we admit the government says the district court got it wrong, but it's harmless error. And then the government acknowledges that the second circuit got it wrong. They just used the wrong provision, wrong statute of harmless error. But we're asking that the justices to please stay out of the fray and allow the circuits to police them, themselves. And the Supreme Court denied my certiori. And I was in prison at this point. I reported September 10, 2014. My appeal was denied in June of 14. We filed a motion to reconsider.

And something else. We asked for an embank because it's a case in first impression. It was the Morrissey beside all these great cases. They said, denied, denied, and I was reported September 10, 2014. I mean, you know, who can make up this story? It's the craziest thing in the world. It's the craziest thing in the world. And, you know, it's now in the past. Right.

I could never get the time back. I am fighting to clear my name. I maintain it did nothing wrong. Right. But I'm, you know, while I was incarcerated, as I shared with, you earlier, I became an educator. And a lot of men, I used to say, what am I doing here? I didn't do anything wrong. And a lot of guys used to come to me and say, you know why you're here? Because we needed you. We needed you. I helped guys get sober. I ran AA meetings at Miami Low, Miami

at the building, FDC, Miami, at Coleman Camp, et cetera. I helped guide some young men when I was a subject to diesel therapy after they let me out and they brought me back in eight months later. They put me to keep different county jails for a minute. And I've had a very big impact on a lot of men's lives. And they've thanked me for it. And they acknowledge me on social media all the time. And so I decided to go public a little bit. And that's why I agreed to do Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and do podcast and all that. Because I see how my experience can be used to help other people. And specifically in business, I was approached by some very smart people that said, listen, you're a brilliant guy. You get business the way other people don't.

You understand those stock markets like very few people in the world. Why don't you just create some courses, build a legacy. And I spoke to Bradley at Lightspeed virtual training, who is the biggest in the online field. He did over $900 million last year. and he represents guys like Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone and Andy Elliott Russell Brunson, Robert Kiyosaki, Damon John from Shark Tank

and dozens of others and big guys, little guys, you know, the dog whisperer, what's his name, the guy that had the TV show. He's on flight speed. And he has a huge reach. And I did his dropping bombs podcast and the reaction was incredible.

And I hope I get the same reaction with your podcast because you're a hell of a guy and I told you, you know, my podcast. And so we're launching the wealth formula. Okay. It's currently available in individual modules on my Shopify store. Go to rossmandel.com. My name is two S's, two L's, Ross Mandel.com.

I wrote a basic business course that whether you're a young kid, a beginner, whether you're a novice business person, whether you're in business school, whether you're a multi-millionaire and whatever chosen field you're in, I promise you, you will benefit greatly. My producer, some of my partners that are really successful in business are living the wealth formula right now.

They said, oh my God, I didn't know that I shouldn't incorporate Delaware. It's not a safe state that I should go to Nevada or Texas or Wyoming, like Elon Musk. Four months before, Musk realized that he messed up incorporating in Delaware. I published, already that you don't ever incorporate in Delaware, unless you're a shareholder. But if you're a

founder, a board member, an executive, you want to be in a state where they've never pierced the corporate veil. So your jurisdiction, where you incorporate, what sort of legal entity you use, whether you want to be a trust in the Bahamas, an LLC, Nevada, an S-Corp, a master limited partnership. There are all different variants. And we break it out in an entertaining and formative way. It's a 114-page written digital text, downloadable, with dozens of downloadable worksheets and PDFs and 100 plus hyperlinks to source materials. So you understand the brilliance of where all this came from. I mean, this really is about close to 45 years of my life and my business experience. And then I narrate in 13 modules, which are now,

interactive thanks to Bradley and Lightspeed they allow they allowed me to interact with the user online on his digital experience and we did teach you how to start a business how to take an idea and turn it into a business how to take it public how to create a a vision board a vision plan how to write a business plan how to do a pitch deck how to pitch how to raise money how to structure a company depending on the the business depending on the legal that you choose. How to raise money. How to raise money. An exit strategy. What exit strategy you're going to use? And we walk you through real life examples. Face it, learning business,

it's a little bit of a dry subject it can be. But we make it very entertaining. We pepper it with stories that you just don't know. Well, you might not be familiar with, but we're going to bring it to you. And we're going to demonstrate you how in your normal course of your life, you come across all these things in your day-to-day life. You're not aware of them. We're going to point it out to you. That makes it very, very entertaining because we make it relevant to life and to my experience, your experience, and so forth. So the wealth formula, check it out, lost mandel.com. What about, you said you're also starting a YouTube channel. Well, you started one. Correct. I had a YouTube channel going back many years. It was sort of wiped out when I was inside.

You had a YouTube channel when there weren't even a thing. There was no such thing, right? They did 250 videos. That's true. In 2010, there was a reality show on my life. There's a sizzle reel, Ross Mandel facing life. Ross Mandel, welcome to my world. Unfortunately, I'm the season finale. The Sky's the Limit on American Greed.

I did Wall Street conspiracy theory with former governor Jesse Ventura. Jesse the Body Ventura. They did a deep dive on who they could do a Wall Street story for network television and my name kept popping up. So they reached out to me. I flew out to L.A. I made a deal. I spent three weeks with Jesse filming all around the country.

And it's available. It was a true TV. Wall Street conspiracy theory. I mean, it's got like 10 million views. It's like a real thing. And stuff like that. You know, I've been very active in whatever, whatever sort of arena I choose to enter.

I become very active. and it's been a privilege to be here on your podcast. You're a hell of a guy. You got an amazing story. And I can't wait to get you on my podcast. Oh my gosh, you're killing me. I can't wait. Michael Douglas.

He wishes he looked like you today. He's an old guy right now. Oh, yeah, he is. He is. So am I getting there. Getting there. Yeah, definitely. Let me know.

I'll do the. Oh, what was the Jordan Belfort thing? Or we were going to ask that? Yeah, we have a question. Because I got a- I love to answer questions. Make it easy for me. I've been freewheeling in.

Yeah. So I guess the first one since we were just kind of on this subject, I mean, you seems like you're going through an emotional roller coaster. Like you think you're getting off, you know, you feel like you're wrongly accused. You think you're getting off. And then you get sentenced. Like what is your emotional state during these years, right? It's years that you're kind of just in limbo.

From 06 to 14, eight years. So, you know, much like Jordy Belford, the name that we mentioned, I was approached by his people to do a sequel to The Wolf of Wall Street. My story is just a little bit bigger. It's America and Europe. I go public on a stock exchange. There's a lot of crazy shenanigans like what you saw in that movie, maybe a little crazier even. And I went to New York, and this is before I went to prison. I was sentenced to 12 years, but I was out on appeal, as we discussed.

And I wanted a half a million dollars for my story. Okay? And I met with the biggest publishers in the world set up by Joel Gottler, who was represented Jordan and got that project done. And they said, Mr. Mandel, you're facing 12 years. You've already been sentenced. We can't give you that money because you might not be around to write the book. But here's what we would do.

You seem remarkably together. Your feet are on the ground. You look good. You sound good. You appear calm and clear and clean. You have a beautiful family. We've seen some of the video on YouTube and we've Googled you. How are you keeping it together?

What is your process every day? How do you not lose your mind? I would probably drink myself to death or put a gun to my head. They said, we'll give you $150,000. if you write that book. So I thought about it. And I did. I took it.

I wrote the book. And it's called Rock Solid. And it hasn't been released because I ended up going to prison. Right. But I wrote the book. And we are now offering for the first time digital copies for sale.

On rossmandel.com. You can download. I think it's about 20 bucks. And I will show you how Ross Mandel gets through every day, every week, every month and every year without losing my mind, acting like a lunatic. And I want you to know, rock solid came in very handy when I was in prison.

Right. Because I had the publisher send me like, I asked for 12 books. The guys took them out of my room in the first day. I had a sign each one of them. Then I asked for 12 dozen, a gross. And they lasted one day. They're in a couple of the prison libraries, but mostly guys took them and made me sign, you know, autographed them and stuff like that. And they used to call me Rock Solid on the compound.

Yo, Rock, Rock Solid. I was either OG, the Godfather, or Rock Solid. And I used to feel big, so I was the only one didn't have like a prison name. Right. And Ross, this is Tennessee. Oh, you're from Tennessee, no Alabama, but there's already in Tennessee. You know, there's already in Alabama. You know, crazy stuff.

But they used to call me Rock Solid. And for the first time now we made it available for sale, it's downloadable in digital form only. the book will hit the shelves probably another three months but there's a digital downloads available right now and that's how I maintain my cool and my calm it's I have a I have my own process

dealing with the world and it's been okay during that time period they filmed that sizzle that you've mentioned a couple times throughout the podcast correct what was kind of the premise of that show and like how that all kind of come about okay so I agreed I had I had bought a I had bought a fight promotion called the AFC from a guy named Dan Lampert, who owns the American top teams, very big in down south of Miami.

And he's been on television with the UFC shows and all that. He's one of the godfathers of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in America. He brought the Brazilian guys in and set up all these phenomenal fighting gyms. And they've had numerous world champions. And still, many of the fighters, the top fighters trained in his facilities. He put in all the American top teams, Malki Kavis. were put in first round management. We managed 60 fighters at the time.

World champions, everybody we had was in the top five, top ten, et cetera. And so we were building this new promotion, fight promotion. And the idea was we had five guys that were all highly ranked, including John Jones, who turned out to be a world champion now because they're the greatest pound-f pound fighter. And a few guys like that, five guys. And the idea was to film me building the promotion.

But focusing on the five fighters, their lives going to Brazil, going to upstate New York, where the fighters were from, and detailing their lives, sort of like a 30 and 30 kind of thing like ESPN has, well, before any of these big fights. The idea was to create an emotional connection between the audience and the fighter. People are interested in people more than they're interested in fighting.

And so that's how it's started. Then I get indicted. And so I decided to get small. I had bought this promotion. I had raised $48 million sitting in escrow when the government indicted me. And I got, I got, I got, I panicked because I've never been criminally charged with anything. I never really did anything to deserve it. And I got scared. So I just returned all the money and I unwound this whole, uh, fight business. But the, uh, the guys from ABC television and the local production crew that was handling a lot of their work in a Boca Raton, five-star entertainment, Scott Woolley, who's my current podcast producer, said, look, you're an amazing character, you're bigger than life, and we think your story

now is bigger, not smaller. You've got a big story now. People want to know how you're going to deal with this, fighting with the government, what that's like, open your life to the cameras, show them how you're fighting, you've been wronged, you have nothing to hide, so forth and so on. So after giving you a great deal of thought, I said, I'm going to do it. do it. And I went on Fox television. You saw a clip, I think, in Ross Mandel, Welcome to My World with Eric Bowling on Money Rocks, Fox Television, National Television. I talked about it. I was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times in the garden section, which is the biggest section of the week. It's their entertainment section in the LA Times on Sunday. I was on the front

page. My reality show, and everybody, every network we spoke to wanted it. And then somehow it died as it went up the ladder. We found out the government, the government has tremendous influence over the mass media. If they don't control it all, I don't know what to say. I don't know enough about that. All I could say is, so I agreed to do this reality show. So they produced this reel, and that's what they used to sell the show, which would everybody wanted it, everybody. And I was represented by the biggest guy at William Morris at the time.

And everybody wanted to deal and the office were crazy. And then all of a sudden everything started to die in the vine. They didn't, the government didn't want it. It made them look bad. I'm not sure of the exact reason. I know you've mentioned a couple times that you've known some characters and some, you know, you were kind of behind the scenes of some of these people within the Wolf of Wall Street movie. So my first question would be, how did you first meet Jordan Belfort?

Okay. So I'm the first movie, the original Wall Street movie with Michael Douglas. Oliver Stone was considering me as a consultant and Michael Douglas is on the phone at one point when Charlie Sheen's first coming in and Michael Douglas is on the phone and he says, you know, I lost a fortune of money with Jansen and that Cleopatra deal and that cosmetic deal. So that was a deal that I did with Jansen. Okay. And we took that company public, Cleopatra Coalik.

It was the first ethnic makeup company, if you could believe that. And it turned out to be huge, right? makeup is the whole Kardashian thing. She made a billion dollars and all that. But so, you know, they knew me. Going back to 1987, I was like a wild type of cat, Oliver Stone, and all that. And then, so back in, I get sober in 1990.

I go to drug rehab. And I get out, I'm sober. Now, this is, I get out November of 90. Sometime in, I believe, early 91, that's what I believe. I get a call from an old girlfriend of mine. Her name is Ginger. I'm going to leave that name, just the first name.

Ginger calls me up, and, you know, we were sort of seeing each other on a little bit here, a little bit there, mostly before I got clean. And, but I went with her to her son's bar mitzvah, you know, like the world of Astoria as a date. She's a very attractive woman. She was very good friends with Jordan Belfort. And so she was talking to me because she knew I was very successful. Then I got sober and I'm coming back and I'm building myself back up. She wanted to introduce me to Jordan because she thought it would be a great fit. She saw a lot of his guys making all kinds of money.

She'd understand the technical details of it all. But she thought it would be a great thing. So I don't want to meet this guy because I've seen the deals that he's doing and I didn't get sober to go ahead and rob people. and do these kind of sort of fake deals. But she's insisting. And so then she says, I have a girlfriend in Brooklyn. She's a beautiful girl. She's a lingerie model.

She just did these Diet Pepsi commercials. She's a sexy girl on TV. She's walking in Central Park and some guys playing Frisbee and the dog jumps. And you just see this sweat dripping. And she's wearing a little cut off jeans. She's stunning. I mean, really, Margo Robbie-esque, beautiful girl. and she says to me, I want to introduce her to Jordan.

I think they would be great together. He's already married and all that, but so she goes, I'm going to pick you up at your office, and then we're going to Chowbella, which is on 78th Street and 2nd Avenue. Jordy, in case you forgot where you met her. And we pull up, and Jordan's already saying, sitting at the table. I'd never met him before. I've heard of him. I've heard of him. I've heard of stories. All my

friends worked for him or with him. And I met him for the first time. And that's when he met his future wife, the Duchess of Bay Ridge. My name is Nadine Grasso. So he didn't steal her from a from some guy. Oh, so let me tell you. So let me tell you what happens. So we having, we sit down. Firstly, I'm enamored with Nadine. She's a gorgeous, beautiful blonde, blue eyes, body, the whole thing. and dressed provocatively. And he can't take his eyes off. He's sitting there like it's Christmas morning and he's looking at the tree.

And we're getting on, we're having dinner, this and that. I mean, we sent it for like three hours. And then he invites us all to his Hampton's house that weekend, the coming weekend. Was she with somebody? Or is she alone? Because in the movie. Right.

At the dinner that we met. It was just the four of us. Me and Ginger, Nadine and Jordan. At the party, I didn't go with them. I said, I'll meet you guys there. I wasn't with them. I don't know who she went with. All I know is I went to the party, and I got full of resentment.

I felt really bad. That was a very big day for me because I was newly sober, and I was a million dollars in debt. And I see these idiots and guys that I grew up with that made all this, you know, They're going crazy as they made some money. Meanwhile, I had $30 million before these guys were even licensed. And I pissed it all away.

And I'm looking at his house on Dune Road in the Hamptons. That should have been my house. And I got so aggravated, I left the party. I remember I left because I drove by myself and I left by myself. And I was driving up and down Dune Road. And I made a vow to myself that day that I'm going to have a beach house on that beach. my house that I deserve, that I earned, that I work for, that I'm better than these guys. And that was in 1991, I believe.

Seven years later, 1998, I got married to Stephanie Anzarno from the Bronx. And we moved into our beach house on the same beach in July of 98. And it took a month off and we were there. So that's a true story. I was very, very angry that day. So, all right. Does that answer the question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is there any? I got a story with everything. Yeah, I got, um, people will be curious. Is there anything that you know that, like, the movie misrepresented or any more characters from the movie that you have a good story about? We don't have enough time. I'd be there to see. I would say, I've seen, uh, Belford do a whole thing on, on that where he,

he's literally like this character is made up of these three characters. Correct. This character, like, he goes through the whole movie where it's just like, you know, you're trying to shove, first of all, you're trying to shove, you know, whatever, 15 years. It's lifetime. Yeah. In that brief period. There's a couple of things I want to say in regards that you should consider. First of all, Jory did some nice things for certain people that he didn't involve them in the book or the movie, people that he really cared about.

like this woman I brought up. I never mentioned her name out in public before. But he, in a decent way, didn't name certain names. It wasn't important to the story anyway. Yeah. But he chose not to.

Because remember, he wore a wire for a year. Right. And he sent 50 people to jail to prison. Some who belong there, but some who didn't. And that's why he only did 22 months. and that's why when he got out, he owed these restitution of $104 million or $92 million to hundreds of victims.

And these people, unlike my alleged victims, formed associations and Facebook groups and TikTok groups, and they went after them. They still go after them. Because they were wrong. They were fias. And... It was a pomp and dump skis.

He's running pomp and dumps games. Listen, what he did essentially, he recruited and convinced hundreds of... young Long Island boys had a steal in the stock market. Didn't even understand they were stealing. Just like when I started in the business, I had no idea that I was doing the wrong thing. I didn't know.

I was used and the powers to be allowed that shit. And so that's what he did. I look at myself as different than him because I built a real legit business. I was a real legit broker. I was really in the business in a legit way. And I took myself public on the stock exchange in front of the whole world after 9-11,

after the dot-com crash, all these stuff different things. My story spans a lot, you know, much longer period of time. He had a brilliant run, but it was all, it was all basically crime. And the big deal that he did was to Steve Manchu, Steve Madden, class of 75, Lawrence High School. Steve is my brother. We were in home room together. He's Madden, Amanda, M-A-D, M-A-N. All right. Danny Porch in the same class, Brian Frank, Jordan Shama. We were all schoolmates. They all were involved with Stratton. And Steve Madden built, he's worth four, five hundred million dollars now. went to jail from it. Yeah. I wonder, I mean, I, I wonder what's happened with,

with Belford. Well, I think there's two different things is that also, by the way, is that, you know, you got out and you kind of, you're leaning into this is what happened and you're, you're kind of telling your story. You know, he wrote a book and he's, he's not, I don't know, I just, I'd be, I'd be interested to sit down and talk with him because I've seen. It's funny because, look, I'll give you an example. I know people that know him. And I've met with people. So I've met with these people.

And I'm like, oh, every time I see him on camera, he seems great. You know, I don't know if you ever saw the thing with Grant Cardone and him. So he does an interview with Grant Cardone. Of course. And, you know, it's just Grant Cardone just. And Belfort's not even trying to make him look like a complete. douchebag. Grant Cardone paints himself in a corner and then won't own up to the fact that, you know what? That was stupid. Like, let me just, let's walk away from that. You know what?

You're right. And he's like, no, I don't understand. And Belfer's trying to help him. He's throwing him a line. He just keeps bearing him. It's horrible. I know what you mean. It's just, you know, and and so I'm always kind of like, every time I've seen him, he always comes off great. But then I know people that know him outside of that. And they're all like, he's problematic. He's a jerk. He's, he's, you know, they go on. They're like, no, you know, he's not a nice guy. He's not, like, they'll say horrible, like, not horrible things, but they're like, you know, he comes off great on camera, but in a business relationship or a friendship or whatever, they're like, hey, he's kind of a jerk, you know, and, and it's like, so I was just wonder, one, I wonder what's happened

with his podcast. I wonder about him. And then the other time I saw him one time on a, it was like an inside edition or something. He's walking through a, there, Wolf Wall Street came out. Right. And he's doing all these huge speaking engagements where I actually think he's doing like workshops, speaking engagements workshops over the course of a weekend. And they come up, they see him, he doesn't realize they're doing a whole expose on him.

And they follow him. Wow. into, they follow him through the airport and then they see him and it's almost like he comes up on them like they're doing something else and they're like, hey, that's Jordan Belford. And they go up to him. And so he thinks, oh, they're here for some other reason. They just recognize me. Correct.

And they're like, total setup. It's an ambush. He walks right into it. And they start, they go, my God, you're Jordan Belford. You're the Wolf of Russia. He's like, yeah, yeah. And they're like, oh my gosh, hey, do you have a couple minutes? He's like, sure, what's up?

starts answering questions, and he just walks right into it. Because they go, one of the things she's like, oh, my gosh. So you're doing a lot of these speaking engagements and stuff now. Like, I heard your charge. You're like, aren't you charging like 30,000? He's well, since the movie came out, he's charging more like 80,000. And then they're like, oh, wow. They're like, they're like, and you're like, don't you live in a big house on the,

on the ocean somewhere? He's like, yeah, it's a, I live in a. And this is 10 years, 15 years ago. He's like, yeah, it's like a $3.5 million house. They're like, that's right. We saw you were playing tennis the other day. And he starts to realize. He picks it up.

And they're like, it's amazing you're doing all that. How much of the $102 million that you owe your victims? Have you paid back? You're bringing in that kind of money. And he immediately goes, I've never met any of my victims. And they go, would you like to? We got John Smith here. And John Smith stands up.

He goes, yeah, he is, you stole my life savings. It was $32,000. And I haven't seen a dime. And he's like, oh, and Belford bolts. Right. Like, he just starts running. Right. You know, this is over.

And him and his whole little team take off and they leave. And later they get him to come back like a week later, two weeks later. He sits down. And I just remember thinking, because I'm sitting in prison watching that show. Ah. And I remember sitting there thinking, I'm not going to do that. Like, you just had an opportunity. These people were, you just had an opportunity to, to, to face.

up to what you did. Correct. Apologize. Shake that dude's hand. Right. Like you could have said I f***ed up. I this. You went ahead.

You started bragging. You started acting like a jackass. And then when it hits you in the face, you ran from it. Like that told me like everything about, like you went to prison. You didn't learn a thing. Like, and I remember thinking, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to lean into it. I would have just turned around and been like, you know what?

know what? That was a stupid thing to say. I f***ed up. I went to prison. You might have that opportunity soon. Oh, I mean, I feel like I've had that opportunity. Right. Because that's my whole stance is to do that. When you're, uh, when probation looked at your website, it says right away, I have a liar or thief from the criminal. Absolutely. And I respect that about you. And when I went to her and I said, I'm going to see this guy. She's like, like, she's wondering if we could give a scheme. And I'm like, listen, this is about our healing. This is the next chapter in our lives. This is about redemption. This is about getting it out and moving forward. So people could learn from our mistakes.

And you see my website. First, it says, hey, just went to prison, just got out, went to prison for a bunch of bank fraud related charges. 13 years, always different things. And one, I said, and I always say, and I'm 100% guilty of every single one of them. I appreciate that. I just tell you about Jordan. So I know people that know this whole life.

Okay. Close people that I know from life from the industry. And he was never considered much of a likable guy. But he's a tremendous before. former in business. Right. So even when he was a poor kid growing up in Queens, he sold meat door to door. He sold ice cream on the beach.

I mean, he was a worker. He was a hustler. And I give him that credit. I admire that. And what he did with Stratton, to me, was like, ballsy. But at some point, he's just stealing. And he had a choice to go left to go right. And he could have went right.

And like the Steve Madden deal, he could have brought a couple of really great deals, settle with the SEC, done some clever things, but he chose not to. And they referenced that in the movie, that he makes a deal and that he renegs on that deal. And then he wore a wire, which I think is disgusting. Like I told you, I was faced with that and I wouldn't do that. It's just not who I am. At the end of the day, I have to live with myself. I wish that I had a better experience and then go to prison for nine years or four months,

but it is what it is. right now I don't have to I don't have a conscious I don't wrestle with my own stuff I suspect that he's got some stuff but again he gets out uh Joel Gottler told me he didn't sell six books for a year and a half he didn't sell six books oh from the wolf of wall street book the wolf wall street sat on the shelves he didn't sell six books and then what happened was he was marking himself as like an industry expert like I was the white color crime reporter for fox television before I went in. I don't know if you know that. I was on Fox TV 15 times while I was wearing an ankle monitor and everything.

Well, I had no curfew. Right. I would fly in and Roger Ails gave me a Fox TV contract before he died and all these different things. But I admire Jordy's stictuitiveness. He went on TV. I think it was the, there was a scam. Oh, fuck. I was just on my tip of my tongue.

There was a big stock market scam. and that Judy was on CNBC to talk about it. And when you go on television for these shows, here's what they say to you. We can't pay you. We can't pay for your hotel, all your meals, and we can give you a car service all the time you're in town. But we can't give you money because if we do,

there are different contracts more complicated. But here's what we'll do. Anything you're promoting, anything you're looking to sell, we'll advertise it for you. Right. Ross Vandelle.com, the rock-sawad book, the wealth formula, whatever. So with Jordy, they got him to, he said, you know, the wolf of Wall Street, the book. Right.

And they saw it on CNBC, and it was a particularly, I can't think of the scam. It was a big national stock market scam. The guy was deforting stuff. It was out in L.A. The famous name, it's alluding me right now. But make a long story short, right after that interview, the book started selling. Yeah. and that's really what launched this different thing.

Then he sold, he paid a half a million dollars for the book, but he screwed up. He didn't know enough about it. He made a lot of money a second book. And he sold the option for $2 million. On the last day of the fifth year, Leo DiCaprio, they exercised the option. So then they paid him.

But he really made very little money from the movie itself. But Leo did a piece for him. He put it on Facebook. He advertised. And then he's managed to roll that up into something very big. He's been speaking all over the world. What he did is he repackaged the Lehman method and calls it the straight line method. It's the sales package that we learned when we went to Wall Street.

Okay, we were taught how to be the best salesman in the world. We're ninjas. You can't compete. If you stay on the phone with us, you lose. The only way to get out is to hang out. If you don't hang up, you're going to lose. If you engage, you're going to, because we're just so serious. It's like playing tennis against Roger Federer.

If you stay on the court, you can't win. We're just trained that way, and we practiced that, rehearsed, even though I might not seem like that. You can't outwin us that way. But he is a good salesman. He's probably become a great salesman. I don't know. I feel like he doesn't have that likeability factor.

But he's a good actor, so you can pretend. I was going to say, it's funny because everything I've ever seen on him, with the exception of the one thing where he took up, everything I've ever seen on him, I've been like, God, this guy, He seems great. He seems great. But then I talked to people

that a couple of people that have known they're like, it's not great. He's missing this warmth. Like we have off camera. So that night that I went out with him

for that time, we were Chal Bella and he met Nadine, his wife. We were at dinner for three hours. And I walked away and Jiji just kept up, what do you think?

What do you think? What do you think? And I, you know, I've told this to people I'm closer. I didn't like him. I didn't feel like a connection with him. I didn't feel that warmth,

like that guys can feel a sort of camaraderie. Like, all right bro now we met you know we hung out spent some time you're a cool dude i like you you know uh it doesn't we have to be best friends but you get a feeling when i leave here you will call me gonna talk and say oh rous guy with a dick or that guy you know with a piece of shit or you know he'd never start talking we're all coming up on five hours very once i get off my shyness problem it's what's going to be i was going to ask um about meeting burney made off bernie made off

Bernie made off. Yeah, so it's, it's 1988, 88, 89. You remember I told you, I started doing risk arbitrage. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I was a big balls broker and I had a partner named Neil Sullivan. Neil, what's up, baby? I don't know where the hell you are. You're not on social media.

I mean, reach out to me, bro. I would love to just chat, man. Catch up. And Neil taught me a lot about the trading business. He was great. He's a year or too older than me. His dad was a founder of like Smith Barney. And we worked at this first.

from Rodden and Wrenshaw. We were partners when we were learning the risk-arbitrarched business. We had a huge business. We were raising, you know, tens of millions of dollars for trades. And the way it works is, you know, there's what you call a bid in and ask

in the stock market. So let's say a stock is trading at 36 by 36 and a half, right? You following? So the bid is 36, the offer is 36 and a half. There's a 50-cent spread. Today the spreads are five cents or a penny. But it used to be bigger spreads

and less liquidity. So $36. We would buy our stock on the bid, so we'd be buying it at 36, and then when we had enough stock for all our accounts, we would then put it out to the clients at 36.5. That's the way it's done. We buy it on one side,

and we make that half a point spread, plus then we get a commission. That's how business has done on WallShare. That's principal business, or market-making business. For all of you want to know, your brokers buy on the bill, and they sell it to you at the ask,

we make the print on the ass. So it's 36, let's say I buy a million shares for all my clients, right? It's $36 million. And I put it out to them at 36.5, that's $36.5 million, right? So that extra half a point on it is $500,000. So I get, half of that goes to my firm

and I keep half. So I make $250,000 that way. So it's $36 by half. All right, so we're doing this business. All of a sudden, it's $36. We're buying a $30,000. We're going to make the print, at 36 and a half, all of a sudden, somebody cuts in the middle of the bid and ask, and it's 36

and a quarter, or 36 in an eighth. So now we can't print over that number if the number is still on the screen. Well, nobody's going to buy it from you, right? No, no, no, we already own it, and we're selling it to our customers, but we own it at 36. We want to sell it to me at a half. It's a print. The stock says 36 on the screen by 36.5. You don't know where we bought it.

Right. So I'm telling you you bought it at 36 and a half. That's what price you're getting. We really own it at 36. Yeah. But when I go to make the print at 36.5, someone jumps in the middle electronically, and now it's 36th of the quarter. You just cost me, you know, $250,000.

Right. And what is this? And all right, it happens once. It happens twice, big deal. All of a sudden, we're seeing this every day. Who is this guy? It's B-M-M-A-F. Right.

We look up B-M-A-D. Who the fuck is B-M-A-D is a training symbol? The fuck is this. So, you know, we're getting frustrated because the teams, whenever we're doing a deal, we're acquiring stock throughout the course of a day or two days or three days, and then we're booking it out to our customers, and then he's killing us on the spread. How does he know? How does he get in the middle of the spread? He comes up on the Pacific Exchange, the Chicago Exchange, in New York Exchange, we can't figure it out. And so my partner says,

let's go talk to him. So we find out it's a guy named Bernie Madoff, and he has a office right in Manhattan, low Manhattan. So we call up and, you know, it gets right on the phone. And And I said, I want to speak to Mr. Madoff. I said, this is Bernie. I said, this is you? You're Bernie Madoff? We didn't know as a guy. Would you say his name of a firm?

Half the firms ought to have a name, but there's no guy's like that type. This guy's named after his, you know, his own firm. Usually you don't do that in the stock market because you don't want that detention or liability. Right. Now you know who to sue. Right. Bernie Madoff.

Bernie made of securities, right? I was Sky Capital, Rome capital, you know, no Ross. So. we said, what's going on? I mean, who are you? And, oh, that's all you had to ask him a question like that. And he goes on and on about who he is. And, you know, he really admies us young men calling him

and that he understands that he's middling the market. I said, how are you doing this? Usually, if someone's going to cut into a spread, they have to be on one exchange. Remember, this is like 1988, 89. There's no electronic trading. This is the only guy that is electronic trading. Right.

He created it. Yeah. And so, and he's nimble. He, anytime he sees a spread, because we create the spread, by the way, it just doesn't always happen naturally. Right. And we're, we're good at what we do. And, and, uh, but he would figure it out and he would jump in the middle.

And, uh, so we said, you know, you're killing us, bro. He says, you know, he sounds like very interesting young men. I said, you got time for a cup of coffee? He goes, why don't you just come out of my office? I'd like to meet you. So we go down there. And he's like a big guy. He puts on a big show.

I'm very cocky. It's hard to believe that I was cocky and arrogant. I know. I know you're stunned. But he's like really got an arrogance about him and cockiness, but he has a presence. Right? He has a real presence. And he shows us his electronic trading.

It didn't exist. And I was, you know, really impressed with it. And, you know, so it was like a feel-out meeting. Okay. but, you know, he said, you know, I could use a couple of guys like you. Uh-huh. And I was like, you know, you know, yeah, and I thought about it. Right.

And I thought about, you know, entertaining a relationship with this man. And, but I didn't. And, you know, he kept on, you know, cutting into our spreads as much as ever stopped you. As much as he could. You know, well, we became a little, once he showed us the system and we saw what he was doing. It was just, he was just, what, faster because it was electronic? Is that it? He's just trying to make money.

He's not picking on us. He's doing it to everybody. Yeah. Anywhere we saw an opportunity. So he would watch us gathering the stock and creating the spread. And so we jumped in. So he basically says, if you want, if you want me to go away, take me out. That means you have to buy me.

Right. So he's buying a 36. And I'm not selling out since 36 and a quarter. So we can sell it to you at 36 and a half. Right. It's like a whole thing. So it's just business. And it wasn't personal.

But, you know, it was interesting. I forgot all about him. And then I get clean. I get sober. I come back at one job. I almost thought of calling him, just so you know. But I didn't.

But I go to this place, Commonwealth Securities, which are the guys from D.H. Boy that form their own company, all disciples of this Morty Davis. And then I go to this vantage securities. I told you my friend, the guy I spoke to on the phone,

gave me this big deal. And then he reaches out to me. And he hears like, hear good things about you. And, you know, he's like a Jewy kind of, I can say Jewish, because I'm a Jew. I'm a member of the tribe, and I believe in what I, in our scripture. So, you know, but he's a sort of a Jewy way. And, you know, he's a pretty good salesman.

Right. And so, you know, against my will, he convinces me to come down and see him. And so. Does he remember you? Oh yeah, he called me. Oh, he reached out to me. Okay, I thought maybe it was just he heard things. You didn't put the two together.

Oh, no, no. He's, listen. He was a brilliant guy. Just like I look at you and I see your eyes are wide open and you're clear and you're invested in the conversation. I mean, you're sometimes you sit with a guy and you look at him and you think there's nobody home. Right. You know, you're home and present. You're accounted for, present and accounted for.

I love that I'm being compared to Bernie. But Bernie had this eyeball thing, and he had a way of, like, feel, it felt like he was doing a million things. He was very OCD-like ADHD. He's got the computer. He's doing it. But he's 1,000 percent present reading you. Like, it would have been a great poker player. Okay.

The fact that, you know, I look back now, I laugh because he's a guy that perpetrated the biggest fraud in the history of the world. Right. A $60 billion fraud in the history of the world. And here, he's going one-on-one with me. And he wants me to come work with him. you know, and he wants me to come work with him. And I'm like, you know, I've been offered all kinds of crazy money and I'm doing this. I'm doing it.

And I, you know, I had a feeling. And I met his kids and stuff. I met the boys. And I actually used to work with his son. It turns out at the beach club in the five towns where I grew up on Long Island. Right. He was the Queens guy. And I was the Long Island guy.

He was Mark Madoff. He killed himself. He died of cancer. The whole thing is tragic. A horrible story. Just a horrible story. He was the nicest kid in the world. He was a real guy.

Well, both of them got one died of cancer. One killed himself. Mark Madoff was a wonderful guy. The ex-or-the-the-I-guess problems. His ex-wife lives in Boca. Yeah, I was going to say, she's living in her car for a while. I mean, I'm shocked nobody reached out to her and no friend of the family reached out and said, listen, man, we've got a spare room.

You can't be living in her car. Robbed a lot of people. I mean, you really heard people. You know, did she know? I don't think. I can imagine that he could have, he seemed to have kept it from so many people. No way he knew. So Ike Sorkin, who's his attorney, was my attorney at one point.

He was the former chief of the SEC enforcement. He was Morty's attorney. And when D.H. Well, we got investigated and we're all getting interviewed by the New York Stock Exchange. I represented all of us individually. So before I went in, I sat with him for like 45 minutes and what you say, what you don't say, if they ask about this, is what you say, this is what you don't, you know, all the different, we got great advice for them.

He was the head of the SEC enforcement for New York. It was a huge, huge thing. And I really saw him. He was Bernie's lawyer. And let me tell you what I know. Nobody knew what Bernie was doing. Yeah. I mean, nobody, okay?

Not even his brother. They said his brother was in it or he wasn't on. His brother was a dope. Yeah, they just wanted to try and get as many people. They just couldn't believe that he could have pulled the wall over that many people. He had one or two guys that worked there that were forging the things with him. And that he felt, here's what people would do. don't know, he found out that he had cancer. And he found out he was going to die of cancer.

And he realized that if he died of cancer, that his children and his wife were all going to jail forever. Right. And so then he called his family over on a Sunday and confessed to them everything. And they called Ike over. And basically had his sons report him. Right. The FBI never caught him. People don't understand that. Nobody caught Bernie. He turned himself in. And the fort is so big that who could even believe it, which is the craziest thing. But he called, he had his children call in and report him. So they wouldn't be land-based. It insulates them.

Otherwise it takes the whole family down. It still didn't. And then Bernie gave all the details out. Yeah. Okay. And that's why they let the wife leave with $2 million and get what she had and the kids were able to leave. But the family itself, they would never. capable of even running a broker-dealer.

He is just fraud to take care of his family. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, but I mean, he was in so deep. And he was brilliant. And what happened with Bernie is, like most guys, he was friggin' brilliant. And he was managing money, not what he became known for, but, and then all of a sudden, like everybody else, he had a bad year, narcissistic. He couldn't face the customers. Like when I lost money for customers, I told them.

I got sued back in the 80s. What Bernie did at one point, he had a bad year like everybody else. But instead of coming clean, he figured, I'm going to fudge it. I'll make it up next. I know. I'm brilliant on how to make it up. Yeah, no. He fudges it and said he made 11% when everybody else lost 20%.

Okay? And then all the money found him. Yeah. And they kept coming to him. And he had devised a trading strategy with the first electronic trading system. that guaranteed he could always make money. Guaranteed, he always knew how to make money. I told you he controlled the spreads.

He was nimble. Nobody could, but, you know, it's like, it's like trying to, what happens is it's easy to make money on a million bucks for somebody. It's easy to make money on $10 million bucks. $100 million? It's a little harder. A billion? A lot harder.

How do you deploy that much money and how many good ideas without moving markets affecting prices and not letting other people figure it out? So there's just so much that goes into this. And the bigger you get, it's like a ship. I could turn my little car around. You know, try turning around an aircraft carrier. Right.

For the time the guy says, make you turn, it takes three quarters of the day by the time the boat actually starts turning. Well, actually makes it completes a turn. And he had just too much. And he had, you know, too much, he just got caught up in it. And instead of making that one decision, we got honest. He lied. And then he had to perpetuate the lie. He perpetuate the lie.

I think of court in his own web. That's how most, you know, that's whenever you, whenever I, real quick, just because I know we need to. Yeah, I got to get going. Yeah, I was going to say, everybody I, everybody I know that has runs upon, has run a Ponzi scheme. It always, it always, they're always like, oh, they're scammers, they're a con man. They did this. Okay.

It's always the same way. It's just, they have a bad quarter. They lie to try and cover it. They think they're going to make it up. And before you know, they're so far behind the eight ball. they've got no choice but to try and just keep those balls in the air as quickly for as long as possible

because they know they're going under. If it was truly a scam from the beginning, they wouldn't have done in their own name. You see what I'm saying? Of course. That's never how they portray it. No, he was a legit guy that said, I'm going to just...

I'm all in. I got no choice. And he thought he could cover it. And he had a way to do it, but not with that size money. Yeah. That's big money. And the other...

So... Mastermind. Mastermind. So what are you doing? Okay, so a lot of people came to me. What is mastermind? Okay, I'll explain it to you. So a lot of people came to me and said, listen, you know, you're like Yoda.

You know how to take any business and make it better. Okay. You're a smart guy. You have, there were so many young men out there like you are when you were in your 30s that were good at what they do, but with a little mentoring and a little help, you could, you could change their life. Just like Morty changed your life, just like David Black changed your life. you have so much knowledge in you, you have so much ability, you've seen so much, you should offer yourself and your course out.

So the wealth formula, the pre-sale is about $297, but it goes on full sale in about three weeks through Bradley and Lightspeed, and it'll be, I think, $9.97. But you can pay $5,000, and you get 10 hours with me, private time on the phone, Zoom calls, or Google Play, whatever it's called, or recorded. Google Meet, all recorded so you get copies as well. And we go over the wealth formula, page by page, or anything else you want in life. Anything else you're doing in life, I become available to you for 10 hours, usually on a Monday or Friday or both.

And, you know, the first guy that called me, he was a young man. He lives in Palm Beach, 31. He has three kids. He's married to a woman he loves. A very serious young man. You know, struggling to make $10,000 a month. Struggling.

He sells precious metals. after the first two or three calls, he's doing $10,000 a week. And after the second month, he's now, his numbers have exploded. He went from $40,000 for two months now. He's in the $60,000 to $70,000 range a month, just bought a house. He was living in a rental apartment with his wife and three kids. Nice. And he credits me and things that I was able to do to help him to address his business.

There's another guy. He's a contracting firm in Tennessee. He's also, interesting enough, 31. He's got three kids, married to a woman he loves, struggling personally with some things. And struggling in business, had some legal issues, this and that. And, you know, I walked him through a bunch of different things.

Now, when I first met this guy, had a big beard, like a country dude. He looked like a guy from Duck Dynasty. I mean, I tell him that. I make him laugh. He actually called me on my way here today. I owe McCall. And he was sitting back like in a big old rocking chair or whatever.

Like, it was like a heck. I'm like, what can I do for this guy? And we got to talking. And he's very closed off guy. But he paid and he bought the formula. He wants to be involved. And so I sort of broke him down after the first, the second meeting. He comes on.

He's completely clean-shaven. Shaved his hair. Right. Looks like a serious young man. Took my advice in the business. He's now so busy. Business is booming. He's getting all these different jobs. We changed the bidding process and things that he was doing. I just have a, the guys like to say I have five pillars of knowledge, five areas that I really have a tremendous amount of experience and I can help change people's lives. You know, and, you know, it's not lost on me that, you know, Wall Street decided many years ago, motivation is a thing for me. But, you know, anything to do with markets, buying and selling, present. I understand markets, how to approach them, so forth and so on.

And so the mastermind gives you an opportunity to get my time directly. And at five grand for 10 hours, a lot of people say, what are you crazy? This is not going to last. You're too cheap. Okay, $500 an hour. I pay my stupid lawyer $600 an hour. You seem to have a, but, you know, we're getting this started. We have a few spots left at this rate, and then it's going to probably double.

And once the Wall Formula actually comes out and the selling effort begins, it's going to be even crazier. I got to take this. I got to. I was going. I'm sorry. She's going crazy. My wife would tell me if I had. She's going crazy.

If I got three phone calls and didn't answer, I'd be done. It'd be over. Right now she's worried that something bad happened. Yeah. Yeah. All we have to do. Yeah, I just got to say. I got to do an outro.

That's it. Call her. Call her. We'll tell her it's our fault. Hello? Hi. It's totally our fault. It's our fault.

We apologize. We had him on the podcast. We wouldn't let him go. He tried. We tackled him. There's two of us here. We're younger than him. It's not his fault.

He struggled. Step, five and a half hours. I just said that. No, we need the content. He's a talker. I thought I was a talker. I can't believe. I got to drive home.

I know. I know. I'm never this out of touch. But we're having a real interesting day. This is some serious guys. I love these guys. And I love this show. And I, you know, I trust Kobe.

I don't know what the hell this is going to end up coming out as. It's going to be amazing. I think there's going to be a lot of noise made about this podcast. I just got a feeling because we're really going to town. Yeah, everybody else wants 40 minutes to an hour. They're giving me like these cut, cut. These guys want to hear more and more. No, you can't.

You can't tell this story in Forty. Those are slackers. Yeah. I love that. It sounds like it's a huge. It sounds like it's not over either. It's an epic. Oh, it's really not. It's really about to explode. Really in a good way, thank God. Maybe we'll do part two when you have to go down there. I love that. And he talked me into coming, he talked me into driving down there. That's nuts. All right. Well, good. That's good. Could you please call Nick? He's called me a few times and he's trying to reach. me. When you, Sydney, let them know that I'm leaving now. I'll be in the car.

I'm leaving five minutes. I mean, I got a bad ride ahead of me now, rush hour and all that. In the dark, I gotta go. I'm old, driving in the dark. Oish, faze me. All right. All right, babe. She's relieved now.

Hey, you guys, if you like the episode, do be a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so get notified of videos like this. Please share the video. And also, please go into the... the description, and we're going to have all the links in the description box. So you just click on the link, go straight there, join. What?

You're good? Rossmandel.com. Sorry, Ross. Well, we're going to have the link. We're going to put all the links. Ross Mandel, the whole, the link and the channel. Channel's called Ross Mandel. The real Ross Mandel.

The real Rossman? Is there, there's a somebody, an imitator? I have, there's a couple of Ross Mandel's out there. There's some bad. And guess what? They didn't go to prison. Shame on them. So we're going to put the.

links in the description, mastermind link, all the links will be in there, click on the links, go there, subscribe, follow, do everything you got to do. Really appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much. Oh, please consider joining our Patreon. There will be clips from this episode on Patreon that is Patreon exclusive stuff that didn't make the cut us talking before the podcast. It's $10 a month. It really does help Colby and I make these videos. Thank you so much. See you.