Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - 140m Red Bull Scam Exposed Cellmates Argue Over Snitching Andrew Levinson

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Andrew Levinson shares the wild rise and fall of a $140M vending empire, cellblock betrayals, and the details behind a massive Red Bull scam.⁣ ⁣ Andrew's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/therealbostonreddbull/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, championed at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash win.

Looking to grow your investing skills and make smarter decisions with your money in 2026, join Her Money's Investing Fix, the twice-monthly Women's Only Investment Club, where expert stock pickers pitch ideas and you help build the portfolio. Since launching four years ago, our member-driven picks have outperformed the S&P thanks to smart, collaborative choices. We've got a strong track record and a community that's learning and winning. together. So go to investingfix.com. That's Fix with two X's. And join us. You got a guy out here named Dietrich. He says he owns Red Bull. He wants to meet with you. I can sell this machine in my sleep, making about $500,000 a week. Oh, and here's Deerder, can we talk and where's your address and we send a machine? The second thing, he says, watch out for these guys. They come with the FBI, the Secret Service, and then I went to the low and met you. I said, I'm the one that cooperatings

Ron Wilson. And he goes, holy! You're saying anybody in that prison that tells you something to get your time off, you would have done it. Yeah, but, but, but what? It's between you and me, it's going to be you. That's where's the line drawn? Uncle? That's flawed, Matt. Oh, something's wrong, it's wrong. You went to trial?

No, but, okay, so what does that do with it? You're guilty? Maybe not. It's the federal government. You're guilty. My dad, when I was 14, he left Vanish for two years. And we found out that he was in the carnival. He was in a carnival.

He owned, like, a pizza, pizza and fried dough and ice cream. And he owned the, you know, the food aspect of it. Yeah, yeah. So we, we found. found him at a carnival. Like we hadn't seen him in two years. Left my mother with debt, you know, left her with, you know, left her with a phone bill. We didn't have a phone for two years. Think about that. I'm in a trailer with no phone for two years. And he took the car. So my mother is like, and I'm like, where did he go? And even like my grandpa would say,

did he call you? And they're like, no, we would tell you if he talked to us, no. So it's like, what? Didn't you, you went to work for your dad at one point? I did. I went to carnival for a summer, and that was, you know, I thought I was, I thought I wasn't white trash, and then I realized maybe I was. So I went, I did the ice cream truck, so, you know, you get to meet a lot of girls. You get to meet a lot of crazy people, too, and then you realize the money my father was making.

This is what I don't understand. So my father is making hand over fist, an ice cream that he charged $3 for, he, he's making it for $0.30. Right. So he's killing it. Yeah. So, dad, where's the money? going. And of course, am I taking $1 at every $5 I take? Yeah, of course. So, you know, instead of him paying me $50 for the day, I'm probably making like $2,300 for the day.

But he has no idea. He has, he might, he might, you know, with the ice cream count and like the milk they put in, how much they, he maybe he knows. But, you know, it probably didn't care. So, yeah, that was a, I got to know my father a little bit, but I got to know my father was a pretty selfish guy that just cared about, like, his situation, which I was probably guilty that a little bit when I started making big money and started, you know, hustling on my own with a family, with kids. So you go to work for your dad. Yeah. I just, I always remember you talking about how there was just so much cash that you guys were putting it like in boxes or bags or something and your dad, you're like he had no fucking idea. Right. Idea how much

money was coming in. And then I remember at some point, yeah, the IRS came to him. Yep. So what happened was he invented pizza and a Coke for a dollar. Pizza and Coke for a dollar. So it's like, it's one of those, you know, in the school you had those pizzas out about this big. Yeah. And a Coke was a cup of Coke this big. Right. But it was for a dollar. Right.

But it's just a fair. You have a fair. You have 3,000 people online. They, like, throwing dollars at you. So literally, like, he didn't have a cash ready to be. We're putting dollars in trash bags. We're putting dollars in boxes. And when you, you know, you got six, seven thousand dollars in ones.

You know, my father has no accounting or anything. He's just trying to hustle and making the money. So he was good at that. Right. And so, you know, if you got a trash bag full of seven thousand. thousand ones, you know, of course, I'm going to get about 500 of those. And so that's really how I, I, that summer I made about, about 18, 19 grand. And that put me through like summer college. Okay.

It's just working for my father. But I couldn't work for my father too long because our personalities were so, you know what I mean? He had a little RV that he bought with a satellite dish for the carnival stuff. And you'd have to live together close by, and it's, it's tough when we both had the same mentality, but what, uh, what happened with the IRS? Because I remember when it, when it went, when I mean, I, I sure, I could fucking tell you the story. Right, right, right. No, I probably tell the story better than he could tell you. I've told, because I remember you had told a story one time in prison. Yep. You told me the story. And then I stopped you and told you, hey, tell him the story about such and such. And the second time you told it, you, you told it the same information, but you didn't,

you had a, the first time you told it, you said something at the very, very end, and I was like, fuck, you fucked it up at the very end. You say that. And you're like, oh, yeah, you know, that happened. I was like, fuck. What happened is it's an all cash business in carnivals. So they started to investigate people. Like, they see my father throwing these ones in bags and he's making big money, right? My father didn't pay taxes for like 10, 15 years, just decided to like not pay. Like, how do you not pay anything? So my father said, why? They didn't, they never went after me. So what they were doing is they were watching him. And they had a guy with a clicker. Like, this

came out when they did the case against him, but had a clicker, like, count how much dollars he's taken in. And they said, hey, you made like 15 grand at this fair. Like, you've got to pay taxes on that. Oh, I'll pay at the end of the year. And he just never paid taxes. And they said he owed like 400 grand.

And like 400 grand, he doesn't, you know, he just goes through money like nothing. So yeah, they said, well, you're going to go to jail if you don't get the 400 grand. So, you know, he cried to my grandfather and they worked out. He did time. He did 10 months. But they cried and my grandfather paid like the, I think the government like 180,000 to get them out. You know, I, I didn't have that one. But yeah. So he did about 10 months for tax evasion.

Yeah, I just, I remember the part I remember was, yeah, was you said that he was in court. Yeah. And they were offering him a deal. Yeah. Like he had to give up this many of his, I guess they have, what are they like little trailers. Yeah, the trailers are like three sides. They like three sides. They pull up the, they show. Yeah. Food trailers, right. And the government was saying, sign over three of the trailers. trailers and you can keep one. Yes. Or, you know, or something. And he, and he, you're going to end up going to jail. And he was, he was like, no, I'm not going to do it. And they were like, he didn't want to give money. Right. He didn't want to give up any money. And then they took everything. Right. He thought he could keep the money and keep the trucks and do some jail time and come back and go right into the business.

Right. But they're still going to take it. Right. We're still going to take everything. That's what they said. Right. And my father didn't believe it. Because this lawyer, he had one of those, like, his name was Paul Carger. It was weird that he was a big time lawyer in Boston. And why he was friends with my father, I have no idea. And he thought he could get away with it. He took, carers to say, play Mickey the Dunst and say, you don't know about taxes. That's not the case. You don't pay taxes. You go, it's just stupid. Yeah. So, yeah, my father did 10 months for that. But he, if he paid back everything at that time, he probably would have got like probation. Right. You know, you probably, you probably. And he said, what had at least something to start

with? Right. They might have left him with one to start with, right? He, it's not his mentality. It was just, he said, I'm going to beat you. But beat you what? You didn't pay anything. Right. So, yeah, that was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, a funny trial. It wasn't really a trial. It was like a hearing. And then he did go to trial, which I didn't see. He didn't want anybody to come by. So we didn't go. But we went to that hearing, though. Didn't go well for him. No, no. Come on. What's your defense? Right. Forgot to pay it. So, so what, so you end up going to, you go to college. Yep. What was your degree in? Economics. Okay. Which is, what am I going to get a job for that? I mean, it was just, I was

going to be journalism, like sports journalism. So I went to Emerson, kind of a, Emerson was really like an acting slash journalism school. Jay Leno went there. Henry Winkler went there. But I got by college because my grandfather paid for it, paid for my apartment, and as long as I got good grades would keep that going. I would have never lasted college without that. So he paid for everything.

So when I got out, he wants me to go make a career. So when I got out, I moved to Florida within like three months. I started getting cold in October in 92 in Boston. I said, I'm going to Florida. My grandmother had a place down. here in Fort Lauderdale and so I went to Florida with no plan with no money and so in early 93 my grandfather comes down for a six-month thing and says what are you going to do with your life I paid for college I don't know I like looking for young Latinas and I'm

gonna spend on my mom going on the beach I'm tanned all the time and I'm good right no no so he gets me a job at a at an insurance company in Miami a really prestigious job is like an almost like a junior executive salesperson I was making like 2000 a week but I said I can't work with somebody, get up at 7 o'clock in morning and drive into Miami and listen to a boss. I mean, that sounds. It's a good job. It was a great job. But I went back to my grandpa, said, I got to quit.

He's like, what? He goes, no, no, you're not quitting. I said, well, I'm going to. Well, you're on your own then. But then he finally looks at me and says, you want to be a businessman like your father? Well, not like my father. I want to be a good one. I want to be a good one.

But he goes, you want to be an entrepreneur. So he said to me, he said, listen, you come back here in a month with a business idea. And if it's good, I'll fund it. And that was my first like salvo into business. What was that? So I go to them. Well, for 30 days, I have 30 days to think of a business. Like, what am I going to think of?

I'm down to South Florida. This is 93. I'm going to convenience stores every day because I'm broke. And in the convenience stores, there's a huge amount of phone cards. Like, if you ever been to a convenience store in 9, were you in Florida in 93? Okay, phone cards were everywhere. Yeah. But they're all like international phone cards.

Nobody even knows what those are anymore. Right. Of course not. No. So the phone cards are everywhere. And I'm like, there's no U.S. phone cards. Remember long distance

charges back then? Yeah. So you call New York, you got to pay long distance, right? You call Boston when I'm in Florida's long distance. Well, what about a phone card? Are you called Mexico or anywhere? No, but most of them are international.

I wanted one that's the United States. That would be my angle. Oh, okay. My angle would be to say, it was called USA Connect. Okay, so my company was called USA Connect. And so I wanted to get in the phone card business, but how am I going to get in the phone card?

I have no idea. I like the idea. So I go to a guy that has like a Kinko's type of place and make a phone card. I say, can you make a phone card with like a scratch? with like a scratch off in the back? He goes, yeah, make me one. USA flag, USA Connect.

What do I know, right? I make the phone cover, but now you've got to get minutes for the phone card. So I go to AT&T's office in Miami and just say, hey, I want to see the phone card guy. Do you have a meeting? Oh, yeah, I definitely do at 2 o'clock? The guy comes out and his name is Billy says,

do I have a meeting with you at 2 o'clock? I said, yeah, absolutely. I called you and, you know, here's my card, USA Connect. So he thinks I have a card, so that's why he meets with me. Right. So I meet with him, I said, listen, I want this card, USA Connect, because I feel you have a – there's a place in the marketplace for a United States card. He goes, I kind of like the idea.

What are you going to do? I'm going to put salespeople out there with all the convenience stores in Florida and sell it and put up posters. And I need minutes from you, though, from the AT&T. You have no idea that you can do any of this. None. I'm just off the whim. I had no meeting either. Right.

So he looks at me and says, well, you're going to have to buy like a million dollars worth of minutes. I said a million dollars right now. You know, I'm not a big company or anything. I can buy maybe $30,000 worth of a minute. And it's thinking my grandfather might give me 30 grand. Right. Or maybe 50 grand for the whole business. Yeah, the minutes only cost a couple cents.

Well, they do, but they want you to buy huge volume to get the, like, the really low rates. So I couldn't get the really low rates at first, but I bought, like, he let me buy $30,000 worth of minutes. So I bought them, and I got a crew together. I got an office, and my grandfather liked the idea only because of this. And I knew that he was going to love this. I asked the guy, can you write that you'll give me minutes on AT&T letterhead? Not saying I have a deal with AT&T, but my grandfather will look at AT&T and go, okay, you're doing something. So he did. He wrote a letter saying that I'll give him minutes for this price and it has AT&T logo on there.

And my grandfather says, all right, tell me what you're going to do. I'm going to get an office. I'm going to get 10 beautiful girls to go out there and get convenience stores. I'm going to get posters, which I already had the poster. And here's my phone card. So I went out and made like 50,000 phone cards, gave them to these girls to go put out. And within three months, I had about 800 convenience stores from Monroe to Palm Beach within about three months. And how, how, what are you selling? Listen, what, at first, they're selling a little bit where I'm making probably in the first month in my pocket about three, four grand. The girls are making about $500, $600 a piece.

So not like a home run, but good. But by the second and third month, I'm selling about $40,000 phone cards a week. And I'm making a month, like the third, fourth, fifth month, I'm making about $50, $60,000 a month myself. Just you, after paying everybody. After paying everybody. This is net. So I'm like, I'm like, this is crazy. this. I go get a condo in Hollandale and I go, you know, typical. Come on, man. I go, I go get a,

I go get a corvette and figure, you know, I'm going to spending money, right? So this is where I'm a great hustler, but I'm not a good CEO. So this is what I don't see. So within a year, at my height, I made $100,000 one month. Okay. So this is 1994 at 24 years old and I got $100,000 one month. It's like making $200,000 or $300,000 now. My bank account had like $300,000 in there at $24. And I, you know, I don't know what to do. I'm spending money. I want to spend money. I said, you know, you're 24 mentality. So what happened was within one day, I went from making $100,000 that month to making hardly anything. What do you think that was? What they did free long distance? They offered free long distance? What? No, what I kind of probably

in my back of my mind, I knew what's happening. Oh, I was just going to say, I was just thinking that. Did someone steal the idea? No, AT&T just looked at and said, hey, if he can do it, we're going to put out with AT&T's logo on there. Like I couldn't put 18D logo. So they put, I was USA Connect. they were America Connect, but buy AT&T. Yeah, you're done. So within like two months, I was done. But now I got $300,000 in the bank. Right. So, you know, I became a bum for about a year and a half.

Because $300,000 at 24, that's pretty nice, right? But at the time, you know, I met my wife who weren't married yet, but I met my wife when I was broke, luckily. And then so she's going to be, are you going to stay in the house all the time now? Like I was in the house where a year and a half went to the pool every day. It's nice. Listen, wait. How did you meet your wife?

Well, I went my life at the Publix at, oh, I met my wife at Publix, but then she was taking the bus. I had a car. So, so, so, so I saw her walk to the bus stop. And, you know, I've done it to like, pretty Latinas went in the buses. Like, I'm talking about gorgeous, like, you know, you know, Ava Mendez before she was Ava Mendes probably took the bus, right? Yeah, of course. Okay, so I went on the bus. Oh, you went on the bus.

Oh, I thought you picked her up. You didn't pick her up? You got on the bus. No, I got her on the bus. I got her number and then met her there the next day and got her number from the and got off and a bus stop like three, three blocks down after talking to her and had a long walk back. Like we're both sloppant on the bud. We're in this together.

Right, we're in this together. Right. I got a car there. I mean, and then I didn't show the car rate away because I said the car was in the shop because I didn't want to look like a totally schmuck. But in hindsight, girls would love that. Like, you took the bus to meet me. But at the time, I don't want to look like, you know, a complete liar, which, you know, obviously

with my record, now you know. But, yeah, that's how I met my wife. So, yeah. You guys got married. We got married. So you're hanging out. You've got this money. You're kind of being a bum hanging out.

Right. Exactly. But it's going to run out. Right, it's going to run out. So this is how I get my next doubt. We're at Claire's boutiques. You know what Claire's boutiques is? It's like a teenage girl's accessory place in the mall.

They did the earrings. They do, they sell like tween products. They're still in the malls. It's called, yeah, Claire's boutiques. So we're in there buying something from my niece. And I see these two girls in front of us, and they're buying stickers, like unicorn stickers. And the guy said, that'll be $19.95. And there was like two sheets, and I'm like, what?

And I tell my wife, I said, I don't want to talk to these girls. or 12 years old just by now. Yeah, I'm like, can I talk to these girls? Yeah, about what? I just said to the girls, I said, did you buy those stickers for 1995? These, like sparkling unicorns or something like that. They go, yeah, we buy them all the time.

They have different ones that come out for the holiday seasons and stuff. And I'm like, wow. So I started to grind on that. I'm like, and I started asking other little, like, I look like a per, but I look like other little girls. And they're like, you buy these stickers. And they're like, yeah, we love stickers. So I'm thinking of myself, what can I do with this?

So I spent about a month thinking about that. And I came up with what's called a sticker club machine. You know photo booths, old photo booths, right? Okay. I want to do a photo booth that took your picture, put it onto stickers. But with your face in the middle, like you faced the middle of a million dollar bill, a face in the middle of like a Santa Claus theme for Christmas, behind bars and stuff saying that I'm a convict.

Well, you know, that's a catchy stuff. Yeah. So I didn't know if I could make that machine. Who could make that machine? A guy told me, listen, go to Namco. Remember Namco make kind of arcade machines? I think they made like, like, Android, They made Donkey Kong, I think.

But it was like they made, they were a Japanese company. Right. So I call up, I tell them the idea and everybody says, hey, worry about them stealing it. So what happened was they said, oh, we like this idea. Come to New York and let's talk about it. So I do. I meet them up in New York and I say, I want a machine to be a photo booth that took your picture and put it onto different stickers. Could you do that?

He goes, yeah, we could do that. But you wouldn't want a photo boot. Just have a stand-up machine with like a curtain in back. So they said it will make you a prototype as long as you try to sell it. So they made me a prototype. And what the prototype looked like was like an arcade machine, but like with a background and back. And so when they bought it, when they showed it to me, I said, this is beautiful. Can I sell it?

And they go, you can sell it for three years if you sell at least 150 a month. 150 machines? Yes. How much is the machine? The machine, their price was 4,500. I sold it for 8,500. Okay. But you don't.

But I sold three of them for $25,000. I sold a three of them minimum. That's a business package. Yeah. Two investors. But you didn't know, you didn't know that you can sell these fucking machines. Like, I mean, and how are you thinking? This is why I know I could sell the machines.

It's a good angle of how to get into biza. Like, because before with the phone cards, I'm not in business opportunities. I'm in just phone cars. This is how the business opportunity starts. Like, I'm not going to go around trade shows and sell this machine. I want to sell it, like, through newspapers. Like, back then there was no internet. I want to sell it to, like, be your own boss, entrepreneurs in the, you know,

so anyways, I said that one guy told me that would be business opportunity, though. You have to be licensed for that. Did you even know what that was? No. Yeah, because the first time I ever heard the, term business opportunities was when you had mentioned when you were in Coleman and you were there for a biz, it was a biz ops scam. Right.

But if you ever look at the newspaper back then, you'd see business opportunities like in the New York Times. Like it would be like business opportunity would be like a cleaning service or like something, you know, just a business. It's just a business opportunity, really. It's another fancy word for a distributive ship. Right. Like McDonald sells biz ops.

It's a business opportunity, right? Right. It's just a fancy word is like, I'm going to sell a distributive ship. I'm going to sell a franchise. Right. Really, you're selling a bizop. Okay. You're creating a bizop is a business opportunity. I'm giving you a business an opportunity to sell it. I have wholesale prices, and that's kind of what I got into. Now, with the machine, I said, how am I going to really push this machine and where are they going to put it? Like, with that type of machine, you can only put it in malls. You can put it into, like, and here's the irony of what got me started in Bizop. I wasn't going to do it because I thought the machines couldn't go, like, very many places and do well. And I said, what about the Claire's boutiques? Like, That's a perfect location. Teenage girls, they're buying stickers anyways, right? So this is the irony of it.

Guess where Claire's boutiques in 1996 was, in the whole United States, was headquartered at. Pembroke Pines, Florida. Pembroke Pines. I'm living in Davey for crying out loud. I mean, the irony is insane. I go to them, they say, yeah, we'll put it, we'll put the, every one of our locations can have a machine. So when I'm selling it to somebody, I'm selling it with the machine and a Claire's boutique's location. It was a laydown.

Right. How many locations do they have? I think at the time they had like 7,800. Yeah. But you're selling 150. You got to sell 150. Right. But once you, you got to realize, Matt, once you start selling something, it doesn't matter.

It just becomes a machine. It just becomes a machine. Like, once these people say, hey, I do well at Claire's boutiques, so they're putting the first 500 at Claire's boutiques, people just, it's easy. It's easier to sell, put it that way. Once you've done that leg work and done, you have a nice slick business package, you have, you have sales now. You have people that they can call that, that have done this before. So it becomes easier. It's an assembly line.

Right. So I, yeah. Like the YouTube. I mean, according to Colby, I wouldn't know. Oh, so, okay. I just walk in at the last minute and say, well, who am I interviewing? Like this guy did such and such. But I'm making it sound very cavalier like it's like it's easy to do, but you have to be licensed in all 50 states.

You have to have what's called a UFARC disclosure statement. You have to have a disclosure statement with every business package you send out. Talk about your history, your company's history. You have to really get, you know, deep, which actually helps you. People think it will hurt sales. When somebody sees the disclosure in there, they say, oh my God, he's transparent, but I have to do that. Right.

Does that make any sense? Yeah. Right. So they're seeing all about my history and all that. So that actually helps sales. But to do the business package, to get licensed in all the states, to get a sales crew up, to get the location up, you know, this is, you know, the work that's being done, the groundwork to make it look easy. It takes time. It takes money.

You got to rent an office space. Of course, you've got to get people that can actually sell, you know, closers and things like that. That one, I sold a little over 4,000 machines in three years. Okay. Yeah. How did that – how did that – did you sell the business or just – I would sell three machines minimum. Three machines for $25,000.

No, it didn't peter out. Remember, they told me to give me three years. At three years, they said, oh, they treated me great now. But at the end of three years, they took it over. Like I knew that. So at the end of three years, we're selling this machine to anybody. Yes. Okay.

Oh, they told me that. But can you just keep going or does it basically – No, that's it. No, that's it's our machine. You got a three-year run. They won't sell it to you anymore? No, no. Yeah.

Because I showed them, I could do it. Yeah. Like, think about that. If I wasn't doing that well, they probably would have gave me another year or two. Yeah. And I was thinking about maybe I should slow down sales. Yeah. No.

That's not my mentality. So I knew that at the end of three years it was going to be done. So at 96, 97, 98, at the end of 98, again, I was out of a business. So you've got, but I'm assuming you put something away. So it's another kind of a... I have about $7,000 at that time. So it's like 98. I've been by the pool another six, seven months.

Okay. But now I've got a better house and a nicer house. now. I got a daughter that's two or three years old now. And so I'm looking for the next opportunity. How long is that gap before your wife starts saying, that gap is enough already? That gap was about five or six months. I had a little honeymoon because I had some money.

Right. But I start getting on her nerves because I'm like the community father, if that makes any sense. I'm going to get a community where I'm playing stickball with the kids and wiffle ball with the kids. I'm taking them to school. Like she doesn't like to look. Like, you know,

you look like a bum. Even though you're living in a million dollar house, right. Right. Right. You still look like a million dollar house. And I'm like, I'm home all day.

Yeah. And I'm out with the kids wanting to get a game going on or something. Like, I'm literally like, you know, like, I'm by the pool all day. I'm by, you know, I'm going to public saying hi to the managers just to buy scratch tickets, like, buy 50 scratch tickets for boredom. Right. You know, going to the sushi place order and, like, you know, it's just stupidity. But I did that for about six months and then I got under nerves. So how do you look for something else?

I never really grinded looking. It always came up. Like my next one, I'm at the grove, I'm at Publix. And I look at the counter and I say, wait a minute now, why do they have gumball machines? Like, you know, they still have those gumball machines, the turn ones. Do you ever see anybody buy a gumball machine? Have you bought a gumball before?

Maybe when you were five, right? Yeah, no. But they were at every, every, but back then they were at every public's, right? So somebody's got to be buying them, right? I also say they might still be there. I haven't looked later, but I know. Right. I know, I remember, you know, seven, well, I guess,

comedian stores and stuff, like for the little kids, like they were, they were everywhere. Right. But, but it's not there for just show. Yeah, yeah, they've got to be selling something. So I'm watching these two kids come up to it, and they're about six, seven years old. The kid grabs it, picks his nose and puts it in these. There's no, you don't realize sanitation issue, too, when they put that metal thing. And so I'm looking at this going, there's got to be a better way.

If they're buying gumballs, wouldn't they buy something that's like an adult and a kid product and it's wrapped for sanitation? I don't know what this is going to be, but I'm thinking about there must be a machine that could go after both markets, right? Not just gumbulls. So I don't know what this is going to be. And I walked around the store. This is 90, end of 98. Remember the chocolate nuggets, the Hershey chocolate nuggets? Not the kisses, but the nuggets.

They were about that big. They were like bite size. Yeah. They came out with the almonds and cookies and cream, right. So I said, what if I could make a machine, like a gumball machine, just turned and put a Hershey chocolate in there? And I'm thinking that probably could be easy to make, right? Like, it just convert a gumball machine into that. So I go to a place called CDI that made gumball machines in Miami.

They made a lot of gumball machines. I said, could you convert this into just making a chocolate? Just turn it to that. Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, how many machines could you sell me? How many cases could you make it a month? Right. Oh, we could make probably a thousand.

Well, could you make $5,000? Oh, I don't know. Could you sell $5,000? I said, maybe. So I started selling that, but now it's the Internet. So now we have like spam. So I got in the whole world of the Internet, this one, because I'm not doing newspaper ads,

I'm not doing magazine ads anymore. I'm doing Internet. I'm doing emails. I had this lady that would send out a million emails at a time. And, you know, people would get cranky about it. And you call you and say, I want to kill you or something. But they can unsubscribe. Right, but they could unsubscribe.

Right. But back then they were, like, violent about it. They'd the press, like, pound all the time. And so, but we get great response. But I would put on the ad, not Hershey, because I know I get sued, I'd put a profit on America's number one selling chocolate. And people would know it's Hershey, right? Right. So Hershey had a little problem with that, but they can.

I don't use the word Hershey. And so we started killing it. I was selling 30 machines for 10,000. But these people were selling the machine for $80. They were making that gum up machine converted for $80. And I'm like... And how many machines are you selling? I'm selling $30 for $10,000.

But including $500 worth of chocolate. But do you, they don't have a location. No, they got to get their own location. Right, exactly. We teach them, like, where to go. But you're talking about like laundromats, convenience stores. Any place that would be a little turn machine with a chocolate. They don't take up any...

Do they pay the person that lets them put it there or they just get in with a cream? With a Coke machine with like with a Red Bull when I got to Red Bull, yes. But not with a 25 million. It's like a convenience for the people. Yeah. Like a mint or something, right? So I sold in about a year and a half a little over 13,000 of those. Is this the one where you went to Hershey?

Yes. So Hershey has a problem with it. And I said, there's no problem. I'm not using your name. Right. And plus when the machine sees, you can see Hershey product in there. I don't have to get that permission. You can sell any public product if you don't put on the side of the machine.

You can't advertise with it. Like you can't put Coke in the side of the machine. Right. You can put soda. You can put soft drinks and then put Coke in there. Yeah. You can use a push button display. You know, you see the can.

That's not, you don't have to have post permission for that. Right. As long as it can't you, and you had told me this before. I don't know any of this because of you. You said you can, you can use an image of it as long as it's the exact size of the image or something like that. Yeah. You can't advertise with that, but you can put that in the machine if it's the exact size. Right.

So like if you have the push button, it looks like the soda can. That's it. You can walk and hit that soda can. Or make it clear and show the soda can. Okay. Either one of those is legal. But you can't put Coke on the side. Right.

Unless it's owned by Coke. Well, it's owned by Coke. Well, unless it's Coke machine. Yeah, they do it. They do it. Well, sometimes they let people do it. But, I mean, that's another story. But yeah, to do that, you can't use their product name and on advertising also.

So I go to Hershey and I'm like, they're going to dig into me. And I'm like, they have no standing. Yeah. So I go to Hershey and I sit down and I have literally an office that, think about this. Have you ever seen a boardroom office that's like a joke in a movie that's like 50 people sit at that? Yeah. That you can see that, like, down the hall. That's what this was.

There was like 50 people there. And they're all eating eggs Benedict, but good eggs Benedict. Right. I'm talking about these people in Hershey live. But you flew in. I flew in. Oh, I flew into Hershey, yeah. Okay.

And I think they're going to chew me out. And they started to chew me out. No, I'm going to sue you. You can't do this. Like, what? You can't sue me? I'm trying to promote your product. Yeah.

So finally, they're just exasperated. And they're eating their eggs Benedict and they say, why should we do this? I knew I had them then. I'm like, why should you do this? Okay. Well, by the way, I've already sold about 10,000 of these machines. Okay. You're welcome.

They're like big deal. Okay, but then they don't realize. This is like, even an invest is the same as an executive. Like, everybody asked me, would you rather sell a smart person or a stupid person? What would your answer be? Like, what would you think I would want to sell a smart person or a stupid person? Well, I already know we've had this conversation. Sorry, I know what your answer is.

I know that initially I had, but this was also before I really looked into this, is I used to think, well, stupid people fall for things. But the truth is, when you explained it to me was, that that's not true at all. No. It'd rather be somebody who's smart enough to understand the dynamics

of the business and that it is an opportunity and it will work. A person of lesser intelligence is going to understand the nuances of a sales pitch. Right. Or the schematic over,

the numbers of it, all the quick pace of it, all that. I'd rather have a Mesa student than somebody that dropped out of high school any day to sell. So in the boardroom,

they say, why do we want this? Why do Hershey? We're Hershey for crying out a lot. Okay. Well, I've sold 10,000 of these. And I said at a typical, like, say a laundromat,

how many of these chocolates you think you could sell in a day, I told them. In a 12-hour day. Just be conservative, I told them. They said, oh, at least like two an hour, like 30 a day. Okay, let's take the 30-a-day, like you said. 30-a-day times 10,000 machines is 300,000 chocolates a day. That's 2 million chocolates a week. That's 100 million chocolates a year. And do you know how much you have to pay for me to get that out for you? No, no. Zero. And they were like, oh, let's listen to this guy. Right. And they were like, oh, we don't have a problem anymore. So, you know, they didn't. So I went back. to sell that.

So what's crazy is I had a year and a half run with that and made about a million dollars on that. And within one day I was stopped. See, this is where I'm a great hustle, I'm not a great CEO. And why do you think within a day I was stopped? Did they steal the idea again? Or they stopped the product?

No. Can you still buy these things? Yes. Okay. Think about this. This is why I didn't see it either. Okay. You can't patent a gumball machine.

Do you know how many companies in this country? How many companies actually make gumball machines in this country? Probably about 10 or 15. Okay. Because it's a gumball machine. There's no patent on a gumball machine. So all these other manufacturers that make gumball machines and sell them for like $70, $90, $100, they're looking at me.

I'm selling 30 machines for $10,000. And they see me all over the internet. So if you're making gumball machines in Idaho, I'm going to start advertising, forget about 30 machines for $10. I'll sell you a machine for $200. I'll sell a machine for $150. So they start advertising online, and what can I do about that? They don't need you anymore.

Nobody needs you anymore. But they're using my coattails because I've already got the excitement about the product out there. So they go make a machine that puts Hershey's in there. And they start advertising that, which is fine. I mean, like, maybe I should have saw that. But if I saw it, I was still done the same way. But within, like, months I was done. But now I have like a million, million and a half dollars in the bank.

So my pool days were longer at that point. So I'm back to being the house dad of the neighborhood for about two years. years. What do you do with the business? Like, I'm assuming you've got a lease on some business. Like, do you walk in one day and you've got 12 employees and go, yeah, sorry, bro, you all got to, or just take some week, within weeks. Within probably a month or a month and a half, yeah. They're just not selling, they're not making any money anymore. They know what's happened and they're not selling anymore. So they just kind of start. It's funny. It's funny that you say that because most people like, I tell somebody, if somebody went in for a job for sales, right? And you said, listen,

I'm going to give you 13% of whatever you sell or I'm going to give you 6% of whatever you sell plus $1,000 cash a week. What would you take? I think most people would take the $1,000 and the 6%, because that's a guarantee. Those are the idiots. Yeah. Those are the idiots. You know why?

Those are not closers. Because if you don't sell, you're not going to be there anyways, right? Right. So if you do sell, wouldn't you rather make 13% than 6%? Yeah, I understand, but I mean, I know the mentality of most people are. The people that told me I want a $1,000 salary and 6%. I'd never, I'd never hire them. Okay.

Ever. That's not a closer. Well, you hear the people on the TikTok where they say, would you get a, if I could, would would you rather have a, like, what is it like, they say like a penny that doubles every hour? Or would you rather have a million dollars? And people like, oh, I'd rather have the million dollars. Of course.

Okay. Well, you don't even get math. But I'm saying the mentality has to be where if I know I can sell your product and you service your product, I believe in your company, I'd rather have the higher percentage. Yeah. Like, if you said you could sell McDonald's franchises and they said you want to, you can make 13% every franchise you sell or you can make 3%, but I'll pay you $1,000 a week's salary. If you said $1,000 a $1,000 a $1,000 a $1,000, you'd be a moron.

You see what I'm saying? Because if people don't realize in sales, you can make nothing or you can make great money. Right. But if you make nothing, you're not going to be in that sales job very long. Right. So, you know. So the sales team kind of take the fact that now you're not, these things are everywhere and anybody can buy them directly from the manufacturer. Yeah.

Kind of takes care of the sales team on its own. They start dropping off. It does. And it's funny because all the sales team, when I did the six-month hiatus, a year hiatus at home, would be calling me like daily to say, hey, you want to do another one? Yeah. And I'm like, what's the next one? You want another job by now? Like, shouldn't you go work?

Oh, no, we like you because, you know, I was generous, paid good commission. I had good products that's saleable. So, yeah, they would be bugging me. So, but this one I had some really good money in the bank, you know, like over a million dollars and life was good. And I'm not even looking for anything else. So, but I've been spent about two years at home with that one. Wow. Yeah, about two years at home.

But doing stocks, I thought it could be a stock broker. Come on, I'm not a stock broker. I'm not a daily broker. Day traded. Yeah. bad situation. You know, I mean, I think you're smart until you're like, you know,

yeah, yeah, it's not, it's not good. So that one, you know, I'd look up for something else. And the next one was a, what's called a, oh, I like the ATM machines. People don't realize that most ATM machines, even the ones at the bank are most of the time owned by individuals.

Like, if you go to one at the bank, say you're at TrueS Bank, and you go to the ATM machine, and you get your $20, it doesn't come out. You go to the teller and you say, listen, the $20 didn't come out. Oh, here's the customer service number. The TrueS doesn't even own the,

they let's, somebody use it. Yeah. That's an individual with that ATM machine. So 95% of ATM machines are owned by individuals. But here's the thing why most people don't want to do ATM machines. Say you had 10 ATM machines and you're making $2 a transaction. That's good, right? But you have to float like $40,000 a machine. Right. You don't lose that, but you never get that, you never get to handle that because it's always working for you. So if you have 10 machines, you better have a half a million dollars to float out there to keep the cash going. And the thing, you have to hire a Brink thing to put the cash in there because you don't want to get robbed.

So there's a lot of intricacies to that business. So then I thought to myself, what if we could do an ATM machine that's no cash? And I'm like, and I tell my friend, my friend's like, how would you do that? I'd say, well, a piece of paper you bring up to the register and they give you cash there. Why would a register want to do that? Because you'll buy more there if you get cash there. It's kind of like a buyback with the public's now, give you $50 back in cash. Right.

But think about this, you have an ATM machine and it says on there, go get it at the register. So like we got some McDonald's to be honest with that said yes. to that. You go to the McDonald's and they give it to that because the McDonald's knows they have algorithms that they know. If you get cash, you're more up to buy one more fillet of fish if you get the cash. So like when I did that opportunity, there's a lot of McDonald's that let me put that machine in there. It's called a script ATM machine. Okay. So it's an ATM machine that you get a dollar, $2 a transaction, but you don't have to put the cash in there. You put in piece of paper. Now there's the, the McDonald's want

a better percentage, yes, but at least you don't have to put cash in there. So that's my, My next one was that, which wasn't a home run. All my other ones were pretty much either home runs, a doubles. That was more of a single. Like, I made money on that, but I actually got out of that one because I wasn't making the big money that I was used to. And then that's when I got into the inevitable Red Bull. I thought it started as the Energy Center. Well, I know.

No, you tell a story, too. Yeah, yeah, I could go. Because I like the Energy Center. I was like the Evolution of the Energy Center. You know what? Me being an idiot, maybe I should have kept with the Energy Center. Yeah, you said that many times. I wouldn't be right here.

Many times you said that. But it was 2004, and I kept going these convenience stores, these damn convenience stores, where I have an addiction to scratch tickets. I'd buy $100, like, $120 tickets at once. I get people addicted to it. I feel bad. I got this one lady that went to the sushi place and always have scratch tickets, like, when I'm waiting for my sushi.

She got addicted to that and ended up being probably lost her job and being homeless because she doesn't realize that I have the money to actually, like, lose it. I can lose it? Right, right, sure. So what happened was. Well, before you get, can I ask a question real quick? Sure. At this point, where were you living?

I'm living in Davey, Florida. Okay. My house is about like 1.3. I have, my daughter at the time is about 7 or 8. This is 2004. Driving a 7th series, life is good. Taking her to school. Now I have time.

And that was probably the best part of my life, really. Going to Vegas. Oh, vacation. Yeah, you know, the Vegas stuff really didn't happen until the Red Bull stuff. No, taking vacations, Atlantis and stuff like that, a little small vacation. But really, at that time, I was more like, I was more of like a homebody with my family. Like, it was probably my best time of me personally, like, to just, to staycations, to deal with my family, to take them to my daughter to school.

I mean, it was really, it was Pollyanna for me right then, to be honest with you. I was going to say people are always like, yeah, when you had money, like, well, you do this. Right. It was like, no, like, I don't. Oh, when I had the Red Bull money, that was different. I don't really leave the house much. No, but the Red Bull money was different. I was making like a half million dollars a week.

Right. So that one, like, you're forced to do something crazy. Yeah. Like when you're making a million a year, you're not forced to do something crazy because that's great money. Yeah. And that's great money for the average person in the world is great money. But when you're making, like, when you see your bank account go three, 400,000 a week more, like you've got to do something at that point. So the Red Bull stuff, that's different. So yeah, do you act like an idiot with that? It's like, yes. I still feel like if I was making $5 million a year, I still feel like I would, listen, I was upset. I would be stay home. Like, I was upset when we moved here. Yeah. Because we ran this podcast out of my life. living room for three years, for three years. And two years ago, or a year into it, I sold my car. Because I was the only time I was using my vehicle, and I had a car payment. It's like 400 bucks, plus the tax, plus the insurance. There was no gas because I never drove it. But I remember one time I went, I did something where I called my wife or something that told her, could you pick

something up and hung at the phone? And I was like, you know, I was like, I was like, I can. She could go get it. And then I thought, when's the last time I drove my car? And I literally had driven my car like one time in a month. And the month before that, maybe twice. And the only times I'd even left, I realized, was like to go get like creamer. Right, sure. And it was like, well, that's stupid.

She's coming. I could wait 20 minutes or an hour? She's coming home from work. Could you stop my public? Right. And so I called her up and I said, I'm going to sell my car. And she's like, well, you never use it. Like, she didn't even question it.

But you're forced to look into that. When you have money, you know, like, think about this. when I had money, like, I heat my pool, like, for, like, what, what, three days a year in South Florida? Right. Like, what am I heating my pool and paying an extra $1,000 a month for, like, electricity? It's, like, stupid stuff like that. But the Red Bull stuff was funny because I had done my six, seven months of staying by after the ATM machines.

And I was really, at that time, looking for an opportunity. Now I'm looking, though. Like, my juices are flowing. I'm 35 years old. I want to do something. So I'm looking at, like, a hundred different things. The Red Bull thing, like, just came upon me because I see everybody with Red Bull cans. I'm like, what the hell is this energy?

I drink it. It tastes like crap. Like, I don't know the appeal. Right. But I keep going to these stores and ask them, how much Red Bull do you sell? They roll their eyes. Everybody rolled their eyes like, oh, you don't even know. I'm like, what? But I can't get involved because they have distributors for the cans.

I can't go be a bottler. They already have bottlers. Right. So I'm thinking about how can I get involved in this energy drink? Because it is a craze at the time. Like McDonald's, I mean, excuse me, Coca-Cola was scared because they can't compete against it. Coca-Cola is for refreshment. Right.

Energy drinks for energy. they were scared. Yeah. So in 2004, when they started to really rock, like they were a competitor, like a violent competitor. Like Coke can deal with Pepsi. That's easy. We're both the same.

Like, I can deal with Pepsi. I don't know about this guy, though. So what happened was I'm thinking of a way to get in the business. I don't know how to get in the business. But here's what the irony of is, is that all the cans were different sizes. If you remember, Red Bull was about eight ounce. Monster was huge, right?

Rockstar was big. None of them are 12-ounce traditional cans. Right. None of them. So a can of Coke is 12 ounces Like, you know, the ones that were in it just a base the can So all the vending machines couldn't fit this like little red bull The big thing

None of them could fit it Retrofit all of it So it was tough for get a machine So I went to a manufacturer that knew I could sell I had a history now And he says, listen, I've been trying to get your business I'll make a prototype of machines for you This guy named Sega Manufacturing out of Chicago

He kept going to a trade show saying Please, I'll make anything for you Okay, you want to make anything Make me what's called, what I said It was an energy center All the energy drinks I want Monster, Rockstar, AMP I want all of them.

Crunk. You name it. I want it in there. He says, I think I can do that. So he made a machine. It was generic. It wasn't a beautiful machine. It was just, it was serviceable.

It had the push button display, and it was just a basic machine with eight selections. But it wasn't fancy looking. It was about, it was about like maybe four foot tall. It was just a bit. So I started selling that in 2004,

and I sold three of those machines with no cans. You go out to cans yourself, but I would give you like Costco, like head of price. I'd give you the best price in your area. even a distributor maybe that would sell to you.

And I would sell three of those machines for $10,000. And he was making me those machines for about $2,000, about $1,900. So he was making me for, you know... There's like a $4,000. It's like a $4,000 or a profit, right. Okay. And are you, can you explain the region or the areas, how you would break up? Yeah, that was the thing where, like, the people's big, the only thing they bucked on, the only thing they really had to be registered on, you could sell 10 people in my neighborhood.

And that's true. Right. Like, say you bought in Tampa, but you lived in. in Ybor City. What if I went and hoarded up and sold 50 people in Ybor City? They're probably not room for 50 people. Right. With like 10 different machines apiece. So I would say, listen, you're calling from Ybor. I got three spots in that area, and that's the only time I'm going to sell three people. I'm only to sell three people. I'm only to sell three people. I'm going to move from Miami to Tampa. I can't stop them. Right. But I'm going to limit the number of people near it. It gives urgency. Like, hey, I got two people already been in that area. You better be the last person. Right. So it's a sales tactic, too. But I would sell areas, which is legal, but it looks skeeby to a jury if you have a go to trial. Like, hey, you know, you're telling a guy you only have sell three, but you have five guys in that area. Yeah, because the guy could have moved. I was literally only selling. Like, if I ran out of 10 people in L.A., I would only sell 10 people in L.A. Right. But if you're in San Diego, moved to L.A. and bring a machine, I can't do anything

about that. Yeah, but you're not saying that. But I'm not saying that. Right. Right. No, I'm not. It's kind of like the McDonald's kind of like, well, it's not, McDonald's just another McDonald's is not going to move in there. Right. But I can't guarantee that they're not going to open up a Burger King across the street. Right. But we have a, we have McDonald's in this location, this location, we're not stacking them up. Yes, exactly. But I'm going to tell them I'm going to only sell five people in Tampa. Right.

And I would only sell five people in Tampa. So I was selling that machine three. Well, most people would buy five because it was a better deal. They buy three for $10,000 or they'd buy five. I think it was like maybe like 14 something or something like that. So I had different price brackets. Right. So I sold about 2000 those machines in 2004.

So I was doing pretty well. I had a sales crew about seven, eight people, customer service. I was making about 20 grand a week, 20, 30 grand a week. Life was good. No complaints. I mean, people, the machine was very serviceable. It really worked well. It wasn't gorgeous, like I said, but it was, if there was any problems with the guy would fix it, the guy had a warranty, you could send the machine back and give you another one. So it was, it was, he did me well. And I did him dirty when Red Bull came along. So what happened is, I go, I'm a year into this. And on a Friday, I'm going to go south beach with my wife. And with no notice, my secretary says,

hey, you got a guy out here named Dietrich. He says he owns Red Bull. He wants to meet with you. I'm like, what? He didn't call? No, he's out in the couch and the lobby with two guys. Do you even know who he is? I don't.

He says he's the name of Red Bull. I look him up and is Dietrich warn shit. It's like a weird last name. And I look him up and, yeah, and I look down the hall and I look to the couch and it looks like him. And I, you know, he's from Austria. What is he doing in Sunrise, Florida in my sales office for? Right.

He's got him, a lawyer. This is what I know afterwards. a lawyer, and Gary Smith was the head of Red Bull North America. They were out of Santa Monica, California. But he's the founder of Red Bull, Dietrich is. And at the time, he's got a soccer team, he's got a Formula One team. This is like the, you know... His commercials are running 50-100.

Cartoon commercials, right? They're starting to really ramp up. He wasn't as big as his height in 2004, but they're ramping. So he's in my office. Like, what? So he comes into my regular office from the lobby. I'm stupid. I got a big office back then.

I got money. I got office probably the size of your whole office. now, my personal office. And so I bring him in, and he sits down, and he says, what's that machine you got in your lobby? Because I have an energy center in my lobby. He goes, oh, that's a piece of shit. I'm like, what?

Why are you? That's a good machine. I don't even want my product in there. It doesn't matter. You have no say to it. It's a push button display. I said, why are you here? This is unannounced now.

He says, I'm here because of this. And he pulls a briefcase out, and he puts a picture of a Red Bull machine that's six foot tall bubble front shaped like a Red Bull can. I've never seen this machine. I said, that's gorgeous. I said, there's only three people in the world that can make that machine.

There's Royal, Dixie Narco, and National. Those are only three I can know can make that type of machine. He goes, yeah, Royal makes it out of West Virginia. I said, I know Royal. I said, this is a gorgeous machine. How many machines have you put out in the last year? He kind of pressed his chest out and says, 500. I go, 500.

I just sold my 3,000, one of the Energy Center. You call that a piece of shit. Now I know why you're here. You know, Royal is giving you shit. You're supposed to be the next Coca-Cola. You only put off 500 machines? He goes, well, you could sell more. And then here's the stupid part of me.

I just see number signs. And I said, I could sell $10,000 a week. You name it. You red bull machine endorsed by Red Bull. So now all of a sudden, you know, I see the number of signs, right? Which is what's bad because he's coming to me. I should really negotiate a good contract for me. I should have the upper hand, right?

But now it's like a pretty girl. I'm just going to do whatever he wants, right? I mean, it's a red bull. So he says, how'd you like to sell this machine? I said, I love to sell that machine. I want exclusive, though. Or you'd have to sell least and he just comes up with a figure, 75 a week. Seventy-five a week. I'll sell 75 a day. I said, yeah, and I knew I could because

people would drool over this. So he says, okay, we make a contract, which I end up suing him for and he lost, but it went to my restitution. But anyways, he writes a contract down, which doesn't mean anything for him. He could say no. He's, he's Red Bull. He's in Austria. I'm a little guy. Yeah. But it's basically a push-pole contract. In 90 days notice if you want to cancel it, and you could buy the machines for this amount. You have to buy, okay, here's where I went wrong. Stop selling the energy center because now he's the red-headed chef's child. This is like, you know, this is like, you know, jailo compared to a, you know, a girl that's a school teacher or something, right? So the schoolteacher is nice, though.

But I told the guy in Chicago, you know, I'm going to sell the Red Bull Machine now. Oh, what do he say? He said, let's meet in Miami first. We meet in Brickle and he says, they're going to shit on you, you know. You're going to sell a certain amount and they're going to just dispose of you because, you know, they need to get machines out. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's sour grapes. And I shouldn't have because this guy, he treated me well. And so I said, no, I'm just going to go with that.

Because I didn't want to sell both because it would be confusing. Say somebody come up, do I buy the Energy Center or buy the Red Bull machine? What would you tell them? Yeah, I mean, obviously connection with Red Bull exclusivity. Of course, it's a better position to be in. But maybe not. You know why? This is in hindsight, I should look at, they're only selling Red Bull.

This machine is still selling Red Bull, too, but with other products. Right. I don't see that. Maybe that's a detriment to me, but maybe not. But I can see why you would have made the lead. Oh, of course. I'm making this because I can sell this machine in myself. sleep. Right. So I start selling that machine. And literally in the first month, we sold about

5,000 machines. And like, and Royal said that could, Royal told me to sell whatever, but they don't believe I'm going to sell that much. Right. So I give them a purchase order for 5,000 machines. Oh, we can't make the machines that quick. I mean, women can make 2,000, 3,000, but they say, well, we need this part. We told Red Bill, but it's cost like $300,000 and we need this machine to actually retrofit the bubble front. And if I don't have this, I can't make those numbers. I said, that's Red Bull. That's Red Bull's machine. Right.

So me being stupid and seeing the Mumbus signs, I say, listen, I'll give you the $300,000, but you've got to put in writing that you can at least make me this amount of machines a month. So I give them the $300,000. And listen to me, I could have sold $10,000 a week that just wouldn't be able to make it. I mean, then the sales went crazy. I mean, it was nuts. I went from making $20,000, $30,000 a week to making about between $400,000 a week.

What do you do with that? And what do you do as a CEO? Now I've got to hire 35, 40 more salespeople. How do you control that mess? I got to hire 10 more customer service. I have 150 employees at this time. I used to have like 20. I'm not a CEO.

I'm a hustler, right? I mean, I mean, like, what do I know? You went to Austria? Yes. Because I just always, I just always, because the picture you're paying. I didn't even have to go to Austria, to be honest with you. I went to Austria about five, six months in for two reasons. Right.

One is Dietrich, like, begged me to go. Because I think he was, like, proud of it. I was like his little. puppy selling a lot of machines. And he was shocked that I was selling that many machines because he only sold 500. And so, and the second thing is I, I really wanted to negotiate like something different with him. Like, here's my angle. Like, I'm selling cans, right? Right. Like, there's a bunch of people call me up that don't want the machines that want cans. Right. Why can't I sell it? Right. And he's saying, no way, you got to go up it to the, I don't understand they have

distributes in their area. But if you're directly calling me from my advertising for cans and you want to buy 30,000 cans for an event or something, why can't I sell it to you? he wouldn't let me. So I went for that too. So I go to Austria and it's weird because, like, first of all, I don't know why I'm going there. That really, I don't have to go. I could do that over the phone. Yeah.

Okay. But I go to. You wouldn't want to go? Why would you want to go? I mean, it could be cool. Like, my name's Levinson, man. I mean, like in Austria, you know, I would know. Stop.

They're fine. They're fine. I'm being real. I mean, what am I? Because I do go there. The guy that picked me up in the airport. Listen to this. I'm moving my sales manager, right?

He's in an SUV and he takes us like in the woods. is the woods, right? But we go from the airport to like where there's no lights in the streets. And I'm like, where we get? The guy could take me anyway. A guy could be taking me to lynch me. I don't know, right? I don't know. You're selling too many machines for him to lynch anyway. I mean, who knows, right? I mean, like, you know, so you've seen craziest stuff, right? So I'm going through the woods and all of a sudden, in the, in the clearing of the woods, you can see these red, red sign. I don't even, you can't see what it says yet.

And he gets closer, it says Red Bull. This factory is like Willie Wonker. It's like this, like, this 10 blocks long. Right. It's massive. And like at one time he sold, all the cans in the world he sold were through that thing. He wouldn't let people make them in the United States. He eventually did. Yeah. But there was one time he was so diabolical, I'm going to make every can here.

He was making 5.5 million cans in one facility. So, I mean, that's pretty impressive. But eventually he said, this is a pain in the ass. I'm not going to do it. I go into his place, and you think my office was big. I got a personal office that's about 1,000 square feet. I thought I was a king. I could chip golf balls there.

I could put. his personal office was probably, I'm not even to exaggerate 5,000 square feet. Like you couldn't even see him on the other side. Like one of those, like it looked like a funny movie set. Like, you know what I mean? Like you see him in a little chair back there. I go in there and this is what the crazy thing he said to me. He said, listen.

He goes, how did you sell like already 15,000 machines? I go, how? I mean, like you sell yourself. He goes, yeah, but, you know, you must be saying some stuff. And I was like, oh, I'm thinking like, I'm looking like, I'm looking like, I'm looking for a wire or something. Right. I'm like, he threw me off with that.

And in hindsight, he wasn't yet. I don't think he's probably already thinking. I, at some point, I've got to kick this guy to curb and take this over. Well, I think what he's getting is a little feedback from investors and little people shitting on us because they didn't do as well. Okay. Like when you first do it, he doesn't know about business opportunity. He doesn't really know how it works.

He just wants me to like spell machines. Yeah. So the first two or three months, people are just getting their machines. And all he sees is me doing crazy numbers. I'm the hero, right? But once they're out there for about five, six months, you get feedback on how they're doing, right? So he gets feedback and, like I said, it's not all polyana. People aren't doing some numbers.

So now he's kind of getting a temperature of saying like, hey, you're in a skeeby business. Right. And, you know, that was his perception. So that's the kind of. Well, you're assuming that he didn't say that. He did not say that. Okay. I'm assuming that he's kind of getting a feel for like an out for me.

Okay. Like it out. Yeah. And that's why, like, I don't want to skip around, but that's why, you know, he made that memo in trial saying that he gave me a warning, which he never did. Right. A 30-page memo, which you could have made that a day before he went to the trial. Didn't you have to check that's what I guess.

But yes, he was trying to make, Red Bull knew they were in bed with a skeeby industry, business opportunities. Right. Now they want to spin it. Does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah. So I make little bad decisions during that times. One is that, you know, when you're selling, you know, like we sold hard.

When I say it means sold hard, when you call a broker up, they're going to sell you hard, right? You call a broker in New York. They're not going to be like, oh, I need to talk to my wife. They're going to say, well, your wife, there's the pants in the family. You know what I'm saying. This is Joseph Vitale, the hard sell. You know the hard sell? This is all kinds.

Benjamin Franklin clothes is all. But what I'm saying, I guess, is my guys were like some of the guys in New York, Boston guys, they were tough selves. They're aggressive. They're aggressive. They're not guaranteeing that you'll make it. We're not saying you'll guarantee money, but they're aggressive. So what happened was we start going crazy. I mean, I make the first month, maybe $2 million in my pocket.

So, like, where do you go from there? But the thing was, like I said, I needed to get 150 salespeople now, like, about a little over 100 to height, 110 salespeople, like 40 customer service. That's a lot of people. I mean, you've got to be a CEO for this, right? I mean, like, cash coming in is like $10, $15 million a month. Like, pure not profit, obviously, right? No, you got to buy the machines. You got to pay the sales people.

Right, exactly. So, you know, I got to get an operations manager. I got to get a post sales manager. I mean, I got to get a lot of people. And I'm good at selling. I'm good at hustling. So there's a big, there's a lot that goes into this. When, when people called in, who are these people, where are they finding you? Sure. And when they call in, they're calling in, they're going to a salesperson. What is the salesperson kind of saying? So where are they finding you?

What are they saying? Sure. They're finding me on sites called business opportunity sites. You probably never even heard of some of these, but they're incredible. Like, one's called franchise gator. One's called be the boss. Franchise.com. They're franchise sites. Right. I can be next to McDonald's. You know how much credibility that is? If I'm on the front page of a site, this McDonald's, me, and like Jippy Lou Bottle.

Right. So I could be on these sites. You pay a lot more for the first page. Like if you're on the first page next to McDonald's, you're going to pay like $100 grand a month. Yeah, but they're going to get your leads. So if you put in business opportunity on Google, it'll come up these sites.

Like franchise gator, it sounds crazy, right? Back then I was getting probably 100 responses a day. Okay. And I'm next to McDonald's. So this is where I get my leads. The leads wouldn't call in. I wouldn't even put a number. I do an application.

I want to know who you are. Then we get the application with a number, and then a salesperson would call them. And then what's a fronter would call them, what's called a fronter. Like, I don't want somebody to be a closer right away. I want somebody just giving them an overview and saying that if they're curious or serious.

Like, I mean, I want to know if you have the money. I want to know that if you be ready to buy. I want to know if you have any, like don't answer any questions, really. Like, try to just give them an overview. you. So those people would call them and then send them out a business package. And then they'd respond to the business package with like a number of a closer like their business card in there. And they would call back and go over the opportunity. And then like I said, at that time, they'd want to know like who are you, like what are the sales? You'd have to pitch them.

So, um, so I mean, who are these people? Are these like, these are like, be your own boss type of people. Like somebody that's, say he's working as a postman. I'm sure. So these aren't like millionaires. No, hell no. These are guys that are like, a step above like blue collar or these guys these are middle class people that they're tired of working somebody make a 50 grand a year right and all of a sudden can have 10 vending machines maybe could have 100 one day quit their job and have 100 vending machines and just do vending machines right right yeah so like these would like average everyday working America yeah okay that would have 50,000 for 10 machines 50,000 minimum investment it sounds like a lot but back in

2004 and five when homes are going up and everything people have 50,000 like nothing yeah yeah they could get a home equity line or credit or whatever Or you go, shit, you really just go get a personal loan. Right. Exactly. If your credit's good enough. Okay. So I remember this was an issue.

Yeah. That one of the things was you had people that people would call in and they would say, hey, listen, you know, you couldn't give them the exact numbers. Well, here's what I remember. Sure, sure. And I know you've watched the show. because I pitched or done your pitch, which was the one-hour pitch. And you kind of went over that because I remember when we were talking about this at Coleman, you were like, well, you know, I got in trouble because, you know, my salespeople would say,

because they never had you on a tape, ever. No, ever. So it was always your- No, they did tape me, but they wouldn't put it in trial because it was bad for them because I didn't say anything. Okay. Well, I mean, they never had you really saying anything wrong. Never, never.

And your salespeople would be like, yeah, listen, like how many, you know, if you found a decent location, how many an hour? Exactly. Right. And you say how many an hour and then it'd be how many hours a day and then how many a month and you explain it. You say, okay, great. You'll have it all. These things will pay for themselves in eight months. Well, if you do those numbers, right? And sometimes we'd cut those numbers and half. Like, hey, we'll be real conservative. That's what I get. It would be like, oh, they'd be like six an hour. And you go, no, no, let's cut that in half. And you give it to them and they'd be paid off in six months. And I remember when you were telling me that, I was like, well, that's perfect. I was like, what's wrong with that. There's not that. It's their numbers. I even did beyond that, on their purchase order, I'd have to have them sign saying that we guarantee no specific level of income. Right. They have to sign that. Like, I can't guarantee you'll make a dollar.

I don't know where the machines are going to go. Right. And in trial, like they said, sometimes they would say, oh, I didn't really read that. Well, why'd you sign it? Right. You sign it. It's not my fault. Exactly.

That's a common. That's common. But this isn't even fine print. This is like in the purchase order, the first line, creative conscience of America cannot guarantee any specific. It wasn't even in the back. It was in the front of the purchase order to make sure that they see that in bold print. Now, that doesn't give me carp launch to say anything for the salesperson, just to have that wipe away everything. But they're still signing that.

Well, I remember when you – because this always got me is that when you guys would say, you know, how many an hour – and I was – and I had said to you, well, what's wrong with that? And you said, well, what's wrong with that is that when we would say one in an hour, they have to say one. You know, he's like, nobody says zero. They're going to say at least one or two. And you said some of these guys would say six or eight or twelve and he'd be like, oh, I have to say 10, 15. Yeah, you've got to come on, you're getting crazy. Right. But, but, and I was like, okay, you say they at least say one.

And I go, okay, well, what's wrong with one? And you had said, well, because actually the average vending machine sells one, you know, one drink every like three and a half hours. And you were like if you did. Well, that's what ours did. But what's crazy about the government had numbers off with a traditional machine, like a Coke machine or something. Right. That they would do about one an hour. Oh, okay.

I'm talking about this is the government's average. Yeah. Like the government, and we'd show that in our business package. This is the government saying that. Right. Which helps you. It only helps you. Of course it does.

that's a machine that might sell coke and everything. Right. And just like our energy center that sells everything. So in hindsight, and this is complete hindsight, just being Red Bull, maybe hurt it. But it's not going to hurt sales because you see what I'm saying. It's a lot sexier, but maybe the dichotomy of it is that that specific machine pigeonholed it where it wasn't the best opportunity. But it looks the best opportunity because it's Red Bull. Right.

So that's where I think it came into. So yes, I was truly shocked. Like you can lie to tech the test, whatever. I was shocked that they were only doing three, four sales a day. Right. That's a gorgeous machine. Red Bull's selling everywhere. The height of Red Bull.

Why is it doing three, four a day? It's insanity. What about the, what about the references? Well, the references were people that, that own machines. Right. Now, here's the thing. Like, I have people that actually bought machines from me that said they'll take calls. Okay.

Now. Because people that are interested in buying a business opportunity are saying, like, well, okay, and you guys would say, hey, look. Let me talk to somebody who's doing it. No, we wouldn't even pitch it. We'd have it in our bullet, but we wouldn't say, hey, give me two people. No, we'd wait for them to ask. Because they didn't ask, we wouldn't give it. Yeah.

But if they did, you'd say, yeah, I give you some numbers. Because first of all, at first I didn't pay for their phone bill and I thought it would be skeeasy for me paying them anything. And the government made a big deal about me paying for their phone bill. Like, just like, bring me a phone bill and I'll pay for it. Right. Like, oh, now they're salespeople. No, they're not salespeople. They bought machines.

But here's the human nature of it. Do I know this? Yes. Do I know that then, yes. Is that if you bought 10 machines from me and you decide to be a reference. friends. Right. And I'm giving you your phone bill and things like that. You're probably going to say good things, right? Yeah, of course. But here's the crazy part. You're probably going to like even lie. I didn't tell you to lie. But I had people like, that tape recording

guys say, well, I have one in Disney World. And why are you telling them that? I didn't even tell you to say it. It's not true, but they want to feel bigger than they are. Right. You know what I'm saying? So like it was, it was crazy. And I'm not listening to every one of the calls they're doing and stuff like that. And also the government made a big deal that they would call me back saying, hey, William's called and he's hot. Well, I mean, of course they're going to say that, right? I mean, they just talk to the guy, right? So, you know, do I know they're going to say things? And do I know they're even going to probably lie? That's human nature. Right. But did I tell them the lie? No. I don't need to tell them a lie. But did these people buy machines? Yes.

But inherently, like, some of them, like, they did tape recording. I was in trial. I was shocked at some the things they said. It's like, why are you telling them that? You don't need to over-exaggerate it. Right. But they do. About four or five percent. other people come to see you because they want to see you're real. Right. And I love that because once they see that you have a nice office, they're going to do business with it. They just want the mindset to know that they're not giving it to a boiler room. Right. So out of those four- So not some Indian and- Exactly. So out of the, like, say in my whole history, out of the hundred people that came to see me, those people were broken up into three different types,

only three types. One, they want to do business. That's all they want to do business. That's all they want to do is see that you're real, do business in your office. Okay, just do business, handshake. Let's give you the check, and that's it. Two, is they want to do business, and they don't want to eat alone. And I don't want to eat alone either. Like, like, they're traveling by themselves and, like, hey, you want to have a bite to eat. And maybe not even talk business, but just have a bite to eat. And the third, want to do debauchery in South Florida. They want me to show them some kind of crazy debauchery. Yeah, let's see some girls. Let's go to strip. Right, yeah, you name it, right. Okay. So the guy says, why do you talk about that?

And he says, what was your first story of you? I said, well, my first story would we would be the Mormon. And he goes, what's the Mormon? I said, there's a Mormon guy that called me up. He said, I want to buy 20 machines. But if I'm going to give you like, you know, $97,000, I need to come see that you're a family man, you're religious and you believe in Jesus and the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and all that. And we need to pray together. Of course. So I said, okay, come to my office. Absolutely, right? So he comes in and we talk for about an hour in my office and all he talks about, not even, he doesn't even talk about the opportunity, the Red Bull opportunity. He talks about family. I see your family. You see your wife. I see your

daughter. How do you feel about Jesus? How do you feel about John Smith? John Smith? Yeah, he was a great kicker for the Patriots. I knew John Smith is in the BYU. But anyways, so he's talking, have you been to Provo and BYU? It's so great. And I said, yeah. So he's talking about family, God, and really, like, genuine things. So I have to respect that. He's a man of God. So he says, I'm going to do the deal, but I want to pray on this. Let's hold hands. So we hold hands. I pray. All right. And we do the prayer. And he says, I feel good about you. Yeah, I'm going to do the deal. Okay. It gives me the check. He says, but I'm staying at the Atlantic Hotel in Fort Lauderdale Beach.

I really don't want to eat alone. I said, yeah, there's a restaurant down. See, it was called Trina at the time. And Trina's was a good restaurant I liked. And I said, meet me there at 7.30? He goes, yeah, I'll go down from my room at 7.30. Okay. I go there at 7.30.

We eat. And for about three and a half hours, all he talks about is Jesus Christ, the Latter-Days Saints, Mormons, my family, his family, really genuine stuff, right? So I said, hey, it's about 1030. I got a guy, I don't have to. But, you know, it's kind of at this point. It's been said, right. So he says, hey, listen, it's kind of the nights early. I always think about going to one of those clubs. And I'm like, clubs. Like you don't seem like a, you know, bed and mansion and South Beach, you know, the club, right? I go, well, okay, I can pick you a club. I can get in the door. So we go down to Miami. We're on 95 going down to Miami. And I'm going to go to a club back then. So halfway down, he says, I think you misunderstood me. I'm like, no, you said you want to go to a club, right? Because, yeah, I'm talking about one of those gentlemen clubs. I'm like, you want to go to a street. I'm like, you want to go to a street. trip club, man, we had plenty in Fort Lauderdale. I didn't have to go all the way down to

Miami. I turned the car around. We go back to Fort Lauderdale. So we go to Pure Platinum. It's not there anymore. It was pure platinum was in Fort Lauderdale. And he looks like a 10-year-old that's never seen titty's before. Right. Like he's looking around like this, right, we sit down. And this girl named Megan and I know there said, yeah, Andrew, how you doing? I said, good, Megan, you know, you know, right, right. You know what you want to call you know you. I took clients there. I It's their clients there. Like, no. I'm not, I went to bed by myself too, but I was actually at that time kind of border strip clubs.

It's like the same thing. Like, I mean, I mean, like, just give me a lap dance. Let's go. Like, let's get the grind on or something. So anyways, we sit down and he points to a guy and a girl over there. He says, what's that? And I said, you mean that? He goes, yeah.

I go, that's a lap dance. You want a lap dance? Hey, Megan, you get a girl to give him a lap dance. So he taps me in the shoulder while she's going to get a girl. And he says, can you make it an Asian girl? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. Like I asked Megan, you got an Asian girl here?

She goes, yeah, we do. We have a girl named, whatever her name was. She comes over. I give the girl like $200. Just give him like 10 lap dances, blow his mind. Right. Okay. I go back and get my lap dances, right?

So I come back about an hour later and, you know, he's loving it, right? I said, listen, I really do have to go. I'll get you a car. You can take a car back. Like, I'll get you somebody. Have a great time. The machines are going to be there in about 30 days. Everything's good, right?

And he's like, no, I'll go back with you. I'm like, why? You're having fun, right? No, I'll go back with you. I said, okay, we start driving back to the hotel in Fort Lauderdale Beach. It's a short drive. He's like, listen, the night is young and I'm kind of like lonely. It's not young.

So I'm like, yeah, it's not young. And I'm thinking, like, lonely. I don't know if he wants me to go in with him. I don't even know at this point. He's like, I'm looking for one of those like companions. I go, you want a hooker? You want to the escort? He's like, yeah, I think that's what they're called.

So I know a guy named Joey. He was like a mobbed up guy. He is, I've got guy, girls for him with other clients before. So I call Joey. Andrew, what's up you up? You haven't talked to me in a long time? Like, I got a client here. He's at the Atlantic Hotel. He's at room number. What is it? 1024. Can you get a girl to come up? And he tapped me in the shoulder again. Asian girl. He says Asian. So he says, I have an Asian girl. She can be there like 20 minutes. Great. I'm dropping the guy off. Great. I got to go back to Davey. It's out west.

I got to ride back. It's fucking 2.30 in the morning. Excuse my language. So anyways, I leave there. And I'm going back home. And I'm almost two minutes from the house. And my phone starts blowing up. And so my phone keeps calling, and I think it's my wife, because maybe, but she knows I'm doing business that night. She's cool with it, but maybe it's an emergency. I look down, it's not my wife's number. I pick it up and I say, hello? And it's Joey. And Joey says, I mean, you know who I am? I could kill you or kill him, man.

What are you doing? This guy just punched my girl in the back of the head, try to put it in her butt and called her a g-k. And I'm like, what? I'm like, holy God, I don't even know this guy. He's like a Mormon, right? He goes, go back there and handle that. Mormon. From Davey, turn around and head to go all the way back to Fort Laudette Beach.

I go in the Atlantic Hotel, and she's in the lobby. It's like 3 o'clock in the morning. She's like holding her head. And I'm like, I go, what's up? And she goes, you know that guy? And she always says the same thing. Like a girl gets in trouble. She goes, I know people.

Right. Like, what happened? Listen to me. I told him everything was good. It was paid for her. And he was going to have regular, you know, sex. And he tried to put in my butt. And I said no.

And he donkey punched me in the back of the head and called me a racist name. Right. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, I'll feel it. And I felt her head and it was a lump on there. And I'm like, I go back up, I go up to his room. And I'm like, I ring the bell and he doesn't answer. I'm knocking on the door. I don't care. I'll call the cops. I'm going to, you need to answer. He opens it up and it's like, Jekyll and Hyde. He opens up, and he looks at me. I said, this guy's got mobbed up. It owns the escort. Oh, I don't care, man. You know, the shit won't even let me put in her butt. And I'm like, you're nuts, man. You're nuts. So I go back down. give the girl like $300 to have her shut up. I got, you want to ride home? And I'm not that bad to hit on the girl at that time. I'm almost that bad, but I didn't. And I just drove her back and shipped the machines and never heard from the guy.

But I got many more of those. So he didn't buy any machines? No, he bought. No, he bought. I wouldn't have went out to eat with him if he didn't buy. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, he bought machines. But, yeah, that was the Mormon. That'll be a good TikTok right there. Right. There's one better one, but I don't know if you want it. You want it here. I don't know. It might hurt me with my wife.

The midget one? No. Oh, Jesus. I don't even know the midget one. No, you know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about the guy. I mean, I'm not going to go. It's a long story.

It's a long story. But at the end of the story, like the guy ends up fucking the head of the brothel, an older chick in her 50s. And that guy went to prison with. You know, he was at, no. Oh, I didn't know that. He went to prison. You don't remember the whole story. That guy, that's my, you want me tell the midget of that one?

The midgettish one's crazy. The midget one's crazy. I guess I have enough time. I've been here for five hours. I'm like, I'm like, just like, Jesus. I'm like a marathon or something. I'll tell you the midget one. That'll go viral.

So the guy comes in his name is Tex. And he's from like Austin, Texas, right? And he says, listen, I want to buy 50 machines. It was like $235,000. He says, but I only want one thing from you. No, I want two things, he said. I'm going to come on a Friday to do business. but I need you to be at my suite, at the Marriott.

I have the whole top penthouse suite. I need to be there at 8 o'clock. I go, what's the second thing? He says, don't bring your wife, and you're going to be out until like 8 o'clock in the morning. I'm like, geez, what are she? So I'm like, all right. So he says, listen, I'm a businessman.

I'm just going to come in there, and the business is going to be easy. Okay, so he comes into my office. And he's like 6'8 with a bolo tie and like a cowboy hat and boots on. And he shakes my hand, and he almost breaks it, really. You ever had a guy shake your hand in your hurts? Yeah.

He almost broke my hand. And he gives me a check for $2.35 without before talking, a cashier's check. I'm like, all right. He says, listen, we're going to talk a couple seconds, but basically be at this address, at this penthouse suite at 8 o'clock sharp. I'm like, all right. So I go to the penthouse suite that night at 8 o'clock, and I ring the bell and nobody answers. And I'm like, what?

Finally, I'm thinking Texas is there, right? What I don't realize is that Texas is kind of like, Debian is that he's looked for the best-looking midgets in the world. He's scoured the earth for the non-forehead midgets, like the ones, like the good-looking ones. Like if you look to their head, they're not the forehead ones, right? And they're gorgeous, right? But he's really scoured the earth. Yeah. So he lives with three of them. One of them opens the door and she looks like Pocahontas, but she's three-foot 10. But she's gorgeous. She's looking up at you. She's looking out of me, right? She says, come on in. She holds my hands, brings me in the suite's room and there's two other midgets there.

But like I said, non-forehead midges, but they're midges. So they're partying. They're like already doing drugs and stuff. And I'm like, all right. And they keep wanting me to like, I'm drinking with them. They keep wanting me to take these pills. And they're not taking them. Like, I don't know what it is.

I thought I was tranquil. I don't even know. Ask my brother and he didn't even know what they were. And he was into that stuff. So finally, I take the pill. Not good. I mean, I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was floating.

Like the room was like levitate. It was bad, right? What is it? The Belford used to take all the time. It was something crazy. It might have been a quaylude. I don't even know, though. So I'm like, high, but I'm still, like, digging on the Pocahontas girl, right? So she takes me into the bathroom. I don't know why. She's holding my head. Let's go in the bathroom. And I, like, all the thing I could do is to put her up on the basin, like, because she's a midget, right? So I put her up in the basin talking to her and then we play around and, like, I don't know what she's giving me. It's scaring me a little bit. Like, really. Right. But I'm still, like, you know, amorous a little bit. So I'm playing around with her. She's playing with me. She takes, puts her hand in my pants, right? And for about 10 seconds, what they get. What they gave. What they me was like had to be like a vaguer or something because it's huge like bigger than it's ever been it's like rock like this right but i'm so screwed up i don't it takes me 30 seconds to realize it's not the

pills she's got baby hands because she's a midget so it just looks bigger oh my god so you have so what happened is so what happened was we go back out we do our thing we go back out and then it's like now it's getting to be three hours i'm there four hours and where's text i don't even know like i'm like now i'm thinking getting a little paranoid too like text might come into the door and just kill me something. I don't know. He comes out of like one of the rooms of the suites and he says, listen, everybody get their clothes on. I got my clothes on. Get to get your clothes. We're going out to South Beach. We're going down to a mansion this club down there. I got table there, everything. It's like 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning. So he's got a limo waiting for us. In the,

in the midgets, they put on their like midget going out clothes, like the little midget hold clothes, right? So listen, I've been to South Beach with, I used to have Miss Venezuela work for me. My wife is gorgeous. I've got looks before. I've never, got the looks I've had to be with texts, the three midges walking in South Beach. I'm like, people are like looking at us like, what the hell is this? He's six eight. How tall? You're six two? Yeah, I'm six two, yeah. So, yeah. And these girls are like three ten, but non-forehead. You know what I'm saying? So we're going to the, we go to the club mansion. He gets right in. There's some people I recognize that aren't getting in like celebrities. We go to a table. We sit

next to all people we say to Dean Kane. But Dean is not a huge actor, but he's sitting there with his friends. And Dean Kane's like, like scooping on these like these girls he's looking at them like these the the the small people I don't know midgets that's not a bad word I guess right so he's scooping on these midges right and then Texas like who I don't care if you're superman or not you know get out of here because he's trying to go talk to him so I take a bottle he's buying bottles tech's got big money buying bottles like crystal I take a bottle and I go to the bathroom and every club like that always has a small bathroom for some reason why do you have a club like that and have a small

bath you have a waiting room for the bathroom these type of clubs so I'm I'm in line to the bathroom with a bottle of crystal. The Pocahontas girl comes up, you want me to hold your hand and keep your company? So she holds my hand. I got a bottle of crystal. I got guys walking by me that say, you're a pimp, man. Like, you're like, this is crazy, right? And so we go back. We spend the whole night out. I get back to the house at like 8 o'clock in the morning. So I think that's it with the text, right? About three days later, I start getting these emails of him doing debauchery with the midgets. Like the first one was at a McDonald's drive-thru, with a kid giving a happy meal like this, one midget on his lap, like on his lap, and one midget going,

like this and the guy, the kid looking in like, what the hell is going on here? He's sending me pictures of a pool party with his guys, like doing the midgets and stuff. So about a month later, my office was kind of mismatched because I grew so fast, I had to have suites over here and over here. It's not all in the same place in this office, in this office. So I have to go all the way over this office, this office. So my wife had been there for like two hours. My secretary said, hey, wife's in your office.

I've been waiting for you two hours. I said, I'm busy. Oh, no, she's not mad. She's just waiting in your office. I left my computer on, though. She's like, what the fuck of these emails, man? He's like these midgets. I know this guy bought me, he keeps sending me a midget pay.

I don't ask for him. That was the midget guy. The guy you're talking about is Boyd Barrow. Boyd Barrow. Boyd Barrow was in prison. Think about that. One of those debauchy guys. He's from Atlanta, right?

He buys from me. He said, next time you're in Atlanta, you've got to come see me, right? Because he owns bars. He bought like 20 machines. So he goes, next time he's saying it. I said, I'm not already in Atlanta for about another six, seven months. My secretary's, no, you're in Atlanta next month. I knew I was in Atlanta next month.

I just didn't want to deal with him, right? Okay. So I would trade show in Atlanta I was going to. So we meet up. And I was the Santa Ritz Carlton at Buckhead. And he said, let's meet at Emeraldagasy's place. Emeraldogasi had a place on the corners. So we meet there.

This guy named Boy Barrel, we eat and he sits down for about three hours with us and eats and talks business and has about 13 mixed drinks. Right. It's a lot. And I don't even want to get in the car with him now. He says, no, let's go to the Pink Pony. Pink Pony is a strip club in Atlanta. Yeah. We go there and he proceeds to have another like 15 mixed drinks.

And I'm like, man, I don't know if I'm going to get in the car. Oh, you're a pussy, you don't get in the car. Like, he's drunk now, right? The ballet, they don't care. Just giving the money, like, give the car keys, no big deal. So he says, the night's young. I said, no, we got to go back. We got an early convention in the morning.

So he starts driving, and he knows Atlanta better than us, but he goes in the woods, like, in the middle of nowhere. And it's pitch dark. I'm like, where are you taking me? Don't worry, don't worry. We drive for like three miles. We see nothing but pitch dark. And all of a sudden I see a little light, a little yellow light coming up.

And I'm getting closer and closer, and I see it now. It says Asian massage. So we stop in there And Boyd takes us in there And there's about 10 girls sitting on couches And the madam comes in She's like 50 something years old

Boyd, Mr. Barrow, how you doing? Like, you know, no, they've been there, right? And pick a girl, pick a girl. So I pick a girl and my sales manager We pick a girl And go back and get a massage, if you know what I mean? So Boyd, he won't pick a girl. And like, she's like, is everything wrong, Mr. Barrow?

What's wrong? He's like, no, no girl for me. No girl. I'll give you two girls tonight for one price. no he goes I want you to the madam like she's like 60 years old 55 but she looks all right for her age so she says no I can't do that he goes I'll give you 2,000 here's my credit card I'll give you 2,000 he's like I know I have a husband I don't do this as I own the place he goes 5,000 here run my credit card and he and she's he's like she's like no no I don't do that I just don't do that

10,000 it's a black card run it I'll be right back so she goes runs the credit card they go off together. We do our business and I'm back in the couch talking to the girls and they have a little bar there and he's in there for like an hour and a half. Boyd, they come out, you know, the madam, she's looking rough. Like Boyd got his money's worth, I guess, right? So it's like 5.30 in the morning. We leave out of there. He drops us off at the hotel. I got to get ready. The convention starts at like 7.30. I don't even sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where Ghostbed can help.

As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghost Bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patented technology that adjust to your body's temperature, every ghost bed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plusher mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firm option with exceptional support, your ghost bed will keep you cool and comfortable all night long. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort is guaranteed. You can try out your mattress for 101 nights, risk-free, to make sure it's the right fit for you.

Plus, they offer free shipping, and most items are shipped within 24 hours. If you're not sure which ghost bed is right for you, check out their mattress quiz. You'll answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation. Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox, and use code Cox at the checkout. If I go to the convention, I'm like 25 minutes late. I'm hung over. And guess who's waiting for us with McDonald's, I mean, with Uncle Donas copies at the convention.

Boyd. And so he's waiting there. Oh, you're pussy. He shouldn't have been that. So I don't see him for another 15 years. No, not 15 years. About 10 years. The next time I see him is I go to the camp from the low,

the Atlanta camp. I go in my dorm and he's in the dorm. The same dorm I go to. He got busted for some K2 stuff or something, not even the same guy. Why was he locked up in prison? Because of K2 stuff. On the outside, he's selling K2?

No, he did some K2 like manufacturing stuff and yeah, oh yeah. Okay. Not the Red Bull stuff. Like, when you told me that story the first time, you told me that like a few days later or a week later, he called you up and he said, hey, I got my fucking my credit card back and. Oh, yeah, he did. No, he did. No, it's a convention. Right. So he said the convention with a coffee guy.

I'll tell you about that. He said to coffee cups. He's like, listen, I got a little head. But he goes, did the massage pilot bang my credit card for 10 grand? I go, yeah, you told it 10 grand. He's like, oh, my God. And then he scratches his head. And he looks up.

He says, that was worth it. So in the height of this, this is like 2000, late 2004 into 2005 in the beginning of 2006, you know, like I'm making like every week putting $400,000 in the bank. And like, what do you do with that? Like, I don't even like, you don't know. But here's the thing. here's where you slip up. If you have 100 sales people, you can't listen to 100 conversations.

Right. I'm taping their calls, but that doesn't matter. Like everybody says, oh, tape their calls, you'll hear. You can't listen to that many conversations. And plus, I'm a sales guy, right? And I really wanted to say something like that went over the edge that to sell somebody, that went to the borderline illegalities. I could just do it on my cell phone at home, right? I got the guy's number.

The guy that's, he's pitching, he has his home number, right? Right. So how do I know if he's not pitching him on his car? So when you say, so your concern is that what are, that these guys have to follow certain rules. Yes. They can't. There's certain things they can say. Yes. Certain things they can't say. Right. And who's over that too? It's like a weird thing. It's the FTC. FD.C. It's federal trade commission. Oh, is it? Oh, yeah.

Why do I want to say like it's, you know, I was licensed, but to let you know, I was licensed in all 50 states for my FTC license, which you have to have a disclosure statement in there. Now, here's what's crazy. And I talk about this. I've talked about this before, but the FTC regulates me. Think about this. I've had four other business opportunities where they regulated me. Okay? When I went to trial eventually, the FTC testified against me. But we asked the FTC, and all of his businesses, four other ones, the Hershey Chocolate machine, the, you know, the sticker club machine, all those machines, including the Red Bull. How many times did you tape record them posing as an investor? He said 828.

Holy shit. So 828 times they called one of my salespeople. Did they ever find me? No. Did they ever reprimanded me? No. Did they ever stop me from selling? No.

Here's the regulatory agency. Right. So how do I get in trouble if my regulatory agency never gets me in trouble? You know why? Because am I pushing to the limit to sales? Like I'm I pushing sales, of course. Like I said, you talk to a used car salesman. I don't want to denigrate myself to a used car salesman, but people sell, right?

When they sell, they try to sell, right? They're not going, oh, if you want to buy it, it's cool. If you don't want to buy it, it's no big deal. You're going to try to sell somebody. So what happens is when I was selling the others, not Red Bull, do you think it was easier for me to sell or harder for me to sell with Red Bull? I would think it would be easier to sell with Red Bull. So do you think I would do tougher sales tactics and things that borderline push the limit

and maybe go over the limit with like the Hershey Chocolate machine? Yeah. Or would I do that with Red Bull. I mean, I would think the Hershey's chocolate is a harder sell. You don't need to do it with Red Bull because I can say give Red Bull's name. If somebody wants to know who I am, call Red Bull, I have a contract with him. Right. Like, think this is the three people things people need to buy something.

Over the phone, never see you. They need one to be okay with who you are. Do you have a good reputation? Better Business Bureau, Dunham Bradstreet. Call my bank, I'd give them. Call Red Bull. I have a contract with them. That's easy. Also, I accept credit cards. This is important. This is a very good sales technique. If you accept credit cards, but nobody pays for credit cards, just do you have an merchant account that they can ding 50,000 on. Do you think I'm not going to ship the machines or I'm going to do something nefarious? Because I get a charge back, right? Right. It's a great, like, kind of like you're real. Even though nobody uses it. Nobody uses it. No, maybe like 10 people a year. Okay. But just the fact that I could, it's an important sales tool. The second thing would be they want to know how much can I do it from the machine. Like, how many sales can you do?

So a typical person would call you, Matt, and say, well, tell me how many machines? How many sales you can do? Now, you can do it this way. The completely clean way is like, if you don't believe Red Bull sells, don't buy the machine. Right. Like Red Bull. No, but how much does the machine do? So the second way you do it is like, how much, well, how much?

You mean, how many cans a day? How many cans a day does it sell? Right. So the first thing you do in 2004 and five when I was doing in 2006, made off popped up. So they're investigating they changed all the rules after certain big events

they changed the rules. Before 1997, listen, before 97, it was caveat emptor. You could say anything. As long as you shipped a product, you could tell them

it sells a thousand a day. So it was chaos in the business opportunity industry. Before 97, you can say anything. As long as you ship what you say you're going to ship. So if I ship the machines,

they're working, I could say it does 300 sales a day. But that got a little too messy. And so they curtailed that. So from 19. 2007 to 2004, they said, as long as 10% of people, you can prove 10% of people do the numbers. You can pitch numbers. Okay.

Now, that's hard to do because you're going to keep track of 10% of people. They have to put in sales things every week and tell you how much they do. It's a pain in the butt. Right. I mean, after 2004, they said no sales. That was so much chaos and so many people doing grimy things, they said, you can't give any numbers. You can't give any numbers. Now, that's tough to sell.

Now, could we have still sold? Yeah, it's Red Bull. You just say, listen, if you don't think people use vending machines, don't buy this. If people don't people, if people don't buy Red Bull, don't buy this. And people are still probably bought. It would hurt my sales. This is what my sales people do. If you are at a reasonable location you get for a Red Bull machine, like a Bally's fitness.

Okay, I'm out of Bally's for a 12-hour day. How many cans of Red Bull you think, be conservative. And at a 12-hour day at Bally's, a regular Bally's, how much you think it could do back in 2005? At a Bally. At a Bally's. How many an hour? At least, let's say at least two an hour. Okay, two an hour.

Let's say two an hour, 12 out. That's 24 cans a day. Right. You're selling it for $2, you're buying it for a dollar, you're making a dollar a can. That's $24 a day. Not going to make you rich. It's like $150 a week. I sold 10 machines minimum.

So you had 10 machines, that'd be about $15 a week. Right. It's about $75,000 a year. That's your money back in about eight months. Yeah. Is that a good business? Fuck, yeah. Anything you could, if you could break even in a couple of years, it's a good business.

Yeah, if you can make all your money back in, you can make all your money back in, you know, whatever, eight months or a year. If you could make your money back in a year, that's a cost. that's a fucking amazing. Okay, so in 2004, 2005, what I just did was illegal. Right. Now, why it's illegal is because most people will do way worse than that. Oh, my machines are doing 100 sales a day. Oh, they do like 5, 6, 7 an hour.

And they just say that. Right. I wasn't even saying that. We were saying, like, let's do the numbers. Now, here's what's crazy about my case. If you sold 10,000 machines and you're about to sell 30,000 more, and you're making $2,000, $2 million a month, and the machines weren't doing that well.

Would you stop selling them? Well, if I don't have to, if I don't have to, not if I'm following the rules. But here's the thing. You're still, you're not telling the people they're doing four or five sales a day, which they are. Right. So if you knew, and you have people dying to buy the machines from you. And you're making like literally $500,000 a week. If you're being honest, you're saying, look, here's the machines. Here's what they cost. I can't tell you how much they're making. Right. You know, because I'm technically not allowed, not supposed to tell you. I've been told. No, that's the, that's the high road that I should have took is that I'm so used to. pitching earnings and pitching a little bit of exaggerated earnings.

I'm not really even exaggerating on letting them do the numbers. But the simple fact is, could I have sold with just giving no numbers? Yes. It would have been about 30% less. But I'm making $500,000 a week. Right. What am I an idiot? Why not make $300,000 a week?

And not go to prison for 13 years. Right. And not fight the government and not do any of that. Here's why, because it's going to sound crazy. But when you're wrapped up to it and this is what you do, it's very tough to get. out of that space. Does that make any sense? Okay. I mean, it, the problem is, is that to someone watching this, it doesn't, it seems, it seems, it is greedy, but it seems greedy and it doesn't make sense to someone watching this who's got a regular W-2 job, because they're like, why wasn't

$300,000? Why didn't you drop back? Sure. But being me and knowing the psychological issues that someone like you and someone like me have, is that to me, and I've actually said this to my wife a few times. And she, the look on her face is, it's just so fucking disappointing. Where I'm like, I'm saying something like, well, you know, we need this. And she's like, well, this is enough. And I'm like this. And I go and I said, she said, well, how much do you want? I said, more. Right. I always want more. More is always better. Like, that's just how I feel. I think that's how we, how we make, keep score. But it's wrong. It's not about the money, though. I know it's wrong. It wasn't really about the money. It wasn't like the flunt that I have all these million dollars.

It was the how you keep score. Yeah. No. I. I do well, this is how I keep score. I made this much money. But here's the crazy part. I have, like, people that really care about me and love me, like my wife, my operations manager that was like my best friend, come to me and say, hey, man, you got to stop. Back up. You tail it a little bit.

Don't hire all these people. The real closers are kind of like guys that are on the edge. Like, hey, just back up. And I was like, just let me make my money. Let me make, you know, I'm just like, I'm such a success, right? Right. When your bank account says, like, you know, $15 million. What I'm doing is working.

What I'm doing is work. Exactly. Okay. So do I know in the back on my shoulder that, you know, the government could look? I mean, here's the thing. This is where I did know, and I said, screw it, is that when I was small, they let me go. Like I told you, I'm pitching worse before. When I'm pitching when I'm 23 years old and have to make a living off it and don't have Red Bull behind me, I've got to say some things.

Yeah. Like, I'm still shipping a product, but I got to really make you believe it. They take a pass on that. They call me 828 times posting as investors and never even find me. You see them say FTC. Did you ever get a letter? Never. That's what we said in trial.

Did I ever get a... No, nothing. But I'll show you the... I show you the, like, what's the precipice of why they go after you, and I'll show you to tell you that a little later. So at the height of it, like I said, I'm making about a half million dollars a week. At the height of it, I look at it and say, listen, I can't believe they're not doing the numbers.

Like, there's a red bull machine. It's a gorgeous machine. Red Bull's kicking ass, right? But here's the really reality of it. Most people are lazy. Like, the one hustler kid we talked about that was in... That went from 10 machines, 100 and in four lateral. If the machine doesn't do well, he's moving it.

He's moving to another location. He's going, like, most of these investors want to get 10 machines that they don't do that well, they put it in that garage and they cry. Right. They're not going to go try to find the best locations. They're going to find the first locations that say yes and say, oh, great, I got a location. Right. No, you should really be hunting for locations for two or three months. When you first get the machine that's so excited, the first 10 people that say yes, they put it in there.

Yeah. And then if it doesn't do well, then they're upset. But instead of saying, hey, I'm going to pull the machine. I got a better location. Right, of course. So do people make money from vending machines? The people that have 100 machines, you think they started with 100? They started with two or three machines, right?

And they just hustle their way. Most people aren't like that. They want what's called a turnkey business. I don't even know what a turnkey business is. Like, you give you a key, you turn, everything's cool. No, there's not such a thing as a turnkey business. Right. That's just a sales term.

So my point is, I'm not trying to crap on the investest is too bad, but some of these people are lazy. Like literally, like, think that 10 machines and all of a sudden it's going to spit gold. So when I'm at the height of it, I decide to say, I'm not going to stop selling Red Bull because it's not doing the numbers. I'm just going to keep selling it. So what happened was about a year and a half in, I've sold about 30,000 machines now. Fucking 30,000 machines. Yes.

And so I could have sold more. They couldn't make that. So here's what happens. This is a crazy little scenario. I go to Vegas to meet with Dietrich. And it's a bending machine convention, a big one. And I'm staying at the Belizeo. He's staying at the Palms.

So he invites me to a meeting at the convention center in Vegas. He says, bring the girl that's ahead of your can ordering, because we have people order cans. Like, I sold about 10 million cans of Red Bull, like on top of the machines, and also bring your sales manager and yourself and your wife. So I do. I meet him there in Vegas, and he's got an Austrian accent. He sounds like Schwarzenegger.

He's like... And so he says, listen, I want to know how many you're going to sell in the next six month exactly. I want any numbers right now. Don't think about it. Just tell me how many going to sell it next six months. Okay, here it is, right? I want to know your can ordering system is crap. I need you to buy this new can ordering system that we have a computer system.

Okay, how much is it? 100 grand, he said. All right. Can ordering system. Yeah, we're going to teach her. We're going to teach her this weekend about how to do that. Okay. And here's some tickets to the Palms Hotel.

We got the real world suite. We'd have a Red Bull party. You know, like Paris Hilton's going to be there. Like, McGrath, the motorcycle guy. Like, they're sponsor people. So I go, okay. Like, I'm part of the team or something. Okay.

We go to the party at Palms. And of all people, Jeremy McGrath, I don't even really know him, but he's the motorcycle guy. He comes out to me and says, hey, you're the Red Bull guy that sells the machines, right? And he goes, I need two favorites from you. I go, what? One is that we called Red Bull, and they said they wouldn't give me one machine. You're the only person that could sell machines. I said, that's good that they said that.

Because they probably think that I'm going to test them on that. Yeah. Because I'm the exclusive. So his buddy, Rob Deardick, who now does ridiculousness. But at the time, I don't know who Dearduk is. He was doing a show with this guy named Big. They were doing that Robben Big show or something. But they have a show.

In the show, they have a Red Bull machine in their house. Yeah. That was from me. Because they had to get my permission. I only sell 10 machines. And they go, can you just give us one? so I gave them one because McGrath asked me at the party. I go, okay, no problem.

I'll sell them one on the machine. Tell me the address. He goes, you want to talk to Deardick? I said, I guess so, and here's Deardick. And we talk and where's your address and we send a machine? The second thing, he says, watch out for these guys. I'm like, what? You're sponsored by them.

Right. He goes, no, watch out for these dudes. I'm like, all right. And so I kind of was a little eerie at the party. So we leave the party. They glad hand us. Dietrich says, great on the numbers. I want to tell my people he could be ready for these six-month sales, right?

six days later I got a cease and this is from him. Here's what happened. We're at a convention with all the distributors. They're probably saying, like, why you keep giving this guy all the money? We can sell the machines. We'll do something to machines. They're pretty much shitting on me because I'm the outsider. Plus, I've already done the job.

They've already done the job. You've created a market. I've created a market for them. Where people see the machines everywhere, they want one. There you go. And I've also kept Royal happy for making machines for them now. And so I've kind of done my job. And the second thing they realize is business opportunities isn't completely clean.

Like you said, the lazy people that put them in their garage, they complain a little bit, right? So not everybody is Pollyanna happy. They don't want to be involved now with me. I've done my job, and they send me a season of assist. Now, my contract says 90 days. Now, here's the crazy thing. They have all the emails of every one of the people that bought machines from me. So they send an email to them saying that Red Bull is not doing business with creative concerts anymore.

They don't say why. They don't crap on me, but that creates chaos. People say, well, Red Bull's not involved anymore, but you're still on the machines. They can't take them away from you. What do I buy cans now? Well, I was selling them the cans for 99 cents. You have to buy them from Costco now for like $1.27. That's not good.

Where can I buy machines if I do well? Well, I can't sell anymore machines after this. Oh, well, I just got machines. Maybe I don't want these machines anymore. Well, I want to send them back to you. So literally the 3,000 emails are all my distributors created chaos. Right. Because Red Bull is supposed to give me 90 days.

I call up Red Bull North America in Santa Monica. They say call Austria. I call Austria. Oh, Mr. Levinson. you know, where Red Bull sue us and they hang up. That's just what they said sue us. I mean, that's what big companies do. So that's the created, like, in business opportunities,

if you don't have any complaints, you have no unresolved complaints. Like, if you have a complaint and give somebody that money back, you can put some sob on it and stuff like that. But if you have unresolved complaints, where you can't resolve them, the guy just got 10 machines yesterday. He realizes Red Bull's not involved anymore.

I'm not going to give him his money back. I did what I was supposed to do, right? Right. If I give it to him, I'm going to give it to a lot of people. right? So what do you do at that point? Yeah, just tough. Call Red Bull. You get the mission, I mean, put them, put the machines out. And some people said, no, like, I'm going to complain. So what do they do? Sue you or? No, complain to the government. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. Sorry. Like government, what can you do for me?

Help me out here. So the government says, you know what they asked me off? This is somebody said in trial. What did you ask the people when you called them? When they called you and said, I, I need to complain about about this company. What did you ask them? We asked them this. Ken, did you get the machines? Yes. Were they serviceable? Yes. Were they good looking? Yes. Were they state of the hour? Yes. What do you complain about? Then the government would say, they get enough calls.

They say, well, did they pitch you on numbers? Did they say it could make this much? Oh, yeah, they said this. And when somebody thinks they get their money back, they're going to say anything. Right. Or maybe the government can help me. I'm going to say anything. So that's the complaints is what puts the spotlight on you.

So the government's getting all these phone calls. So how many, what is there like? There's like 900 investors, right? Or something like that. Well, I mean, that's what it says on my trial. I wish it was only nine. about 2,700. They said it was 900 because I think they believed that it was 900 people that they actually contacted. I think so the article said. Yeah, the article said. The article also said

that I made 24 million and some people could shoot that as what the company made. So it's, it's very, like I wish it was only 24 million. That would be under 25 million with fraud. And you know, the fraud case, mine, unfortunately, it was over 100 million. Right. But it's just, yeah, the media sometimes, like, you know, they construe it as, you know, during the trial, they put out press releases when they were covering the trial, saying that this guy really didn't do anything wrong. Then when I was found guilty, they put, oh, this guy was duping people, people lost their life savings.

Come on, you know what I mean? But that's a whole other thing. But yeah, when they sent the email up to every one of my distributors, I don't know they're sending that out. I just see a cease and desist from them for myself. But I should have realized they have everybody's email address. So if you get an email on a Friday, and you just got the machines on a Wednesday,

you're freaking out. You're freaking out, right? first of all, you still own the machines. They can't take them from you. Can I sell you cans anymore? No. Can I sell you machines anymore? No. But you still can run this business. You can still go to Costco, Sam's Club, buy cans from one of their distributors.

Oh, well, you can't do it. No, I can't do it anymore. So, you know, that's, now, what would you do at that point? Would you stop selling? Think about this. I spent about $800,000 a month on advertising. I already have advertising out for that month. What do you do with that?

Well, I mean, are you still going to be able to get the machines? So I call Royal. Royal says if you buy machines in the next four days, four days because they've got the... Because they got a letter to? They got a letter too. Okay. Well, I probably got a conference call. So within four days.

So what do you do? Buy enough machines to cover your app. What do you do at that point? Right. Like my head's spinning. I don't like, I'm like, I'm just trying to... You stop selling, right? I didn't completely stop selling, no.

Okay. Because I went out and bought some more machines from Royal. Okay. Because I got 800,000 advertising that just came out in April of that month, April of 2006, and they just called me on, they just sent a season. This is on April 6th. So you're going to just chalk up 800,000 just because they circumvented into a contract and they reneged on the contract.

It says 90-day notice. So, no, I sold through that month because I had $800,000. And yeah. But I bought them from Royal, and there's nothing they could do about it. Royal gave me four days. I sent them a check for, I don't know. I think it was like $5 million or something like that for the machines. You know, pre-ordered, like saying, hey, when anybody orders,

ship it to them. So you sell the rest of these machines. And then you close everything. Yeah, I close everything down. Yeah, I close everything down. It's because at that time, I know the government's going to look at me because of the complaints. Right. And there's nothing I can do about it. I can't tell somebody I'm going to get the money back because if I give everybody their money back, like when somebody buys 10 machines of 50 grand, you think I make 50 grand? No, of course not. No, but that's, but the government spins it that way. Yeah, that's out. For a neophyte, like if somebody doesn't know, most people

that watch this, I'm going to know about how the government works. And I tell people this analogy and it's the only thing I can break it down to it. If I sold 3,000 Lamborghinis to 3,000 guys, and I ship them Lamborghinis, new Lamborghinis, 0 to 60 and 2 seconds, it's a Lamborghini. But while I'm pitching you on the Lamborghini, I say, you're probably going to get beautiful girls, right? It's a Lamborghini. Right. And nobody gets girls. That's fraud. That's fraud. But here's the crazy part. If I sold a Lamborghini for $300,000, I bought it wholesale for $250, it's a $1.00. What would the fraud amount be if I frauded them? In your mind? In my mind, it should be $50,000. And they're all $300,000. You know why? You know why?

Because you only bought the... Because you wouldn't have bought the Lamborghini last and said you can get girls. Well, great. Give me the Lamborghini back then. Can I have my machines back? Right. Like, I'm supposed to owe them like $100 million. Can I get my $30,000 machines back?

Yeah. No. Well, I mean, like, I understand mine's like, they say $55 million. I've never fucking seen $55. Come on. I mean, me, me. I mean, like, there's a whole, like... You know how they do it.

Yeah, they do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just light on an application. Of course. I didn't make it happen.

I made a broker fee. But, you know, once they come after you, they come after you. Yeah, yeah. So at the time, here's what's crazy about I shut down shop, right? But I know they're looking at me, right? So in August of that year of 2006, I'm actually, like, I'm just don't know what to do now. Like, I'm kind of like, I can't go back into business. I wanted just to stay there and put my feet in the ground and get it on the machine.

Maybe I should have done that, but I just stopped shop. So in August of that year, I'm out in a vacation with my wife in San Diego. My mother calls and says, hey, I got a letter from the government saying that they need. need all your, all your information you're a subpoena for my paperwork, for my company. So now I've got to go to lawyers, right? I got to go to lawyers. So I got big money at the time. I call up Roy Black and Roy says, give them your information. You have nothing to hide. I know your case. You told me your case. Just give them. So I literally bring 20 boxes of all my stuff from Creative Con, emails, everything to the FBI building in Merrimar and just drop it off there. This is in August.

Now, they don't indict me for four or five years after that, but that's the first salvo. Right. Is, is they want my paperwork. So I know they're looking at me. It's going to take them years to build up the case or whatever, right? Here's what's crazy. This is how people don't realize the government of demons, that are the biggest beast in the world. I go to two lawyers because they're going to eventually indict me probably, right? But I want some advice. I go to Roy Black, and I go to Richard Diaz.

Everybody knows Roy Black. He was a big-time attorney Miami. Richard Diaz was a cocky Cuban character out of Coral Gables. And he did a lot of drug deals. But he was a good lawyer. I go to both of them. Listen to this. Within a week of each other, I go to both of them.

I go to Roy, and Roy says, yeah, I've already talked to the government on your behalf. because I gave them both retainers to talk to the government. He says, yeah, take a look at this. He gives me a list. All it says is 10 people on the list, 10 names. I don't recognize all. I recognize four or five of them. I go, what's this?

He goes, you know these people? I know about three or four of them, casually. He says, well, the government thinks that we can just wipe all this away, and they've done some dirt. We want you to go have a lunch meeting and one, and you could wear a wire and things. I'm like, what? I'm here to fight them. I'm talking about it.

What are you talking about? I just wanted to give you the option. That's what the government told me to give you. Right. And I'm like, I'm kind of blown away by this. I go to Diaz five days later. He has the same list. Okay.

So who are these people? These are people that done business opportunities. Like, I was the big boy of business opportunities. Not everybody's making $2 million a month. And what do they think that you have on these people? I don't have no idea. Okay. Like, I know them.

But you don't have anything. So they're hoping you will. No, they're probably going to tell me what to say there. Who knows? I don't know. Because I never went down that rabbit hole. I said, no, I'm trying to fight. I'm trying to beat them.

Okay. Okay. We just want to show you as an option. But both lawyers saw me the same list within a week. Think about that. I haven't even hired them fully yet. I've hired them just to consult and then trial is going to cost me more money and all that stuff. But I show the same list.

So listen to this. Now they know I'm not on the team. Yeah. So at this time, they officially know I'm not on a team. Two days later, they subpoenaed my mother and my wife for fingerprint analysis and voice analysis at the FBI building in Merrimar. Within two days of that, that's not a coincidence. No, that's not. Why would you think it was?

No, but I'm saying that, like, I'm new to the whole system too. at that time. But I didn't know how much, though, they were, they want W's not the truth. Just debos. Like, you know, the ammo is to scare your family. And then all of a sudden, I'm going to go, my mother's crying at the FBI bill. My wife's not. She's a little more of a spitfire. Like, but my mother's, my mother's crying. Like, I'm like, mom, they're not going to indict you. Like, and some people's mentality is like, I'll do whatever you want. Don't indict my mother. And my mentality, I don't know why is that my mother did nothing. Go take her to trial. You don't look bad. My mother didn't do it. My mother worked for me. She made business packages.

And you're going to indict a 64. year old at the time, woman, just because you want to put pressure on me? So you see what I'm saying. They, like, this is the things that I got into. The answer is yes, by the way. Oh, of course. I know it is. They will. No, but I don't know that at the time, though. Like, I start to realize that quickly. But here's the thing. They don't, they don't even touch me for four years. Like, I'm at home for four years. Are you thinking you like, hey, this is never going to go anywhere? Are you thinking their way? Because they'll hit you just before. They do. Before the five years. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking that, I'm thinking 50-50.

They couldn't take a pass because I just ship all all the machines. Like, you know what I mean? Now, here's the thing where I thought they wouldn't take a pass, is that I start to get people, my ducks in a row, to get people to say, yeah, I made money with this. I got 10 machines. I got 20 more. Like, I got 15 people around the country who worked hard with the lawyers to go get people,

to line them up for a trial. Right. And they all said, yes, we'll testify. As long as you pay for me to come in and all that stuff. And it's still Roy Black? This is Roy Black and Dia. I hired both of them. Oh, okay.

I gave Black a 300,000 red, I gave $100,000 to Dias. They were going to work it together with a guy named Howard Strebnik. You ever heard of him? Yeah, of course. She was the dean of Miami law. But he's Roy's really right-hand guy.

So that's who I talk to mostly. So we're trying to set this up for trial. So they do. They indict me four years later. How does that? What happens? Here's the thing. I know they're going to indict me.

It was no surprise they came in my house at 530 in the morning because about 10 days before they had the grand jury. So they subpoenaed my mother and my wife. So I have to take them to the building. It's next to the, TC building across the way, that building there. Yeah. And so I can't go in.

You can't go in to your own, I don't know if you know, you can't testify at your own grand jury. But my mother and wife were there, so I got to take that. I'm out in the lobby with the FBI, the Secret Service, by the way. You know, big fraud cases have Secret Service involved. Yeah. Mine was secret service. No, but you, mine, mine too. But I'm saying, people don't know that.

They should be protecting the president. Why are they on the fraud case? They're just breaking it up. They're breaking up the workload. So what I'm saying is I knew the gun. I knew, of course, like, you're going to. died a ham sandwich, so I knew I'm going to get. So I get the 5.30 in the morning thing where they come with a ramrod, by the way. Think about this. Am I a flight risk? Am I, I, I've been, I've been

four years since I've done the business. And they knock on my door and I come to shovel that 530 in the morning, and they were about to ramrod it. Right. So they come with the FBI, the Secret Service, they come with a battery ramp. Listen to me, they come with 30 people. FBI with a battering ram. Yeah, black battering. FBI Secret Service, Postal Inspector, because I sent things through. the post office and local police. Yeah. Who do you think were biggest dicks? Having, I mean, I would say the biggest dicks would have been the FBI and Secret Service, right?

By far the local police, because they have no idea about the case. They just think I'm a frog guy. I probably think I'm ripping off old ladies. They're giving me crap because the other guys, they know the case, them, yeah, the local police. But they come, they come very deep because they want to intimidate me to sell. It's a whole MO of this. It's a show of force.

So I was going to say, prior to being investigated, I used to always think like the FBI was like the cream of the crop. Like they were very professional. They would treat you well. That they spoke to you like you were, you know, like you were human being. And then I get indicted and I realize, oh, no, they talk to you like you're a fucking dog. Like they're like the local cops are more polite. In my case.

Well, yours is different. You're okay. They know it already. Think about my case. They just call them up at 3.30 points saying we need backup. Yeah. For what? For a fraud guy, big money fraud guy in Davy, Florida.

The Navy police are probably thinking, this guy's a scammer of like, like, who knows? They don't know. It probably took people's pensions. They don't know my case. So they don't know yet. They know yours already. So, you know what I mean? Like the local police have no idea.

They're trying to play tough guys. That's all. So what's crazy about that? They take me at 5.30 in the morning. We leave my house about 6 o'clock in the morning. We don't go to the, yeah, we don't go to the courthouse. We go to an office building next to the Broward County courthouse. Okay.

And they put, they handcuffed me to a pole that's sticking out of the ground. And they just leave me next to a desk for the house. three hours until court opens at nine. And the FBI are on the couch chopping it up, talking about things and goofball, meathead type of stuff. And I'm like, you know, I'm a little disheveled. I've been, I just got up. And I'm not a five-thirty of the morning person. I'm barely at eight o'clock to get here from Fort Laudel. I couldn't even make it in time. So I go to the court and the judge says, oh, a $10 million bond. I'm like, wait a minute, my lawyer

pokes me like they like you haven't looked at the bank account but they they took all your money oh okay

because I haven't had a chance to look at my bank account yet right so I go to the judge no they took all my money oh they took all your money

you must have some money somebody I know I'm a businessman I keep it all in the bank right and they did it on purpose I didn't put money in a PVC pipe like some people do I didn't do that

I kept to so I can go to trial and say that I have the money in the bank they can see every dollar accounted for right you know now I know

it doesn't really matter but still so she says you don't have any money. They took my money. Oh, a million dollars bond. I just said I have no money. And then finally, she just shrugs her soul and she says security bond for 50,000. And I'm about to say something. My lawyer goes, no, that's good. That's good. I don't know what a security bond is. Like, it's just my wife saying that she'd be, I'm good for it. I'm good for it in case he doesn't show up. Yeah. So I'm home by like 10.30 at the morning. All that rigumeral

30 people outside my housebury or ramrod, I'm home by 1030. And I'm home for another year before trial. So it's all just show. It's all just a show. So, here's what's crazy about the case. They indict four of my salespeople. Two of them take six-month deals right away. Three of my salespeople, one of them is an office manager that knew nothing about nothing. They indict her, and I'm like, why are they indicting her? And I realize that she has two kids and she'll say anything. But she doesn't know anything about sales tag. Nothing. She knows about getting computers and office supplies. The other two guys say, he didn't tell me to say any of that. Well, if you can't say that, we're going to give you 10 years if you go to trial. Well, we can't

tell on him because he didn't say that. So they went to trial with me, they didn't take the six-month deal. So everybody that thinks that everybody tells and that they don't have the opportunity to tell and that the people that don't tell never rule given the opportunity, that's BS. That's people that are just trying to hide behind themselves. Not everybody does tell. These two guys said, you know what? No, I can't say that. They didn't take the six months like the other two people did. And they went to trial with me. What they get? They got seven and a half years. Oh, shit. But they didn't, they didn't lie. The other two people, the other two people, one was the office manager.

They said mostly the truth, 80% of the truth, but 20% of Atlanta stuff that, like, I know the government told them to say that we have secret meetings with the hierarchy of the company on Fridays. Like, what's the hierarchy of the company? What? So the government kind of, you know, that's why they gave them the six months. So, but it's important to know that, I mean, the state of this isn't, I mean, I know you're very cavalier about it, but not everybody tells.

And that's, that's a pretty much good thing. So, you know, the cavalier part about it is, is, is, is, it depends on the situation. No, it really depends on the situation. Like most people think that everybody, this is people that go on and say, no, the people that don't just don't have the chance and that's not true. So the people don't, well, I don't understand what you're saying. The people that don't tell don't have the chance to tell. Like people have mentality that everybody, that everybody tells that they have a chance. And that's not true.

No, I, I've never said that. I'm not saying you've had it. I'm saying that. I think that almost everybody has an opportunity to cooperate. I don't know anybody, unless you're someone like made off, unless you're somebody who's like, they're like, we're going to trial no matter what. Like they offer you like 100. I never talked to the FBI. I never talked to the prosecutor.

I've never done it because I was going to go to trial. You were going to go to trial. Did your lawyer ever say to you? Yeah, we can set up a meeting. We can talk about things. Right. Because I mean, by this point, I know that by this point, Black and the other guy are gone. No, they're not gone.

They're gone because they took my money. I can't afford him anymore. Think about this. No, they're not gone. Well, I thought they were gone because you couldn't pay them. No, but I didn't know that until that day I got indicted. So they're still there? No, I gave him a retainer, but not enough for trial.

Black. I got Black and Richard Diaz. I've given retainers, but not for trial. I know it's going to be bigger money for trial. Yeah. So there's two different type of retainers you can have. You can have a retainer for pre-trial. Right.

A retainer for trial. But if it goes to trial, yes. We were going to want an extra half a million dollars. Million with black and like $400,000 with Diaz, which I had, but they, now they're taking all my money. Right. So what do you do now? So, well, I understand.

But here's what's crazy about fraud, though. Here's about crazy about fraud. I'm innocent to prove him guilty, right? I mean, that's what they say. But if I'm interested. Why can I use the money? Say I am innocent, really innocent. I can't use the money that I legally made to help defend myself against the government. That's insanity. I understand. Okay, but that's part of the M.O.2. That's the system. That's a system. It's to break you. No, but right. So, so. But is it a fair system? Well, I don't think that that that's necessarily fair. No. Other countries don't do it, by the way. Right. I understand. I mean, there's lots of things that are unfair. There are lots of things that are where the system works. There's lots of things where it just doesn't work. I mean, there's tons of. No, but. But there's not tons of things that people don't really even know about it. Like they think it were the fairest system in the world, right?

Right. Well, I mean, I'm not sure that's inaccurate. I mean, how many other systems do you know about? I mean, I'm researching, but I'm telling you this. Do you think even in being a neophyte before you were in the system, okay, would you tell me if I went to federal trial that the jury wouldn't know how much time I'm going to look at? No, I think that's insanity. That's insane. So think about this, the Clark kid that had the Klock for the third time.

He's only selling a Kriok. Right. they think he's going to get a year in jail. They think it's good for him to get the year because he's probably going to help him rehab, right? They don't know he's going to get 30 years because it's a third time of a pet. What I'm saying is, that jury with me,

how much time you think he'd get it as a white-collar guy, first-time offense? You're getting probation, or maybe five years, maybe five years or maybe. Or maybe five years of the most, right? They look at the paper after that trial, seven days after my trial, and they go, I was part of that trial.

It's front page of the Sunsetnal front page of the Miami Herald, right? Oh, I'm going to read that. Oh, 210 months. That's 17-5 years. idea. If I knew he's going to get 210 months, I'll probably go find him not guilty. Yeah.

Think about it. I think I'm cocky, a little year or two with doing some good. They don't know I'm going to get 17 and a half years, but why can't I tell him that? Right. I've mentioned that multiple times. It's insanity is what I'm saying. Some parts of the system are insanity. Right.

So, yes, that's not fair. That's not a fair system because that's just basic law. Why shouldn't they have the knowledge to know how much I'm going to get? Right. You know why? Because they used to be able to do that, by the way. because it would hurt their Ws. Right.

That's all. So you're out, you're back, you're at home, playing video games with your daughter. Maybe a little worried to be cavalier at this point. Okay, but you're at home. And so you have no money. No. At this point. Well, I got jewelry and watches.

Yeah, but black basically. You don't have go to trial. I don't go to trial. I have living money. Right. So you go to black and he says, yeah, I'm done. I'm sorry, I'm out. So he's out.

So you get another lawyer. Yes. What lawyer do you get? And what is he telling you? I go to the next lawyer, right? Because I have watches and all that stuff. And the government says, oh, what might put another charge? Because you're diverting funds now that we should be holding. Think about that. I go to another good lawyer. Yeah. You know, Wiener? You ever heard of Wiener? That's out of Fort Laibu. Anyway, he's big time. I go to him. How much is trial? Half a million. Okay. How much is your retainer right now?

$200,000. I go to actual a friend that I had that said, listen, I know you're good for it. I'll give you the money. money. So he was going to send Wiener the money, and the government called him up and said, yeah, you can send the money. We're going to look at you a fine-tooth comb. And he got scared off by even loaning me the money. So the government says, listen, all those watches that you sold that we know you sold because they're tracking me now and they're watching my behavior. Right. They threaten me with that. And I have to balk and hire a cheap lawyer. So who do you hire? First of all, I call a guy named Murphy. The guy named Murphy lied to me, said that he was going to fight He just wanted to plea.

Yeah. And, you know, then I got a guy named, the last guy was guy named Shelley, and he was, he was, he was just because he was $20,000. Right. So, well, so the guy Murphy, he wants you to plea. He wants me to plead, that's all. Does he call the government? He does. Offering anything?

That's the thing. They're lazy. Inherently, these lawyers are lazy. They think that everybody pleads. All I have to do is negotiate a plea. From the get-go, I say trial. Why not plea? Okay, because of this, Matt.

Is my black and white fraud to you? Really? I shipped 30,000 machines. Everybody got machines. Think about that. So is it black and white? It's not like what you did. It's not like check fraud. It's not like frauding for the. It's not black and white. I sold machines. Okay, I might have sold them hard like I'd use the stocks. But everybody got the machines, Matt. They were new machines. And I understand that. Do you see, do you see any amount that that I could fight that? It was fight a bull. the problem is that in your situation, it's questionable. Like knowing now, I would be like, I'll take a plea. Like, I'm going to take, I'm not even thinking of my... Of course. That's hindsight.

It's 2020. I'm saying, if you ran a business and sold 30,000 machines and shipped 30,000 machines and have purchased orders that said that they can't guarantee any income, I mean, that's not black and white fraud. I understand, but, I mean, at some point, don't you get discovery and realize, like, hey, they have my... They have my, first of all, my, several, six people on my staff have already pled guilty. No, not six people. Like, four people are indicted and two people pled guilty. Two people said, no, I'm not going to talk.

Okay, so how many? Was it four? Four total, but two, two said, no, I can't tell you anything. They went to trial with me. Okay. It's only two people. So there's two people. Yeah.

There's two people that are already going to testify. And ten clients. And ten clients that are going to get on the stand and say, hey, this is a horrible, I was lied to, whatever. Oh, whatever they're going to say. Okay. You know there's recordings. Yes. Okay, that don't, but you're also thinking they don't have me on a fucking recording, or they do, but I didn't say anything.

But here's the problem, though. Here's what I'm looking at, Matt, and this is what you don't see until you go to trial. I have recordings, too, of great sales pitches of people but happy, people staying with the letter of law. 90% of those are those. You understand what I'm saying? I have 90% of them. They can say, these 5% of cavalier. No, these, these, they're rogue salespeople.

You know what I'm saying? I have that defense. So you genuinely think, you genuinely think, I can beat this. Also, I have 15 people that will testify for me that say I made money, including a 22-year-old kid that if he can make money, anybody can make money. You see what I'm saying? It's not like, it's not as like cut and dry as you think. Like you used to like fraud fraud. This is like kind of grayish fraud.

Yeah, no, I understand. That's what I'm saying. But you sound like you don't understand why I would think I have ammunition to fight them. Like if I don't fight it with my case, nobody fights them. They might be a bully system where everybody lies down. That's crazy and that's a bad system. For the most part, they are. But that's not good, Matt.

I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying it's a situation. I'm saying I'm not signing up for prison to go to prison. You can sign up for it. Listen to me, if nobody got machines, I would sign up in two seconds for a deal. Do you, so, okay. So are you saying, like, you're headed into trial thinking there's some gray areas here, but overall, I'm innocent.

That's it. Okay. Is this some gray area? Of course. There's gray areas that every sales pitch. If you pitch, if you recorded Lehman Brothers for a year, they would go to jail in two seconds. Does that make any sense? I mean, it does, but I mean, I also think that it's stacking up against you.

No, but so many people like are used to the clear-cut fraud cases. Like, look at the Wolf of Wall Street. It's exactly my case. We're both 13 counts of wire fraud. He was 13 counts of wire fraud. My money counts a little higher than his, okay? We both did the partying with the office and all that bullshit that he did, right? But here's the thing.

The three differences with me and him, one, he wore a wire on some of his employees and some of his friends to get time off, okay? This is also clearly fraud. No, but his is clearly fraud. That's what I'm saying. The difference between me and him, he's selling penny stocks that don't exist. He's selling air. You ever know air? It's easy to sell air.

If you let me say anything, Matt, I'll get you a billion dollars in a year. Air is easy. There's no talent in selling air. I'm selling a tangible product that's backed up by Red Bull. Right. That's different. That's not apples and apples. That's apples and pineapples.

Do you get that? I understand. You're just hindsight saying because they got a winning percentage than that. What I'm asking is, did your lawyer come to you and say, hey, listen, I spoke with the government and the government is offering, yes, the government is offering you five years or three years or. No, my lawyer comes to me and says the government wants to talk about that. And you're saying, I'm not talking. I'm not having a conversation.

I'm just fighting them. Okay. From the get go. Because I had always, and I want to say it was, I think, coroni. I actually, to be honest, I felt like you at one point had maybe, or maybe it was just coroni or something. I've never met with the government. I've never talked to, the only time I ever talked to an FBI agent when I was waiting for the grand jury with my wife. And they started talking to me.

And I said, I want to talk to you. You're my, you know, you're my enemy. What do you get out of here? So I always thought that they had offered you like three or four years. No. No, maybe it was coroni that they said that. They can't offer me three or four years because, one, my money counts so high. You know what it is.

Leadership role, number of victims, money count, sophisticated means. They're not going to offer me three or five. I mean, they're not. It's not. I mean, they can offset it by, well, first of all, what is it? It's over $100 million. It's over $100 million. They're saying your profit margin. You're already pregnant. So it doesn't matter if it's $100 million. So your profit margin is over $25 million. No, it's not profit. They don't use profit margin. No, it wasn't. They don't use profit margin. You're saying it's $100 million. If I sold 3,000 Lamborghinis, you didn't get that? Yeah, I heard that. Every single dollar I take in is fraud to them.

Okay. So you're saying that they're not, they're not charged with over $200. They're charged with over $100 million. Yes. Well, what is it? 100 and $10. It's 108. I think. Oh, okay. Seven or a hundred, yeah. Okay. I'm the highest, kind of like 39 points on the list and some of them. First time offense, yeah, I got 17 and a half years. I could have got the lower end of the guy. He could have gave me more. I could have got 210.

Right, but you don't understand that you can argue in front of the, well, you don't even have to argue. Basically, if you plea, you basically get to go in and say, like, for instance, the fraud. Yeah. They say, hey, you sold this house. You got a mortgage from the bank for half a million dollars to buy this house that's worth half a million dollars. Sure.

And they initially come in and they say, hey, we're charging you with half million dollars in fraud. Right. But when it comes down to it, you get to offset the fraud because the property itself offsets the fraud. So there was really no fraud. So what I'm saying with that is fraud, but there's no dollar amount. I know what you're saying. But think about it. If that was the case, why wouldn't they do that after my trial too?

I still shipped a machines. They still got value. It doesn't make any sense. That's where our system is like wacky. I mean, like, how do you justify you'll do it before trial, but you won't do it after because you fought them? You see what I'm saying? I'm saying, when I first got in trouble, the first time I got, I was, I'm like, I wasn't indicted. I was actually just, it was just a criminal complaint, where I had two co-defendants that wore wires on me.

And the FBI called me and I said, you know, I scheduled a, schedule a time to go and talk to the FBI to explain what I'd done. But I just told them that. And then I called a fucking criminal defense attorney. He called them cut cancel. Sure, sure. Sure. And initially what they did was they came and they said, hey, it's half a million dollars in fraud. Sure.

But I knew that that half a million dollars was to use to purchase these three houses. And so my lawyer initially said, hey, it's half a million dollars in fraud. You're probably going to go jail. I'll only go by this, Matt. I talked to one of the biggest defense attorneys in the country, Roy Black. Right. Howard Schneberg, Shrebnik, who was a great legal mind to be on. He's a little character, but he's a good legal mind. They both told me that with your money count and your number of victims, your high profile Red Bull, you'd probably, if you negotiated it and didn't tell on anybody, which I know you'll never will, that you get about 10 years. Okay.

That's what they said. Now, they said, I'll get you zero if you go back with those people on a wire, and I'll get you zero years. Right. But I wasn't going to do that. I'm trying to get points in Joe's system, but I'm saying that that was. That was the areas I was looking at. Zero jail time telling the other business opportunity guys, they don't know them that I did yet go wear wires on them, and I could have easily done that, just whatever they want me to get them to say. That was for option one.

Option two is that have one of the best defense lawyers in the country, negotiate with him, he says eight to ten years that he could probably get me. Right. Or you go to trial and look at 17. So in my case, my lawyer, which was a last name is Trombly. his first name. Gary Trombly, Gary Trombly in Tampa, I paid him like 75 grand, because I knew I was going to plead guilty. Yeah, sure. Because I know 100%, they've got me on a wire. Right. I've committed 100% from. Yeah, it's not great, black and white. It's fucking,

I'm done. Yeah. And it was my, the loans, yeah, were my wife's. These were loans I did with for my wife. She's Puerto Rican. I can't let her go to jail. She'll kill me. So, my wife's Peruvian. So she would probably get me too. Yeah, she'll cut you at least. Or help somebody kill me. Right. So I, I go to the lawyer. and he tells me, you might get, he fucking scared me. He said, you're probably going to go to jail for three years because it's half a million a loss. And I said, and I said, there's no loss.

I said, and I explained why he said, well, there's potential loss. No, there's no potential loss. And I explained that to him. He says, well, that's true. Well, first what he says is, well, listen, you haven't been indicted yet. Right. And I went, okay. And he said, if you, he said, I, he, do you ever heard of the term pre-trial intervention?

Yeah, of course, intervention. He said, I can contact the U.S. attorney and, probably get you a pretrial intervention. What does that mean? He said, if you're willing to wear a wire, or he didn't even say wear a wire, actually. He said, go to your office. He said, because they believe your office, you're running a mill. A fraud, a fraud mill.

And I said, okay. He said, go in there, grab five or ten of the most egregious files on your brokers, bring it to the FBI and explain to the FBI what happened. He said, I can keep you from being indicted and they'll indict your, you know, your broker. He said, you know, you might have to testify, but they'll probably plead guilty because they're so fucking guilty. And I was like, okay. And I said, oh, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Which was a mistake on my part.

I mean, which was a mistake because I could have kept from being indicted and never fucking gone down the fucking road that I ended up going down. And I was look at that because initially when he said that, I was like. But don't you think you have a, I mean, again, you've got to take this wrong way, but a little bit of a moral compass with other people? No. No moral compass. I have. Zero moral compass. I don't think morality leans into it.

We were all committing fraud. And I also don't think so. No, it does lead into it. But the only reason why I'll cut on you off, and you're going to take this wrong, but really, this is to heart, okay? Right. You said something about,

you talked to some guys, some like hood guys about you giving $500,000 to your ex-wife or your girlfriend when you went on the run. No, no, it was a girlfriend. Okay. You give a half a million dollars to your girlfriend. Right. You took $100,000, right?

Yeah. And she got like half a million. She got like half a million. Okay. And their first moral compass barometer to tell you is that why don't you kill her? Yeah. Okay. So think about that. Right.

That's a schism of the degree of difference between what you're thinking and what they're thinking is huge, right? Yeah. Okay. It's the same difference is when somebody told me that you told on Ron Juan Wilson, stuff that I heard Juan Wilson say too, and that when Ron Wilson said that he hid money with his wife, that instead of me saying, hey, Ron, you shouldn't say that you're in prison, that you went back to the dorm and you told your lawyer to call the FBI and you got a deal for that. The schism of my thing is the same thing with you. Do you get that? Do you get that a little bit? Just tell me if you get it or not.

Well, you're skewing it for one thing. And we can talk about that. We can talk about that. No, but that's the barometer that I have with like, like, I'm not even trying to get points for this. I never thought about when Ron said that for me to like, and I had more time left than you. Well, and we can get to that. Okay. Because that's a great way to say it, but it doesn't, it doesn't do.

No, it's not a great way to say it. It's a great way to say what I feel. Do you mean, I'm trying to say the difference between when the guy said he'd kill the girl over half a million. Yeah. You're saying that's insanity, right? Yeah, I would, yeah. When somebody said that it crossed Matt's mind to go back to the dorm and use that to give an indictment to Ron and his wife to get more time off from him, it was the same schism that I was shocked. That's all I'm saying.

So back to what I was talking about was that when he initially came to me and said that, you should say that. I was like, immediately, just like you, I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. In your head? No, no. I'm telling you. Yeah.

This isn't my first fraud charge, by the way. So you don't know my story. I was on probation. The fraud that I went to prison for, I was already on probation. I've committed multiple frauds. So you like jail? I never went to jail because the first time... Well, you probably should have been going to tell you a loss.

And I've said that. I've said if the first time I'd actually gone to jail for a couple years, I probably would have done me some good. But instead, what I did was I said, no, I said, there's no fraud here. There's no loss. I don't think you can send me to prison. You went from getting a charge that you got no time on to doing a charge that you got 26 years on? Mm-hmm. That's insanity.

So he says, testify. Like, I'm scared of prison. I wouldn't even jaywalk now. I'm being real. It's like insanity. I understand. So initially I say, I'm not going to do that. And so I don't do that.

I don't testify. I say I'll plead guilty if they drop the charges against my wife. Okay. Because he's like, yeah, but you know, listen, he actually said, this is my favorite. He actually said, how good is your marriage? And I went, what do you mean? And he said, I said, we're like, I go, we're actually in the middle of a divorce.

And he said, and he looked at me and he said, I mean, they don't really have that much of a case on you. Your wife took out the loans. And I went, no, no, no, no, no. I said, listen, I'm not doing that. I said, I'll take the plea if they drop the charges on her and I'm not cooperating. That's because of your wife that you loved that one time. Yes. But your moral compass with anything else besides your wife is probably to tell.

Well, I didn't tell on these guys. First, what he said was just tell on these guys. Now, my moral compass, which I think even saying that sound is ridiculous. Well, I don't know what to say to it. I don't know what to say to it. When somebody tells you something and you don't think of ways to have that be advantageous for you to get more time, I don't know what that is. I'm being real with you. Yeah.

Like, what is it? I'm using the word moral compass. You give me a better word. Like, if somebody in prison tells you something, under confidence, kind of, because you're both fraud people and we're both telling something. Like, I don't know why I wouldn't think to go use that to help me get time off. Like, it doesn't come in my mind. Maybe I'm Mickey the Duns. But I don't know.

I call that moral compass and I'll stick by it. Here's the problem. That's all I'm saying. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, that's fine. The vernacular is just, I have no other vernacular. You're, first of all, you're jumping to a conversation that's here. And we're talking about something that's here.

You keep jumping. It's like you've already decided you want to have this conversation about something completely different when we haven't even finished the story yet. Like I'm still talking. We can edit, like, edit and stuff like that. I know. Let's make it as easy as possible for Colby. Let me finish this. is that initially I didn't cooperate with those guys on those guys.

I didn't grab the files. I didn't do anything. You know, I look back now and I was kind of joke and think, boy, if I had known then that I could have kept from being indicted and just gone about my life, I would have gone and I would have scooped up the entire file cabinet, put in the back of a truck and driven it into the FVI agent office and told them every single thing these fuckers have done. Because here's what happened.

When I get indicted, they all lined up to testify against me. Every one of those fucking broker. Huh? But not your wife. The guys in my broke. No, they probably approached your wife, is what I'm saying. They probably post your wife too, right? No, and they never talked to my wife.

So what I'm saying is when I got arrested, these guys all were ready. They all testified against it. Not testified, I shouldn't say it. They all spoke to the FBI. They all cooperated against me, you know? Yeah. So that's fine. But I'm saying at the time, I didn't cooperate against them because I thought, I'm not going to do that.

That's wrong. No, fuck that. You know, I think I'm a tough guy. And so I'm not going to do that. Maybe it is moral compass. You don't know. So it may have been at the time, but I got it corrected. So I decided I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'll take the plea. I'll get, whatever. We'll see where the chips fall. And luckily, luckily, my lawyer comes back, fucking two, three months. You know how it drags out forever.

Months later he comes back. He says, well, you know what? They looked into it. And you're right. Those loans were, they were secured by those properties. So there's no dollar amount. I can get it trimmed, I can get it brought down to one count of wire fraud, three years. I take a plea, I go, I get three years paper. Yeah. Fine. Of course, then I start a much, so I'm on paper. I start a much, they drop the charges.

At any time in that process, this is important to state at this time. At any time in that process, did you feel you're going to get jail time? Yes, initially, because initially he's telling me you're going to probably, he's like. Well, probably, I mean, that's kind of like. Yeah, he's, well, no, first he's saying you're getting jail time. And I'm saying why they do that because they want to look like heroes because they're going to tell you that anyways, the lawyer's going to say because he looks like a hero when he doesn't give you time. And he wants $75,000. But did you feel

like 50% you could get you out of time? Like, yeah, no, initially I thought what, but as he's, first of all, once I pay him and he's explaining, and we come back in and he's telling me what they have and what they don't have and I'm looking at everything and I'm thinking, you know, like, have I scurried enough money away to be able to pay child support and keep my wife in the fucking place? She's got a bunch of properties and is it going to be okay? And, you know, Oh, my, and I'm fucking terrified, and I don't know anything about fucking prison. I've never, all I've seen is shall show of reduction. And so as he's showing, yeah, Oz wasn't even out yet.

But he's showing me the paperwork. I start to realize, I bring the, actually, he prints out the fraud portion, and I go home, and I'm laying in bed, and I'm reading, and I read. Look at the table, the table, but they have paragraphs. Like, they have little paragraphs explaining things. And they explain potential loss. And they, the example they use, the boat. They say if you, if a person has a fraudulent loan for $200,000, let's say,

and they spend $150,000 on the boat, and then they pocket $50,000, they say it's a 200, you know, that the potential fraud is only $50,000 because they can always sell the boat. So it's secured by the boat. And I was like, that's my fucking, that's what I did. That's my so I mean, I'm the next day, you know, I don't even sleep that night. I'm called the next day. I'm calling. I'm leaving messages. I get, I explain the whole thing.

And he's like, oh, she's fucking, he fucking knows this. He calls, and then he argues and he bitches, I bring in the appraisals, I bring in everything,

I show him everything. Right, he's going to have to prove that. It's not something you can just say, yeah, he can't just make a call. So a month or two later, he calls back. He's like, hey,

good news. I convince them that you convince them. You're telling me I'm going to fucking jail for three years. It went from going to jail for three years to you're getting three years paper. So, you know,

and in my mind, I kind of always felt like, you know, you tell yourself, like, I can't go to prison. Like, there was no doubt. Like, nobody lost money. Like, I'm telling myself that, but he's telling me different and I'm terrified. So it does take several. I never go into all that because it's too long and people don't want to watch here. Did you do one lawyer or two lawyers at the time?

No, I mean, I have the main guy, which was Gary Tromble, which was a big time lawyer. He had represented like AT&T and all these huge companies. You were comfortable with him. Okay, but you were comfortable with him, though. I grew up across the street from him. Oh, wow. He lives on the Hillsborough River directly across the street. Like, I used to play with his daughter.

So, um. But did you know, like, I knew, like, I even knew this to be in a neophyte is that I know they're going to exaggerate it, the badness of it to make them look good when you don't get that. Does that make any sense? Like, I was told before I went to any lawyer, hey, they're going to give you worst case scenario because they look better. No, because my brother-in-law is the one who brought me to flight. When I say I got a lawyer, we went to three different lawyers. Yeah. And I knew Gary and I liked Gary. I knew.

But do they all say it bought the same thing? Oh, no. One of them was a prosecutor. She was telling me I'm probably going to jail for three or four years. And she was an ex-pro. She literally just started her thing. She also wanted to charge me $15,000. She was a U.S. attorney who just started her practice and wanted to get, wanted me to

give her $15,000. And she was an asshole. Like she was really, like, talked to me like I was dirt. And I remember saying, I don't feel good about her. And I went with my brother-in-law. And then I went to another guy that was a friend of his. is. And then I went to Gary and I liked Gary, even though he was outrageously expensive, but I liked him. I know him. I grew up across the street and I thought he'll fight for me.

Right, right. So gave him $75 grand. That whole thing that I just told you took place. And I really was dealing more with this lawyer underneath him. I was talking to her more, but you know, it's like Roy Black walks in the first meeting, but you're really dealing with Shrebnik. That's what's what happened to me. Right. Same thing that happened with Devoroli when he went. So what ends up happening is, so that's fine. I end up on probation. I take off, I end up on probation. I run a much bigger scam, $11.5 million.

I make a bunch of fake people. You know the story. Eventually. How quickly after that? Like, while you were on probation? How quickly after that was. No, no, you were on probation for what, three years? Yeah.

That's it gave you three years. Mostly fraud gave you three years. Yeah. During that three years, you just started to do something that was. I started, I started a much larger scam. Wow. So my mortgage company had done like they. Yeah, you need to go to prison for a little bit.

Yeah. No, I would say if I had gone to prison the first time, I probably would have been better off. But I start a much larger scam. I end up stealing like $11.5 million. And then a friend of my, my buddies are all coming to me wanting to help. You know, hey, man, I see you making money like how, you know, bro, can you help me out? Can me? So I end up a buddy of mine. He starts running a scam in Orlando. He gets caught in a bank. He cooperates. By this, this is my best friend named Travis. I still talk to him to this day. But before this, I mean, grew up with him. Before this, because I think I remember, but I don't completely remember.

But you made money in real estate, right? Yeah. You were decent at it? Yeah, I was good at it. So clean, you could have made $150,000 a year maybe? Probably could have made $100,000, $150,000, yeah. But I'm greedy and I'm stupid and I'm arrogant and I'm narcissistic and I'm cocky. And I thought I could pull off a better scam.

But when you were looking at two or three years, I know that you were like, I don't want to do prison time. Right. Like I know you enough to say you didn't want to do time for that. Yeah. So your shoulders relaxed a little bit when you didn't get time, right? Like a little like. Of course. That's what I'm saying.

If I had gotten some time, I would have been fucking fair. But your shoulders didn't relax enough when you're not to go into another scam. Yeah, of course not. I'm a douchebag. No, it's not about a douchebag. It's about, that's just, that's pretty ballsy. So, see, I thought it was, at the time, I thought I was a fucking, yeah, I thought it was ballsy, but now I just think it was stupid.

So I, I start this whole other scam. I get another 11. That balls in a good way, by the way. Yeah. So my buddy gets caught. He, he gets caught. I immediately bond him out of jail. I got him out of jail

And I get him a lawyer Because it was a state charge for $15,000 I get him a lawyer It's 15 grand that was it Yeah It's cheap right 15 grand He says they're going to negotiate

He then by the way I always love this about Travis Like he's fucking scoundrel He ends up over the next month or two While he's working with the Task Force He gets me to give him like 25 grand or so to start a business, which he still runs to this day.

Wow. Which was a tree trimming business. I'm like I say the name of it. Well, he'll put money in your books when you're in prison or something. No, no. He never sent me anything. And I called him. But so he's working with the task force on me.

And then a couple years go by. I've stolen $11.5 million. He gets caught. He's working with task force for a couple months. He works with him. And then one day a sheriff's deputy that I'd done a couple million dollars in fraud for comes to me and tells me some guy got arrested in Orlando. He's working with the task force.

They just handed it over to the FBI. They're going to come arrest you. And that's when I take off on the run for three years. I go on the run. I steal another three or four million dollars. I get caught. I get the 26 years. Right.

So three things. And this is why I think people would want to know. You've probably gone over it, but maybe not. So if you didn't have that first charge, how many years you think you would have done for the second one? If you didn't have a record, like half of that, 13 maybe? Yeah, because only people. because of the timing, it was in the middle of the financial crisis.

It was at the beginning of the financial. Right. And the precipice for me, everything has a precipice, by the way. The drug case was Lenny Byest. I don't know if you know Lenny Byest, a kid who died from, he got drafted by the Celtics. Everything has a catalyst. Yeah. Like, people don't know in the 80s, they couldn't crash.

Hard Claws couldn't get passed until this kid died because he was famous. And then it was everything. Because, right, the catalyst for fraud was made off. All right. The catalysts for financial. So there's always a catalyst. Well, yeah. No, for public opinion.

Yeah, okay. Like public opinion in the 90s, like, every fraud guy gets tap on the wrist, lap on the wrist. People still think that, by the way. So, so if you didn't go on the run, how much time would you have gotten? Oh, if I'd stayed? Yeah. I don't know, a few, five, for the 11 and a half million? Right. While I was on probation? Right. Yeah, I'd have gotten, I don't know. Do I cooperate? No, no, if you don't cooperate. Oh, six or seven years, at least. It was 11 million. I'm on probation. Right. So now, now they got you doing it like in their face. You're running on them.

stuff like that. So they didn't really give you a chance to like town anybody else. Oh, no, no, no, no. So when I get caught, when I go on the run, I continue to commit fraud. I borrow another three to four and a half million dollars on the run. I get caught. Yeah. My lawyer at our first meeting says, because keep in mind, when I left Tampa, I have an 11.5 million dollar fraud. It's collapsed. And everybody that helped me is already cooperating. So I've been gone three years. I see. Three years, everybody's cooperating. So when I sit down with my lawyer for the first time. She tells, she walks in and she gives me a stack of FBI 302s and Secret Service,

which there's not many Secret Service because it was a different case. FBI, boom, just bam, stacks them down. She says, before we really start, she said, look, first of all, she said, obviously you're guilty. She said, I mean, unless you, you're not thinking, and I was like, no, no, obviously I'm guilty. She says, okay, she said, everybody, everybody in Florida that I can see, everybody that's been already been indicted. They've been indicted, they've indicted unknown co-conspirators. There's 12 of them. Me and 12 people that don't, that just initials.

She said they've all cooperated except for my ex-wife, by the way, which is on the indictment, but she did not, she did not, never talk to them once. Everybody else was more than happy. There you go. So they've all cooperated. She said, so she said, you can't go to trial. And I was like, okay. I said, okay.

She said, your only real strategy at this point is. is to, she said, is to cooperate and hope for the best. And I went, well, what if we talking about? Let's schedule some fucking meetings. Like, what are you talking? Like, I'm not fucking, like, I'm doomed. I'm doomed. Because I knew, by that point, as opposed to the first time I got in trouble,

I knew by the second time that only a fool would play by rules that nobody else is playing by. Nobody. Nobody but my ex-wife did not, was not ready to testify and had not, and I sat there, by the way, and got to just read through. She gave me like 30, 45 minutes, and I couldn't read them all, but it was ridiculous how many people had to walk, right. You realize you're different with other cases because you were gone for three years. It's like, it's like the Wadi Bollger thing. Like, he's on the run. He's in hiding for 10, 15 years. You know what I'm saying? Like, he's not the boss still. Like, you're not next to these people still. You're now you've already like admitted your guilt you're on the run.

That's a little bit of different. Don't you see the difference of a regular case when everybody gets indicted at the same time about telling is what I'm saying? Like you're already on the run. You're already giving the FU. You're already like admitting guilt almost. That's a little different. This is a different. Fraud is different.

There's no doubt that I'm guilty. No, that, well, your case is different than that. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that like, like, wait. There's no going to trial. No, there isn't. There isn't. No, but I'm saying when you say,

like, of course they're going to testify against me. Yours is a little different type of deal than most people. You were on the run. You were giving them the FU on the run. Like, you're already like, you're already a menace, like, really. Like, how are they going to, like, be strong if they were going to even think about being strong and say, you know what? I'm not going to tell them that, you lost that with that.

Does that make any sense? Yeah, but I mean, trust me, they're, they're on the way. They're driving there. They're showing up. They're not threatening. These guys are not threatening. They're coming straight to them. they're going, they're showing up.

I know what you're saying, man. I can only tell it to my personal thing. And in my personal thing, 50% of the people said I can't tell against them, 50% of my four. So I'm just, you know, I know that the majority, you're right. But in my case, literally 50% of the people didn't take six months and got seven and a half years. Do they regret it? I haven't talked to them since. But I'm saying they should.

Why are you called? We reach out, of course. I mean, I don't know where they live, but right now, but I should. But my point is, I'm not, I'm not giving them necessarily extra credit. for it. Like, I would have been found guilty anyways, but I'm giving them credit for it. Yeah, it's admirable. They feel like they didn't do anything wrong, and they went to trial. Right. And they also feel that they did. They could have just said, I'm just going to say, whatever you say to tell me to say. Because that's what the other people did. Like, the office manager, she really didn't know anything about anything.

She was a gopher that got computers and got the thing. Like, they did it because she had two kids. They knew what she would say anything. Yeah. That's pretty scary when you're indicting somebody that the indictment's not going to stick a piece. If she says no, they're not going to probably push the indictment because they have nothing on her. But she's terrified. Of course she's terrified. No, you're right. But that's, it's kind of like, you know, that's, you know. She's terrified.

She's got a kid. She's got three FBI agents in the U.S. attorney. What the government's willing to do is people don't realize that they're willing to indict somebody they know is innocent just to get somebody, which is. I, I mean, no, it's completely innocent. Not like a little hand is dirty, completely innocent. To me, that's, that's scary.

I mean, I think it's scary too, but it's also the way it is. Like, I'm not going to fight the Leviathan. Oh, no, no, no, no. Well, I mean, like I said, my case isn't black and white. It's not like the Leviathan. What yours is that you just, you're black and white. Yeah. Yeah, mine's, there's gray areas of fraud.

There really is. So, I mean. So you, you do end up going to, I mean, unless you want to continue down this path and then go back to, you go wherever you want. You go wherever you want. I think, I think we just continue on the storyline. Okay. Go to the trial. Well, I know.

I know. He wants to talk about Ron Wilson. Well, I think we have to do that now. I mean, I'd like to talk about the trial. So I'm out for a year on bond. Right. And so my trial dates January of 2010. Excuse me, 2011. I was in home in 2010. So my first day of trial, Vodir, which if people don't know, Vodier is talking to the jury about basic questions about, you know, what the trial is going to be like. So Vodier happens on January 24th, 2011, and that's important because it's the first day of my trial.

And it's also, that's my daughter's 14th birthday on that same day, coincidentally. So it's kind of, you know, it's a weird situation to be in. So they go to it with Wadilla. They asked the jury a simple question. This is what scared me the most right away. They ask them, they say, if you see this trial, it's going to be about two-month trial. If you see this trial over two months, you see the prosecution's defense, you see the defense's evidence. Could you possibly find him not guilty or guilty from just what you see at trial?

That's the most mundane question in the world. And the first guy, very first guy says, well, he's been indicted on 13 counts. He must be guilty of something. And of course you X him out, but they're all thinking that. Yeah. So right away, I'm like, these people, like, it's not like. it's not like Pollyanna, like where they say innocent, to prove and guilty, nobody thinks that.

They think, like, I don't get indicted. And I used to think this way. I don't get indicted. Like, just don't get indicted. If you're indicted, you must be guilty of something, right? Right. They had to show them, they had to show the grand jury something to prove that you were guilty and something. My mother when she went to the grand jury said they were feeding her popcorn, they didn't even listen to her. They were giving them, like,

snacks and stuff. Like, she was talking and, like, the grand jurors, like, were, like, telling each other, like, it's just a rubber stamp. It's a shame. But, like, there's only one case I know in the history that the grand jury said in fraud cases that said, you know what, I don't think there's enough. They 99.99% of the time no matter what you say at the grand jury, because you can't defend it. They're going to say it's good enough for trial. So it's like really just a, it's

nothing. So that's the first day of my trial with picking the jury. The second day of my trial was really the first. So the prosecution goes first and they say, listen, we'd like to get the overhead projector. Okay, here it is. They take the overhead projector, put it in the middle of the room. This is at 10 o'clock in the morning. They bring out a stack of checks like this big, all the checks I paid myself for the first two and a half years of the company. They don't say a word for the whole day, not one word. They just say, the only thing they say is exhibit. Exhibit 1. They show the first check I paid myself, which in the very beginning was like maybe 10,000. Exhibit 2. By the 10th check, it's like 30,000. By the 40th check, it's like 300,000. This is

every week. The jury's looking at me like this. Like right away, they go. going, like, this guy's making $300,000 a week? They, I wouldn't say the word hate me right away, but they resent me. Right. And they're looking at me, like, staring at me going, and what do you do to that? They haven't said a word. They haven't said what the trial's about. They haven't said if I'm guilty or not.

They haven't said if I made it nefariously. They just are showing checks to say, there's no way this guy's making $300,000 a week. He's got to be doing something. Right. And that was the first day when I knew I'm like, I'm in the whole world right away. So, you know, the trial happens in the prosecution, and puts on a case. The first they put the FTC, which I'm thinking the FTC is going to say bad things, right? The FTC says, no, we don't have any violations from him.

What? We thought they had many that I didn't see or something. Wait a minute, he's done business opportunities for like 15 years now. How many times have every tape recorded his salespeople? 828. You called 828 times. You have these 820 tapes. Yeah, we do.

We brought him here today. And you've never gave him a violation? I'm thinking, this is great, right? So we asked him, like, say, listen, you regulate what he does, yes. And you never thought about shutting him down? Oh, well, we have different standards than the, he knows where they're going now. We have different standards than the Department of Justice. You regulate me.

Right. And if you don't see a problem, I don't understand it. So the second witness for the government was an FBI agent that said this. All they asked him is, well, when you went to his home, like, what did, what? Was it lavish home? And of course we say, objection. What does that have to do with anything, right? Oh, very lavish home.

He had many things. Objection. And like, he's saying over the guy, even though they say it, right? And by the way, at the end of those checks, they showed a picture of my house, which they took down right away because we said objection. And the judge said, no, take it down. But they've already seen my house a glimpse of it. It wasn't, I mean, it's a 1.5.

It's not a mansion, but it's a nice house. So the second day of trial was the FBI him. And then the third day of trial started the investors. So the investors, the first investor, I remember, I think I told you the story, about the boat captain. Yeah, yeah. So it's a boat captain. He says, hey, you know, you really like this, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I bought, you know, I bought 25 machines for 109,000. I really liked it. Okay, did you read the purchase order? Yeah, kind of. Oh, do you see here when you signed it and it says that creative concepts can't guarantee any specific level of income? Well, I didn't really read that much.

But you signed right next to it. Oh, probably. I just don't read that much contracts. And he said, this is his words. It's only 109,000. And I'm like, what? And my lawyer says, only 100,000. 9,000. Like, do you ever have contracts that are big money? Oh, I've done houses before. Well, do you read

the contract of your house? Oh, I kind of lead that up to my wife. Okay. Did you show your wife this? Oh, I did. And she was okay with it. Okay. So you bought 25 machines. Do they show up? Yeah. Were they nice machines? Oh, yeah, beautiful machines. They worked. What happened? I put it to 25 locations. It didn't really work out the wall and I put in my garage. Okay. So you're saying that you didn't really read all of his material. Oh, not really. Okay. So the 109,000 really doesn't mean much. How much do you make as a boat captain? Well, I do like, I go out like, he goes, what do you do like charters and stuff? Oh, no, I only go a mile. I can only, I have a license to go out a mile. So how much do you make it a year? Oh, I make about 37,000. I mean, you make 37,000 and you're okay with a $109,000 investment. You're not reading the

paperwork? He says, yeah, but my wife's a neurosurgeon. Right. And I lean to my lawyer, I said, yeah, actually, you probably did an operation on him. I mean, you know, jury doesn't see it. But yeah, that's how Cavalieri said it. The second lady said that my salesperson told her that she could make like 150 sales a day. Where's the tape of that? No. You can say anything. She just wants her money back.

She'll say anything. So basically everybody comes up there and says, we got gorgeous machines. I love the machines when I showed up. But, you know, they didn't make the numbers. And I just, did you move the machine? Oh, I moved them back to my garage. Why wouldn't you try another location? Oh, well, I was fed up with it.

Right. That's what you're dealing with. What happened with the 15 people that you had? Oh, that's a good question. Well, way before the trial, like three months before the trial, they all tapped out, like, you know, one at a time. Hey, the government called me. I can't do this. Well, we can make you do it.

Oh, yeah, if you make me do it, I'm going to say bad things. Because the government called them up, and they said exactly what the government told me. I'm going to go through every one of your tax returns. I'm going to go through your fine-tooth call. I'm going to see whatever you do, I'm going to know. And they scared them. If I did that to their witnesses, I'd go to jail for more time.

Yeah. No. But yes, they systematically called every one of the 15 and scared them off. If you called any of those witnesses, it'd be witness stampering. Of course.

But theirs is not. This is just interviewing them. Right. But everyone told me that they scared them off. Everyone. So how long is the trial go? Trial's three and a half months. And you testified?

I testified for 10 days. I understand. Yeah. What do they say? What do they say for 10 whole days? Oh, for 10 whole days. they're saying sales tactics, but they're saying things that are completely legal that they're making look skeevy. Like, this is what they'll do. I'll give you a typical example of two or three of them.

One of them is, you've heard of a shell company, right? Yeah. You've heard of it, but many people haven't heard of it. You buy a company that was like started in right now, 2002. Right. And you flip it into another name and you say this corporation has been around since 2002. The state of Florida sells those. They actually sell an older one for more money, by the way.

I know. Some would, but so that's completely legal, by the way, also. So I did that before, like, two, three-year-old company before mine called Baltimore Financial. But the jury thinks that's the skeevious thing in the world. Like, so I said, did you change it? Did you say you've been up and running for three years? I said the corporation has. Why would you deceive him like that?

No, I bought a Shell Corporation at the state of Florida cell. I could have bought a corporation that says 1950 to make them really feel well, right? But the jury thinks that's crazy, like, oh, my God, that's, like, nefarious. The second thing is. Why not just start a corporation? A brand new corporation. Well, I mean, if I said I started two weeks ago, there's going to be people that bought because you're a two-week-old company. Right.

I'm just going two years old, which many people do, by the way. I don't doubt it. And I know it's not illegal, but it doesn't look good. But why would the state of Florida do that then? Well, they're just trying to recoup the back. Okay, but I'm saying if it was, but they felt it was fraud. If they felt you could use it to fraud somebody, why would they let you? Well, because, I mean, I, I, because.

Because there's many things that are like that. Like, they can use it to defraud, but you could also use it just because you're trying to. But I'm saying that people that haven't been in business, and of course the jury's not going to anybody in business, they're going to X out. Right. Like any potential jurors. I mean, I understand as a business owner why you would do that. One, it gives you credibility, but it gives you credibility if you're selling boats and it's a perfectly legitimate business. but if they, by the same token, if there's anything illegitimate and it ends up in front of a jury,

now it looks, it looks fraudulent. But it's legal. They have to admit that it's legal, but it looks fraudulent. You see what I'm saying. So stuff like that, which hurts because if you're really innocent, then that's something you did legally. But you see what I'm saying. That's their, and that's their MO. So, and then they bring them, you know, two people, my salespeople that testified against me,

they bring those up. You know, the first woman, she's stuck with the script mostly, but a couple things, but my office manager just said some crazy things, like says that, oh, I knew about the sales taxes because we had secret meetings with the hierarchy of the company.

That's her verbage. Who's the hierarchy of the? That's what I told my lawyer to ask her. And she said, oh, that's me, him, and a couple other people. And, you know, he's very charming sometimes, but he's, you know, to see,

you could tell she's just going on script. Right. And what's crazy is that she, we go for lunch during her testimony, we break for lunch. And I'm sitting in my wife waiting for the elevator. There's three elevators

on the top, floor, the second floor of the Fed building of a trial in Fort Lauderdale, they could have went to two other elevators and the FBI brings her in my elevator, you know, on purpose. And, you know, I could hold my tongue, my wife's there and I shouldn't, but I, you know, I call her some names. But he's, I'm going to tell the judge, I'm going to tell the judge, you could have went to two other elevators. You brought her in my elevator. You know, so, you know, that kind of like, the trickery. But the trial, the trial is weighted because they're thinking you're guilty no matter what. Right.

The trial is thinking that you made so much money that I think you're going to get about a year or two. And that's why I really honestly think that they knew I was going to get 17 and a half years, I would have been found not guilty. What would have happened if, you know, how they showed your house? They flashed your house up and you're like objection or objection. Sure. What if you would have blurted out? I could be going away. Yeah, they would have said mistrial and I would have been put to jail.

Take away my bond and then would have tried me again. I could have done that 10 times. Yeah. Okay. I was just curious. No, I mean, I can, you know, I could tell that because, yeah, yeah, if I blurted. out, hey, I'm a little nervous up here. I'm 10 years. I was thinking about saying that. I was a little nervous because I'm looking at 20 years. I've been told my lawyer, right or wrong, but I've told many lawyers that the judge would say mistrial.

Right. They would remand me and take away my bond and then try me again. So what about the, and I think this happened earlier, but one day you're going, you're headed home. Yeah, sure. You're walking through the parking garage. Oh, yeah. That was in the middle of my trial. Okay. It was a kid from Calvary Chapel Church. He's a guitarist at this Christian church in Broward. He's on the jury. He's on the jury.

He says, you know, I know his background because you have to say your background, and he always wears like a sweatshirt. And I'm nothing wrong with a kid. Probably a great kid, but he's just kind of frumpy and he's just like, so anyways, my wife keeps telling me don't park in that garage every day because that's where the jurors park. I go, why? Because they took four out of five in my cars.

They left me with the seven series BMW. It's no big deal. But I mean, like, that's the only car I got left. They impounded the other. He took the other cars. So the kid happens to be parking right next to me. So he gets out of the trial. We both walk.

He walks. And I've been on the stand saying that I'm broke now. And I was. They took all my money. But then he sees me going to the 745 probably goes back to the jury meeting in Monday and says, hey, this guy's driving a 745. And, you know, did that hurt maybe? But, you know, he's looking like, oh, God, I thought he was crying poor mouth. But, you know.

Probably, yeah, didn't look good. Didn't look good. I'm sure. I'm sure he probably gets in a fucking 15-year-old. No, he did. He was parked right. It was like a Toyota like 82 or something. Yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah. So, you know, did it help? No. But, I mean, it was little things like that. I mean, the trial was. And also every day after the two-month period, the judge would say sorry to the jury for it taking so long. And almost blame us. Like, it's your right to be.

I mean, you have to be there. It's your civic duty. Right. But every day he said, I'm sorry. It's been taking so long. And, you know, the defense is long-winded. Like, why? What? Like, it's so skewed. I mean, the biggest two skewed things I've told you this is that, first of all, you know, this big media because Dietrich shows up to trial.

Dietrich does not have to show up from Austria. They can't make him. He's not even a U.S. citizen. They can't. He shows up to make Red Bull look like they got dup by me. So he brings this memo when he's, when he's on the stand, of a 30-page memo of all the bad things I was doing that he said I signed at the biggest trade show. This is the most craziest thing I've ever heard in my life. They show the signature line, signature line, my name typed, his name, typed, his name signed, unsigned on my side. And my lawyer says, well, where's the sign one? Oh, I don't know. I think the prosecution has it. The prosecution is like, we don't have it. So my lawyer says, Jack, you can't show this.

This could be made yesterday. It doesn't have a signature on it. The judge says, Mr. Warren said, did you see him sign this at the baggage? Oh, I did. I'll let the jury see it. Now, on appeal, it was definitely said the judge made an error, but it was said harmless error. Okay. But did you ever get the document?

Had you ever seen it? Never seen it in my life. If he showed up to me, the biggest shot, I said, let's not do business anymore. I said, get that out of him. You think I'm doing all that? It was all the hindsight shit

the government said I was saying. Right. I never signed anything at that big show. He took me to the, I went to a Palm's hotel to the real world suite. You know the real world suite? Yeah, yeah.

For an MTV party after our meeting, we think I'd go to that if he shows me this stuff? Right. No. On the sign, wouldn't they have the sign one? Right. It wasn't signed.

he made it to make Red Bull look like I duped them. So what's the second thing? The second thing is that this was I was more shocked. The government has 88 tapes that they, not the FTC, they call salespeople up when they were investigating me before during the Red Bull run and has 88 tapes of sales conversations. They picked the four worst ones that that hard hitting New York salespeople that they're tough, right? So you got the guys and you know, you play those four. It's like it's like a broker or something. The jury is like they're not business people that are going on.

little tough, right? We go to play the other 84. And their lawyer says, oh, that's here saying, we've already heard enough salespeople. It's their tapes. Right. The judge says, oh, wait a minute, let's have a sidebar. Every sidebar was like two, three minutes, except this one was a half an hour. I'm waiting a half an hour doing a sidebar. At the end of the sidebar, it's a 50-50 decision, but we've heard enough salespeople. So you're only going to play the ones that they picked up. It's their tapes that they put in evidence. Yeah. I was shocked by that. Well, first of all, it was at three-month point of the trial. He's saying people like, I'm sorry. sorry for taking it so long.

If they play the other 84 tapes. It goes forever. It goes another, whatever. So my, my, in the, right. In the, you know, my appeal, it said that he made an error. That's an error. Right. But it said harmless error.

Right. So, you know. That said harmless error, by the way, is, it's kind of like a catch-all. Like, there's tons of things that are like. Like, they're admitting that they made a mistake. They can't not. Oh, the judge made a mistake. But it wouldn't have mattered in the jury's opinion.

Well, let the jury hear. Let's do it again. Let's the jury hear this. they don't do it that way. So when they come back, is there anything else about the jury or about that trial? No, but the trial is just basically at the end was more of like of them of them showing analysts by saying that like I should have made a determination as a, their words of a moral business person that this wasn't working out and stopped making half a million dollars a week and stop selling the Red Bull machine and sell something else during the in the middle of it.

That's what they're standing on. that I made a decision that, but what I'm saying is that, like, what we argued is, if I made the decision halfway through, because the machines didn't go out until, like, two, three months in, right? We didn't get sales stats until, like, three, four months in. That means I didn't go into it nefariously. I didn't go into it to fraud people. You see what I'm saying?

So we argued that, and they were like, oh, we're not saying it, that. He went into the fraud people. What? You're saying I made a decision, like, my fault was my decision to keep selling with sales, stats after I knew it wasn't going to do well. Well, that only happens like halfway into the business. It doesn't happen right away. But they still argue right away it's fraud.

So, you know, it's always waited to them. So what happens is, and this is three things that people might realize they might not. Like I said, my biggest thing is they have no idea what time I'm getting. Zero a chance. Like they're thinking I'm going to get a year or two. Maybe three years, like five years at the most. And they probably feel bad for me getting five years. But 17 and a half?

For white collar, first time offense, never been arrested in my life? Yeah, the jury has no idea what you're facing. No idea. So, and they think white. The only time they know what you're facing. It's a murder case. No, no, it's a murder case. No, no.

Is if it's, um, if it's the death, if the death penalty. Well, murder case, yeah. Yeah. But if it's a death penalty where you could get the death penalty, then they know you're facing the death. That's why it's 33% more likely to beat a murder case than any other case. 33, 33 times more likely. Because they have to know. Not 33%, 33.

Because they have to know. Even as a neophyte. know how much time they're getting. So you better be right, right? That's why they say, OJ. Innesot proven guilty. Me, I'm guilty right away. I'm a fraud guy. I'm guilty, right? Once they say, I was indicted on 13 counts of fraud. They don't even know what that means, by the way. Like, wire fraud. What do you think a person who doesn't know about it? What do they think what they think they think they think they think they think they think when I didn't know when I got charged with wire fraud. The only, the only reason why they called mine wire fraud. Because

people wired me money to do the opportunity. Like people think I did wire fraud in the bank or something. No. So it's just, they just don't know. They're not educated enough. They should be. I don't know. I have no idea why they wouldn't be. Like, why wouldn't they want all the information they can to possibly make a good decision? Right.

Here's the second thing. The second thing is that jury, that jury when they're looking at me about the money thing, that sticks with them because you know why? They're thinking that two or three years, I could justify it. He made all that money, right? She gets out he's going to have millions. If they believe that I hit it or something, which I wish I did. I'm maybe I'm idiot, but not doing that.

I really honestly wanted to beat him so I thought the best thing to say is I can account for every dollar. We'll go over my bank account for all the time I was doing. You can account for every dollar. Me not taking out a million. Where'd that million go? No, I can account for everything, which in hindsight didn't make a difference, obviously, but I wanted it as leverage. Because if you do, if you do hide money, where did that money go? If you're on the try, you're on the stand going, oh, that looks bad.

Right. So. So when they, it goes to the jury. Yes. They come back. They come back five days later. I was out back getting the lunch and doing this like five days. They recess on a Monday and they didn't come back to Friday.

So they come back and my lawyer says, oh, you've been out for a year. They'll probably give you 70 days until the sentencing to sort your things out. No. They say guilty and the judge, my lawyer says, hey, but he's been out for a year. Like he's not a flight risk. He took all his money.

He hasn't done anything. He could have left during the trial. You know what he said? Yeah, but he's guilty now. When they said, when they read off the ex, I remember you told me this in. prison when they read off all the charges like the you beat several of charges I did I beat all the conspiracy charges I remember they said that they thought that I made a bad decision like when the

machine wasn't doing well yeah so I think the jury heard that and said he didn't go into it I didn't go into this business to the do people I had a contract with red bull I'm selling the energy center I didn't knowingly go into this in a scheme to defraud because I shipped every machine right think about that so I'm going to say not guilty on the conspiracy which was six counts of the 13. So that was the first six counts, though. Think about this. I come back from five days recess and they say, first count of wire fraud, do you find offended, Andrew J. Levinson, guilty or not guilty? Not guilty. Okay. I know there's 12 other charges. When they say not guilty five more times, and the sixth time, I'm straightening my tie. I'm ready for my speech,

like when I'm walking out of here to tell them everything in the world, tell the prosecutor, like, whatever, right? You know, 7th, 8th, 9, 10th, 11, 12, 13th. it's all guilty. So. And in the feds, I could have beat every count but one and still got the same amount of time. Because wire fraud is one to 20 years.

Yeah. So I could have beat every one, 12 out of 13, and one count gives me the same 210 months. Yeah. Great system. So they take,

and then they, obviously, they take into custody right then. Yes. So my lawyers, like, shrugs your shoulders, like, because I really thought I could get this every days,

and they take me to the county jail to wait 70 days to go back for sentencing. Well, your lawyer is irritated that he, got paid $20,000 for a fucking two-month trial, too, right? Yes. But, I mean, it could have made his name because it was in the papers. If you ever got me off, I mean, you have to convince me.

I'm just saying, I know by that point he's shaking his head. But if they didn't take that money, I would have got Black, and maybe Black had got me a little less time. Maybe, maybe like, it's like the OJ trial. Like, remember Judge Edo? He's enamored by the other lawyers, right? Maybe this, you know, Schmachan would have went, oh, Roy Black, okay. You know, it helps. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, he probably would have mounted a better defense also. Of course, of course. Also, if you still have the money, the judge also knows that, hey, when I, when I deny something, it's going to be appealed. Like, this is going to be a problem like that. Right. Right. If I got on a, if I got Dershowitz on appeal or something, like he's probably going to not, he's going to let those tapes in. He's not going to let Diedrich say I sign the stuff.

Right. Because they can beat me without that. Like, that's just, like, icing. Yeah. Like, they don't need D. Deterch to come and dupe a memo that I said I signed and I never signed it. They don't need that. No, Dietrich didn't know that, though.

No, he just wants to protect Red Bull. No, he wants to help Red Bull's name. You know that. Like, oh, the poor guy duped me, a billion-dollar company into doing this. Yeah, yeah. So, fucking seven, so 17 years. Yeah, 20-10 months. What did your lawyer think you were going to get?

What was he saying? Oh, he said, without a doubt, I'm going to get $210 to $22026. That's my range because I'm over $25 million. Right. I'm a leadership role. I can't say anything about that. I'm the owner of the company. Right.

I'm over 250 victims because, like, a 3,000. thousand people that bought from me. I got sophisticated means, which I have no idea, even to this day, how that works. Everything false. I mean, anything, even, so I can't fight any of that. Anything simple, anything, uh, even slightly complicated. Right, of course. To that, to the layman is sophisticated. Mine is simple. I, I score out the 37 first time offense. That's 210 to 226. I knew I was going to get that if I was found guilty. Right. Like, 100%. Like, he's not going to downward departure me. Right. I fought him for crying out loud. So, all right, 17 years. Yeah. When do you get, what happens?

You go to, what is your wife saying? Not much. It's like a blur. It's like a kind of like a like, doesn't even, we don't even really talk seriously about it. I mean, we do talk about. But I mean, it's just all like, just a smack in the face. It's all just reactionary. Like, hey, just.

I mean, she comes to see you. You're locked up. You're in the Marshall's whole. I know. I'm in the Brown County Jail. It's like the Fed's. It's a Fed's. But she comes to see you.

She's just like shaking her head. Yeah. Because you can't really say anything there because you think they'll listen. Like in the county jail, where our kind of jail, you can't see them. It's a video, like in the same dorm, ever ever get to see your video visit. So that was kind of just, and then, you know, we talked about eventually, but not right away.

When I was in county for 70 days, it's just basically horrible county jail, like that lost like 60 pounds, which was good at the time. But it was just, you know, waiting for sentencing. So my PSI comes back. I know what I'm going to get. I mean, I know I'm got to get, no, 10 years. You didn't go to PSI. You didn't go to the, you told me not to go.

Yeah, your lawyer told you not to. Yeah. I'm not sure that would have made a difference anyway. What did the headline say when the headline says this. Of course, frauds, so local businessman, dupes, investors of Red Bull. You can look it up. It's totally spins. Like all the stuff they said before when the trial was going on, hey, this guy shipped 30,000 machines.

But after you're guilty, it's everybody lost their life savings. Everybody does this. Everybody, you know, does that. It's just all spun. Like, you read that, you laughable. It's like hardly anything of the trial. They just, they're going to just say the, like, what every fraud guy does, like, ripped people off. Yeah.

But, you know, and if you watch my trial look at the transcripts, it's it's kind of like a like a 50-50 thing. You can see the prosecutor. I don't think he was that confident. But, you know. Well, you told me in Coleman when they were reading off the not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. You leaned back. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

To like look at him. Oh, yeah. I look at the prosecutor, me mugging him. When the six, the six count of not guilty, when they said not guilty six times, I'm going, I'm looking at this guy, gorgeous. Because they brought him in from Washington. Every Friday you say, by the con, the judge and say, I'll see you back on money. He flies back to Washington and flies back.

They put him up in the hotel for the three months. They couldn't get a local prosecutor, do we? Who knows? Wow. I mean, it's a very uncommon, it's a very uncommon crime and prosecution. So I can see why they would have a specialist that they would fly in. So, all right, so you end up get, how long until you get to ship to Coleman? Do you go ship to Coleman?

No, I go to, I go to FTC Miami. The day after I got sentenced, I go from. I go from the county jail to FDC Miami. Okay. I was in Memphis, Miami for about four or five months. So I met with my counselor there, and he's like,

man, your first time fraud, you got five security points. You can't go to a camp because you're over 10 years, but you go to a low. I don't know anything about this low, medium,

stuff like that. He goes, yeah, you're gonna go probably like Coleman low. Why would you have five? Why do you have five fucking points anyway? Five, that's it. But I don't even know why five.

I don't even know why five. I had like two because I had a detainer. When I got the detainer, it was like zero. It was like one. five is still low. Probably because you went to trial. Yes.

Probably because you went to trial. Right, right. So, but if people know, anything under 11, you're supposed to go to a camp. But I can't go to a camp because they have more than 10 years. Yeah. So I'm supposed to go to low. So about three, four months later, I see the list of packout list and I'm on it.

Levinson, it says, C-O-L-M. I don't know what that means. The guy said, oh, that's common medium. I said, I mean, no big deal, but you said I was going to go to a low. He goes, I don't know who you pissed off. Like, you, you only got five points. They put a manager variable on you. Yeah.

And so, and people... You went to the medium? I went to the medium. I was at the medium. I was at the medium. 2011 or 12, I was at the medium. No, I left in 2010. And then I came over to you.

I saw you in 2012. I left... I came on to you in September of 12 to the low. But 11 and 12, I met the medium, yeah. Yeah. I actually didn't want to leave the medium. Because we had your own room and I heard that the fucking dorm sucked. And I...

Well, what's crazy with me is they kept me in A2, like the, you know, the entry dorm? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They kept me in there because they... said I was on phone, like they listened to my phone calls. Like, remember those some guys that lived there, like Joe Pegg, remember Joe Pegg? Yes. He was my buddy there. And like, who was the guy with the tattoos?

Yeah, they had a tattoo shop. My, was a blonde hair. Used the orderly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I forget his name. I mean, he had tattoo shops around here and his girlfriend got overdosed in front of him. Remember him? Chuck.

Chuck. Chuck. See? I like Chuck. Okay, so I went there for two years to the medium. Everybody didn't believe me that had five points. And I showed it. And I said, look at five points.

Yeah, I got a manager variable. So the first year, after the first year, my manager is saying, hey, you should go to the low. Yeah, yeah, you're with my manager. I don't know. The higher ups are saying, no, you got to go another year here. So I did two years there. And then I went to the low and met you. It doesn't make any.

I don't know why. But I also know, I also know there's a trial. That's a trial punishment. Yeah, I also know a guy that went to trial and got, and he got, he went to the fucking pen. Yeah, I can't go into the pen. Yeah. Like, think about this. I'm not the media.

If I do anything wrong or they think I could do anything wrong, easily send me to the pen. All right, so you go to the low. Yeah. I go to the low. I go to B4 with you. How long are you with the law? For four years. From September of 2012 to October of 2016, I went to the Atlanta camp.

I was with you for four years. Okay. Yeah. So, um. Like three and a half four years. Yeah. So while we were there. Yeah.

Because I watched the podcast. Yeah, sure, sure. And I know you want to talk about this? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's natural to one. I mean, I haven't seen you in nine years. It's an event that happened after I left you. Or happened during it.

I didn't know. I didn't know what happened after. Well, what I was thinking about it is... Well, I had no clue. Maybe I'm Mickey the Dunst. I had no clue. Well, first of all, I think you were in the cell next to me for a month. For a month.

No, maybe about three months. It was about three. months, okay. We didn't eat lunch every day. No, I didn't ever said every day. I said many times, though, probably 30 times. Yeah, over four years. Yeah, 30, 40 times.

But, well, if you watch that podcast, it's like, me, you, and Wilson were best buddies and ate lunch every day. Like, that's how it comes off. Yeah, I'd never said every day. Yeah. We'll go back in. I can go back. Yeah, you can go back. I know, I never said every day.

And, yeah. But I say we, I would say educate guests we had lunch 40, 50 times in four years. let's say meals more than one maybe sometimes dinner sometimes lunch yeah yeah yeah i don't think you went to breakfast i don't think you went to breakfast not one time right not one right not one you're right about that uh uh yeah uh i was gonna say but we should intimate conversations a bunch of times yeah yeah yeah i knew your ex-wife in your situation with your son and you knew a situation with me i mean we we knew more than the average person about each other yeah yeah yeah that's true And Wilson, like you also in the podcast made it sound like we were all friends.

But I mean... I never said the word friends. I said we hung out because we were both all fraud guys. Right. And it's kind of true. He was grumpy. He was this. But he wasn't, he wasn't friends.

Of course, he probably hated me. But I never said he was my friend, by the way. I never did on there. I said that. No, it just comes off that way. It's like we ate. We ate every day. No, I said we ate because we were all fraud.

Right, right. Like, I wouldn't have even talk to Rod if he wasn't fraud. Yeah. So fraud tends to tends to, mingled together, you know that. Oh, I know that. I know everybody kind of, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they you gather with, you know, you, you, you, you, you gather, you, you, you, you, you,

fraud guys gathered, you know, you're, um, it's comfortable. Um, yeah. We, we, we, we had many, not many, but we had private conversations about other stuff, a lot about my case in your case, because, I mean, I could name a lot of stuff about your case. And, uh, but I mean, it must have been, I don't know, 40, 40, 50 times we talked about about our cases, maybe? Maybe 100. Maybe 100.

Yeah, I have no problem. Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah, and I was writing stories for, you know, I got some guys in Rolling Stone. I got, I was, I wrote a bunch of stories, optioned a bunch of guys' life rights. We had lunch with Devereoli, me and Deva Roli. Yeah, yeah. What an asshole.

You know, I don't know if you, were you there when I sued him? Yes. Okay. I mean, I was like, I was just leave when you decided to start and then I went to the camp, so. Yeah. So, yeah, it was Devereoli. It was Doug Dodd. Doug Dodd, the wrestler kid, right?

Yeah. Yeah, what a nightmare of that whole thing ended up being. Although they re-optioned that thing, because multiple times. Listen, to be honest, when I got to the camp, I'm sorry, when I got to the halfway house, I got there with $300 that somebody gave me. So a guy in prison, I was going there with like the car,

Why didn't you go to a camp ever? I actually stayed out because the closest camp was Miami. You're right in town. You're right in town. You're right. It was Miami and my mom was an hour driver. She was in a wheelchair. No, that makes sense. It makes sense.

So what I did was, I don't know if you really pushed it. Oh, no, they tried to. That's why I went into the drug. I went into ARDAP once. They put a management variable on me. I dropped out. I see. Three months later, they said they were going to yank the management variable off me and send me to the camp.

And I said, absolutely not. I said, I'm signing up for ARDAP again. went back in so I could stay there. Because basically my brother and sister were telling me that the only reason my mom was still alive was she was waiting for me to get out. Of course, that makes sense. So, but I'm in, so I'm in prison. I'm writing guys' stories. I'm not writing guys stories because I think that I'm going to garner some information and I'm going to.

That was more Jason, but I can tell you this, people's perspective is after, in hindsight, if some one of those guys, in confidence because they're going to tell you things because you're going to write a story that if you heard that could help you, you probably would have took advantage of it. Maybe. I think that people have told me things and I never, I just shrugged them off. You could have walked on Ron. Why didn't you walk on Ron? Because it was actually because it was such a fucking layup, and I didn't have anything to

fucking, and I'll be honest. So other people told you stuff that did tweak your interest that maybe I could get some time off of that? No, I actually had a guy who told me that one time, And I'm going to say this very, I'm not going to be specific, very vaguely, that he was working with a guy that had been indicted. And I said, were you concerned that he was going to flip on you? And he said, no. And he said, no, he would have never. And I go, why?

He said, because he killed somebody for this guy. I know this guy's name when he was arrested. I know exactly who he is. And he tells me the situation with the guy, who the person was. So I don't know the guy. No, not the name, but he tells me... Enough that you could do some research. Enough that I could probably make two phone calls and the homicide in the county would tell me.

Because this guy was a big guy. Everybody in the county knows who this person is. Not my guy, but this guy. And he tells me that he basically killed somebody for this guy. I see. And he told me that, and I went, and I was like, I was not, we're going to... I was like, okay, I get it, I get it.

And I just kept writing. And to be honest, part of the reason I thought that was... I didn't lean into that was I thought, you know, first of all, I was already in the middle of like a 2255 and the government's fighting me. They don't want to give me anything, right? Because when I first got arrested, just to clarify, because this is a whole kind of contention between you and I. I appreciate it. When I got arrested by the Secret Service when I was on the run, and my lawyer told me everybody's already cooperated against you. We scheduled meetings with the FBI and Secret Service.

I spoke with the FBI and Secret Service. We went over everything that they already knew. Sure, sure. Like, I don't have anything I can tell them. Right, exactly, right. Other than the fact that they're saying, well, this person is saying this, this, this, this is this. And I'm like, yeah, that's absolutely true. And they're like, absolutely.

And they're like, okay, yeah, we already know they know they know. Like, they know they know. They signed the fucking applications. They received, you didn't receive $3,000 for a broker fee. You received $40,000. You know. So they already know. But so while I'm in prison, I'm fighting.

I'm fighting what's called a 2255. And I'm trying to get the government to give me something because, and they won't. They're like nothing Cox told us led to any prosecution. That's true. Right. But you're telling them what? What do you mean? Like, 2225.

What's the, what's the, what's the? Oh, no, the 22. Like, I can't argue. I can't argue because I can't argue that that I gave you something and somebody got arrested. They didn't. So my argument is, you guys, the government asked me to be interviewed by Dateline, and they said they'd consider that substantial assistance. Why you were in prison? Yeah, before I got sentenced. But yes. And then after I got sentenced, they came to me and they said, hey, we want you to be interviewed by American greed. And I was. And then they came to me and they

said, we want you to write an ethics and fraud course that can be used to help train. It's used to help satisfy continuing education credits for the nation's mortgage brokers, which I did. And at that point, my lawyer keeps going to them saying, well, cut his sentence. You said you cut it. Well, we said we consider it substantial assistance. And we did, and it's just not enough. So at that point, after the fraud run— My memory serves me right.

You went back to court while you would be— before, you know, I guess arguing. You went back to court, yeah. Right. Because Amadeo files the fucking paperwork. They argue back and forth, back and forth. government's saying no, no, no. And at some point, the government says, okay, we'll give this guy a rule 35.

We'll give him one level off his sentence, which is 30 months. And they said, but we'll bring him back to court and let him argue in front of the judge because this is kind of unprecedented. We don't really know. We don't know what to give him because there was no arrest. I see. There's no arrests associated with this case. Okay.

This is what I don't understand this, though. And it's important because the timeline you're given me is that way before that when you're at the medium, you said you were afraid because you testified. You told somebody you testified at the medium against somebody. No. I remember on the air, you said you were at the medium talking to a guy at the medium saying that you were, that you, he said, I wouldn't tell anybody that. Like you're selling or something. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, I mean, I do speak English.

Yeah. What happened was when I first got there, he was like, do you have your, he said, do you have your, um, he said something about the PSI anyway. Like it's hard to get your PSI and you probably won't be like. And I go, I got my PFI. And he goes, you get your PSI? I was like, yeah. And he went, let me see it.

And he looked at the PSI and he said it was fine. He said, oh, you're good. And I go, what do you mean? And he goes, yeah, I'm just checking to see if you cooperate against anybody. And I went, oh, I mean, I said, I did cooperate against some people. I talked to the FBI. I said, but nothing's come on it. And he went, I wouldn't tell anybody about that.

I wouldn't tell anybody about that. Not the medium, no. Right. And I was like, I was like, oh, okay. And then by, listen, that was like, it's almost like I tried, but I couldn't get anything. And then I talked to my cousin who was there. And he was like, yep, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah.

Fucking show anybody that. Don't tell anybody that. Don't this, don't that. Yeah, you're lucky the guy didn't spread it there. Yeah. I'm sure he probably told a few people. But, uh, but nobody was looking that hard. Okay.

I missed it true. I thought you had. But you never got, because everybody else testified against you first. Like, and they wouldn't even take your testimony as anything because the cat's out of the bag. Right. And they've already indicted these people. I've given nothing additional. And nobody ends up getting indicted because by the time I get sentenced, it's the beginning

of the 2008 financial crisis. Right, right, sure, sure. And the whole economy is collapsing. And do we go and arrest a bunch of guys for $5 or $10 million or $10 million or $20 million? Right. So we go off to these banks that are collapsing for a million. Yeah, the only thing I don't want to get, I left for the camp in October of 2016. Okay.

So you almost sounded like, like, you were surprised that I didn't know anything. before that. Yes. So here's what happens is... I might be making the dunts. I might be playing softball and doing weird things all the time. I mean, I don't, I'm not in a loop. I don't think, I don't remember when exactly Wilson. Can you look up when Wilson got re-sentenced? Okay. He was recharged. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, like, as a man, I'd never heard anything about that at Coleman. I'm shocked because I was kind of assumed that it, well, here's why. Listen, because I did go back to court. Because the government says... I know you went back to court, but I never heard anybody say,

about Ron. Like, I don't care about, like, you make it sound like I say Ron, but only because it happened. Like, I could care less about Ron, right? I'm just saying, I'm just using Ron because of what the incident. Right. So I go back to court and the judge says, look, I'm not going to give this guy 30 months off, okay? Yeah. Because what he's done for the government is he, you know, did these courses, did all these things. He deserves more than that. Yeah, with the courses. I fully knew the course. He told me about the courses. Right. And he said, so we're going to give him seven years off his sentence. But just the courses. Well, and being interviewed twice by American. and greed and date line. Oh, okay. That's great. I've got 26 years. Like seven years. Like, seven years,

I'm just saying, I'm saying it's not like he cut it. At the end of the seven years that you're to talk about, how much time did you have left at that point? So that brought me from 26 years and four months to 19 years. But you've already done. 19 years and 19 and a half years. But you're already done at that time. Six years. He was, he was, the additional present time was December 10th, 2014. Okay, 2014. So, okay, so here's what happens. And you, you know, You were there until 16. Yeah. Additional prison time?

No. No. No. Wait, how much? December 10th, 2014. He didn't even come to our dorm until 15. Yeah. This is the governor recovered $164,000 for 241 months.

Wilson's sentence in total, when he's total sentence was 241. When he, he came to our dorm in 2015. I'll send you the article here. No, I know. I'm just saying like it can't be the right timing as far as what him and Matt, like, What Matt knew. Ron Wilson sentenced brother and wife. Okay, yeah.

Yep, here it is. That's November 12, 2014. What? Ron Wilson's wife and brother plead guilty to conspiracy to hide. And then. This is April 2014. Yeah, okay. I wasn't deep in the dorm with you then.

Like, nah, that doesn't sound. I don't think Ron was with me but two years before I went to the camp. I don't remember that. He was, yeah. When did you leave? 2016. October of 2016, the end of 2016. Okay, yeah.

So. Yeah, so it's 2014, he gets, he's, he's given additional time. I mean, I'm flabaggeda because I'm telling you, honestly, like, I have no reason to lie. I've never heard about that at Coleman. There is a note on the bottom of this article says updated February 12th, 2015, which, I mean, that's only a few months. No, this is still April, this is it'll be 2014, this. I'm saying this. Like, you know me.

I'm like, like it or not, I'm a little brash. I'm from Massachusetts. I would have told you something about it if I knew. Does that make any sense? Yes. So I didn't know, no. I'm not trying to say, I'm just saying like, no. Was it, would everybody talk about the classes that you taught all that stuff?

But Ron Wilson, no. I left there in October of 2016. Okay. So here's what. Maybe I wasn't in a loop and I was only talking to crazy coroni and the people I play softball with. And I don't know. But I was in the same dorm. as you. Yeah. So here's what happens is I come, I come back from sentencing, and Ron Wilson is there.

And he's been there. He's been there about, about a year. This is 2014 or 15? This is why I don't know the time. Like, I don't think he got to Coleman until 15. I really don't. But wait a minute. Now, this is what doesn't make sense to me. If it happened before that, why would they put you and him in the same dorm? They didn't. That's what I'm saying. The timelines don't make any sense. December, 2004, a Federal Monday, Monday, former, Ron Wilson, wife's brother, Ponzi scheme. December 2nd, 2014. The wife and brother of Ponzi scheme mastermind Ron Wilson were sentenced Monday.

Yeah, this is it. December 2014. So he gets to our place, when do you think? So I'm probably, I'd say a year before that. No, no, when does Ron get to our place? About a year, maybe a year, maybe, let's say a couple years before. that, a year or two before that. Because literally, he had been there maybe a year. When I went to the camp, was he still there? No. Oh, no. But he was there at least a year before that. It was no two

years he was gone before I went to the camp. No, I'm not going to say that. Okay. Well, even you were like, the timeline didn't make any sense to you really. Well, yeah, 2014 seems like I thought it was I thought it was. I bet you he was in outdorm of 15. The year 15, I bet he was in B4. There's no way. I I can tell you right now, because here's what happened. First, what happens is this. He gets there while I'm fighting my case, the 2255. Yeah, yeah, sure. So he's there for, let's say, eight or nine months while I'm fighting the 2255.

I then get sent. I then go back to, I go back to court. They knock seven years off my sentence. I come back. Ron is still there. So I get back, and I, and we're on is ill. I walk up, and, you know, I walk up. And he's like, hey, I heard you got, you know, some time.

knocked off, yeah. And I'm like, right, right. And so we're talking. And I already know because Wilson was very, he was very upfront about that he was cooperating against the other people in his case. I knew about that. Right. So, so we were walking the track because we hung out, you know, we hung out and we talked and stuff. And, uh, so. And for what reason? Because he was gruff and old and kind of weird. So I always always said this is that he, he, he. He reminded me of my dad. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Which was a gruff guy. My mom used to say he had an abrasive personality.

Okay. So I, you know, I'm hanging out. So I hang out with him, not all the time. He would do. And you knew his case, right? Like how bad it was. Like, you knew like he took money from pensioners. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you were cool with that. I mean, I was cool with it? I mean, I was, I mean, was I cool with it. Like, you didn't take any money from me. You know, and there's not that many people in Coleman that you can really talk to. I agree. The truth is, you know, out of 18, 800, half of them are sex offenders. Out of those guys, you know, most of them are drug dealers. Or they're, you know, they're just, they're doing things that I'm not interested in doing.

They're gambling, playing cards. They're playing, you know, handball. They want to watch, watch fucking fishing shows. To get your mind off stuff, yeah. Right. So I hang out with the fraudsters or whoever. Your avenue to get your mind off. That was writing people's stories. I mean, that's a good avenue. Right, right, which I had always hoped that when I got out, I could be a writer or something. I didn't know what, but I knew something. So anyway, I'm walking with Ron, walking with Ron, and we're walking every once in a while.

And as we're walking, I'd only been back maybe six months. And I'm walking with him. And he's telling me, he's complaining because he said the fucking the government, they're never going to cut my sentence. And I'm like, eh. Like you're going to die in there. Yeah, yeah. They're never going to cut my sentence.

I'm like, eh, I said, be a gruff, but a little bit of a sad sack. I mean, you know, yes, and sometimes he was fucking hilarious. I liked them. I liked Ron. So we're walking and he says, yeah, it says, listen, I, he's like, they're never going to cut my sentence. And I go, well, I said, what do you say? What do you think that? And he goes, well, they think I hit Ponzi scheme money.

And he had always made a big deal about how he had dug up like, I don't know what the number was, but it was like $5 million or $3 million. You talk about coins and stuff? He talked about it. Yeah, yeah, he had them in big. Under a tree and stuff. I don't know the cans. But I mean, yeah, the cans, right.

But it was a great story. I love the, I love the imagery, right? It's got these big fucking ammunition cans, right? The sardine cans, right? Right. Like Tennessee or South Carolina, where is you from? It sounds like an old Civil War type of thing. It's great.

Yeah, I know. So he's telling me, and I'm like, well, yeah, but you gave him the money, so what's a big deal? And he's like, right, you don't understand. I was like, okay. You know, like I'm not, I could care less. And this is the thing about Ron is that multiple times, this is just another thing, things that you had said that multiple times he had said, you should write my story.

Would you consider, he never said it like that. It was always like, would you consider writing my story? And I was always like, no. Why do you? Why do you think people do that? Like, I've never asked you. No, you never asked me. And I did, although you said, oh, Matt asked me, you know, dozens of times.

which I don't remember dozens of times, but I did mention several times, like, you got a great story, we should write your story. Yeah, I didn't say that in a disparaging way. I said that's the truth. You've asked me to think about writing a story. I just, you know, the reasons I don't want to do it

because, you know, there's no reason to put my wife and kids through. I mean, I'm on podcast now, but I'm going to, but I'm saying that, you know, there was reasons at the time. I mean, like, you know, articles that they asked me to write, they weren't going to pay me. I can't pay their restitution. You know, this, in my case is a little different probably because I didn't care about the glamour, you know,

understand? Like when, you know, when American Greek called me, I'm not going to do the show because I don't, they're going to make me look like a scumbag. Right. Well, and I know that too, but I'm also thinking the government's telling me they're going to reduce my sentence. Oh, no, yours is different. I'm saying in general, like, some of these people just want to have, be notorious. They don't care. I don't care about that. Like, like, you know what I mean. Yeah. Well, so Wilson says, but he's saying it, and I liked Wilson's story. Yeah. I always, and he, by the way, he always had a, he had a name for the story, which he had come up with, which was, the tarnishing of Ron Wilson, which I always thought was pretty good. You know what I'm saying? So because it was silver. You know, his his Ponzi scheme was based on silver.

I think you thought he was Shelby foot or something. Yeah, he thought a lot of himself. But so what happened is he kept saying, and I remember I was like, oh, you know, I kept doing that this is what I do when I don't have time or want to write your stories. I'm like, bro, you should write this story. Like, I'll help you. I'll help you. And I would help someone. Yeah, I'm more than happy to help people.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm more than happy to help people write the outline and they can do it. They're just lazy. So he didn't want to do that. Oh, yeah, well, maybe I will. I think he did start, he did absolutely start writing this story. But he kept saying, saying, he was like, and then one time he even asked me, why don't, why won't you write it? Like, I see you write this fucking drug dealer story over here.

Like what? And I said, the problem is, I said, you're not a sympathetic character. And he wasn't. You know he was. There were times when he would say, there were times when he would talk about his crime. Like most people, it's never black and white. white. Right. You know, there were times when he would talk about his case and he'd break down into tears and start crying. There were also times when he would say some of the most

fucking callous things that you were just like, you're just like a monster. I remember when he told me about this woman who had come into the, this woman who was divorced, she was about 35 years old. She was divorcing her husband who was like 25 years old. Oh, Lord of her. He's like 60 years old or something. And she came in to him because her husband had invested all of his money into Wilson. Right. Right. Like his whole life savings is in Wilson's Ponzi scheme. Right. She came to him and she says, listen. And she has Parkinson's, by the way. He said, not so much you could tell, but she's starting to shake. Yeah. Yeah. I remember saying that. Yeah. And he goes, he said, she came to him and said, look, if I give you $100,000, what could I expect to have in five

years. And he goes, I don't know. He said, are we talking about cash? And she goes, yeah, cash. He goes, all right. He said, um, listen, he said, I know you got more than $100,000. He said, you've been, you've known you were getting a divorce from this guy. This guy's 25 years older than you. He says, you've been squirrel and away money. He said, come on, what have you really got to work with? I can't work with the $100,000. She goes, if I give you, and I don't know if it was 200 or $300,000, it was like, let's say $300,000 in cash, what will it, could, could I expect in five years. He's, you give me 300,000 in cash. He said, you'll, he said, you'll be a multi-millionaire in five years. And he goes, and, and she goes, okay.

Doing what? Well, because he's investing it. Oh, he's investing in. Oh, he's investing, but what does he say he's investing in? Oh, in, um, silver, uh, he's trading silver's commodities or whatever. He's trading. Um, he's not. No, I know he's not. I mean, it's like the Ponzi scheme with stamps. Right. Right. Exactly. So he, he, she, she came in a couple days later with the cash and, and he was, I mean, she had like 300,000 in cash. I don't know. I might have been 200, but she had 300,000 in cash. And I was like, really?

And I said, and he goes, yeah. And I went, he said, she was saying five to 10 years because it was five to 10 years because she had Parkinson's and she knew that, um, she knew that she in five or 10 years, she wouldn't be functional. And she needed to have a nest egg right to take care of herself. Yeah. And, and he's like, so I convinced her and she gave me the 300,000 in cash. And I was like, oh, okay.

And I went, what did you spend that money on? Because he didn't invest it. Right. This woman's got Parkinson's. And he looked and he goes, he said, I bought this beautiful antique carriage. And I put it in the, he had his own. Remember he had the historical society. Museum.

Yeah. It's a huge museum. And I put it right in a historical society, yeah. This is this woman's got Parkinson's. She's not like a retiree who's 35 years old. She's in five or 10 years. She's non-functional. What I'm saying is like, it's like it's, you know,

It is really the odd couple, though. I mean, like, listen to me, he's 30 years older than you. He's gruff. He's gruff. Yeah, he's gruff as shit. He doesn't really have that great of a personality. I know, I know, but he's simply, it's either got to be the father figure thing or, or, I don't know, you're bored or something because he wasn't. No, I like to run.

A lot of people thinking he was an asshole. He was an asshole. But he wasn't ever an asshole to me. Oh, well, but, I mean, I don't argue. It's hard to be an asshole to me, you know? So I'm, I'm very cordial. with him. I'm nice to him. And I didn't spend every day with him, right? Like, I'm hanging out with my

buddy Pete. I'm hanging out with you. You knew, you basically knew his charge before he told you about hiding the money. I knew his charge before I even spoke with him. But what I'm saying is, you can construe it as this because don't say I don't see things, but you said, hey, I talked to the FBI and I talked to my lawyer first, and my lawyer said, he's got a bad case. You knew he had a bad case. I knew he had a bad case.

I'm saying it sounds like you sound like, it does sound like like you just talked to your lawyer and you were like, oh, he's got a really bad case. Oh, no, no, I know all. But you did say it like that, though. I'm going to call you on that because it made you sound the way you presented it. Just like you're telling me the way I presented things. I construed it as like I talked to my lawyer. I went back to the dorm.

That's what you said. This is your words. I talked to my lawyer. He looked him up. I think it was your wife looked him up. Somebody looked him up. Yeah, you said that. The lawyer looked at him up.

He said, oh, he's really got a bad case. You already knew he got a bad case. Why say that then? Because that's what the lawyer said. No, I know. I know. But like, he's not telling you anything. It sounded like new information, like almost.

Yeah, it's not new information, but she said, she looked him up, saw him in the new, I'd never read an article on him. I already knew he had a bad case. But it wouldn't matter if he said, oh, he got screwed. It wouldn't matter, though, right? I don't give a fuck. Yeah, exactly. So, right, so which is exactly why it, which is exactly why it doesn't, I'm telling you what she said, because it's irrelevant. I'm just saying that's what the conversation was.

So we're walking around the, we're walking around the compound, the inner compound, not the, not the track. And we're walking around, and he's mentioned it multiple times. Yeah, they're never going to give me anything. And I say to him, well, if they don't give you anything, then we'll have, Frank, file 2255. Relax. I'm like, he'll get you time off. I just got the fucking time off for me. And you're actually going to have arrests.

And he goes, and I, and he, I said, he says, oh, you don't understand. I go, why do you keep mentioning that? What is it, what is it you think? I don't understand. And why do you keep mentioning this? And he goes, he kind of, he was. can I trust you? And I looked at him and I went, probably not.

And he goes, and he goes, I did actually put some Ponzi scheme money away. And I went, okay. I said, well, they would have to find the money. And I was like, I mean, is it buried next to the old money? I mean, what? He goes, no, he said, I gave my wife about $150,000. He said, you know, and just some gold or, sorry, precious metals and some cash. I think she's got some like 100,000 in cash.

He goes in my brother's got like 30,000 he's holding for me. And I was like, I was like, oh, okay. I said, well, you said they've already talked to them. And he's like, right? And I said, okay. I said, well, they've already talked to him. They're not going to talk to them again. I said, and your wife certainly isn't going to say anything.

She's already been talked to. That's your height, she's hiding proceeds from. I mean, this is, this isn't Ponzi scheme money like this is from rich people. This is pensioners money. So, you know, I'm like, so this is. It's a big deal. Like, they're going after this money. And they've already talked to her.

She's not going to hand it over now. Right. And he goes, oh, he goes, here's the problem. The problem is, since he'd been arrested, she found out he was having a longstanding affair for a couple years with a much younger woman. She was furious. They were in the middle of a divorce. And his wife, he said, was bipolar and the kind of woman that would burn the fucking

house down around herself. And he said, you don't understand. She'll burn the house down. He said, he said, just to make sure that I don't get a, day off my sentence, I think she will turn that money in to give them a reason not to give me something. They typically need a reason, even if it's bullshit. So I was like, I was like, okay, well, if that happened, I said, well, I seriously doubt that. But if they don't give anything, we'll file 2255. I don't say anything about it. And a month or so goes by. I had been to trial. I was waiting

for my transcripts to come. They never came. I call my lawyer and I say, hey, I never got my transcript. She said, oh, Matt, I'm so sorry. I forgot to order them. Okay. So she said, I'll order them. I'll order them. And that's when I'm on the phone with her. And she says, so how's it going in there?

And I went, it's fine. And she goes, anything going on? And I went, no? I said, what do you mean? And keep mind, this one represented me. The whole time she represented me, we're actively trying to get my time off my sentence. She never wanted to talk to me. You know how they are?

They want to get up the phone. And I went, and I said, she was nothing. that happened in there? I went, no, what? I said, listen to this. And I said something. And I'll be honest, this, because I'm just saying exactly what happened. Yeah. Because in retrospect, like most, the wall phone, wall phone, guys right next to me, everything. In retrospect, and what year do you think? You probably know, a date with this. Give me a date around. I don't remember. I don't remember even a year. I mean, we're checking the fucking thing. I'm assuming this is early, no, I'm assuming this is, if it was 2014, I'd say this was probably mid. No, you said it's

after you, you gave a chronological thing. You said that you talked to you, it's after you were actually your lawyer about transcripts or something. Like I'm trying to piece it together. In 2014, maybe, is it 13? I would say that I had this. This is the reason I think it's late 2013. Because they indict him in April of 2014. They reindict the wife and him. So I'd say, let's say it's middle of 2013, maybe early 2013. Because my timeline is wrong, like in my head, like, you know, when we were in the dorm. So what's crazy is that, okay. So I talked to her and she says, she says, well, and I say, listen to this. And I tell her what happened. And she goes, hold on. And you know, you hear her typing. She types up. She was, okay, hold on. She goes, oh, wow.

She goes, yeah. She goes, oh, she said, oh, this is a bad guy. She's sold from fucking churches and and I was like, right, right, right. I said, okay. And I said, uh, it seems all right to me. You know, whatever. I mean, I'm hanging out with fucking, you know, you're hanging out with guys that have fucking bodies and, you know, whatever. This guy's cool. You know, I'm having lunch with some guy who's got two fucking bodies. He's all right. Yeah. So, so we're having a conversation and I'm like, okay, okay.

I said, she says, well, let me look into this. I said, okay, and I hang up the phone. I hang up the phone and I don't think anything of it and I truly didn't think anything of it. And here's why. Because in my first case, when I'd actually done everything they asked me to do, they didn't want to give me anything. I had to follow 2255 to get them to give me. So they're not going to give me anything for this.

On top of that, even if I think if I, if I tell them, hey, here's who has the money. and they go out and they get $150,000, $180,000 back. You know what they're going to say? That's not substantial. That didn't help us. I certainly don't think they're going to indict Ron Wilson or his wife or his brother. You know why? Because I'm thinking if they get the money back, why would you indict them?

And two, you're not going to indict him. He just got 19 and a half years. He's dying in prison. Right? Or you're not going to, and well, all this really does for him is you're not going to give him any time off anyway. So now this gives you a reason not get time off. So I don't think anything, I'm like, oh, okay, hang on the phone.

Maybe a week later, the CEO says, hey, you got to go see S-I-S. I go, okay. So I go to S-I-S all the time because I'm ordering Freedom of Information Act on guys that I'm doing stories on. So I go in there and usually I deal with Sacon. Remember Sacon? I deal with Sacon, but it's not. It's Bulldog. And I walk in, I'm like, hey, what's up?

Here to get my mail. And they're like, and a bulldog, like, Cox, come here. Sit down. He's such a fucking dickhead. Picks up the phone and calls, and I'm thinking, fuck. You're like, what's going on? Calls the phone, picks it up and says, and says, here, you got to talk to this guy. I get on the phone.

And I'm like, yeah, hey, and this is Secret Service agent. I want to say Griffin or something. Somebody Griffin or something. And I'm like, yeah, I understand you know where Ron Wilson hid Ponzi Schee Ski monies. And I'm like, holy shit. And I go, uh. So you just threw it by a lawyer and then she just took it from there. She just took it by there.

And listen, she had no – this woman never took any incentive to do anything. How in depth did you tell her what happened with you and Ron? This guy told me where – all I said was this guy told me where he's hidden Ponzi scheme money. He told me two people that have money that is Ponzi scheme money. And she said, holy shit, oh, this is, you know, this is pension money, blah, blah, whatever. Okay. And she said, let me look into it. That's all.

So obviously I don't think anything of it. she couldn't even order my fucking transcripts. He's not going to fucking go. I don't think she's going to do anything. But, you know, he was a big deal. But in some podcast, you made it sound like when he said that, you said, oh, that could be used. Like, when he first said it, like, when he first said it, you're thinking in your mind,

that couldn't be used. My very first thought when he said it was, was that, is that enough? Is that enough to get me a sentence reduction? And I immediately thought, no, because they didn't want to give me anything the first time. They're not going to give me anything. Just like I just said, they're not going to, and that's why I went and I laid down and I didn't say anything for months. And, you know, in retrospect, I should have called the next fucking day. So you're trying to say, I shouldn't have waited.

But you're trying to say I was in that door for two years after that and people are still telling you their stories knowing that you told on somebody that told their story to you? No, nobody knows that. Nobody knows what happened because I go into SIS. I talk to them. As I'm talking to the guy from the, I'm telling him, I'm not going to tell him anything. I need something from the U.S. attorney. and a letter from the U.S. attorney saying they're going to reduce my fucking sentence if they recover any money at all. He goes, okay, I'll take care of it.

He says, look, here's my fucking, here's my number, my email number, email address. I get the email address. I write it a little sticky bag. I leave. I go and I put him on my core links. Do you love this?

I'm corresponding with the Secret Service in the dorm. No, you sell you a thing. I know that. with these fucking guys around. You're a candy-ass low, and then maybe if you're at the pen on the medium, I mean, we, you know, we got... Might have been a little bit more terrified.

But so I go in, I get on the thing, months go by. I'm slow walking. No, I'm not, you know, like I, I'm, there's nothing for me to say, wait. So it, not months go, but let's say a month goes by. And then eventually they come back and they send me a copy of an email from the U.S. attorney in South Carolina saying that if, if they recover it,

substantial amount of funds, which was bullshit, or they said, or it's all subjective. You know, they'll consider it substantial assistance, but that's all you're going to get. That's all I was going. I wasn't going to get a guarantee. So I get it and I say, okay, here's what happened. And I tell him, here's what the guy told me. I mean, you know you can find down the rabbit hole now. I mean, like, it's not like, oh, I'm all in.

I'm all in. I'm not going to hold back. So I tell him, hey, here's what happened. Here's what he told me this and that. They go, okay. They say, then they come back and they say, hey, have you ever heard about this girl? this woman? I'm like, yeah, that was this chick, blah, blah, blah. Who you ever heard about this woman? I'm like, yeah, that's the chick that he was having an affair with. Did she know this? And I'm like,

he's always said that she knew this at this time or she didn't know until this time. Well, when was that? This time. So they start asking me questions. They asked me questions every two or three days for months. But he didn't go back to trial on the second. He got re-indicted. Did you go back to trial? You didn't have to testify or anything. No. So months go by. Months go by. And he didn't go by. And he didn't go back to trial. And he didn't go back to trial. And he didn't. I'm And finally, it kind of peters out. And then one day I get an email and they say, listen, Wilson is going to get some bad news today. You were in the dorm of the time with him still. Yeah, he's still there.

He has no idea any of this is happening. Nobody does. I mean, obviously not. I mean, I mean. So that happens. The only person knew that this was going on was Frank Amadeo. And Frank Amadeo. And Frank probably does some of the various things himself too.

At this time. Yeah. That's the only thing at that time because somebody else does know later. Okay. So what happens is one day... I'm saying whoever knows keeps it like tight slip because of two years I didn't know about it. Right. I mean, like usually in prison, like nobody keeps, you know, lips tight.

No, no, they gossip like a sewing circle. So what happens is anyway, at some point the Secret Service is, hey, listen, he's going to get some bad news today. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. Well, he didn't. It took a couple days. And then one day I'm walking across the compound and somebody scream or I hear somebody yell, Cox, Cox!

And I turn around. I'm like, and I see. him walking towards me and I think, fuck. Like, we're in the middle of the combat. All I need is a screaming match by the guard tower or the little guard shack. And he walks up to me and he says, and he's like, hey, and I'm like, yeah, what's up? He's not going to believe this. I'm like, what's that? And he says, I talked to my lawyer, you know, a few hours earlier. Because by this point, he's been moved to the military dorm. Do you remember he's moved? So he's moved. And I went, and I went, too. Yeah. And I go, what's up? I said, what happened? And he said,

he said they called in my, my wife and my brother, which I'd already known that. He had already told me that. And he said, I just, I got re-indicted. And I said, holy shit, are you serious? I said, man, I did not think you were going to get re-indicted. I can't believe that. That's crazy. And he goes, yeah, he said, they re-indied me.

He had told me this earlier, but he had said that they recovered half a million dollars. And I was like, half a million. And I said, you, I thought it was like $100,000, $150,000. He goes, yeah, I said, you told me it was like $150,000. He goes, I didn't think I could trust you. I went, really? That's like being half pregnant. You already told you about something.

Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's $10 that you fucking hid. So anyway, he says, so he's like, yeah, they re-indicted me. My lawyer said they're going to put me on the pack out. And he's like, I don't know what to do. What should I do? And I said, I think you should go to trial. because I figured if he goes to trial, then they have to call me as a witness.

Of course, yeah, you get more time on. Jesus Christ. Oh, man. So, so he ends up, he doesn't talk fucking lame. He fucking rolls over. So he gets, I'm not laughing, but okay, I understand what you're saying. He goes back, no, I understand. You can't laugh.

So he goes back to, to South Carolina. And when he gets there, he gets his, discovery. And in his discovery are, I don't know, probably 120 emails between, you know, 60 from me, 60 responses from the Secret Service, let's say 120, back and forth, back and forth. And so he knows right away, he knows right away that I fucking, that I'm the one that fucking ratted him out or whatever snitched on him, whatever you want to call it. So he writes a letter back.

do you remember the guy they used to call Rick Flair? Yeah, I remember. He wrote a letter to Rick Flair. Yeah. Because he was his old celly in the in the army unit or whatever, military unit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he tells him, Matt Cox got me re-indicted. Yeah.

And he explains exactly what happened. And he says, be careful, watch out for him. He says, I never told him anything, but he somehow figured it out. which I don't know what that means. And he said, yeah, he said, watch out for him. And so Rick Flair didn't make this broadcast news. Of course he is. He's walking around showing.

But what year was this? Same time. You're still there? You're still there? I must be making the time. You know, there's people that would have called Yonah, not me like, you know, like WWW and people like that. I mean, there's people that probably would have like, man, that's a little fucked up. I mean, like, even if they say, what are they going to, they're going to say, oh, that's fucked up.

No, you know what they're going to say is like, you know, I'm certainly not going to do a book with you. Jesus, crap. I'm not going to tell you my life story anymore. The cat's out of the bag with that shit. I'm still writing stories. But nobody knows. But I know I'm saying that word rumors leaked out. You'd have to be a retard to tell you your story.

You're like now because you've already used a story against somebody. Do you remember Bradley? Bradley had gotten like he had a company where he was selling medical equipment or something. Like bald head? No, no. No, no. He had a good head of hair. So anyway, Bradley comes up to me one day and he says, listen, he said, I don't.

Maddie said, I don't care. That's how we started it. Like I'm like, you don't care. He goes, I don't care. He said, I don't care what you do to try and get out of here. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, it's a weird way to start. And I went, what do you?

And he said, but I just want to know. He said, there's a rumor going around that you cooperated against Ron Wilson. And I went, okay. And he said, Ron Wilson wrote a letter. to somebody, his old sally. He said somebody he was in the dorm with. He said his, he was, and I don't know how, what he said exactly, but I realized right away Rick Flair.

So I go, okay. And he said, and it said, here's what it said. He tells me exactly what it said. He said, I had the letter. Like, he let me read it over during count and took it back. I went, okay. And he says, yeah. And I said, he said, so I don't know if you did that or didn't do that.

I don't really care. He said, I'm just curious. did that happen? And I said, oh, well, you know, what does it matter if it happened or not? Like, what do you care? Like, what do you getting at here? And I, and I said, would you go around telling people? Would you tell, if you were me? Would you say, he said, okay, never mind. Like, he understand. He's like, I get it. Okay, fine. So I then go, and I find Rick Flair, and I walk up, I've never talked to this guy, by the way. I walk up to him and I go. He was a strange character. Yeah. And, and, you know, I did know, because Wilson knew him.

He, his wife had actually moved next to the prison. I knew that. Right. He had run. He had run some kind of a Ponzi scheme too. So I go up to him and I walk up. I said, hey, what's up? And he goes, hey, what's up? And I can see the look on his face. And I said, listen, I said, I know that you've got a letter from Ron Wilson. I know that you're showing it to everybody.

And I said, now here's the thing. I said, let me explain something because he doesn't really know what's going. He just got a letter. I said, I know that it says that I'm cooperated with the Secret Service against Wilson. I said, so I'm going to let you in on something. And I said, I'm cooperating with the FBI, too, on several major cases in Tampa. And he goes, okay, isn't true. But he said, he was okay.

And I said, and I said, I have a management variable locked on me on this institution. I can't be moved. He was okay. I said, but you know what's going to happen? You're going to be moved, yeah. I said, if I go right now to lieutenant's office and I explain that you've got a letter, you're passing it around, that I'm in danger. Right.

Right. I said, they're going to move you to FDIC Baghdad. I said, I'm pretty sure your fucking wife moved here, right? I said, you want to see your wife again? I said, if I was you, I said, I would not be showing that. I don't think he showed a lot of people because he didn't. They can't get out of the Baghdad bad because, like, I'm not plugged in with everything, but I mean. Listen, it may have been, like, Bradley may have been the, the, like, he told me that he's showing the letter around. I don't know who showed it to.

Maybe it was five people. Maybe it was 40. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, what happens is I end up, so I'll tell you, the other person that knew that I told, do you remember Nico? Yeah, Nico, of course. So Nico one day comes to me, Nico's about to be released. And he says, listen, he says, I'm getting out of here. You know, I'm going here.

I'll be home in like a year. And I was like, right, right. And he goes, he said, you know, I've heard you talk about like there's something. I called a third party rule 35, and I'm like, right? He said, he said, Matt, I just, I can't, I just, I don't, I'm not okay with you doing seven more years here. Like I had like seven more years. I had like, six or seven.

Yeah, seven more years. And I was like, okay, he said, and I know that there are people out there that I used to work with. He said, that have never helped me, never done anything. He said, I could probably help you out. And I went, I don't, I don't need that. I don't need that. And he goes, what do you mean?

I went, I said, oh God, I said, Nico. I go, oh, my God. And he goes, what? I said, I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. I said, I know how it's going to sound. I know you're going to be upset because Nico did not cooperate. I know.

And I said, I'm going to tell you. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, I'm going to tell you. And he goes, okay. He goes, well, what is it? Just tell me. And I said, I, I said, I'm probably going to get my sentence reduced.

And he goes, oh, shit. And I said, yeah, I said, Somebody said something. Here's what happened. I explained very briefly what happened, but not who. And he goes, who, who? I said, oh my God. I said, Nico.

I said, I'm going to tell you. I'm telling you as Matt. He said, listen to me. Listen to me. He goes, you're a friend of mine. I don't give a fuck what you have to do to get out of here. He said, what happened? I said, I cooperated against Ron Wilson.

I told him about, because he had already been indicted by this point. And I said, I'm the one that cooperatings Ron Wilson. And he goes, holy shit. He goes, oh, my God. And I'm like, he goes, oh, my God. And he's laughing, of course. He's like, oh, my God. He said, oh, that's horrible.

That's what I said, oh, you know, fuck him. He's like, no, I know, I know. He said, oh, that's horrible. He said, ah, that's too bad. He said, I like him. I said, I know I liked him too. But he had to go. So I tell him that, and he's just like, oh, he's like, okay.

He's like, well, what do you think? I said, I don't know. I haven't heard anything yet. So anyway, by that point, he gets, he gets sentenced. His brother gets, they both get like probation, a year probation for obstruction of justice. He gets six, Ron Wilson gets six more years. Another thing, by the way, that you kept saying 10 years, 10 years, 10 years. I mean, he's got more years.

Yeah, he got more years. So 10 years, 10 years, 10 years. The truth is he got six. It's in the articles. You can look it up on Pacer. Okay. I'm not sure why that matters that much. I mean.

Well, because you kept saying. Because here's the thing. Okay, six years. You got six years. We'll stick with that. No, he got six months. Oh, six months. Did I say six years?

You just said six years three times, four times. Sorry, I'm sorry. He got six months added onto a sentence. He just told me three years, six years three times. Okay. Okay. I'm just, I'm saying, if you want to try to get, I'm trying to get mine specific. I woke up at four o'clock in the morning.

No, I know. I'm just saying. I'm old. You're trying to correct me and like in your, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry. You can look it up. It's six months.

Okay. And I only mentioned that because, you know, the 10 years. And I said this on the phone is that, you know, you're right. The spirit of what you said, I said something. I got him re-indicted. And I got more time added on to his sentence. And so the spirit of what you had said on the podcast was true. And I'm saying the spirit of what I said, and I want you to know, is not to get points

and not to say, like, we're on different wavelengths. But I really honestly believe that there's only, when you, when somebody, does dirt like we've done, there's only two ways to handle it. Either you tell them everything you're done, try to get less time, or you do like I did and you fight them. That's the only two ways. And I went with, you tell them everything you've done. But not, but not, not on, it's knocked off. Right, that's it. But not. Because it's foolish. It's foolish to not say something when everybody else is saying something. I mean everybody, everybody love Hitler. It doesn't mean some people bucked them. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's just lame.

No, I disagree. Just because just because everybody's doing everybody. I mean, a lot of people love Trump and it doesn't make any sense. Like everybody, everybody's doing something so that's cool. That's good. I mean, that's what's justifying it. No, no. I'm saying that everybody's testified.

Not everybody is. Not everybody. Not everybody is. Not everybody is. You sound like one of those rappers. Like, I testify because everybody else testifying against people. No. So you're saying, you're saying you're supposed to just get 30 years and go and do your

fucking time. If you've done dirt, like you're not supposed to give me, it. You learn that in elementary school, Matt. Now you want to let me tell you and ask me the question? Elementary school, we learn. When you go to the principal's office and you've done something and I've done something, you're taught at that age either to own up to yourself, but don't say, oh, because, you know, you know, you know, Andrew did something worse than me.

No, that's flawed. Like you don't, you don't know, but I know he did this in the, in the cafeteria. That's flawed, Matt. It doesn't matter if you're 35 years old, you're 15 years old or you're seven years old. Listen to me, it's flawed. It is. You could be cavalier, but I'm not. I'm just saying that.

Okay, so I'm saying what you can disagree. I mean, I'm not saying you can't disagree. That's your opinion. But, I mean, to say my opinion, if you're asking for it, is that you only handle it two ways. Yeah. Don't do the dirt. Or, you know, be a man, just do your time. That's it.

I mean. So why didn't you take a point? So you're telling me this, right? You're saying anybody in that prison that tells you something to get your time off, you would have done it, right? Anybody in the prison? No, probably not. Oh, so there's some people you would have, you would have passes on. Sure, sure.

There are some people. Why? You just said it. I'm going to just do anything. I really. You almost sound like I was stupid for not saying something if you've heard it, but now you're saying there's some people that can tell you and you would take a pass. Absolutely. There are some people.

You just said I was stupid if I got information to get time off and I would say, no, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't match. I'm not. Okay. It's a scale, right? Like everything's a scale. No, it's a scale. It's wrong.

It's wrong. You went to trial? No, okay. So what does that have to do that? You're guilty? Of what? Maybe not. Of what?

Of what? Fraud? Of fraud. Like I said, it's black and white. How do you know I'm guilty of fraud? Like, because we, we pitched earnings and you ask a guy what he could make. I mean, that's black and that's not black and white, Matt. You know that. No, no, I disagree. Here's, look, the way you just told your story. Okay. Yeah. I understand how you told it. And I let you tell it. Sure. Sure. Well, that's why I'm here.

Because you've, you've mentioned multiple times that I do a whole softball thing where I don't, I don't call people out, right? Yeah, absolutely. You don't want me to, do you, do you want me to, do you, do you know, you can make it your opinion on my case? I don't have, I don't care. Okay, so like, like, no, if you want to say I'm fraud, that's cool. Right. I know your case. Like, I'm a big boy, Matt. You don't have to curtail it for me. It is fraud.

Okay. You, you, 100% committed fraud. Okay. And like I said, that's your opinion. You took middle. Well, no, it's the federal government. You're guilty. So everybody that's been guilty, there's no innocent person in jail.

No, but I know. They never get it wrong. But I know your case. But they never get it wrong. They didn't get it wrong in your case. I'm just saying. I know they didn't. Okay.

I know that one, you've. Is it worth 17 years? You, no, absolutely not. Like 100% you say no. I don't think you deserve 17 years. Okay, so if you were in a jury, you knew I was going to get 17 years, what would you have said? Seriously. He's going to get 17 years for this.

God, you don't deserve. You didn't. Would you have said not guilty? You might have, right? I might have. Okay, that's what I'm saying. There you go. Then that, not guilty is still a not guilty, right?

Yeah, but. But what? Well, I'm trying to say. But you think I'm guilty of the fraud, right? Which is okay. I'm good with that. Only because. I could be.

I'm not even defending myself, Matt. You are. You're not even letting me answer. No, but, no, I'm saying that. You're asking me a question. I'm saying that if you were a juror and he's definitely going to get 210 months minimum, could get 226. I would rather see you go free. Okay.

That's honest. I'm glad you said that. I'm not glad you said that because your answer. I'm glad you said it because I think you're honest. No. Listen, listen, whether you believe this or not, I got no reason to lie about a fucking thing. I wouldn't lie about anything. I have no reason to.

I don't care what any viewers think of me. Yeah. I don't care what you think. of me. So I have no reason to lie or tweak or twist or anything. So what I'm saying is that I would look at you and I would think, hey, maybe this guy deserves two or three years. I'm not going to give him 17. So I'd rather he walk off free because I don't think that what you did was, I don't think what you did was you went and you said, hey, this man is 75 years old and he's and he's got a $400,000, or Sorry, $400,000.

Okay. If there's retirement, I'm taking it all. Okay. I'm going to leave it on the street. I don't think you're that fraud, sir. Okay, Matt. I think these people got the machines. And you know what?

And I agree with you, but this is what, this is why I have a problem with it. Because when we talked about two months ago with text, I asked you specifically, if I was stupid enough to say what Ron said to you about me about me about me, about me. About me hiding money and I didn't hide money. I kept it in the bank and I took it. But if I was stupid enough, you said you probably would have told them. That's what you said by text. First of all, I said. Even though you know I got way more time than I should have.

Right. I'm glad that I was never in that position. But at the end, you said, yeah, you would have told them. Right. But had it been the same? But you said you would have? Is it a yes and no question? Would you have used knowing that I got way more time than I should have?

I got taken away from my family and my case isn't really black and white and I got 17 years. No, but if I was stupid enough to say, you know what? It's amazing how you're setting up the question. No, it's not a question. You took yourself away from your family. No, I did. You did. No, but you're saying I got too much time, though.

You could have entertained pleading guilty. No, but you're making the difference with me and Ron Wilson, not me. you made a difference. You said your case is you got too much time. He didn't. He was doing some nefarious stuff. Would I have said something and got you an additional six months? Sure, probably.

No, what if you thought I could get six more years? Yeah, I don't think it would have made a difference. Right. Okay, that's what I'm saying? Okay, that's all. That's all. To me, like, I cringe. That's all.

Yeah, I get it. And listen, I get it. You're disgusted and you're upset and you're horrible. It's just trying to say that, yeah, that makes me cringe a little bit. I get it. I hear you. That's all. I'm trying to say, like, I didn't separate me and Rawlsson, you did, and by saying, and you're right, and he got pensioners and stuff like that.

And I sold some people vending machines that they got. And then I'm not saying, you know, I sold in bad ways. I'm going to admit that. But I'm saying, you think I got probably way too much time. Yeah, I think you got way too much time. And then for me to say, hey, I'm trying to help out my wife and I hid some money, which I didn't. But if I did say that, to give me more time from that is like just killing me. You see what I'm saying.

I don't think it's killing you. I didn't kill anybody. No, but you see what I'm saying. Thinking that I got too much time, but thinking I got too much time and give me more time for a slip-up in a confidential conversation, it just gives me a twinge in my heart. Here's the thing. I notice whenever you frame one of these questions, you do it for me in the worst possible light you can think of. Because if you would have done it to me, that's cring. That makes me cringe. I mean, I'm sorry about that. I'm just saying that there's some things in prison that we've been through some hard times. We've both been through some big sentences. We've both got big sentences.

and that we tell some people in confidence and we talk about things and you know a little bit of confidence. I'm not saying you were my best friend, but I'm saying we talked about family. I don't think I told anybody in prison anything. You talked about struggles with your wife and you talked about struggles with a kid

and you told me some personal things. I did. By the way, the same things I told you, I've told every single person that watches this. I'm not trying to say. I'm just saying that. Like, I didn't tell you anything that I don't care as in public.

I'm not pretty sure you didn't tell everybody in that dorm about your personal stuff. I mean, a lot of those guys were sex asses were crying out loud. Well, I mean, I don't think I talk to every sex of there. No, but I'm saying you're not chopping up saying, hey, my wife is this and I, my kid. I mean, we had personal conversations.

That's a little bit different than just casual, lottoddy, blazay conversations. I understand. I have personal conversations with Ron Wilson either. I'm saying, Matt, there's a point where you become maybe friends, semi-friends, what you can do in prison, like, you know, casual friends. I mean, at best, we're work friends. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that we are. I'm just saying.

Which is basically when you can leave. You never talked to that person again. No, of course. But there's a point. Like you and I were never really friends. I'm not saying we were friends. I'm not saying we were something. I mean, not to share some things that I'm not going to share with everybody.

And maybe you wouldn't have shared with everybody. That's all. I mean. I mean, I hear you. That's all. So if you really thought I got screwed with the sentence now. Yeah, I think you should not have gotten 17 years. Right.

And for me to, which I wouldn't do, but to me to slip up in confidence and tell you about, you know, hiding money for my wife and get about six, seven more years, that'd be pretty cruel. Well, I get it, but if it's between you and me, it's going to be you. Not you and me. It doesn't have to be said at all. I mean, you can just, like, eat it, eat the word. Or I could go home five years early. I mean, that's what you, I guess anything.

So like I said, and you think it's this cavalier, but if your wife said that, hey, listen, I've had a Trump time, I embezzled money from my, my boss and you are at visit with her. Now it's my wife. No, but, but, but why does it have to be? First of all, she was my ex-wife. Oh, ex-wife. But, but second. But, secondly.

How about an uncle? Like, where does it draw the line? That's what I'm saying. Well, first of all, if I- You said definitely not my wife. I wouldn't tell my wife. Look, I didn't cooperate against my wife the first time, did I? But I'm saying, where's the line drawn?

An uncle? A brother? I don't know. What's your line that you say, no, I can't do it against that person, because they're a relative? I don't know. I think it's a case by, it's a case-by-case basis. We'll agree to disagree, but bad is bad. Like, wrong is wrong, so that's all.

I mean, you can be cavalier. I'm okay. I'm okay with it. But, I mean, that doesn't mean, that just means I have to say what I feel. So bad is bad. But you draw the line at wife. Maybe it's, I don't know, uncle or brother or, I don't know, a good best friend. I don't know what you draw.

My brother, he's going to prison. Okay. He's going to jail. All right. Mark's going to jail. That's sad. What, you don't really know Mark. It doesn't matter.

I know you got the same blood. We actually, he's actually adopted. But I hear you. But I hear you. He's good to go. He's good to go. Jesus. Oh, man.

Okay. I mean, this is good. This is a good conversation. Jesus. Yeah. I think it's good. I'm curious to see what people in the comments say who haven't, who don't come from, I guess, they've never, you know, you never experienced prison or, you know, anything on the gray. Like, what are their thoughts on?

On this subject? On this subject? Like, both your guys' opinion, you know what I mean? 50% are going to say that I'm a rat piece of shit. And then 50% are going to say, fuck that guy. I had to fucking cooperate it too. Because that's what it always, that's what it is. You know what I think is 45, 45 and 10.

He doesn't know the 10% of the people are going to say this. 5% of the people are going to say, you know what? Anything goes. Like some of the people that say to snitch, they wouldn't say anything goes. Like you drew the line with your wife. Right. You draw the line with your mother, right? Yeah.

Even if she told you something like she did horrible. Of course, I'm going to, it's my mother. Right. But your wife, like you draw your line, your uncle. Where is it like your stepson? You know, you say to some kind of where the line starts. You see what I'm saying? But I think five percent of those people, and this is, I've seen this out there, and this makes me boggle my mind, is that if you think you're going to get too much time or you're innocent.

Like, I never said I was innocent. I've never said that, by the way. I've never ever said the words, I'm innocent. I've said I've got too much time. And sometimes you're fighting because you're looking at too much time. Could that be a, could that be a barometer too? Like if somebody's going to look for 20 years and they think they only should get two, three years, maybe you should fight it. You know what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is this, though. There's some people out there that think you never fight them, which is scary because you don't want a system like that. You really don't. They're not infallible. They make mistakes. You know what I mean? You don't want a system that automatically going to lay down and they're going to deba everybody. That's scary because that's almost like a stop-o type of stuff.

They have to be right. You got indicted. Do the time. You see I'm saying? That's not good. Well, I think that's where it is now. It's not good is what I'm saying. That's why I'm saying our system is, is, that's bad.

I think them contacting, them contacting. your witnesses, them making threats, then making veiled threats, all of that. I think obviously that all of that is wrong. But then, and that's why they, they win. But they, but they started doing that not, they didn't used to do some of those things, but they want Ws. Right. Well, I also think that the jury should know what you're facing. That's, that's why I said it about our system being so like the glorious system of the whole world. If you, why isn't the feds, the state says it? Why doesn't the feds say, at least what I'm looking at? That's like, that should be rudimentary. Yeah. No, I agree. Listen, there's lots of things that are, there's lots of things that

that are not good with the system that should be corrected. But, you know, whatever. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, there's nothing I can do to correct those things. And I'm, but, but, but everybody is saying there's nothing they can do. I guess it keeps going on, but so I'm not saying I'm going to be a savior. Yeah, but you have to understand. Who's going to, so people just start going to trial. Oh, no, no, you're misunderstanding. No, 90% of you probably didn't even know about me not being able to tell them how much time I'm going to get, at least something like that. At least to say to put a light on some of it. Because I believe some people don't even know what we just said.

Like, you can't tell them how much time you're looking at? Right. The jury has no idea that this person's facing 20 years or 25 years. No, but in state, you can. Right. But in the feds, they do it because they want Ws. Yeah, I understand. It's not, it's not looking for, it's not about justice.

It's about getting, it's about getting, it's not. But I don't think the average person knows that, though. So it just says light on that. I don't think it's, I don't think it's, it's not worth doing. That's what I'm saying. I mean, just to shed a little light. That's all. I'm not trying to be a martyr.

I'm not trying to be, I'm just saying some of those things need to be addressed. That's all. I'll stand behind that. Right. Well, I mean, I've mentioned that multiple times about the system. That they should, everybody, I've said that over and over again. The only time, the only time they get to know is if you're facing the death penalty. Right.

Which is why? Like, why shouldn't they know? Because I think it's, they think it's possibly damaging to the, to the jury themselves that they're, oh, I had no idea he was faced. If I said guilty, he's going to get. He's going to get killed. And that's why they let them know, by the way, we need to know going in. Are you going to be okay with this? Because otherwise, if they know and then, oh, my God, that poor man died, I feel horrible.

I want to sue the government. It also goes the other way with that kid. All he did was sell two pieces of crack. No, I agree. And it's his third time. And it's a third time. Are you a lot of issues. That's all I'm saying.

You know what I mean? They shed light on some of that. My people go, oh, really? They do that. I would have never known. I mean, you know. It's not going to change anything. You can't say that, though.

I mean, it's like saying, like, they said the same thing when they're, you know, whipping people outside here in the 1960s with water hoses or something. Don't bucket. It's not going to change. Things are getting better right now. Trump's got this whole thing that they just put through, which is, uh, I like Trump. Oh, God. I'm a fan. Don't cut that.

I'm going to throw up. They've got a whole thing right now where they're talking about you probably be able to get off probation. They're now saying you don't have to get it. Not all that much money. You know I owe restitution. It's like letting, like a bookie letting you off with your own money. They're never going to let me off. Well, you know, I owe money.

I mean, I know. I couldn't get off probation either because I owed money. I've been on probation about a year now. I'm going to be on two more years. Do you really think that judge that I went to trial with that's 85 years old still hanging on trying to do not on the active bench, but he's still like the mechanism? You think he's going to say, yeah, don't worry about the. Okay, let's take you out of the picture that from here on out if you're released, you don't have to go on supervised release and they're talking about making it. The system now is if you do like half your time and you don't have any violations, you'll get.

cut off. No, I hope that's true. I've also heard him talk about no more camps and that doesn't happen ever. You know what I'm saying. There's a lot of things he talks about. Get him time. He's got he's got much of shit to do. He talks about bleach working for COVID. I mean, he talks about a lot of stuff. He's trying, right now I think he's still trying to get them to put real sugar in Coke. Yeah, he wants that Mexican sugar, he says. I love that Mexican stuff. That's the best. Jesus, nah, it tastes like shit. Was he locked up in Coleman with us? He was the camp with me. Oh, the camp. Yeah. That's too bad. Remember Kenny King?

Yeah. I've mentioned Kenny. Like about not of the ten guys that you've told me, but you like you shake your head when you say it. Like you say them. Because he was a nut. No, he was a nut. No, I'm telling you like afterwards. Like something, it seems like some of the people you talk about something happened afterwards.

No, no, no, no. Kenny King, he's, he's, he's, he. I don't know. No, no. He got out. He was fine. He's fine. God, I'm just thinking about all the guys that were locked up.

Sure, sure, sure. Are there some, what guys does Andrew, that have been on this show that the audience would know. Like, so you know Cook? Cook? Yeah, Cook I know. Do you know what happened with? Oh, you know what happened with Cook?

No. Well, you know Cook came on the program. I know Cook came on the program. But you know he got re-arrested. From the program? No. I don't know. I don't know.

No, no. He was driving with some girl and he got pulled over and they searched the car. And they searched his bag, which he says that the, so they caught, they got ice. They got ice. They got a weapon. and they got Viagra. So it was going to be a good time. And they searched the car.

And he said that if the all that he says, of course on a recorded line. He says if that stuff was there, it was hers. But they took me out of the car, searched me when they went into the car and pulled the two of, pulled them out and searched the car. His bag was right next to hers in the front. It was now in his bag. And so he's going to go to trial. and, you know, but he's locked up in, Pasco?

I don't know. How long was he out before all this happened? Manatee? Um, uh, how long was he out? A year? Came on the program. He did great. We were going to try and help him start a podcast.

People were asking for him to come back. Yeah, people wanted him to come back. I like Cook. But by the way, Cook would have to go too. It was between me and Cook. I'm saying this. I don't, I don't like people that cavalier about their freedom.

I mean, that's just stupid. Who? Cook? Yeah, if he's hanging out with it, he's got ice. I mean, you could, I value freedom too much. When I heard him on the phone, you can kind of tell, like, this guy's a wild one. He's wild. Every time he calls me, he's always, you know, he's always, just don't cry now that you've got to get another sentence because. He was always cutting up.

He's always like, he's still cutting up and laughing. He thrives in prison. Who else from the show that the audience would know that is anybody else that? He knows Jacob Diaz. I don't know if you remember him. I remember him, yeah. Oh, Jacob. I mean, knows Devaroli, which.

She didn't, I never interviewed Deverelli. He knows Derek Nolan. He knows. Yeah, Derek, of course. Donovan Davis. So Derek called me up after I did the other podcast. Okay. And he said, oh, you called me a junkie.

I said, yeah, you were a junkie pretty much for a little bit. When I knew you, you were doing, you're going pretty hard. I mean, I was telling the truth. I mean, I didn't mind Derek. He has good stories. He was thing. But he was, you know, at one time, he looked pretty bad. Oh, I don't, I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know.

I don't, I know he was doing, I know he was doing stuff. No, I'm saying, he's got his life bad. He got together. I gave him all credit. He's got a kid. Oh, he's kicking ass. No, he's kicking ass. But like for, for, for you, like, me to not say that you, look, listen, me, you, you, you,

you, you, you, you were, you know, you look bad. Like, when he, he went to another camp. He looked like he looked like he was like a ghost. Oh, you saw him in another. I only saw him at a transfer when he was going to another place. And I didn't recognize him. Like, he, I, like, like, a, like, a skeleton. Not a skeleton, but he was.

I don't know that. He's got his life back. That's good. I don't know if you know, I mean, he knows Frank Amadeo. He knows Pierre Rossini. I guess some planes that I'm trying to sell, like maybe Frank. Was Boziac? Was he in the low?

What? Was Boziac in the low? Yeah, I don't know if you would remember it. Because Boziac was there for literally like six months. Yeah, yeah. I bet by face, I'd recognize him. Yeah, he was. Is Franks not practicing law?

Is he? I mean, what is he doing? No, no. He's in Orlando. He's taking his meds? Yeah, he's in Orlando. No, fully medicated. Good.

I believe he started doing, he started working with companies doing something. I don't know. But he was out for like a year and a half and the government violated his probation, threw him back in prison based on him being out of leaving the jurisdiction, which he didn't do, and them receiving two phone calls saying that he was in the middle of committing the same crimes that he had committed. prior to. This is what they said. They violated him. It took himself, took him six months to get himself in front of a judge. And he got in front of the judge and he said, Your Honor, I had an ankle monitor on, so I don't know what they're talking about. They know exactly where I've been

all the time. And you think it was to get back at him like fighting all those cases and stuff? Yeah. And so, so he tells him that and he says, and also I'd like to review any phone calls that you said I got because what are you talking about? I'm committing crimes. So the government, the judge goes, yeah, what are you talking about? They go, oh, well, they were anonymous calls, Your Honor. And he's later like, Judge goes, anonymous calls.

Like, you just had him locked up. And then he's like, okay, well, I want to know about the ankle monitor. Oh, we'll get that information. They then proceed to delay, delay, delay. And it took a couple of weeks or a month to get him back from the judge. And they say, well, Your Honor, we can't provide that at this time. But we believe, they said, he said, that's it. Let him out.

And so he got back on. But you can imagine six to eight months of just destroying his fucking life. And so he starts over again, his whole life over. again. He's Orlando. He's trying to recruit boy bands, no? Boy band. That's Pearlman. That's Pearlman. I'm just kidding. I don't know who else you would know that we've had on the podcast. That might be it. I mean, that's kind of all the guys that I can remember.

Because Isaac was the medium, right? Yeah, he doesn't know Isaac, which is great. He's a friend of mine. He's locked out right now. Lock back rate locked up? Yeah, of course. He's been back twice. That's why the recidivirates that 60, like. 78% because I'm not jaywalking. They beat me. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not. I don't have to get hitting the head twice and realize hitting the head's not good. How long ago did you get out? I got out two years ago. I got September 6th. The day after my birthday, September 6th, 2020, I got out of the camp, went to the halfway out for about 10 months, went in home confinement for about six months, and now I've been on on probation for about 10 months.

So I've been out a little over two years. and yeah it's tough it's just the you know the challenges we don't think of the psychological challenges when you're first guys you know it's just you know the time that we did over a decade is is going to change everybody if they don't think it changes you you're just not looking at it i mean you don't even realize some of the things you you know psychologically that changes you a little bit i mean yeah no i think i think i was uh definitely definitely had some some major issues for a long time this is what's funny is that everybody when i got out all my the people that i would was around. They used to say that I was aggressive. And I was like, aggressive. I never saw that.

Like, I'm not aggressive. Like, what are you talking about? They're like, just like that. And I'm like, that's not aggressive. That's just me being, I'm assertive. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, aggressive makes me think of violent. Like, I'm not a violent person. All aggressive, like a one argument or something. Right. And I'm like, what do you talk? And they were like that. And I was like, what do you? And so that was one thing.

The other thing is, I mean, psychologically, like, I remember around three, three 30, I used to feel anxious. Yeah. Because I knew at four o'clock you have to be standing. Like, that upset me. Every, for probably months after I got out of the halfway house when someone would knock at the door and I didn't know, I would think, for a split second, I'd think, like, oh, they're here to get me.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know you're saying. They're here to get me because they, they know that they shouldn't have let me out. You know what I'm saying? Like they're going to say, oh, there's a such and such. One of those high school dreams. Like, you're back in school or something. We let you out five days early and you got to go back or two months or you should have, whatever.

And I'm like, fuck. There was all, just all kinds of just fucked up shit that, uh. I mean, the Pollyanna country would be something where we get out after over a decade and get some kind of psychological help or something. No, that's not going to happen. No, I know it's not going to happen. I'm just saying that, you know, that's all right. I'm a big boy. I'll go all right.

I'll be all right. Me too. The, the good thing was that the entire time I was locked up. was I was writing those stories, you know, and that I kind of had a plan. Like the books that I wrote when I was in prison, I got out and I published, and they've made several thousand dollars a month for, you know, years. Okay. That helped pay me. And the other thing I was going to mention when I was in the halfway house, I got out with like 300 bucks, and I broke. And remember the story I'd wrote and got the guys in Rolling Stone? Yeah. So they'd option. So they'd optioned

It was optioned it once, then they optioned it again. And then when I got out of prison and I was in the halfway house and I have 300 bucks. I remember I had just gotten back from the super Walmart where I'd never been in a Walmart before. They were amazing. You never in a Walmart? I'd never been in a Walmart. Yeah, I think you probably. No, I don't know.

It was not like this. Right. Like I remember being like, holy shit. I need these deals. This is amazing. I spent a couple, two, three hundred bucks on a whole new wardrobe, which you could do at Walmart. And I was basically down to almost nothing. And my ex-wife called me and she said, you got a letter from that lawyer.

And I go, what lawyer? And she said, you know, that lawyer. And I went, she's the one that sent a letter like a year ago. And I went, no, open the fucking letter. And she opens the letter. And it was a check for like almost $7,000. Because they optioned. Right option, yeah.

Again. And I went, and I went. Holy shit. She's, oh, you motherfucker. She's like, I can't believe that you, you know. And I got another check from these people. I was like, oh, my God. I mean, literally I've been there a week or two, whatever.

I barely even been there. It hadn't even been a month. It'd been, whatever. Like maybe a few weeks. And I cashed that. I deposited a check. And I was able to go buy a new car, not a new car, whatever it. Buy a car for like 20.

$2,500, maybe $3,500, get a year's worth of insurance on it, get some new tires, and that was broke again. But that car got me to work and back for about a year, and then COVID hit, and I went and bought a new car. Sold that car for $1,000, bought a new car. And my probation officer gave me shit about the payment. I know you remember the date because the date, everybody remembers. What was your date if you never got time off?

2030. It was like January of 2030. So you'd be like, what first step you would probably get, you know, a couple years off or something? For the first step act? Yeah. Here's what happened. I was supposed to get like 35 days. Right.

And but by the time they implemented it. No, what I'm saying? If you had to do your whole term, you would have got a lesson. Oh, okay. I was going to say, I actually got like a week off or seven days off. I'm saying if you did your whole term, you would have got a couple years off, probably. I would have probably got probably close to a year, eight or nine months. Yeah.

And like me, I got a year and a half halfway house. So you, you probably been out about, you. In about a year and a half, two years from now, a year, about a year and a half. Yeah. Did you start your podcast? How's your family? My dad died, I think, 2013 when I was in prison. And so I got out and my mom died two years after.

Right. And I was lucky enough to spend the last two years. That's cool. You know, I was able to go over, God, I went up by there at least three times. And I was there when she had her final stroke. Okay. Like, actually, we had just gone to a walk. No, that's good day you got out before.

Yeah. I mean, that's. We'd actually just. just gone for a walk. Yeah. She was in a wheelchair. So I pushed her around with her nurse, brought her home, and we were putting her in bed, and she had a stroke.

And then over the next week, it took about a week for her to die, and I was there every day, and I held her hand when she died. Nice. And so your new wife you met at the halfway house? Met my new wife at the halfway house. She did not want to date me. She said I was a city boy. Oh, okay.

She said she makes fun of guys like me. Was she like Polk County girl or something? Okachobi. The land? Okachobi. And she, it's funny because when you mentioned, um, uh, white trash, I told her the other day because we just got a pit bull puppy. Yeah.

And I said like if it, if it, if it wasn't clear that we were white trash before, the pit bull puppy just pushed it over the edge. Yeah, yeah. Look at my arms. And you've been in prison. They're all, look at, look how scratched up. Yeah, next thing you get a tattoo and you'll be all right. Yeah.

Um, yeah. I mean, my wife took me back. Uh, and then. And, you know, I was, it wasn't, she wanted me to get a square job. You know, I was in the house all the day and, uh, let me back in. And then now I get my own place because it's just, I was on her nerves. Well, why, why not get the, the job? I mean, there's a couple jobs.

It's funny because I shouldn't have got let down like this because I had a probation officer, a different one first. Right. And she said, I got a sales job, which, that's all I know. I mean, not all I know. I mean, I've been to college. I mean, like, I could do something else. Like I could work at Walmart or something, but...

What's wrong with the sales job? Okay, so, no, so I get the sales job, right? And I'm working in it for three, four weeks. I'm making, like, first week I made $1,800. I mean, I got to pay, and I got to pay 25% restitution, you know, before taxes. But anyways, but I know, mine's 25%. It's basically, basically 50%. It's $50.

Yes. If you don't realize, if I make $1,000 out there in a week, I'm making $500. Yeah. Because of, you know, tax and restitution. Anyways, I worked there for, like, three weeks. I'm living with my wife. Everything's great. I'm going to work every day.

She comes on a Friday. and says, oh, I'm going to violate you. You didn't tell me it was this kind of sales. What kind of sales? Like, it was just basic sales. It was selling marketing for a company online. Okay. She says, no, no, man, you're going to get me in trouble.

Like, I'm going to call the judge. This is, she comes to the work. She doesn't call me. Yes. So that let me down. I liked the job. And then, like, I kind of got downtrodden from that a little bit. You know, no, no, no sad, stuff.

You know, nobody has to cry for me. I mean, I got, I finally got cataract surgery, and they screwed up my eye. Mm-hmm. Yeah, remember. Yeah, they detached my retina. What about now? I can't see out of my right eye. I'm suing them, but I mean, oh, yeah.

You know what the crazy part about is? This guy in Mendelssohn that did my eye surgery was referred to me by the BOP. They decided not to pay for it. My daughter pays for it. Listen to this. This guy five years before was in the feds for election fraud. And now he's a renowned eye doctor. He was an eye doctor before that.

But they didn't tell me he was in the fed. It's irony, right? Right. So I get pissy with a guy because literally, like, Like he said, oh, you might have had a detached retina before the surgery. Why wouldn't you look at my eye before the surgery? You wouldn't do surgery on a detached retina. Right.

He detached my retina. Everybody says so. So, you know, in the middle of lawsuit with that, but I can't see out of my right eye. So I went from just a little blurry wanting to get a corrective surgery. Yeah, cataract paid him $5,000 to, yeah, me, yeah, get a detached redner and then permanently screwed up my eye. I fucking hate to hear that. So, yeah. So, yeah.

So, yeah. Right, right. But that's no, nothing to say that I shouldn't just square it up and get a regular job. I mean, just, I think if I worked just at Walmart, my wife would be a cool target. What about, and when you were talking, I was thinking about this, is that you have experience with these people that make these machines. Yes. Why not contact? Like, you know the, probably the people that you knew are probably still in the business.

Of course, absolutely. Why not call them and see if you couldn't do some kind of sales, marketing, something? Yeah, the type of people, like now they did business to me. And, like, I was, like, doing the wrong thing. Like, I've been in prison. And I hear what you're saying. And I hear what you're saying. And I called one of them, actually, two of them.

Okay. And they're like, listen, we love you, man. You're a good guy and everything. But, like, we got to keep away, like, you know, you're fraud. And then all, like. Well, you'd be, because you'd be shocked how many people that contact me and want to talk to me about real estate. And I'm like, I went to prison for basically real estate fraud. Of course.

Why would you possibly want to talk to me? And, you know, they'll have me on the programs. They'll have me on, you know. You know what Angola that I thought about. I thought about when they reached out to me, people like just from the videos, I don't barely know social media, but I put up a post. I get a lot of views. And then they DM me about, hey, I'm looking at this opportunity. Maybe you can look at it for me and help me, like, look for the bad and the good things and something. And, right, that's a consultant for that.

But then I'm not sure my PO would want me to be a consultant for, you know, the things that I did, but I would be the knowledgeable on that. The red flags or the other good things about a business. Like, all this is legitimate. I give keynote. I give keynote speeches every single, at least a couple a month. I give keynote speeches every single month for banks, financial, uh, sorry, banks, credit unions, uh, cyber conventions, you know, every, uh, uh, a forensic accountant, the funny thing, you don't want to listen to this. I went yesterday, fucked it.

I, it's three hours. I drove three hours to speak at a high school. They don't, they don't pay me. They didn't pay me. I don't, because I'll talk for education like universities, high schools. Yeah, it's a brand. And law enforcement, and I don't charge. But so I went down there and spoke in front of three different classes.

They teach forensic accounting in high school. That's pretty cool. Wow. Yeah. I don't think these kids are paying attention. But I talked in front of them, then drove back for three hours. But just went to Canada. I texted you when I was in Canada.

They did, yeah. I didn't think I'd get into Canada. But, yeah, I mean, all the business opportunities I've sold and all the things I've seen, and all the things I've marketed and all the things I've come across. Yeah, I'm pretty much an expert on something that I can tell right away is not going to be a good thing. So why not sign up for LinkedIn and start fucking just start, start hammering people? You should. I got to have the gumption to do that, which is no excuse.

So, yeah, all of that. Social media, I've had, you know, there's 30 people that podcast people. First, my PO wouldn't let me, obviously. We took care of that. Yeah, exactly. And I appreciate that. And then the second thing would be to have a vehicle to, to, to, to have a vehicle to, to, use that. Like, even the viewers here, they like my story. They, they realize that I have something

to say, you know, where do they go? They go to my Instagram. They go to my, you know, I don't know. I don't even know TikTok. I don't even how to use it. Like, like, I got to be more savvy on that because there's a lot of people reaching out from me, like, either do a podcast or I'll put content out every day. When I only, I'd highly put content maybe once a month. Like, I'm just, I'm just, no excuse. It's just, I should be doing more of that. Yeah. I mean, it's not going to, you know, you've seen the, I'm sure you've seen the, you know, nobody's coming to save you. No, no, and that's true. And you call it a rut and call it whatever you call it,

then I just forget about that. After life goes on, you know. Yeah, you got to start waking up early. You got to start making some, making TikToks and put it down. You got to ask people to, you know, listen, somebody will, and, you know, somebody out there will say, hey, this guy would make a great salesman for yachts. Yeah, they're never going to let me sell anything, though.

That's a problem with the probation. That's like I'm saying. Well, you keep saying, do you know what you do? you go to the judge and say, Your Honor, I have a, I have a sales thing with it. And eventually they get tired of being overturned. They get overturned once or twice and they're like, fuck. I would have to push it because I know my PO is such a blockhead, like, you know, he's going to watch this. But, you know, he's, he was, to not let me do it.

He was, he was bad. I'm not saying I don't like the guy. He's actually a nice guy. But he thinks he's going to get in trouble for it. Yeah. No, I spoke with him. Right. He was concerned about, he was like, is this something that happens a lot?

What do you think? Because he didn't quite know. He's like, no, he thought like, we're going to talk about like, I don't know, show people how to commit fraud or so. I don't know what he was thinking. Well, he thinks I'm going to glamorize it. And, like, and not once I've come up here and talk about Wolf of Wall Street stuff that I did. You know, I had $20 million in the bank at one time.

I'm not going to talk about stupid stuff. Like, you know, I could sit up here for a whole show and tell you about private just to, you know, to Vegas and stupid stuff, like getting people in my office like he got. I mean, I'm not saying I can't glorify it, but it seems hollow. Right. Well, I think I still can't watch a Jew law. Yes. Did you know that? You remember that story because Jew law is a professional asshole.

Yeah. Listen to me, Jude Law, for everybody, no, I mean, Jude. The poker table, that's your story? Yeah, Jude's story. Jude Law is like, I'm at the poker table at the Belagio, and it's like 2.30 in the morning. I'm with my wife, an older lady sitting here, me and my wife, and then nobody to my right. So Jude Law shows up to my right. It's like 2.30 in the morning.

I'm on a burner, though. Like, when you're on a burner, like, you're not going home. If Hitler shows up next to you on your right, you're not going to just get up and leave. Right. because you're on a burner. So, and my wife appreciates that. So, uh,

so, uh, so July shows up. Anyways, about maybe three minutes after he shows up, two girls come up to him, very sweet girls, about 23 years old and says,

Mr. Laura, I really love your work and I love you. And he looks at him and he says, when did you get out of here? You know, I'm busy here. Like, just shoe away.

And I'm like, damn. I don't give him. I say, man, you, you like that. Oh, you don't know the pressures of being a star. I'm like,

you're not the Niro, man. Like, it's like, come on, man. And you could go to a private room. You're in the middle of the Belizeo. It was a $500 an up table, but you're not in the private room table, right? So my wife kind of rolls her eyes, and the old lady on the left, she's like, man,

she knows who he is, but two more girls come up and like, oh, my God, what is he going to do? And he tells these girls, he calls one girl a douche and says, are you, are you stupid? Like, like, get out of here. Can't you see I'm busy? This is ridiculous. And, like, you don't know those pressures. And I'm like, man, you got to, they pay your paycheck for. crying out loud. Yeah. You bet you would have begged to be in that position. Come on. Ten years earlier.

When you were trying to be. With his English accent, he calls the girl a, like one girl a bitch. And I'm like, if he's got a boyfriend, this guy, he can beat you up or something. I mean, like, it was real disrespectful. And he, but he, but then he sees my wife's reaction. And I'm on a burner. So my wife wants to go. You know, I'm winning every hand. So my wife says, no, let's go. Like, and she looks at him. And then he tries to, like, justify it with her. Hey, you know, you don't know the pressures on Monday. She's like, you've got to be kidding me. You're a rude aho. And then the old lady gets up. And so we all kind of leave and I collect my money in the deal like rolls his eyes. And then he adds in a classy little dig. He says, you know, Mr. Law, like, you can go to a private room now.

Like, you can go. There's places that, you know, won't be bothered. But yeah, he was a big time. I met a lot of celebrities and very, none of them were that bad. Yeah. I was going to say, so I always think, not that I'm Jude Law. But I always remember that story Because I remember being like, you and I having a conversation where I was like, wow, like you would have done anything to be in that position when you were starting out.

Of course. And so you forgot about that. And those people pay your paycheck. Right. So whenever somebody comes up to me because, you know, because of the commercials and everything, you know, people come up to me. Fuck all the time. Like literally I'd say if I go out 10 times, it's at the point now where it's nine out of 10. 9-0-10.

If I'm really out, not if I'm stopping at the gas station, but if you're really out at a restaurant or walking around. And if I walk through the airport, for sure, it's like, boom, boom. Listen, I went, one of the times I went with my wife, we both went on an airport airplane, sat down, and I'm sitting in the middle seat. And the guy looks over at me and he goes, he said, man, should I, should I have my credit cards? And I looked at him and I went, what? And he goes, no, I'm just joking, bro. I remember you, you're the fraud guy from. I've watched your stuff.

And I was like, hey, what's going on? But every time somebody sees me and says... It's because you remember the Ju-Lot thing, because it was horrible. But every time somebody sees me, like, I'll be eating. Yeah, sure, sure. And if somebody sees me and says, oh, man, I love your stuff, bro. You can politely say, hey, I'm having a problem. I'm sorry about that, like, a thing's looking at me.

Listen, I've only done that one time. Right. I've done that one time. And it wasn't that. And usually, like, I'll stand up, but they're like, can I get a picture? Absolutely. I'm surprised I didn't. I should have said that.

I've only done that one time. in the gym talking to a former co-defendant when a guy talk about listen oh my gosh listen i'm going to tell this story you're going to love this story you're going to you'll be all right okay this this this buddy of mine we can leave his name is rudy because nobody's going to watch this this is at the end of the video nobody's watching rudy was a co-defendant of mine listed on my indictment as just the initials just as initials, who has convinced himself he's never done any fraud. I'm in the gym one day with my wife. We're working out.

This is, you know, we work out like 5 o'clock in the morning, 6 o'clock in the morning. And we used to. I haven't we were in work out in six months or a year. I'm fucking in horrible shape. But the point is, is that I'm there working out and Rudy sees me and comes walking up to me. And I turn around and I'm like, Rudy.

Now, I tried to contact him in the halfway house. He didn't want to talk to me. Ashley said he called his lawyer, and his lawyer said he would call my probation officer and have me thrown back into prison if I tried to contact him again. And I wrote him a nasty letter back and said, when did you become such a bitch, blah, blah, blah. And so he comes up to me and he goes, oh, you called me a bitch? And I went, what? Because I'm happy to see him. I'm like, hey!

And he's like, oh, you called me a bitch. And I went, what are you talking about? And he goes, he said, yeah, you, because I had done a podcast where I mentioned this. And he says, yeah, you said you sent me an email or text saying I was a bitch, being a bitch. And I went, well, I said you were acting like a bitch. He goes, I never got any text message. I said, because you blocked me. That's why you didn't get it.

Right. And he goes, well, and he goes, well, uh, uh, um, and I said, what's going on, bro? I said, listen. I said, I didn't mean to offend you. I said, I just wanted to talk. I've always wondered what happened. And so he spends the next five minutes complaining about how the FBI. questioned him a bunch of times about the case and how it ruined his life.

When by the way, when I met this guy, he was about to fly back to Belgium. He's Belgium, whatever that is. He's about to fly back to Belgium because he's being about to be evicted from his apartment. So when I meet him, I pay for his apartment and I pay for his electric because it was, I think it'd been shut off. Pay to get it to hire him as a real estate or start working with him as a real estate agent. and I basically get back on a fast track through fraud, absolutely my fault. But he knows it's fraud.

He knows it's all fraud. And so anyway, eventually when I end up having to take off and I leave everybody behind, they're being hounded by these FBI. Yeah, you told me about Rudy in prison. I remember, yeah. Yeah, yeah, big tough guy. Look like kind of like a better looking version of Van Dam. Right.

Anyway, who's also from Belgium. So anyway, Rudy's, he's kind of like all like, like, yeah, this. And my wife's sitting right here. Like, he's clinched up, right? but I'm being very like, golly gee whiz, you know, he's not going to hit me. And so he starts calming down and he's sitting there talking and this and that. He's like, yeah, man, well, and I said, yeah, bro, I just wanted to know what happened. I just, that's the only reason it reached out.

I'm not trying to offend you. I'm not trying to upset you. I said, I just like, well, you know, I've got investors. I was mentioned in several articles. I said, oh, okay, I said, I get it. I did go to prison for 13 years and you didn't get anything but talk to by the FBI. And by the way, if there was a list, I mean, if there was a chart where it was like Matt Cox here, and there was that line underneath.

It would be Rudy, Dave Walker, and probably one other idiot. And then a bunch of people underneath it. But he's convinced himself he hadn't committed any fraud. So we have this whole conversation, and we're talking. And he calms down. And as we're sitting there talking, he's like, yeah, this, this, this. And he, a guy walks up to me and goes, excuse me, Mr. Cox. And I go, yeah, what's up?

I don't know if he might work at the gym. I go, yeah, what's up? He's like, bro, I love your fucking stuff, bro. I'm subscribed to all your stuff. He said, I just wanted to say hi. I know you're busy. I said, man, I said, I appreciate that. And I shake his hand.

I said, man, appreciate it. I said, I am kind of in the middle of something here. I said, I'm sorry. I don't mean to. He said, no, no, no. I should, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I said, man, I appreciate it.

And he turned around and he walks. I said, yeah, okay, cool. And I go, you were saying? And the look on Rudy's face, bro, I couldn't have, I couldn't have been orchestrated any better. He's like the look on his face. and he looks over at my wife and he goes, how often does that happen? She goes, all the time.

And he went, he goes, boy, you've really turned this into something, haven't you? And I said, I really have. I said, but what choice did I have, Rudy? I said, I can't run from it. I might as well lean into it. I said, and it is what it is. And he's like, oh, I see you on the fucking TV all the time.

And I go, oh, I said, oh, yeah, the commercials, yeah, yeah. And he's like, well, yeah. And so we just kind of start having a conversation. And he says, hey, he says, you know what I'm going to do? he said, I said, you know, I said, I'd love to have dinner with you sometime, bro, because I was considered you a friend. I liked you. Not that I wouldn't have cut his throat if I had to.

He obviously would have cut mine. He certainly did. He didn't reach that line with an uncle. No, no, he's below the, that threshold. He's the bro, the stepbrother line. And if he wasn't, when I read his 15-page FBI 302 on me, that pushed him over the edge. So he, anyway, so we have this conversation and we talk, and he says, yeah, and I said, yeah, and I said, look, I said, yeah, I'd have dinner.

And he goes, look, he said, you know what? Yeah, let's have dinner. We'll talk. It's cool. No problem. No problem. You know, here's my number. Text me.

And I said, okay, no problem, no problem. No problem. And then I got a phone call like the two days later from a mutual friend that said, yeah, Rudy thought about it. And he said, it's just too upsetting to talk to you because of the trauma that he went through because the FBI question. Oh, God. I feel like, I feel like that. He's just doing that. for like that make himself feel like a justification.

It's good, yeah. Like I did do 13 years. You know, 13 years, three years on the run, you know. Three years on the run. That was on you. But I mean, that was my fault. Which, by the way, was an amazing part of my life. Like, probably not the best part of my life because I love my wife.

And I know. That's what you go to. Yeah, it was a great time. Like, I just saw a movie. Like, when you die, you go to the best part of your life, whatever you age is. Well, it's not the best. I made that mistake before. I said the best.

And I really, I shouldn't have. It was something that I said and I hadn't really thought about it. I meant kind of like during that period of time. I don't know if it's the best time you're like. Because honestly, like right now my life is, is, it's very good. I am certainly not the person that I wanted to be when I was, you know, in my 20, you know, in your 20s, you have a vision of who you'll be. You're right. And that person is not this person.

Right. That's true. But for everything that happened in my life, this is the best. best possible solution. So, you know, and I love my wife and I love my dog. He's so sweet. I mean, he's mean as fuck. I mean, he bits.

What's his name? What's his name? His name is Aries, which I'm not thrilled with. You wouldn't testify against Aries, right? I mean, if Aries got to go, bro. Aries got to go. That's good. I mean, I have no ill feelings for your success.

So you worked hard with that. I know that. But yeah, I mean, I just say, you know, obviously. see, you know, I'm not going to pull punches, and it's just, you know, the way I feel about the other stuff. And that's, and again, not trying to play Joe Prisoners, just, and I don't know what it is. And maybe it's the way I was brought up. Maybe, like, I don't know the switch. It's not because people think this way.

I don't think this way. I never, ever have opinion because people sway me because everybody does it. I'll never do that. Like, I'm too from Massachusetts for that. Like, you call Massholes, we don't, you know, I don't care of. 99% of the people believe this and I believe that because, you know, 99% of people could have been gay for the stay. I hear you. I didn't like it and head and head with the hammer when I went to the prison.

When I got out, I still don't like it and hit and head with a hammer. So I don't know about the gay stuff, you know what I'm saying. But you see what I'm saying? I'm trying to say. Why do we? I don't even know. But I'm saying that you said not, you said that everybody's doing it. Like, you know, everybody's testifying.

Oh, God. Are we back to this? No, no big deal. It's fine. Keep going. Anyways. Anyways, no, no, it's cool. It's cool.

Congratulations to your success. I think that, but I mention one thing, I think that as long as you dwell on this. It's not dwelling. It's just telling you. Well, I hear a lot of guys. I haven't been to be you in nine years. I got to talk about it because it would be crazy not to talk about it. Right.

I just think. Like, hey, I haven't met you, Matt, because that's actually your show. But by the way, you did testify on somebody that was in our dorm. That's like, that's, you know. Testify, I would have testified. Well, I mean, it's kind of. I would have been out earlier. You got an indictment on him.

You got an indictment on him. I would have been only. Anyways. Anyways. That would have been. Now, I don't get that lucky. I should, honestly, contact. That cavalier stuff is.

Contact Ron Wilson. Isn't this bad karma? Yeah, I'll be all right. If this is bad karma, you'll sign me up. You'll take more of it? Okay. Sign me up.

I should call old Ron. I would love to call Ron. You know he got out early for COVID. Was he dying or something? No, no. Just COVID. Didn't he have like 15 years left? He got out on the.

Care of that? Yes. That's what I'm saying. He didn't do any of his stuff. He did less than 50% of the 20 years. He did like eight years. Yeah, but I'm saying. Yeah. That has nothing to do with what happened.

I mean, I'm saying, okay. Well, I mean, I said, oh, to me, I made a good call. I wrote a letter. No, but I'm saying he got out. I'm saying he's out right now. I could have him on the podcast. Did I do it? He'd probably come on the podcast.

Maybe not. I don't know. Here's what, oh, I didn't tell you this. Probably a bad health or something. I didn't tell you this. Oh, I hope not. He had such a great head of hair. He did.

He did a great, great white, thick. Yeah. I mean, just amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, you're right. So he, listen to this. I didn't tell you this part.

You're going to love this part. Because I've said this before. Yeah, yeah. One day, and you were in the unit for this. One day. So remember I told you he got the, he got his, his, fuck, whatever it was, his discovery. Yeah. So he'd been sentenced at this point.

I want to say I was waiting because I was hoping I was going to get something. because I ended up filing a 2255 because they wouldn't give me anything. Government, when we filed the 2255 and said, hey, you guys say, they said they'd give me something for this. This is what happened. These people got indicted. You were covered half a million dollars. They were like, we don't know what you're talking about. So luckily I had that letter.

The whole thing worked out. I got five years off. You got five years off just for that. For Ron Wilson. Yeah, because at $100,000, I'm thinking you get in five years. No, no, for half a, it was happening. No, I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

You got a, you hit a scratch ticket. I don't think it for the 150. I don't think, oh, listen, they're desperately trying to fuck me over. Because I thought it was 150, but it ended up being half a million. And I didn't think they'd re-indied him because it's like, you, they already got you, bro. Because he told you something like crazy, stupid in confidence, but he didn't tell you the truth on it. Right, but it blew up. It blew up on him.

Like, it ended up blow up. That's bizarre a world. I'm just saying, it's kind of funny looking at it from the outside. I mean, you know, it's just, it's. So, so when, so I'm sitting there one day in myself. Yeah. And I'm waiting. and, you know, it's for count, for four o'clock count.

And there's a, there's a black guy in his bus clothes. He just got to Coleman. Yeah. And he's right across from me. Okay. And I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there. And he goes, hey, hey, man.

And I go, yeah, what's up? And he says, you know a guy named Matt Cox? And I mean, like, you know, like fucking, right? Now, that's what in prison, if you're looking for somebody, right? Like, you ask another white, you ask somebody of that race, right? So, and I went. yeah, I know Matt Cox. And I'm thinking like, this is bizarre.

And I was, and I was like, yeah, what's up? And I go, and I pull out my ID and I show him. I go, I'm Matt Cox. And I said, what's up? I'm not thinking anything. And he looked at me, he said, you know a guy named Ron Wilson? And that's when, like, goosebumps. This is during the middle account when I was in the dorm.

Yeah, they haven't counted yet. You're probably in the back corner. So I'm sitting, I go, yeah, what's up? I'm in the very close to the front by the TV room. Yeah. So I'm sitting there, I'm like, yeah, what's that? And I said, yeah, why? He said, he was, I just came from South Carolina.

He goes, I was locked up with Wilson. I went, really? The feather is small world. Yeah. And I'm like, really? He said, yeah. He said, he gave me a message for you. And I'm thinking, right.

That doesn't sound good. Even in the, even in the low, that doesn't sound good. And I'm like, okay. You know, at this point, I'm like, I'm looking around now. Of course. Like, I don't want this guy to fucking go nuts or say something too loud. There are people around. It's pretty quiet.

And I go, what's up? Now, people are still kind of talking. But it's quiet. You know how quiet it is. But they obviously haven't entered it. So it's still a little bit of a rumble. But I said, what's up? He said, he said, he said to tell you, he understands what you did.

He'd have done the same thing to you. And he hopes you get as much time off. He goes, as you can, and to let you know that he's found Jesus and he's going to be okay. Remember he was religious? He knew the Bible. But he didn't come off religious, right? Like he didn't feel – but he could quote the whole Bible. I know.

And so it was weird the way the religion – but I never heard him say something like – I thought he quoted as like an historian type of thing like not like – Exactly, not like a real – like a Southern historian. Like I said Shelby Foote, if you know who he is. Like, you know, he did the Civil War stuff. You know, he had the hair with him. I guess what he reminded me of. But anyways.

So he says this. Yeah. He says this. And I mean, I am like, this is bizarre. You think he's savvy enough to know really what that inter- thing is. Oh, I know exactly. This guy does.

Because this is what the guy says to me is. So I look at him and I go, and he sat there. You know, he just said it. And I went, I look around. I go, is this going to be a problem? Yeah. Like that. And he goes, I said, am I going to be hearing stuff from people?

He goes, oh, no, no, bro. He said, listen. He said, listen. He said, I'm here. he said, but he said, I got five years. He said, but I don't expect to be here long, if you know what I'm saying. And I looked at him. He was on your team.

Oh, yeah, you guys on the team. Yeah, we're like, yeah, I hear you, brother. And I, so I, I, and he is, you know what I'm saying? I said, I get you. I hear you. He said, all right, all right. And listen, within six months to probably six months to maybe a year, I don't know exactly the frame, what months.

Yeah. He was gone. He was gone. But that, so whenever I tell, say, oh, I should contact. Wilson and I didn't contact him for a long time. I mean, I still haven't contact him, but a long time I didn't contact him. My reasoning was that I was on probation. And I told everybody, well, when I'm off probation, I'm going to contact him. And then I've kind of thought, well, you know, he's on probabia. I do know Biden commuted his sense. Because remember, they let out

a bunch of people on COVID because they were old. Right. And then they thought that they wouldn't go back maybe and then Biden just commuted this. And that's what's happened now is he's just on now he's probably just on probation. Yeah, it's probably on probation. I guarantee he's on probation. So I kind of feel like like, and first of all, you know he doesn't. I've looked him up, try to look him up on Facebook. I've tried to look him up other ways. And I haven't put a lot of effort. I probably could go to Tom and say, hey, can you find this guy's information? I would say at his age and what he's been through, he's probably not going to come here and do the show. He's probably, he's not, he's still in his, he's probably, I don't know if he's in his 60s.

How old is he now? 76 or something like that. Really? God, 78. He's probably pushing 80. Ron Wilson. We were with him like, we were with him 10 years ago. And he was in the 60s already.

He was in his 60s. He was like 63. Yeah, he's probably 75 years old right now. He's got to be in a 70s, yeah. I wasn't thinking about that. It could be in good shape. We don't know. Bring his wife and brother and they might want to.

They probably have a lot. We'd probably have good things to say. We'll probably have a shoot the shit together. How old was? How old was he in 20, in 2014? I know you got to go. I know. No, no, I'm not discouraged to go.

I was giving him a thing like, like, the bizarre thing of like seeing Ron come in here. No, I was doing the whole eye roll because I want to see Ron and his wife come in here. And like, I'd like maybe to be at that show, be a fly on the wall. Listen, I just imagine. I don't go anywhere, but Bubba love sponge tomorrow. Imagine me. I love Bubba. Imagine.

This guy's not a laughing stock anymore. Like he is his real name Timothy? No, it's wrong. It's actually Ron. Is it Ronald? It's Ron. So it's Gene, sorry, Ronald, Gene, Ron Wilson, born in 1944. Oh, man.

$90 million. He's 82. See, I told you. He's 82. He's in the late 70s already. You're way off. He's as old as that guy that. When he was with us, I'm going to say he's in his late 60s of 70.

I think he just. No, he wasn't in his 70s. He would have been in his. 82 now. He was with us 10 years, 11 years ago. He just turned 70. Oh my God You have no grasp at time

No I don't You don't either Look, okay A $90 million Ponsi scheme I actually think it was $100 million He said it was like

102 million dollar Ponzi scheme So this Ponzi scheme It was in 2012 By the way So tell me this Like a $100 million Ponsi scheme

And he's only Hiding a half a mill Well no Keep in mind Okay you're doing What everybody does Is they're saying 100 million

That's what they Because with the earnings So it was really like 50 I remember He used to always say it was $57 million. So he gave some of the early people money back like Madoff did and keep him happy.

Correct. Some of the old timers that would have shot him out there in South Carolina. And they were selling, oh, yeah, between 81 and 82, because I'm looking at his, at his. Yeah, he's 82 years old, man. His sentence was commuted in 2024. He was locked up. Oh, wow. Was commuted in 2024, but he was let out during COVID.

That was 2000, what? Yeah, 20. So he did eight years. So I was right, he did eight years on the 20. That's not bad. It's not bad. Yeah. You're the worst Jamie ever.

You've contributed nothing. And all this looking up stuff. He's supposed to be able to talk like when we come back and forth. Oh, yeah. I'm here. You did a little bit. A little bit. I'm just making notes, you know.

It's so riveting that he might have not wanted to get into fear, right? I mean, yeah, it was good. I'm curious to see what you know. But you tell everybody it's good, though. But me, I know I am. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is good. We don't, we tell everybody it's good, but this will be... This one sincere, though.

Trust me. Yeah, this will be good. Yeah. We wouldn't record for five hours if it wasn't. It's been that much? Four hours and 48 minutes. Holy shnikes. That's why we have this thing here.

What's the long as you recorded? In a like one run run. This is long. This is close to... It's 618, holy shit. Yeah. I don't leave the house except to come to here. Okay.

Like I'm not, I'm not really in the no. In the no, right. You know, I, listen, half the time when these guys, when I'm interviewing these drug dealers and guys like, they say stuff, how much, like, I speak the Queens English. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know. They're talking about a vibe with poet. They're talking about dubs and, you know, this and that. And I'm like, I don't, what, you know, I actually do know what a dove is, right?

A dove? A dove. It's a key of, it's a bird. It is a bird. But a dove is they. Birds go for 22. A bird, okay. I'm going to ruin 222.

So, yeah. Okay. At least you know that, the vernacular. You've talked to enough drug dealers. It's got to be, it's got to be like a little bit yawning now that I see all these key stuff and vice. It's all the same. Well, we try to. Honestly, it's the only time I'm such a narcissistic prick that it's one of the few times that when someone else is talking, I'm actually paying attention to them.

Really? Yeah, because most of the time when someone else is talking. You're off in space because I can see your eyes. I'm not. I'm waiting. I get tired right now. I'm tired too. I've got like four hours.

Most of the time when someone's talking. talking, I'm just waiting for an opportunity to talk about myself. This could you admit that? I get bad sometimes. Sometimes I interrupt once or twice with a story here or story. Like, it reminds me. You know what I do it the most is when the story's not doing great? When they can't tell their own story.

Interesting. And I start. So I must have did it all right because you weren't really, you know, that much. Yeah. The only reason I interrupted you is because I, you would say stuff. Because I know you've told me the story. Yes. Or you've told me like,

We know somebody mutual. Right. Oh, remember so and so. And it's good that you can do that because it shows you that, like, I can rattle off my story anytime because it's the truth. Yeah. Like, some people exaggerate. You probably had people in here. You know they're exaggerating.

You know they're telling full of shit. You know they're telling about that case and everything. Like, this, I don't need to exaggerate it. I mean, I don't need to do anything. And I didn't even talk about, like I said, puff on my chest up on how much money I had. That's all lame because I was indicted. I was convicted. So, but me to go, I lived in this house and I had this kind of car and I spent this money.

It almost, it does feel hollow. It doesn't almost feel hollow. It feels hollow. Well, you need, you also like it. Like there's, I, and I can think of like half a dozen different things that you haven't mentioned. Like, Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne Johnson, yeah. Duane Johnson took my daughter to school a couple. He did that day and another day, so two days he took my daughter to school.

Yeah, he lived about maybe nine or ten houses from me for about three, four years in Davey, Florida. And it was funny. Like, this is a good rock story most people don't know. And Rock's a great guy. I have no pretenses with him. but in 1999 he moved to Davy, and I lived in Davy, started living Davy in the late 90s. Davey is like a bedroom community of Fort Lauderdale.

So I'm living in Davy, and I'm going to a place called Lum's. It used to be an old, like, place, and it's not a business anymore, but they had the last lums of the whole world was in Davey. So I'd go there, and the mayor was a guy named Harry Venus. Harry Venus was a Harvard-educated, very smart guy, but he would love wrestling.

Like, he was addicted to wrestling. He'd get amateur wrestling like three times a week. So when Hogan was, I mean, when the Rock was looking for a place to live, he really wanted him to live in Davy. So he wanted to be the rock to be the spokesperson of Davy. This is like 99. He's not in the movies yet. He's just a wrestler. He wants to be the promotional of Davy and the new Davy with bedroom community and, you know, Gated community and like rich houses now in Davy. So the Rock agrees. So he gets Rock a house. I don't know if he paid for it. I don't know what the deal was, but Rock lived in

Davy for about nine or ten years with his first wife, Danny Garcia. So Rock's living there and he befriends Harry Venus because Harry Venus is a lover of Harry Venus says, hey, what about your father? You know, doesn't he need something to do? And he goes, yeah, if you can get him something to do, that'd be great. His father was named Rocky Johnson. Yeah, he was a wrestler. He was a wrestler.

He was a black guy. His mother was a Samoan. His uncles are the wild Samoans. So he has a wrestling family. But anyways, his father was living in Davey. I'd see him around at the Waffle House and stuff. His father was still built like a, you know, brick shit house. But anyways, he gets his father a job as the head of the parts and rectuation for Davey.

And he did really well at that for about three, three. three, four months until he went with a 16-year-old. Oh, wow. That's not good. No. It's not good. Yeah. So Rock was kind of embarrassed with that.

Wayne was a good guy. He was a real good neighbor. His first wife that they divorced her in 2006 was a really nice lady. I think he still does business with her. He's still a producer. You see Danny Garcia. It's his first wife. They had a first daughter that's about my daughter's age now.

She's probably about 27, 28, like my daughter is now, but was young back when he was living with me. But yeah. What about you have a story about Spike Lee? Oh yeah, that was a good story. Have you ever heard this? I don't know if they've heard it, but Spike Lee is a good story because, you know, at the time I got all the money from Red Bull, I'm hanging out in South Beach. I'm going a stupid place.

On Friday, I go to a hotel like the Victor or the Delano just to do it over the weekend. Even though I got a million and a half house, I should be staying in my house, right? But I like the feel of getting the hotel. So we're staying at the Delano. And it's weird because I'm at the Delano and I'm seeing like, I went to do a fax back when we did faxes in their little business room at the Delano. And Cuba Gooding Jr. was in there. We went to eat that night, and Angela Bassett was there.

Like, why are these people? I don't know. Like, I should have asked them why. And eventually I did ask somebody. So on Saturday morning, we're going out to get the car. And my wife's got the valet ticket with a $20 bill. And we're going, they have a front porch at the Delano. Used to be called a blue door because they had a blue door.

But there's a porch out there to get the car. And on the valet stand is a guy sitting down reading a paper with a Knicks hat on. And he's just looking at the paper. I don't know who he is. I think he's the valet too. My wife comes up to him and says, here, here's the valet ticket and the $20. He puts his head up in Spike Lee. And I go, oh, no, no, she has no idea what Spike Lee is.

He goes, no, no, I'm just waiting for my car. I'm sorry, I was sitting on the thing. So, yeah, she was ready to give Spike $20 in the valet ticket. Then Spike comes with his car and, yeah, right, right. But he was sitting down with his hat down. So, yeah, that's the Miami stories, but yeah. So funny. I can't think of it

all the other stories I don't think we can tell No in fact in fact that like when I when I Wanted me to write a book And I didn't imprison because I couldn't make any money off in the restitution of that What are you talking about? I wrote a book You keep saying I've heard you say that on a podcast where you're like But yeah listen let me explain how we and I've actually Threat me on this so like a prosecutor threat me on that

Now fuck that he's fucking gone This is exactly But I did fight him I'm not on that team you know Yeah it doesn't matter Here's the thing It does matter because like most people come on your show, never said they had a hassle with PO, and I did. Here's the law.

Why did I have a hassle? Here's the law. The law says you are allowed to make, it's just income. You are allowed to make money on your crime, okay, telling your story, provided it is not a crime of violence or espionage. And I've heard that, but I've also heard my prosecutor. I told you in prison. But I've also told my, my prosecutor is telling me, listen, if you make money out this crime, I'm going to take every dime for restitution.

He can't. He can't. Fuck him. He could take the 25 percent, of course. That's all he can get. I'm ready to go. Do you want us to put your Instagram in the description? Like, save them and watch this and they want to contact you.

Yeah, of course. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button in the bell, so get notified videos just like this. Also, Red Bull or Andrew Levinson is going to be starting his own podcast. So we may have a link in the description for his YouTube channel. So I'm going to try and convince him to at least put up an introductory video. So go there and subscribe.

and he'll be putting up content. Also, you can go to his Instagram right now where he posts, not regularly, but he's going to start doing it. So click on the Instagram, go there, and follow him. He's going to be starting doing more social media and you can follow his story. Once again, I appreciate you guys watching. Also, please consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month. It helps Colby and I with this stuff.

Also, if you want to be a guest, you can go to our website and you can go to the Be a Guest page. and you can fill out a very brief application, leave a three to five minute video about your story. And, you know, I really appreciate it. Please consider doing it. Thank you very much. See you.