Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - 19-Year-Old CEO Gets Locked Up & Loses Everything | GONE IN 60 SECONDS

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

19-Year-Old CEO Gets Locked Up & Loses Everything | GONE IN 60 SECONDS

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I know you're not, but real people. He basically shows me. more cash than I've ever seen in my entire life. This is when I start having altercations with the police. Before the lights even came on, I knew it was all over. And he goes, well, how much money? And I said, honestly, I have no idea. So I went to University of Central Florida.

Before I even picked a major, I picked what fraternity I wanted to be in. Because like that, you know, that's obviously priorities. And so I'm up there. And my parents said, you know, this isn't what we're paying for. Right. You know, if you're just going to drop, if you're going to complete three classes a year, we're going to have to cut you off.

And so first, they took away the emergency Amex because that's what I would go out. There was actually a bar at UCF called the library. And the reason for that was you could go there. I don't know if it's still there, but then you swipe your $40 tab or whatever. and then you could tell your parents you had some overdue books at the library so where were you last night at the library at the library i forgot to turn my books in on time so i owe 30 bucks to the library so they took away the emergency amex first and i mean i don't know that's whatever does everybody not have and um and i kept partying but in order to get that money to go

to the bar at night, what I started doing was I was valet parking cars for some of my fraternity brothers. A couple of guys that had graduated before me started a little valet business, and it was perfect for me because, you know, if I wanted to go to class in the morning, I could, you got these fine dining restaurants where you set up at 4.30 in the afternoon, you know, for a dinner shift. They start cutting people by, you know, 930 p.m. You leave. You got $100 to $200 in cash in your pocket, and you could go right over to the bar. So, I mean, it was perfect. And I kept floundering with my grades. So eventually my parents are like, all right, now it's full adult time. Take

your little valet money. You pay your rent. You pay your insurance. You pay your this. You pay you're that and I made it all of like one month as being an adult so now I have to move out of my college life and back into my mom and dad's house they said if you're only going to go to a couple classes a week you can commute the 40 50 miles to school so well your parents really they would put the pressure on you like they were like they were like this is we're not they weren't they were not and I mean rightfully so I've lost scholarships. I mean, it's expensive to go to school, you know, and pay fraternity dues and just for me to be partying.

So, you know, I basically went from living in a fraternity house to back to my mom and dad's house at like 19 years old. Right. So my number one thought is like, I got to get out of here. Like, you hear people talk about FOMO. Like, I know what day it is. I know what the specials are. I know it's Tuesday. everybody's going to pub.

I know it's Wednesday, everybody's going to Devaney's. And here I am 60 miles away. Like, oh, you know, my mom, like, and, you know, my family raised me with rules and, like, respect. So my mom, I know. The worst. And so my mom would be like, if you're not going to be home for dinner in time, you know, be respectful and send me over a text. And if you're going to be past 10 p.m. tonight, just let your father and I know. So, like, it was, like, instantly back to high school.

And I knew that all this fun was going on, you know, 60 miles away. So I thought I got to get out of here. Right. And it's hard to, it's hard to bring girls back to your parents' house. Oh, they frowned upon. I have a hard enough time getting girls that is this. You got to go back to my parents. Yeah, you know.

My roommates are sleeping. My roommates. Yeah, exactly. So what happened next? I tried to get my job back. Like my, I bagged groceries and at publics. In high school? in high school, and I tried to get that job back.

You know, they didn't need me. Applied it like a car wash and, you know, just trying to find. My number one goal was first, last security. That's it. Like, I need an apartment. I don't care if it has furniture. I just need somewhere to get out of my mom and dad's roof. And one day we went to, it was somebody's birthday.

I can't remember who, but we went to a fine dining restaurant, nice steakhouse in Brevard County. And we ended up having to park across a highway and basically, like, in high heels, the girls with us had to run across four lanes of traffic. And I thought, hmm, you know, it seems like a good place for valet. I know a little bit about valley parking. I worked my way up to a manager at the valet job I had before. So I showed up the next day with my little tie, my suit. was like over a decade ago, so I looked like I was like 14 years old. Right. And it's probably my first communion suit, you know, I was a little skinny kid.

I said, I didn't want to tell him, like, I'm starting this venture because I didn't think they'd have like any faith in me. Yeah. Like, you know, I'm, oh, hey, I'm 19 and I look like I'm 14. Can I park cars here? And if you say, yes, I'll figure out how to open a business. Right. So instead I went in and I said, I'm a manager for this company, the one I worked for in Orlando.

And I'm expanding that business down to Brevard County. I've been tasked with coming down to this county and seeing if anybody needs valet. And sure enough, the first place I went into, I got them to sign off. Now, I'm doing okay. I mean, it's me. I'm parking cars, mostly myself. You know, it started as weekends only. up to five days a week. I spend all day long trying to land new accounts and all night parking

cars. Do you have some people helping you? At the beginning, it was me and my business partner parking cars within about three or four years on a good night. I'd have about 30 people parking cars for me. Okay. So we actually built this up to a substantial business. Things were going well for a while. We're making good money. I was the youngest. person indocturned into the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. I was in Florida today all the time. I did Space Coast Business Magazine. Then the news wanted to interview me. It was, I mean, it's an interesting story. You know, a 19-20-year-old CEO who can't even legally drink. When I finally incorporated the business, I actually needed my dad to sign, co-sign on the insurance,

because they'd never had anybody under 21 or even 25, I think, who can get this $2 million garage keepers liability policy. Everything's going well. We're parking cars. You know, I got a lot of, but we're also, I mean, I'm still a 23-year-old. I'm still a frat guy. And so I like to party. You know, I'm partying all the time.

And we're going out to bars. We're doing all the normal stuff. I'm making a lot of money. At some point, right around this. time one of my neighbors and I were arguing about who is going to be the designated driver because it's like oh no you know you do it everybody want to drink and all of a sudden this guy says well we d d tonight I'm like why why do you want to be wait what's the catch you know what I mean like we fought about it earlier and he said well you know I got this pill and I can

take half of it and drink one corona and I feel better than than drinking all night long and I'll pass a breathalyzer. And that pill turned out to be oxy-cotton, oxycodone, roxies, blues, 30 milligrams, whatever, you know, all the street names. And that was the first time, because I said, well, give me the other half, you know. And just from a financial standpoint, I could pay eight bucks for a pill, split it in half with somebody, and now I don't run up a $100 bar tab. So I'm a bargain hunter. You know what I mean? That was right around the time that the pain killer started to become really prevalent. What year was this? This is probably between 2008 and 2010. The pill mills, all that stuff hasn't quite started yet. Eventually one opens up by us and I'll get to that.

I'm running my business. I'm taking pills. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm taking pills. I mean, I'm losing any humility that I have because now I've been in all these magazines. Now, all my friends work for me. They're kind of gassing me up. You know, whatever I said, I just had like a bunch of, I like to surround myself with a bunch of yes men who are just great idea. Yeah, you know, you're the man, Greg's the man. And I'm picking up, you know, we're going out. We're buying bottle service and I'm picking up the tab and doing all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, a lot of friends when you have money. Yeah, it's weird how that works. It's so weird. So, and I mean, at this time, like, again, I started off this business with the Mitsubishi eclipse. Now I'm driving a BMW M3. I'd like to have a two-door and a four-door pretty much at all times, a car to go out in, like a big four-door, whether it was a navigator or, like, an S-Class Mercedes, and then

I'd have a little sports car, coop, that I'd drive around all the time, and that was my BMW M-3. and the back license plates of my cars always said par king you know like it's funny because I lived on a golf course and nobody could figure out who this like 23 24 year old was with all these like ridiculous cars so they thought I was a professional golfer right because I was a I was the par king right I never swung a golf club in my life but you know so oh and then I'd also have to, I mean, it wasn't enough that I'd just get the car, but I'd have to, you know, make it custom so that everybody knew it was mine. You know, I'd take it in. I had the Snavely

Euro plate on the front, you know, those European plates. I'd have that with my last name on the front, parking on the back. I'd do a couple of modifications to it so that, I mean, it was very apparent that's Greg's car. And yeah, so super humble, like I said. Yeah, yeah, of course. And yeah, this is when I start like running into problems well wait can I want to mention one thing so this is funny because we talked about it he knows you know Donovan Davis yeah so I wrote a story about a guy named Donovan Davis it's called the Gap on my website anyway super good really good guy yeah we're a great guy I met him in prison got 17 years but it's funny because he lives in in Melbourne he used to park cars there he's like I've been in his house I've been to

He's like, he was the coolest guy. I mean, the bread and butter, like, when the way the business works is you get the venues and they pay you by the night. So, you know, I had nightclubs. I had a bunch of restaurants. I had like seven venues at a time. But the real money, like the extra, the gravy was like these private parties, you know, these mansions that would pay you $2,000. to send four or five guys out for the night. And what I would do is when somebody wanted a private party,

I would do a site inspection. And that means I'm going to send a guy out. I'm going to go out myself or I'm going to send a guy. And I'm going to say, hey, where are we going to park the cars? How many people are going to be there? Where are they going to go? And really what I'm doing is just sizing up the house. You know, if you're Donovan Davis and you got a Rolls-Royce, a Lamborghini,

10 other cars and whatever, it's not going to be the same as when Johnny graduates from high school and your parents live in a three-bedroom house. Like, you know, I was making so much money that I could tell the nicer people or the more humble people, you know, yeah, five or six hundred bucks and I'll get some guys out here and we'll make sure that the graduation goes off well. But if you're showing me your Lamborghini, and that's not to say I ripped you off, Donovan. I'm not saying that. I gave you good service.

I still love you. Yeah, but even an eight-car garage. If you got an eight-car garage with, and then in marble where cars were missing, there would be like a BMW logo. And I said, do you jackhammer this up every time you buy a new car? And he goes, I try to keep up on it. He's super funny. He was the nicest guy. He's so cool.

So, yeah, so that's kind of how the business worked. And like I said, I had nightclubs that. that I had people calling me at 2.30 in the morning saying, I can't find the keys to the Mercedes. I can't find the keys to this Audi. So, but that's at 2.30 a.m. My lunch shifts at the fine dining restaurants would start at like 10 a.m. And so people start calling in sick at 8.45, 9 a.m.

You know, they thought we were friends or whatever. So I'm going. So you got four or five. hours asleep yeah i'm going 20 hours a day which is when the the chemical you know whatever becomes advantageous like the the yeah so anyway that's that's my justification i don't whatever but i couldn't do it again today i mean a 24 years old you're so much different you remember when you could just take four hours of sleep and wake up with no hangover and whatever this is when i start having altercations like with the police because I'm running around Melbourne like I own the county I mean like I said

I have seven venues go and say I would go around and I would help out where I was needed and I'd collect money from people you know go to collect checks whatever from the restaurants a lot of the nightclubs like to pay me in cash for whatever reason and you know I also I mean Valley is a cash business So I just, I, I, I like to carry and flaunt a lot of cash at the time. And I've just finished my night. I'm leaving, I'm leaving one of my venues and I'm getting on 95 to go back to my house. It's about 9.30 p.m. And I'm going to, to go home and get ready to go out for the night.

So I know I'm clean. I know I'm sober. I know I got nothing on me. And are you already using like pills at this point? Oh, I probably have. But just, just, just wasn't that bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I probably hadn't taken anything that day.

At that time, it was more like, you know, a party thing. Right. It didn't, it'd become a necessity just to be functional until later. And so I see a guy pulled over on the side, on the on ramp. And I don't know what I was thinking. He's pulled over by a cop. By a cop. Okay.

And I just thought, like, I'd give him, like, a little solidarity, like, I see you, brother. So I just downshift my car. And, like I said, I didn't keep my car stock. I got this M3, my friend Vlad, who I'm still friends with today, he's got a company called Vlad's Auto Bon, and he works on, you know, Ferraris and probably Don Davis's cars, like everything. He's, you know, whatever. And so my exhaust sounded like an F1 car. Right.

I mean, so I get on, and I don't even think I accelerated the speed limit to get on to I-95. I think I just got to the speed limit in one and a half seconds, you know? Right. And so I'm just driving. Like, I'm just driving along. You know, I gave him a little loud exhaust, maybe thinking it would help the guy out with his ticket or whatever. Which it did. Yeah, it did.

It did help him out because I'm about four exits down on 95. And, yeah, this explorer is switching lanes. He's the cop. Yeah. And so I think, like, oh, there must be a real emergency. I get over and he pulls up right behind me. And he's like, what are you doing? You're crazy.

blah, blah, blah. He's yelling. face. I had a convertible top down, so before I could even get my ID out, this guy, the hat and all is just right in my face. And I mean, it was Melbourne. It was over a decade ago. It was a small town. You didn't see like kids driving around in, you know, cars that were $60,000. Right. So he was trying to piece together what's going on. He goes, where are you coming from? And I told him the name of the restaurant. He goes, oh, you've been drinking there? I'm like, no. I was, you know, parking cars and whatever. And he goes, oh, whose car is this? And I'm like, well,

this is mine. And I mean, it's just not, you know, registering in his brain. And he's very upset by the whole situation. So he says, why don't you get out of the car and sit on that? So now I'm sitting on the side of I-95. And now more cops are starting to show up. And he said, can I search your car? And I said, no. And, I mean, he said, why? You got something to hide? I said, not really. It's just, you know, this is, this is the land of the free. Right. You know what I mean? And he goes, okay, well, well, we'll see about that hot shot. And, you know, another canine pulls up. And this guy is just, like, in all his glory letting this dog, this German Shepherd jump up on the side of my car, just scratching the paint. Oh, over here, boy. And he's looking at me. And he's smiling, and I'm like, I don't really care.

But, you know, it's like, do your thing. So he goes, oh, we got a hit. That's weird how that works. Right. There's nothing on me. And I was never really a big pot smoker. So it's not like you could even say, like, it was the residual of having it. I mean, it was a convertible.

Like, there was nothing. There was no. But anyway. So he goes, we're going to be searching your car now. And by this point, I'm fed up. I went on the side of the road for half an hour. And he goes, You might as well tell me now, you guys, you got any weapons, any gun?

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So he writes me the worst ticket that he can, which is like careless or a reckless driving. I don't remember. But it didn't have a fine attached to it. It had a mandatory court date. And so I get this, I get this court date. And he's like, you know, signing is not an admission of guilt, but you'll be, you know, we'll be seeing you in court, et cetera. And I said, you know, fair enough.

I'll sign it, but, you know, I'm not going to court. I mean, I've got many tickets at this point. And, I mean, I just had a traffic attorney. Like, you know, not like the ticket clinic, a little more personal than that. But, and I didn't think that I was being snarky or anything. I just said, well, you know, you won't see me at court. You'll see my attorney. But yeah, we'll settle it in court.

So the next day, maybe two days later, I go into the venue that I said I was coming from. and somebody said the owner wants to talk to you and she was a big city councilwoman you know for she owned one of Brevard's oldest most prominent you know fine dining establishments and she was down in the office and the owner wants to talk to me whatever I go downstairs and she says you know you're a reflection of us when you when we hired your company and I said I totally understand that and she says uh she says well you know officer so-and-so showed up here he was so upset by his interaction with you he said you know that he pulled you over for for driving like a maniac and then and then when he tried to talk to you you were like i'm not talking to you i got more

money than god blah blah blah and none of what you said i mean i think that was a strong exaggeration of how the the interaction actually went. But, I mean, you know, maybe I could have been a little more humble. But anyway, so I was so, no, no, I'm irritated because, like, not only did you give me the worst ticket you could, but you, you're trying to get me fired or something. Yeah, you're trying to ruin. Now you're personally, like, lying and trying to ruin my life. So I called the ticket attorney, and I said, I said, I don't care how.

Like, I don't care who shows up. I want it to look like the O.J. Simpson trial. Right. I want you there. I don't care if they're paralegals. I don't care if they're janitors. Get them all in suits. I want, and I'll pay for it.

I want like five people in traffic court. Like, it's the biggest case of the year. And I want a picture of it. And he did. He got the ticket dropped. He showed up with a whole team of attorneys. And I'm sure that cup still hates me somewhere out there. So.

So what's so, I mean, so this is just a common occurrence, you're slowly, things are starting out unraveled. Yeah, I mean, I've got, every time I get away with something, just like anybody else, you get more emboldened. I think you probably know that. And I had another police officer who I'd run into pretty, pretty regularly, and there was an area where the speed limit was very volatile in the sense that it's a highway, it's three lanes. It starts at 55, goes to 45, back to 55, and there's a small stretch where it goes

down to a 35. So this guy's niche was like hanging out at the 35. And I'm driving it, you know, 10, 11 p.m. all the time because that's, you know, I work at night. And so I see him two times in one week. He catches me, you know, going 50 in the 35. Nothing, you know, nothing insane. But he, So first time he comes, he gives me the ticket. Second time, four or five days later, he gives me another ticket. And he always remembered the parking plate. So he said, you know, next time I see you, the third one's on me, because he kind of tossed the ticket at me and, you know, whatever.

So a month or so passes. And what do you get, do you get these tickets thrown out? You just pay the attorneys and they, you might have to pay the fine, but no points. No points are a big deal for me. Oh, yeah. Because I've got this company that I'm the CEO of with this huge liability policy that's kind of based off of my safe driving record. Right. I mean, it's very, very easy to either take the course or get tickets thrown out if you pay an attorney.

It's about the money. They just want the court fines. They just want the fees. And I had no problem paying that. So I'd pay the attorney. I'd pay the fees. And there'd never be points. and so I'm like 20 miles from where this cop and I had had our first two interactions,

and I'm in a different car. This time I'm not in my silver convertible. This time I'm in a white S-class Mercedes, but it still had the Parking plate on it. And he pulls me over, and he says, oh, hey, Mr. Parking. He goes, I guess you know the drill. And I said, yeah, yeah, go ahead, do your thing. And then right as he's walking back to his car, I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like, you said the third one's on me.

Right. And he goes, which is probably like his trademark because he remembered pretty quickly. And I said, you said the third one's on me. And he goes, did I? He goes, yeah. He goes, I'm going to nail you so hard next time. And I said, all right, that's fine. And he was a man of his word.

And I left Scott free without that ticket. So now the usage. Now the pain clinics have come to Brevard. And I, about 20 miles from where I lived, there was a doctor who was prescribing, according to Florida today, more oxy cotton than the entire state of California combined. So, yeah, great guy. And, you know, my friends basically said, you know, why, why pay for this stuff? Everybody I knew was going in there. You get the, you get the MRI.

And I don't know if he even cared about the MRI, but they taught you how to, how to scrunch up in the MRI and wait for 20 minutes in an uncomfortable position. And the doctor had like a saying. He'd go, I don't even know how you've been getting through the day lately, you know. I was going to say, it's funny. I've talked to doctors and pain clinic doctors. They're like, the problem is the average person. They said, it doesn't even have pain if you take an MRI.

He's like, everybody has some issue with their spine. Like there's always some kind of narrowing of the disc. There's some, it's like the average person. There's no, I've never seen a perfect fucking spinal MRI. It doesn't exist. And so if you say, I have pain here, well, pain is also phantom pain in your spine. So it's like, doesn't have to be the exact spot. So if you're saying, I don't know.

know where my pain is. Like, I don't know where my, my issue is in my spine, because it doesn't bother me. But if he is, if you're five or six inches close, he's like, we're going to note he's got pain. Yeah. He has narrowing of the discs or narrowing of the joint or whatever. It's like, they're going to put down that they, he's got an issue here with radiating pain.

He's like, you're getting oxies. You're getting issued something, something. Because everybody, look, even if you have no problem, you don't feel anything. So there's something there. He ate a couple of things he liked. to say because you could hear him he was getting people in and out of the waiting rooms at some point he told me that he saw 60 to 80 people a day five days a week 300 to 360 dollars cash depending on if you had a drug test or not i don't know what the drug test was for to make sure

you're taking your 20 grand a day right uh yeah he made about 100 000 a week cash only no credit cards, no insurance, no anything. And now, I mean, once you give me that, I was prescribed eight oxies a day as a healthy 24, 25 year old. That is like when the gasoline got on the fire. You know, the business starts to, when you're running a business as a full-fledged addict, and not only that, but now I can get pulled over with this stuff. Right. You know, it's my medication. And I believe that. I convinced myself of the fact that I needed this medicine because of my back pain.

The doctor told me, even though I knew that's not a doctor. Right. The guy would play himself in his own movie. He wore a shirt unbuttoned down to here, gold Cuban curb necklace, gold presidential with the diamonds in it. He'd show up late. he'd show up high like the guy was a disaster the guy was an absolute disaster

I mean just evil you just got like the feeling when you were in the room with him like and then he ended up getting arrested for having sex with his patients some of them being underage apparently I don't know his whole story so I won't go all into that

but he is incarcerated as we speak and probably as he should be actually I am part of of the class action lawsuit against the Sackler family. Oh, really? Because, and I'm actually in the top tier of that group, because I am somebody who started off as a college student and basically was prescribed, started off as a college student with a business.

I was prescribed. I had no previous arrests, no previous, you know, problems, hypothetically. and then all of a sudden this doctor threw a ton of pain medication at me and then my life got out of control so yeah i i will be i i don't know what'll come of it but i just thought that you know it's it's wrong what they did and i've got a lot of friends who aren't with us anymore because of of those pain clinics and so again i just what what what is the name of the company that they own too what's the pharmaceutical company, the Flagler's, uh, Sackler family. It was, I believe, Purdue. Purdue, you're right. It was Purdue. Yeah. So I don't want to say Pfizer, but I know that's not it. FIzer. Purdue. Purdue Pharma.

Yep. And, uh, again, I don't know if anything will come out of it, but I feel like somebody needs to be held accountable. It's disgusting that you can, I mean, we still have the opioid epidemic running rampant in this country right now. Yeah, it's just way harder to get them. If I had the same addiction I had back then, today, I probably wouldn't be here. Right. Because, you know, when you're taking oxies, you know, if you could do three yesterday, you can do three today, you can do three tomorrow, probably three and a half. When you're buying street stuff, you know, it takes one dose that was stronger than

yesterday's and you're done. So, anyway, he ends up getting arrested. And... So how long is he prescribing stuff too? Probably 18 months, two years. Oh, okay. Yeah, we had a good, I had a good run, you know, oh, thanks, considered. And I would never ever, like a lot of people there, I mean, you'd see plates from Louisiana and five people to a minivan.

And, you know, you'd see the drug dealer outside who was sending all this people in to get their stuff and whatever. They call that sponsoring somebody where they, you know, they come in and they'll pay for you because you don't have the $300. plus the 200 at the pharmacy to get it out or whatever. And they actually started putting up signs all over Bavard County that said, don't bring Dr. Gaden prescriptions in here because they were tired of people overdosing in the bathrooms or whatever. So it was, I mean, it was just all bad. And along the course of running my company, which I'm still doing,

we're going out and we're partying a lot. We're heading to Orlando. And I met a guy who, through a friend who was, I don't know how he got what he got, but he was very, very, I would say high up on the oxy trade. He was a, I mean, he was a drug dealer, a scary guy. I mean, just intimidating. I shouldn't say scary. He never threatened anybody. He's a big white guy, about six foot four doing tons of steroids and I mean so so a lot of us would get together and we'd like to go out to nightclubs and these guys like to rent exotic cars all the time

it seemed like they had kind of cash burden off so you know we'd just convoy there'd be orange Lamborghinis and everything and we'd all drive up to the club and go up in bottle service so I knew him we knew each other but we weren't I wouldn't say friends but he would sell large quantities because I'm going to need him once my doctor ends up getting arrested because you know this no no no I don't I don't know my doctor I didn't actually know what he was into until I'm like you know my doctor's arrested um where am I going to get stuff and so he would do deals that basically started in the thousands of dollars at the time Pills were about $10.

No, no, I'm sorry. If you were to buy, like, one pill, it would cost you between $15 and $20. He had the sealed pharmacy bottles. He had what he would call tanks. And a tank was 10 bottles, not like the orange ones you get at Walgreens, the white ones behind the counter of Walgreens. And they were wrapped in, in cellophane. and, you know, he basically his thing.

And so he would sell you $100 at about $10 a piece. And he wouldn't sell you $99. He wasn't opening anything. He wasn't counting anything. And, you know, like I said, I had a little bit of money. And I like the bargain. I didn't want to go picking up on the street every other day. Right.

And again, I never, ever sold anything. Nobody can ever tell. I might have given stuff away. But I was so scared because I had a business and because I had, you know assets and whatever that somebody you know this is when like you start hearing about the confidential informants and this guy got busted selling four pills i said no i'm not gonna i'll never be involved in any of that this when when the counties were confiscating stuff like if they caught you yeah exactly i've got i've got a couple of paid off cars i've got a business and god i

give a couple of pills for 20 bucks to to a friend and they take your car and they take everything they say the valet company's a front they say this guy's a huge drug dealer i'm going to seize all these cars whatever so i didn't i was terrified of that happening never never sold a drug in my life and so anyway is the the guy who i need to meet i don't know his last name i've no idea what happen to him but he's the guy who I need to now start buying from and so we do a couple of deals you know I pick up and whatever and one day he reaches out to me and he says hey I've got a little bit of a cash problem and I was hoping you could help me out can you come over to my house you know noon or whatever so you know I'm a little worried take some money maybe five

or $8, I don't remember, and I stick it under the spare tire of my car because, like, I don't know. I mean, robberies are pretty prevalent in the business that he's involved in. And so I get over to his house and, you know, he's, we make a little small talk. Hey, how you doing?

And again, this guy's always got an AR-15 out on the table. I think it was mostly for show. Like, I'm huge. Don't mess with me. I mean, he was a, he was a pretty cool. guy. But so he goes, hey, come upstairs with me. And now I'm like, oh, God, you know, what's, what's going on? Right. I, you know, does he think I'm snitching, something else? You know, is this where I go up and get jumped and robbed? And all throughout the house, there is just all

the trappings of somebody who has too much cash and just can't spend it fast enough. He had a Rangerover that I guess he paid cash for he had shoes everywhere that were just still in the boxes that was back when everybody was wearing the Ed Hardy and the true religion jeans and they're just they got the tags I mean those just clothes like he shopped all day long and just never even wore the clothes and so we got upstairs and he opens up he basically shows me more cash than I've ever seen in my entire life. And he's like, so you still got that valet company, right? And I said, yeah.

And he said, well, you know, I was really hoping maybe you could like put me on the payroll. I can't buy a house. I've been spending money. So here I think he wants to borrow, you know, a little bit of money from me or something. Right. And instead, he wants me to watch his money through my legitimate business, which I politely declined because, you know, I didn't I already had enough headaches in my life so yeah plus at some point you never know

he gets caught in the first I mean it's it's I know plenty of guys that have been drug dealers that have been caught and then they're like that you know they get caught but the the government says yeah but you're getting a check every two weeks like yeah well I you know I got this place I go and I give them you know this restaurant I give and now the restaurant people now they're indicted for money longer yeah exactly you know I actually did a loan for a guy one time god what was his name i remember his name tony zuko and i'm not i'm horrible with names he was he was eric eric tamargo's best friend eric tamargo's the guy that i had go in the bank as james red i paid him like 1500 bucks to sign for like was that the guy who you underpaid

yeah oh yeah he gave like 500 bucks and complain and then he next time you want to like a thousand and you're gonna give me everybody else is taking like 50 right now we're making it like yeah we're We're making like 80 grand on the deal. But his best friend was Tony Zucco. We did a loan for him. And I remember when Tony Zucco came in to get the loan on a house that was a couple hundred thousand dollars, but that was 20 years ago. That's probably like a $450,000 house now.

And he came in and I was, and I already knew he was a drug dealer. So I pulled his credit. He actually had good credit. For real. I was like, yeah, bro, you know, you don't have income. That's an issue. And I'm already going to, I'm going to solve the problem. Yeah.

But before I can even say anything, I don't know, I have income. I make about 40, 50,000. I make about 50,000 a year. And I went, really? So, yeah, yeah. He said, I have W-2s, pay stubs, everything. He said, I'm a manager at a sandwich shop. And what happened was one of his ex-girlfriends, mothers opened, made sandwiches and, like, sold

them in like one of those trucks or something, or she had, I don't know, a business, something. Yeah. And he would go to her. He'd just push to cash. He'd give her a couple thousand every two weeks. And you'd write him a fucking check back, take a little bit. She'd pay the thing. And he had was like, holy shit.

Well, when he gets busted, what do you think happens to her? Like, I don't know what happened to her, but I'm cutting a deal, and he's like, I'm, I'm sure she was fucked. I'm sure she's going to almost as bad as him. And she was getting a small slice. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's real fed. Yeah. But sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, please.

That's common. But I'm saying that that happens. All the time. I'm glad I turned that down. And it didn't even actually cross my mind. It wasn't something I was thinking about because, you know, I didn't. I had plenty of money and I was terrified. I'm watching.

And now at this point, I'm watching people start to get arrested. So I'm not that cocky. Right. But eventually what happens is I end up getting a DUI. And a DU. How do you have to do? Do you? Well, I got four people in the car, including plus five of us total on the car.

This guy, I say there's a cop behind us. And I'm doing fun. I mean, really. And this guy just. just puts down the back window, pulls the wristband from the nightclub and flips out the window. And the cops, like, run up.

They think that we see that they're following us. They think he's throwing something off the window. They think we just threw a baggie or whatever out. And so by the time, they're walking, by the time there's four or five police converging on the area, they're walking around with their flashlights and whatever. So, you know, he was like, oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'll drive you around

I'll do whatever you need to do So they pull you out of the car and you don't blow I just refuse I just I mean yeah I know better and Yeah so Which beats the ticket does it beat the ticket No you automatically lose your license But I mean in my mind why give evidence

You know I don't know if I I really wasn't intoxicated But I didn't know that it was such a big deal To refuse to blow Right so I lose my driver I have two weeks before I lose my driver's license, and I know that the company will basically go and solve it. And by this point, we're running it poorly.

We've got the IRS saying, like, hey, you know, where's these taxes? And, you know, that kind of stuff. Taxes. Yeah. I mean, it's a cash business. You don't have to pay taxes on that. I'm kidding. Would that need a great defense?

I paid all of you. You just type up a letter. Wait a second. You guys made a mistake. I have a cash business. I only pay taxes on the check. My buddy Tommy said you don't pay taxes on it. Your buddy Tommy that works at Walmart?

Yeah. Yeah. So things already are starting to flounder with the company. I mean, you know, when you're in full addiction, running a big business, it's just, it's like that putting a finger in a dam every day. There's a new catastrophe. And yeah, so I decide, I mean, we sell the company, which we didn't get anywhere near what it was worth. because we didn't have any books. Like, we didn't really have the intention of selling it.

Right. It was, like, just the person that bought it had basically just seen me go from driving a Mitsubishi eclipse to living a pretty extravagant lifestyle. So they... You should have gone to that drug dealer guy. I had to go into that guy. You know what? I have... That is actually the smartest thing that...

Yeah. You could have swapped out for cash and some tanks. And a couple of tests. You got throughout, take three tanks and a hundred grand. I had you as my, as my considerable area. Unfortunately, you were in jail. Oh, because I'd made such wise decisions myself based on decisions like that. Yeah, exactly.

Well, I mean, you could sell to whoever. But yeah, so I, now I go from working 20 hours a day to basically having nothing to do. And I've got cash. It's a, it's a bad place to be. It doesn't sound bad. average 26 year old how much money I had and they they'd probably be pretty excited but what's your habit though oh it's horrible everything's horrible how much a how much a day oh I well I mean I couldn't tell you to be honest hundreds yeah hundreds of dollars

hundreds of dollars going out nothing nothing coming in mind I'm still living the lifestyle as if I have a crazy income not you know I'm not gonna I'm living now I move back to Orlando I'm living in a nice townhouse like I bring basically what I decided was you know how like guys will be like oh if I knew what I know now and I could go back to high school I'd get every girl well I still had the baby face so I was like I never actually got thrown out of college I'm going to go back to college but this time instead of you know living in a fraternity house or a dorm room or wherever I'm going to live in this nice town house. house. I'm going to bring my, my fancy cars with me, and I'm just going to clean up. And, you know, I did. That's the goal. Is that not the goal? I mean, 26 probably is. You go to college? Are you going back to school? Yeah, yeah, I actually ended up getting a degree. Oh, okay. That's good. So, thought you were just, I'm just signing up for classes to meet the meeting. No, no, no, no, no. I actually wanted to finish school. What are your

parents saying uh you know it's it was it was really volatile thing because it's like they know something's wrong when i'm on on drugs right but you know it's hard to have an intervention of somebody who's not asking you for money who's not dependent on you right so i'm showing up at christmas and i'm not quite right but i'm not horrible and and you're and you're making a living and I'm not, you're not sleeping on benches. Yeah, and it breaks my heart because my dad's my hero. I mean, and he's a lot, that's not just me. Like, if I tell people about my dad, they're like, oh, you're Bill's son.

He's, he's, like, the best guy I know. Like, my dad's a software engineer, and he will, I mean, he's made a great, like I said, he provided us an upper class living, but he's the type of guy that you could call with no notice and be like, I need a mattress strapped to my roof. and you have an SUV. He'd be like, all right, I'm on my way. Like, he's just, he's not pretentious. He's somebody I look up to a lot.

So, so, yeah, the idea of the fact that I was fluctuating between my family being really proud of me because here I am in the newspaper, but then, you know, the rollercoaster of, okay, well, now you got a DUI, but, you know, is it, and I'm trying to spin it. I'm a salesman. I'm like, well, yeah, I didn't blow because, you know, I took a pre-law class and they told me don't ever give them more evidence, which actually ended up getting me out of it, you know, but anyway. Yeah, so my parents are concerned at this point.

Okay. And I'm concerned because now once I'm burning through the money and it's going fast, like it's going fast. You know, I'm still going out buying bottles at nightclubs. I'm living basically one day at a time. Once the money starts to dry up, I still have that ego, but what I'm doing is selling off expensive things, watches, I'm taking the BMW and I'm trading it for a Lexus that's a little bit less fancy and taking the $10,000 difference in surviving for another three weeks.

Like, it's just, you know, it's what you do when you're, when you're, you need your fix. So everything eventually comes to a head. I'm going to say, did you ever see the movie leaving Las Vegas? No, I don't think so. Okay. I saw war dogs. No, no. No, this is Nicholas Cage.

He, he's an severe alcoholic. He loses his wife, his kid. I don't mean loses, like she died. I mean, like, she takes his kid and just leaves. Like, he can't, he's not allowed to be, like, full custody, not allowed to be around him. And basically, he's lost his job. he's lost everything and what he does is he takes his paid for bmw he drives to Vegas he decides he's gonna drink him to self to death right and over the course of the hour

and a half two hour movie it's the selling off every the watch and then this and then that's a hundred percent what i was doing and i mean it's it's an interest it's a it's a really it's an interesting movie but boy it's fucking well that's i mean that's what i was living like it was i mean now we're not i'm not having fun at all anymore these are These are dark, dark times in my life. Like the friends that are hanging out, now they're all starting to get to a certain age where, you know, they're gone on and got real, they used to work for me. Now they got real jobs themselves.

And then they want to stop taking my phone calls and, you know, just all the stuff that goes along with, you know, I mean, because they're like, oh, it's Greg. Like he's, when's he going to get his shit together? You know what I mean? So there's no more parties, you know, I got, anyway. So everything comes to a screeching halt when I am, because I can't afford to buy from Mr. Big Time anymore. Right. I, you know, I can't spend thousands of time. So I'm in a little bit of a sketchy neighborhood.

We'll call up the projects. Right. Just for short hand. And I get what I need to and I'm leaving and I make meaningful eye contact. this police officer who's coming in the other way. Like, you know, when everything's slow motion, and here I am, like, white as bread, driving Alexis going the other direction in the middle of the projects.

Yeah, someplace you should never, shouldn't be. I mean, I'm surprised I didn't get robbed there. And he makes the U-turn, and I know. Before the lights even came on, I knew, like, it was all over. Like, everything was over, and it was almost like I was relieved. like I mean it sounds ridiculous but it was like it's done you know and he did the exact same thing as the first cop he said can I search your car I said no and he goes well I smell marijuana get out again don't smoke marijuana right but yeah so he searched the car he found something I shouldn't

have had that would be considered a felony right and so now we're not talking about speeding tickets we're not talking about reckless driving we're not talking about a DUI now this is actually a felony. I'm a college graduate. Like, I don't want my life ruined. And so we go out and get the best rated attorney in Brevard County. And they tell me that they've made a deal with the prosecutor. And that deal is that.

Do I get a say? No, no, no. You can chime in. No, you make it sound like the lawyers made a deal. And they're just telling you, this is the deal you're taking. It's like, we'll do. No, that's 100% what it was. Really?

Oh, yeah. But to be fair, I wasn't of sound mind. Right. And so they said, you're going to, he goes, if you can successfully complete rehab, then we'll basically dismiss these felony charges. And I thought, perfect. Right. You know, I hear good things about passages Malibu.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, anywhere you're going, but you'll see. And so. He's bringing you espresso in between meetings. I thought I'd be taking steam showers for 30 days, come out and beat another case. And yeah, that's not how it went down. So, and keep in mind, I'm in heavy addiction at this point. I am no exaggeration, 50 pounds lighter than I am right now. And like my wrists go up to my shoulders.

Right. Let's put it like that. Like super skinny, no muscle mass. White as a ghost. Yeah, ghost white. Yeah, exactly. All of them. My clothes hung off me.

And so, you know, I thought rehab would be good for me. So I get to rehab. And, yeah, it's not what the commercial was because there is no commercial for where I went. This is like, so I walk in on the first day and there's like a state sponsored. It's a state sponsored. It's kind of, you know, donations. It's this weird, conglomerate. Right.

And, yeah, so I come in from, I mean, basically up until this point in my life, living pretty well. Right. You know, nice townhouses grew up in a nice family, all of that. And this is the other side. Yeah, this is, this is, you know, when you get to where you're going to be staying. And there's people working out with the laundry. Right. Um, and there's, there's, you know, that is really, they take like, they'll take laundry bags and a broom and they'll load up books in the laundry bags or, and the pull-ups on the bunk beds, the whole nine yards.

So, yeah, I get in there. There's a hundred bunk beds. No, no. Fifth. Yeah, a hundred guys, 50 bunk beds, give or take. And I never seen anything like in my life. Half the people look like they're homeless. like half of them look like they're I mean I'm terrified like I'm absolutely terrified I've never

seen anything like this in my life the the unwashed masses I sure I guess I mean they big there was a shower there it wasn't it wasn't well used so so I get there and they say that you're gonna the first well first of all you go to intake and intake So I guess you'd say, by the way, that we went to dinner last night. Greg took Jess and I did dinner last night and told us all about the place he went. And I mean, although Jess is kind of like, yeah, that's just like she knows tons of people that have been in out of these places. But, you know, Ray's upper middle class as he's talking about it, thinking it's like the first time I went into a jail and you walking to jail, you're like, oh my God.

Like, this guy comes up and talks to you, he's missing half the teeth in his mouth. And you're like, oh, my God. Like everything is just horrific. Like when the guy said, you're going to call your people. Yeah, you can call your people. Like, what's he saying? What does he mean? So, yeah, I, I, so you go to intake and there's this office.

And the way the place actually runs is it takes part money from the state. It's a 501c3, I believe, is the term, where it's a non. nonprofit. And it's in Fort Lauderdale. And what people do is they donate stuff. It's like it's furniture, clothes. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And they get a charitable charitable donation. Because I mean, to be fair, addiction obviously doesn't discriminate. I, you know, had friends who were extremely wealthy that had substance abuse problems. And I would obviously towards the and go to the projects to meet people who also were. So anyway.

I think you're trying to say you had well friends that had substance abuse and you'd heard about poor people that had them. No, I didn't know any of them, but I've heard. This is a problem that affects the people in the projects too. I was in the projects. I was the people. Never got out of my car. Rolled the window down this question.

I did when the police. I got out of the car when the officer told me to. But there was a police presence. The officer, maybe you should bring some more patrol cards before I get out. Do you know where we are? This place is dangerous. There's a man that just sold me drugs a couple blocks away. It was terrifying.

All right, all right. So I go to the intake, and I have no idea what's going on at this point. I've just dropped. They won't let me bring my own duffel bags in. I mean, we dump everything out, search it, put it in black hefty bags. And so now I just drop my hefty bags of clothes by my logger, by my bunk bed. And then I go to intake. And basically the guy at intake says, what did you do for a living?

And I said, well, I owned a company for a while. I have a degree in this. And I have, I've sold some insurance. I have a variable health life and annuity. I started listing off these licenses that he probably doesn't even understand. Right. And he just looks at me and he goes, okay, he goes, smile. And I go.

Wait, I thought you. So I guess I later figured out that since I was so frail, right. I wasn't fit to go on the trucks and bring the furniture into the trucks. Thank God. I didn't want to do that. And since I was presentable, I got assigned a job later that day that was salesman.

So there was a handful of jobs. And they, you know, they tried to help some of these people. If you were unfit for the public, and like you said, if you're missing half your teeth, whatever, they'd at least try to teach you how to run a weed whacker because or fix in air conditioning. So they had like the maintenance sector. If you had a clean driving record and you didn't look too scary, but you were strong enough to pick up a couch. They'd let you go to people's houses

and pick up furniture and those guys got a couple of tips here and there. And, you know, if you were, didn't look like you could lift a wheel of cheese and you had all your teeth, then you got to be a salesman. And so that's what I did.

I sat there and actually, it was nice stuff like because we're in South Florida. So, you know, lots of these wealthy people. They know it's a program that helps people with addiction problems. So they would donate their Versa—I mean, they're not selling this stuff on Craigslist. You know, a Versace dresser at some Palm Beach mansion. They just call us and we come pick it up because, you know, their son had a pill problem or whatever. And they get the—and they get the little slips.

Some paper that says, I donated $400. Yeah. Yeah. Or $800. Well, I don't think about the world then. negatively, but yeah, I didn't. Sure. Sure. They were scamming. And so I, my first, so while I get in there, they tell me that I just missed the first class. And like, it took 30 people to build a class. And I said, what's that mean? And they said it means another 30 people come in and you can start your class. Now keep in mind, I think I'm going to be there. 30 days and I said well how long is it take to get 30 people and they said I don't know 30 45 60 days and I said okay how long is the class and they go oh it's a month and I said okay well you know I can handle that to at least 60 days at this point you're thinking 90 I mean 60 to 90 and then

they go and there's six classes and now I realize I'm like approaching a year and I mean I'd love to say you know and I took it like a man I cried like a bitch I was surrounded by people who terrified me I think a lot of the people there were questioning if I was even

heterosexual because I was you know small and a little more fashionable and you know the whole teeth thing you speak properly I said thank you and please yeah yeah thank you please. I mean, I learned all the rules like quickly. Like, you don't just jump up

on the bunk bed. You get up this way or whatever. You're top bunk. And so, I mean, it was really more of a jail than a rehab. I actually, there was a lot of people there who were court ordered there. And because they worked you all day long,

people who were in my same situation would just walk out and say, call the sheriff. And it was a normal thing. Like, the sheriff would just come take them because all they wanted to do is go play checkers with Matt. and instead of work, but, you know, I really wanted that felony off my record. There are people at the halfway house that would do that. They'd say call the sheriff.

Like I'm, because in the halfway house, if you didn't have a job, every two hours, they made you clean. Yeah. So you're cleaning outside. You're cleaning inside. And you had to go out and look for a job and prove you did. You can't sleep. You can't. And they're giving you such a hard time in there that, I mean, that literally they were guys like, hey, yo, yo, they go, they go, whoever you got to call.

I ain't doing any of this. because they're all of you, if you don't do it, then we're, we're going to call it. I'll do the rest of my time in prison. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People are leaving every day. People were leaving every day to go to prison.

And so I'm, I'm scared. I don't know how I'm going to, how I'm going to make it 10 months. And I know that if I don't make it 10 months, I do not pass go. You get a felony. I'm a felon. I'm a real life felon. And so I actually, you know, it's like anything else. I start.

I mean, first. couple days. I knew this was coming up, so I decided to start tapering and whatever, so I didn't get, like, off of... So you didn't, you didn't go through, you didn't go through, I didn't go through full-blown withdrawals there because, because I had like a month notice. I, don't get me wrong, it was, it was not pleasant. Like, I wasn't, I was aggressively tapering for how much I was on, and I kind of finished cold turkey, but it could have been way worse. Right. But, so I don't know how I'm going to make it through 10 to 12 months a year. I mean, it was, it was terrifying.

And eventually, you know, you kind of get to where you can eat again, get to where. And I started falling into a groove. And there was people there. They paid you $9 a week. There was, you know, nine whole dollars. That you could spend, I guess they'd call it a commissary or we call it the canteen. You could get Snickers bars. Basically, the regimen was 5 a.m. wake up.

Then you would go to your class, where they'd teach you a little bit about biblical stuff, a little bit about life skills, putting on deodorant, you know, all the things I needed to know. This is a fork. How to brush your tooth. It's rough. And so, so, anyway, I, I, I, I, I, I was just thinking The fucking teacher's like And when someone gives you something

It's polite to say To say Thank you And some guy behind you're going Gay You know May I please have this Gay

Gay Guy I mean got I Where am I? It was I mean There was

I mean there was Maybe 5 or six people there who could i could converse with but the rest was like anyway so i get into my groove you know i start to i start working out i start you know now i'm up to looking like a healthy member of society within you know 60 days say and the guys i'm working with they all it kind of seems like they have like some money to spend because they were they were say six months in and when you get six months in now you're allowed to leave on a Sunday or whatever and the guy that sat at the desk next to me who was

another salesman was like man I'm going to hard rock casino I'm doing this I'm doing that and I'm like how did I mean how'd you lose $200 like you don't strike me as a person whose family came in and said hey here's $500 for the week we'll see you next Sunday so I kind of talked to him about it and he said well I mean you every you got a hustle like you got to hustle while you're here So I had a little bit of the ability to manipulate the prices, like of this high-end furniture. Every day people lined up, kind of like, you ever seen that show Storage Wars? Like, there was a guy who would pull up in a yellow, same five people every day, a guy who pulled up in a yellow corvette, and then right behind him was his,

a couple of goons. And so we'd open the gates at 9 a.m. because they didn't know what came in overnight. They'd run around. They'd slap stickers on it. They'd negotiate pricing with me. And then, you know, you gave them... I had enough leeway that I could play with the pricing.

And they'd give me, you know, a little tip here and there. So I start making some money. And, you know, keep in mind, this place is not where I want to be. Like, they're... The people who are employed by here are relatively... abusive because they're the type of people that graduated the program and then they decided to stay to mess with people so at 3 a.m. they're turning on the lights they're like everybody stand up locker search bed search shaking down mattresses for the time in their life they've had

some control yeah exactly like they've been there were nobody outside and now they come in so so this place is adversarial to me like they and I'm not trying to justify anything that I do in the future, I know it's wrong. I know now it's wrong, okay? I'm not judging you. I know you're not. But real people. The non-sociopaths.

Yeah. They're judgmental. Don't be judgmental. It's wrong. And it was a different time. Different time. Different time. Everybody's grown since his experience. Thank you. So, the way the checks and balances there worked

were because I was you know getting $20 tips here and there you came you bought some furniture from me I wrote you up a little carbon paper and then you took it to a cashier who had never been involved in the program she's behind the last

and you know she was a big girl and I'd go up and try to talk to her and say like hey you look pretty today and she'd heard it all so you know I thought I thought maybe having teeth, would buy me some favor. But, um, uh, so she. Okay. So she, all right, serious.

Um, so. So, hey, sweetie. Um, so. So, how you doing? So, so checks and balances. I write the carbon copy ticket. They take it to her. They pay.

and then they get a receipt staple to it from her who is not an addict as far as I know has never been in the program as somebody who's getting X amount of dollars an hour to just ring people up for what we say for whatever I priced them for so they pull around the back and then the loaders look at the ticket the loaders are the guys who are a little less presentable a little bigger they can strap a couch to the top of a suburban and they get their two or three dollar tips and uh yeah so so in my mind i say how can i i say how can i but i need to find what happens to those tickets after i write them so the loaders would just take them all and shove them in a box and you got three smoke breaks a day

which was a big deal. If you caused somebody to miss their smoke break, they're fighting. Keep in mind, I'm trying to survive. Let's just put that out there. So when smoke break got called, I went to see where all the tickets were. And I had been writing pretty generic tickets of, you know, four-piece dresser set, nightstands, mattress, whatever. So then I went and took them back out, and I put them in my little filing cabinet.

So now I don't need the cashier girl anymore. I can directly sell to whomever. Again, not justifying it. That's just what happened. And so 90 days, you know, maybe 120 days, I was crying in my mattress. I was scared how I was going to make it through this place. And, you know, a couple of, and now at this point, I got people coming to me saying, you know, hey, Greg, I got, I met me a little female when I was out there. And, you know, I was hoping you can maybe float me 40 bucks.

And, you know, we could, you know, I could take her out, get something to eat when I got my pass coming up. And I'm like, where are you going to take her for 40 bucks? Here, take 80. And, you know, whatever. So now I got an iPhone. Now I got, you know, people looking out for me. So really quick, how exactly are you making the money now that you have the tickets? So he's not turning in the ticket.

He's not giving the chick before. Let's not be so binary. He's not handing the ticket, the $400 ticket. The guys just pay him $400 bucks. He gives a $400 ticket to the guys that load up the furniture. So he's cutting her out. So they just pull around the back. They might ring something up from a different section, like a t-shirt for $1.50 so that everybody sees them at the cashier window.

But they got a ticket, and the only thing that's wrong is the receipt date, which these guys aren't checking. These guys aren't checking anything. They're checking. Oh, get this. Okay, grab that loaded up. Yeah, they say, then they say, which dresser's at, Greg, I pointed out, I've got a red sole tag on it, everything's good.

Not a high-tech operation. No, and I mean, again, I'm not trying to just... And you feel bad. I know you feel bad. I know last night. I actually do. I know. I feel better.

I feel your pain. Listen, we got people on that campus who are living in mansions. Like, this is big business. So the way I see it, I wasn't taken. You were sticking it to the man. No, I mean, I was trying to get through my 10 months and whatever and comfortably as possible. They're using you slave labor, $9. So, you know, I was spreading it around.

Like, you got, if you're on the lawn crew, you can't get it. God's work. God's work. All right. I hear you. I'm with you. God's work. God's work.

I'm going to hell. Okay. So anyway, I get through that and I actually, barely, barely got through it. But no, I am helping people out. Like, if you're on the lawn crew, you get your $9 a week, you spend it all the first four days, I'm giving you $10. People catch me with an iPhone. I mean, it's kind of like you talked about with the guy who took his, his $1,500 and you're making $80,000. It's like, hey, yo, you know, I see me.

And I feel bad about that. Yeah, well, you know, whatever. Don't let me in with you. Eric, Eric, I feel bad about that. I feel bad about that. So, you know, these people are like, hey, yo, you know, the authority figures. I've seen, I seen that you had an iPhone you were looking at under the blanket last night. And I'm like, oh, okay, well, what are we going to do about this?

And it's like, well, I think, I think, $20.30. would be fair. 30? Let me... $30? I make $9 a week. I always had a pocket with like a small amount of money and then, you know, like a couple of loose 20s in case somebody needed. But anyway, so I do get through the program.

I graduate. And again, obviously I still haven't learned a lot at this point about ethics or morals. This would be what should have been my wake-up call. I was still... That's the last class at the... I graduate. Oh, did you? So, they didn't, so morality wasn't one of the classes?

So the last class is toothpaste. The last class is toothpaste. Morality comes in a minute. So if you'll hang tight. So I leave there. I go to a halfway house. I've got a, you know, a car that I had before I went in. I got a little bit of money that I left with the place.

And I don't know what else to do. So I become like a bartender at a night. club, which is the perfect place for somebody with debilitating substance abuse problems. But in my mind, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't, I got to live my life, like, kind of getting girls easily and partying all the time because of money. If you take away the money, like, what's the funnest thing I can do if I don't have money anymore? So I go bartend.

I'm still in my 20s. I look, you know, I was having a good time. But I wish, believe me, I wish leaving that program was the last time I ever picked up a drug or a drink. But while I was bartending, you know, again, I was in my late 20s and one of the girls, they made a joke. Like, and I don't know why it stuck with me, but, you know, the girls working there were all 22. There was hostesses, it was whatever. And everybody was in their early 20s. And then there was me.

And, I mean, if you're just looking at all of us, it doesn't like stick out. like hey that guy's older but you know they they they were kind of in jest calling me like grandpa gregg because they knew 30 was coming up and when when 30 comes up and you work in a nightclub basically you got two options you can be like the sad manager who like if you want to switch your shift with jessica on wednesday you better get me to initial making you know 40 50 grand a year or if you want to keep making your $200 bucks a night, then you just go to fine dining. And while I was at the club,

there was a couple of guys who would come in all the time. And they were what I thought were high rollers. They had, you know, Rolexes and the fancy Gucci belts and they valeted their BMWs. And I said, you know, what do you guys do? And they said, oh, I work for BMW. I'm like, oh, you know, didn't even cross my mind. They were just car salesmen.

I was like, oh, so you like design BMWs, you do this, you do that, you know, and they're like, no, we just work at the dealership up the street. And I said, you know, we became kind of close. Like they'd come below their paychecks every Friday. They were like weekend warriors. Friday, Saturday, they'd come, you know, buy some bottles. And so I said, well, do you think you can help me out getting a job at the dealership? And they said, no, come on in. So I go in there and the sales manager, I mean, I put my suit on, the sales manager, the sales manager,

just won't talk to me, I'm, I'm 100% like out of the service business. I want to, I want better in my life. I don't want the highest achievement that I reach as a, as a full-grown adult to be, like, server. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but, you know, I wanted more out of my life. And so I wait six hours at the dealership. It's this big two-story BMW dealership. And, oh, he didn't care.

He, I mean, I think it was like a test, if anything. Right. So then he brings me into his office, you know, I give him the hard sell. Like, I've always kind of been all great at persuasion. And I'm like, listen, I, you know, I don't have any experience. But listen, I'll be the best. I promise. Give me six months.

I'll work harder. I'll work for free. You know, I'll come here for two weeks and, and you don't have to pay me anything. And he goes, you know what, kid, I'm going to take a chance on you. And he reaches out and he shakes my hand. So my, I got a name badge. I work at BMW now. I go out and buy suits.

I can't afford. I quit my nightclub job. And on my very first day there, the general manager of the place looks at me and he goes, who are you? And I go, I'm Greg Snively, sir. And he goes, and where's you come from? And I'm like, oh, you know, I kind of give him a roundabout answer of, well, I live over here. And he goes, no, what Diorship did you come?

from. And I said, well, this is my first car sales shop. And he goes, well, I hire salespeople. I don't train them. It's been nice knowing you, Greg. And I mean, I was fired within 20 minutes of my first day. Yeah. Yeah, he was a dick. Coconut Creek BMW. Thanks for that. So I had the easy option would have been to go and get my job back. I mean, you usually go to the manager, the guy that hired you, said, hey, motherfucker. I was gone. That guy's the top of the top. He was, like, buy.

And I wasn't fighting for that job. If the, I mean, this was a two-story BMW dealership. They had Lamborghinis there. Like, if this guy doesn't want me there, it's going to be a bad place to work anyway. So I was like, well, you know, the easy thing to do would be get another service job. I'm still living in Fort Lauderdale. a bunch of guys at the club and me rented this big party mansion and you know there was like eight of us to one house and I never even had a key to the place like we just it was always unlocked because there was always a bunch of people there

and I decided to load up all my stuff and instead of just going back to being a server being a bartender I went back to my parents house again and I said okay I need sales experience so I'm going to everywhere. I put my suit back on and start, I end up getting a job at a mattress store and, you know, I'm making six, seven hundred bucks a week to sit in a store. Hey, you guys, you ever heard the term cool like the other side of the pillow? Listen, this pillow is great. It's called ghost bed. I personally, you have used one of their pillows because they make pillows, they make mattresses. I've actually slept on this pillow for the last few nights. It's a great pillow. I actually I slept so good. I believe that there's a little bit of slobber right here. So I'm going to take

this out. I'm going to take this off because that's disgusting. But listen, the pillow is made of this really, really cool fabric and the cushioning is amazing. And it's way, it's not like it's a foam pillow. Like it's super, super cool. And it was great because typically, honestly, I'll bet you I wake up and flip the pillow probably five or ten times. during the night just to try and keep it cool. I never had to flip this pillow one time, super cool, the material is cool. It's, it, it, it, it, you know what it reminds me of? It's kind of like the different, it's a heavy pillow, but it's super soft. It reminds me of the difference between buying an iPhone, which you can feel that heaviness, that, that it feels expensive

and feels solid as opposed to an Android. Anyway, our listeners can get 50% off site wide for a limited time, just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping

50% off site wide. But the whole time, I'm watching sales videos. I'm getting into the stuff. And, you know, I'm not going to... Some of it's good, some of it's bad. I'm watching Grant Cardone. I'm watching Jordan Belford. I'm like, okay, I'm going to be a

Master Closer, whatever. So, you know, about those programs, like, I don't agree with everything. Grant Cardones. I don't agree with anybody says. I watch your podcast. I don't agree with everything you say. You know, you like to judge me a lot of time. Hard to believe, but.

Zig Zigler. Yeah. You got to, like everything, Zig Ziglar. Yeah, but that's a little, that's antiquated, bro. I understand, but he's wonderful. He's still good. He's still good. He's good.

He's good. He's like the original. My dad bought me. a book from Zig Ziglar when I told him I wanted to get into sales and you know my mom god bless her a lover she's great but the idea of me being a salesman that's like that was like a bad word in our house and she's like you know my dad's an engineer my sister's a teacher like I'm a salesman yeah and so she's kind of like you know oh so you only get paid if you sell something uh okay and anyway so i i keep working my way up

And I end up moving to a different mattress company. And then I become kind of like a top performer there. And, you know, I become the guy that they dispatch to, you know, there's a mattress store on every corner. Like if one's performing poorly, they'll send me there and say, is it the area or is it or is the salesperson? So I'll go there and I'll be like, I don't know, the salesman's just weak. I did $20,000 this week out of there. Right. And I just keep moving my way up.

I go from mattresses to furniture to a bunch of different. And, you know, one thing I learned is with the exceptions of necessities, the higher ticket, like necessities being cars, mattresses, basically everything we talked about before. The higher the ticket, the higher commission you tend to make. And I'm still a salesperson today. I believe that if it wasn't for persuasion, I wouldn't be where I am today. And to backtrack a little bit while at the mattress store is when I met my wife. Best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, she's the love of my life.

She's, you know, we've been married for five years now together for about seven. You know, and I think she's more beautiful than the day that we met. So I, yeah. So horrible, bro, this guy. Listen, very complimentary. All the things that I'm not. Like, it's very complimentary to Jess. You know, oh, you look nice.

Oh, this. Oh, that's not. Oh, very, very, it's just very lady, a ladies man. And so, like, Jess, he's saying stuff and Jess is looking at me like, do you hear this? You hear how polite he is? You hear how you hear. Oh, thank. Oh, you like my outfit immediately looks at me.

I'm like, yeah, it's all right. I said it looks good. I said it looks good. You didn't say it looks good. I even walked out in my heels and showed you and you said, heels again. I told you, I hate it when you wears heels. Like, this is a giant. She's already my height.

She puts on four-inch heels. Oh, that's why you don't like the heels. You're fucking towering over me. Don't let your insecurity take away from your lovely... See? Your lovely wife. It's not good for me. It didn't help me at all.

Listen. I had to hear about that all night. Really? It's very nice. He's a very nice person. He's not a nice person. He's not. I don't want to take it back.

And so I meet my wife. And at this point, we're doing pretty well financially. You know, we'd always talked about when we first started dating, getting a little place on the beach. So we just achieved that, a little condo, you know, you walk downstairs, two minutes, you're in the sand. And we got his and her BMWs. So we got kind of the little sales success, dual income, no kids, starter package. Right. And, but I am not actually sober.

In my mind, opiates were my drug of choice. And if I can still drink sometimes, still do this, sometimes do that. But nothing, you know, I've just, just stay away from the oxy and that kind of stuff. then I'll be fine. Right. And so everything comes to a head again. When it's Thanksgiving, we go to our mom's house, and I proceed to get intoxicated. I decide I'm going to drive us home.

And the love of my life, I end up crashing her BMW, brand new five series. I felt horrible about it. It took them longer to build it than it took me to cross. brush it. And, you know, it was just, it was, that was my real, real rock bottom. And again, I love this girl. I mean, and so she said, she, this is how good of a girl I have. She said, I'm going to take the ticket because I just realized you're inebriated. Right. We got sued because we had some guy in a pickup truck and a new BMW. So, you know, he turned around and called Morgan and Morgan or whatever. And they sued her, not me. And we weren't even married at this point.

So she said, you need to go home. You need to clean yourself up. And she wasn't kidding. I mean, there was breathalizers. There was a bunch of the Walgreens drug tests out on the mantle at all time. So at any given time, I basically, it was like, it was like, you know, girlfriend probation. Right. You've been, you've been randomly selected to take a piss test or whatever. So I sat in that guest room and I sweat up the sheets for a while and I got myself clean. Oh, so it wasn't really that night. It had been a, you'd been drinking for a while. I'd been, I've been just doing everything.

Yeah. Okay. You know, like, again, I've been anxiety meds, whatever, just whatever. But you're functional. So she didn't pick up on it because you're functional. Correct. Yeah, it never really affected my work. It never really.

And so, yeah, we, I was, I was like, anyway. It's, that's exactly. Yeah, you hit it on the head. Well, that's a problem with functional, like, addicts is that, because some people are functional. And so a lot of people will be like, oh, yeah, he does drink a little bit here and there, but he's fine. It's like, it's just because he can get up, listen, I got a buddy Travis, fucking drink

like a motherfucker, gets completely blitz, falls asleep. He will wake up at 5 o'clock next morning. Boom, ready to go. Going to pick up the guys, I got to be there at 7 o'clock. I mean, it's like, the problem. You were stumbling down drunk tonight. before. Right, right, right.

Perfectly fine. The problem with, with, the problem you run into with drugs because, I mean, I was on a lot of drugs when I was running my company. And if you would have asked the, the people I was doing business with, they had no idea. When the drugs start to be a problem is when you don't have the money. Because then you spend all your time running around trying to meet a dealer to get one to get right for the day or whatever. But when you're supposed to be working and pick a deal out and make a call.

exactly that's when you start i mean don't get me wrong there's always that guy nodding out that's obvious but that was not really me and when you're getting a a good check every friday and i mean it was yeah i didn't i didn't have to i didn't have to get clean until this point i thought i was maintaining and she so she put basically we ended up getting married once i ended up getting clean and sober and Yeah, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. We've been married for five years now. And, you know, today, I have a great life. And, again, that's because of, you know, my, it's got a lot less to do with the stuff.

I mean, we've got a beautiful little condo on the beach. We just built a house. I got, you know, a nice four-bedroom house on a lake in a gated community. but it's like what I love is that like the house is full of laughter and we're happy and when I call my mom she doesn't answer the phone like what's wrong anymore I got a good relationship with my my mother-in-law with my father-in-law my dad and my dad's like my best friend he's still my hero so you know that's what matters more so than the stuff and don't get me wrong I still like my stuff yeah I always well that's just who I

but I if you took it all away from me I can tell you two things number one I'll be fine and number two I'll probably get it all back again right and that's that's not ego that's just you know well that's that that's funny you just despite what your mom says like that's the salesman you know like my dad used to say like you know you could take everything away from me and drop me in the middle of Idaho and he was like in two years I'll be making the same amount of money and he said within five I'll have everything back yep you know he's He's like, and it was like, why do you say that? He's like, because I'm a salesman.

Yeah. You know, the world, despite what people think, needs salesmen. Well, think about this. Everything is persuasion. Everything is persuasion. I don't care if you're a dentist or you're a landscaper. Why are you the landscaper I should choose? Why are you the dentist I should choose?

So I think that everybody should actually take time to learn persuasion because regardless of your occupation, you know, an engineer, whatever. You're going to have a job interview at some point. And you're going to have to have the charisma to make yourself more desirable than the guy who just was in there before you. So I think everybody should take a little bit. I mean, everything sales at the end of the day. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I was going to say, I was thinking about that marketing. Have you, did I tell you this? It's, you know, marketing sales, right? Yeah. So I heard this. I heard this a few years ago. I'm surprised I've never heard it before, and I read it. I was just like, oh, my God, I love that.

Some guy had run his, he's, you know, ran a, he ran a, what do you call it, where you cut hair, you know, whatever. Barbershop, thank you. He had a barbershop, stop, bro. All right, bud. You know, he had a barbershop for whatever, 20 years on a corner or whatever, and it's doing, and it had done great, right? He charges like 20 bucks for haircuts.

Right. And, and then a new barbershop moved in down the street, and it charged, they charged eight bucks. and next thing you know he's like within three to six months his business is just failing it's just falling apart yeah and so he goes to a party one day and he sees a buddy of his who's in marketing he's like i don't understand i've been in the same location i've had the same customers my customers are going this new place they're getting charged eight dollars you know for their haircuts and i'm going under and he's like i don't know what to do you know tells his buddy bob what do and bob goes let me think about this he said i'll be by your place in a couple of days he said i got i got you

What do you mean? You got me? It's been six months. I'm doing everything. I can't. I'm advertising. I'm doing everything. I'm going under.

He's like, I'll be by. I got you. And Bob goes and he puts, he comes in with a huge sign. And he says, we put this sign up. And he puts up a huge sign. And all the sign says is, we fix $8 haircuts. That's it. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. It's like, sometimes it's that simple. I tell you what. I'm not getting an $8 haircut. How perfect is it, though, right? Yeah. Like I just took your entire advertising and now you're advertising for me. it's it's over i love it yeah so anyway yeah well that's the whole story i guess the last thing

i'd like to say is you know i've been in a way to hell and back i mean there's nothing and if you're out there if you're at rock bottom i mean that's actually a great place to be like rock bottom is beautiful and it's you don't know that when you're there right but that's when you realize there's nowhere to go but up and that's when you start to to get the mental clarity that you can do like you start to reflect on all your bad decisions and the anxiety and all that but you realize how many things you could do different and you realize what's important in life and if anybody out there is struggling with addiction or anything you can literally reach out to me and i will always respond like i i've i did a a article for a company called

the addict's diary and it ended up getting like 10 million views and a couple hundred thousand shares and like 20 hours a day I was responding to people's DMs because they just didn't and I'm not a counselor. I'm not a trained professional. I just want to tell you that like Matt, where are you supposed to be right now? Right. You're supposed to be in prison, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I shouldn't be here right now. I mean, I was a 130-something pound drug addict on the verge of death. And now, I mean, you've got a beautiful wife, even if you won't admit it. That's true. I don't say that. I've got more than I deserve. And, you know, recovery and all that stuff, it really is possible. So if I can do anything for anybody, reach out to me,

you know, Instagram or my email. Greg.Snavely is my Instagram. And Greg.Snavely at Gmail at Gmail is my email and I promise as soon as I see it I'll respond. No, we'll put it in the description so you just click on the description, go in the description box and click on it, boom, it'll bring you right there. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor, hit this subscribe button at the bell so you get notified of videos like this, share the video because that really does help. Also, we're going to leave all of Greg's links in the description.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much. See ya. If you want to stick around for some extra content on valet scams, on how to run a successful valet company, make sure you go to Patreon. Matt's Patreon for exclusive content. It's killer stuff. Get on there.

All right, cool. All right. You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah, that's good.