Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - 24 Hours Until Prison | How I Lost Millions & Everything Fell Apart

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Get 50% Off Your One Month Trial with Trade, at https://drinktrade.com/matthew⁣ ⁣ Matt Cox sits down with Jason, a white-collar entrepreneur facing 54 months in federal prison after a 50-agent FBI raid. From multimillion-dollar financing deals to wire fraud charges, he shares how it all unraveled—and what happens next.⁣ ⁣ Jason's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/beyondthebars54/⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Get 50% Off Your One Month Trial with Trade, at https://drinktrade.com/matthew⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

54 months in federal prison and I turn myself in tomorrow. I have no idea why 50 agents came to my house. My life has completely just stopped. We were in the merchant service industry for about three or four years. And through that process, you start dealing with people that are looking, business owners that are looking for working capital. Right. So this is right when the merchant cash advance business was coming in.

I don't know if you're familiar with that. They call them MCA loans. I mean, I am. Isn't it like you take a percentage of your monthly average and you can, there are companies that will lend you that money? Sure. It's like a factoring. Okay.

It's like a, it's like guido on steroids. Break you down for them. I don't know. So somebody's doing what they do is they'll take, let's say you're doing $10,000 a month in credit card processing. So from what I remember, I've gotten away from it for a few years now, but they would take your six month average and then you could buy. against your future receivables at a rate of like, gosh, it's like 50% or higher.

So your six-month average, so let's say your six-month average is $10,000 a month. Sure. And you're saying they'll lend you $10,000. $10,000. And they want it paid back over a six-to-eight-eight-month span. They want it right away. Right. They start taking it out of every sales immediately.

And again, it's worse. than Guido. The rates are unbelievable. I don't even know how... 20, 22%, higher, higher. Okay, that's ridiculous. Higher. 40, 50%. And so... It's a good way to not get your money back. Yeah. Well, in a lot of... And it's, what's amazing is a lot of people do it. And I'm just, I don't know how it's still legal, be honest with you, because to me, if you're doing that, then that's even worse because, I mean, if it's $10,000 on your, based on your monthly average, why can you just go to the bank?

Yeah. Oh, no, I have such bad credit. Oh, well, let me lend you money at 50%. Yeah. I feel like I know how this is going to end. Yeah. So I feel like I'm already going. If I'm borrowing that money, I'm already going under. You're just helping me a little bit. Yeah. And the worst part about it is there's positions now they call them. So they'll go three, four, five positions now on these MCA loans. Again, I, where these people, these business owners absolutely bury themselves. So they just keep borrowing. It's almost like a first mortgage, a second mortgage, a third mortgage. But at a 40 or 50% rate. It's that high. It's just pushing off the inevitable before you go under if you're doing that. Yeah. So it's that high. So we got into that, but it's how I started seeing like business owners were needing working capital.

Right. As opposed to if their credit is okay. Let's not say it's the greatest, but it's not the worst. they needed there there there's a middle they need it today there's you know we don't have it financing just doesn't allow it because either you know you were in the mortgage industry i believe and you know so a lot of these groups are looking for certain credit scores time and business so on and so forth so that's was my start in my journey in getting into the working capital side of you know for business owners that's how i got into where i'm at

today. But, um, so working through that, working through the MCA stuff, you start to meet different people. And that's where I met a group called Allbecks out of California that was doing sale leaseback. So where, um, somebody owned equipment outright and they would actually release it to the business owner. So let's say yellow iron, you have a bulldozer or something of that nature, where they would actually release it back to them for 50 cents on the dollar. So I own a bulldozer. Sure. I'm a construction company.

I own a bulldozer. You're going to lease me, my bulldozer back. Sure. How? Well, a lot of times the way the bulldozer would have to be paid off in full so they would already have the title. So you would have to, the way that they would set it up is that they had vendor agreements with these companies that were doing. you know, leasing bulldozers and how they would approach it is, is that the customer was actually buying the bulldozer from them when they already have it. So they basically already own the asset

outright. So they're just making it look like that they're selling them that asset that they already have and where they were only giving them 50 cents on the dollar. So let's say the bulldozers worth 50,000. Well, the customer would only get 25,000 for the working capital, but they would owe the 50,000. I own you. Not me, the bank. Whichever bank approves it to. I understand.

I own this bank. So I'm a construction company and I got a yellow bulldozer that I own. And you're coming to me. The bank is saying, okay, we're going to lease you your own bulldozer back. So I'm making payments to them. Well, the bank isn't coming to you. It's the company that has the vendor relationship with the bank. So it's a middleman.

It's a broker. Yeah, it's a broker. So the broker is soliciting that they're providing working capital, and it's a way for the business owner to get the working capital. So the bank never knows. Okay, so all the bank thinks is that the customer is in the field for a new bulldozer or a use bulldozer, and they're just doing the financing end of it. So the bank approves it for the business owner.

the bank's going to pay the vendor. 25 grand. 50. Oh, sorry, 50. Correct. And then the broker is going to give that, or the vendor, is going to give that 50% to the business owner for their working capital, and they get to keep the bulldozer, but they make their payments to the bank.

Okay. A lease payments, usually on a 60 to 72-month turn. Okay. So they got their bulldozer, plus they got $5,000. 50 grand. 25. Sorry, 20.

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Don't mean to sound confusing a little bit. I'm not trying to. They already owned the bulldozer. I thought it was half of, I thought it was half of 50, but then you said 50. And I thought, okay, maybe it was 100.

Well, the lease amount is for 50. Okay. But the bulldozers just a point. They, the, the company, all backs out of California used to do, they would run ads for, you know, business owners looking for working capital. So they had multiple vendor groups. They had guys in the automotive. They had people in the restaurant industry.

You know, they had set up probably five or eight different vendors that specialized in different equipment, if that makes sense. Yeah. Because, again, they already, the business owner already has the equipment there, whether if it's at their shop or whatever may have you. And they would just make it look like the customer was in that industry. looking to purchase that equipment, trying to simplify it as much as I can for you. In all reality, the business owner is looking for working capital. So as I'm paying you, as the business owner, I'm paying the bank, whatever, $1,100 or $700 a month, whatever. Once I get to the end of it, that lease is paid off and I just keep my bulldoze.

You keep the bulldozer you always had. Okay. Correct. Do they say, I remember, do they have fax machines anymore? They don't have fax machine. Nobody's got a fax, do they? That was really big. There was a big company out of Colorado that.

Because I had a fax machine and I had a copier that was probably 10 grand, maybe 10,000. We paid like $300 and something dollars a month for three years or five years, whatever it was. And then at the end of it, for a dollar, you buy it back. So that way you can write off 100% of the. the lease payment, even though I have, of course, I've got the, I'm paying, I've got the copyer, I'm paying that every month. And then at the end, you buy it for a dollar. So now I have got this asset that I was able to write off 100% of it. Sure. Right. Because it's just a tax. Yeah, equipment leases. Yeah, absolute tax write off.

I did the same thing with two fax machines, although just to say fax machine right now, people in the comments are going to be like, fax machine, bro, nobody's got a fax. What's the fax machine? Yeah. So. There's actually a company. out of Colorado where there's a massive lawsuit as we speak, where a large leasing company is suing them because that's exactly what they were doing. So they were inflating the price of the fax machine, and they inflate the price, like I spoke with you before, they inflate the price so they can give the 50 to 60% back in working capital to the customer.

Right. See, the customer, the business owner is completely aware of what's going on. Well, does, so does the bank, doesn't the, in that scenario, doesn't the bank realize that the bulldozer or fax machine is only a thousand dollar fax machine? You know, and you're saying it's worth, you know, 5,000. Don't they, doesn't the bank have the ability to say, you're, this fax machine sells it fucking staples for 1100 bucks. You're leaving it to these guys for 5,000. Don't they have the ability to say, hey, that's,

that's something's not right there. We disagree with that. We don't think this evaluation is correct. Sure. Because they have a due deal. They have a due diligence barrier, right? They're underwriters. Who's the underwriter?

Right. Yeah, the bank, right? The bank's underwriter. That's what I'm saying. So who's looking at the deal? So the answer to that is absolutely. But reality is they could care less. It's all about.

They want to make these loans. It's all about numbers. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, they should, and it takes with all the technology today, it literally would take a couple minutes to look it up and say, okay, here's what it is. And what's the serial number and what's the model number?

And they can look it up. Absolutely. They don't base most of these loans because I was in it for probably about 10 years. We'll get into what we were doing for about 10 years. And what I know for a fact is they don't care about the asset. They could care less. It's all about the numbers. Because remember the phones ring and there's a sales rep that works for that bank,

whether it be Bank of the West, Dell Financial. And they have numbers. They have quotas that they have to hit. So they're picking up the phone. They're dialing all day long. Dialing all day long. Hey, what do you got?

What are you working on? What can you send? You got any bigger deals? Got any deals for $250,000? They're pushing for the numbers, if that makes sense. Yeah. So it sounds like the, the, you know, prior to the financial crisis where they stopped even doing full appraisals,

they just doing drive-by appraisals, or they call them, um, site inspections. Yeah, they're, they're, uh, desktop. They call them desk. I don't know if they still call them desktop, but it's basically, it's like, yeah, it's just some guy who's in California who's looking at the comparable sales in the neighborhood within a mile and saying, yeah, it's about the same square footage. I think it's probably worth 400,000. But if they actually sent somebody out.

out there to go through the whole property, they'd be like, oh, this thing, 280 at most. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Or it's not even livable, but they stopped doing, towards the end, they stopped doing that. Just like they stopped verifying if you had the income, you know, no asset, no, no, no asset, no income loans or no, I forget what they call it. Anyway, yeah, they stopped because they're, because they were being pressured so much to make these loans and they were able to sell them and then, of course, put them in to try them. launches and packages. Yeah, that's a big market, too, even in the equipment industry. It's huge. So, yeah, they don't care about the asset. Okay. And it's all about the numbers.

So how was that business? Pretty good. The one prior, the one that we were talking about. Yeah. Yeah. The tractor. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, that's how I kind of got it into where we were working with getting the working capital or business loans, whatever you want to call them for business owners, making it a little easier for them. And so through that is where technology was kind of starting to open up. And that's how we had gotten into the computer server industry with technology and started working with a group or two where they were like, hey, listen, all these leasing companies

and banks, they're pushing technology. and they're like, you know, started working for a group and the next thing you know, again, pushed it really hard and was like, you know, we could do this on our own, you know, where we, you know, these guys were buying pieces of technology for, you know, $700 to $1,200. And they were turning around leasing it in the beginning for about $25,000 to $40,000 on the low end. And again, nobody was... What technology are they buying? Computer servers.

Okay. That simple. Just a computer server. And nothing state of the art. I mean, they, you know, again, the leasing companies weren't doing any research whatsoever. So a lot of times, even if they put, let's just say they put a Dell server there, it was never questioned. And it was all, you know, the approval. who are always based off of the customer's ability to pay back.

So whether if their business was strong enough, where they could do a business only, or if their personal credit was strong enough, again, it refers back to they could care less. They didn't care less about the asset. So I go to you and I say, I got a Dell server, which you bought for whatever.

800 bucks. 800 bucks. Yep. And you say, I'm going to, I'm going to lease this to you for, you know, whatever, $20,000. Sure.

And you say, that's crazy, bro. I can pick one of those up at Staples for less than a grand. And, yeah, but if you lease this from me for $20, I'll give you $10,000. You can make the lease payment. And then as soon as you're done with the lease payment, of course, you just keep the key. Sure.

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Standard message and data rates may apply. And if they say yes, okay, cool, then you write up an application, you fill out a credit application, and then you send that to who? To the bank. or the financial institution. Is there a specific bank? We can use Dell Financial. So Dell Financial is now financing their own server for $20,000 that they know sells for $800.

Apps 100%. 100%. So does that, you know what I'm saying? Does it make sense? Like that doesn't make sense. Like you know it's worth, why are you lending 20 grand on something you know is 800 bucks? And so here's something even better. So eventually, as I was working with a different group, I said, you know, we should do this on our own.

I don't need to work with these guys. And I kind of seen how the process went and being in sales and being aggressive. A lot of people were doing it. I was like, we're going to do this on my own. So I worked with Dell Financial. I think I had told you about that. And, you know, we had did Dell Financial. we did $6.5 million with Dell Financial in equipment leasing.

Now, Dell Financial will take a Lenova product. They will take a Zenith product. They will take a Reebok product. It didn't matter. The craziest thing, it did not matter what that you would send over an invoice to them with a dollar amount on it. So at this point now, I'm doing this on my own. I'm no longer working for a group.

we're doing this and we've got four or five brokers that we've reached out to because they're in that MCA group that we first talked about or they're doing SBA loans and customer may not, you know, they may not qualify for that. And we put, we called it rebates. Now we didn't call it rebate loan. We just said, hey, we've got this rebate product. You get the computer server. You get the technology. Then you also get the rebate, which you can use for working capital. You can pay bills. You can buy product, you can expand, you can do whatever you need to do. And we went from probably, you know, we set up that relationship. It was back in 1819 and we started kind of testing the waters and we started off at about $30,000. And by the time we finished, if the customer qualified, we were doing deals

for $150,000. For servers. For a... server for a server. And as I was doing it, I mean, you know, obviously we inflated the price, but there's nothing wrong with product. And as I was doing it, I, you know, again, we had did it for many years and, you know, Dell Financial was accepting it. Now, remember, Dell is huge. And And, you know, we're sending in what is so-called an invoice, what they ask for. And on the invoice, you know, all we would do is put, you know, just the product name on there. They didn't want any description. They didn't want any model numbers.

They didn't want anything. And all they based their approvals off of was the customer's ability to pay back. And most of them. They pull their credit, credit score, nothing? Business only. Oh, okay. So you didn't even have to, I'll use the word PG, you may know what that means, but other people may not. They didn't have to personally guarantee the loan either.

Or it's actually, I'm sorry, the lease. So now we're doing, you know, 50 to $100,000 deals with the same type of equipment. They're accepting the business. And I'm getting calls every day from the rep from Dell Financial saying, you're doing great. Send us more. Send us more. Yeah, keep sending them. Your portfolio is amazing, meaning, you know, people are paying.

People are doing, because again, if they're being approved business only, you know, there were some criteria at a certain time in business, and they would have had to have approved their credit worthiness, just like if somebody takes out a mortgage. And did that for probably with Dell Financial, it was a little, I think a little right around two years, but never questioned an invoice ever. And so how much of this are, what is your fee, your company's fee? Our fee would be, so there were brokers involved. Right.

So obviously the business owner would get their rebate of 50%. So we'll use a $100,000 deal. They would get $50,000 back. Right. And their rebate, they would get the equipment. and then if there was a broker involved, which at that time we were doing enough business, I didn't have to go get any business.

Brokers would just keep sending in the deals. What are those brokers? They would get 20%. Okay. So on a $100,000 deal, that's... They could make $20,000. They did. Right.

They did. And the $30,000 we kept for the company where we would buy the equipment, ship the equipment. Yeah, pay your overhead. Pay the overhead. Pay the expenses a little bit. Right.

And go from there. And, um, advertise, or just, it's just, it's just word of mouth. Yeah, word of mouth. Because,

you know, when you're in that type of industry and I had worked in that industry for like I said, probably 10 years, people find you. And then they, you know, business owners are always looking for working capital. And here's what really amazed me that,

you know, they could lease a computer server, which is, you know, not, you know, for a hundred thousand, but they couldn't go anywhere else and get any real money, meaning they couldn't get a regular

loan from a bank. SBA turned them down. They could go to the MCA group and pay that high risk, you know, which isn't a tax write off because remember when you're leasing the equipment, you can write it off on your taxes because it is, you know, you can deduct it. And it's up to their CPA, how they want to do it. I mean, we didn't advise that, but that's up to their CPA. I had a guy.

So this sounds like, so I had a guy who owned a company. It was something like tech something. I remember was tech something. And he had started a company that was repairing like computers and stuff like that. He actually worked for the company. And then the owner of the company like sold him. He retired and gave him the company and he bought it from him. And then this guy got approached by a solar panels.

So under the Biden administration, and I remember he was telling me, he's like, God, he wanted Biden to win so bad. He's like, because I think Trump's going to shut this down. And I was like, really? It was like, what is it? And he was trying to get me to kind of like, bro, you should do this. Like you could advertise on your channel. And it was amazing because he was like, look, here's what's happening. You've got a house that's worth $100,000.

I was like, okay. You want to get solar panels. the solar panels are $20,000. I was like, okay, he is, we'll install the solar panels, and owner, I'm sorry, install the owner, the solar panels, and we'll finance the whole thing through this administration, the Biden administration had this whole loan process. Sure.

So we, with the banks, but they guaranteed the loans. So you get your 20 grand, we, you get your solar panels. Okay, cool. He goes, and if you need any other home improvements that are eco-friendly, he was like, we could replace all the windows on your house for another $15,000. And I'm like, okay, well, who pays for that? He was, that program. Wow.

And I was like, okay. And he said, up to 150% of the value of your home. Wow. So they'll lend you 50,000. He said, now, if you only owe, do the house? house is worth 100,000, and let's say you owe 70,000. You already owe 70. You have 30,000. They'll lend you the 30. So now it's 30 plus the 50. So it's 80,000 to do any home improvements you want. And the interest rate was like 6%. It was a second, it was a second mortgage on your house.

And yeah, it was insane. And when I was like, well, how do you qualify? He's like, you only had to have like a 550 credit score. He said, you only had to, you had to state how much money you. you were making. Like it was, it was insane. Sure. And I was like, that just doesn't seem legal.

He was, it's fucking government, bro. He's like, they're the ones who made the rules. He's like, these guys have been doing this for fucking, you know, for four years now or three years because this is about a year ago.

And it sounds like the same kind of thing where it's like, how can you lend more than more than what the value of the product is? But that was the, that was a, I wonder if that program still, because listen, it sounded pretty good. Like I was thinking,

that's got to be pretty, that's got to be a slam dunk. Almost too good to be true. Yeah, which I don't. know if it shut down or if they were losing money. Like, I don't know how those loans were performing, but yeah, people were getting solar panels. Solar panel was really big for a while.

Yeah. I don't know if it still is. But it sounds very similar to this, and that was a government program. So. Yeah. And again, you know, who's the underwriter? Who's looking at these deals? I mean, when they have, they have to get approved, right? Somebody has to sign off on it.

And I think from the beginning. without a doubt. They knew and they know today exactly what's going on. Now, I'm obviously no longer in that industry. That's why the FBI showed up at my house and we can get into that. But it is a true true crime program. Yeah, right. I like to talk about that. And whenever you're right. Yeah, and we will. So if I'm over talking it, you tell me. So how long did this go on? Like, I did that for, we, I was in the industry for about 10 years. And yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was always making sure, listen, I looked for, quality customers. This wasn't, you know, I wasn't the guy in the business where if I felt like

anybody was doing anything shitty, shady lies. If I caught anything, I would cut them off immediately. And I ran my business like that. I was, I was concerned about the business owner, making sure they got their money. Right. And so. There's no benefit to burn the bank because then they stop working with you. And you make a great point. We'll get into something a little bit later, which may amaze you in my case is you're right. If you have a relationship with a bank or a leasing company and you send in 10 customers and five of them are either first payment default or they stop paying in the first two or three months. How long do you think that that relationship's going to last? They shut them off. I know. I've had several. They're going to pick up the phone and go,

what's going out here? Where's our money? Can you call the customer? Can you get them on the phone? And so I agree with you. I was always about being ethical. making sure that the customers, the business owners were taken care of. And I, as much as I could, I didn't meet the brokers, but I tried to do my due diligence. And, you know, everybody knew if you fuck around, I catch you lying. If I catch anything, I just cut them off. Stop communication completely because it wasn't worth it. And again, when you're dealing with business owners and you tell them you're going to do something, I wanted to do it.

I wanted to make sure. But yeah, it ran for about 10 years. and I had situations like that where I was working with a bank or a leasing company and, you know, we were six, seven months in and unbeknownst because, you know, I'm not doing business. They're approving it. So they approved it. But where you get somebody that's a first payment default. And if it's a $100,000 deal, that's a lot of money.

And of course, they're picking up the phone wondering the first word is fraud. Right. where it's like, well, no, customer got their equipment. And outside, you know, most of these groups that I worked with knew that the business owner was getting the rebate and care and say anything. Just keep sending them. What are you working on? What are you working on? Send me something new.

So most of the groups and banks that I worked with knew that the business owner was getting the rebate on top of the server. So. So what happened in those instances where there was fraud? They look into it. They look into it. And I tried to, I would try to help. I would try to intervene. I get the broker on the phone and say,

hey, look, here's ABC liquor. Their first payment default, find out what's going on. Right. What the fuck? We're going to lose our relationship with the bank. Not only that, man, I don't think I want to work with you anymore. Right. You need to figure out what's going on or this is over.

And remember, it was enticing for them because they're getting 20% back. Right. right, that's a lot of money. And again, clean, thought everything was clean. So I tried to do the best that I could to try to help the bank out. And some customers would just take the money and like anything. Somebody can go buy a car and they stopped making payments the first day and you don't ever see them again. But I would try to do the best that I could to try to help these banks and leasing companies out,

whichever if I had a call here or there to do the best that I could. How often did that happen? Um, I would say, you know, I don't, on an average, I mean, you know, maybe one out of 30 deals, you know, unfortunately. Right. Because again, we tried to prescreen everybody, time in business, five years or more in business, tried to do the due diligence, because again, you've got shelf corps, guys that are doing all kinds of shit out here to make it look like they're running a bit.

I mean, we would, I would catch fraud on the daily. Right. And call the broker. How long does the business have to be in business? Had to be, how much, like it had to be. I mean, minimums like three years. Okay. Who set that?

Who said that? A lot of the banks do. Right. They say we, the bank has to be, or the, this company, we don't do any companies less than three years old. Less than three years. Like they have certain underwriting criteria that you have to meet. Yeah, they do.

And remember, there's a lot of different banks and leasing companies out here. and I didn't really deal with any high risk. There's some high risk companies out here where the payments are really astronomical, but we just stayed away from any of the high risk bank. This was more A, B, paper. Right. So again, like Dell Financial, CIT, Bank of the West, Wells Fargo,

there's a lot of big groups. So who's making that, who's, who's, like, what's the average interest rate? I want to say somewhere between eight to, 12%. Okay. Yeah. And I think probably more on the 12% side. And the term? 60 months. Okay. Yeah, usually 60 months. Again, on a computer server. I was going to say, that's, that's what is it? 10. How much is that? That's three times. That's a payment of what, a couple grand a month? Yeah, well, I mean, I think on 50 grand, it was like 1,200 bucks on 100,000, 22, 2300 bucks.

Okay. Somewhere in that vicinity, if I remember. Yeah, it's been a couple of years now. But so what happened? Life's good. Yeah, everything's going good. And thanks for coming by. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, what's going on? Yeah. Well, tomorrow I turned myself into the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And how did that happen? Well, about two and a half years ago, it was December of 22. We're in the store two weeks before Christmas. and I get a call and he says, hey, is Jason?

And I said, yeah, this is FBI agent, yada, yada, from Texas. Let's leave it at that. I said, okay. And he says, are you home right now? And I just click. I hung up. You just thought it was a crank call? I did.

Did you know that any of this was coming? No. Had you heard anything? Nothing. Nobody's calling you saying, hey, man, we were just subpoenaed. No. Nothing. Okay.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So it's just completely out of the blue. It was like somebody's fucking with me. Click. That's what I thought. Yeah. And at that point,

I only worked with three or four guys and guys that are good, they were good guys. I'll just leave it at that. They were straight up guys. So none of, from what we were doing, I wouldn't think that. On my cell phone,

I had cameras, you know, that surrounded the house. And so I just pulled it up. And I was an absolute disbelief. What was on the cameras? Probably 50 agents. FBI agents.

A house was surrounded. We lived down the water. They were in the back, I think somewhere in the fucking swimming pool. And were they holding hands all the way around the fucking house? Like, we got him. Yeah. I think they had a boat out in the river there on the water with the fucking lights flashing. But all jokes aside, I mean, yeah, there was, they had the big trucks with the sirens going.

Because you could see everything out front. And I was like, whoa. So he called back. obviously and he says hey Jason um FBI yes yada yada and he says um can you come home and I said for what he says well I really want to talk to you and I said oh and I said for what I said what's going on he says well I can't tell you but uh I really need you to turn back around and come home now I was thinking at that point with all these agents this just doesn't happen out of nowhere and I had no clue why they were there 100%

at that point. I had no idea. I'm not involved in anything in my life to per se. Let's put it that way where there was something there and on my back in my head and I'm going, oh fuck. Yeah. I shouldn't have fucking did that or none of it. There was absolutely nothing. That pay stuff by fake 15 years ago working for the dealership caught up with me.

Yeah, no. Checking the exes like, no, no, no, no. And he was just very persistent about, you know, you just need to come back. I need to speak with you And I just said, no, I'm not coming back. He says, well, we're going to kick the front door in. And I said, okay. And I hung up and I called an attorney. And he was texting me.

You have five minutes. You know. So I talked to an attorney and he says, well, I need you to get to my office. But I said, well, they said they're going to kick the front door. I said, but I can unlock it from the cell phone. He says, why don't you just call him? Right. And let him know, we'll unlock it.

You know, unlock the front door. So I called them back. and he says, are you, are you on your way back? And I said, no, he says, well, we're going to kick the front door in again. And I said, you don't have to do that. I said, I'll unlock it from the phone. That's exactly what I did. And then I had cameras inside the house.

And at this point, my wife was watching, unfortunately. And you can just see they came right in. Again, I had to have been watching. Something was going on because they knew exactly where to go to pull the plug on all the cameras and everything. It was like one, one thousand, two, one thousand, boom. so they knew exactly where the panel box was, if that makes sense. Yeah. Because I don't know if you have camera.

But it was pretty high end what I had in my house. And so you could see them running in. Again, like you're watching it. And I mean, this is your home. You know, we have kids. Two weeks before Christmas, there's presents. And, well, $1,000, $2,000. And it just goes because they had cut the cameras and everything.

So my first thing is, is I'm thinking, obviously, what's going? I'm not going home. Am I under arrest? No. Okay. So I call an attorney. My first attorney of four, unfortunately. It's been a hell of a ride.

Are you thinking this is a mistake? Like I just trying to figure it out. I'm a thinker. Yeah. No. I mean, I've seen that before, but I just,

I couldn't put my hand on it. I mean, there was just too many there. It was like something's going on here. And I'm, I'm just trying to think, right? But at that moment,

I mean, you've kind of been through, a similar, you know, well, you've had things happen to you. And at that moment, I was worried about my family, worried about my wife, worried about my kids. And so we go to the first attorney, you know, he says, come on in. And we go into the first attorney and we go up to the front. They're waiting for me, right? They're waiting patiently and they're at the door and come, come and come and they're shuffling

us through and we're almost kind of like jogging. And I'm going, God, you know, what the fuck? My head's still going. What the fuck is going? on here like what am I missing you know like something massive's going on right so we get hurtled off into his back office he shuts all the blinds and uh give me your cell phones every you both you cell phones it puts it in a box he had like a and he shuts it he goes all right they're probably listening and i'm like what what did i do at this point he doesn't have a clue and the point is

with the attorney most of these attorneys could fucking care less right period he he definitely just was seeing dollar signs. So my point of that story is, is, you know, before I even got a word out, I'm being shuffled into an office, they're closing the blinds, and they're putting cell phones in some type of box that nobody can hear us, and it's being stored away.

I'm thinking, who did I kill? Like, what am I missing here? And when you're not involved in anything, like I didn't think I was, that's even harder, right? Because some guys stole the jewelry, right? Some guys stole the money. Some guys robbed the dealership.

They got the fake IDs in their pocket. They have anything like that. And again, not that I'm better than anyone else, but that's the truth. I'm going, I'm fucking lost. And so that was the first attorney. And, you know, even from starting to talk with him, you know, he said, I'll get on the phone. let's see, you know, I'll call the agent. I gave him the number, you know, when we had went in before he took the phone.

And the agent wouldn't tell him anything other than he can have the house back by like four. So they were there from like nine to four. An all day deal. Again, there was nothing there. No drugs? I mean, it had some cash that they took. You know, they took cash that I had at the house, a couple different things, but only took a couple of things out of my office, my computer.

Again, there wasn't much there. Not that I'm not trying to, you know, it was very strange because, you know, when we were able to get back on that first day, not trying to jump around, but when we were able to get back into the house, I mean, they had torn all the pictures off the back. They opened up the presence and I'm going, right? I still don't understand why they're there. I don't have a clue.

My wife comes to me and goes, you know, what the fuck's going on? Right. And I still have absolutely no answers. And so, you know, you're going through your home and you're looking through and you see, I mean, everything was just flipped upside down. And so, I mean, you're, you know, you're in a stage where, I mean, you don't know what to do that day. Right. Standing there at that moment. What is real quick?

What did the attorney ask for? They asked for, I mean, he must ask for a deposit. Give me $20,000 right now. Yeah. The attorney was funny, the first one, like I told you, I went through four. The first one, we lived, I lived down the river. So he lived basically across from me. Okay.

So you knew somebody to call? Well, yeah, he's got a good name there. And so, yeah, you knew, yeah, if somebody, people that's been in serious trouble, yeah, has referred to this guy. But, yeah, so I believe the first I gave him when I walked in there. there, I believe it was 30,000 right when I walked in. And, you know, he was a big jewels guy right off the bat. So he went from, give me your phones to something's going on here. Bad, you know, we're going to find out to, so gold, silver, any fine art.

And I'm like, I'm sitting here going, find the fucking Twilight Zone. Yeah. You know, money. Right. For money. Yeah. And I had a pair of jet skis on my dock. And he's like, I've always wanted a couple.

You know, I want a couple jet skis. And I'm going, I have no idea why 50 agents came to my fucking house. Yeah. My life like that, which, you have, you know, has completely just stopped completely. And this guy wants to know if I've got gold, silver, fine art. How about the jet skis? I can see him from here. I'm like, I'm going.

Yeah, because I went to his house. Yeah. Again, trying to figure out, you know, where we were at and what the fuck was going on. And he held on tight, right? All he was seeing was dollar signs. I'll go to, you know, he knew they came from Texas. We'll leave it at that. And she's like, yeah, I mean, we're talking 300,000, not a big deal.

I'll fly with you. We'll eat together. I'll bet you will. Yes, yeah, sitting here thinking, this fucking guys. We'll be best friends. This guy's a fucking lunatic. Absolutely. And so immediately I'm going,

no, this isn't going to work. I mean, I paid him the money that he asked for. So he got the FBI agent on the phone. Again, he just said he was from Texas, a certain area from Texas, but wouldn't tell him absolutely nothing. We still had no idea. He said, we need to set up a proffer. Right.

So if he's willing to come in and just sit down and answer some questions, you know, we can kind of go from there. We'll kind of give you an idea. And that's what I was told. And I had no idea what. the proffer was. And I said, well, what's the proffer? He's like, well, you just go in there. All you got to do, well, again, back to, we'll fly together. I'll come with you. You know, we'll stay at a nice place. We'll get a nice hotel. We'll make some time out of this.

And I'm going, I don't want to fucking make any time with you. Yeah. Are you kidding me? No way. And so the proffer really wasn't explained. So I had to come to Jesus after I left. And this is when he asked me, you know, the jet skis, I had went to his house in the driveway. and you could see my house right on the other side. I was on the ocean side. And that's when he said, you know, me and the old ladies always wanted a set of jet skis. And I just said this is it. I can't deal with this fucking guy.

So I looked around and I hired my second attorney and 40-year vet thought I found a killer, military attorney, former prosecutor, blah, blah, blah, DoJ. So I hand him 120. Yeah, 120. He takes 25, or wait, maybe, wait, no, he takes 25 to do the introduction and the proffer. That makes sense. Okay. And he wanted another 80, okay, after the proffer, to be held in an escrow, not to be touched.

He said, I will not touch it. unless you're charged with a crime or there's a trial or anything of that nature. And I said, okay. He already knows you're going to be charged. They didn't raid your house. He already knows. Well, he was telling me, he was sending emails and emails that I'm going to detour the DOJ and the, you know, from charging you. Oh, I'm going to get, I'm going to get a strong effort.

Yeah, no big deal. So, um, funny story about this second attorney. which was great. Never explained the proffer at all. Never prepped me. Never gave me any information. All he says is, don't lie. Don't lie. Don't come here to Texas and don't lie. I said, okay, well, I'm not going to lie anyways because they'll use it against you. So I had never met him. You know, I paid him, send him his money. I never met him in the day that I get there in the morning. You probably drink the same coffee every morning. It's fine. But what if there was something better? Trade coffee helps you find coffee that's fresh. Taste great and is made just for.

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you know, unbeknownst to me, I didn't know that that was going to be. his future wife. It was his girlfriend at the time. The AUSA? No, no. The attorney, the girl. That he says, hey, this is. This is Jennifer.

Yeah. And that was her name. No. I swear to God. Okay. Sure. And they're married now. But this is Jennifer, such and such.

And she's working with me on your case. No worries. Everything fine. Yeah. Sure. And didn't put it together. You know, I'll beat on that. But so I go in there into this proffer and not prepped.

Didn't, you know, And again, I would think somebody would want to prep if you're going to do a proffer. Not to go in and lie, but you've got to know what the hell is going. Yeah. What to answer, what not to answer. Don't answer until I tell you to answer. Don't we get, yeah, go through the whole thing. So a week prior to getting there is when I found out that Dell Financial had filed a, what do they call it?

Complaint. And I'm like, Dell Financial. And then when the light bulbs went, okay. Yeah, we worked with Dell Financial and I was starting to get the... Had they ever cut you off? The relationship ended, but I think it was mutual. I don't know if they were, they were weeding out their relationships, that vendor relationship that was sending in that type of paper because, again,

I think they wanted to just stick with Dell products because as when you were approved and set up as a vendor, you could send in... Yeah, you didn't care what it was. Yeah. Yeah, it could be IBM. Yeah, the relationship did end, but I don't, I don't, I believe it was mutual. I don't, I don't remember an email or a phone call saying, hey, you've been terminated. Yeah.

And this is why. Never. Okay. Or, um, you had, you know, you sent us $6.5 million in business, but 6.3 of it went bad. Right. You know, that's their claim today. But we'll get into that a little bit later, which would be literally impossible because, you know, if you send in 10 customers. it goes back to and five of them don't pay,

they're going to cut you off immediately. So that's when I first got an insight of why the FBI was at the house for that, which is considered like a white collar crime, I guess. So there was nobody killed, no drugs, nothing of that severity that I would think that would bring that type of approach. I mean, guns drawn and really,

and by that point, my wife had felt like she was being tailed. A lot of things had finally came together. were. We were being followed. They were watching everything months prior because I have the paperwork that you know, you get from when you take a plea, blah, they give you all the information. But they felt they're following you, hoping you'll lead them

to the, to the honey pot. The safety deposit boxes. Yeah. They're spread throughout the state. Yeah. And the, you would jump on a plane and fly to Belize and your secret. Yeah. Yeah. So they know who you are. Yeah. That's what I mean. They know your demeanor.

They know exactly whatever house they're going into, whether it's today, tomorrow, yesterday, they know basically who they're dealing with. So, I mean, we weren't hurting anybody and we weren't going to harm anybody. So anyways, we go in and we do this proffer and, you know, I was pretty thrown back that, you know, the amount of agents that were in there. Again, I'm thinking, wow, the L financial, and this is where they had some of the information. Not a whole lot. I mean, because I didn't, I mean, they only took, you know, my computer. There wasn't a whole lot.

I didn't store things like laying around, you know, like there's a stack of 100 deals for, you know, $15 million just kind of up against the wall. I mean, I didn't keep things like that. I didn't feel like that I needed to. And, I mean, they were focused in on, you know, it almost seemed, you know, we had gone through the, you know, talked about the rebate and how they felt, you know, they weren't happy with the inflation of the price and that I was giving the rebate back to the customer.

That's what they basically felt was a crime in their eyes, obviously. But a lot of the agents, you know, there were agents in there for like PPP stuff. And they were, man, they were homing in on that kind of stuff. Did you take a PPP loan? I said, no. He said, why not? Why didn't you take the money? Why are you doing your head like that?

Yeah. Well, that's because, yeah. And I'm going, well, because I don't, would never take a dollar from the federal government, honestly. I don't want a fucking dollar from them because they want it back. But yeah, it was, it was quite an experience. And the attorney, I think he said one word, maybe two, didn't say much. Kind of just sat there and he was, you know, staring at Jennifer a lot. And I'm going, right.

I'm sitting here thinking, what the fuck is going on here? You know, and I've got all this. And so do the proffer. And I don't mean to laugh about it. but, you know, it is what it is and do the proffer. And so we leave out of there, right? And he's like, all right, you know, hang in there, Jason, hang in there. And they turn around and start walking.

And actually, you know, they're holding hands. And I'm going, what the fuck? Another part of my journey. Right. And so left from there. And, you know, at that point, it was more of a, you know, I did the proffer. He wanted the $80,000 with which I sent, it's called an I old. account, I believe, it's where the money's supposed to be.

It just sits there and nobody touches it. IOLTA is the words that they use in the attorney, in the attorney world. And I want to say legitimately, 40 days later, I get an email, bupup, pop, pop, pop, pop, hey, Jason, listen, I move that $80,000, yada, yada, it's going to help me in the short term, but if you don't get, you know, if you don't take a plea or this doesn't go to trial and I can get this thrown out, which that's the plan, I'll give you every dollar back. You'll get your $80,000 back. And it was just. There's an incentive for you to have any of that get it, get me unindicted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he shouldn't have touched the money in the first place.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that was the deal. Right. Yeah. I don't, I mean, it could have been a part of his ploy. I honestly couldn't tell you. It's being a criminal defense attorney is a license to steal. And that's what they do. Yeah. Yeah. So he just took that money. And from that point, it was hard to get him on the phone, obviously. He is a military attorney. So he travels a lot. So he uses that as his ploy. I can't talk right now. Just email me. And then I'll just get back to you when I can. So we had, you know, we went through the hoops. You know, they'd have questions here. They'd have questions there. And one day I get a call. It's from the attorney that took the money.

And he says, well, they're going to offer you a plea. I said, whoa, I thought we were going to try to disway the government from charging me with anything. Right. I was going to be in the good. I'm getting my money back. No, no, no. You know, and listen. I've worked my ass off on this. I said, I haven't heard from you. Shit. It's been fucking months. You've worked your ass off.

What's conspiracy to commit wire fraud? I said, what is that? I had no, again, I'm not trying to be funny and make faces. What is that? Listen, Jason, look it up, you know, but this is the plea. Now, I'm on a cruise ship. I'm not going to be able to get on for a couple days. For the short term?

go over it, look at the plea. And then when I get back, we'll talk. And I'm going, and in the whole time, I'm completely humiliated. I'm embarrassed. I'm not telling my wife everything, meaning here came a plea. She's been destroyed, literally. I mean, we've been together for 24 years and have an amazing family. You know, married to my wife for 24 years.

She's gone through absolute hell. You know, it was hard to, it took time to tell. I mean, I didn't even tell her right away that I had gotten a plea deal. We were traveling. Our kids are into blah, blah, blah. I just couldn't find the moment to grab her and go, fuck, they just sent me a plea agreement for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. So what is the plea?

Have you been indicted? I never was indicted. Okay, right. So I took a information, yeah, da, da, da, whatever their words are, information to. Does a plea, I'm sorry, does a plea agreement, does it like say like, I'm going to be facing three years, five years or not really? No, mine was up to 20 years. Mine said specific verbiage.

Yeah, that's just the, that's the maximum. Maximum is 20 years. Right. But it, you'll fall wherever the guidelines place you. Yeah. Right. Unfortunately. So in that plea, I never understood how important it is the dollar amount.

Right. So in that plea was $15 million. Yeah. That I never seen any proof of. So they're saying I did $15 million in business, but there was never any discovery. There was never any proof that said, okay, well, here's the portfolio of business that Mr. Let's add this to everything else. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah. So they used a number. The second attorney could care less. He just looked at it as, and he sent the sentencing. He left that open, meaning, you know how you can say, well, no more than five years. No more than three years. Yeah, you can get up to 20, but as a part of the deal, whatever, right? If you take this plea, what I was told by other attorneys that they could have capped the sentence.

And so the prosecutor could have asked for the whole 20 years, which is unrealistic today. Obviously, we both know that, but. Or you could also have pled to something with a lower max. Yeah. So you could have said that my first plea, I pled to. wire fraud against the United States government, something like that. So it was something along the, because wire fraud carried up to 20 years. Yeah.

And my first attorney was like, yeah, I'm not letting them plead to up to 20 years. I'll let him plead to wire fraud committed against the United States government. He is, it's got a max of five years. And so even though my dollar amount for my first crime was nothing, like there was no dollar amount. But he was still like, uh, yeah. So, I mean, they, they probably could have altered it and had you plead to something else that did not carry a maximum of 20 years. Yeah. And the attorney could have fought more.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Unbeknownst to my, I have, again, I'm. And it doesn't, here's the thing that the attorneys, a lot of times they don't want, they'll, they'll put it on you like, like, like, we don't want to do that. We don't want to upset them. Well, wait a minute. The only person that would be upsetting them is you. Yeah. Like, you're talking to them for me.

Right. It's not like I'm behind you going, bro, fuck that. Tell them this. Tell them, I won't do it. Like, what happens is they're talking. They know that you're not behind them. So they can always say, no, wait a minute. We need to agree first on a this.

We need to agree first on, or wait a minute, he won't plead to that. I'm not going to let my client do that. Absolutely not. And then they're not mad at it. There's not like they're upset with you. Yeah. Your attorney's fighting for you and they expect that. Sure.

But, you know, these guys all play. golf together and they see each other, they shake hands. It's sad, though, Matt. It's really sad. I'm sorry, especially when you have good people involved. It's the system. And so in that plea when Mr. Attorney gets off the cruise ship and we're going over,

he never physically went over like we didn't read it. There wasn't a Zoom meeting that said, okay, 10 o'clock, we're going to be on a Zoom member 80 and 25 is blah, blah, blah. We're going to be on a Zoom meeting so we can go over each page. Right. And so you understand exactly what's in this plea. Right. That's how it should be.

Right. It could be overwhelming for other people, but so I had to go through it all by myself. He didn't want to go through it with me. And I had asked him minimum of 10 times, okay, where's, where's the proof of the $15 million? Okay. Well, I'll accept it. Just show me it. All right.

Jason doesn't matter. Doesn't whether if it's a buck. It matters. Huge. It's a huge. Of course. Of course. Because the base level offense of wire fraud doesn't send you to prison.

What sends you to prison is the money, dollar amount, and then enhancements. Correct. So, and it was what he told me a minimum of 10 times. Even the day that I went in and took the plea, I said, I've circled it, I've showed him, why can't you get this for me? Just show me. That way I haven't. And he refused.

again, just didn't give a damn. Took my money, did his little bit of whatever little bit of work that he did. So we were talking about the just being able to see proof in the plea deal about the $15 million. Right. And me not even knowing being a 40-year vet, he should have knew. He should have knew that that $15 million is huge. Yeah. And again, I was thrown to the wolves.

He could care less. And so, you know, just even bringing it like I had talked to you about my wife was just absolute humiliation 100%. I struggled with that with the most with my family. I think that's the hardest part in all this. If I didn't have a family, I don't think, I don't know, it would have, you know, probably would have did things a little bit different, but I was just so concerned about my wife and my kids, everybody, you know, that surrounded me and my family.

But yeah, he, it was absolute refusal. He said that, you know, he had went to the DA, I'll call him the DA, and he said, you're not getting anything else. You've got what you're going to get. Going on vacation? We're here for it. With kids who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time

is a human right? Yep. We totally have vehicles to handle that because whether it's a road trip or a business trip, where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever is open. Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise, we're here for it. Just never had the ability to see that. So I go in and make a long story short, I take the plea.

And I was like this far from backing out of it because I've always been a fighter. We'll continue to fight. and but take the plea and get in front of the judge do the deal, blah, blah, blah, and, you know, walk out of there, get to go home by the grace of God that day. You know, I could have, who knows it could have caught me, but not being in this, but I didn't know exactly what was going to happen. Yeah, a lot of times that they could have remanded you right there and said, okay, he just played guilty, take him into custody and just wait for the sentencing.

Yeah. And I mean, there was just other things involved where, the, you know, the judge is asking the attorney, he's stuttering, just wasn't prepared and didn't give a damn. Right. So enough of him. And so, you know, get back home, working through what was going on. And then, you know, the next thing, you know, I get a call from the attorney,

the famous attorney says, hey, listen, you're going to do what's called a PSR or PSI, whatever they call it. Never did one. Never researched it. Again, ignorance. Absolute ignorance by me. That's how I look at it. And he goes, I'm traveling.

I'm not going to be on the call with you. Okay, so listen. My public defender fucking came with the person and sat there for an hour and a half during my PS and prepped me before I even spoke to the person. I had no idea what it was. He said a couple things to me. Don't lie. No.

Yeah, he did. But he said, you know, tell me you do drugs. Tell me you use drugs. But don't lie. I said, I don't use drugs. Well, tell them you do drugs, but don't lie. There's a thing, Bob, you know, it may help you. It's called Ardap.

And I'm not making fun of Ardap by any mean. I think it's probably a great program for people, but the way it was presented to me, I'm not a drug user. It could have been alcohol. And alcohol is a drug, right? But it wasn't explained by any means, but don't lie. Look, I got to go click. And honestly, that was it.

And so the woman that did the PSR sends me an email and says, I have tried to reach your attorney. And I've left four emails. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I need to interview you. And so this was from her. They had my email. Next thing you know that same day, I get a call from him. Hey, you got to, you know, I said, dude, she just got off phone with me.

I'm like, what the fuck is going on? I mean, it was that bad where she, this should make sense. had an extremely bad taste in her mouth before I even got on the phone. She's like, it's not my job to chase you or your attorney. So I set up the appointment. I said, hey, no problem. And in short words, I did my PSR and my garage alone by myself at home in a fucking garage, a PSR, which is so important.

You're fighting for your life, man. With the probation officer sitting here. Well, she's on the phone because they were from Texas. I'm in Florida. I didn't have to go there. we were able to do it over the phone. Okay. And she asked me specifically,

is your attorney going to be on the phone with us? And I said, he's not going to be around. He said he can't do it. And, you know, and he was one of his things where if you can't answer, if you get stuck, just tell her,

move on to the next question. Yeah. So at that point, I'm just on my rate. I'm going, wow, this second attorney is, you know,

the writing's on the wall. I mean, I've literally been, so I do the, you know, been through the ringer. So I do the, PSR and he doesn't go over the PSR with me at all, not a page, not a, not a Zoom or a phone call that says,

hey, let's let's go through this page by page and go through what they said so you can do your rebuttals, so on and so forth. And so the PSR came in at a 27, wait, 28 to a 30. Again, I had no idea what that number was 72 to 93 or the 30 is 93 to 120 months months and I'm going whoa I mean literally I mean I was sick and again it was all based off of that $15 million that point that I had made from the beginning with the DA from as far back as you can go just show me the $15 million show me the proof. Where's the second attorney never even asked for discovery or factual evidence? Right.

Never even asked that question. Again, not trying to, you know, that battle is lost. And so when I got the PSR or when I found out what the number was on the PSR, they kept prolonging it. They had, you know, you've got to wait for your date, yada, yada. And I got to a point where, you know, I'm like, you know, trying to figure out sentencing and how all this works. And I just got to a point where I'm like, this guy, you know,

I don't know what kind of jail time I can get. He's fought for absolutely nothing. And that's when I hired a third attorney out of Texas. And this third attorney that I hired, he was right around $40,000. So another, and he was going to be the, I'll get you through the sentencing unless I find something. unless I see something that doesn't look right. And they said, okay.

Well, what he was going for is the factual evidence and discovery. Right. Because his first question was, is when I dumped the second one and I hired the third one, he goes, send me the factual evidence and the discovery from the attorney. And I said, I don't have it. He's like, what do you mean? I said, I don't have it. Your attorney didn't ask for it?

He said, if he did, I don't have it. And I, you know, I said, let me get to the bottom of this. he calls me back and goes, you sit down? I said, yeah. He goes, you're not going to believe it. Your attorney never asked for the factual evidence or the discovery for the case, which is almost unheard of today. Yeah, yeah.

At the very least you asked, I mean, you asked for discovery, which you're talking about as discovery. I want to see discovery. I want to see what you have against them. I want to see. In a case like this, would you not agree? Yeah, well, because otherwise, the government can just say, they can say anything and they will.

They can do what they want. Right. Right. And they do. Right. When I first got arrested, they told me that I had stolen, 26 million personally. Oh, right.

You had it had $26 million. Then when I said, I've never sold $26 million. Then they dropped it down to $15 million. No, wait, $5.6 million in loss. Then it was like $22 million in loss. Then they said $15 million in loss. And it was like, and then my PSI said $9.5 million in loss. Oh.

And then I argued and got it down to $6 million. dollars and I got it down from nine and a half million to six just by saying that's bullshit I've never seen fucking I didn't steal nine and a half million where you get these numbers and they said well is it between three and six and I went probably and they went okay well we'll go with that I said okay and then they said six yeah I never had that just just saying that's not true dropped it that's not true dropped it that's not true dropped it yeah just by saying it I didn't even ask for the information yeah so you you had the after the information and said I

I want to see that. I want DEL to provide it. Today. Provide me right now how much on every single account, how much was paid, how much with, and it's called a portfolio, which you would know what that means. Right. It's very easy. It's very easy.

So it'll show they would have it ready in 12 minutes, two minutes, eight minutes, depends on quick their sip in their coffee. And they would send over the dollar amount sent. Yeah. And then who paid and they have all the breakdown. Well, here's the other thing is that you would be able to go in and say, I received this much. Because I'm assuming they're saying, hey, this client borrowed $100,000.

We got 14 payments. Yeah. He still owes us $85,000. So you owe us $85,000. You owe us $85,000. But you would be able to say, well, wait a minute, I didn't, I didn't get $100,000. Correct. That money should be offsetted by.

one, the cost of the device, two, the money that was sent to the client, three, the money that was I sent to the broker, I made this much money. Correct. So I should be, have to pay back what I made. Correct. You know, and you can certainly go after the clients. It sounds like you think they did something wrong. Were they indicted all? So, you know, did you go after them? No, they just let them go. Just me. And I provided. So who are the other conspirators? So if it's a, if it's conspiracy, where'd the other conspirators? I believe probably brokers, if that's what they think, I don't know. But they knew that that's where the money was going because they had the bank statements. They knew exactly where every dollar went. So go after them for the money. Not even that,

though. Not even that, Matt. FBI agents were going to the business owners and they were telling them to stop paying your invoice. Don't make any more payments. We have that in writing. There's a lawsuit going on right now where the woman went, oh God, she's paying on time. Didn't know anything that was going on. Two agents walk in and we go, blah, blah, blah, blah. They committed fraud. You're making your payments like you should be on time. You're doing everything that you said you would do.

We would advise you to stop making your payments. And she did. They're creating losses. And she did. And then the leasing company turned around and there's a massive lawsuit now. And they're all going back and forth. and I got a copy of that because they wanted to wheel me in. Wheel me in.

Want me to say it like that. And I get the paperwork and I'm going, FBI agents, why would they go to work? You know, people that are running a business and telling them to stop making payments on their lease. I mean, they would come and repossess the card? Would they not if you get a vehicle and you stop making payments? And again, it, and I. took that to the fourth attorney and it was, you know, but... So this is the third attorney.

So the third attorney, I didn't get to finish with that. I don't mean to jump out of there. So the third attorney that I gave about $40,000 to, remember, he was the one looking for the factual evidence or the discovery on the case. And he comes back and he goes, okay, I got, you know, he didn't get it. Obviously, we know that. He said, but I got it. I'm going to go through this.

I'm going to look through everything. And, you know, let's give me a couple days on this and let's talk. They said, okay, so give him a couple days, and I get a call back from him. And he goes, have you ever heard of Statue of Limitations? He said, yeah. And he goes, we may have a case here. I'm like, bing, bing, ming, ming, bing, me, bing. Really?

Statue of limitations. He says it was only, I believe it was five years. And so his play was, now he's selling me on, let's pull the plea, file a motion. We're going to pull the plea. So we're going to try to and we're going to base it off of statute of limitations.

And when we do this, the minute we get that plea reversed, we're going to file that statute of limitations. We're going to get this thrown out of, thrown out of here. Okay. The problem is that it's a, the way they're looking at it's a continuing.

Correct. The statute of limitations doesn't apply if it's a continuing crime. So it could be, Correct. You could have done things 30 years ago, and there's a five-year statute of limitations. They're like, yeah, but it's continuous. Correct.

Correct. But you don't know that. I didn't know that. He felt comfortable with it. He didn't feel comfortable with it. He felt comfortable with convincing you. And then he can ask you for more money. This is number three.

Right. This is attorney number three. I can't believe you're standing here saying that attorneys are scumbags. I feel like you're saying attorneys are scumbags. No, no, no, yeah. A federal attorneys, that's the top tier scumbag. Yeah, aren't they? They're supposed to be.

Right. That's the, they're the, they're on the top of the ship higher. Yeah. So he knows the DA really well. They play golf. Pat and I are best,

I can call Pat right now. I was at his kids, christening two weeks ago. Yeah. He says, so I happened to run into the DA. We were, I said,

where were you? Oh, the country club. Yeah. I ran into him and I had some questions that I had asked him. I said, this is great. I said,

wow, we got a statute case. I'm going on free. This is my, this is, this is, whoa, yes, thank you God. This is all over. My headache's fucking gone. And I said, go now and find out the $15 million dollars in losses. I want to see it.

Yes, I got number three. This guy is, he's going to go get it for me. He comes back and he says, well, the DA doesn't have it. And he's not going to ask for it. And we're not going to get anything else from him. It's exactly what I was told about the losses, the proof of the loss. It's important for me to say that, the $15 million. He's not going to go back and ask Dell for it because Dell Financial was supposedly

where the complaint started. This is what brought all this to Texas where I was at. And he says, but I'll tell you what, we got a hell of a case with this statute case. He said, I think this is a go. He's like, I want you to sleep on it. And I think let's pull this play. 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

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Again, being a fighter, calls me the next day, he goes, so what do you think? I said, you know what? Fuck it. Let's do it. He goes, well, here's the replicate. You know, this is what could happen. could go to trial and I'm going to need another 40,000, you know, he's going through the payment plan.

I said, well, I'm thinking he's got a statute case. If it doesn't, you know, this is what he's, this is what could happen. He files the motion. So bad. He files the motion to pull the plea, which is serious. Yeah. If you don't have. So I'm not trying to make a light in this matter.

No, no. First of all, it's extremely serious. The court. What, it gerates the judge, the court, which is the court. Correct. and so he files a motion to pull the plea we're doing the happy dance like I really felt

maybe I was in fucking dream world I felt good about it I was like you know what this is going to work out four hours later I get a call we made a mistake we made a fucking mistake we didn't make a mistake the same day

we made this listen I was wrong about the statue thing I just got a off the phone with the DA. We need to pull it now. And I said, you just filed a fucking thing. Did you pay him the other four?

No, no. Okay. No, I almost hit the floor, honestly. I was almost at a breaking point because I was like, um, it was more of my wife because she was right in that hoping, praying, things are going to work out. Everything's going to be good. And not even four hours, sorry, not even four hours.

sorry, not even four hours later. I get a phone call from him saying, I made a mistake. We need to reverse this. You're cooked. They said, this is what you told me to fucking do. No. I hung up. He waits, calls me the next day.

You okay? Like, are you fucking kidding me? No, what do you mean? I mean, I knew the severity of that. And it was, again, on the statute of limitations, I wasn't trying to piss. I was going by what the third attorney had told me. So I'm immediately going, I'm doomed. Now he says, let's pull it.

Hopefully the judge forgives us. And I'll work on your sentencing. Well, how can I, again, here I am. And third attorney, and I'm going, you know, this is a fucking disaster. How can I trust him moving forward? I do something that he recommends. Four hours later, he calls me and says, I made a mistake. And you don't make a mistake on these kind of moves.

These are life-changing. Could cost me years in prison. You know that. It's serious. And so I said, I just, I need a couple days. I need air to breathe. And I really felt like I was going to collapse. Honestly, God.

I was at a breaking point. I was like, I don't know what fuck's going on here, but I've just had another. Three attorneys. A bit of just the lies just, it's, you know, it was unbelievable. So started looking around for attorney number four and which we found. And out of all four, they've probably done the best that they could, what they were handed with. And when I hired the fourth attorney, he had gotten all the information on the case.

and he just said, you know, I'll ride this out with you if you want because I was still considering pulling the plea because my brain's going, we had this, my wife, she's, I don't like, it was a tough moment for me. And I never forget, he called me at like 11 o'clock at night and he's like, Jason, listen,

he's like, we're in a fucking airplane right now and we're 30,000 feet in the air. I've got a parachute strapped in my back, you don't have any. He's like, I'm pushing you out of this fucking plane. Now, I'm going to jump with you. He's like, but you're going to fall and die. I'm going to be okay.

I'll be right there with you, but I'm going to open up my parachute. And it was what he used as a paraphrase. I'll go to court and fucking horrible. Well, because he was saying you're cooked. We need to pull the plea back. Oh, okay, okay, okay. We need to pull the plea back from the statue, from the claim from the third attorney.

Yeah. And let's, Horrible fucking. Let's beg for forgiveness, which we did. Everything was fine. And so I didn't mean to use that, but that's what he was, because I was just in this, I was just in another world. Yeah, I was thinking this is what's happening. But yeah. So he's like, we're in this plane, like I explained, I got a parachute. You don't. I'm throwing you out. I'm jumping with you because I'm with you. I'll finish this to the end. But you're cooked. If we go to court, this doesn't happen. And the judge, you're, you're. you're cooked. And so he filed the motion, accepted the plea, you know, throw out the motion to vacate my plea

and, you know, got basically back into trying to figure out the best way for sentencing. Tried to clean up the PSR a little bit. There really wasn't much you could do because we had missed precious time, you know,

you know, from the second attorney that I had dealt with. Right. And, um, But, yeah, it was, you know, so pulled the plea back, you know, or the motion that we filed to remove, you know, just stick with the plea that we had made with them and followed the motions up until getting sentenced. Day we went in, you know, that's, I was telling you, again, don't mean to jump around, but Dell Financial. So I had about, in losses, we had about a total of 800,000.

that was the number that they had given us, you know, because they had went in and tried to get everything that they could. So the loss amount was 800,000. So it wasn't 15. No, it was 800,000. A couple companies responded and said, this is what our losses were. And so a month prior, or two weeks prior to being sentenced, it would have been in April. We get a call. It was like a spring break thing from the DA saying, listen.

We need an extra 30 days at spring break. We didn't take into consideration the spring break stuff. And so give us 30 more days. I'm like, okay, 30 more days with the family. You're fucking lying. Yeah, lying through their teeth. 30 more days with the family, not a big deal. And a week prior to sentencing, the new date is when I got the $9 million number.

There's $9 million. And it was through an email. That said, oh, we just got this from the DA. The 800,000 just went to $9 million. I'm like, oh, fuck. From who? From Dell, which was one big player, 6.3 million in losses. And there was a couple other three or four of them that said we had lost X amount of dollars.

The total was about, so it went from 800,000 to about another $8 million. So 6.3 of that was from Dell, which is a huge, huge number. Because again, when you're going in front of a judge that's sentencing you, 800,000, looks a lot better than $9.1 or $9.2 million. Right. Even with them, as hard as they worked for me, the fourth attorney that I had, I still said that's bullshit. It's not true.

It's fucking not true. It's not true. Ask for it. Go to him and say, okay, where is it? And I explain the portfolio. Remember, they're attorneys. They're in a tunnel. Left, right, that doesn't exist.

Here's the verbiage. Go to them and ask. for it. And it was basically just we didn't want to piss the judge off. You made a great comment earlier that I was going to refer back to, which was the tail end of this, is everybody was worried about pissing the judge off. As opposed to, I was like, well, what about my fucking rights? Yeah. What about me? How does somebody, how does a judge, hold on? I'm not saying anything how does a federal judge fucking sign off on a $9 million restitution with no proof? Right. Is that bad to say math? I mean, you've, no, I mean, you've, no, I mean, he's, you've, no, I mean,

Because it's, it's, you would think that the judge wants to have accurate information in front of him in order to, to sentence someone. Like, I don't want to send it. If a judge is really concerned about justice at all or doing the right thing at all, then he's concerned about having accurate information. Because the truth is, if you're, even if you're just a decent fucking person. Yeah. I don't want to give someone nine years that should get two. Right. know, because let's face it, then then what ends up happening is I've just, I've sentenced

someone who to seven extra years that they don't deserve and that's not right, right? Sure. You want it to be reflective of the crime. So I don't see why you can't ask Dell. Where's the losses? How much was supposed to be paid and how much was paid? This is a simple math. This isn't, this isn't calculus.

This isn't an extremely difficult math. This is not. This is, hey, we lend him this much. He paid back this much. He was supposed to pay back this much. Okay. here's what the loss is. Sure.

And then break it down, like you said, business owner got 50%. Right. Broker got 20. Right. And we kept 30, but through the expenses, whatever number you want to give it.

We whittle it down to, it'd probably be less than 800,000, but, you know. Does it look good for them? You know, the big number is 9. $2 million, the slam dunk. They spent a significant amount of money rating or who they wanted,

they were, you know, of course, I'm sure they were being, they were thinking it was huge numbers. and they want you to go to jail for a long time. Yeah. Because it makes them feel good.

Yeah. And one thing I found curious too, and maybe it happens that the head FBI agent retired right after I took the plea. Okay. And I don't know if that's normal. I just found it to be peculiar a little bit. And he was at the sentencing. He was there to make sure that, you know, he was, you know, he's retired.

Right. And, you know, he was one of the. few that were in there to see me go to jail, you know. And I was surprised to see him there too. But, you know, that's kind of stuck with me a little bit just as, you know, curious why, you know, or maybe it was his time to go, but retiring right after my plea, I don't know. I think it's, you know, a bit much. But, yeah, so I think, you know, judge sentenced me 54 months in federal prison.

And is that, was that the low end of the guidelines? It was better, yeah, because when I was in there, they called me the ringleader. So I got an additional two points. So that's why the 28 went to 30. And so that guidelines was like 93 to 120, something like that. And the PSR, the lady that did the PSR, was asking for 72 to 93, someone that fuss. So, yeah, 54 is a lot less than what I could get. you know, and I'm sitting there going 12, 24, 36, 48.

I'm a numbers guy. I'm like, all right, four and a half years. And, you know, the way the judge was talking, he wasn't, you know, really happy. And, you know, which I understand, but he has a job to do. But I put a lot of footwork in. And I almost think, you know, because you have a lot of consultants, a lot of guys out here that prison consultants. And, you know, everybody knows this and everybody knows that. And one thing that I can tell you is I did self-educate a lot, you know, through the, trying to get through the sentencing.

And my wife did a lot of footwork on that. Tremendous. Shout out to her. She deserves it. And so when I went into my sentencing, I prepared through putting footwork in, like doing the work. And it was almost like I felt like it was used against me. Like I was just too buttoned up for some reason. You know, I remember the judge telling me something that I have more.

more people that stand in front of me, in front of me that say a lot less than you, that may be more remorseful than you. I'm thinking, oh, shit. I'm not sure what that means, but, you know, and I don't get time to explain that, hey, I'm just trying to put the, put the, you know, put the work in and rebuild, I guess, if that's the best way to put it. But, yeah, 54 months in federal prison and I turn myself in tomorrow to, you know, the BOP.

So Coleman. Coleman. Yeah. Coleman. You were there, I think you said, right? I was at the, I did three years at the medium and nine years at the low. Yeah. I was in the Marshall holdover because I didn't get bond.

I don't know what that means. I, well, you know, like when they arrest you, they take you in. Oh, got. Oh, gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you've been out the whole time. So I was never out. Wow.

And it was a year from being captured for being arrested. Then six months later, I pled guilty. And then six months later, I was sentenced. But I was in custody the entire time. That's what I was saying. Also, a lot of times when you plea, you say, hey, okay, I'm guilty. They'll go, okay, take them into custody right then. You're like, fuck.

A lot of times that, like the attorneys haven't arranged for you to stay out. You know, a lot of times, like, if it's a good attorney, he goes to the U.S. attorney and says, look, he's going to plead guilty. We don't want, we want him to say out with his family. We want him to be able to self-surrender. We want, and they'll be like, yeah, okay, he hasn't been a problem. We don't think he's going to take off and run. So that's fine. We don't have a problem with that.

And then you get run. Then you plead guilty. And then the judge says, okay, we're going to let him say out. Sure. And then you get sentenced. Sometimes you get sentenced, you know. And if they've, if the decent attorney, he's contacted you, his attorney said, look, at sentence, thing. We'd like him to stay out so he'd stay with his family until he has to go to prison.

Yeah. Because trust me, you don't want to go sit in the county jail, like, or the U.S. Marshal's holdover. It really sucks. Yeah. And that's one good thing my attorneys did do. And another thing I didn't realize is the, when you owe restitution, if you put, you know, X amount of dollars in your commissary, that they'll, they want to take that. They'll take a piece of your convocery money to pay back your restitution. Another good thing that my attorney did was ask the judge that I have X amount of dollars put to the side that they cannot touch so that I can use for whatever I need for my commentary, you know, every month, which the judge did agree, which was good.

And it was the damnedest thing. One of the FBI agents jumped up, jumped out of his seat and said, you know, he wasn't, he was sitting behind. Yeah. And he says, you know, again, it's, I'm in a fog there. and he says, I don't need Jason having, he used my last name, I don't need Jason having a million dollars sitting on the books and I can't touch it. I want to be able to get that money.

And I was like, a million dollars on the books. Those were his exact words. And the judge was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can only put X amount of dollars in there. But this guy, it was unbelievable, yeah, to the end. I mean, they're right to the end, thinking that I'm going to put a million dollars. I'll be lucky. You know, I think you get $500 a month or something, $3.40.

Yeah, I think you can spend like $350 a month. Right. So you don't get a whole lot. Yeah. You can put as much as you can put in the account. You know, but that, but he's being a jackass. Nobody's putting a million dollars in their fucking account.

Um, uh, and yeah, it's called FRP. They'll take it. Yeah. Uh, so a couple of things that, um, my last attorney did do that, you know, he set up some things that I do greatly appreciate and, um, So did you end up getting ARDAP?

Like did the judge recommend you do ARDAP or? No, I was told because I had spoken with my attorney. See, I didn't understand what ARDAP was. It was never explained by my second attorney. He just had said, say you have a drug issue and don't lie where I'm thinking about drugs is heroin and pain something heavy like that. Right. As opposed to, I've been drinking since I've been 15. Right.

So an alcohol is a drug. Yeah, yeah. And so as I was able to educate myself more on the RDAP program, we had spoke about it. I did talk to my attorney about it. And I actually went, had seen a counselor too, which also recommended, you know, that I do have an issue with alcohol. Right. And that, you know, she had written out a recommendation that RDAP would help me tremendously. So, you know.

But had your, it's so funny because had your sex. an attorney just explained that, hey, there's a program if you have an addiction problem, not drugs. Doesn't have to be, well, I mean, alcohol is a drug, but it's not that, but had he just explained more accurate or even had a 10-minute conversation with you, like, hey, have you, do you ever drink to excess? Do you ever this? And if you said, well, yeah, I mean, I do.

So there are times I definitely do. Absolutely. Like that's, you know, that would have qualified and that would have been, they would have said, oh, wow, I think you could have benefited from this. And then they could have gone in front of the judge and said that too. And then it's almost a lock. Yeah. You know.

And again, like you said, if it was explained properly, and it just never was. But we'll see what happens. And again, you know, I've been drinking since I've been 15 years old. And I believe that RDAAP would help me tremendously. Well, I think, yeah, I was going to say, what's so funny is, I mean, you just had one fucking horrific attorney after another after another. And I just don't, I just don't understand why. some that these fucking attorneys ask for 40, 50, 60,000 dollars. And I'm telling you right now.

120. Yeah. And I'm telling you right now, you'll go to an attorney, to a jailhouse attorney, and you'll get better fucking advice from a jailhouse attorney, and you'll pay him some honey buns and two six packs of soda. Yeah. And that guy will fucking file a 2255 and get two years or knocked off your sentence or, you know. Sure.

But if you, you know, the problem is you think you have a ton of time. And I know it feels like a ton of time. Yeah. And because the truth is, no matter how much time you get, it always feels for day. Like I said, I've always told, I've said this. A day is too much for me. Yeah. I've said, I've said this over and over again.

There's only, I've only met, only met two people ever that told me they were, they got a deal. Not only did, that's what I deserve, but they were like, I got a deal. Yeah. One guy was a guy who was up for 10 days. He was long-distance truck driver. He was driving through a national park with his semi. And finally just kind of passed out and ran over two hitchhikers. Whoa.

Yeah. Just a couple. Two 20-year-old ran him over. Vehicular homicide. Yeah. So, but there is no such thing as vehicular homicide in the federal courts. So they charged him with murder. So double murder.

Double murder. And he got like 15 years. Wow. And it was tearing them apart too. Like it's not like. he was like not remorseful. When I even mentioned to him, I don't even know why I said this.

I actually was just stupidest fucking thing I could have said. I actually remember saying, well, when he told me he got 15 years and what happened, I was like, well, I mean, are you working on it's a very own way you can, you know, are you working on it? Like, are you working on that 15 years? Like, are you trying to fight it? Yeah.

Which, you know, it's just a natural thing to say to most people because you typically are saying that a lot. I don't know why I just said it. Not even thinking about the severity of a, crime. And he looked at me and his eyes filled up with tears and he said, I killed two people. Yeah. He said, I got a deal. And then he got up and walked away before he started crying in front of me. He was that upset about it. Second person is Boziak. Boziac was a buddy of mine. I was supposed to get like 12 years or 12 or 14 years, something like that. And just so happened, just a complete accident.

His attorney happened to mention, he happened to mention, I can't believe I'm going to go to jail for 12 years because the guy at the UPS store opened that package. He was like, it's just so stupid. And she was like, he was about to sign his plea agreement. She reached over, she goes, wait a minute and pulled the back. She said, they had a warrant to open the package. And he goes, no, no, he said, the UPS guy called and asked them, hey, I think this guy's shipping drugs.

And they were like, well, they ran my name, my fake name, and nothing came up. And they said, well, we got no way to get a warrant. we'd have to know what was in there to be able to bust him. We don't know. We don't have any indication that this guy's ever been arrested for sale of drugs or smuggling or anything. And the guy was like, okay, hangs up the phone, opens the package himself, takes it upon himself, calls him back and says, look, it's not drugs. It's credit cards. And they were like, and bingo.

Right. So he tells her that. And she's like, really? And she grabs the thing. She says, I'll be back. And this is a public defender. Leaves. He didn't pay her dime.

Yeah. Leaves comes back like four or five days or a week later and says, I got him to drop all the charges except for the aggravated identity theft because you did open the account using a fake ID. Wow. It's two years. I can't do any better than that. He's like, give me the pen.

What do you mean? What do you talk? And he signs it. He was thrilled. He's like, I couldn't believe it. That's it. Out of the entire time I was locked up, two guys. So, I mean, it's always seemed horrific.

Yeah. But the truth is the 54 year, I mean, the 54 months. 54 months, yeah. Which is bad to you. And I'm sure you probably don't give a shit that it's you. It's you're concerned about getting back to your family and your son and your wife because, you know. But I think what happens is, you know, you'll get the Second Chance Act credits. Right.

You'll get 15% off. Yeah. You get into Art app. You pass. you'll get a year. You might be in prison less than two years. Yeah. Well,

we'll see what happens. Yeah. I mean, you can max out too. I think the first step, I think you were saying, but you can get up to 4.15. So you can get,

you only get a year off of your time in jail. But the extra 50 days that you get, they'll either give it to you. They can add it on to your house arrest or home confinement or halfway home. Yeah. So, you know, and I'll be, you know, I'll be working every day, staying busy programming, doing whatever I got to do. And it's been a hell of a ride, though. You know, I feel like it's the only the beginning, you know, because there's a lot that, you know, there's a lot of things that go on out here. And it's, it's hard to fight the DOJ, which, you know, 98% of people take a plea. And there's a reason why. Well, it's even harder when the people that you're paying to be an advocate for you are working again.

Yeah. They're on the, they're on the same team and you don't really realize it. But, uh, you know, one day at time. Um, I'll tell you something that lawyers do that I've heard over and over again. Um, so a lot of state lawyers do this. So let's say you're a drug dealer. Mm-hmm. And you've come to, you've got a lawyer that you use. And you've come to him before. Little charges. He goes in front of the judge. You give him, you give him, you give him five grand. He represents you. He gets probation. Whatever. A lot of state attorneys. So finally, you come back to him and you say, listen, my house got raided by the DEA or the task force, let's say. There's a task force and knowing the task force is tied in with the DEA, right? It's a drug task force. They tied it. They

raided my house and this. And you know, and so, but you were essentially raised. by the local police. Local FBI? No, no. Just local sheriff's department or local police, even though it was a task force that's maybe being monitored or run by the DEA or FBI, something like that. So initially you were arrested by the sheriff's department and went to the county jail.

Gotcha. But you got out. He gets you out. Or he comes to see you because you talk to your girlfriend and you say, hey, go get my lawyer. he comes to see you. He says, look, I can get you out of bond, whatever it is. And so typically what these guys, and these guys, as soon as they sit down, they know it was a task force. It's run by the DEA. Yeah. This isn't the local sheriffs. This is, I know that this is, he already knows it's going federal. He could have, even before he sat down, called the task force or called the district

attorney and said, hey, my client, boom, boom, boom, is this going to go federal? And that person may have said, oh, absolutely. It's going to end up going federal. That attorney then comes in and sits down with these guys and they're like, listen, how did you get, how did you get raided? Like, I don't know, how much, I mean, are you, is it that big of a deal? And these guys are like, no. Like, I got this. No, I'm nowhere. I mean, I mean, are you moving like fucking keys or something? And they're like, no, nothing like that. He's like, so he's like, how did that, that's insane. And so these guys will be like, yeah, yeah, it's, so, yeah, this isn't going to go federal, right? This is just,

you're moving half a key, whatever. Yeah. And you go, okay. So, yeah, I'll represent you. So here's what you do. He's like, look, I'll represent you, go to trial everything. Give me 20 grand in cash. Or not in cash, right.

Give me 20 grand. Yeah. Give me 20 grand. I'll represent you through everything. 20 grand does everything because I've been, you've been coming to me for a while. Yeah. But listen, if it goes federal,

you're going to have to get another attorney. But like you said, it's small time. It's not, you're not moving hundreds of keys. It's not going to go federal. But so give me the 20. It's nonrefundable. But if you go federal, I can't help you.

You got to get a federal attorney. But like you said, and the guy's like, no, no, no, it's not going to go federal. I'm not, you know what, I'm not barely moving anything. But okay, cool.

So he arranges to give the guy 20,000, even though he knows it's going federal. So he just took 20 grand. Yeah. And three weeks later, he finds in, he goes, man, bad news, bro. It went federal.

You're going to have to get a federal attorney. Wow. And they say, he's like, man, I gave you $20, but I gave you, yeah, I know I gave you, give you, give me $20, but that money's gone. I've already used that in all the, I've, I've been looking into this. I've, I've, I've, I've, my, my, my legal team. Bullshit. He didn't do anything.

He went on a cruise. Yeah. I just got back, I just got back from my cruise. Yeah. You know, but I mean, that's, yeah, that's just kind of what they do. It's like, hey, I can get this guy for $120,000. I'll promise them all kinds of stuff. But the truth is, his life is in such shambles right now.

I can do anything. And the money is the least of this guy's problems right now. And they get away with it, get away with it and get away with it. And, you know, it's like you would have to, probably the only way to get something back or get the money back would be. And you actually could because almost nobody ever does this. It's filed something with the bar. Other attorneys don't even tell you to do this. Yeah.

They'll be like, oh, that's just the way it is. You know, damn well, it's not the way it is. You can take all the paperwork, write it all up, and file with the, and file something with the bar in whatever. This is what my agreement says. Yeah. Here's the email. Here's this.

I spoke with him on the phone. I told him that wasn't, you can't move that money. Yeah. You know, whatever he did this. And you can see that this and then he took all the money. He lied about this. He didn't know this. He didn't know that.

Completely ineffective. Charging an astronomical fee. File that with the bar. the bar is going to write him a letter and say we're opening an investigation into this allegation. And he'll respond. And he'll respond. Then it goes in front of a three judge panel. Oh, okay.

Oh, you've been here. Did you already do this? Yeah. And what happened? In front of the three judge panel, they threw it out. Okay. Why? Can't get a response for some reason.

Haven't been able to, we've tried and tried, yeah. You can't get a response from the three. From the panel? Yeah, why they declined it. So, yeah, I did exactly. which you just explained. Did you argue? Were you arguing that he was ineffective or were you arguing?

It was a little bit of everything. Yeah. Ineffective touching the money from the ALTA account. There was quite a few things. Just I don't have it in front of me, but there was. Yeah, that doesn't. There was, but I had gone to the 1%. That's what they call it.

So it went as far as it could go in front of a three judge panel. Because 90% of that's thrown out right off the bat. Yeah, because most people argue just the, a payment dispute. Yeah. And they throw, oh, we don't deal with payment disputes.

But if you argue that he's in effect- Just gross. Misconduct. Yeah. Misconduct, negligence, a little bit of everything. And we're still working on trying to get the reason why.

I don't have it. I don't know. But we did do that. So. I wonder if you can file a state court claim. I have to see. You know? Because at some point,

he'd probably just be like, I don't, try and give you something back at some point. Yeah, I doubt it. Really? I doubt it. Yeah. He's probably on a fucking cruise ship. All right.

So. Man. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's all good. Yeah. How long ago did this legal battle start and how long ago was sentencing? The beginning of this has been about two and a half years. So it was December of 22, two weeks before Christmas.

And then the sentencing was last month on the, What is today the second? So it was, no, it was April 25th. I think it's been about a month and a half. Yeah. Yeah. I hate to ask this question, but I'm always curious.

Like, what has this last month and a half been like? Because usually I'm asking this question, like, and if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. I mean, I just, I'm always curious. And I'm always asking, you know, 10 years after the fact, five years after the fact, very rarely is someone in the situation, you know? Yeah. Well, I think it may happen to more people than you believe, but, you know. Well, I'm saying to have someone here.

No, no. We are typically talking to someone who's gotcha. 20 years after they've come to their crime or 10 years or five. I mean, you know, you keep your face strong. So, I mean, it's, I mean, I've always been resilient. And family wise, you know, wife wise, it's, it's been brutal. it's it's uh you sometimes you wake up and you got to pinch yourself like you're you know when is this going to end you know so um you know we have we've had to do not to get too personal but we've had to move some things around and we've just had to do different things we still have a young daughter at home um it's just been a lot you know so um without getting into too much detail it's uh it's a

so real moment. I'm ready to get it over with. It's, it's been hard, though. It's very hard. Very emotional. Even with, you know, I've got two older kids that, you know, had to come in and spend some time with me, yada, yada. So again, without putting out too much out there because I don't want to for their privacy. It's been brutal, absolutely brutal. So today's been a little bit of a more so real moment. I think me and you talked when, you know, I haven't even gotten my, I haven't gotten letter wasn't sent to the judge, no letter to the attorney. I've got nothing in the mail, but I turn myself in tomorrow by 2 o'clock. So again, I don't know if that's a normal process. According to my attorney, I keep getting told they're supposed to be, you know,

served with the date, time, where I'm going, the whole nine yards. Right. Somehow for some reason, that that information, that paperwork didn't get filed or didn't go out, but the OPA expects you to be there. Yeah. Be there. Yeah, and I'm going to be there. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So it's been hell. Absolute hell, 100%. But living for every day that I can. And something good will come out of this.

There's no doubt. And then things are already working in our favor. And just got to keep praying hard. Coleman's not going to be too bad. It's like a shitty high school. Like a shitty day. It's like a shitty summer camp. I'm not into any shitty stuff.

Yeah. So to, you know, I honestly I expect to keep busy you know work my ass off do whatever I can you know I'm a people person I love people you know I'll know I don't I won't go around trouble I don't want anything to do with trouble

so as long as I get in there and do everything that I'm supposed to I'm respectful whether I'm here wherever I'm at I'm going to be respectful I mean a lot's going to happen there that I'll probably be laying there going fuck what was that but I don't have time to argue or disagree with anybody. I don't give a fuck what's on TV.

Right. I'm just going to stay busy. Yeah, I was going to say that the ways. I can care less what people are watching. The ways you get in trouble is arguing. Cell phone. Somebody said somebody will walk around with a stolen cell phone. They got to. I don't want anything to do with anything like that.

It's arguing over the TV. It's borrowing money. Yeah. It's running up debts. Yeah. You know, it's talking about people like gossiping. Sure. I mean, you know, so you just keep your head down.

That's it. And you fucking. And the other thing. thing for you, a clean cup white guy. Yeah. Yeah. People would be like, well, what do you, what do you hear for? They think you're a choma.

They say a sex offender. So what you, so the worst thing you do is to say, oh, my lawyer told me not to talk about my charges. That's the problem. Because they think, now they think, oh, okay. Yeah. You're, you know, so what you say is I'm here for water fraud. Yeah.

Yeah. And I will say that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to, again, I'm not looking for best friends. I'm not going to sit there and fucking. and cry to somebody, but I will tell people this is, you know.

And again, they'll be able, I mean, people have access once they have my name. You can look it up. It's fucking everywhere. It says. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, but I would. It's clear as day, you know, but yes, I agree with you. Yeah.

Because somebody, I don't know if it was Dan. Wise. Yeah. Was, said something about, because I didn't get the camp. So I don't know. Yeah, but here's, what it is,

about that because you always go to a low first. So you always go to a low no matter what? In this district. Okay, I didn't know that. If you were in California, you'd go straight to a camp. Probably in New York, too. Like, there's a lot of districts where they'll send you straight to a camp. Yeah.

But for some reason in this kind of the Florida, Georgia, South Carolina kind of district, they send you to a low and then you'll either go up or down. Yeah. But you wanted to go to a low anyway because there's no art app at the camp. So if you went to the camp, like you're now, which I'm fine with it. Go to the low. So you're going to be at the low.

Yeah, I think it'll work out as good as it can be sitting in jail. Plus you're local. Yeah. My wife's two hours down the street. You know, yeah, we're very close. And that's what's important, being able to see each other, being able to communicate with each other. And again, I've self-educated.

So I'm ready. I mean, I'm not, I mean, ready as you can be. Yeah. Right. Who the fuck wants to go to jail? Yeah, yeah. Come on. Seriously.

I mean, unless you're, unless you are. are like young. I mean, you're just, you know, I'm 50. I don't have time for this bullshit. I mean, I... Sometimes I like to go back for a couple months, just to say hi to people. Little John.

Hey, look how good you did for yourself. But, you know, it's, you know, I'll help. If I can help people, I'd love to. I mean, I've been in finance credit my whole life. You know, and I hear, you know, Dan was saying things like, you know, people still trying to figure out how to do, you know, a checkbook and just, educational stuff, nothing bad.

I mean, I'm no better than anyone else. Just if I can help, I'll do the best that I can. Yeah, there's there's GED classes. Yeah, well, I've got my high school diploma now. Not you. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. You meant for them.

I'm talking about you teaching GED. Oh, got, oh, really? Okay, I didn't know. Well, they need tutors. Like, you're a tutor. So, or you, um, you teach a, the, the, the ACE course, all those courses that meet the requirements for the Second Chance Act. Yeah.

Right. Or is it Second Chance? First Act. First, first chance. Act, I think it's called. Anyway, FS, whatever. Anyway, those courses that meet those requirements are typically taught by inmates. Yeah. So, you know, that you, I taught the real estate class. Nice. So, you know, there'll be different classes that like, hey, do you have any experience in this? And then, yeah, I could do this. And then you end up teaching a class and that helps you time go

by. Once a week or for an hour? Yeah, it'll be like on Tuesdays and Tuesdays and Tuesdays. It'll be like on Tuesdays and Tuesdays and Tuesdays and Thursdays or Mondays and Wednesdays or Wednesdays, whatever. Yeah. You teach that and it's in three months it's over and you teach 40 guys. They give you credit for that or no, is it just a part of us? They give you credit and they give them credit, right? Yeah. So you get as a teacher, you get credit for teaching the class.

Do you get double? I don't think you get double, but you're getting. Does it become a part of your like first step act? Does that? That's what I, that's what I'm saying. I got you. Those credits go towards that. That or sometimes it's just a matter of working.

Because there's only so many jobs. Yeah. And there's too many inmates. Yeah. Because a lot of people don't talk about. You can max out the first step that. 415 days. Okay.

Because everybody just says a year. But you can get those extra 50 days by putting the work in, which again can go towards home confinement or halfway house. Right. So again, just trying to self-educate. Just trying to walk in and go and I almost feel like it's fucking used against you because they're like, don't go in. I'm not going and acting like I know anything.

I'm just trying to educate myself. And if I can help or talk or give back, that's exactly what I'm going to do. You know, so I'm, I'm, I'm, good headwise it's more of my family you know my just again i've been married from 22 years been with my wife 24 25 years we've been together our whole lives man and i mean i mean i never went on vacations without her we've basically for the most part been together almost every day work together i know a lot of people can't do it but we have and uh if i can say anything she's just been powerful and all this because i if the shoe is on the other foot i'd be like damn what the

fuck, you know, what's going on here? But she's, and she sees everything. She sees everything that's going on. And she's just, her support has been tremendous. I think it's important for people. You know, if you've got that kind of support, you know, if you've got to shout them out and say, just be thankful. Praise God to her.

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