Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Becoming A Successful Author In Prison | Seth Ferranti

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Becoming A Successful Author In Prison | Seth Ferranti

Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Neeson. Buy your tickets now. I get a free Tilly Dog. Not included. The Naked Gun.

Tickets on sale now. August 1st. I formed this other plan, right? I was like, man, you know, because I was out on bail. I was like, man, I'm going to take the fuck off. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Seth Ferranti. and we're going to do a podcast on Seth Story. Seth was a, you know, I saw on concrete.

It was like the, what was it? He said you were like the LSD kingpin or something. Yeah, so basically, Seth was arrested and did 20, you got 25 years. Yeah. Did 21 years in federal prison for selling LSD. Yeah, LSD and cannabis. And cannabis. Okay.

So, all right, check it out. so somebody asked me earlier too and like the first question somebody asked me and I didn't even know like where where were you born yeah I was born in Lamore Lamore is actually out in the desert they call it the central coast it's between L.A. and San Diego okay and you I mean I I kind of know the story so you you grew up there and you said you started basically were just what you start off just yeah no I was I was I was a military brass so I was I was actually born on like a Navy base you know it's out in the desert that's where like they like they train fighter pilots right you know so um my dad was basically a fighter pilot and um but he was the Navy he used to fly off

aircraft carriers so we're in San Diego we're in Virginia Beach we were in Germany we were in London but we always ended back up in California usually until he retired and that's kind of where my problem started because I was like this California kid and I ended up in northern Virginia like in this really kind of a lily white upper class area like right out of washington dc when i was when i was basically you know like a sophomore junior in high school and being from california you know and at that age like you know everybody were going out partying and just the weed that they got they just got like garbage weed it was like all brick weed like brown shit and then uh like if they could get lSD or something like that it was just like super expensive like 20 dollars a hit

so um i mean i knew a lot of people you know i had a lot of friends that were getting into that stuff, you know, back in California. So I started getting weed sent, you know, from Northern California, you know, like, like Emerald Triangle, Humboldt County Bud. And from, from like San Francisco, I started getting LSD sent. Okay. But you were, how, I mean, how old were you at that time when you were? Man, I was, I was, I was, I was like 16, yeah, so I was like 16. And at first, I mean, it was just for personal. Right. You know what I'm saying? So I would just get personal like you know five or six of us we kind of put our money together and you know i'd get it sin and i'd send the money and um but then eventually like you know if if if you do drugs and

a lot a lot of young kids you know kind of figure this out or at least the smarter young kids figure this out so when you're young and you're doing drugs you know and then finally you're like well fuck it if i can get it why should i pay for it right so that's like the first thing you're like do it for free drugs but then you know after you do that for a while you're like well fuck it i don't want to pay for it and i want to make money right so you know this was and it wasn't something that just happened overnight so this was a gradual thing like you know over my first probably nine to 12 months in northern virginia you know where i've like hey man i can make money off this shit you know and then um and then other stuff happened like i started going on tour like at 17 i started

going on a Grateful Dead tour and anybody that knows anything about the Grateful Dead tour like in the late 80s you know like we're talking like 1988 right you know like what they call shakedown street or the lot I mean it was basically like an open air drug market right so and and like I say when I say open air drug market I don't mean like cocaine heroin there was that stuff around but it's mostly like I call you know like I'm a weed in psychedelics dude you know I was never into cocaine I was never into heroin speed you know I hate amphetamies I don't even like MDMA you know I've never been like a you know amphetamine type of guy so I was always into like the the psychedelics you know in cannabis

you know hash mushrooms you know even stuff like peyote mescalin you know so that was kind of like where I leaned you know kind of on that side so I would go to these dead shows and the big thing about the dead shows like I mean it's just this big lot and everybody selling drugs so I had two reasons I went to the dead shows. One reason is because I established a connect down in Kentucky that grew weed and they grew pretty good weed, you know, compared to the brick weed from Texas that was coming around. So I would take that weed. I would grab that weed for whatever, 16, 1,800 a pound. And I would take that on Dead Tor and I would sell it for $200 ounce.

And if it was good weed, like what they call Kind Bud. And when they say Kind Bud, they were referring to like the bud from Humboldt County, you know, the Emerald Triangle, which I could usually only get in the fall. you know that harvest time but that's what they wanted they wanted that good sungrown organic because the brickweed was basically crap the brickweed yeah the brickweed was crap so you know that's what the deadheads wanted you know to go with that whole hippie vibe so i started going and i started selling bud on tour you know and i was making a you know considerable amount of money not doubling my money but you know i was usually making like you know a thousand a thousand 1200 pound and it was easier to get i got better lsd contacts on tour

Because, you know, I had some friends and they could get like some sheets here and there, but they couldn't really, you know, they couldn't really like hit me off and I had to pay like, you know, I wasn't paying wholesale prices like they were getting at basically like retail prices, you know, but still, you know, not like they were selling hits. You know, I was getting buying whole sheets from them, you know, so I was probably getting like a dollar or $2 hit and selling it for $5 hit. But then I knew if I went on tour and I hooked up with the right people, I could basically get it for like 30, 40 cents a hit. you're not making it though you're just you just have a contact yeah no i never made it so you know but um because when i was locked up i i met one guy the like the whole time i was locked out one guy that actually made lSD i mean because you know it's it's not like it's easy it's not like growing growing weed it's like this guy you got to be a kinnis yeah you got to be a kinnis so you know so um yeah so what i know about the whole lsd trade is a lot of times at the shows they would fly in. They would fly in the liquid.

So, you know, they would fly in, they'd fly in like 25 grams, you know, at a time. But, you know, each one of those grams makes 10,000 hits. Yeah. You know, to give you the number. So pretty much every dead show, and the dead used to crisscross a nation. You know, they used to play everywhere.

And they would play multiple nights. So every show, every town, like let's say they played three nights in Philly, you know, from San Francisco. All that stuff is still basically made in that area. You know, all the chemists, you know. And a lot of times it's the same guys from the 60s, you know, maybe they have like, you know, they mentored other guys, younger guys and brought other guys into the trade. But, you know, it's like, it's not, it's not like a big group of people.

I mean, they keep it pretty, you know, secret because it's a lot to even, like now, to even get the precursors and all the other stuff. I mean, they've outlawed a lot of that stuff. So it's really hard to get the stuff to make it, you know. But, I mean, like I say, one, one gram is 10,000 hits. So you don't need a lot. Yeah, he was, the guy was telling me, like, they would get the sheets of paper and the, you know, perforated sheets of paper. And he was like, you're literally just putting like a droplet on each.

Yeah, the blotter paper. Well, what also they do is they actually, they actually dip it. All the whole sheet? Yeah, so they dip it. So like what you got? Like one sheet of 100 hits is about this big. So that's like a sheet. And then they would have what you call like a page.

So a page would be like 100 of those. All right. Okay. Or not 10 of those. So that would be like, you know, a thousand. hits okay a hundred and then they had what you call a book would be 10 pages and then you know that would be like 10,000 hits that's like a gram of LSD you know but it's all it's all the blotter paper you know it absorbs it and that's pretty much you know I mean it's not a

perfect science because some places might absorb more than others right you know I've talked to a lot of chemists so you know that's basically they've kind of explained a lot of stuff to me but yeah I've never done it but I know they would fly it in and um you You know, then, like, when they get it there, then they would go through the process of laying it on the sheets, you know, where they kind of dip it in it or whatever. Right. You know, and they all would also do a lot of liquid. I remember going to the shows, and this is kind of funny because where whenever there were shows, they would have a lot of the deadheads or the hippie kids would go to the local grocery stores, and they would buy all the boxes of the food coloring. You know, like the food coloring, it comes in these, like, little boxes, and there's, like, 10 or something, or sometimes five.

Right. And those were like what they would use for the vials. So they would get that food coloring and they would pour it all out, you know, and clean it out. And then they would fill that up because that one vial and that food coloring, that was like 100, that was like 100 hits. You know, so they would sell vials too. Because some people would do like straight liquid. I even did, I did some liquid one time. So one time I was at some shows in Pittsburgh, like in 89.

And, you know, I'd always been a big fan of Jimmy Hendricks. And I used to read how Jimmy Hendricks, he used to take his bandana. and he would just pour like a whole vial of acid on his bandana, and then he would wrap it around his head. You know, so it's not like he was taking 100 hits, but, I mean, he was absorbing. Yeah, yeah, he's still absorbing it. A lot of that.

So one time at this show in Pittsburgh, it was actually right after Brett Midland, the keyboardist, real popular keyboardist died. He, like, OD'd on a speedball. And I was like, man, I was on this Jimmy Hendricks trip. You know, maybe I'd seen some documentary or something. I don't know or read about it in Rolling Stone. or something. So I actually took, and I poured three quarters of a bottle, basically like 75 hits on a bandana, and then I wrapped it around my head. And this is like, this is like before the show

starts. You know, because back then it was way different. Back then, like, you had like free rain in the whole stadium, man. It wasn't like all the security, like they cording off this area and you can go here with your tickets. Like back then, dude, like you gave your ticket. You went in the stadium, you know, from the lot. Yeah, you can even go back out to the lot, you know, because a lot's like, you know shakedown street so it's like a party and stuff like that so I this one time I did it and I took all this fucking 75 hits right and we're waiting for the show to start and everybody used to go up to the top so this is Three River Stadium in Pittsburgh everybody would go up to the top and smoke weed you know because you don't want to smoke weed you don't want to front out the

security or whatever so if you went up top they didn't give a fuck so we walked up me and my buddy he'd only take maybe like 25 hits he took the rest of the bottle but he drank it you know so you know he took like really adjusted 25 hits you know i don't know how mine was 75 hits but it was in a bandana so it's not like i took 75 hits right but it was you know going into my skin so we walked up to go to the smoking section you know everybody's smoking weed and so we're up there you know everybody got their you know big ounces or quarter pounds we're rolling up fatties and we're smoking them and then like the show starts you know so like everybody goes back down to the field because then it would just be the whole field would just be like wide open everybody be dancing so me and my

buddy though like the trip starts you know kicking in right so we're like we're like looking at the steps you know you know like in a lot of the stadiums i mean it's it's kind of steep right you know so we're like you start tripping balls right so we don't go back down we're like oh no we're just gonna stay up here we're gonna smoke some more weed so it ended up we we stayed up there and this is this is like i mean they used play they play like two sets man so they play like you know like an hour and a half and then they come back play another hour and a half so this like three hours dude like we're up there like our friends keep coming up trying to hey man come down and we're like we're like look and we're like fuck no like a couple

times we would try to look it's too steep right because you're tripping fucking balls right so we couldn't walk down so eventually um like the show's over and like we stayed up there the whole time and eventually everybody leaves right and uh like the people are going around cleaning you know and they're like looking at us like what the fuck are these dudes doing you know we're just up there like smoking weed tripping and uh so i don't even know it seemed like forever but eventually like a dude one of the custodian guys comes to us you know and he was like yo man he's like they're about to lock the doors of the stadium like you need to go now right to get the fuck out of here there's like nobody there's just like trash everywhere people picking up shit

so finally uh we actually like we crawled down you know like backwards you know on the steps you know like crawled down backwards until we got to like the uh you know like one of the main floors you know then then we could walk out but yeah that was crazy that's the most acid i ever took it one time and um like i can only say i i remember it but i mean it was um i mean i think i had a good time even though like i missed a show and i was like scared to walk out because it was like a ledge man it was like crazy i still to this day i have like vivid memories of trying like i'm telling you probably in that however many hours three to five hours i probably attempted to walk on those steps like 20 or 25 times me and my buddy and i just i couldn't do it it was not happening

until finally like and you know acid lost a long time too so you know i was still tripping it was just like they were going to lock the door and i didn't want to get fucking you know locked in the fucking stadium um so so i mean how so at some point though like you started i mean you know you you you kind of started selling more and more you're making money at it you're you know yeah really i kind of my business kind of exploded when everybody started going to college right so you know first i'm like a sophomore and then i'm getting more into it when i'm a junior and you know like i say i'm selling to the sophomores and i'm selling to the seniors you know and i was kind of like that guy i was kind of like that dude like if you wanted weed if you wanted lSD i was like the dude and i don't

I don't care. I would sell like 10 sheets. I would sell multiple sheets. I would sell like five or 10 hits. You know, because I was like whatever. It was all money to me. Plus, I always felt, you know, I always felt like I always felt like I was filling the need, you know, because I felt like people wanted good, clean drugs, you know. And I always felt like, you know, weed and LSD, you know, and mushrooms and stuff like that. I always felt they were good drugs. I didn't feel like they were bad drugs. You know, I didn't carry a gun. I didn't have a criminal. organization you know what I'm saying I go around beat people up you know a lot of times people paid cash a lot of people times people fronted I fronted stuff to people a lot of times people that I fronted stuff too were my friends and they fucked up the money and I still didn't do I was like well whatever I can make more money right that was always kind of like my attitude so um you were saying you didn't you didn't really feel like it should be illegal anyway I mean it's yeah that was yeah I always tell I tell people to this day this is my big thing right I was never a criminal right I broke laws that I thought were wrong right you know I was an outlaw

you know what I'm saying so you know like I say I to me there's a difference you know I mean in prison you got criminals and you got outlaws you know and maybe to the government law enforcement it's all the same because you know we're breaking the laws of society but I mean there's a difference anybody I mean you know you've been in prison man there's a difference you know a lot of times a criminal is going to do whatever he can you know criminal like fuck you over for a dollar right you know where like an outlaw has like morals you know kind of code that he's trying to live by yeah so you know there's a big difference but um yeah so i probably really exploded like probably like around 89 you know when i was a senior so um a lot of my friends had went off to

colleges you know and were like freshmen and so i went to robinson and robinson was a big school in Fairfax County. So Robinson was probably like 4,000 people. And then we had a sister school that was like not even five miles away called Lake Braddock. And Lake Braddock would have like 4,000 kids. And so, you know, for two years, you know, going on three years, I had been selling, you know, drugs, you know, LSD and weed to all these people in these schools, you know, going all the park. And you know, like I say, everybody smoked weed back then. It didn't matter, you know, if you were a jock, you know, if you were a stoner. You know, if you were a stoner. You You know, if you, like we call them truckers, like the dudes with the big four by fours.

You know, if you, you know, some Virginia, you got like the more country dudes. You know, so didn't, you know, the cheerleaders, you know, the popular kids. Everybody smoked weed. Everybody did LSD. Everybody did mushrooms. You know, some of them did Coke, but, you know, I didn't really fuck with those people. That wasn't really my scene. So when these people started going colleges, like, and these are all good kids from, from good families, you know, not necessarily like super rich.

You know, some more rich than others. but all upper middle class, you know, like all these kids, like they got a Mustang or like a hand-me-down Beamer or Mercedes when they were 16, you know. And, you know, so when they all went off, they went to all these colleges, you know, like Penn State, you know, University of Maryland, you know, Kentucky University, UK, you know, West Virginia University, you know, all the way like Virginia tech, you know, Radford, you know, VCU, you know, all the Virginia schools. So I just had like all these friends that went to all these different colleges and all within, you know, pretty much neighboring states to Virginia. So they all, they still need drugs. Yeah, so they're

going. And I mean, you want to go because like when you're a senior, you want to go to the colleges anyhow because you want to party, you know, check out the girls and see what college is like. Because I mean, that's what it's about in the suburbs, you know. You go to school. And then you know you go to college and it's like a party. So like they're calling me up there, you know, and and I'm going and they want me to bring drugs. They're like, hey, dude, what can you bring? Whatever? They're like, I need this for me. And like my whole frat, everybody needs shit. So I started going and it just like turned in. It was like just this little kind of local thing, you know, where I was kind of like, you know, a retail dude, but not really a big wholesale. I did maybe a little wholesale. But that was like real small part of my market. It was mostly retail. Right. You know. hand-to-hand stuff. And it just turned into where, you know, I remember the first time I went to Radford, right? I went to Radford in the beginning of the semester, so late August, 1990. And Radford is like kind of like the sister school to Virginia Tech. Radford used to be like an all-girl school, but then, you know, then they changed it so guys could come. And Virginia Tech is like right

there too. So it's these two, you know, Virginia Tech is a really huge school, but Radford's a pretty big school. So like August 1990 I go to I go to Radford and I had just picked up some bud that they just harvested in Kentucky and back then like sometimes like in the summer like it would get dry man like you couldn't find any weed and if you did find weed it would be like brown you know garbage brick weed with seeds. So I was always known for getting the good bud from like Kentucky or northern California. So this time I brought I brought like a ton of uh not a ton but probably like 20 pounds you know just harvested fresh you know good green bud and um i actually go i go to my dude's house right and my dude has a house and it's it's kind of like a little you know duplex apartment thing so

like he has a house right here and then his buddy has a house right here and so i bring bud and he's like man he's like man nobody has bud he's like everybody wants bud i'm like well fucking call him dude i'm like we're we're here so we break out the fucking triple beam right and first i'm like in his room and like people are coming but you know it was like so many fucking people like it was like crazy so what we ended up doing is we ended up going to his friend's apartment which was like kind of connecting you cross away and we had that door and we put like a table in front of the door like we're a fucking vendor and me and this other dude you know my road partner we're basically weighing stuff out and there was like a line so there was like a line all through this walkway and all through

my friend's house because they would come in my friend's house the front door and then you know come out in this side door and we go and it was like a line dude and we like literally quartered outst up weed for probably like three hours straight you know and i would like literally like sitting at the table throwing fucking money in the back like i don't even know how much money i don't even know how much weed i'm selling but you know at the end i mean we still had some left i probably had about five or six pounds left but i literally probably sold 14 15 pounds in three hours all for like quarters and ounces and i just have like this big duffel bag of money you know and that that was just like that's like what it was back then and i did that and once i did that first i was like man

i was like i can make a lot of money doing this you know that was my first thought but second i was like man i got to find a better fucking process because this is like some bullshit because it's you know i mean back then it was marijuana you know the war on drugs and all that shit i was like man this is like this is like too open. You know, so what I did among the people I knew at the different colleges, you know, because I had some situations at other colleges like that, you know, that was the most extreme situation. Right. That's why I'm telling the story. But, you know, I had different situations like that. It paints a good scene, though. Yeah. So I just started finding dudes like some of my friends, you know, like the smartest, most trustworthy or on point friends. And I would just go

to them and I say, look, dude, check this out. I'm going to come in. I'm going to drop you like 20 sheets of acid I'm gonna drop you like five pounds of bud and then you know you can do all the hand-to-hand sales and you know this is how much you owe me and then I'll come back and get it right so I did that at all these different colleges so I started doing this loop you know where I would go down I would go down 81 in Virginia and hit all the Virginia colleges then I would come back through Kentucky I would go to eastern eastern Kentucky and then I would go up to UK then I would come back to West Virginia, West Virginia University, which West Virginia University in Morgantown was like my hugest market, man. That place, at that time in the late 80s, like West Virginia, like in Playboy

magazine, like West Virginia University was always like in the top five party colleges. You know, like it was just fucking crazy. It was just known. You know what I'm saying? They always had like a big football program. You know, they were always kind of big in football. But they were just known. It was known as like a super party college so um and i had i had my buddies were in the delta tal delta fraternity and they had this big fucking huge old dilapidated mansion like on frat row and they just used to have these big ass fucking parties so they used to have these uh they used to have this party it was called the uh man it was called like the it was called like the the backyard not the backyard brawl but it was called like the backyard something i can't think of the this

the second name so it was called like the the backyard brawl or backer or something whatever that's it backyard bash you got the word so it was called the backyard bash so they would have this party and there'd be like literally 5,000 kids and they would always have right in the beginning of the semester and there would literally be 5,000 kids like going through this old dilapidated mansion and then they have like this big you know backyard and parking spot and they would get like reggae bands and stuff like that and so I would go to there and you know at first like it would be like I would be selling hand to hand eventually I got one of my dues to do everything. But, like, their parties were so big that eventually West Virginia University, like, told

them they couldn't have the backyard bash anymore. They were like, you guys, that party's outlawed. You can't have it. So, like, you know what these dudes did, right? Because these are, like, some little, you know, little smart, you know, also entitled, rich kids. They were like, okay. So they called it the Acquard Ash, you bring the bees.

Okay. So they just changed the name like that and still have the same. fucking party you know they were basically like fuck the university but um that's what i did i cultivated these relationships i kind of made from friends of mine there were drug users you know partiers into drug dealers and um so you know you're just the distributor yeah so this started like 89 so then by the time like 91 when i'm really rolling uh i'm basically supplying like 15 colleges in five states with uh weed and lSD Okay, that's a full-time job.

No, definitely. Like I see it this time too, like I didn't work a job because that was my job, but I actually went to college a couple times, just like, you know, the local community college, but it was always like, I even, I came down to Florida, dude, I came down to Florida in 89 in the fall of 89. And I was enrolled at, what's it called the USF?

Okay, yeah, yeah. I was enrolled in USF right in the fall of 89 but I mean it didn't last because I was like I was just drawn you know I was drawn to like the dead shows I was drawn to the dead scene you know I was drawn to the you know just like to me because to me being that drug dealer it was it was like being a rock star yeah you know what I'm saying and it wasn't even the money it was a lifestyle and not to say I mean you're the guy calling it shots everybody's like hey hey they need you know what I'm saying something for from you and you're there they're they treat you with respect and you know yeah I mean I I know and then and then too it's like just the the chicks do because like like I would have like I had like multiple girlfriends just like at colleges I would have like different chicks like I would like if they were in the dorms I would move them out getting an apartment just so I had like a safe place to lay my head and I would pay like their apartments so like I say I was making a lot of money for a teenager right I mean I always tell people like I was

making like 20, 20, 30,000 a month. Like, not generating, like I was making profit. I mean, generating, I was probably, you know, generating like, you know, a couple hundred thousand a month, you know, but I was literally making, you know, 25, 30 grand a month. I mean, 20 grand, 30 grand a month is a lot of money for a grown adult. Raising a family. That's a ton of money for a kid. And this was like, this was like, you know, 89, 90. But really, I always tell people too, because, you know, I sold drugs so, so probably from like whatever 16 to I got busted at 20 so four years but it was really only like nine months where I was at that height so it was that last nine months like 90 you know into when I caught my case uh you know the fall in 91 so you know because because before like everything I'll

explain this is when I'm like putting everything together you know I'm getting all my my sources and my contact straight you know I got it eventually like I didn't even have to go on tour to get the acid because I developed where they would just they would send me they would send me like a hundred sheets 10,000 hits and I was basically getting like 100,000 hits a month you know sent to me and then for the weed you know I would get in the fall to about January I would get weed sent from uh you know San Francisco from like northern California you know Emerald Triangle bud and I would drive down to Kentucky myself and and get their bud you know which was that they grew domestically which was pretty good. It wasn't as good as a humble bud, but

you know, it was close. And then the rest of the year from January until like August, I would basically get the brick pot, the Mexican brick pot. And I even, dude, I used to get a lot of weed out of Fort Myers. I would drive down to Fort Myers Florida. You know, I used to

go to Dallas, Texas. I'd fly to Dallas, Texas, but I would drive down to Fort Myers, Florida, and I would get weed from actually, it was like Kentucky dudes that were getting the weed down here. So they'd grow the weed, you know, all you're in the fall and then in the winter you know sometimes they would come down here you know to kind of keep the business going so I'd go down to fort Myers and I wasn't picking up a lot man and you know I pick up like whatever 50 pounds a hundred pounds a brick pot which when it's all

compressed like that you know it's not that much and also what I was doing was uh I was flying down to Dallas and I would I would bring money and I would get like 50 pounds or something 40 50 pounds and I would actually pack it in a suitcase and I would check it and I would and I would fly back with it you know like i was i was doing that like when i was 17 so that was crazy because back then you know back then you didn't you could go right to the airport right and you could say like you could buy a ticket you could say like my name's joe smith right and you could pay him cash for a one way ticket you know no red no no red flags no nothing and i go down with it like i had this green big green 1970s samson night uh you know suitcase

you know huge you're like this big and i fly down i check it it was empty you know what i'm saying and i go down and i literally sit at my buddies down there because i had some buddies that went to university of texas of arlington so i and they had developed some mexican contacts down there so i would literally go down there sit and wait on the mexican dudes you know until until they have their shit ready i dealt with this one dude named mexican eddie and um i would literally get the weed buy it pack it back in the suitcase you know i'd wrap it and stuff like that that. And then I would check it, check it in my luggage. I go back buy a one-way ticket, cash. This time I might be Chris Smith. Right. And go to, uh, you know, Dallas or, uh, you know,

DC National Airport and go pick it up off the carousel. So, you know, I didn't do that a lot, but I probably did that probably like, I don't know, 15 times over the years. You know, but mostly I was, I was a smuggler, you know, I was a driver. I was a driver. That's what I would did. because I knew I figured it out at a very early age if you buy a product or you know drug like weed or LSD in one point you know and brought it to another point you know that's how you made money yeah yeah you could leave that on the table you don't have to it's not a big deal I mean this is pretty casual I'm just like you know I'm a director so I'm like I'm like

anal with get everything out of the fucking shot i was thinking of the the fort myers thing i wrote a story about these two guys that ran basically like it was one of the largest um largest bust in that area um from the DEA i think they got caught with like 1,200 pounds or something that was just like you know and to just get to get seized to get caught with 1200 pounds god only knows what you know if that's just the one thing they caught you with yeah that's just a one shipment yeah but that was fort Myers fort Myers is a big you know it's big for marijuana for bringing in marijuana plus what was the other guy's name that we did the the um the saltwater cowboy yeah he but he was Tim McBride yeah Tim McBride he's off yeah he was in the keys he was

yeah oh that dude was a huge fucking marijuana smuggler yeah he's uh he's he's he's boy he's an interesting character too um see that's that's why I always look like I'm not saying for a teenager I was a big drug dealer for a teenager but like when I really look at it like after after doing all that time in the feds and stuff like that like I look at it I mean I was a small I was a small timer you know what I'm saying I mean you know for for a kid yeah I mean and who knows if I didn't get busting maybe I would have got bigger

you know you never know but you know once I got in the feds and even like dude like like Tim like I mean those dudes were just I mean they're bringing in fucking tons so I mean we got an organization or a crew that's bringing in tons I mean really what I was doing I mean I'm like a minnow you know what I'm saying yeah but it's it's hard to You know, it's, you know, you get in front of the judge, you could, you know, they make Oh, they don't get a fuck.

They act like I was fucking John Gotti or Pablo Escobar, the fucking suburbs of the fucking feds. Every, every fucking new case is public enemy number one. Absolutely. I always love that, that these guys are get in front of the judge and they make them sound like just the most dangerous criminal in the world, and then they send them to a low. Yeah. Or they send them to a camp. Yeah.

If I'm so dangerous, how did I go directly to a camp? No, it's fucking, it's fucking crazy, man. That's, that's our criminal justice system, man. It's, it's, they got all their priorities wrong. But, um, so yeah, what, what, sorry? Yeah, definitely, um, like I said, I, I, I had like nine months where, where I was rolling where, like, like, like, I was probably the man, but, you know, like, I was really feeling myself, like I thought I was a man, you know, where it was where like I had built everything up over a

couple years. And, you know, even too, like, like as a kid, you know I mean teenagers I mean you second guess yourself you know you're insecure you know so I was doing this for several years and you know maybe I still didn't feel how I wanted to feel and then like dude I had like that nine that last nine months before I got busted like I was on top of the world like I could literally I felt like do anything I wanted I had enough money you know one time right before I got busted dude like I went to Hawaii I just went to Hawaii for two fucking months dude I was like man fuck it you know i was like i'm gonna get the fuck out of here so i i put a couple dudes

you know that actually they ended up on my case and they they ended up telling on me but i put them i said okay you're in charge of weed you're in charge of the lsd i'm just gonna go to fucking you know just fucking stack my money i'm gonna go to fucking hawai for fucking two months and just chill out you know but uh yeah and then like i say i you know i had a bunch of different girlfriends but i was always the type of dude too usually like i would have like runs with girls you know I would have like six to like I would always have a main girl while I had like a six to nine month run with her and she'd be like my girl even though I might have had you know other girls that I just saw every now and then right you know but that was kind of like you know there's

some 80 stuff I don't know maybe people would look down on that today I don't it's a more it's a more sensitive world today so so what was the like what was the the catalyst that brought it all down that yeah so basically um i mean looking back i mean at the time i thought it was like a real bright idea but looking back it was probably pretty stupid so uh you know the summer 91 usually like in the summer it would get dry there's no weed right so before i i took that trip to huai you know in this in the spring of 91 you know i set shit up because i was always gearing up for the fall because with the fall was where i could really make money so i needed to like get my money up for the fall so when they harvested in northern California and Kentucky so I could buy up a lot of bud

because you want to buy up in the harvest you want to buy up of the butt early like you want to buy when the farmers are hurt like late August September you know because you can get shit for cheaper right you know what I'm saying then by like October November by January so it's like the weed you can get for 1600 in September by January that we might be like 3,000 right you know so that was always my thing because you know I was trying to maximize my profits so had this bright idea in the spring of 91 when all my friends were going to be home from school you know the school was over i was like you know what i was like i'm going to fucking sell as much acid as i can this summer so i can get my money up for the fall you know and plus like i say

that nine months i was making money but i was probably spending money recklessly because when you got money coming in that young you know like water i mean it was just going out the door like water. I didn't give a fuck. I was just like fucking spend money on anything. I didn't give a fuck. I was really, I was dumb. I was a type of kid. And I'm sure, you know, you might have known kids like this, but I was a kid that I would buy like some expensive polo t-shirts or whatever. And I would wear that shit one time. Right. And I would give it away. Because I was like, I only wear new shirts. That was like my thing. Like I only wear new shirts. I don't wear fucking old shirts. I don't wash my shit. You know, like I'm saying. So, you know, I mean, I've had some

shit that I probably watch you know you know keep it real whatever but you know that was that was like my thing you know I'm not gonna front like every fucking shirt I had was like brand new but I that was like that was like one of my things and also another one of my things was uh sneakers man I was a fucking sneaker head you know so the air Jordan has started coming out like probably like 85 86 so you know about like you're talking like 90 91 there's like a fucking shit load of air jordan's at a shit load you know everybody else jumped on the sneakers so like I literally had like hundreds and hundreds of pairs of fucking high tops yeah that sounds like bozzi he uh he he had he had like a storage unit filled with two 300 pairs of uh of sneakers it was just like he had a wall

like in his room that was just sneakers i was like are you wearing all the sneakers he's like no i'd never wear him i just had him i just like to go buy him yeah he said i just like to spend the money dude to me it was like just go and spend it and i always i always had this thing like just spinning cash dude I just love to spend cash, you know, because everybody else is like credit cards. I just used to, like, dude, like literally. And not like I'm spending over $10,000 or whatever, because they still had that $10,000 thing back then.

But, you know, I just used to love to go to, like, stores or go to the mall and just fucking drop, like, five or six grand. You know, and I would buy mostly myself, but sometimes it might be girls. I might bring some guys in my crew. I'd buy them shit, too. And I would just go on these fucking whatever, whatever I had, or five, six, seven, eight.

And I would just fucking drop that shit in the fucking mall in a day. but so I'm I'm fucking you know doing all went off on a tangent again but yeah so you know I'm trying to get my money up because I was fucking spinning reckless like how I just described and so I just had this fucking awesome idea I'm like fuck because I know it's going to be dry I knew there's going to be no weed I'm like you know what I'm like I'm just going to fucking pump out as much fucking acid as I can in the summer 91 and I'm going to make as much money as I can so I got my money stacked for the fall so I can fucking make a killing because I know the falls is when I'm really going to make the killing. Every fall, that's when I made

a lot of money. So all my friends are back from the colleges. So they don't have the whole college to sell to. It's just all my fucking high school friends from these two high schools, Robinson and Lake Braddock. And so, dude, so literally acid is going for like five, six dollars a hit. I flooded the areas with so much fucking acid Like usually I would do like You know 10,000 hits a month But that's like all the colleges So now I'm fucking I'm like fucking

I'm gonna get like 150 sheets I'm gonna get like 15,000 20,000 hits And I'm gonna flood it all my people Are in Fairfax County You know there's no colleges So I actually The price of acid that summer Went from like $5, $6 a hit

Down to like $1 to $2.00 hit because I flooded it so much you know like you know I mean looking back I was a fucking dumbass you know cut my own throat but whatever you know at the time I thought I was fucking brilliant I was like yeah so um not only did I flood the area but it was just I mean there's fucking acid there's just everybody's just tripping all fucking summer and eventually you what happened is uh there was this kid I mean I never met the kid but he was like a little 15 year old kid he was at this big field party in clifton you know clifton was like the kind of rich real ritzie area in fairfax

county where they have like the million dollar houses and they would have like these big you know five six acre lots so the kids that live there when their parents you know just like when any parents would you know go on vacation you know they would throw parties except they would throw like these big field parties you know and people people would be like stages for bands or they might bring like fucking uh skateboard ramps and all types of shit so it'd be like this fucking crazy fucking scene and so there was this big party but eventually like all parties out in the suburbs you know eventually the cops are called so um this one kid was tripping balls on acid and the cops came and somehow he was running through the woods naked and um like a cop was chasing

him you know and the cop like tackled him and for some reason this kid grabbed the cops you know service revolver and uh you know luckily only shot him in the arm right you know so i mean whatever flesh wound but you know i'm sure it was painful whatever i don't know if he hit the bone i don't know all the exact details but i know he shot him in the arm and um so once this happened you know and then that kid like you know whatever he said yeah he was blamed it on the acid of course told him where he got the acid from and um which she could have been drunk in the same fucking thing would have happened and who knows i mean i always say look if it's in you it's in you the drug is not going to bring it out right just just like in prison like you know when they talk

about dudes do homosexual shit if it's in you it was in you before you know in oh yeah yeah multiple ways it was in you oh it's just when i'm in prison bro so but uh so so this this happens and actually the dude that sold him the acid was actually i knew him personally because at one time i had sold he went to lake braddock i had sold to him you know for probably like you know my first two years but by this time like there's like seven people between me and him because you know he was a cool dude but he was like this metal dude he actually ended up on my cakes but uh you know he was he was this metal dude and i did i just thought like the way he sold drugs he would just sell to anybody you know so i didn't you know so there was like seven people separated you know between me and him

but it was still all my shit so um this kid said he got it from this guy his name was Dave the metal guy and um yeah and they started an investigation man and um really it was like you know this this is how law enforcement in this country reacts too like if you do something to law enforcement like you if you shoot a cop or something like they go hard man they don't fuck around like you know they're like man you know like you touched one of ours you know they're like a gang like any fucking gang or the mafia you know you you know just like the criminals you touch one of theirs they're going to go hard the fucking cops go harder than everybody so um they basically had like a witch hunt that summer man it was like an LSD witch

hunt because the dominoes start just pop pop pop pop pop yeah they were trying to find yeah like where the fuck is this shit coming from and also like everybody knew my name everybody knew Seth right because you know now Seth is more common because you got like Seth Rogan or you know Seth McFarlane so there's like some famous people named Seth but back then like dude like 91 like Nobody was fucking named Seth. Right. You know what I'm saying? So like my name stuck out.

So everybody, you know, everybody's Seth, Seth. So they keep hearing Seth, Seth, Seth. They don't know my last name or anything, but everybody's hearing Seth. So, because I was kind of like this, whatever, this infamous, you know, you know, myth. You know, I don't know if you want to say legend or whatever. You know, I was just a dude that supplied all the fucking drugs to all these colleges. So, you know, a lot of people knew who I was. I'm sure Colby will use a legend in the, in the.

clickbait title he'll come out with it'll be legend yeah i mean you know a lot of a lot of people the infamous legend yeah you know but it's underground you know underground you know underground legend yeah yeah you know like i'm not mainstream or celebrity or nothing you know i was all i've always been more notorious and infamous so um they start hearing my name and then they got this guy dave crago you know so like during their investigation so he ends up actually setting up another friend of mine this guy named chris that was actually getting shit right from me you know he set him up in a you know a deal with like a DEA like a narc and um then it was like that was like the state case and then they pulled me into the state case right like they tried to set up a deal like

the cop got a certain amount like 10 sheets but he wanted 20 more and he want to give the money you know until he got these other sheets. And like the dude, Dave, I mean, whatever. I mean, he was an informant, but I mean, he was basically a pussy dude. And then the other dude, Chris, I mean, he was like, you know, a lot of the dudes, I mean, they're just like,

I was always a dude like, if there was a problem, like I was a dude that they would call. Right. You know what I'm not to say, I'm not a tough guy, but you know, I mean, I'll fight, I don't, whatever, you know. But these are all middle class, soft white kids.

Yeah, so, so basically like, It's not even my deal, but they call me to come handle it because the dude's Chris. He's like, man, I got this problem, whatever. So I fucking roll down there with like a couple other dudes. And I don't even know. It's a fucking sting. It's like a sting that they set for Chris Miller. They didn't even set the sting for me.

But fucking Chris fucking calls me and I get drawn into the fucking sting. So boom. And then they're like, oh, we got fucking Seth. Right. You know, like who. Yeah, they were trying to get to you. But they had no idea. It was just, it was like a fluke thing.

you know and um and like i say still i didn't give anybody any drugs and i didn't take any money that doesn't matter you know yeah because that that's at the time though i thought i was i was like you know so look so it's state so i get arrested on state and so they they take me back to the station and fucking like the DE agents there and they're like blah blah i'm like man i don't got nothing to say you man i'm like now fuck you talk to my lawyer and they're like well your lawyer's gonna want to suck our dick you don't know how much trouble you're in blah blah blah you know we know everything's coming from you blah blah blah and then then another fucked up thing happened because uh i had this one kid was holding like 120 sheets for me and so they found about out about

him through chris and um so then they go right and they get that right and then i'm like oh fuck so then they got all my fucking product too so now because before they had like they had like 10 sheets right you know it would have been a state then they go and sees you these guys give them the information they go and get another 120 sheets now so now they got like a 130 fucking she's so now they're fucking it was like the biggest LSD bus in Fairfax county ever right you know so uh yeah and so then it's state you know whatever I get my parents bail me out and um the feds come in at that time yeah the fed so this is like this is like early July and um you know I hire people don't realize that you know like the the the state will grab you for something and then sometimes they don't have enough

to prosecute you so they'll give it to the feds because the feds have even a lower bar as far as conspiracy law right and then even even then you can sit there and think oh they don't have anything they never they don't have me on tape they don't have me on this they don't have me on that they don't have any product that i got so they got nothing except because that's what that's what i was thinking that's what ends up happening in the feds is it doesn't matter it's just what people say right they'll put four people on the stand that say they bought from you and you're done it's over you're like they got no money they got no tapes they got nothing on me they happened to have four guys that say I did it boom you're looking at 30 years

yeah because so I was thinking at that time because I was even like I was like boom I didn't I didn't sell any cop anything right I didn't take any money from any cop you know I got hooked into the sting or whatever and I got arrested but I didn't sell anybody but then the other 120 sheets it was so you mean it was mine but it was at somebody else's house right you were watching too much law and order you know what I'm saying so I was like man I'm like I'm good So, you know, I hire a state lawyer, you know, whatever, paid him with like, I'm paying him like 10 grand cash, drug money. And even the stupid lawyer even asked me, you know, his name was Michael Rieger. And he was like, I hope this is not drug money. I was like, what the fuck? I was like, dude. I'm like, dude. I'm like, fucking 20. I just gave you 10 grand cash, dude. And you're like, I hope this is a drug. And I was arrested for the biggest LSD bus in fucking Fairfax County. That's my part time. I've been saving that on my part time job just to give to you. And I just came out.

I'm like, boom, here, 10 grand, dude. Like, I walked right into his office. It was in an envelope and he was like, I mean, it was, it's just like so comical these dudes, like to save their ass, like the shit. They'll say, I'm like, yeah, dude, where do you think it's from, man? You know, like, I didn't even lie to the dude. I didn't even try to lie. I'm just looked at it.

I'm like, come on, dude. Are you serious? So, uh, so I got the state case, but like, they're investigating the whole time. So, like, as soon as I get the state case, dude, it's like, it's like nobody wants to talk to me because the fucking DEA is going around talking to everybody so it's like

so I got until I got you know the federal case it's about maybe like a month and a half dude and it was like crazy because like I don't know who I can talk to you

and like also I have like a load of weed at this time I'm trying to fucking move I'm trying to get more money right I didn't have that much but I probably had about 40 pounds you know what I'm saying so I'm like fuck

dude because like it's like every other day it's like because I could tell like I'm calling people what some dudes owe me money and like dudes are just like dodging me like they don't want to talk to me and because you know back then I knew anyhow like when somebody gets busted it's like they're hot yeah yeah so nobody wants to fuck with them but see so it was that but at the same time it was the investigation behind the scenes in the DEA so I don't know who's given information who's not given information you know they're like going to the chicks they're going to like people's girlfriends they're going to like my girlfriends they're going to fucking everybody the feds

don't fuck around and they're going to all these little fucking rich kids and they're threatening like give information on Seth or you're going to jail for 10 to life so you know like I say for a long time I had I had a big thing when I was first locked up where I was like oh fuck snitches all this but you know whatever I mean what did I expect them to do it was my fault for putting those people in that position you know that's how I look at it now right but uh that's actually how I look at it actually when I hit the halfway house I actually called like five my co-defendants that all cooperated against me and apologized for putting them

in a position where they had to. I said because the truth is I was smarter than that and I knew better than to put you in that position and the idea that they were going to hold up was insane. That's comical. I mean they got the fucking, the fucking mafioso killers. They don't even fucking

hold it. The whole thing like I'm not saying I know some super thorough dudes that I was in prison with and I know some super thorough dudes that like we're in Pelican Bay and walk like level four yards and like still to this day they're like fucking yeah snitches and fuck them guys and i they would never but i always tell them i'm like dude if you're in the life if you're in the life or you're in prison and you want to hold those values and that attitude

cool but dude if you're like you're trying to live a normal life you know and like and there's still some of my buddies are like i can i can walk i can walk in the u.s i'm like okay dude whatever that is that going to help you out here i was going to say don't commit crimes and and you know yeah then you get to do 30 years. Fuck that. No, I see, I see, like, my whole mindset, you know, life is about change. Life is, life is about evolving. So I see, you know, I put people in bad positions

and whatever they did what they were going to do anyhow. So, you know, but, yeah, so I'm having, like, this month and a half thing where, like, in my lawyer, he's like, oh, it's going federal. So we got to hire a federal lawyer. So then I had to give you, like, five more grand. I'll pay this federal lawyer, five grand. Only five grand. At first, that first, that first.

Okay. So just that was like just the retainer. So paid him cash. He didn't even ask me if it was drug money. He just took it. You know, he just took it. He was like just happy, I guess, to get it. So, yeah, so then this fucking shit goes federal, right?

And I'm just like, fuck, man. So then I got to go through the whole fucking arrest process, get bailed out, all that fucking shit again. And still at this time, I'm not really sure, like what I'm really looking. that because I'm not really I'm not like up on the mandatory minimums you know what I'm saying I'm I'm not up on the federal sentencing guidelines you don't have any idea like are you thinking three years five years are you what do you hear I'm you're hearing yeah I'm thinking maybe like I'm thinking like maybe three to five years even the fucking federal lawyer I hired right he's telling me he's like oh you're a good kid from a good

family he's like still you know he has that 80s mentality right you know like he's thinking like before they changed the laws and like 88 or whenever they went in effect 88 or 89 so he's like oh maybe you might get like eight to 10 years at the most and so but even i was like man fuck that i was like i'm not doing eight to 10 years and um you know so like i said i basically uh i had i had some product i had money that i was trying to collect you know i i had the weed that i was selling you know while all this shit is going on you know even though i'm have to be careful who i'm selling it with you know i'm trying to fuck with people to that you know the DEA doesn't know about or that they haven't talked to or whatever because you know

I did fuck with a lot of different people so um I'm getting my money up and so then uh basically I come up with this plan you know like my escape plan because I'm like I'm like because basically like my my lawyers tell me they're like they're like you know eventually you know once they start talking to prosecutors you know they're like you're looking at 20 to life I'm like 20 to life I'm like what the fuck like are you serious to life i was i was like flabbergasted and then they were like whoa you know you might get like uh you could probably get like whatever like four to six years you know if if you uh you know bus bring some of your contacts here you know like they wanted me to they wanted me to bring

some people from san francisco like some of my deadhead friends you know they want me to bring yeah they want you to cooperate yeah yeah so they wanted me to set them up and i was like i was like man i don't know about that so um that was like how they presented my choices they were like oh you can do 20 to life yeah or this fucking can bust these motherfuckers cooperate yeah and get less time and i was like or you can go to trial lose and definitely get life but but i was even like i i was even fucked up like you want me to cooperate and i'm still going to get time yeah i was like what are you fucking like i mean i thought when people cooperate like they get off like they don't even go to prison so they were like no it's not

like that whatever so um i formed this other plan right i was like man you know because i was out on bail i was like man i'm gonna take the fuck off you know what i'm saying i'm like i'm gonna fucking get the fuck out of here fuck these motherfuckers right and like i say i i had some money so um you know i was always a big sports fan right and you know back then it was all newspapers so like we would get the washington post every day so when you get the washington post you know and you go like i would go right to the sports section but But the section right before the sports section is the metro section. And so I remember, like, you know, over the last couple years of my teenage years,

I would see like headlines like in the metro section, like, you know, so-and-so, this person, like, commit suicide at, you know, Great Falls, you know, jumping into the Potomac River. So that kind of always stuck in my mind for some reason. So I was thinking, I was like, man, I was like, how can I just like disappear, make Seth Ferranti disappear? So there's like no Seth Fronte, there's like no case. So I came up with this, I devised this plan. I'm like, I'm going to fake my suicide on the banks of the Potomac at Great Falls National Park.

I'm going to make it seem like I jump in the river and the area where I was going to jump in where everybody committed suicide, it's known as like Class 5 rapids, you know, because the water's like crazy and there's rocks. So, you know, they got like professional kayakers go there, but only like the super most craziest professional ones. So I was like, man, I'm going to stage my suicide.

Of course. In this area, I'm going to jump. Everybody, that's, that's, everybody's go-to move. Yeah, I'm like, I'm going to jump in the fucking water. So, uh, I came up with all this fucking big plan. And then, too, because I had another problem, you know, because, uh, you know what? My parents had put their house up for the bail, right? So, so then I talked to the lawyers, right?

So I told the lawyers, you know, because I was like, uh, I, I didn't bring it up, but I was like, you know, I started pursuing the cooperation thing. I was like, well, what happens if I say, I'm going to cooperate? They're like will you plead guilty and then they're going to release you on a personal reconnaissance bond they released the lien against the your parents house and it's no longer the collateral and I was like once they said that I already had this suicide plan but you know I didn't want to I didn't have enough money to cover you know because I don't it was like I think they put up 75 grand or something so I didn't have enough money to cover that for my parents so I didn't

even want to fuck my parents right so then the lawyers you know when I asked them about the cooperation and they told me about this I was like they said PR I was like PR bond I was like what the fuck does that mean right and they're like well you know they're gonna release you on your own recognizance I'm like all I got to do is like tell them I'm gonna plead guilty and I'm gonna cooperate all right and they were like yeah so I was like okay I was like set it up right so I fucking sign the paperwork they fucking went to the courthouse pled guilty they fucking cut me loose and then they told me like I'm gonna have to do these fucking debriefings right right but I was already planning I already had everything

plan like I'm I was fucking gone yeah you know what I'm saying so I went and then did like all this fucking transpired like from the time I signed the paperwork told when I fled I mean it was only fucking like a couple days right and so I took the fuck off right I fake my suicide I took off you know I got rid of the rest of the weed I had and I took off to California and um like for real dude like I thought I mean because I just went I was like on a nine month high like where I was on top of the world and then like everything fucking crashed so then I was like fucked up and then like I came up with this plan and I executed it and then I was I was like

on top of the world I was like man I was like I'm that fucking dude like fuck these motherfuckers right like you know I felt like I got my fucking swagger back or whatever because like when they when I got busted and all that shit like dude my fucking moxie my swag was just like gone I was like at the lowest point but you you'd also thought that you pulled off the faking the suicide right because didn't you that wasn't there something in the newspaper or something about you committing suicide and yeah so you thought you you thought it was a lock yeah so so so i go to la a flight of la and i'm i'm actually i'm staying on uh point magoo military base so i know this girl her dad's like the exo this uh girl named nancy so she was like an old girlfriend so i

went out there and i'm staying on the base and uh you know point magoo's a little bit up from la but i was having her drive me down to la every day because you know back then they had like the big newsstands, you know, like on every corner with like all the newspapers from different places and all the magazines, you know, you don't see that as much today. Sometimes in the big cities, but not really with all the newspapers from the different cities. So I was going to get the Washington Post. Like every couple days, I would go to Washington Post. So the first time I went and I saw it said, you know, Fairfax, LSD Kingpin commit suicide. And I fucking saw, I was like, fuck yeah, I got these motherfuckers. Because I was thinking like, boom.

now seven years like Seth know Seth Ferranti my parents can have me declared legally dead in seven years right you know what I'm saying nobody's found or whatever they don't know what the fuck is up and my body you know I figured my body was gonna float out to the fucking Atlantic Ocean you know so I keep going back

and I'm fucking like I'm on top of the world again I'm like yeah I'm the fucking smartest motherfucking outlaw I can outsmart the fucking feds these motherfuckers can't fuck with me and I'm like 22 so I'm like fucking you know you know when you're 20 it's all like that false bravada You think you're living in a movie or something.

Yeah, dude, like I was. I was like, you know, catch me if you can wasn't even out then. But, you know, I thought I was catch me if you can, you know. But, you know, I just didn't know the name of the title of the movie. But I thought I was that dude. So I keep going down and I'm reading the papers. You know, a couple of my code offense are going to trial. You know, everybody else pleads guilty.

You know, out of everybody, like two dudes ended up going to trial. Everybody else, like six other dudes ended up pleading guilty. So I'm reading all this in the paper. And then it was like probably like two weeks after I go back down and like I'm still on my fucking high dude and I get the fucking paper and I open up to the metro section dude and I was just fucking crushed because it said it was like fucking prosecutors declare Ellis Fairfax County LSD King's pen suicide of hoax and I saw the headline. I was like what? Like all my planning everything dude. I was like what the fuck? I'm not dead. So I start reading the article, right? And it's like they said the U.S. park rangers, you know, dragged the river for two weeks and they didn't find a body. And I was like reading it more.

And then like it went on to say like, you know, you know, where, you know, I allegedly went in, you know, there's like a dam like after that. So I mean, I was like, fuck, dude. It wouldn't have been washed out to sea. It would have been stuck in this one area and they would have found the body. Yeah, dude. I like seriously fucked up, man. I fucking staged. I staged my suicide.

It was a good two weeks. Yeah, so I staged the suicide on the wrong side of the dam. So that's, I mean. I had a dime. So, look, I thought it was smart as fuck. And I mean, really, in a way you think, I mean, I did. I was real innovative and I came up with this fucking crazy idea. And I almost pulled it off.

Just that one little fucking detail, man. Next time. Next time, you know. So that's how, yeah, so that's how that whole shit transpires. So then they made me for some. ungodly reason these fucking and I know why now I learned later at the time I had no fucking clue so I learned later because

when I was in prison I did all these freedom information action on all my case and everything you know because I was a you know I was a megalomaniac researcher like that so you might know about stuff like that me too so what I pieced together after the fact so what happened

was there was this dude name Henry Hudson he was like the assistant prosecutor like the you know that's assistant pro yeah he was assistant u.s. attorney named Henry Hudson like on on my case at the time in the eastern district of Virginia so all of a sudden right after my case this dude transfers to the eastern district U.S. Marshal's office and he's the head of the U.S. Marshal's office and so I guess like you know he felt like I put a black mark on his record or, you know, like I made them look bad or I

outsmarted them. Was he, he was your AUSA? He was your, he wasn't the prosecutor on my case. My prosecuting of my case was his chick named Christine. Right. He was like the, he was like the assistant U.S. attorney. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay, sorry, never mind. Yeah, so. So she was underneath him and your case was underneath his caseload. Yeah. So this dude, he goes from second in charge of the U.S. attorney's office to, the number one guy in the U.S. Marshals in the Eastern District of Virginia. And this dude makes me top 15 U.S. Marshalsless,

I guess, out of revenge factor, or he's pissed off, or I'm the black mark on his record and he has higher aspirations. Right. You know, so, yeah, so, I mean, I had no clue. So, so for two years, like I'm prancing around the fucking U.S.,

like eventually I started selling weed and not LSD, but I started running weed from Dallas. Texas up to St. Louis and I'm just like carrying on you know war on drugs I'm still a drug dealer like you know really in retrospect when I look at it I was really really really stupid I mean I'm trying to fucking be the biggest drug dealer I can as a fugitive at the height of the war on drugs so you know but I mean retrospect age you get some clarity so uh you know at the time you know I got blinders on whatever I thought I was a cool guy so uh so this dude so I'm actually

U.S. Marshall's fucking top 15 most wanted for fucking the whole two years I'm a fugitive and like I have no fucking clue because even when I was a fugitive like I would watch all the shows I watched like America's Most Wanted you're like I'm doing research dude I'm like a researcher that's right you know like when I do something like I research it right so I'm watching America's Most Wanted I'm watching fucking like unsolved mysteries I'm watching all that shit because I'm figuring out like how do they catch these motherfuckers and so a lot of times like I'm seeing shit like the night stocker Richard Ramirez it's taking like three months to match up his prints yeah so you know i'm i'm like fuck dude like i'm low profile i don't have

any murders i'm never even beat nobody up you know what i'm saying i'm like this gonna take them forever to match up my prints because i'm you know i feel like i'm not a high priority but you know lo and behold i had no fucking idea that i'm fucking a federal u.s marshals top 15 most one of fucking fugitive so uh and and like i say this dude henry hudson he he he did the paper work you know because later on when i got caught you know one of the u.s marshals told me like he's looking at my jacket you know and he's and he's looking at me and i look like when i got caught i looked like a little college kid and he's like he's like who did you piss off all right you know what i'm saying because there's like anybody else on the top 15 most wanted list is like violent has

guns murders whatever yeah they're dangerous fugitives and you're selling a product you can't even OD on i'm selling fucking hippie drugs right so whatever So, you know, but I came to find out this all later. So, you know, by that whole time, really, when I'm a fugitive, I was selling weed. I was running weed. Eventually, like, in L.A., my money ran out, and that girl got sick of me living in her parents' house. So, you know, I had to fucking roll out. So, you know, she didn't want to, she didn't, her parents didn't know I was a fugitive, but she knew.

So after about six months, she was kind of like, dude, you got to like. The novelties worn off. She was like, yeah, it was cool seeing you again. having some sex and shit but now you gotta balance motherfucker because there's no this relationship's not lasting there's no future

you're a fucking fugitive fucking drug dealer you know what I'm saying at the height of the war on drugs she's like she saw no future like what she's gonna have my kids when I go to prison I don't know but uh so uh yeah

I kind of she told me kick rocks I go to Dallas Texas I hook up with Mexican Eddie right you know my fucking brick pot dealer you got fake IDs and stuff right tons of fake ideas i mean that's a whole other story that would take another half hour to tell about the fake ideas but i got a whole fucking bunch of fake IDs that i got through researching through books i learned how to do it and um i meet some guys and they're from st louis you know and i'm

selling drugs you know weed in it in texas at harrigan's restaurants these other restaurants and one of the guys one time he goes at st louis so i'm like can you sell some weed and so i go up i take 20 pounds and like over that next year to 18 months I make like I have like my my second little fucking marijuana empire and um then eventually uh I get arrested for like a quarter pound of weed with the same guy who took me up there but it was in his truck so he claims it he actually was selling weed for me but it was my weed you guys got pulled over or something what no we were in the back of a Burger King parking lot oh that's right yeah the Burger King parking lot it just got robbed like two weeks before. I just dropped off like three pounds.

We were just waiting for the money and smoking a joint. Cops fall up. Dumb luck. And I didn't even know he had the quarter pound on the truck. But, you know, he did the right thing. He claimed it. He said it was his. But they still arrested me and took me in and it matched my prints. You know, released me. Then I came back and bailed him out. Got his car out of

the impound. You know, I got my money for the three pounds. And, yeah, but then in three days, they match up my fucking prince. So then the fucking Midwest fucking fugitive task forces looking for me. They go his house first because they got his real name he starts driving him around st louis to all the people i fucking saw we to and then eventually they found some dude that i just fucking loaded up

threatened to give him 10 years to life and he brought him right to my hotel boom extradited back to virginia since since to 25 years 3004 months did you you didn't i mean you just pled guilty to 25 years i'd already pled i had already pled i pled before i left that's right yeah i I pled, because I pled to the 20 to life and told them I would cooperate. Because you were never going to be there for the sentencing. Because I was going to be dead. Right, right. But I wasn't dead.

My whole plan backfired. So then when I came, they held me to that plea. And they fucking, and obviously they didn't give me any credit for any cooperation. And they enhanced me five years for 60 months for taking off, you know, obstetricist of justice and failure to appear. Right. So 25 years. yeah did you do a 2255 did you do anything I did everything okay you went through all the whole process of trying to lost everything yeah you know back dude back then in the

90s you couldn't get you can get any play for anything all you if you went to trial you could have went to play so I would say that to any of your listeners really I mean you got two choices when you get busted man either fucking cooperate fucking fully and fucking get as little time as you can if you're not not going to do that go to trial man that's that's the only way you're going to retain your rights so you know like i'm saying you know uh don't try to do anything halfway don't try to outsmart the motherfuckers like i did you're just going to get fucked yeah um 25 years bro what the fuck and then i i heard on the uh on the other podcast where you're talking about the

you were talking about um you know being uh the different prisons and uh you know the whole thing And you mentioned Coleman and Whitey Bulger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I was in the medium there at Coleman. I used to write Whitey Bolger. Yeah, yeah, you told me that. Dude, he has the most awful handwriting. Yeah.

You can barely read his writing, dude. It's like... He was also like 100. That was like 70 or something? You got to have like a fucking magnifying glass, dude. I'd send him the Rolling Stone article about my case that came out in 97 when I was in when I was in FCI Beckley. and he wrote me a whole fucking letter on the Rolling Stone, my Rolling Stone article.

Like, I still got that. I don't know. I think I might put it up on eBay one day. I was going to say that any letters from him would be worth something. Let's see if somebody give me like, I'll start the bidding at $10,000. All right. So we're going to do another podcast about just about what you're doing now because when you went to prison, you start writing and that's, you know, and although I mean, although the true crime story is cool,

you know, to me, I mean, that's like. Like, you're at a spot now in your career where I'd love to be in a few years from now, you know. The whole prison, I mean, it was a lot of time I had to do, but whatever, I got three college degrees. I got a master's degree. I started writing books. And every day in prison, my thing was, what can I do today for when I get out? So, I mean, everything I've done, it was all planned, dude. I mean, I'm very methodical.

Yeah. You know how I do stuff. I do everything one step at a time. You know, I research out. I'm not trying to jump from. one to 10, you know, I don't mind taking the steps. I'm very methodical. So prison, even though I had to do 21 years, I was very methodical in that 21 years. And I did everything that I needed to do to put me in the position where I am now. You know, I started writing true crime stories when I was

in prison. I didn't write any fiction stories. Like, I've heard your, your, how you started writing it's like some of the gangster guys stories and, and some, some were what, fiction, kind of fiction, started that way? No, everything was pretty much non-fiction. My first book, Prison Stories, was true, but I wrote it as fiction because, you know, I didn't want to be like a snitch in prison. Right.

And they're always so worried about, oh, what if I tell you something that I could get, well, then let's not talk about that. Or we'll change the names. But so, yeah, I started doing that. It was the same thing. Like, I heard your interview before. So it's basically like, look, I'm in prison.

And when I was in prison, I saw all the other guys, they're learning to play an instrument they're taking horticulture classes or they're they're they're playing softball and it's like you're spending 10 years of your life or 15 years and you're an amazing you know handball player but when you but you came in with no education you've only sold drugs you know you're an amazing handball player when you get out but you're you're in your 50s now the fuck are you going to do when you get out of prison none of and the guys that were taking Porticulture are only concerned about taking it because they plan on bringing a bunch of houses and growing marijuana. And the guys that are taking the stuff as far as like, I forget what they called that class, where it was basically about how to run a restaurant. So highest failure rate out there, get a restaurant. So what you want to do is you want to put a guy who has no money in a situation where he could open a restaurant and fail. Or real estate.

Or real estate or something. It's like you don't have any experience. You have no way to do this. So my point is, to me, I thought, what can I do in here? And the one, you can't really work, but the one thing they, they will let you do is they will let you write, they will let you write books, they will let you write stories, you can write for magazines, and you can't make money that way. You can't run a business, but they can't stop you from doing that. That's the one thing they will let you do. And there were so many amazing stories. I would hear guys tell stories. I heard for years, I'd listen to stories and I think, how is that not a movie? How is no one written your story? And they can't write their own stories because you don't see yourself the way you really. are. So that's when I came in, I wrote my own story, and then I started writing other guy's

stories. And, you know, I hope, I figured someday I'll get out of prison, I'll have all these stories and I'll try and get them turned into documentaries or movies. IP. I started collecting IP. And so, but you, you know, but you're way ahead of where I am. I just like to be where you're at at some point in the future. That's my, like my goal. That's like, that's my dream. That's what I laid in bed at night in my bunk and thought, well, if I get out, I could do this and I got to this and I did it and I had a whole building block in my head you know plan you got well that's how you do it you got to manifest it you got to talk about it you got to put it out there you got to make it reality I'm I'm a firm believer in you know um like moving forward positivity

and just saying what I'm going to do and then doing it right you know I'm a firm believer in that like I don't like even in prison prison is a very negative place right and when I first started ran, you know, even the guards, the other prisoners, they'd be like, you know, you can't do that. They'd always told me, like, I can't do this. And like, I would read the policy and I'd be like, man, I can do this. Yeah. You know, so, and so even out here, I'm like, I will not, I cannot stand negativity. Anybody that is like negative or like second guesses me when I'm trying to do. And like, like I say, sometimes like, you know, I'm doing these documentaries now. You know, I got white boy on Netflix. And you know, some people that might be like the pinnacle. But to me, it's just, it's just like another

ladder on the rung you know i tell i want to be the quentin the next quentin tarentino i want to do you know scripted you know fiction fictional like drug you know crime movies you know sometimes maybe based on a real event but you know like dude like i want to do like a hundred million dollar budget movies right you know like i'm not fucking around like i'm already looking right now from do this documentary stuff i'm looking to jump to like the three to five million dollar indie flick and then you know then I'm looking to jump to like a 20 million you know 50 60 and then you know I want to do like a fucking Marvel movie right I want to do the purple man I don't know if you know who the purple man is he's a he's this criminal character he's like in a lot of

spider man comic books but he's like he wears like a gangster suit and he's all purple and he has like these uh I don't even know how to say it's like is it called fur fur gnomes or something so it's like he can emit from his body. Pharamones. Ferramones. Ferramones. So he can permit those from his body and make you do what he says. So that's like his superpower.

But he's like a villain. I had an ex-girlfriend like that. Yeah. A lot, I think a lot of women are like that, especially on men. But so, but he's like a super villain. So I want to do like the Purple Man movie. You know, I also want to do, I want to remake the Princess Bride. Right.

Oh, nice. Nice. but you guys don't even know what the Princess Bride. I want to remake the Princess Bride. So sad, bro. With, like, with good CGI.I. Nice. You know, like a tokenistic version of the Princess Bride,

but keep the humor and the sweetness. And then another movie I want to remake, I want to remake, you know, harder they come. You know, the classic, or harder they fall, the classic Jamaican movie. Okay. Yeah. So it's like from 1971.

You know, it's about, you know, Jimmy Cliffs in it. So he's about like a up-and-coming reggae, you know, dance hall guy but like he's involved in crime so i want to remake that just like think how they remade scarface right so i want to remake uh you know that old jamaican movie except you know set it in like the you know the hip-hop era you know and have a guy who's like he's trying to be a rapper but he's involved in crime and he ends up you know going to jail for being a crime like a lot of the stories we uh you know heard about in federal prison but um yeah my whole thing man where i started writing

because I kind of looked at it. I started taking college classes and I was like. When you were in prison? Yeah, yeah, when I was in prison. Which is difficult, by the way. Like everybody thinks that, oh, yeah, they offer this. Listen, man, you basically, you're doing everything yourself. They might have some person who's supposed to help you, but they're half asked about it.

So it's basically all on you. And plus, when I first went in, they had the Pell Grants, right? But about 96, they abolished a Pell Grant. So they didn't even fund the college courses. So my parents paid for all my college courses. I did all my shit correspondence. So I got the A degree from Penn State. I got the BA from Bachelor or from University of Iowa.

And actually that was one of my best moves when I got on that program because University Iowa is like famous for this writing program. You know, you got to the writing program, you got to go there. You know, it's like on campus. But a lot of the instructors that I was doing correspondence courses through were the instructors from that famous writing course, you know, doing like extra work for extra money. Right. And so I had the benefit of these instructors.

And I was taking all writing heavy because in there, you can go like a business administrative route or you can go like a humanities route. You know, and if you go like a humanities liberal arts, it's like a lot of writing, creative writing, journalism, you know, reading a lot of books and writing papers. And eventually I got my master's degree. I got my master's degree from University of California. So, but during that whole time, that's how I learned to write.

You know, so it's not like I just started putting a pen to paper or whatever. I like took college courses, you know, and I learned to write. I already was creative, you know, I was kind of creative, you know, my whole life. You know, I used to write poetry, playing bands, all that shit like that. You know, I'm saying, creating all these worlds and shit. It's so funny. Like, they don't know. They don't know what that means.

Yeah. What a dungeon master is? Dungeons and dragons. That was like the, wow. Listen, there's so many things that I'll say to somebody in my age and I'll always look over at Colway and Colby's just like, He has no clue what I'm talking about. That's the 80s shit.

The 80s was a wonderful time. But pre-internet was, I think it was a better world, really. But, you know, so the whole time I'm getting these degrees, I'm writing. So first I started writing, my first big success was actually writing prison basketball. So, you know, because like in there, dude, there's like these dudes. They're like phenomenal basketball players, dude. And like how you were talking about, like they spent all this time. They spent like 10, 15 years just playing basketball.

But, you know, I mean, they can never be professional because when they get out, they're going to be too old. But, like, in there, dude, like, these dudes are phenomenal basketball players. So I started writing about this one guy named Ron Jordan. He was from Harlem. He had, like, that Rucker Park game, dude. And this dude was built like a linebacker, right? He was maybe, like, 6-1, like, 240, right? But this dude could, like, slam dunk.

He had, like, all the handles. He, like, embarrassed dudes. They call him Ron Jordan the abuser because he used to, like, abuse people. He would, like, do all the stuff, like, fake somebody out, act like he's going to the basketball. basket and with the easy lay up but he would pull it back to let the dude guard him again you know because it was just like the the man-on-man like macho shit dude this dude and he could dunk and he could shoot threes this dude was scoring like 60 points a game and everybody used to come out the gym to see him so that was like

my first big success I started writing about this dude and the other prison basketball players and um yeah I was writing for this website called hoopsite you know which now they're like on I don't know they're like uh I think U.S. today or something bottom so they're like this big but that time they were just like this little kind of hip hop basketball website and then i started writing for slam which is kind of like a hip hop basketball magazine and then from there i started doing the more gangster stories i started right for don diva and feds which are like they call like you know the street the street bibles yeah they wouldn't even let they wouldn't let those into the like those are like the most popular magazines in prison man

Guys would get them sent in. They'd have the, they started putting... Yeah, new covers. Fake covers. Yeah. Fake covers. Like, you get one of those magazines in prison. Like, dude, the line is like 200 long. Everybody wants to read it, you know?

So I started writing for them, Don Deva, feds. And really, I formed a journalism career in prison. Because that was, like, the only thing I could do. I was like, what the fuck can I do? I was like, I can write, you know? So, um, and then really my biggest break came, um, this is probably like early 2000s. I just started writing really like around 99. So, uh, you know, at first I was just writing like in the prison, like I was doing prison

sports newsletters, like that they post on the boards and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I was doing that. I did that for six years while I was taking the college classes. So then I started doing the Don Deva stuff in the prison basketball. And then, um, there was this editor of advice named Jesse Pearson. So this was like when Vice was just basically a magazine. They had a website, but they weren't huge like they are today.

So this is like early 2000s. You know, so they're like this kind of low rent GQ. You know, they have this big thing. It's like dues and don'ts where they do like the fashion like dress like this. And they make fun of people. They take pictures. So he had, he was a big fan of my work from Don Deva. So he reached out to me, you know, and I started writing.

Dude, they were paying me like, dude, they were paying me like $500 a month. Right. To write a column. I wrote a column like 1,200 words called I'm busted. And it was in every magazine for like fucking two or three years. $500. Like I was living like a king on $500 a month. $500 in prisons, a lot of fucking money.

Fuck, dude. I was like, everybody thought I was like a millionaire. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And so that was like my first big break because I started writing for that. And then I kept writing for vices. They kept growing in. I was like their prison guy.

You know, I'll do like their prison. And then I got more into true crime. Then I started doing stuff for penthouse. I started doing stuff for the fix. war on drug stuff and how the whole white boy thing came about is uh you know i started writing him around 2005 because i started doing my street legend stuff like i had all this material from don diva and don dana diva could only it's a magazine so they could only fit like so much and i had all this extra material and i like all the dudes they kept coming back to me they're like dude what about

this picture or what about this you want to use some of the stuff so eventually you know like they were upset with me because everything was not in the magazine that they gave me you know so eventually I came up with my street legend series. I've published Prison Stories 2005, Street Legends 2008. So at the same time, I reach out to White Boy Rick because I'm in FCI Gilmer and Beckley, Beckley, FCI, Beckley, and FCI Gilmer in West Virginia. And there's all these Detroit dudes, so I'm hearing about this dude, White Boy Rick. Hold on.

You know who White Boy Rick is? Okay. You guys saw the movie, yeah, yeah. I haven't seen about some of the trailers and stuff. Yeah. All right. So I start writing him because I want to put him in like my Street Legends book. Yeah.

Right. And basically my street legends books are just like all these African-American drug lures that are part of, you know, the lyrical lore of hip-hop, you know, and gangster rap. I kind of, I just kind of romanticize and glorify it and I make them into these Billy the kid, you know, Jesse James type figures. Because, you know, I was writing, I was writing for my peers in prison. And also, I was a white guy writing about African-American dudes like in prison. Like, you know, that doesn't happen. I mean, you've been in prison. That's not like, that's not like. That's not like. like something normal you know and and the only reason i even have the juice to do that is because you know i had the long sentence i i'd been in a little bit and you know the longer year and the more stripes you get yeah you know so um by the time i do this you know i'm like in 10 years so you know i got i got a lot of stripes and i played sports i was i was a sports fanatic i'm like really athletic i would be like the only white dude like out there playing ball with all the black dudes like like i would i was like the dude like you know you go to the yard like you go to yard at lunch, I'm playing ball, you go to the yard

and recall, I'm playing ball. You know, I play like three hours straight. I didn't give a fuck. That was like how I did my time. Yeah, I actually sat at a table in the library with five guys that were writing or five black guys that were all writing urban novels. I was only one writing

true crime. And I was the white guy at the room, or at the table because I was the guy that, you know, as racist as this is going to sound, it was basically you don't have Google, what you've got as a white guy. So they'd say, you know, I don't understand. How do you say that?

Hey, Cox. It was always, hey, Cox, hey Cox. And I'd be like, no, it's this, it's that. Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, this. Yeah, so, I mean, I was, you know, to sit at that table, everybody thought I was like a, you know, like, you must be a cool guy to be sitting at the table with all those guys

because the white guys and black guys very seldomly mix in prison. You were just Google. Yeah, I was Google. Yeah, I had a purpose. You were like that smart guy from the 80s that Google fucking made obsolete. Yeah, exactly. In prison, only in prison. Yeah, but in prison, they still need that guy, that guy who knows everything.

Out here, I'm semi-smart, but in prison, fucking super genius in prison because the IQ is so low. But anyway. No, that's what I tell people, too, right? Because look, like, since I've been out, like, dude, I've been to Cairns, man. I go to Sundance. And I'm around like, dude, these people, they went to Harvard and Columbia. And, dude, they just speak. And I'm like, I just want to be around them so I can learn to speak better because they're like so eloquent.

and they use all these fucking big words and like I feel like a brute around them right but like in prison I'm like like you said I'm like the super genius in fucking prison and then I get out around all these fucking talented writers and filmmakers and people that went to all these Ivy League schools and come from all this money and I just

I feel like a fucking brute dude I'm telling you it's fucking crazy this is like my my biggest fucking dilemma today you know because a lot of people that are like oh no you're eloquent you can talk and I'm like no I don't talk like that I'm a fucking I talk like a brute. I talk like an educated brute. Yeah. Among my friends on the outside, I'm like a, I'm practically a thug around

these guys. And to me, it's like, as far as like masculinity, like I always say like I'm, I'm like a four or five on the masculinity scale from one to one. Oh yeah, there's some tough dudes in prison. They got tough motherfuckers. Oh, in prison, I'm like a one, maybe a zero. I might as well be wearing a dress when I'm in prison. Now here I'm a five. Prison, I'm a zero, practically. I'm this far from being a fucking punk in prison. I mean, that's how they look at you. You're soft white guy you're you're harmless but yeah it's funny how just everything changes out here yeah so so you know so white white boy Rick I started writing him right and like I want to tell his story right but I want to like romance

romanticize and I want to make it gangster you know I want to glorify it because that's what I'm doing in my street ledger series and that's I'm hearing these all this stuff about him like who is this white kid that was running all these you know black organized crime in Detroit when he was like 16 or 17 and I kind of identify him with him too you know because we were both young white dudes we both got a lot of time you know we were both involved and stuff as a teenager so you know there's a lot of similarities you know so I'm writing him and we start writing and he starts telling me like this totally

opposite story you know how like he was in a foreman and you know the police prostituted him and buried them and and I didn't really get it at first because I'm like I'm like man I don't I don't I'm not writing about a formance like my base is like the other prisoners you know now I'm in like medium security prisons like these dudes ain't gonna fucking if I write some shit they're gonna be like you're writing about a snitch you know or whatever so it took me a couple years to kind of get my head around his story and and how to write it and like I say it took me to get older and it took my writing to evolve and it probably took me going to a low yeah where you know they don't

carry it like the same you know because I did 12 years in the mediums and then I did nine years in the low so it was like this kind of evolution in my writing where you know I went from writing this hardcore death before dishonor shit to you know more about the injustices of the drug because I started seeing the bigger picture more you know as I got older and I started writing more and like I say also going to the low gave me more room to explore this stuff with not being considered this or be considered that so um yeah 2012 I wrote this story about his case for the fix dude and like the shit fucking went viral dude like it was my first experience of having the prison basketball shit was pretty popular but like this shit like fucking went super fucking viral on the

fix this is like drug war fucking site right and um just brought a ton of tension to me you know and um the whole time i was already thinking you know because i was writing books uh you know from 2005 till i got on 2015 i wrote eight books and um then when i got out i took two of those books and i divided it up the chapters you know and put 12 out like digital books you know to make it like 20 even though it's like from the same material and then I had a couple more so I think I got like 24 books out right now but once I started doing the books you know and I was kind of doing the journalism and I was like man really I want I want to do movies I want to do visual stuff you know but it was just kind of you know learning it and like when I took my master's degree I took like a

lot of film type courses you know at least reading the books as much as I could and there And I did have a couple, like, they would let me send in some DVDs, you know, so I could watch different shit. But really, like, everything I was doing, man, was basically for gearing up, you know. So, you know, I even, like, dude, I read a whole bunch of books, like, books on, like, shots, like, explains all the different shots, like, in narratives and stuff like that. And, you know, I just went crazy. So I was, you know, reading. Because in there, that's all you got time to do is read. You know what I'm saying?

So it's like, you might as well educate yourself. I don't think I read five books since I've been out in six years. But, you know, yeah, so I kind of hit the ground running. And, you know, I did more pieces on White Boy Rick Story for, like, Vice News and Vice and some other places. So, but still, when I first got out, though, I was just a journalist. I was working as a journalist. And then I met the dude Sean Wreck, the director of White Boy. And he had transition studios.

He had just done this movie, a murder in the park. It was on Showtime. And I actually interviewed him for that, for that for a, for a while. vice right and he found out about my backstory and we started talking and at first we were going to do like this uh prison expoise like on on on how all these sub industries are built around the prisons right you know like like keefy coffee and all the hotels and how it's all kind of interconnected you know with the the dude like the senator brings the prisons there and it's all his friends the businessmen who form all the businesses around the prison so we were looking at something like that

talking and I showed them some it was like right when they announced like the white boy Rick movie with Matthew McConaughey and I had shown them some of my articles I go did you hear about this he's like yeah I heard they're gonna do that movie and I'm like you know I know this dude I'm like check out here's these articles you know I had wrote like four or five articles about and he's like what he's like he's from Cleveland so he's like yeah I heard about this dude you know he's like R-H so he's like I heard about this dude man and then he was like man he was like you got access to him and I was like yeah he's like I'm looking to do my next doc man let's do this

You know, so it was just like, lucky I made the right relationship at the right time when he was looking for something, you know, and there was a hype because of the white boy Rick movie, so it made him interested. And for that, he actually, he had actually, you know, told me, like he came with a couple different proposals, like, you know, let's do it like this, let's do it like this, you know, trying to lessen, you know, maybe kind of my role or just kind of, you know, buy the idea or whatever. And I told him, you know, I knew how to tell a story, but I didn't really know how to make a film. So I told him, I said, look, man, I said, you know, I want, I want to be by your side, you know, whatever. If you can give me something at the end, whatever, but you don't got to pay me nothing now. I say, I want to, you know, keep by, I want you to mentor me. Also, I asked him that because this dude had cut his teeth doing like crime stoppers. He did like 200 crime stoppers shows.

You saw all the networks. Yeah. And he had won like nine regional Emmys in Ohio for all his work on these 200 shows. So I knew dude was something special. I knew he knew what he was doing. because when I walked in his office, he had nine fucking Emmys. Yeah. So, yeah, man.

So I made the deal with him. I said, look, dude, I'm going to get you everything you need for this film. I'm going to get you all the access. I'm going to get you all the people you need to make this film. And I go, I just want you to, you know, involve me in the process, man. And he was very fucking cool about it. So like a lot of times we would do the interviews and I would be there sometimes. I might watch the camera, sometimes not.

But always at the end of the interview when he was done, he would give me five. minutes in the director's chair. So, you know, actually white boy, so I got a writer credit and a producer credit on that. And Sean Wreck, Emmy Winnie director, trained me how to be a director, you know, mentored me over that like, you know, nine to 12 months that we did the shooting, you know, and then I worked with his editor, you know, and him as we edited it, you know, over like the next nine to 12 months. So that was like, you know, so really, I mean, Sean Rick. I mean, he taught me a lot. And then also like Rick, Rick's still my real good friend to this day. You know, Rick, there was a lot of interest in Rick. He had the Hollywood movie, man. Rick

didn't have to, you know, give us our blessing or participate in that, in that white boy documentary. He did that because of our relationship. Because I told him because I said, look, dude, I said, I want to make films. I said, this dude got the money to make this film. And I go, first off, you know, our first goal was to get him out. Yeah. You know, and he had got this other guy out from. a murder in the park right so that was kind of like his track record but that was like the first thing but i said i told rick i said the second thing is i want to make films motherfucker i said do this for me because you know he was kind of first he was like oh who's this guy and his his representation where oh we don't know about this guy he only made this one of film who the fuck is he but i told

i said look i believe in this dude i've seen his you know team he can do it you know and i go this is my entrance into the film world and what i want to do and so like i will always be indebted you know to Rick especially, you know, for giving me that opportunity by giving his blessing to that, but also, you know, to Sean Rick for teaching me everything that he taught me. And it's on, it's on Netflix right now. Is it playing on Netflix? Yeah, it's on Netflix. So it was on, what was it on before Discovery? And then it was on stars. It so was on stars for 18 months. And now Netflix. Yeah, they went on Netflix. And it was crazy because when it first came out, it first came out probably like, you know, almost three years

ago. And when it first came out, I knew it was a good film, right? But this is like pre- pandemic this is like uh pre black lives matters exploding all over the uh you know world internationally you know this is pre a lot of things and i think when at first i thought like everything that's happening now was going to happen when it first came out man because i was like man this film is awesome man sean wreck and his team you know i contributed to it but you know i'll give credit where credit is due i mean that was sean reckoned his editor you know i was probably like the third most important person on that or maybe the fourth but uh you know i knew it was a good film i knew it was powerful and it did it helped to get rick out you know not that it got rick out by itself but it helped

but um i thought everything that's happening now was going to happen then but i think because the world the way the world was you know people you know they didn't believe it or you know there was too many rabbit holes or they didn't believe in the level of corruption that we were showing and exposing you know and plus i think everybody was still kind of in the rat race of america you know capitalism trying to make money so um you know so it had like a you know 18 month run on stars and you know didn't really get a lot of recognition or turn a lot of heads and then you know then like we we signed the Netflix deal and um it went on Netflix like right at the end of pandemic you know like last April and I think it might have something to do with like the Tiger King effect maybe but it man it went

on Netflix dude and it just fucking exploded it was like it was brand fucking new man so the first two weeks it was on Netflix it's like top 10 on Netflix not top 10 documentaries like top 10 movie series everything for two weeks straight right New York Times did like a little fucking write up on it and uh then you know like like I say then like they said like in April May like it had 20 million fucking views right so it's crazy because that just for me it put a lot of wind in my sales because I had a bunch of different stuff I wanted to do that I'm working on now, but I didn't really have the money. Right.

But it just kind of blew me up. And I always look at it, like, I look at it like sports. Like, all right, New England Patriots won the Super Bowl. Everybody knows Tom Brady's a man, but all those other free agents on that team are getting big contracts. Yeah. So, like, I was part of something that has been extremely successful, you know, on Netflix and that a ton, and it's, it's like recognition, the recognition value, dude, like, you

could talk to anybody. You know, most people, they know fucking white boy Rick and they know fucking white boy on Netflix. Right. You know, it gives that recognition, like that name value where I do like, I could just meet somebody on the plane and be like, oh, yeah, I did white boy on Netflix. And they'd be like, you know, they know it. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, so now, dude, I got a ton of shit, man. I'm doing a, I'm doing a cannabis documentary, the cannabis docu series on Humboldt County called Tangle Roots that I just, I just premiered the teaser at the Emerald Cup, which is like the World Series of Cannabis. Just last weekend, you know, I got on stage and got to talk about it. I had all the farmers with me. I'm doing an LSD docucus series that I'm going to premiere the first episode of it in San Francisco on Bicycle Day.

You know, that's like when Albert Hoffman, that's like when Albert Hoffman first synthesized LSD and took it and discovered LSD. They call it Bicycle Day on April 19th. All right. So I'm doing it at this thing in San Francisco. And then I also got this other docu series. I'm working on about the Mafian heroine called Dopeman.

and so I'm making arrangements you know I've kind of come up with this plan because all this stuff I do it's it's kind of niche it's kind of true crime um it's really hard to get in the film festivals you know I've been going to all the big film festival I've been to Cairns I've been to Sundance you know I've been talking to all these people and um I'm kind of seeing like these target uh market audiences like the Emerald Cup or like an LSD specific event or like a mafia specific event right is these are almost like like i i think i can use these like my sundance you know because i mean you know maybe i could get a sundance maybe not but you know sundance is only once a year and all my stuff's can be finished up you know like in the next six to eight months so i'm i'm looking for waves like

how can i create the hype you know in the press and make enough noise you know to make the streamers notice yeah i got white boy on netflix but it's not like i got a direct cook up to netflix you know so you still got you got to make the noise that's why they have the film festivals because you know they write about these things, and that brings the attention of the Amazon's, the Hulus, the Netflix. And really in today's game,

it's not about going to the theater. It's not about going to DVD. It's about getting on these streamers, man. That's how you're going to make your money back, and that's how you're going to keep working. And really, really like anything in life with film, it's about you got to keep working, man.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So you got to get this stuff because, I mean, that shit's expensive. We spent, like, White Boy, it costs like $250,000 to make. You know, and like some of these, a docu series that I'm doing now, you know, that are like 180, 225 minutes. I mean, these are like,

I mean, we're spending like, you know, $500,000, $750,000 to complete these projects. Hey, if you like the video, do me a favor and subscribe, hit the bell for notifications. Also, we're going to have any links that link to, um, to Seth story or to anything that Seth wants me to put in the description. We'll be in the description. There'll be a bunch of links in there, hopefully. And that's it. And I appreciate it. it. See ya.