Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Celebrity Chef Steals 2m The Real Story

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Sarma Melngailis shares how getting involved with a charming celebrity chef led to losing $2 million and unraveling everything she’d built.⁣ ⁣ Sarma's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/sarmamelngailis/⁣ Check out her book here - https://tr.ee/ECo11Arlo6⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Go to https://kachava.com and use code ITC for 15% off your next order.⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the guy that wrote the book, the vegan. Is he the vegan? He write the book that you kind of helped with? He and I co-authored our first cookbook. So he and I got together. He had written one cookbook. He was sort of like a, he was a celebrity chef, light. He didn't have his own show.

He wasn't like Bobby Flea or Mario or all these names that everybody knows. But in New York, people knew his name. And he was this really good looking guy. And he, oddly enough, had always been my, that his restaurant was my favorite. and I loved his book and I had this opportunity to work with him on his second cookbook. So I did that. And then we ended up becoming a couple.

And then he moved into my, he ended up moving into my place. And there were little sort of signs of like why he's the big time chef with 11 restaurants. Why am I paying for a lot of stuff, you know, early on? And then I ended up sort of getting involved in, I ended up getting involved in his restaurants, putting money in. And I had earned a lot of money because I, when I worked, at Bain Capital, I co-invested a lot. And I did that. I co-invested on my credit cards, knowing that Bain Capital returns are historically and on average so high that it would be silly not to co-invest

as much as you possibly can. So I'm like using those credit card checks to co-invest in deals, which was really smart because all of that money, you know, there were some deals where I put in like four grand and I got back almost 100 grand. Like there are those deals that I knew that was going to be the case. So I did that. So I had, and then also that apartment that I bought, I sold and made, made a bunch of money on that as well. So I had a lot of, for somebody my age, I think I was 28, 29 when I got together with him. I had a lot of, you know, I had a fair amount of money for somebody that age. And then about a year and a half into our relationship, I was in debt by the same amount.

So that's sort of summarizing what happened. but I basically kept putting money into his company as his company was sort of unraveling. And even to the point of when he wasn't able to make payroll for his staff, I felt I was involved with him in the restaurant business. And so I would start cashing their checks with my personal money. So I'm paying his staff over 100 grand. I ended up paying them. And I never, of course, I never got any of that back. So you're not writing promissory notes or this is just your boyfriend.

and he needs to help out. Yeah, and, you know, that's one of those things about me where it's like if I'm, if I'm in something, I'm kind of all in and I'm committed and I want to help him. And I think he's, you know, I think he's just having a hard time and blah, blah. Anyway, so we were together for four years, but his entire restaurant business basically unravels. He had 11 and then he has zero. And what's kind of gross is that 9-11 happens in the middle of that. and I think it always sickened me that he seemed to kind of use that as an excuse.

Yeah. Where it's like, dude, your business was coming apart anyway, but now you have this handy excuse that that's why it happened. And can kind of point to that as if that's the reason as opposed to your incompetent and it was going to unravel anyway. Yeah. I was going to say, I know somebody or that it's kind of a kind of like a big, time guy who's almost 100% positive is running some kind of a real estate Ponzi scheme. And I keep thinking, like, he's holding on long enough for the economy to crash. Oh, and then that can be as an excuse. I'm like, I'll bet you this guy is desperate for the economy to crash at any time. And then

he can say, we were doing great. And then, you know, it was the economy. Then he can wait, hold out for six months to a year and then use that as an excuse to claim bankruptcy or something. I mean, yeah, that was, yeah, that's, I'm sure that's a crutch that a lot of people used. Yeah, so he certainly did. I write a few chapters about him in my book. There's a lot of stories that he's just very clearly a certain type of a person that lacks empathy, but they do a really good job of being very slick and coming across as very sympathetic, but yet, like, absolutely cold-hearted.

And, yeah, I mean, that situation when I finally, when that relationship ended, people kept saying to me like, oh my God, that was so crazy. You should write a book. And I'm like, yeah, one day maybe I will. But then I step into something. Yeah, no, no, no, I can do way better than that. Let me step into another nightmare that's like makes that one look like no big deal, which is what ended up happening. But so he and I ended up opening the restaurant that I had for, that I then ran on my own for over 10 years. And so he and I both at the same time went to a, it was called Pure Food and Wine. And then I had also started this brand called One Lucky Duck, which is like the duck tattoo.

Right. But he and I ended up shifting to this vegan thing together. So somebody took us to this restaurant and we were like, oh my God, we're going where? What? We're going to have to eat this food. Oh, I just kind of assumed that you'd always been a vegan, like since high school or You know why it was? It's because I saw on the documentary, I saw the pictures of you with the purple hair.

And that's what I said, oh, she's always been a little bit, you know, the vegan thing, a little bit out there. She's always been kind of doing the, no. I just assumed that. I didn't know. Yeah, no, I wasn't vegan until, I mean, the blue hair thing. I also assumed he did vegan, but like he was a vegan chef. That guy, Matthew. No, no, no, no.

He had very trendy, very popular restaurants. He had a restaurant in Atlanta. had restaurants. I know, but I still thought they were vegan. No. That's what I'm saying is that I guess I was already kind of pre-programmed, you know, to think that. So, okay, the vegan thing.

Go ahead. Yeah. So he and I went, we were supposed to go to this fancy new Jean-George restaurant with this friend of his, and his friend said, oh, can we go to this other place instead? It's like this raw, vegan place because I've been eating that way and I really want to keep eating that way. And we were like, and I remember looking up the place and thinking like, oh, God, this is going to be terrible. And I was super bummed because I'd wanted to try that at the restaurant.

So he takes it as this place. It's very crunchy. Like everything you would imagine a, quote, raw vegan place would be what that conjures in your mind is what this place was. It's kind of has this curry smell. It's very earthy. It's small. It was the summertime. They're like AC didn't work very well. But this guy starts explaining how much better he feels eating this way and the rationale behind it and why it works, you know, and we're kind of intrigued. And the food comes out. And it's way better than I thought it was going to be. But not done in a very sophisticated way. But yummy, right?

It's yummy, but it's not like, it doesn't look that great. Whatever. The presentation was off. And while we're sitting there, I'm like, and the whole time my wheels are turning. And I'm watching and I'm like, I'm seeing supermodels coming in, getting food, going. And I'm like, oh, there's another one. What's going on here? And then there was this lovely woman sitting next to us by herself.

And we were chatting with her. And she said, yeah, I started eating this way. Like a whole different person. I have more energy. all the stuff healed. And then she said, like, yeah, my friends won't come here because, you know,

she said, I wish somebody would open a cool raw vegan restaurant. And that moment was one of those, thing, like light bulb moment where I went, somehow I knew in that moment that's what's going to happen. Matthew and I were going to open

the cool raw vegan restaurant. So a year later, that's what happened. We opened the cool raw vegan restaurant. And it's funny because this studio with the red and the lighting, reminds me of the vibe, but the restaurant. Because it was this same kind of, the walls were red and had this very glowy, you know, dark wood and red.

It was very kind of a sexy atmosphere as opposed to, right? That's why when I came in here, I was like, kind of looks like, I don't know. Listen, I did all this. Like I would imagine a set would look. Never been on one. I made all this. I designed all this. It's very nice.

All this. I made all this in my garage. But red is one of those colors. It makes you want to hang out longer. It's like, I don't know. Anyway, point is when you walk in there. Is that true? Oh, yeah.

Is scientifically true? Yes, apparently. I like red. So I just picked it because I thought it was kind of cool. Well, it's a very like hangout inviting warm color as opposed to imagine if the walls were blue. Like you want, if you're going to open a spa, you want it to be more blue, like lavender, soothing colors. I don't know. Apparently colors have effects on people's moods.

So the restaurant when you walked in was beautiful, and it was pure food and wines. We had this extensive wine list. The food was very beautiful, sophisticated. It was really delicious. And we benefited from people very often coming in and having sort of low expectations, like raw vegan food, but then it was really, really good. And most of the people who came in were not vegan or raw food. Basically, you're not cooking anything above a certain temperature.

So you're keeping all the enzymes intact. So you're not cooking out all the nutrition and the enzymes. It's easier to digest. Therefore, you have more energy. So anytime somebody goes from eating whatever they're eating to say you switch suddenly and say I put you on a raw vegan diet for two weeks, you would probably go, oh, wow, I feel a lot different. Like you just have more energy, you have more clarity.

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And then it sort of became more of a permanent way of living. Now, I understand that everybody's different, so I'm never, like, pushing this vegan thing at all. And I'm not even, I don't like the label. I'm not a strict vegan, like, everybody's different. But the whole thing with the restaurant was we are making this food available. It's delicious. It's beautiful. It's an amazing vibe.

People love the restaurant. At any given night, probably more than half the people that were there, including a lot of regulars, were not vegan or raw, but they just liked to come there the same way that you might go to a Mexican restaurant one night. or you might go for sushi another night, and then you come to our restaurant. So it had this really great vibe. And then, so Matthew and I split, crazy story was like in the tabloids,

all this nonsense happened. He gets out of my life, and I'm now running the restaurant on my own. He goes to the investor and tries to get him to cut you out or something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the guy's name? I forget.

Jeffrey. Right. Right. And then. But that guy knew that, like. Yeah, he realized that he's, he's, he does. doesn't have a great, he doesn't have a great name and he owes everybody and he's kind of going on.

Matthew's history if you look into it. And now, now there's been all these articles written about everything he's done subsequently, which imagine what did he do, the same thing. You know, people get screwed over over and over and over again. Which when those articles came out, I was like, whew, because nobody could look at the chapters I wrote about him on my book and question it now that that stuff is all out there. It's like, yeah. And plus I can back it all up. but so then I'm running the restaurant on my own and also I've started this one lucky duck brand and we're making cookies and we're making all these products and now they're in whole foods and now they're in more whole foods and all this stuff is just happening like whole foods is coming

to us wanting to carry it in more stores so and I'm making it all out of the back of the we're making it out of the back of the restaurant and I know that's not sustainable like we have to move to the next level and so thus begins sort of what probably was my my my my my issue the entire time I was running that restaurant and things are going well and we're making money, but I know we needed capital to go to the next level. And I could never quite find the right partners to do that. And I was very wary of the type of money that's private equity or venture capital type money where they'll come in, they'll see a great brand, they'll come in, they'll put money in, open locations all over the place. But then so often it ends up getting

the integrity of the brand, everything that made it special and great is compromised. It loses that special something that it had in those brands tank. But by then the investors have flipped it and made their money, and that's what they care about. They're looking at like a time horizon of a couple of years. They just want to blow it up, flip it, make a bunch of money, and then they don't really care what happens to it. Whereas for me, this brand and, you know, that restaurant and the One Lucky Duck brand and everything it represented and everything we were doing, I was like, this is meant to outlast me, I can see it all, this is going to be very big, I know it, I can see it, this is like, hmm, and so I was

very wary of bringing in the wrong people that would, you know, that would take control of it, and then long term, you know, it would get run into the ground. Like, I wasn't doing this to sort of, I wasn't doing this to cash out, make a bunch of money, and then, and leave. This was the rest of my life. This is, this is my thing. You know, I never wanted children. I didn't want to, that wasn't my thing. This was my thing. This business and this brand. This was my life thing.

So I was in this position where I'm overworked. I'm exhausted. I'm stressed out because I had bought the restaurant from that guy, Jeffrey. So there was debt on the restaurant. And then from my time with Matthew, I still carried a lot of personal debt. And when the restaurant was making money, I was always reinvesting it into the restaurant. I wasn't like paying off my old debt because I just thought, the restaurant and the business is more important.

So you bought the restaurant from him? From that guy, Jeffrey Chaturow. Or he lent you money to buy the restaurant? Or is just an existing restaurant he had that you guys took over and then he lent you the money to run it? He was the original investor in the restaurant, but it's a bit... More complicated? He already kind of owned the site or something? No, he didn't already own the site.

But because he was the person involved in the restaurant, and I had started One Lucky Duck with a small loan from a friend of mine. I had started the One Lucky Duck brand myself. So that was a separate entity. But really, they were very intertwined. And so in order to bring in investors and take it to the next level, I had to resolve this situation because, well, Jeffrey has the restaurant. I own One Lucky Duck.

This is very complicated. This needs to get sorted out. And then I had a bunch of, I had some investors, and we were going to recapitalize. And then 2008 downturn happened. and that was a bit of a shit show. And so rather than just not going forward with that deal, Jeffrey said, all right, how about you just, you know, owe me this money, but you can basically have ownership of the restaurant,

so you can put both companies into the same LLC, and then you can, you know, move forward. Got it. So I did that. And I was paying down that note to Jeffrey, so I paid him a few hundred grand over time. And 2008, a ton of restaurants in New York City, like a lot of really good restaurants in New York City. We're going under.

Going under. Right. And we got through that. So, recovered, doing well. But the point is, when this man came into my life around which the rest of the story revolves, I was in a place where I had broken up with a, I had had a very healthy relationship with a lovely guy who was he was a lot younger than me but one of the best relationships and but I knew it was eventually going to end right um because he was 14 years younger than me I was I was 34 and he

was 20 13 years I was 34 I think I was 34 he was 21 when we met wow and so I wow that's the that's the charge right there that's the relationship where I was like uh my wife's 18 years are going to be, but I, but totally different dynamic. Well, anyway, and also, the older you get, the more, the less the age difference is as seemingly astonishing. But I just thought, well, he's going to want to be with somebody younger, like, what does he want? So I tried to be like, no, we really can't do this. Maybe not, though.

And he was, yeah, well, he said to me, he was like, what if, like, what if, like, the earth gets hit by a meteor in two weeks? Like, if we just, if we want to be with each other and hang out, why wouldn't we? And I was like, it's a good point. How old are you now? So then 53. 50. You're holding up pretty well.

You might have made a mistake. All that raw vegan food. Yeah. You might have made a mistake. That guy might have been a mistake. Might have been the one. That might have a whole different trajectory of your life. I know.

He's lovely. Well, no, we did. But we did end up in a relationship for four years, which was totally drama-free. This guy sounds great. Later on, I had a relationship with a guy who was 13, 14 years younger. Also another, also a very stable, cool relationship. That's what I'm saying. So, yeah, he was great.

But. I mean, you got to get rid of those guys. But eventually. They have to go. These are drama-free, younger, good-looking guys, younger, drama-free. They got to go. Got to get rid of that guy. Well, he, anyway, the relationship would run its course.

And he and his friends moved back to Colorado. And so I'm, and that was the first time of my life I had been heartbroken. Like I, I had never experienced real heartache. And so I'm, I'm heartbroken. I'm overwhelmed with the business. I'm wearing so many different hats. Like people are coming at me. Oh, my God.

This business is amazing. We want to expand. And then I'm sort of just like, you know, I need a break. I need a break. I need some relief. I need. And that's when this guy, that's when I end up coming across this guy through Twitter

and my conversations with Alec Baldwin. So that's another bit of the story. I had a relationship, friendship, situation with Alec. And when that ended, we were friends, and he joined Twitter. And I think when somebody very famous joins Twitter, it's like a very quick, your followers go, you know.

Sure. And this was back in 20. 11, right? So it's a different time back then. So I was active on Twitter and Alec was tweeting with this guy and they were very, and then he followed him and the guy was very funny and they had this like very witty back and forth banter. And so I, and then that guy started tweeting to me and I got involved in conversations. That guy followed me. I followed him that we started DMing and that's how I meet this guy who in my, throughout my book and my story, I just call him Mr. Fox. Right.

Because originally. There's multiple names. Yes. Originally, I thought he said his name was Shane Fox. Later, we, we, I find out his name is Anthony Stranges, which he's now changed to Anthony Knight. There's some lady on YouTube who was like, first his name was Shane, then it was Anthony. I'm just going to call him Shantany, which I like that nickname too. But either way, I call him Mr.

Fox. It's just easier, especially throughout my book because it's like it would get confusing if I was calling him one name in the beginning, another later. So what he did was very skillful because I know now, I mean, he probably looked at me and was like, oh, she's a good, she's a good target here. And he got to know me, feeds me information about who he is. He's very mysterious about it. I'm in this place where I'm heartbroken, I'm overwhelmed, you know, it had been six months since I broke up with the younger guy. And he's kind of feeding me probably everything I wanted to hear. And I was very open.

And on my website, I had written these very personal blog posts. I've always been very open. It's like, there's a thing called oversharing. I'll overshare. If you seem interested in me, I'll tell you way too much information, probably more than I should. because I'm not thinking you're going to use it now to manipulate me the way that, like a cult leader would do, right? They mine you for information.

What's your biggest childhood wound? How can I get to that and now get you to, like, get attached? And that's what cult leaders do, and that's precisely what this guy did. But I made it really easy for him because I had written these very personal blog posts about my hopes and dreams and my struggles and my insecurities and what I really wanted. and it was all there in these posts that I had written on my website. And then also he, you know, through talking to me, I probably told him way more than I ought to have. But I'm not thinking somebody's, you know, again, I'm not operating in like a defensive position.

I'm just very open. So he is feeding me a little bits of information. Oh, he's kind of very cagey about what he's. he does, acts very mysterious. He shows, he doesn't have a picture on his thing. There's not a whole bunch of pictures of him. He's very mysterious about who he is and his identity. And then finally he puts up a picture of like the lower half of his face and it looks good. And then finally he sends me a picture of himself. And, you know, those pictures, he looks very good. And he's kind of mysterious about what he does. You know, first he said commercial real estate, blah,

He's basically reeling me and getting me more and more and more intrigued. And so it's about, I think it was at least a month, if not more, before finally I meet him in person. But by then he's gotten me completely somehow sort of hooked on who he is and what this might be. And he was also very different from the younger guy. You know, he seemed like a big, strong guy, which normally isn't really my type. I'm not into like the gym bros. He seemed very different from this kind of lanky, cute, younger guy that I had been with before.

It was just all very intriguing. So he waits a certain amount of time before he meets me, which was strategically on his part, a wise move. Because had I met him right away, I would have been like, oh, yeah, not really what I thought you were. Okay, bye. But he had gotten me already, like, emotionally invested. and again, the thing we were talking about before, where by the time he shows up and I meet him, and I'm like, oh, it's definitely heavier than he seemed in his pictures.

But he told me he'd been injured. And so, yeah, he's, you know. And then I'm like, oh, and it'd be so shallow for me to, like, reject him just because he's got a little extra padding and he's a little bit, like, you know. I'm shallow. Softer than I thought. Like, that would be shallow.

That would have been a discussion. The first, that'd be the first date discussion. Like, what are we going to do about this? You got a couple weeks. I better see some improvement quickly. Anyway, so he, you know, I'm, I'm, so that's how, when I meet him the first time, I don't immediately throw him out. And it's not that I would throw somebody out because of the way they look, but it's more the deception. You know, it's like the deception out of the gate.

I understand. Not cool. You don't have to. But either way. So, I hear you. I know what you're saying. Right. I'm not shallow either.

But after I'm with him in the beginning, after I first meet him, I'm like, yeah, I guess that's that. Like I'm not, I'm not going to, yeah, I'm not going to see this guy again. I guess he's not what I thought. But he didn't live in, so I'm in New York City at this point. He doesn't live in New York City. So he's coming to see me. And another thing, you know, he came from, he was living in Massachusetts. So he came and stayed with me for a whole weekend, you know.

And, of course, I'm not going to just go, oh, you don't look like you said you were door slamming your face. It's like, oh, well, he came all this way. Okay, I guess he'll stay for the week. Whatever. So this guy is... You've got to be meaner. I know.

I know. I know. I know. Yeah. I mean, at the time, I understand catfishing wasn't a real thing. But, you know, that's a little bit of a catfish when someone shows up. you know, 30 pounds overweight, more overweight, then it's like, hey, come on now. What are you doing?

Yeah. I mean, but also more, what he did was he had gotten me so emotionally invested in wanting this thing to work out. So, you know, it's like if you, the dangers of meeting somebody online, they're able to feed you what you want to hear. And then you're going to fill in the gaps and your mind is going to sort of create this fantasy of like, oh, I think this is the perfect guy. And oh, my God, it's all these things I've ever wanted.

And so you're going to sort of create that fantasy and then becomes that much harder to unwind that. Well, also the longer you have invested in someone, the more, you know, kind of you're going to give them it. Yeah, it's hard to give them a pass because that's kind of like when you go into buy a car, like they want to drag the experience out as long as possible. Because if you've spent like four hours or five hours at the dealership, you're more inclined to say, okay, I'll pay an extra $25. on my payment just because at this point I can't really go anywhere else. I've been here for five hours. I want to go. I want to get the vehicle.

I've spent all this time doing this. I don't want to have to go somewhere else to do the same thing again. And then so you just go ahead and sign, not really realizing like, well, I just cost myself like an extra $5,000 over the next five years. Yeah. Or it's probably like a lot of people, they might get married because they're like, well, TikTok, I want to have kids. And, you know, I've already spent three, you know, I've already spent six months dating this person. so he's a little bit like cuckoo in this way. Yeah, I can deal with it.

It's a similar type of time invested in this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, he comes into my life and what another way he sort of gets me hooked is that very early on at one point he wants to borrow some money from me. And it's like something like six grand or it's not a huge amount of money. And he presents it to me as if it's like this crazy emergency and oh my God, I don't know, something horrendous is going to happen if he doesn't get the money. And I'm on the spot.

And you're in that situation where you're thinking like, well, if he's telling the truth and I don't give him the money, then that's kind of, then I'm kind of an asshole. And like, why would he? And again, this is how I'm wired. It's like, it doesn't occur. I'm like, why would somebody, like, I'm just not thinking like somebody who would deceive somebody else's thinking. So I'm not thinking that that's what's happening. To me, I'm thinking if you can't take out, if you can't go to your bank. and borrow $6,000, you have horrible credit.

You don't currently have a credit card that has $6,000 worth of equity or whatever, you know, reserve, whatever. I'm not thinking that way at all. And by the way, he creates some sort of situation where there's so much urgency. It's as if he needs it right now this minute, you know. So either way, the point is, call your parents. Point is I give him the money, right? Right.

And then that's another tether because even though I'm like, all right. I kind of want my six grand back. This guy's like not who he said he was. I'm getting a weird feeling. I don't know about this. But I want my money back. So then he'll, he would say like,

all right, I got your money and I'd go, okay, fine, you can come, okay, you can come back. And then somehow,

you know, by the end of the weekend, like he'd give me a couple grand, but then he'd take it back and somehow he'd get more money out of me. This whole thing spirals over time where, yeah. I mean,

like to me, it's like, if I gave you six grand and you gave me two back, I could see that hooking me because I'm thinking, or most people in my mind, of course I'm like a scammer, right? So I'm, I'm thinking, bullshit, you're coming back for more, more than the two grand, you know, because I still owe you four, but you gave me back two. So most people, that's the hook. That's where they feel like, he gave me back to, he's already paying me back. He's good. I gave him six. He's already making payments back. I'll have all the money back. And then something else happens. And then

need a little bit more money. Yep. But then they pay you back. But I mean, imagine that. It's just in your, most people in mind, they think he's paying me back. But really, he's just borrowing and borrowing more and more money. Hey, I need to borrow $30,000. Give me $30.

Oh, by the way, here's a payment on that $30. It's like, that's a Ponzi scheme. People, you know what I'm saying? Like a lot of people will, they invest $100,000. And the Ponzi scheme, they, the next month, they say, hey, you just, your $100,000 turned into 110,000, so they leave it in. Yeah. You know?

Or even if they said, give me 50,000 back and you gave them 50,000 back from somebody else's money, then they, within a month or so, they come back and go, you know what, here's 200,000. And you're like, they're not, because they're thinking, because the 50,000 or the 60,000 I left in there just grew even more. Had I left the rest of the money in, you know what I'm saying? Psychologically, it makes sense. I noticed a lot of that when I watched the, I watched the Bernie made off.

Doc. People are more afraid of the loss of the opportunity than they are the loss of the money. Yes. Which seems insane. But in that, when I watched that, I noticed a lot of similarities in terms of the way that he behaved and the way that he was able to manipulate people. And it's all the same. You know, it's like what this guy did to me, what cult leaders do, it's all the same

sort of a playbook. But what makes my story different than a lot of these kind of. of just a typical straightforward scam is that it gets a lot, it gets very culty because he starts to do a number on my brain and he starts to get me more confused and telling me these stories and always got this access to stuff and he's going to be able to basically resolve all of my struggles and make it so that I can grow my business however I want. I don't have to answer to any of these investors. Because at some point he starts telling you he can pay off Jeffrey. Like I can pay off Jeffrey. Like is that kind of one of... He's like, I can pay off Jeffrey. I can pay off all your

debt and and then some and you know, you'll have all the money you want to grow your business. Because he figures out what's most important to me. What's most important to me is my business. Right. That's most important. Which probably not too difficult to figure out. Spitting a little bit of time with you as a business owner, you're probably very quickly, that's probably pretty much all you're talking about, all you're thinking about, right? Like most business owners, they're super, you know, obviously you've put all your heart and soul into something. It's like, like, ask Colby. All Colby, Colby's mentioned this many times.

Most of his friends, like, he's like, I mean, he's like, all I talk about. Like, they're all talking about this and this and this and this and this. And then they're like, what do you think? He's like, bro, all I got to say is I'm thinking about how do I get more views? What can the hook be? What kind of a thumbnail? Maybe should we switch thumbnail? You know, like he's not even interested in the things he used to be interested.

And I'm the same way, like I'll talk about YouTube all the next 10 hours we can talk about YouTube. Yeah. Because, you know, you become consumed by it. Especially if, and here's one of the things that when I look at people who end up in cults or end up in a similar culty type of a situation, there's a lot of characteristics that we share. You know, a lot of, you know, super hardworking. But there's this level of idealism. And so it wasn't just that I had a business. It was that this business was going to help save animals, shift the world.

My business was helping this sort of fringe, raw, vegan thing that's normally seen as very crunchy in granola and people would scoff and laugh at it. No, no, I'm helping to make it mainstream. And that's what we were doing and very successful at it. And so thereby I'm going to help people shift towards. It was never about converting everybody to being vegan. That's why I never liked the label. It was just like to help shift people to eat more plants, less animals, better for the environment,

better for people's health. People can heal themselves from all these diseases. They don't need medication. It's basically shifting the world towards this natural way of living. And I'm thinking of it in this very, this is what I want to do. This is why I'm here on this earth, right? This is my purpose. It's not like it's an oddball idea.

You've got companies or investors that are coming to you wanting to invest in it. You're just not happy with the deal. Like the deal is like it's little, this seems like it might get too commercial. or it might be, they might, you know, you haven't, it's, you haven't taken a deal yet, not because there's not interest there or people don't see the viability. It's because you're like, you don't want it to destroy your brand somehow. Yes. Yes. And I think what I, what I needed back then and what I've needed all along and still probably need is what you were saying earlier about, you know, how your wife said, like, kind of want to protect her. Yeah. If I had somebody around who was

by my side and making sure that my time wasn't wasted by, because I would end up in these meetings with people would come and they'd want to, they'd want to talk to me about investing, but sometimes they'd be kind of full of shit. And more often than not, they were dudes, and they would get weird. You know what I mean? And I'm like, I spent all this time meeting with you, and now you're treating this meeting like it's a date. The fuck is going on. So I would end up in those situations and not, I wouldn't have seen it coming. Or, they would be these very kind of, you know, the reason why they called venture capital, vulture capital.

It's like this very predatory, like they want to take this concept and blow it up, make a bunch of money, flip it, thereon to the next thing, it's destroyed. So I was always very protective of the brand and always wanted the type of investor who was mostly in it because of what our purpose was and what it was going to do for the world. And yes, also it will be commercially extremely successful because all these elements are here. but also the point of it is to last. Like I wanted this brand and this business to outlast me. Like when I die, it's still, it's a big brand.

There's a scene I write in my book that happened when I first got my tattoo. And this is the logo for the more expandable side of the business. And I'm on the subway from Brooklyn going back to Manhattan. And this dude on the train is like, what is that? It's got like a saran wrap on it right after you get a tattoo. And he was like, what is that duck? And the first thing that popped in my head, and this is very, I'll admit it now.

I didn't tell anybody back then because it seems like, who do you think you are? But the first thing that popped in my head was like, you're not going to have to ask me that one day. It's going to be like the Nike swoosh. That's what popped in my head. So that's where my brain is quietly thinking because I'm thinking that while at the same time being somebody that's riddled with insecurities, probably lacking self-confidence, but I have this core belief that, no, no, this is meant to be really big. And I actually still believe it. But whatever, a lot of other shit happened.

So when he comes along, he presents himself as if he's the way for me to realize that goal of being able to grow the business in a way that I want to, where I can pay the employees what I want. I don't have to, it wouldn't get sort of commercialized and ruined and destroyed. I can grow this business the way they want. It's going to be a... So he basically feeds. me that fantasy and that's what that's part of the that's the main part of the hook right um and in a way he becomes the the relationship becomes very much like cult leader cult follower

not that i was following him but it it was more of a relationship where like he's he's like the guru and i'm like i'm like the student i'm the one that he's going to bring along and it it just goes from it starts to over time, you know, he tells me sort of crazier and crazier things, and it gets very strange and otherworldly. And what the show on Netflix and tabloids like to bring up was, oh, he made her believe her dog was going to live forever. Okay, that makes me sound like I'm totally crazy. And it wasn't like he said, hey, your dog's going to live forever. And I was like, okay.

all these things are very subtle and he started to imply that I mean it depends on what you believe but when I adopted my dog it was as if a force beyond me compelled me to do it and that's that's how I can explain it people talk very often especially with rescue dogs

it's like that dog found me there's a connection there it feels like something something more is going on right and that's how I felt when I adopted my dog Leon which was right before It was about a year before I met this guy, Mr. Fox, is when I got my dog.

Right. Leon. Remember Charlie? Do you remember Charlie? Yeah, yeah. With the dog that got shot and he found the dog. He saw the dog that it was a big thing. It was in New York where the dog got shot by,

the police, right? The police shot the dog. But it survived. Everybody thought it died, but didn't. It actually lived. And he contacted them and tracked down the dog and went and found the dog and adopted the dog. It was just like it's just this amazing story. I feel like I've heard from that guy. Of course. Oh, you've heard from Charlie or just, you've heard the story. You definitely probably,

I can't imagine you couldn't have heard this story. We interviewed him years ago, right? I might have heard from him, but I don't know that that's going to take us on a whole tangent. But that was how he felt. Like he saw this, this happened to see this thing, not a big deal. Like most people saw it. It's like, ah, that's horrible. Kind of saw it and was like, that's what happened to me. I have to find that dog. I was not in the market for a dog. I was like, I'm way too busy. Can't even take care of myself.

The reason I was looking at dogs is because I was trying to convince Alec Baldwin to adopt a dog. Right. And I thought like, well, you know, he wants a wife. He wants more kids. He should have a dog in his life. And that's going to make him. He's got money. He's got this house with all this yard.

He needs to get a rescue dog. So I had been sending him pictures of dogs. I'm like, this dog, you should get this dog. He's not really that interest in getting a dog. I stumble upon this one photo, and I'm not even looking for it. It was I saw it. I forget where I saw it in somebody's newsletter, and I see this dog's picture, and something happens. And so I'm telling him, oh, my God, this is the dog.

You have to get this dog. He's not really interested. I become completely strangely fixated on this dog, and I don't know what it is, and I can't explain it. And then I'm waking up in the middle of the night and I'm crying because I'm thinking about this dog. Why? Why? I don't know what's going on.

And then eventually I'm like, I think I have to go see the dog. Why? It would make no sense for me to adopt, especially like a five-month-old pit bull. When I live in my office, I'm overwhelmed, I'm busy, makes no sense. None of it made any irrational sense at all. I had to go get the dog. I go see the dog, Leon, and I'm like, and then I go home and I know I'm going to come back the next morning and get him. I'm crying on the subway.

It's just there's, it was like, I've never, I had. never experienced anything like that before. So I'm not, I don't know what I believe. Somebody said to me at the time, do you believe in God? I'm like, I don't know. But somehow it felt like I had to get this dog. So that's how I'm feeling about him. And then I wrote this, of course, I wrote a whole blog post a couple months after I adopted him about my story of adopting him. Very sweet story. This guy, Mr. Fox, I'm sure, read that, knows that I feel like there was some sort of like a destiny thing involved. So then he's like, yeah, of course that was, you know, of course that was meant to be, I sent him to, who do you think sent you, Leon?

I'm like, so he starts tweaking with me, tweaking my brain in that way and gets me to kind of believe all this stuff. And anyway, and so it's not that he necessarily made me believe that Leon would live forever, but he got my brain into a very like woo-woo space. And there's a lot of research out there about now this whole topic of manipulative. and, you know, sort of brainwashing is a bit of like a hot topic in YouTube and podcasts. And there's this one dude who talks a lot about Chase Hughes. Do you know who that guy is? Suspect. That's a whole other story.

But he talks, basically there's a lot of, you know, it's like what Andrew Tate does. He teaches you how to manipulate girls to then be able to make them go on OnlyFans and take all the money and whatever. He teaches people how to manipulate other people. I think at all, but I hear you. Other people. I guess I haven't seen those videos. Yeah. Well, there's a very good documentary on him on BBC.

It's like an hour. It's really, it's very good, very well done. But it's all the same thing. So there's a lot of the stuff out there about like, you know, how to manipulate people. And that's what my story is about. I mean, that's why my book is as long as it is because it's not like something that happens really fast. It's something that happens over time. And it's really hard to describe how your brain gets compromised, especially because part of that is by definition, you know,

you're getting into a compromise state and now you're dissociating and you don't even understand what's going on. So then to go back and try to explain it is very difficult. And I was fortunate enough that eventually I was able to, I mean, I'm jumping ahead a bit, but when all of this unravels, this guy deleted all. our emails to each other. He had taken my phones and stuff. I deleted our texts and everything. So I'm thinking I've got like where I've got nothing. But I was able to recover our G chats. Do you remember when Gmail you could chat? There's like a chat function. I don't know. I was probably in prison. Okay. Yeah. You missed that. There's probably a lot of stuff that happens like a lot of pop culture

stuff where you're like, yeah, I totally missed that. So I was able to recover our G chats and they were extensive. I mean, when I eventually printed out everything I found, it's like I've got multiple binders like this thick at home that have our entire G-chat history. And then I was able to recover bits and pieces of texts and some emails and whatnot. So I'm sort of piecing together what happened. But I included a lot of those conversations in my book because you can see how over time the way he's talking to me and the things that he says and how he's doing it. So it's a bit of like, it's a bit of taking you along the journey of how he does what he does over time. So real quick, let's go back.

What did you think he did at this point? Because I'm fascinated by the, his kind of his handler. Oh, Will Richards. Yes. Yeah. So early on he tells me. So at any point, if you asked me, and if you ask me now, but if you ask me at the time, what did you, you know, what did you think he did or any question about him? I wouldn't necessarily, I wouldn't know because I was completely confused.

Anytime I asked him questions, I would get a very word salad response, where then now I'm really, now I'm more confused. And if you're trying to, if you're trying to brainwash somebody or manipulate them or get them to do something, one of the best ways to do that is to confuse them. So do you know who Darren Brown is? He's like a mentalist. But he's got these specials on Netflix. And he's unique in that he talks, he explains how he does what he does. But one of the ways that you, like if you were going to try to, if I was going to try to, if I was going to try to. to insert a belief in your brain, one of the best ways to do that would be to confuse you, like to say something really weird that makes no sense, and you're kind of going, huh? And then I sort of insert the belief, and now you've got that in your head. And Darren Brown is able to do that to the extent that he could walk up to somebody on the subway, do his thing, and somehow get you to hand him your watch and wallet and walk away and be like, what just happened? Right.

And he does that over and over. over and over again, he's really good at it. So it's the kind of thing that you have a hard time imagining that happening to you. And so my story is kind of like a long, drawn-out version of that. It's like, wait, what? How did I just give that guy my wallet and my watch? I don't, how did that happen? But this is like a long, drawn-out version of that where basically it's happening over time,

you know, because now he's gotten me to, like, believe all this other stuff. And so I'm, you know, I'm giving him more and more money. and then it morphs into like this is all a big test and the money doesn't matter, but you got to give it to me. And then we're almost done and this is going to be over soon. But what did you think he did for a living? That's, I would be like, whoa. And how did he hand you off to the guy who didn't exist?

Who didn't exist. Yeah. At some point, early on, he tells me he's got this like assistant. He makes him out to be like some sort of an IT expert guy somewhere far off. This is assistant Will Richard. and Will's going to reach out to you. And I'm like, okay, so I get an email from this guy, Will Richards, the Gmail account. And somehow he got my, so somehow Will was going to, like, encrypt my stuff, so he needs my

passwords, you know. So that was kind of the first way he got into all my digital stuff and my passwords. So, but, of course, in the end, Will Richards doesn't really exist. It's just him using another Gmail. Right. But what's interesting from the brainwashing side of this whole thing is at some point, like I realize more and more, I'm more and more suspicious that Will Richards doesn't really exist. And later on, I mean, there's places in my book where in my G-chats, you know, Will's texting me or the guy is saying to me something about Will.

And I'm like, fuck you. Will doesn't exist. you know, you're full of shit. But then I'll still end up doing what he wanted me to do or giving him more money. So that's one of the – I include a lot of that stuff in my book. And a friend of mine was like, you know, you sure you want to put all this stuff in there where you're pushing back on him? Because you're calling him a liar, you're pushing back on him. But then you still do what he said.

And he's like, you know, it makes it harder to understand that you're sort of his victim if you're pushing back on him this whole time. And I'm like, yeah, but that's what happened. I don't understand it either. And it would be amazing if I had... If you were trying to manipulate the story, then obviously you would remove those things. Exactly. I'm just telling you what happened. Right.

That's what... And you don't even necessarily have to understand what happened. And my favorite readers of my book are people, like, forensic psychologist type stuff. Right. Who really want to analyze and understand it, like have at it. Because I... I'm sorry. Go ahead.

How long is this brick? This brick of words. This is, this is like, is this like 600? 650 pages. 650. Yeah, but. Do you have an abridged version?

But I don't have an abridged version and I will do the audio. But I, one of my favorite comments from people who read it. And like I also have people who are like, they're just super, they're like fans or they'll read it. And the number of people who've told me that it's the first book they've read in years because they can no longer focus. They can't focus on reading a book. So they haven't read a book

in years, but somehow they were able to read it. It's like the chapters are short. It moves really fast. It's really engaging. And it's easy to read because I write in a very conversational way. Like I write like I'm talking to a friend. So it's easy to read. It moves fast. It's engaging. And so it is a long book, but it's kind of like reading two books at once. You know what I mean? It could have been a part one, part two. I want to write a whole other book because a whole bunch of shit happened afterwards. So that's very gratifying. People who do read it tell me it's hard to put it down.

So what did you think that Mr. Fox did? Only because in the dock, it makes it seem like you believe that he was like some black ops guy. Some black ops guy. And that at some point he even tells your father that he's, he worked for like a private contractor. Like black water or something. Yeah.

Right, right. And but yeah, and he, but he's never, which also, it gives him a reason to, to not be specific. Right. So, so I'm wondering, is that what you thought? Is that like I thought he was worked for like Blackwater and that he had a job that he just couldn't be specific on? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Basically. I mean, and there's another story similar to mine where it's, that's a huge, screaming red flag as if. somebody claims to work for some sort of a clandestine organization because it's the perfect cover for everything. He can be off-coms for a while and not getting back to me and have the perfect excuse because it's like, oh, he was on a job. I did. I wrote a book.

Oh, I can't tell you. It's better you don't know. I wrote a book for a guy that talked like that all the time. And it was always that kind of like military kind of jargon. It's just fucking irritated that crap out of it. Oh, yeah. He used all the military jargon. There's Ephraim Devereoli, by the way.

He did that all. He talked like that all the time. It's like, you're a Jewish stoner from Miami, bro. Like, you're not military. Like, stop talking like that. But he did it all the time. Yeah. One of the more interesting questions about this whole thing is to what extent did this guy in some way kind of believe his own bullshit?

Like, to what extent was he like almost living out his own weird fantasy as if he was put himself inside of a, video game and he's living this out and part of him believes his own nonsense. Right. That part is fascinating. Well, so I wrote a book about a guy also. I've written a bunch of true crime books. Yeah. Was about a guy named Marcus Schrenker, and he was a pathological liar. I mean, there's no, there's, you know, everybody that's ever spent any significant amount of time with them across the board has all, have all said the same thing, pathological liar.

Yeah. And so as a result of writing that book, I read a bunch of studies on pathological liars. And it's funny because some of them will say that they do believe their own bullshit. But then others that say that it's really just that they get an extreme, they get an extreme kick of like endorphins or something by fooling people, which really they all say that. So I shouldn't say that. It's not any specific. They all kind of say that's part of the love of what they're doing. And then there's a certain type of pathological liar.

It's a, and I'm going to completely botch the name of it. It's like a fan. It's basically it's fantastical something. I can't say it. It's too big of a word. Anyway, Colby might look it up. He's not looking at. Colby's probably texting his wife right now.

I'm trying to look it up. It's fantastical something pathological liar. Am I saying wrong? A fantastical pathological liar is a person with a. pseudological phanta something a mental health

condition involving compulsive and elaborate lying where the lies are often dramatic, fantastical and difficult to distinguish

from reality. But yeah because they mix it with reality here's a cool thing about it is that that lie

will kind of manifest itself in his psyche forever. So he's been telling the same kind of the same for the

longest time to But it becomes real. It's the same problem. It's a similar psychology to like if you repeat the, you know, this is the way. It kind of makes sense. Like this guy was a pilot. So part of his fantasy, part of his fantasy life is that he's a pilot.

Like he's got a whole pilot thing ingrained in this, that he was in the military. He flew all these missions. He worked for NASA. Right. And that's true. But if stuff is repeated over and over and over again, it's like it because you can get something. But he also knows it's not true. I'm just letting you know from, I don't know about Mr. Fox, but I'm saying, like, he says it in such a way that you every, you 100% believe it.

And there are pilots that he's talking to on a regular basis. He's fooling pilots into believing that he was flying F-16 whatever's and this many missions. Yeah, but there's probably some part of his psychology that in some way believes it, even if he knows it's not true. It's like he's run with it long enough. The confidence is overwhelming. Yes, and that's the thing. It's so people, and it's probably why somebody who would qualify as a sociopath or whatever label you want to put on it, you could put a, put them, give them a polygraph,

and they'll pass it. Right. Because they're not exhibiting those signs. They're not wired like an old person. Right, exactly. So they can lie in a way that, like if I told you some complete, lie. Probably little things are happening with my eyes, my body, and the movements that you're even subconsciously picking up on where you're like, hmm, seems like this person's full of shit.

But they're not, that stuff isn't happening with them. Well, I wonder what, what, so he's going around, he starts this Gmail. He tells you, hey, by the way, kind of like my, my such and such IT tech guy, whatever, that kind of, you know, works with me with, you know, the company I work with, what company is at. Let's, yeah, stop asking so many questions. You know what I'm saying?

Well, you're like, okay, yeah, he can't tell me. And so, and then this guy, so he clearly knows it's all a lie.

You know what I'm saying? It's not like I believes it. Right. But he's, I just wonder what the, the long term, because what the long term goal for him, or is he just,

like most path, pathological liars, they're really just trying to get through the moment. Like, there is no long term goal. Or if there is, is, it's vague, and they don't really know how to move towards it. They're hoping it manifests itself.

But they're really like shrinker when he would say things to answer questions. He's just trying to get, you could, he was just trying to get through that moment. Yeah. To the next one to get you to believe him and do what he wants you to do so he could just move past. Even though he's saying stuff that very easily you could, you could turn around and find out, oh, that's completely lie. Right. But he says it with such confidence, you don't even check.

Yeah. The thing about what this guy was telling me is there was never a way to disprove him, right? Which is vastly different than shrinkers because you could disprove shrinkers, but his version is so he's figured out a way to tweak it so that there's nothing you can do to check it. And really, the only person you could probably check it with is Will, right? Like you could probably try and double check with Will or his ex-wife. Sorry, I'm just going off the documentary, which I thought was really interesting, was the ex-wife, where the ex-wife, where the ex-wife, where the ex-wife, where the ex-wife, where the ex-wife. wife, the lies that he had told her, she had gone to the father, thinking his father's going to tell me the truth.

Right. I met his father, too, and his father backed up all his shit. Because his father was a, was a crooked cop sociopath, too. His father went along with the whole thing. Totally charming guy, really funny. They're both very funny. It's very dangerous because people, you know, my brain can't understand, like, how can somebody be so funny? and be doing something so diabolical at the same time. Of course. Because again, he's not, this guy's not just running like a con where I'm going to be out a little bit of money in, oh, well, he's systematically destroying my life and the things

that mean most to me. And when you talk about what was his long game, when you look at all of his behavior and what he did and the way he gambled away money, he wasn't an addict. He's not an addict. Addicts deserve sympathy. They have a problem. They feel shame. This guy didn't feel shame.

He just didn't give a shit. about anything, right? So he's just thrown the money way. He doesn't give it. He doesn't care. He's just on to the next thing. He's not saving it. It's not like he was saving all this money and then he was going to get a certain amount or just bleed me completely dry and then get on a plane and go to Mexico and he's gone. No. So the only motivation he appears to have had, if you look at everything that he did and everything that's in my book and what happened is it's as if his goal was to maximally destroy me

and any opportunity for me to come back and rebuild. So it was like he wanted me to burn on my bridges. He wanted me to not only deplete it's not like I had savings. This money's coming out of my business. It destroys my business. It's coming from other people

because I got to raise money to make payroll, but then he takes it and like, fuck. So it's as if he wanted to completely break me and destroy me and make it impossible for me to ever recover and come back. Because what happens is, you know, eventually my business is destroyed. And then he takes me away and drags me around the country on what I call sort of like

the road trip from hell. And I'm in a completely broken, dissociated state. But why was he doing that? Right. Well, let's stop. Let's go back because we're jumping ahead. Yeah, I'm jumping ahead. So my question is, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't ask you to go into.

all of the various different types of or different times that he asked for money. But is there one that stands out to you where he came to you, asked you for money? You weren't, you know, you had to come up with, you came up with the money and like why? I mean, over time, it morphed into, it morphed into sort of what he's doing is putting me through this test. and I just have to, and it was like, well, there's one more time, and then you'll never have to do this again. So he's gotten me to a place where I'm in so deep, and I'm already basically fucked.

Is it okay if I swear? Like, I'm already, I'm fucked. Like, he's already gotten so much money out of me that, like, I could never explain this to somebody else. This is all fucked up. This is a huge mess. And he's basically doing that thing where it's like, oh, just this one more time, and it'll, you know,

and it'll all be over. And there are times where I'm pushing back on him, And he's like, when this is all over, you're going to feel like a real asshole for being a jerk to me. Like, he's completely messed with my brain, right? So every time it's like, okay, I guess I just have to do it this one more time. And then I'll get relief from this horrendous situation that I'm in. If you think about, I'm one of those people where I can't stand gambling. It makes me too anxious.

I would, I, is not my thing. But it's like if somebody, you know, if, if, if, you know, if, you. you've lost a bunch of money and you're like, but if I just play this one more hand, I might, I might get it all back. And then I don't have to deal with all that shame and, and then I'm out of this whole situation. That's what I was going to say. Is it, is it, is part of it, you're thinking, if this thing collapses right now, then I'm going to have to go to, because you're, and collapsing is also me. If I just decide, you know what, you're full of shit, you're a fucking liar. I've had it with this. I'm done. I'm out. He's gotten money. He's gotten more and

and more and more much. So it gets worse and worse and worse that for me to recover is that much harder. And I still don't understand what really happened. And I don't know if he's full of shit or not. Like, so I don't even know, understand what happened. But this isn't $6,000 at this point. No. This is 50,000, then 100,000, then 50, then 100, then 40, then, then, then 60, then a hundred than and before it's because in the end it's it's you know millions like it just keeps going I mean do you are you because like I said I hate to you know says but I you know I know I know I know of a Ponzi scheme we're halfway through the Ponzi scheme one of the original investors figures out it's a Ponzi scheme and instead of saying okay and taking his couple million

dollar loss and saying, I'm going straight to the authorities, he, he just helps continue the Ponzi scheme and the hope somehow or another he can figure out how to get his $2 million back. So you see him saying? So it's like, it's like, well, you should have just cut and run, but I would have to then admit that I'd, I didn't have one lose my money and then lose the money that I asked my family to invest. And the overwhelming, um, just, I guess, guilt. of it, he just continued and continued to borrow and get people to invest in the hope that at some

point he'd be able to extract all their money back, but instead he just made it worse and worse and worse and himself and ends up in prison. So, yeah, I mean, and that type of psychology is probably also what was going on here. But, you know, you have to layer on this sort of otherworldly element where he's turned this into more than what could be explained rationally. So he's leaned into the whole whatever I was feeling that felt like destiny that got me to adopt my dog. And, you know, in any little coincidence, he would lean into him, be like, well, you see

that happened? You know, that's not, that wasn't a coincidence. And you're like, oh, was it really? Okay. So he's gotten me into this more and more sort of delusional space of believing his, his otherworldly type story. not necessarily believing it but not not believing it not being able to disprove anything he's saying it's sort of like if you you can't prove that god doesn't exist so you it's like well maybe there is a god

and maybe there's not but you can't ever disprove it so a lot of his stories and the narrative that he created I can't disprove it and he's and he's just gotten me more and more paranoid and dissociated and unraveled and more and more now now I'm relying on him to get me out of the mess so now it's become this thing where he puts me in a space where I'm not able to talk about what's going on so I'm more and more isolated from other people he's put me into this nightmarish situation but yet he's the only one who can get me out of it so that creates like this bond where where I need him to get me out of this situation. He's the only one who can get me out is how it feels. So, therefore, I just keep like every time I'm like, but you said I was never going to have to do this

again, okay, but just this one more time. And it's like, oh, fuck, you know. And it would be amazing if I could have audio or I have one audio call that I recorded. But the way that I was able to push back on him in these digital communications. Because I was communicating with him over G-chat, he wasn't in front of me. He wasn't right in front of me. We weren't like G-chatting from across the table. He's somewhere else. So I'm pushing back on him. You're a liar. Blah, blah, blah, blah. He's pushing me to give him another wire, get him some more money. And I'm saying, no, I'm not going to do it. Fuck you. You said, you lied. You told me I was never going to have to do this again. And then the conversation ends. And so I know that he came home or came back to wherever we were.

I was basically in his presence again. And then if you look at my records, it's like, oh, I sent him a wire for $50,000. So it's like somehow he, in his presence, he would get me to do the thing that he wanted me to do. What are you doing to come up with the money? Because you're broke. You're having to come up with massive amounts of money for your employees, for your... Right. And a lot of...

So one example is, for some reason, he sends me to Rome. He kept taking me away from my business more and more and getting me away from the people that, of course, would have kept me more grounded to reality. But at one point, he sends me to Rome. He's like, this is all going to be over. There's also this whole idea that he had this mysterious brother that was somehow part of the story who also didn't really exist.

But he sends me to Rome, and very often what he would do is, is, you know, he would somehow get the money out of me that I'm like, how did he, how did he do that? How did he get the money out of me? But now I need to, I need money to cover payroll. So he takes the money from the business. I need money to cover payroll. So I borrow the money to cover payroll from somebody, you know, from whatever Joe Blow over here. And I get that money to cover payroll because that's my biggest concern. And then, you know, the business is generating money, but he takes that money and then I need money to cover payroll, so I'm borrowing the money. So when I was in Rome, I was able to borrow $100 grand from somebody to cover payroll.

And, you know, I'm... Is this an investor? And a very nice person who was like, oh, shit, you know, you're in this bad spot. And what's... Again, what just gets me more and more stuck in the situation is every time I have to borrow money, I'm like, okay, well, he's telling me this is all going to be over. And so I got to say what I got to say to get this money to cover payroll. It's not exactly true, but it's all going to come back and it'll all be taken care of.

So I got to like borrow this money to cover payroll. And then, of course, I never get that money back. And then it all just unravels. So what happens when the business kind of eventually it just collapses? Yes. And it's, you know, why he took me away, I don't know. Yeah, I was wondering because to me, he's bledged dry. I mean, granted, he does get some more money.

He does end up. And there's things I've learned after the fact that I didn't know at the time. When he takes me away and, you know, according to the tabloids at the time and, you know, even in that show, it makes it seem like we ran off, you know, the towel. Oh, they ran off. They fled. Like, no. if he had put a black bag over my head and dragged me away, screaming, I was screaming, but he didn't put a bag over my head.

But it's kind of the same thing when he took me away and I never, and then I didn't return for however nine months. I mean, he also got me away from my dog. So he did a number on me. And I remember when he, so I guess from his point of you, he's probably bled me dry. I'm not really sure why he took me away. But he does. And when I realize that's what's happening, as opposed to this is all over and it's now,

now my nightmare is going to be over and everything's going to be magically fixed, and then I realize it's not and he's taking me away. I think at that point, my brain, it was like broken, broken, broken, broken, broken, crushed. Because I remember screaming in the car. And I remember, like, the greenery going by. in the window. And I remember screaming my head off in the car, and he just lets me scream, because he probably

knows. I just got to let her have her freak out. And then I'm like leaning against the window, and then it's like, I don't kind of go blank. And so I think that's when I really shifted into, like, absolutely crushed, broken psychology where I'm now dissociated. I'm not crying. I'm just like a robot.

And, you know, when I'd say, I remember him telling me that, you know, there's multiple realities and parallel universes, and we're just going to slide into another one for a while. But it's all going to, we're just going to be right back out and then everything will be fixed or whatever. And I'm like, uh, what? You know, like, huh? And what's weird? What wigs me out now is that, you know, if you're scrolling on Instagram or you go to certain places, you hear people saying that shit all the time and not like totally cuckoo people. You hear like normal people talking about, oh, yeah, well, there's parallel universes and blah, blah, blah, bye.

And you just have to vibrate on the level to ascend to this next. People talk about that shit all the time now. But either way, he said shit like that to me. And I was just like, I don't, I'm broke. I don't know. I'm broken. and it's over. Like, I don't, I just want to die now.

Like, it's, well, that's how I was. I mean, are you, are you ever at some, I mean, at some point, you're coming out of this kind of this numb state. I mean, are you thinking, like, are you understanding that at this point, the employees haven't been paid, the business is closed? So when he takes me away, the business is running, up and running. And when he takes me away, then it, it unravels. they don't get paid because I'm not even there.

Right. So if you were just looking at this from like a tabloid narrative, it would look as if they made it seem as if I didn't pay the employees, like screw them, took a bunch of money and ran off with him. That is not at all what happened. So because I was completely gone and then he takes my computer and my phone, everything, I'm now completely cut off from the world. fast forward nine months when I'm eventually arrested with him in Tennessee.

If you had told me that the restaurant was up and running because they had managed to take it over and somebody stepped in, I would have been like, I had never, that entire nine months, I had access. He eventually got me an iPad. Like I'm a little kid. I need to play with something. So he got me an iPad so I could play games and watch Netflix. I could have Googled myself. I could have Googled to see what happened. I never did.

I never did. I was just trying to like deny like to just be like I don't, I can't even face it. I basically was functioning like a, this is what's hard to explain about dissociation is you're there, you're functioning. I could go order a Starbucks and interact with somebody and be normal, but I'm like not there.

And what's heartbreaking is I know there's somebody else in that situation right now, but that's another story. Right. But you're just not there. So that entire nine months or so that he has me, I'm not, I'm not like crying, I'm not emotional. I'm basically just keeping myself occupied. I have the every random hotel place we're stopping. I've got the news on. I'm watching something on Netflix or I'm playing Churchill Solitaire, like something.

I'm just keeping my, I'm just occupied all the time and just he's dragging me around from place to place. And by the way, a whole other thing they left out of the dock. air quotes, is there was this really gross like abuse component to the whole story that they totally left out, which is weird because I was asked about it in my interviews

and I went through that whole part of the story, which was really brutal to talk about at the tail end of a 12-hour day on camera when it was way too soon for me to be on camera. Now I understand these things better, but, you know, it was way too soon for me to be sitting down for an interview like that without really anybody advocating for me or helping me understand what happened. I'm just on camera being asked questions. And so that's why a lot of

people will watch that show and be like, yeah, but you, you know, you look like you're being unemotional or yeah. It's very frustrating. But anyway, point is I go into that whole part of the story and I cry on camera and I'm thinking, oh, I'm going to be like ugly crying in this docu-series that's now on Netflix and like, no, it's going to be really embarrassing. So when I saw it and they just cut and didn't include any of that, part of me was relieved because I was like, oh, that part where I'm ugly crying is not like, I'm spared that. But I was like, wait a minute, why did they cut that out? You know, that's like a... It made me look probably too much like a victim. Exactly. Right. They cut it out. And they also

spent an entire day interviewing this guy who literally wrote the book on what's called coercive control. Coercive Control is basically like a framework for manipulating and controlling somebody. And so this guy wrote the book on coercive control. He authored the book. He's the main guy. He also helped get coercive control criminalized in the UK. And they interviewed him for a whole day and didn't use any of it. And in his interview, he apparently said, like, if I'd had anything to do with her case, she never would have gone to jail. Right. But they didn't use any of that because then they wouldn't have been able to have that twisty ending. Did she do it with? Was she not and was she not?

You know, it would have been a more straightforward honest story, but they didn't want to do that. Right. Yeah. Well, I can, I mean, I can see that because, I mean, obviously, it's pretty obvious the way the doc, you know, was going, you know, was, you know, was, I don't know. So.

But it's another, so it's very common in cult situations. Do you ever follow the nexium story, the nexium cult in all, and the guy got, the guy was sentenced to 135 years. Is this the one where they were doing like the sweat lodges or something? No, that's a different one. Okay. That's a different one. The nexium, the guy was based in Albany.

There was a show on HBO called The Vow about the whole thing. Anyway, but that guy ends up getting prosecuted, sends to 135 years. But it's very common for these cult leaders to use, it's like they convince, It's just, it's really gross, but it, like, I didn't, I was not attracted to this guy that I call Mr. Fox at all. And in the beginning it was different, but, and down the road, like, he makes it seem like, he basically stages this whole situation where it's like somebody says to you, like, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to push you around and I'm going to basically, I'm going to have to like, you and you just kind of have to go along with it.

it. Like, what? So this whole, and I never know, like, I don't know what to call it because if somebody, somebody says, hey, I'm going to rob you now and you just have to go along with it. And so you go, oh, shit, all right, well, I guess this person's telling me. And so you give, like, did he really rob you? I don't know. Right. So it makes it even more confusing on the other side of it because you don't know how to treat it. Like, if somebody dragged me into an alley and did that, well, yeah, I'm very clearly the victim. But if I knew what was happening, Am I the victim? You know, it gets really complicated in Harry.

And, you know, it's probably a lot of the same complications that happen in a lot of very creepy situations. And this was definitely very creepy. So, anyway, they left that out of the dock. And that was part of the story. So that's kind of some of the stuff that's happening to while he has me on the road. And it's really gross and icky. And, yeah. Who's the girl that called him the hamburger?

burglar. She worked for you at one point. Oh. Was it Bonnie? The long brown hair? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's very, very funny. I was just going to say, she's funny throughout the whole thing. She's amazing. Yeah. I love her. Yeah, she was, because when she's, she mentions the meat suit.

Yes. And she's, or no, they mentioned the meat suit to her. And she's the, they are like, have you heard about the meat suit? and she's like the meat soup. She was like, oh my God, what's, what is this about? Like she starts laughing and she's like, no, what is it? And then they explain that the more he, so what the more weight he gained? He basically acted like he was getting fatter and fatter and fatter for me because he's putting

me through this weird, you know, otherworldly test and I'm supposed to hate him. And he's, you know, I mean, I go into all of this in my book and it's really hard. to summarize, but it's like he twists everything to such a degree that now, now it's like a given that he was lying to me because he was supposed to be lying to me, but that's part of the whole thing, and I just got to go along with it. And, you know, again, over time, it's like I'm just completely broken down. Right. So, so, yeah, he basically rationalized him getting bigger and bigger. And I was supposed to hate him. And that was part of this whole process. But what I started to say before is cult leaders very often do the same thing. So it's like

this guy Keith Raynery did it to specifically India, Oxenberg. There was another docu-series that was made where she talks about it more. But it's somehow like, you know, cult leaders very often do this where they're like, you need to, they'll put it in some kind of a weird spiritual context, but they basically come up with some weird excuse to abuse people. And it happens in cults all the time. I was going to say that that's always the way it ends up, right? Like the Branch Davidians. God, there's a just there's, there's, it almost always happens.

It's in almost all the cults. Once they get complete control of a large, of a group of individuals, they almost always end up kind of sex with the cult members. You know, I think that the power gets it, they become, they start thinking, They must start believing that they're just, you know, all powerful or something and that they can do anything. They just keep pushing and pushing it. It must have something to do with like they get an extreme enjoyment out of seeing how far they can push you. And he's obviously pushed you to the point where you've gutted your own life and then the lives of anybody that had trusted you is now giving you money.

So you've gutted them. And you're at the point now where you're just a mindless, you know, on Tom and on. I forget. I'm saying the word wrong. But you're just following anything he says, which is funny because it always makes me think of going to sentencing. When you just get up there and you're in sentencing, like when I went to say, I know I'm getting a decade at least.

Yeah. I got more than that, but I thought. And you just walk up there and your people think, oh, I would have said this and I would have this. I would have told my lawyer, bro, by the time you get there, you were just numb. Yeah. When they tell you your sentence, you're like, right. And you just turn and they're like, here, turn around, get handcuffed. You just start doing everything.

Go over here. Okay. You just do everything mindlessly. You just start, fall like, you get it. And it makes me, did you ever see Apocalyptic? No. There's the movie of Apocalyptic, where these guys are getting their heads cut off. And they're not chained up or anything.

They're just walking up, the temple, walking up, walking over, bending over, and getting their heads chopped off. And you're like, run! There's 150, 200 of you. Right. No, they just you're... The typical question in my story that I've been asked a bazillion times, like, why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you run?

And it's like, yeah, I didn't know that was an option. What do you mean you to know that was an option? It didn't seem like an option. It didn't occur to me. That's like somebody saying, why didn't you blast yourself off into outer space? Well, is that an option? Can I do that? Because, you know, but I didn't know that was an option.

You know, it's hard to explain to somebody that's not been through anything similar. How could you not know that? Well, because I didn't. You know, you kind of have to have been there to know. Kind of like I feel whenever somebody says that they're going to, they've been sentenced to 10 years in prison, and they're out on bond and they're going to turn themselves in at the prison. I'm like, what? That's like I would never, I would never turn myself into there. You have to come get me.

I'm not turning my, like you, of course, went for three or four months. Yeah, very different. met guys that have got 12, 15 years and they show up at the prison to turn themselves into the time. I'm like, absolutely not. But they do it. They just mindlessly, you kind of, you get to that point where you just, you just kind of start following the rules or what you think are the rules and you're just not even considering it that you would do something else. And the other part, the other part that people, that what confounds people is they don't understand. They're like, well, if he was just trying to get the money out of you, But it's not about the money.

He's already gotten it. He doesn't get it's like it's for him it's not about the money. I think his what he's getting a ride or like what's giving him, I don't know, a jolt of being alive, whatever is fucked up psychology is it's to break people. Like that's what's giving him a rise? Two. What is it that he got two point something million? But he would, it's like for him he could just light it on fire. It's like he didn't.

No, I understand. I'm just saying what was the amount? Roughly a couple million. couple million. I'll bet you nobody was more shocked that he got that money or that he could get got you to get him that money more than him. You see him saying? Like he never that, but he does he keep, and even when you took off on the, on, you know, on the run or whatever when you, you guys left and just, you know, whatever that I just can't think about it anymore. I can't face it. I can't whatever. And you're off on the run. You're still able to get him some.

more money, not much, but some more. No, he's using my email at that point, and he's able to get more money out of my mother and somebody else using my email. Right. Well, he's still through you. Right. But I didn't even know that until way later. Right.

I understand that. But, I mean, even then, had he not been able to get a dime and realized he couldn't get a dime, I think he still probably would have kept you with him because, you know, he still got complete control over you. Does that make sense? Like it's like for him, the kick is having complete control over you. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what's giving him a rise.

It's not about the money. It's about having completely broken me. Yeah. So that's what. Did you ever see a series called Stolen Youth on Hulu? There was a story. It was a bigger deal in the up in the Northeast because it revolved around these students at the Sarah Lawrence College. And it's a good school.

They're smart kids in college. and this one of them's father was in jail. He's getting out of jail. He comes and lives with them for a while. Totally takes over their lives, destroys them psychologically. And that is the one story where I can look at that and go, okay, that's the most similar to what happened to me.

Different circumstances. It's a small group of these college students. But this man comes in their lives and completely obliterates them psychologically. And weirdly enough, he, this is another weird thing that, a lot of cult leaders and a lot of these types of people do is they're the ones that collect the evidence that later on proves what they did. So in my case, he didn't do it to a great extent, but he takes these, there's various times where he takes video of me with his iPhone and I don't know that he's taking video of me.

And they used some of it in bad. Yeah, yeah, you're screaming and bad and you're crying. And you can see I'm clearly like not there. And I think he was taking that video because he wanted, I think he wanted that because he wanted to be able to show that I've lost my mind. Or I don't know. Or maybe that's like snuff point to him and he gets off on watching it later. I don't, I don't know. For whatever reason, he's taking that video.

So in a lot of these cases, even with that guy Keith Ranary in the Nexium cult, for whatever reason, they like to video themselves. They like to video. They like to document. I think a lot of serial killers potentially end up getting busted because they like to save the evidence. It's almost like a trophy. You know what I mean? So in that doc that's called Stolen Youth, that guy had taken a ton of video of these kids

and of this whole scenario where you can see how completely broken they are. And these are like smart kids, and they're just broken psychologically. And that guy, in a very similar way, you could tell he kind of believed, in a way, must have believed his own bullshit stories and acted like he was the guru and he's putting these kids and he did the same and then he's

sexually abusing them and it's like a very similar dynamic and so that guy and his psychology seems to me the most similar to this guy I call Mr. Fox. Did you ever see um I think it was I don't want it's not I know it's not called like the puppet master might be something like that puppet master puppeteer or something like that well there's one called the puppet master where he convinces he convinces the girl. That he's like works for the CIA or something. Yeah. And I was,

that's the one. So, and then, and then in the end, they, they find her, right? And she's completely broken.

She's like cleaning somebody's house. She's working. She's working a full time job and living in someone's spare room. And that would have been me. So when people say, there's a line in the beginning of my book, I think at the end of the first chapter where I say, I kind of,

you know, sort of like an intro, but I say it took getting arrested to set me free. Right. Because it did. I mean, I love the detective who arrested me. Ray Brown, I write about him.

He's like, and he could see what was going on. But, and he said to me, like, it's over now. Like, as if I was being rescued, right? But of course, then I had to get extradited to New York, and that's a whole other part of the story. But when I think about what would have happened if we hadn't been arrested or if this had just continued, I feel like I would have, would 10 years have gotten? Would I have been that woman? mopping somebody's floor. I mean, there were times where I thought, you know, where I'd have

moments where I'd sort of be like, oh, what's happening? And I remember sort of thinking of myself, and I remember this because one of the people in that story, the stolen youth story that was on with that guy Larry David and the Sarah Lawrence students, one of them went through a similar thought process where you're like, all right, I could kill myself, but I don't really know how to do that. And that seems really messy. And I don't, you know, but maybe I'll just like slide off the radar and like go work in some diner and some tiny town and like find a trip like live somewhere and just then I'll just do that till I die yeah maybe that's what I'll do and I feel like that woman who's broken in that show the puppet master that's that's where she was

so I hate to put it like this um but I mean do you looking back on it now you you you do you realize how like just insane this whole thing is, like it just in its entirety, do you realize like, wow, what, this is, this is not like, like, how did I believe this guy? Well, so imagine when after, you know, I'm, I'm arrested, now I'm like facing criminal charges. I don't know how to explain what happened because I don't even understand what happened. And you get, you get arrested real quick. You get arrested because the, for what was the, what was the, what was the, eventually people go to investors and people go to the police.

They put together, they, is it an indictment or just like a criminal complaint? No, there is an indictment. And it's for, it's, what are those charges? What is the state charges for? Like grand larceny. They're, there, when I, when the, when the detective explains me what the charges were, I'm like, what? Well, it always sounds like, like, yeah. Yeah.

And then even, um, tax fraud, because, and I was one of those people where, um, you know, when I ran the restaurant, like, everything's above board. Like, I'm one of those people where I am so want to play by the rules. I'm such a nervous nilly about stuff like that. And so, but there was, I never misreported anything. It's just that when I was running out of money and I got to make payroll, blah, blah, blah, like a lot of, I wasn't, I wasn't paying sales tax. I was still filing it.

Everything was recorded. So there's, so in my brain, I'm like, where's the fraud? Like, yeah, if you don't pay your taxes, technically you, owe that, but I wasn't misreporting numbers. Right. You're telling them. You're telling them. Right.

Fraud. Even if you just don't pay your sales tax after long enough, I don't know. I still don't quite understand that. But so, yeah, it was, I've been asked a lot. People say, well, what's the moment when you woke up and figured out what was really going on? I'm like, there was never a moment. It was like a thawing. And it was like, it was like, it was like,

waking up out of a total nightmare into a whole brand new different nightmare. Right. So, yes, it was good to be back home in New York. All my stuff is gone. I have nothing. I've got nothing. I'm living in my sister's house. And so, but yet now, how do I explain what happened? And for which I feel so much shame. And of course, I feel responsible. And they were my employees and they got screwed over. And that's all, I feel like it's all my fault. But anyway, and so, and now I'm being charged, you know, now I'm being criminally charged for this stuff. And at no point did anybody ever suggest that I go through any kind of a trial? Like, that was never offered as an option.

It's like, well, you're just going to plead guilty. And then hopefully you just get probation or whatever. And I, the whole time I thought, like, well, surely the more evidence they collect, like, they'll see what really happened. And like surely they'll see that, A, you know, I didn't benefit from any of this. That doesn't matter. I know. See, that's where, you know. You watched too much law and order.

Not even. I didn't watch law and order. I'm just one of those people where I think about like, well, right and wrong. And surely, like, this doesn't, logically, this doesn't make sense. Why would I have done any of these things? You know, my attorneys would be like, yeah, they don't care. It doesn't matter. It's a real.

Yeah. Right. And I'm like, really? Yeah. You know? And so the more they would collect. And then at one point, I'll never forget, at one point, I'm sort of confused, like, why, you know, he's got the criminal background. My background is like squeaky clean, and I didn't, you know, yes, all these other people were hurt. It feels like it was my fault. But I also lost way more than anybody else. And my, the thing that meant the most in the world to me, like, why would I have done that? It doesn't make any sense. But at one point, she says, um, My attorney says to me, like, so I've been made aware that the DA found a copy of your journal. I'm like, the DA found my journal? Like, how the fuck did that happen?

And they're like, well, apparently, you know, he, Anthony had a copy of your journal from like 2014. I think I'm like, yeah, I remember one time I was writing in my journal. He came in and he was like, what are you doing? You can't be writing this shit down. Takes it away from me. I assumed he threw it down the trash sheet, burned it, who knows, whatever. I just thought it's gone. For whatever reason, apparently he had it with his stuff.

So I'm like, that's weird. I'm like thinking the DA is reading my journal. I'm like, that's embarrassing, you know? I don't know. Okay. And she said, you know, I haven't seen it yet. She gets a PDF of it. She sends it to me.

And I remember I'm working this weird job. I'm in the back. I'm getting a ride home. I'm like in the backseat of these people's car. I get the email. I'm looking at the PDF. my phone. I'm like reading it. It's my own messy handwriting, but I can read it really fast as a PDF. I'm reading it. I start crying because I'm like, oh, and I remember it was my birthday.

And I'm like, this is like a gift. Surely now I'm like, they'll go, oh my God, this poor woman. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. Yeah, we kind of got this all wrong. Like, all right. Maybe she'll get probation because technically irresponsible, but like, wow, that guy's a monster. Holy shit. I'm reading my journal thinking that this is all changed now. No, didn't move the needle. They didn't give a shit. They interviewed my mother. My mother got conned out of a ton of money by this guy that also wasn't hers.

She borrowed it. So this guy did a number on my mother, too. Of course, I feel responsible for that too because I feel like the whole thing is my fault. But the DA met with my assistant DA met with my mother. My mother's like the most, everybody loves my mother. mother, right? She's very, none of that moved the needle. And for whatever reason, they weren't really interested in, you know, looking back on it, like all the tabloid stories, the whole prosecution seemed very much focused on me. He was just kind of there sitting there. He didn't

get out on bail. And so he ended up serving a year. But by the time this whole thing gets, you know, I end up pleading guilty because what else am I going to do? And he's out. He gets out. I get sentenced to four months. And then there's a period of time before I go to, you know, to serve my sentence. During that time, he's already served a year.

He gets out. So they never charge him for any of the shit he did to me, to my mother. He's just charged as if he and I were co-conspirators, which makes the whole thing really, you know, well, like really? as if he and I did this together. Right. And so he gets out, and then I got to go do my four months. And part of what people also never understand,

and I'm in the position of having to explain myself because of the way that docu-series was done, why would you talk to him? Well, I'm thinking, you know, if his goal seemed to be to destroy me, and he basically succeeded at completely destroying me, except here I am, I'm going to go do four months. If he really wanted to, like, hammer in that last nail on the coffin, what would he do?

What would he do? I don't. He would, my dog. Oh, what, oh, harm your dog? He would go take or harm my dog. Okay. Because at that point, like, that's all I've got left is my dog, Leon. That's it.

And so he would have known that my dog would, in all likelihood, would stay with my mom, because she had a place with land in the country. So I'm petrified that he's out. He's going to go after my dog. And, you know, I'm telling my mom, like, look, don't ever let him out of your sight. Don't, like, let him out to pee in the yard. And, like, you've got to watch him the whole time. And I know my mom's, like, it's four months.

She's not going to watch it. She's going to just put him out in the yard and let him go. And I'm picturing this guy driving up one day and getting Leon. Hey, come here and, like, just taking him away or whatever. This is my biggest fear. So when he gets out, I'm completely freaked out because I've had, you know, I've had no contact with him.

At this point, I realize this whole thing was, like he spent years dragging me through this totally diabolical nightmare on top of all the creepy sex. Like all of it is just so ugly and horrible. and he's getting out. What does he do? He immediately gets on Twitter, and so I was posting all this shit.

And I had unfollowed and blocked him from my account, but of course my dog had a Twitter account and an Instagram, but my dog had a Twitter account had never unfollowed him. So I'm looking to see what, like, oh my God, is he going to come after me? So I'm looking at what he's posting, and he starts to clearly posts little things

that are meant for me to understand, like a little weird inside, jokes or things, you know, or like he'd mentioned my favorite flower or stuff like that. It seemed like he was kept kind of hinting that he wanted me to reach out to him. And I'm like, all right, well, doesn't sound like he's going to come after me. So at some point, I make that decision, like, and anybody, again, anybody who's been in this kind of a seat, this totally makes sense to them. You're like, sort of like a survival calculation.

All right. I'm going to reach out to him. and so I do. And I end up, I make contact with him. I do remember the first time I spoke to him on the phone. It was just, I'm like, all right, well, I'm just going to have to, like, dissociate. And it's like a safety thing. Like, you'd rather know where they are.

I'd rather him think that maybe he still got his hooks on me. I'd rather make him think that he'll maybe be able to manipulate me, whatever. As long as I know he's not going to hurt Leon. Keep your enemies close. Exactly. So that's what I did. So that's why I had. communication with him, which then later on, because I had that open channel, it's not like

I chit-chatted with him all the time. But, and part of me also, there was that psychological, there was that need where I wanted, like I wanted to understand, what the fuck did you do and why, you know? Anyway, of course I knew I was never going to get that answer. But later on, I end up recording him a few times for the, you know, that. the show that became bad vegan. Right. And some of it they use in a way that makes sense.

Some of it they use in a way that is completely misleading. They move all my words around. They make it seem like I'm laughing with him. And they don't make it clear that I made that recording for the show and I'm playing a role and just going along with him because I'm just trying to get him to say loopy shit on audio. So there's more audio of him. Whatever. I'm just trying to get content.

Yeah. moved my words around. So what I said in response to what he said was completely from a different part of the conversation. But anyway, that's why I had that. That's why I was able to make those recordings because I had that open channel of communication. And at this point, I'm at least to the point where I realize, you know, he's, you know, he's like a snake that bites people and that's what he does. And I'm never going to get an explanation from him. But it's better to know where he is and to let him think that like I'd rather know where he is so I'm not always looking over my shoulder or wondering right so that's kind of how I'm necessarily even know that he knows what why he's

doing what he's doing right yeah um real quick before we talk about like you're to prison or prison to rikers to jail um can you explain what happens when you get arrested like you're you guys have been you guys have been traveling he's going to different gambling and doing stuff like like that, you're kind of just hanging out at these different hotels. Yeah. And then you're in a hotel and you guys, you know, I know the pizza thing. Yeah, we're in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which is the strangest town. I mean, the strangest town.

It's near like Dollywood. Dollywood. Yeah. Dollywood. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very strange place. And the weird thing is that he says to me, so we're in this random hotel.

we've got two separate rooms. Most of the time that we're on the road, we have two separate rooms. If we don't, we're in a suite. You know, he knows enough that, like, he's not going to torture me

by making me sleep next to him, whatever. I've always got my own space. But we're in two adjoining rooms with, you know, with a door in between in this hotel in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. He says to me,

and I don't, was it the day before, was it that morning? He says to me, he's like, baby, there's going to be one more gut shot. And I'm like, And I'm like, what?

And I'm thinking, wait, he's going to make me get money from somebody? Like he's going to make me do something. I'm going to have to go somewhere. I'm going to have to ask somebody from, I'm like, oh, what's he going to make me do? What's he going to make me do? And I'm like, so I don't know what's going to happen. But it was after that. So my point is that I kind of think he knew.

I think he got us arrested on purpose or something. I know that sounds weird, but I think he did. Okay. And the way that... Was he out of money at this point? I think he was just kind of out. I think like I'd probably dry it up as a source. You know, because he was able to...

I know this now. I didn't know this at the time. He's using my email. And I think my cell phone was long gone. But for a while, he was using my cell phone to texting people as me, emailing people as me. He has to know that there's like a warrant out and there's everything's falling apart. Right.

He knows more so than you realize. any of that. Yeah. So what happens is, I'm in my room, and I've gotten, he's gotten, we did drive back closer to the East Coast and he gets Leon back for me, right? And then he's like, baby, this is almost over. I got you, Leon back. And I'm like, oh, so I'm back with Leon. So, I'm in my room with Leon, and there's some commotion in the hallway. And we were like at the end of a hall so there was never anything going on in the hallways. Leon starts barking like crazy because there's something going on outside. So I go over there and I open the hotel door and I see a bunch of like police officers. I'm like, oh, can I help you? Like I don't, I'm not like thinking they're looking for

me. I'm like, can I help you? They're like, no, no, ma'am, go back in your room. And then one's like, wait a minute, it's her. And I'm like, what? I'm like, what? And so they come into my room. They realize who I am because apparently they didn't looking for me. And I think the detective showed me on his phone. There was some kind of like a wanted picture. I just remember that feeling really bizarre.

I'm like, huh? And then they explained to me that I'm being arrested and then they let me know that my husband, we used to skip that part of the story, but at some point he convinces me to marry him. That was another thing they got totally wrong in the docu-series.

they totally misrepresent how he convinced me to marry him. But that happened. So they're like, your husband's been arrested. I think they arrested him in the lobby. Because, and I didn't know this at the time, I found this out later. But apparently he'd ordered a Domino's pizza using his credit card. And I don't understand, because wasn't he using credit cards at the hoax? Like, I don't understand any of this.

But either way, it was the pizza that somehow alerted something. in the system. I didn't even know there was a pizza. If I was going to eat pizza, it wouldn't be dominoes. Sorry. I didn't even know about it. But later, that became like the tabloid headline is vegan, you know, New York City, vegan is arrested because of a cheesy pizza, like as if I was busted eating a pizza. I wasn't, I didn't even know there's a pizza. But so they explained to me that I'm being arrested. I'm kind of in shock. and my biggest concern at the moment in that moment was what's going to happen to my dog. Right.

I'm like, what? Okay, but what? What's going to happen to my dog? And I'm like, oh, ma'am, you know, well, he's going to go to the local pounce. I'm like, no, he can't. You can't take him the pound. I'm like, he's a rescue dog. Please don't take him the pound.

Please don't take him the pound. And, and they were, I mean, they didn't handcuff me, nothing. They just were, like, gently explaining to me what was happening to me. And that's when at one point, the detective said, like, it's over and now, you know, and I was like, oh, what? You know, but he said it to me as if he was pulling me out of a bad situation, because I think he could tell. I think he was somebody who'd seen enough shit that he'd seen people like that guy

in situations and probably people like me and understood the dynamics here and had also done his research and researched my background. That guy's background saw that he had a criminal background. I don't mind squeaky clean. He kind of sussed out what was going on here. but they very quickly said okay we understand we all love dogs my dog is very like dudes always really like my dog because he's kind of like a dude's dog and he's really super friendly so I'm you know there's an arrest happening and my dog is like thinks they're all there to play

with him he's all excited he's jumping around right so they're all charmed by him they're like oh you know Kevin here will take him home don't worry we won't bring him to the pound and I'm like oh thank God. And this isn't a big time New York police department. This is kind of a small town. Yeah. You know, they're all, they're, they're not jaded and, and, you know, they're either way. I'm like, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. So they're more willing to help out. They agree not to take Leon to the pound. And it ended up that the manager of the hotel took him because they really liked me and they loved Leon. And so they, you know, they don't know what's going on. So they agreed to take. Leon and then eventually my father drives to Tennessee, picks up Leon.

But I'm arrested and they explained to me that I'm being charged with stuff and I'm like, and again, I'm just like, what? Okay, you know, they tell me to change my clothes into something warmer because this is May in Tennessee that it's going to be kind of cold where I'm going. So I change into like jeans and a sweatshirt and T-shirt. And yeah, and I'm taken to the folding cell and pigeon. Forge, Tennessee. That's where my book opens because I'm in this holding cell and throwing up because I had been drinking coffee. And when I was in the hotel, I'd been drinking a couple

cups of coffee a day. And so I'm one of those people, I guess, I'm hypersensitive to caffeine that if you suddenly cut me off from caffeine, I'm going to get the migraine of the century and to the point that I'm nauseous. And so this is like day to probably the end of like 48 hours in the holding cell. I'm throwing up in this room where there's probably at any given time anywhere between like eight and 20 women in a not very large room in a holding cell. Most of them are all coming off of hard drugs. And I'm throwing up, oh, baby, what are you coming off of? What is it?

I'm like, caffeine. Coffee? Yeah. You sure? You seem pretty sick. I'm like, just coffee. So, yeah. Anyway, I'm in the holding cell for six days.

then I get moved to a dorm. The detective comes to see me a couple of times. He's super nice. But, you know, it's beyond his control. New York comes and gets me. And so this part makes sense to you. I remember thinking, because I'm hearing all these stories by then, and I'm thinking like, oh, am I going to have to go by bus, by bus, by bus in the heat,

getting transported back to New York? Fortunately, they sent marshals from New York, and we flew back. But getting, you know, handcuffed with the big leather belt and the handcuffs and going through the airport like that, it's a really weird experience in flying. You feel like Hannibal Lecter. Exactly. Like everybody's pointing and looking at you and terrifying.

That's what it feels like. And I remember thinking how bizarre it would be because we flew from Tennessee to Atlanta, than from Atlanta to, I think, LaGuardia or JFK in New York. And when we were in the Atlanta airport, I remember that it crossed my mind. And I look kind of cuckoo at this point because my hair is all, like if I don't blow dry and fix my hair, like it would look like a big old rat's nest.

So that's how I'm looking, right? I've got like the rat's nest and I probably look a bit disheveled. But I remember we're going through the Atlanta airport. And I remember thinking, this is a hub, but there's all these business people going around. I'm like, what if I bumped into somebody that, Because you run into people in airports sometimes. Like, what if I ran into somebody that I worked with at Bear Stearns or being capital?

Jimmy, what's up? How awkward would that be? And the funny thing is they, I think they tend to do this. Like, they had taken my sweatshirt and wrapped it around my hands. Right. So that people aren't turning their heads and staring because, you know, unless you look close, you don't notice that I'm handcuffed. They didn't, my ankles were in shackles, right? It's just my arms.

But I remember thinking, like, how weird would it be if I ran into somebody from my old, life in that moment. But anyway, so we're flown back and I and I and brought to. Are you flown back on a commercial plane? Yes. You didn't go on con air. No. I heard you describe con air. Yeah. In the in the in the in the in the, sorry, in the dock it seems like it makes it seem like con air, right? Like as yet they have you explaining about the ankle thing or I'm sorry about the handcuffs being chained to the waist. And then they say that then they show it. fly back. So my wife and I thought, oh, she flew back Conair. And because, yeah, getting on there, I was thinking getting on there, all the guys on there are, hey, baby, hey, hey, hey, look over here, look over it.

Like, it's just. Oh, I've had that experience in the buses. Oh, okay. Yeah, when you're, when you're on the buses going back and forth between Rikers and the courthouse. The women are just having it, like, just as horrible, like the first two, three rows. And they just, my wife is like, she's like, they're just disgusting. Yeah. Yeah. No, that kind of stuff happens. and later on. But, yeah, so first we went to the DA's office in Brooklyn, and they did all the fingerprinting and all that stuff. But what was weird is there was a period of time where,

so I describe all this in my book where when New York finally arrives in Tennessee, and I'm made aware that I'm going to, you know, they're here to get you. And so a local Tennessee cop is going to drive me to the airport. So I'm in the back of the, they put me in the shackles thing, I'm in the back of the car and we're going to pick up, we're going to the men's jail to pick up Mr. Fuckface, sorry, we're going to pick up him. And I'm like, because at this point I've thawed to the degree that I pretty much understand that this was all a huge, a huge, like this guy is a complete, like everything he told me was. bullshit. But I'm not sure because I'm still thinking like maybe somehow some weird miracle is going to happen. So I don't really know what to think. But yeah, thankfully they put him in the front seat, so I'm in the back. And he's just like, he's kind of talking like this is all just

normal. He's chit chatting with the cop. Like I'm just sitting there. So anyway, we, we, but there were a few times where when we're all in the airport with those marshals I was surprised I mean maybe they did it intentionally but there were plenty of times where they let us we could have talked without them hearing us and I didn't I just didn't really know

like I didn't know what to say I didn't know what to ask I didn't I was just kind of like what the fuck and he's like hey how did you oh oh they kept you in the holding cell for six days I can't believe they did that to you I'm like, huh? Like, what? What is going on?

And then there was another period of time where when they took us from Brooklyn to Rikers, we're sitting in the back of a car together. We're like side by side in the back of a car, and there's two marshals in the front. And I remember him saying, like, don't worry. It's just going to be a couple of weeks of nonsense. And I'm just like, what? And he's like, baby, the most important thing is I got to get on bail.

Then I can fix this. It's all going to be fine. And I'm like, yeah. You got to get somebody to get me out and out on bond. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, the most important thing is that I get out and I can fix this.

And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. But when we get to Rikers and I'm dropped off first, that's the last time I ever saw. And yeah. And then I'm in Rikers. It's like about a week, 10 days. My dad is able to figure out my bail. which, you know, my dad's not a wealthy dude. You know, he was physicist in MIT.

They got to, like, do whatever, jump through all the hoops that people got it. People have to jump through to come up with, you know, triple mortgage thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to get it all in place. So I'm in Rikers then for about a week before I get out on bail. Then I'm out on bail. And then, even then I'm thinking, I'm not thinking I'm ever coming back. I'm like, well, surely they'll figure out, like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, a criminal. I'm not, that's not me. I don't, what? But then over time, you know, it, it sinks in over time that this particular prosecutor does not give a shit about what really

happened, what my motivation was, what, no, they just want to, they just want to see me prosecuted. So over time, it sort of starts to sink in that this isn't really getting any better for me. and also, you know, I naively sort of think that, like, well, shouldn't it matter what my intent is? No, it doesn't matter. And, you know, this was in 2016. It wasn't until 2017 that I went to do my time. There is no conversation about, like, now there's a lot more conversation about narcissistic abuse, sociopathy, psychological abuse. There's a lot more about this now.

and things like that the guy from that cult leader was prosecuted in New York. That was a huge story. That whole story of his psychologically abusing all these people. But that all comes later. So there's sort of no context for what happened to me. And I'm very aware of the fact that if for some reason I was going to go through some kind of a trial, it would be a total shit show. And it would like even the trauma of going through that and the uncertainty. that, you know, maybe they're not going to admit this, that, and that, and it looks bad because of this, and it's all going to be misunderstood.

Nobody can understand it. And that maybe I would end up doing more time, way worse than just going, okay, I'll take the four months. Right. It's just, no, just give me the four months. But at that point, I didn't know. I knew that the worst case scenario was going to be six months. Six months? I knew that was the worst.

It came down, it got down to the point where, for me, that was going to be the worst case scenario. Okay. I was going to say, because if you went to trial, I think you could have gotten five or ten years. Exactly. That's why I was like, I'm not going to go to trial. Right. Okay. So, yeah.

So now you're just kind of negotiating, whatever, six months, trying to get in six months. Right. But the hope is that, so I ended up with a different attorney. He has me go through an evaluation with a forensic psychologist who states very clearly that she was definitely manipulated. I've got 25 letters from, including people. who lost the most money and a bunch of former employees, all writing letters saying, you know, here's what happened. You know, she never would have done this.

This isn't her. Blah, blah, blah, blah. None of this makes sense. Even the investor who lost the most money is saying, this just doesn't make any sense. Like, I would have put in more money down the road. Like, none of this makes sense. She wouldn't have done this. And he's the guy that in that near term had lost the most money.

So all of that is being presented to the judge. But I think because of the amount of money it was, he felt like he had to sentence me to something. Right. So what he did say at my sentencing where, again, I'm thinking he might just give me probation and that's it. But he does say it seems pretty clear that you tried to run your business in good faith. Right.

And when he said that, that just meant a lot to me because I felt like, okay, no matter what happens, at least he's acknowledging that something really messed up happened here and that I tried to run my business in good faith. You know what I mean? Like that meant a lot to me. But then he says because of the amount of money it was, he gives me four months. And in that moment, I'm looking over, I see the prosecutor. She's got a big smile on her face because she hates me. She hates me.

That was clear all along. And so she's got a big old smile on her face that I'm going back. to Rikers. And, but in that moment, I just thought, I had this weird, immediately I thought, I guess this is what's supposed to happen. For some reason, this is what's supposed to happen. And I also had this thought that, well, lady, prosecutor, like, you just made my story that much more valuable. Because I think I had the sense that this is eventually going to be a story, you know, down the road. And for whatever reason, like, I don't know, I guess this is what's happening. I got to go do four months. And I have.

have the awareness that in the grand scheme of things, four months is not a very long time, whatever. Right. It's like, yeah. This is what has to happen. So, but then I was given time before I had to, it's not like I was then immediately taken out. Yeah, you had a few months to turn yourself in.

I had, yeah, I think I had about six weeks to get my stuff in order, figure out, handle stuff with my dog, get myself prepared and whatever. So, yeah. So then. How was Rikers? Oh, I mean, it was a blast. No. Yeah.

Rikers was pretty nuts. Yeah. It was kind of nuts. But you're basically in your cell most of the time or in the pod? No. So I was never in a cell. I was not ever in a cell. I was in a dorm.

So at Rikers, you're either in these dorms of like 50 people. There's 50 beds. So there's up to 50 women at a time in these big, huge rooms. And because, and there were. but I just never, I was never in a cell. I think there were cells that were two bunks, so two people per cell. But I was always in general population and in the dorms. And I remember I was, I've been rereading some of the letters that I wrote while I was at Rikers, because I wrote down all my stories of what happened while I was there. I sent them out, knowing that I would

want them on the other side. And I want to write another book, and I've got a lot of stories. and I think I may post some of these letters on my substack, but I'm sort of telling all my completely bonkers jail stories. And I'm really glad I wrote them all down because I wouldn't have remembered everything. But I remember in one of my first letters, I'm writing, I'm like, I feel like I'm writing, I feel like I'm writing a letter from like summer camp from hell. You know, because I'm in this dorm of up to 50 women. Right.

Something about the way the correction officers treat you like children. Everybody starts behaving more like children. Everybody is rowdy. It's like cuckoo. I'm writing letters, talking about the food and not sleeping well. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where ghost bed can help.

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You'll answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation. Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use code Cox at the checkout. People are snoring. I feel like I'm in like nightmarish version of summer camp. And it was the summer. So just the way my sentence works out, I went in on, it was the summer solstice. So June 21st, I went in and then I got out mid-October. So basically it was like I spent a summer.

at Rikers. Right. But yeah, I mean, a lot of, I'm sure you know, like you see people there and you think, are they real? They seem like exaggerated characters. And I remember I had that feeling so many times. I had that feeling in Tennessee too, where I'm looking around thinking, is this all, straight out of central casting, right?

Is this all a set? And the casting department went overboard? Like the casting department, they just went a little overboard. Like the people are just a little bit too weird, kind of hilariously so in some cases, where it just feels like you're watching it. You're in your own TV show. That's how I felt a lot of times with some of the characters and just the messed up weird shit that happens in Rikers. And a lot of like, yeah. So, you know, I'm not obviously, I've been in New York a couple of times, but, you know, obviously I don't think grow up there.

But that's how I felt about all the Italian mobsters. Like they really were like they stepped off the set. of Goodfellas. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Hey, I talked to Bali and Bali said that. And you're like, you're fucking joking, right? Like, that's not, like, and they, they talk like that all day long every time you say,

Hey, let me talk to you over here for a minute. And you're just like, oh, oh, shit, you're serious. Right. That's really, you're serious. And they do, they click together and they have their, they have little parties and their get-togethers and they're. Even the way you talked about that guy, the emperor.

That part. So I listened to your whole six hours with Lex, which I'm surprised you beat my five hours with Lex for six hours. Listen, it was like seven and a half hours, but he trimmed it down. Yeah. And for me too. I think I talked to Lex for five and a half hours, and then he cut it down to like four and a half hours. Because I remember some things I talked about. He cut. But I cried.

I cried at the end of year. your Lex interview when you're talking about that guy, the emperor. Oh, of course. I can't even think about it. Yeah. Yeah, but he seems like one of those otherworldly, like he seems like such a character that it almost doesn't feel real. Yeah.

If he hadn't helped me out as much as he did, he would just be kind of a footnote of this insane person that I met. and because he helped me so much, he's, you know. Yeah. And the other, I remember the other part in your story where you talked about when that attorney had called you about something. And then she's like, anything else going on? Yeah. And the way you described it where she was like, well, anything else going on?

And then finally you're like, well, there is this other guy who, da, da, da, da, da. And then that led to the whole thing that basically got. A ton of your time taken off. Never wanted to talk to me before. Whole time during my case, she never wanted to talk to. I couldn't get her on the phone. So the question is like, doesn't, don't some of those things sometimes make you wonder? You know, like, why did that happen?

No, I do. I think about that all the time. Yeah. You know, without that one little thing. There's a bunch of little things that were so out of character. And even in the moment I thought. It's as if like in the script. script of your story, you hadn't forgotten your line and she's trying to prompt you.

You know what I mean? Like if your movie, if your story is a movie and you're supposed to go, oh, well, there's this guy and then that's how you get out. But you had forgotten that line. And so she's going, are you sure there's, you sure there's nothing you want to tell me? Dude, like, you forgot your line. And then you go, oh, yeah, there's this thing, right?

No, no. I, dude, you're hit. You've hit it on the head. But I was back to the characters. It's like you would, I would meet people, and I'm sure this happened, where it's like if you had to, if you had to design a crackhead, that's what this guy would be. And he's in there with you. And they walk up and you're almost while you're having a conversation or watching them, you're thinking, you are exactly what central, it's, you're straight out of central casting. This is what a crackhead looks like.

Right. And I remember I'd watched Breaking Bad, which I love that show because that Walter White characters. Um, reminded me of my dad, not that my dad is cooking meth, but my dad is like that professorial physicist like things have to be done right and per, you know, a lot of his personality, especially the early Walter White, um, reminded me and my dad in a good way. But, um, and I love that show. But because I had seen, you know, there's all the meth heads in that show and then here I am in Tennessee jail and now I'm up close with them. And I had the same exact thought. I'm like, were you just in that show breaking bad? Because you,

your black teeth or the no teeth, and then just the way that they're behaving, and it doesn't seem real. And then the same thing happened at Riker, some of the people who, you know, they're just acting completely nuts, and you just, it doesn't seem real. And some of the characters, I remember, too, thinking, I wish that I could have had like a GoPro implanted in my forehead and recorded all this because it is. Nobody's going to believe this. Well, either nobody's going to believe it, or I'm not going to be able to

remember it or I wish I could remember all of this dialogue because there's all this stuff that happen you're witnessing all this all the tragedy of humanity but then there's also some really beautiful moments you know like the stuff like that guy helping you the way that he did it's like it's beautiful and heartbreaking and and lovely and but then there's also just the stuff that's hilarious like people are just funny right fucked up in a very funny way and you're like in the worst possible situation this is yeah Yeah. And so, yeah, it's a very confusing jumble of emotions and stuff that's going on there in jail. But I did. I mean, I witnessed a lot of stuff during my time at Rikers that definitely learned a lot. And also about how completely messed up the bail system is. Like, whatever you want to say about wherever people are politically or whatever, just the bail, like on its face is completely unjust. I mean, there were people in my dorm that if I had had access, to money at the time.

Well, certainly there were people I would have bailed out because it would have been the right thing to do, but there were people that I would have bailed out because they snored really loud. And I'm one of those people that... That's the part of the application for bail. I do snore. Get them out of here. But, I mean, if I had access to funds, and I remember being shocked that there were people that are, the only reason they're there is because nobody...

Their life situation is such that there's nobody in their life that can come up with 500 bucks to get them out. Oh, yeah. Therefore, they're going to stay there, and they've not even been convicted of anything. They're going to stay there until their court date. And I'm like, when's your court date? Right. That's three weeks from now.

Or maybe it's six months from now, and you already know the most they can give you is a month. Right. And you're going to stay here for six months to get time sugars at six times. Because nobody has a thousand bucks or $2,000 or $500 to get them out. And meanwhile, anybody that does have access to money would be out. and they'd hire the lawyer and they'd get off of whatever the dumb charge was if there was even any validity. So it's, it's just on its face unjust. But when you're there and you're witnessing it,

you know, when you're there and you see it and you see how completely, like their, their life might have been okay, might be already kind of fucked up. But now that they've been arrested, now it's completely screwed up because they, they can't get out. now their abusive ex is going to be taking care of their kids. Now they've lost their job. They're going to lose their house. And they might have not even, they might have been arrested. They might have not done something wrong because they haven't been convicted at this point.

But just because they didn't have access to a thousand bucks to get out, their life is now completely fucked. And there's no way to get it back. Even if they might have done nothing wrong, maybe they did. But either way, it's like on its face is just not okay. Well, I think individually, it's probably for many, many individuals in many, many different ways, is extremely unfair. And then there are many people that get released that should not be released. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of, like, psychopaths that have access to money that were abusive.

It's very likely they really did beat the crap out of their spouse or whoever. And yet, they'll get out. Or, you know, they very clearly exhibited all this stalker, psych or. behavior, but they've got access to money so they'll get out and now they can go and murder her and finish the job. Right. Well, I mean, look, I mean, I'm in many ways, I'm sure it needs to be tweaked, you know, but then again, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of like the, you know, my wife feels like going to prison save your life. You know what I'm saying? So it's kind of, you know what I'm saying? Like it's like, so for every one of those, there's probably a few that

should have never, and I also look at the guy who, you know, got arrested. There's so, it's so, This is the system. But anytime you throw human beings into the mix of you could design the perfect system. And if you throw human beings into it, it gets all fucked up. I mean, you know, you look at the guy who was raised in the projects. Grew up in the project, you know, grew up in the projects, went to these horrible schools, had nothing but horrible people around him and then ends up going to prison. And it's like, you know, that guy never had a chance.

And I met tons of those guys in prison where you're like, You just hear their life story and you're just like, wow. Like, you've never, and they don't even talk about it like life's been unfair to me. Right. They talk about it. Like, everything's totally cool. They're not complaining. They don't complain.

They don't even understand how unfair the situation they're in is. Right. Which, you know, and they end up in prison. But they can still act. They can still be in situations where they will do the right thing. And I've, I noticed the difference between, um, those types of. of people where they even are some of the ones that would get in fights. I remember getting fascinated with, I could watch a situation and go, oh, that's going

to turn into a fight. I can feel it. Yeah. Like this bull, up, up, somebody took somebody's grape jelly. Not a big deal. But like the way this is, the way they're going back and forth about it, this is going to turn into a fight. The turtles are going to come in, pepper spray, the whole thing.

Somebody's going to get moved. It's the John Boziac thing where the two guys, I had a buddy who would go in the TV room. We had TV rooms and there's whatever 12 chairs. And two guys start to bicker and he would get up and walk out. And so eventually I go up to him and go, every time somebody is, it looks, something says, you leave. He goes, man, I'm a month away from being in the halfway house. Yeah. He said, I can't get roped into some bullshit between two fucking idiots who are going to go

to a fight. And then the cops, like you said, the cops come in. Yeah. They're spraying everybody. And it doesn't matter how they started it. They both get in trouble. Or they get in trouble. And then they grab other people around because you were in the.

room and you're like, now I'm in the shoe for six months or for three months on it for something I had nothing to do with. And then I don't go to halfway house. And of course, he was like, and I need a halfway house because he had like, if I don't get the three months halfway house, then they just released me onto the street. I have no money. I have no clothes. I have no nothing. I have nowhere to go. Nobody will help me. Yeah. So, because he's one of those guys where nobody's going to help this guy. He grew up with nothing, has nothing, knows nobody. And so I could see people where if they've grown, if they grew up in a violent situation,

they're just wired. They're wired to be really reactive, so they're easy to provoke, and they will get reactive and get into fights. But they're not, like, they're not at their core bad people, but then there are bad people.

I'm sure you saw a lot of those too, where it's like there are some very bad people who've done some horrific things. And one of the things that made me, so pissed off was some of the people who were, I would say, at their core, bad people would intentionally provoke the people that clearly had mental health issues and were very reactive and kind of irrational. Everybody knew they had mental health issues. They would have been in the mental health unit had that unit not been overcrowded. Now they're sending them into our dorm. And they

would provoke them into the fight just because I don't know what. It's fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then those people would get in trouble. And there were pregnant women fighting, seven, eight months pregnant, getting, starting fights, starting fights. There's some mental illness. Seven or eight months pregnant. Yeah.

And I'm watching and going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. Like, is her belly going to get hit? She doesn't seem to care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really fucked up shit. I remember one time I was reading a book and these two women started to go at it on either side of my bunk. And at one point, I'm like, and it starts to escalate.

And I just lean down and they start like, you know, like the girl fighting like over my head. I just, I'm reading the book and I'm like, oh, God, I just lean down. And they're like going at it over my head. And then eventually they break out of them. That one didn't quite escalate into the pepper spray and the ninja turtles coming in. And ninja turtles. It's so funny that you would know the ninja turtles.

That is such a funny thing for you to say. Yeah. You don't look like somebody who's. supposed to know that. Yeah. Or saying pepper spray or all the things, half the things that you've said. You get out, like what do you do when you get out as far as like work? Yeah.

Like, yeah. What is that situation like? You didn't get halfway house. You just walked out the door. No, no, no, no. Yeah, no. I mean, I didn't walk out the door. But yeah, there was no halfway house thing.

I always think of those places relating to substance abuse. because that's another element of the whole jail populace, especially at Rikers. There's a ton of people there who are there with hardcore addiction, substance abuse issues. So that's also something that, like, I learned a lot about while I was there. And the whole, the methadone, everybody's on methadone there. So they come in and they're like, methadone, and half the dorm gets up and they go down and get methadone. They give them methadone. Yeah.

Yeah, and I don't think they even try to like wing them off. No, they're just going, getting methadone. And, yeah, and I remember being like, why are they standing there like that? And they look like they're going to fall over, but they don't. And now, I've seen it occasionally on the street or whatever, but it's like, did you, it's like they look like they're going to fall over. And it was always happening when they came back up from methadone. They're like, but they never, I. And I'd go, oh, my God, they're going to, nope, they don't fall, but they don't fall.

It's a weird. In the federal system, they don't give them. They're not giving them anything. You're just done. They don't want to give you ibuprofo. No, Rikers, they're giving everybody methadone. Yeah. And, yeah.

Somebody gave me this huge teddy bear once, but it was very floppy. And so no matter how you positioned it, the teddy bear was like this. And I started calling it the methadone bear because it just looked like a bear on methadone. Notting out. Yeah. So, um, Yeah, I mean, eventually I finished my time, read a lot of books while I was there. Right.

I wrote mostly stories about what was happening. You know, anytime something totally bonkers would happen there, I'd write it in a letter and mail it out so I could get it on the other side. So, yeah, when I got out, I had moved into an apartment in Harlem, so I was living up there, got out. I was working for somebody that I knew from the past. I started to do that again. I could work mostly from home. But I knew I was going to eventually write a book. I mean, I knew I needed to write my story.

Right. And I knew it was probably going to take a while. Why not be a chef somewhere or try and be a chef? Or you think that's just... Well, so from my perspective, I come out and I, you know, I... The part of what... So I... come out and this guy's gone, you know, Mr. Fox, whatever, he's never going to repay a penny

of anything. Like, I'm aware of that. He's never going to come up with anything. It was, there was like 800 grand and what the employees weren't paid at the end. And plus, I think they bump it up by a certain amount or whatever. So what weighed on me, the heaviest is what those employees were owed. Like, that really, like, I just wanted to get that paid. And, and And then there's a lot of people that had, you know, I had borrowed money from that it wasn't part of the restitution, but I feel like a personal moral. I just feel like I'm responsible. Somehow I got to make that money back. I'm one of those people where if I started a business, raised money from investors, and the business just didn't make it.

It just failed. Nobody really liked the company. I would probably feel so responsible that I would feel like I had to somehow earn money to pay those people back. like, so no matter what happened, I feel really responsive. So all along I'm thinking like, well, I got to do something big because I have to pay it back all that money. So if I just go take a job cooking food in a restaurant, it's never going to pay it back. Never going to pay it back.

Be able to pay your own bills, yeah. Right, right. I'm never going to get it back. So I get to do something. But I ended up stepping to another total disaster. situation because I'm thinking, you know, my story, it was in the tabloids. It's very public. Nightline had wanted to do a thing. Now that I know what you went through with that too, somebody in media advised me like, don't do that. So I'm glad I didn't do that. But I knew that there's some value in

my story here. But in the meantime, my defenses are down because it's very public that I have less than no money. So I'm thinking, I've got nothing to take. So after what happened with Matthew and then Mr. Fox, I'm not thinking somebody else is going to come in my life and fuck shit up because I have nothing to take. But somebody came into my life. Oh, my God, I know what you've been through. I'm going to help you. Bah, blah, blah, blah, comes. Oh, I'm going to help you with this. I'm going to help you with that. And the person did help me. I was still legally married to this monster. Right. And again, I don't want to have money to like hire a great attorney to help me get that all sorted out. but the whole process of like doing it yourself is like the paperwork plus it's like emotionally loaded

so this dude helps me go through all that helps me get divorced from the guy that was helpful but um uh eventually i i did not i was not aware at this point i was not yet aware that the people who potentially want to fuck shit up aren't it's not about money necessarily so my defenses were down. This guy comes in and basically it turns into a situation where I'm terrified of him. He's behaving more like a crazy stalker and I'm like, oh shit. And I end up leaving New York because of him because I'm so terrified. And so I go, I'm originally from Massachusetts. So I go and I, a friend of the family helps me out. I go, I get an apartment there and now I'm also working for that person and living in Massachusetts. so I leave and go to Massachusetts for a while.

And then I was also working on writing my book. And then I still had to deal with a legal situation with this other person. And I do want to write another book and write about that story just because it's bonkers that after everything I'd been through, I missed the red flags again. And what I know now is that if you are, if you are, if you have a similar psychology to me and you're wired the same way that I am or whatever, if you're somebody who this happened to once, you sort of think it's almost like, oh,

it's like you got struck by lightning. It's not going to happen again. But no, the odds are, it's more likely that's going to happen again. It's like being the victim of sexual assault. Right. You're more likely to have another second assault. Exactly. It's, you know, predators or robbers or criminals.

in general, they can, they can actually spot people walking down. And like there was a whole, there's a whole study done where people, they would spot, they could spot people of who they could take advantage of or who they would rob and who they wouldn't rob. If you got a bunch of criminals together, almost all of them pick the same people over and over and it just by the way they behaved and walked. And a normal person who's never robbed anybody, it's just a regular person. They're random all over the place.

They don't have any clue. but the predators can figure it out very quickly, who's victim material. Right. And so, and I've heard other people say this too, but when you look back, you know, I might think, what do I have, is there like a sign on my forehead that says,

yep, easy to manipulate, because that's what it feels like because you, and then you feel stupid and like, why does this keep happening to me over and over and over again? And but yeah, it happens over and over and over again. And then I get after that last one, I'm like, oh, wow, okay, like I get it. I don't like universe, whoever, whatever, I don't need an, I get the lesson. Like I now I'm aware and I got very careful about anybody that in like a dating context or super careful.

Like never going to step into that again. but the subsequent lessons I needed to learn is that it's a similar dynamic in a business capacity too where you know I still have there is still value that people see and I mean that's kind of what happened with bad vegan it's like oh this is a we can turn this into a big story and extract a lot of value out of this and she's not going to know you know so yeah so I had to subsequently learn some some additional business level lessons to where it's like a similar dynamic of we could dupe her we can take advantage of her she's not going to realize it so that happens too so that some of that happened later on as well did anybody approach you like to be like a spokesperson

for you know a vegan brand or anything like that well but if you google me the tabloids are going to come up. The tabloids on the other side of this, they read off the indictment as if it's fact. And they're like, oh, she ran off with this money. Like, she's the vegan Bernie Madoff. That's what the tabloids called me. I know. But if you're just, if you're just a spokesperson, then you're just getting a check. And you're not asking an investor to give money. Some brand could say, hey, we're going to do commercials and have you be the spokesperson. Right. But what brand is going to want the person who, if you Google her, that's what still comes up. And I hear you. But you'd be shocked. at how many people have reached out to me to talk to them about financial advice or real estate.

It's like, what are you talking about? I'm a real estate fraudster. And you want me to teach a seminar on how to invest in real estate? Like, my experience in real estate thus far has all been predicated on fraud. Like, are you? But they do. It's insane, but they do. So I was going to say, despite the, hey, I've got this insane story.

other than that, you still had begun to build a brand. And when I look at you, my first thought is not, my first thought is vegan, the vegan thing. I understand it went off on this insane fucking story. But that's not my first thought when I see you. I see vegan because, you know, you have the look. You know, does it make sense? You have that, the vegan look. you have the, and you look healthy.

Not all vegans look healthy, brother. I'd be honest with that. A lot of mine don't think. They think they look healthy. They look just too skinny. But you just said you're 53 years old. You don't look like a 53 year old. So I would think that somehow you could maybe turn that into something.

Or maybe you just have such a bad taste in your mouth from the whole thing. You're just like, you know what? I'm done. You know what I'm saying? Like I don't want anything to do with it. I hear what you're saying. And I think that if I were wired differently and I, So when I was building my business, I was both behind the scenes and then I would have to, you know, I would represent the brand.

I would do some interviews. But back then, podcasting wasn't a big thing. Right. You know, Instagram wasn't a big thing. Instagram was like photos. It's a totally different world now. And if I were, I mean, if you look at my reels on Instagram, I am so awkward. It's like I am almost comically awkward because I'm just not.

Yeah, I could probably have built a huge following by now. If I was up there making recipes and doing the thing and making the reels or whatever, I am not good at that shit. Like, I am just not, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm too awkward. I'm just, like, if you want me to be myself. Seem awkward here? I mean, you're, you, you, you, you kind of beat around the point a little bit, but, you know, if you wanted me to look in the camera and be like, so funny story, remember the show, Top Chef?

Yes. the first season was Katie Lee Joel Billy Joel's former wife Katie Lee was the host for the first season but then after that it was Padma right remember Padma Lakshmi so Katie almost was going to back out of her contract something I don't know the point is I was I was flown to L.A. because they wanted me to audition to be the host of Top Chef this is before everything fell apart and I'm like you realize I run a business that's all around like being vegan it'd be weird for me to host this other show and also like you realize I'm never I've made appearances on other people's shows I've been on camera in an interview scenario but I've never been like the host of anything that's not my jam oh but you'd be perfect for you know they flew me to L.A and I'm like and the whole time I'm kind of going all right I'll fly to L.A but like I'm not oh no we could train you to do it I'm like this is I'm not I'm not

And also, I couldn't take time away from my business. So the point is I flew there. And they did, somewhere there's tape of me going, welcome to San Francisco, because I could memorize the lines. I could memorize the lines, recite them, but I am so awkward. But they did train me to get me better at it. But, I mean, I was never cut out for that role. So the point is, I'm not like the, I couldn't be like the, hey, hello, you know,

welcome to this show today. Hey, we're going to talk about, I can't do that. I do it all the time. I do it all the time. I'm horrible at it because I can barely read. So, I mean, I basically have to read the sentence three or four time and memorize it. And then I do two lines. And then I turn around. He says, you can read this. And then I just read it. And he puts B roll up. So it looks like when you watch the ad, you're like, man, you're amazing. That's just editing. Like I'm not amazing. I assure you it was horrible. And Colby will say, say it again. You know, that's not what that word says. This is what it says. Okay.

And then I say it, you say it four times, five times. You're bound to get something right. Yeah. I mean, I think that. And so I think that sometimes. And you don't have to be perfect. Nobody's looking for perfection, especially on some kind of like a podcast or something. Like people want you to be genuine and awkward.

And then you're more relatable. I'm more, I'm comfortable. Like, I'm not super uncomfortable right now. I'm comfortable in a podcast. scenario. But again, if you, if I had to talk into the camera and it's just me in the camera, it just, I would feel silly and weird. I don't know. I feel silly and weird. I do. Because we've done that where it's just me and I do. I know exactly what you do. Or I don't know, there's a guy, Ian Bick, who has a true crime podcast. I did his podcast. Oh, okay. I did locked in. Yeah.

Yeah. So he, he started off by doing TikToks. Yeah. And he would just put the phone there and he'd do this whole thing. And I've tried to do it. It's hard. It's very hard. It's very hard. It's very hard. to just sit there and just kind of go. It's easier for me to have a conversation with you and have someone cut that into a reel or a short or something than to look at it and say, okay, Matt, tell that story. And then it's like, oh, I can tell it's you, but just staring at the camera, I feel awkward and weird. Yeah.

But I mean, so all you have to do is get somebody else that you can shoot the shit with or interview or something and put it up. And if you're going to be able to get yourself on programs anyway, then those people have somewhere to go and find you. and then you build that following. Yeah. Yeah. Or not.

You know. Yeah. There's, well, what I've wanted to do all this time is to bring the business back, to rebuild the business, because the brand is there. The audience is there. All the people who are, what really meant a lot to me when I was in Rikers, when I did my time, is that a ton of letters, I got a ton of mail. People sent me tons of books and things. but I was getting letters from our regular customers,

and what was really heartwarming is they knew me enough to know that whatever happened, even if they didn't understand what happened, they knew something really messed up had happened and that I had not intended for any of this to happen. And so those people are still, all of those people, where the sort of committed, love the one Lucky Duck brand, we're ordering our ordering products online to be shipped to them wherever, like our hardcore customers still loved the brand and even now.

I mean, anytime I would post something about maybe reopening the restaurant, everybody's like, oh my God, if you reopened, I'd come back, I'd fly from here, wherever,

you got to reopen, you got to reopen. And the space is still there. So it's theoretically possible that I could rebuild the business, which not only because that would be, it would be amazing for that business to exist again and it should exist again, But now there's this added layer of the story of what happened. And the idea that that monster, you know, through me and yes, I'm responsible, like, it completely got destroyed.

But for him to have not won and for me to be able to rebuild and bring it all back is something that a lot of people who have been in a variation of my story means a lot to a lot of people that I could come back. get it all back that that guy didn't win in completely destroying me. So that's more than anything been the goal is to bring the business back. But again, I've been a bit back in that situation that I was in before where a lot of unsavor, like not right people see that opportunity as well, want to, instead of just collaborate and genuinely bring back the business as it should be, want to sort of come in, take over, take it, exploit it, or extract all the value. And so I've been in a bit of that situation again where I have to be very careful about

how I move forward. You're kind of in negotiations now? Just in a very uncomfortable limbo state of like, I don't really know what's going to happen and what's going to sort out. And there are, you know, investors who are willing to participate. but a lot of messed up stuff has happened in the last couple of years that unfortunately has drained a lot of my energy. And similar to before, needing that right partner who has the right integrity is in it for

the right reasons. And it doesn't have to, it's not the financial side of it, not that that's not an issue as well. But I'm very aware at this point that it would not be wise for me to be in a situation again where I'm responsible for everything. I'm overwhelmed and I'm also vulnerable to somebody coming in and taking advantage of the situation. So it's a matter of having like an operational partner. Right. You know, who from a business perspective, who has integrity and where the ideal situation where I'm in the role of almost like a creative director, you know, because that was really, people would always tell me, oh, my God, that restaurant was amazing and nobody's ever

made food like that and your products were so good and you're a genius. And I'm like, no, I just was really good at like curating the right people, bringing in the right people. The people that I hired, that I worked with and promoted, they were really talented at creating a lot of these recipes. It wasn't me. I'm not the genius coming up with this shit. I just recognizing. as what was quality and what was good and created this beautiful environment where people worked for 10 years. And so I would like to be able to recreate that. But I can't do it all myself, you know.

Oh, you've got to switch it to the Steve Jobs of vegan cuisine because nobody thinks Steve Jobs made one of those iPhones. Oh, yeah. You know, he just knew. Well, he had the vision. He has the vision. This is the way it needs to look. He's also known for treating people not well.

Well, that's, you know, but either way. He's the one who had that vision. And so, yeah, I kind of am that person. And a lot of times people think, oh, it's, you know, it's too idealistic. And I still have that same goal as before that I would like to help shift things and do my part. So, I was going to say maybe, because opening that. restaurant is probably that's an that's a big investment right that's not like hey I need somebody give me 100,000 dollars that's at least a million or so and I'm probably way low because

I'm thinking Florida right so that's probably a super huge investment for somebody who all it would be for me it's probably nothing for somebody else but I was thinking about did you ever see working, was it working girl? Working girl? That's with Melanie Griffith. Yes. Yeah. And at one point, she kind of, I forget that the, anyway, there's just this one point where this guy has this huge idea to try to buy up like TV commercials or or TV stations or something. And she comes in and she has, she explains why buying up a, um, radio stations is a better, is a better, um, idea. And,

and he his he sums it up by saying it talking about how there was a 18 wheeler that was trapped beneath a you know what I'm talking about that you ever heard the story there's an 18 wheeler that's trapped underneath a an overpass right like it was too big to get under the other price it gets wedged in there and all these and then they call in they call in these uh engineers and they call in all the you know these people from the from the state troopers and they call call in these people from the trucking company, and they call in, you know, all these people from the highway division, and all these people are trying to figure out how to get this thing. And as they're rerouting traffic, there's a little boy in the back of a pickup truck or something, and he leans out and says, why don't you just let the air out of the tires? Yeah. And that was what it took to turn it into. And so you know what it makes me think of is that instead of rebuilding, and this is probably nothing, it's probably maybe a bad idea. Might be a great idea.

Is that we interviewed a guy the other day who has, the vegan trucks? Yeah, vegan food trucks. Food trucks. On the run vegan or something like that. On the run vegan? Yeah, it's the name of his food truck thing. And I think he's got like seven or eight of them.

In Miami, they're all over the place. Yeah. And he's kicking ass. I'm trying to remember if I wrote it. I think I wrote it somewhere. There's a line somewhere where I say, the next person who tells me to open a food truck I'm going to punch at the face.

Well, that's why we have this distance. I know. Exactly. I can't, I can't quite reach. It's not, I get it. I get that. But anyway, I mean. But why would it, why would it be a bad idea?

I understand it's not this, the, it's not the restaurant, which was amazing. But maybe it's, hey, I could crawl before. Yeah. I mean, there's a bit more to the story and the space and how special that particular space was, the fact that it's still there. So located in a certain area. It's the exact same space. No, I understand.

But I mean, it was also a great area or something too? Oh, no. I mean, we had this beautiful garden in the back that was part of the, I mean,

that would bring in people who might not otherwise go because our garden was so beautiful. It's outdoor space in Manhattan restaurants. Usually, if you're eating outdoors in a restaurant in Manhattan,

usually you're on the sidewalk as people walking by, oh, what are you eating, you know, sirens going by, traffic, whatever.

It's very rare that there's a, back garden. And if there is, usually they're tiny. Ours was big and beautiful and there's trees hanging over. And it's in this little right off of Union Square. It's in this area that doesn't, it's very quiet. Like you just don't feel like you're in Manhattan anymore. It was a beautiful garden and a really, really beautiful space. And a lot of restaurants, like there is something about a location. It's almost like it's going to sound woo-woo, but it's almost like it has the space itself has a certain energy. And the fact that it was there, it just seems, when somebody says,

I don't understand how come it's not, how come somebody else didn't open it? I don't know. Why not? Why is the space still there? Why is it still available? It seems like it makes sense for me to be reopening there. And then a lot of things happen, some people that got involved, maybe weren't the writing people, those people are out of the picture. So maybe I'll be able to pull it off. I don't know. So I'm basically in a very limbo space with it. But in the meantime, I finally finished my book, which ideally I would have loved to have finished it earlier. If I had finished it, this is my book. The one you won't, the one, the brick. The book. Yeah. Oh, oh. Yeah. I love that picture of Leon. Is that actually that, was it, is it touched up or is that really this

a perfect silhouette? No, no, I have a color version of that too. I mean, that's a friend of mine took that. Like, that's pretty, that's crazy. Yeah, no, a friend of mine took that picture. I think that was right around. It was about three years ago. Or, no, a bit more than that. Yeah, it was about three years ago. He did a photo shoot and took that photo. So in the meantime, I finished my book.

The girl with the duck tattoo. Yeah. The girl with a dragon tattoo? You see the... Yeah. Yeah. I know. Imagine in jail, too, it's like everybody's got face tattoos and everything.

And I'm like, nah, I've got this. I don't know if you're like my tattoo. Like it takes, like it's like I'm sleeved out. Yeah. They're all going to be really intimidated by my duck. Yeah. Not really.

But so while all this other stuff is going on, I finally finished my book and put it out. And I put it out. I've published two cookbooks way in the past with Harper Collins. I knew going into this that if I went and did a traditional publishing deal with a big publisher. Yes, you get the advance and then you get a lot of support in the promotion and when the book comes out. But little tiny checks after that. Maybe you're not for a long time. If you go with a big publisher. Yeah. Yeah. You get little tiny. If you ever make it

out of roy out of, if you ever earn out the advance, then you get like tiny royalty checks, which is I get, I still get tiny checks from my cookbooks. But they earned out of royalties. And I did earn more money in the past from those two cookbooks. But now, I mean, 2005, 2009, they're so old and basically almost out of print. But so I, and then do you know David Gaggins is? Yeah, of course. Okay, you would know who David Gaggins is. So I remember when I listened to one interviewer, he talked about how he ended up walking away from a major publishing deal because he'd done all us research and he realized, oh, yeah, no, I'm going to self-publish this. That makes way more sense. Yeah. And also, he talked about it's his story. It's his memoir. He doesn't want

anybody else controlling the process, editing out what he says, changing the cover. And I, after what I went through with the show that ended up being called Bad Vegan, like, I do not want, I, my trust in that respect is obliterated and I don't want somebody editing down my draft or telling me I have to cut it down or I can't say this or I can't include that. You know, all of those G chats I include, I don't know, maybe if he was somebody else, he might say, hey, you can't reprint all my G chats or, I don't know. I think that's one of those things where, but what, is, is he going to come back and sue me? I don't know if the publisher would have let me reprint all of that. maybe they would have

who knows but either way I wanted to put out the book that I did yes the way you wanted it to yes right which is I think in the long run

I'll be glad for it but it doesn't make the process easier at this point just because I got to do all the promotion myself and I think we've already established that promotion

and putting myself out there is not my forte and this is it was Amazon. Well, yeah, it's sold on Amazon. It's on Barnes & Noble online. I sell signed copies myself. I made a website for the book and my own website.

I did get an offer from a big studio on the scripted rights, but they wanted to make a story kind of like more like the bear, like a story around a female lead reopening a restaurant, and she's got this crazy backstory. story. But either way, it was a situation where I'm, where they could have done whatever they wanted with it. And I just felt like it wasn't the right time for me to, to do something like that. And I also feel like all along I've wanted my story to be useful. I wanted all of the messed up shit that I went through to be useful and valuable to other people, like learn from what happened to me.

so that you don't step into a similar thing. Or if you've been through something, here's how you can help understand it. Because I just know from hearing from so many people that have been through this kind of thing, you're left on the other side. You're blaming yourself. You feel responsible.

You're full of shame. You don't understand how it happened. And it almost by definition, it happens to people who are accomplished, successful, smart, high IQ, whatever. you think that somehow it would be easier to call on a person who's less bright. But for whatever reason, it's kind of the other way around. So I've heard from so, so many people.

And there's a lot of confusion about how did this happen. So either way, I just want my story to be useful. And I think psychologically, it's kind of interesting. How did this guy, how did we get from where I was to where I was at the end? Like, how did that happen? And I think there's a lot of, there's entire chapters that I cut out of my book that would make for really, really good scripted scenes, but they were harder to tell in a narrative.

But all of those nonverbal ways that you could depict something in a scene would be really great. So there are chapters that I cut out that I know could go into a scripted thing. It's a very long-winded way of saying that I wanted to hold on to those rights. in order to, if that's going to happen, it ought to be done well. So where's Mr. Fox now? So after Bad Vegan came out and then somebody reached out to me about doing some sort of a follow-up series and I initially didn't want to participate and I didn't. So I said I didn't want to do it.

Then I realized they were going to make an episode or two about, Mr. Fox anyway. And it's Elizabeth Chambers who she had been married to Army Hammer. She had done some journalist stuff before. Either way, she's the one who was hosting this show that is called Toxic. It came out, I think, earlier this year.

And there's a few episodes about other stories, but then episode five and six are about this guy, Mr. Fox, Anthony Stranges, turns out what she reveals through the show is that he married somebody, changed his name to Anthony Knight. But that, so that series goes into what he was doing after my story and kind of where is he now. And she ends up, in those two episodes, she ends up tracking him down and confronting him on camera, which is like, I always tell him. I'm like she has, she's got like balls of steel. Like she runs up to him and gets in his face and tracks him down.

When she finds him, he's in Arizona. But heartbreakingly, seemingly doing a variation of what he did to me to somebody else. And she, that's why I was telling you should watch that show toxic, because they, they get that woman on the phone and she's kind of denying everything and you would think that again, it's like pulling out of somebody out of a cult. You'd think that if you just went, hey,

you realize the guy you're with is a total con artist, right? You realize you're in a cult, right? You've got to get out of it. No, it's not that simple. It's not that simple. So, anyway, basically, he's doing the same thing. And he did a number on a bunch of people in between. Some of those people reached out to me.

So, you know, he's obviously going to keep doing what he, variations of what he did to me to other people. Yeah, I've met quite a few guys like that that are in prison. You know, they just, they just go, they, it's just going to prison every once in a while as a part of. It's for them, it's like an inconvenience. There's nothing devastating about it. It's just like, oh, this is kind of a, it's kind of a pain. So I feel like the year that he spent, the year that he spent at Rikers, for him was probably like, ah, just, oh, well, you know, it's kind of a pain in the butt.

But it's just, yeah, it's just part for the course. This is just what I, this is just part of doing business. Every once while I'll get grabbed and thrown into a. Yeah. And what I appreciated about that show, toxic, which I then I did end up, when I realized she was trying to track him down and I was like, well, if I can help you, I will. Like, here's what I know. And then, you know, I did some stuff on camera for them.

But what I appreciate about that show is she does focus on. on how these people seemingly get away with what they do over and over and over again, or they get away with like probation or a slap on the wrist. Because they're very good at doing things in a way where they're not necessarily breaking the law. I mean, people have said to me now, like, well, if people could find him, couldn't he be prosecuted for this or this or that? And it's like, eh, not really. Did you see the Tinder swindler? I have not, I have not watched it.

Serious? I know, I know. Oh my God. How could you have not watched that? Because, you know, I watched Stolen Youth. I watched The Vow. I've watched the Puppet Master. I've read a lot of stories.

I've listened to a lot of podcasts. And you get, you kind of get to a point where, you know, I haven't more and more of these stories come out on, and you just get to a point where it's really painful watching them. for that reason, that's part of what really pissed me off about bad vegan is because I know what it feels like to have gone through something like this and then to be watching another story and how gut wrenching it is. And so to get to the end of it and have the audience have been manipulated as well. And this is who you should have had to do yours, by the way, because the women in that you feel for. The whole time you don't, you feel like you realize what, don't take this wrong.

Yeah. The game that he is playing on them is so insanely crafted. Yeah. That you don't doubt for a second why they keep falling for it. Right. You know, there are times when you feel like, okay, now, wait a minute. Now, he's telling you to lie to this person to a person to, or to America Express to get that he's giving you false documents to prove that you make this much

money so you can get the loan to give to him. So you do realize at some point it's like, hey, at this point, you've stepped over the line. You should have said, hey, wait a minute, I'm not going to provide. Intender's one. No, but similar. You're telling people things that he's telling you to say to get them to give you the money. but they're actually getting loans from institutions where he's providing them with documents and saying, well, yeah, and they're like, well, wait a minute, this is fraud?

Is this fraud? No, no, because technically you are an employee just, I'm now hiring. I am paying you this much money. You will be receiving this. So this is no longer fraud. And then there's just like, oh, it's kind of like you feel like saying, come on, man, you know that's fraud. Like, you don't, he hasn't cut you that. He hasn't paid you that money yet.

isn't this, isn't that. But they're kind of like, well, this is his world and he understands how this works. And I don't. Clearly, he's successful. He's flying around this private jet. He just flume in. And the great thing about him, his, is that, and these women are so taken in and you can see it because he's flying them into, and I don't know if it was Paris or not, or France or where he's like he's flying him into the UK he's flying him into or um or let's say into London or Paris or Rome and so you're thinking of course they think he's loaded he's on a private but he's really stealing from this yeah to this and that's why he's because he's got multiple people you realize right away like you for not not for a second do you well one or two

seconds but you do think to them you're like you're like of course they're falling for this like he he appears. I think that's probably part of the reason why I know it might on some level it would be hard for me to watch so that stuff because of what you just said. You just said they should have made. Whoever made that should have done your story. They would have crafted it. And having written, by the way, having written, I know that I can tweak. You can tweak subtle things. I can tweak one or two things and still be accurate, by the way. Pete jokes about this all the time. He's like, what does he say? True, but misleading. That's true. What you said is

true, but it's misleading. And I always use the example of saying he stole nearly a million dollars. Now, when you tell Colby that story, you're going to say he stole a million dollars. But the truth is, he stole $650,000. Somebody else would be like, that's not nearly a million. Sure it is. What's nearly a million? That's nearly a million. I can say nearly a million. I'm not, it's true. It's misleading because I know when you continue that, you're going to say a million. So there's lots of little tweaks things you can say. You cut it here. You leave this.

Little things that make someone sound much worse than they actually are, or you've altered something subtly. And editing is amazing. Oh, I mean, editing is everything. And if I, if somehow I did it over again, I would have, if I had recorded all, So I sat for two, one day was 12 hours. The other day was almost as long. There were two separate interviews that I did for like 20 hours of videos.

Bad vegan. Yeah, a ton of video. I mean, and then they edit it and condense it and do whatever they want to do with it. If I could go back, I would have recorded all of that audio. So at least I could show that the part where they talk about why I married him, they spliced the audio there and made it look different than it really was. And then a director I've been working with now and looking back, and I don't like to go back and watch it, but there's places where I couldn't, now, I can prove that they move the audio around in the end because I have that original audio.

But my interview, there's places where, you know, he might ask me a question or something and I say, I don't remember or I don't know. And I'm like, did I really say that then? At that moment. Or did I say something else? Right. And then also there are times where I genuinely, there's a lot I don't remember. And anybody who's been in through anything similar knows that when you go through something all messed up and trauma where your brain is, you're by definition not going to remember a lot.

And then there's another time where he asks me something where I don't, where I actually genuinely didn't want to give him an honest answer because to give him an honest answer would have potentially made somebody else look bad. he was asking me about why I fired a certain person and I was like I remember that yeah I don't really remember and then they and then they make me look like an asshole for it and it's like I'm just not gonna I'm not going to say like well yeah I kind had a reason at the time but I'm not going to say that you know and so I'm on the spot and I'm like well and then so it looks like this as you said yeah you add up enough of those where you know

I think in episode one they make me look very sympathetic but then they start introducing all these little moments and layer onto that the fact that this is what other people pointed out afterwards so after that show came out i'm bombarded with all kinds like a fire hose of incoming stuff right and in that incoming there there's a ton of people saying to me uh have you ever are you on the spectrum have you been diagnosed and i'm like huh what that's why are so many people saying this And there's people making like YouTube videos, analyzing me, making the case for why she's definitely autistic and on the spectrum. And I'm like, that's interesting. So eventually I go for one of those very extensive evaluations.

You're doing all the weird stuff and the, you know, shapes and doing my IQ. A whole thing, I go through a whole evaluation, comes back, diagnosis, autism one. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. So on what scale? How many versions? Yeah, one out of six? I mean? Well, no.

So it used to be called Asperger's. Right. Like, probably the most famous person with Asperger's is Elon Musk, right? Okay, yeah. And now you could, there's a lot of well-known people that they say, yes, this person has Asperger's. They no longer call it Asperger's because I guess the guy with the name Asperer is like a Nazi or something. So we don't want to use his name anymore. so now we're just going to call it autism one, which I feel like makes the whole thing more

confusing because there's a spectrum of autism. Yeah, I mean, there's nonverbal autism, which is very different. It's very different from high functioning autism. So I guess I fall on the high functioning category. Then on top of that, the differences between men and women who have that, there's a lot of differences. So I, weirdly enough, my last relationship, which was a very good one, another guy was younger, but a very good one, I, early on, he said, he said something to me that made me go Google men with Asperger's and also being in a relationship with a man with Asperger's.

And when I'm reading all this stuff, I'm going, that explains it, that explains it, that explains okay, okay, he definitely would get a diagnosis of Asperger's, and this explains his strange behavior, and now I understand it, and by the way, we're really compatible because I also need a lot of alone time. I also, I have these things in common with him, so it works, and I understand it. Never once did it occur to me that if I was evaluated, I might also get that diagnosis. Never occurred to me until after that show came out, and then I'm being like peppered with people saying that to me, not in a, not in a negative way. It was coming from people who had gotten a latent life diagnosis. And I understand it because now sometimes I come across people,

like I have friends who, if they went and got an evaluation, they would definitely get the same diagnosis. It's not like, again, it's a spectrum, but it's more, I think it's way more common than people realize. But I also realize a lot of my favorite people would get that, have had that diagnosis, or would get it. And part of it is being very, like, what you see is what you get. It's almost like we're not capable of being manipulative, but also easy to manipulate because it wouldn't occur to me that somebody would, like, I will take things at face value. I can be very sarcastic.

There's a lot of evidence of it in the book. Like, some of the parts that people appreciate the most are where I'm, like, talking back to him and I'm making fun of him and I'm being sarcastic and pushing back on him. and I think there's the parts that provides a bit of comic relief when my story gets really stressful. But also I very often would miss sarcasm or I don't read people's, like I don't read signals right all the time. So I also can come across as very unemotional. So that was another thing that was lobbed at me after that show came out. As people are saying in my interview in Bad Vegan, she showed no remorse.

and she's very unemotional and she looks very cold. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not cold and unemotional, but sitting on a camera answering questions, I might come across that way. So, yeah, I lost track of war. But that is just interesting now, looking back at your life and everything that happened, realizing that, oh, whatever it is that led me to get that diagnosis

is not only relevant to what happened, but it kind of relevant, explains a lot of what happened throughout my entire life, even how I felt in high school. And, you know, I'm probably like my weird, you mentioned that I had blue hair that made you think I was vegan back then.

Right. You know, but I just felt like a misfit. And I think when I, when I shaved my head and colored it blue and green, I think that was my way of having the outside match, how I felt on the inside in some way. But it's weird because it seemed incongruent with being shy and not really wanting to bring attention to myself, yet I did.

So, but anyway, yeah, the way that I came across on camera led people to think I'm cold and unemotional when that's not really how I am, but that's just how I present. So a lot of those, and again, those are things that in editing and the way he crafted the story being told, Chris Smith, the director, he was able to kind of very skillfully do what he did and then leave certain things out because, as you said, had he left in that part about that really gross abuse where I'm in that part, I'm in tears and I'm crying and it's super uncomfortable.

They also interviewed a guy named Hort Richards who has a fascinating story. I think they're making a docu series about his story, but he was a Princeton graduate male model he was in the era of like Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington when supermodels became a big thing. Right. He was like the, he was one of the dudes. They weren't as famous, but he was walking the runway with those big name models. The entire time, he was in a cult giving all his money to this guy.

They were making him, he would get off the runway and Milan come back, give all his money to them. They would make him scrub the bathroom floors. and he's believing that they are all, I don't remember what the story was, but believing that somehow they're all going to be beamed into outer space. It's like a story that seems so hard to believe, especially because he's this articulate, very bright guy, came from a good family.

He had been an athlete to, and yet somehow he believed all this stuff and gave all his money to this guy, and it's really hard to understand. So they also interviewed him, and I was told. Cut that out. Yeah, they didn't use any of it,

because it would have validated what happened to me, but they didn't want to do that. They wanted to create a narrative where there's a, did you ever see a, where you were complicit somehow? Yeah. Right. I didn't,

but I know at the end of that there's a scene, right, at the very end, isn't he caught on a hot mic? He basically admits to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So I think he,

with a director, Chris, used that audio to make it seem, to the way they present the audio at the end of Bad Vegan, they have me talking to this guy, and it seems like I'm caught on a hot mic because they show some B-roll footage of me and they just play the audio. They don't play footage of me.

So it seems like I'm caught on a hot mic and then they show me laughing with him about it and they move my words around. So it gave it an ending like the jinx. And that's why a lot of people watch it and they go, well, that ending is weird. That doesn't make sense. But then a lot of people watch it and go,

oh my God, dude, she was not the whole time. And they don't, and maybe they were not really paying attention. I don't know, but the point is a lot of people watched it and thought, oh, you know, it's a terrible situation. She was manipulated. What a crazy story. You know, that sucks. And then a lot of people watched it and thought, oh, my God, she was on it the whole time. She's the con artist, too.

So, but for him to have been, for him to do that, he had to leave out a lot of stuff and also drop in a lot of ways throughout the series where, in these subtle ways, he makes me look questionable by the way that I answer, by the way he shows me answering a question. It makes me look like maybe I'm not telling the truth or maybe I hesitate or, I don't know. That's like him crafting it in a way that he did. No, what I was thinking to myself, and I can bring it up again when we get to that point, is the whole time I'm watching that. So, you know, I had an American greed and a dateline that were both done on me.

and they're horrific. Oh, yeah, no, no, I actually wanted to, yeah, because you know having, I know you explained what they did where they made it seem like it was your wife or your ex-wife who'd won the wire when it was these other people, right? Oh, that's not even that. That's not even there, either one of those. That's another program. That's a more recent one.

Yeah. And then, and then also, there was like, was it the 60-minute guy who was like, like, pushed you, pushed you, pushed you, and then got you to, like, laugh or say something. No, that was dateline. Date line. And what they did was they took two different clips. They slipped in a clip. So he was like, you hurt a lot of people.

And I went, well, I mean, I've financially inconvenience. I haven't physically harmed anybody. Financially inconvenience several people. And he was like, you hurt a lot of people. And I went, I didn't hurt anybody. Yeah. physically. I mean, said, yeah, granted. I said some people lost like one person lost like $7,000. One person lost like $5,000. Yeah. One guy lost like $12,000. I was like, you know, and I was, and he goes, you hurt a lot of people. And I go, you seem to be hung up on hurt. So I said, yeah, I said, I hurt a lot of people. I went, is that what you're trying. No, then it goes, you hurt a lot of people. And then I go, which is something that happened 30 minutes earlier or 30 minutes later where I go. And then it jumps back to him looking.

at me and then I say, and then I say some, that's when I say, yeah, I heard a lot of people. But I'm frustrated at that point, but when you look at it, you're like, what a piece of garbage. Yeah. And, and, you know, and this is the way I look at it. I don't know if, I think I said this on Lex, is that when I looked at all of these, all of these, you know, in their totality and what they were saying, you know, did they take things out of context?

Absolutely. Did they twist things? Absolutely. Did they make me look like I was a vengeful psychopath more so than I probably am? I'm not saying I'm not on that scale. But more so, yes, they did. But the spirit of what I did was encompassed. Did they make me look worse? Yes, they did. But it's kind of like your sentence going to prison. If you put yourself, there. You don't get to choose whether you do 12 years or six months. Do you see what I'm saying? That you gave up that right. You know what I'm saying? Granted, you'd like it to be based on what you did, but you don't get to choose that. And so did these guys say some things that were inaccurate? Yeah, but I put myself, it's like these guys that go to jail and they'll, a lot of these guys are like, oh, they fucking snitch this or cops lied about this. I was like, okay, yeah, but you were making meth, right? And they're like, well, yeah, but they said it was

six pounds and it was only one and a half. And it's like, yeah, I get it. And you got, maybe you got an extra year or two, but you were making meth, right? So I kind of, you know, in some ways I get that. It's, it's the argument of they said I killed 13 people and I only killed 11. Yeah, but that's, yeah. I'm 11 people. Like, you know, I'm still a scumbag. Am I a level 13? scumbag. No, I'm only a level 11, but to most people, a level one is bad enough. And so that's one thing that I noticed kind of when they talk about it. So I've kind of just discarded that being irritated about that. But the thing I noticed about watching all of your stuff that you've done,

all these podcasts and all these things, is that you're super, it's, it almost feels like you're spending the rest of your life trying to correct subtleties in these people's story when you really should just say not apologize at all. Fuck you. That's what you said. That's your version of, okay, well, this is my version. And focus on your version as opposed to correcting their version because while you're getting attention to present your version, instead of presenting your version, you're spending all your time trying to correct their version. You're spending, and fuck them. That's kind of what I was saying.

Right. That's what my director is saying. He's absolutely right. Yeah, but well, and so, well, but it's a bit challenging because unfortunately that came out. That's what everybody saw. And so. But you could run with that. You could take that and run with it.

I mean, people are going to have already made their mind up. You know, and maybe if they get interested in you as they learn about you and they realize that these things like, hey, that's not quite right. Like what they said isn't quite what she said. Yeah. And then the other tricky part is that the way that show was made, people watch it through their own lens of their own experiences and they come away with different conclusions. So I also never know what somebody thinks, you know.

Like, it just all depends. If I'm in a one-on-one situation, it's very different than like some rando d-emming me that, like, you know, some nasty shit or whatever. It's very different because that's like who you've, listen, there's no way you know to trust me. I've gotten the nastiest. I've gotten a horrible thing. It's on a regular basis.

Like people say horrific. People are very brave in the comment section. They would say things they would never say to your face. Yeah. It's rare, but every once in a while I'll engage with somebody who says something terrible if I'm like, I don't know, somewhere and I'm just, eh. And I've so often, I've gotten them completely turned around where they're like,

oh my God, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. And all they did was read what I wrote on my website. And they're like, oh, okay. Right. So that often clarifies things. Yeah, I would, I just wouldn't even focus. I'd be focusing on, hey, this is what happened.

Everybody has, you know. Yeah. There's always, like, the problem is there's really, in a way, there's no truth. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Like, you know how they, oh, there's their version and there's your version and their version somewhere in the middle is kind of the truth. But there's really just people's versions.

Like everybody knows what they did and they can justify what they did. You know, I'm not sure anybody, there's no omnipotent person there to say, this is the truth. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not, it's not like there's. that dude's version and my version. It's these filmmakers who just wanted to make something a certain way, so they did it. But you feel like everybody that watched that, like, despises you?

No, not at all. I was going to say, because my wife watched it. No, no, it all depends on how much somebody's paying attention. Because it's weird. You know, in the opening of the show, I'm like, fuck that guy. I'm recording him, fuck him. And then they get to the call at the end and they forget. about the thing in the beginning.

So they think that like somehow I'm... So it ends it on this shitty note. Right. Yeah. And it, yeah. I didn't even think it was that big. I wouldn't have even thought much of it because I saw the whole, I've, by that point, I've already determined what I think by the time you make that crack like, you know,

where he says, you're the smartest person I know. And then you kind of chuckle and go, you know, you're right. No, I know. my response from 20 minutes ago. And you know, I'm happy to share this. I know I told you. They, they, they, right. But what's funny is that he had made fun of me in this way that it pisses me off because he's right.

He always tells me I have cartoon legs, which is a very specific kind of a funny insult. Right. And, um, and so I, this was like 20 minutes earlier. And I laugh and I said, it pisses me off because you're right. Right. That I have cartoon leg, which is like, now I feel like I should stand up and demonstrate. But like, it's like this funny, random insult. And then when he said, and then what I said in response to him saying, like, you're the smartest person in the world.

I go, yeah, but I didn't solve that stupid wooden puzzle you gave me. Because he used to give me all these stupid tests and whatever and trying to make me feel stupid, right? And he gave me this, like, dumb wooden puzzle. And like, I didn't solve it, right? And so basically my response to him was like, yeah, but I didn't solve that wooden puzzle. You know what I mean? Like, so they just moved it around and made it look like, I'm like, yeah. And now I understand, too, why, like, a lot of women were really nasty because I think that bit the end makes it seem like I'm going, ha-ha, I'm smart and beautiful.

And, like, we didn't get away with this thing. And, ha-ha. Like, it just, it's, oh. So my wife would get frustrated watching, you know, she'd get up and walk around for a second and then come sit down and get frustrated. and, you know, she flip-flopped back and forth on you. And then probably the last part where you're, you know, that's really when she got the most frustrated when you guys are just living out of hotel rooms.

And he's gambling and he's asking you to, you know, do, you know, call this person and get money and do this and do that. And she's just frustrated and walk. But in the, you know, at the very end, she was like, I feel, what did she say? She said, she said, I feel like she's just really sweet and gullible. She goes, but like I like her. And she goes, I could see hanging out with her.

She said, but in a way I'd almost want to hang out with her to protect her. She's like, you know, she said, because I could see her like just randomly, you know, being okay with, you know, some guy coming up talking and she's talking and I'm realizing this is a bad. guy and she's just like, la la, la, la, just gullible and believing everything he said. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, we're leaving. And which is funny because I've been in the same way with my wife before where she's done things. And I've been like, what are you doing?

You don't even know that person. What are you thinking? She's like, well, he needed help. And I'm like, so why? That's his problem. It's three in the morning. Figure it out. He can walk.

He's like picking up some guy on the side of the road. Well, no, but I saw the car. I think his car broke and he was walking. Well, then he can keep walking. It's three in the morning. in the middle of a field, you know, of five miles of nothing around. You could just disappear. And she's like, hey, you know, yeah, and then he got in the truck.

She's like, he was definitely on drugs. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Yeah. No. I, yeah. But it's the same thing, like, at the beginning of the story where you're saying, where your friends, like, where you're like just giving away money to homeless people.

And your friend had mentioned that, like, she's. Oh, my sister. Oh, is it your sister? Yeah. Yeah, she said that when... You came to visit her or something? Yeah, she was going to school in Montreal and McGill, and I drove up there and visited her a few times. And I mean, I spent plenty of time in Boston.

I don't know what was so different about McGill or Montreal, but maybe there were more homeless people or something. I don't know. Or maybe we were out drinking, but she had to... Yeah, I guess apparently I was giving a lot of homeless people money, and she was like, Sarma, you can't give everybody, like, you can't do that. Or, I mean, you could, but like, it's not going to help. You know, I also listen to a lot of true crime, admittedly. You know, I listen to a lot of, there's a true crime show that I listen to called Just Thought Lounge.

I don't know if you, I think it's got a few, I think the guy's like like millions of subscribers, super. And he's like 20, 30. I really actually hate it because sometimes he doesn't tell you what happened. Like, you listen to 35 minutes of this thing. And then he's like, And he's going to trial next month. Like, come on, bro. Like, what do you mean he's going to, like, I don't know if this guy did it or not,

or he's going to be found guilty. But listen, I literally listened to in the last, probably, out of the last three, in the last day, two people, two women that met some guy at, at, like, what was it? I want to say Sam's Club, but I think it was Costco, whatever, one of those places. And the guy didn't have money. for a hot dog. So she bought him a hot dog and they had a hot dog and he seemed really nice. And so she got his phone number because I'm sure he's got like an Obama phone for free or something. And a week or two, oh, and he had a jersey on for some team, I don't know.

And then so like a week or two later, she had an extra ticket. So she called him and said, do you want to go to the game with me? And he did. And so she picked him up and they went to the game and they had a great time. She took a selfie with him. And it was so wonderfully. She paid for his stuff and everything. thing. And then they came back to her house and he killed her and then took his car, her car and drove around for a couple of days and then set it on fire, of course. And I just thought, and then,

so that's one homeless guy. Then the next one was another girl who somebody had said, well, she's always bringing people here, you know, like homeless people and stuff. Like a neighbor said, basically they found her murdered. One of her friends found her hacked to death in her apartment. And the neighbor said, oh, yeah, I saw. with some guy that went up thing. And then they thought it was her boyfriend. Then they boy, no, no, I did. I saw her.

And here's where we saw each other. And she was actually with some guy. And she's, trust me, she'll pick up some guy or some woman, some homeless person and take them home and feed him. I'm always telling her not to do that. She picks up some guy and takes them home and he chops her.

Yeah. And just buttures her and then leaves. And I thought, what is going on? Like, what's happening? Yeah. That's you.

Yeah. That book, Gavin De Becker, Gavin De Becker wrote this book called the gift of fear. And it talks about like overriding your instincts and whatnot, but there's like this is a classic example of, you know, it's like somebody offering to help you, like, oh, let me help you carry your groceries inside.

Right. And you don't want to be rude. So you go, even though you get a bad feeling, you're like, but I don't want to be rude, which I have been guilty of that. I've done so much shit where it's like, well, but they helped me with this thing, so I don't want to be rude.

So, okay, I'll just do, you know. And so, and then, you know, the guy helps her with his groceries, up the stairs, in her apartment, boom, and kills her. So, yeah, I mean, I feel like now at, you know, it's like I'm finally learning a lot of this stuff in a way that's sunk in. But, I mean, I've done it over and over and over again in personal situations and in business over and over again in business where I just assume. like I wouldn't fuck anybody else over why would they do that to me I don't get it right like

that's where the whole as Julian calls it the tism kind of is relevant because it's like I it's like I'm wired in a certain way where I don't see stuff that a lot of other people would see or at least think to question I guess you know I also I rented apartments for a long time right a long time maybe four or five years that's not that long it seemed like a long time that thing, but I'm old now. So anyway, and you get to understand when you pull people's credit and then you see what their payment history is and what their work history is and what they very quickly realize this person won't pay me. No, no, they said this. They said that, we'll get double the deposit, tell them double the deposit. I'll take their money and I'll kick

them out. As soon as they're late, I won't, there's no, there's no, there's three days, you know, it's due on the third, oh, okay, oh, you don't have it. Okay, no problem. We're not going to have a discussion, we're not going to, oh, okay, no problem. You know, oh, give me a couple of days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. You walk out, you write the three-day notice. You come back, you stick it on the door. This is Florida, so you could have them out in like 21 days.

Like, there's no, they better, the only way they maybe could fight it is they, I have to try and fight it in court, and they better show up with, like, their kid in an oxygen machine to be able to hold it off even of a couple of months. So you just start the process, and you don't stop because this person's got such a history of being a, and you realize that, you know, they always have a story, but the truth is, though, they

bring those things on themselves. It's the same thing with, like, being homeless. Like, you don't accidentally become homeless. You have to have screwed over every single person you know that would have helped you throughout your entire life to end up on the street and gone through all the programs. And then you end up on the street. And then people are like, oh, he just, it was just, it just, something went wrong. And it wasn't, not one thing didn't go wrong.

many, many, many things went wrong and they ended up on the street. And so that's why when I tend to see people like that, my first thought is how many, my wife and I will see someone walking along the side of the road. And, you know, you see them and they're pushing a cart and I'll look at them. And I probably said this within the last few days. I looked at her because we both kind of glanced over and looked because in Florida, there's not as many homeless people as there are in New York. So they're just like kind of like everywhere. And I'll, I remember I'll look at my wife and I'll be like, how many things went wrong in this guy's life for him to end up where he's decided he's living out of that shopping cart and living in a tent in the woods.

And he's just given up. I mean, how many, I'm like, how many jobs did he lose? How many, you know, did he have mental problems? I mean, does he alcohol problems? It's like the mental problems issue. Tons of them. Because there's no, there's no real help, especially in Florida. There's no help.

Yeah. They don't. Help is jail. jail or live in the woods. Yeah. When I was at Rikers, a ton of people that came in and out of there were basically kind of, you know, on the outside, they're mostly homeless. Even the homeless guy that I was friends with, he would occasionally get himself arrested, spend a few days, shower, get a full medical exam, you know, three meals a day, whatever. And it's like a place to stay for a few days and get some care.

Or I was going to say in the medium security prison and the federal prison I was at, Because I was there for like three years. Well, there was a lot in the low, too. But there were guys that had like the amount of people that had like bipolar disorder. Yes. And that really is. They actually had a whole unit for guys like that that had mental problems. Yeah.

And they had other inmates that would stay with them. So you have two units. It's a two-man cell. And one guy is basically watching the other guy. Keep making sure he washes his clothes, calms down, goes to bed, wakes up, early, makes his bed, kind of, you know, because they're just, you know, and that really is, I want to say it's Reagan that closed all the mental hospitals, almost all the mental hospitals, there's almost none left.

Because, you know, and so those people ended up, they just kind of let them hit the street and then eventually commit crime, and then they just hammer them, and they know that if they're in prison, they'll kind of keep them in check and they kind of just got thrown away. But there's also no fixing them. So that's a tough It's probably cheaper They probably figure it's cheaper To keep them in prison

Than it is to give them mental health Services I'm sure there's some bean counter somewhere It said Well basically You know It's just like You know

It's a horrible I mean it's horrible Because there's probably no solution to it So But this got off track When you talked about having done those shows Where they moved your words around then I knew like, all right, you'll totally understand that the way a similar thing happened with me in that show,

where they just completely create a different impression of you. And in a way, and I hate to say this, but I feel like, one, I wonder how much Netflix had to do with that. And two, it's almost like clickbait. Like they want a good show. And I know you're thinking, yeah, but they're doing a documentary. they want to be accurate. Well, they want to be accurate just up, just close enough to the edge where they don't get maybe sued. But, and if they have to sacrifice you to get a better, to get more views.

Right, they will. Your, yeah, your expendable. Right. And the marketing was all pretty gross. There was this whole perpetual pups thing that they did, making fun of me about the dog thing. Right. Yeah, so Netflix wasn't behind making it. Chris Smith and Mark M's the producer were the ones who made it and then sold it to Netflix.

And I know how much they sold it for. And it's kind of grotesque. That part of another thing that they had either flat out told me, but I was shocked that it wasn't in the show. So I had thought that it was going to be in there is that that I, I had not profited from that show other than the amount that I got in the beginning that went 100% to pay the employees. So in order to participate in the show, I'm thinking it's a documentary. Documentaries traditionally don't pay the subjects. Kind of like if a major news organization is going to do a legitimate story, they're not going to pay the subject. So that all makes sense to me.

But I'd said, look, what way is heaviest on me is what my employees were. I really want to get that paid. It's this much, whatever. Okay, we'll, we'll get you 75 grand. That went straight to cover what the employees were owed. The employees were paid. That was supposed to be in the show. Yeah. And they left that out. So people are thinking that all of this stuff that I, right, so they didn't include it. And so the, you know, of all the online, online comments that come at me, the ones that that hurt are the ones that are yelling at me for being a horrible person, because You never played your employees. And it's like, if you only knew historically how that relationship has gone and the fact that, no, I did,

and that's the first thing that I wanted in order to do this dumb show, which then they made millions off of. And now I'm sitting here trying to, like, correct the record. And, yeah. But I don't know. They have to live with that. I mean, I doubt this thing awake at night. No, they're not. Again, that's my naive thinking that surely people wouldn't do X, Y, Z because that would be terrible.

They wouldn't do that. They're telling me it's going to be an honest story, and I'm assuming it's going to be an honest story because they seem nice. And I had previously been friends with this guy, Mark, and Chris seems like a nice guy early on. Like, I just, yeah, no. I mean, that's been my harsh lesson over and over again, is just because somebody seems nice, doesn't mean that they won't jam a knife in your back and make it look like you did it yourself. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor, hit the subscribe button to the bell so get notified of videos just like this.

Also, we're going to leave all of Sarma's links in the description box. We're also going to leave the link to her book. So you can get it on Amazon. Really appreciate you watching. If you want to be a guest on the show, we're also going to leave our website. You can go to the Be a Guest page and you can fill out an application and leave a short little video and we will get back with you. Thank you very much. See you.