Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Dark Web Cyber Scammer Makes Millions | John Boseak's Full Story

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Dark Web Cyber Scammer Makes Millions | John Boseak's Full Story

There was nobody doing what I was doing. I was making $100,000 a month. The quality of the product that I was putting out was indistinguishable from something that was issued from a financial institution. I can do this from anywhere. It doesn't matter where I'm at, I can do this because I need his internet connection. They beat on the door again. Police open the door. This is a fork in the road kind of moment.

Like, do I stay here and stick it out or do I leave? So I left. You know, that's what I do. I run from everything. I've been running my whole life to spend like this on recurring. theme. That's what I do. For those of you who don't know me and are just seeing me for the first time today, my name is John Boziak. And roughly from 2005 to 2009, I manufactured and distributed $3.5 million in fraudulent credit cards and driver's licenses via the internet. And I made a

boatload of money doing it. Had a great time. You feel bad about it. No, victim was crime. Did you get a haircut for this? Because you usually have the bald haircut. Oh, I grew, I, because that's all, that's all the other ones. Yeah. That's Danny, that's a concrete or Danny Jones's podcast. I softened my look a little bit. Yeah, I grew my hair.

I don't do the bald head anymore. Yeah. Yeah, made some changes, made some lifestyle changes. Yeah. So, Michigan. You were born in Michigan. Yeah, I was born in Michigan. I was born in Mount Clemens, Michigan.

It's just a small town, about 30 minutes north of, well, about 30 minutes, 20 minutes north of Detroit, downtown Detroit. Yeah, small manufacturing kind of town. You know, not a lot of wealth concentrated in the area. Right. You know, just working class, just middle working class, you know, not giant homes or anything like that. Yeah. So I have two younger sisters. Oh, okay.

I have a younger brother and I have an older brother. Yeah. But me and my younger brother had the same mom, different dads. Right. Me and my older brother have the same dads, different moms. And then me and my younger, two sisters have the same dads and different moms. So it's... I didn't know that at all.

Yeah, it's all... I just know Chris. It's spread out all over the place. So your parents got divorced and... No, my parents were never married. Oh, well, they weren't... You were raised in a single-family home. You know, I don't even think...

Single-family home. Did I just say single-family home? Single-family home. Single-mother household. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't meet my dad until I was like seven or eight years old. Oh, okay.

Yeah, so, like, they, something happened. Like, I, to this day, I can't get the full story out of either one of them, neither my mom nor my dad. So, um, but I got a little bit out of one of my uncles. And I didn't find this out so later. He was like, oh, yeah, your dad, you know, you didn't start coming around until you were seven or eight years old. I was like, I didn't, I don't remember that, you know, because you don't remember.

Yeah. Stings from when you're that age. And, um, yeah, you know, it's, you know, he just wasn't there. Like, growing up him and my mom didn't have a relationship at all. so like when my mom would go when I would go to my dad for the weekend they would pull up

we'd meet at Kmart at the Kmart parking lot and my mom would pull in one end of the parking lot and my dad would pull in one and the other they don't get out of the cars and speak to each other

and I get out of one car and I go get in the other car and that's it right like there's maybe one phone call to say I'm gonna come pick them up or she would just stick me

on the phone with him like if he called she would just stick me on the phone with him and I would just communicate with him directly and I was like 9 or 10 years old 11, 11, 12, 13 years old

right but me and my dad we have like a great relationship like yeah I don't speak to my mom nowadays like I haven't speaking to or seen my mother since like 2009 2010 um but me and my dad you know I call him every once in a while because he's you know I got to check in out him he's getting kind of old right but yeah you know me and I've always had a pretty good relationship with him you know there was it was rocky in my teenage years uh you know for a little while there but I wasn't angry I had a lot of angry years as a youth so what what happened when you were Like, you know, did you, were your good student?

Did you get in trouble as a kid? Did you, you know? Right, no. So school. Geez, this is, we're digging out cobwebs now. I haven't thought about school in so long. I always got good grades, but I was class clown. You know, I needed the attention from the other kids, so I would just do shit to make

people laugh. Plus, you know, everybody's been telling me my whole life that I'm like this super intelligent person, but I don't really think so. I think I'm just really good at being full of shit. You know what I mean? Like, I'm really good at making people believe that I'm a lot smarter than I really am. You know, if that makes any kind of sense at all. You know, it's like a scam.

And, yeah, it's just, you know, my intelligence is really just a scam that I'm running. Since we're on the topic of identity theft, have you ever gone online and searched your name and seen how many data brokers have your information available for sale? These brokers sell your information to spammers, scammers, and anybody that's targeting you. in my day i had to go out and either survey people make phone calls run ads to gather all this type of information your name date of birth email address home address relatives information but all of that is available online through brokers that's why i use aura the sponsor of today's video ora automatically shows me the brokers that have my information and have it available for sale

and they automatically fill out an opt-out request for me cleaning up my information helps reduce the the amount of spam that I get and protects me from hackers who could use that information to get access to my social media accounts, my bank accounts, and other sensitive information. Recently, AT&T revealed that over 73 million customer records have been released on the dark web. AT&T is recommending that those affected use stronger passwords, monitor their account activity, and consider credit freezes or fraud alerts from credit bureaus. Well, ORA does all this for me. And best of all, I don't have to download several different apps just because a company couldn't keep my data secure.

If my information was compromised in the AT&T data breach, I wouldn't be worried because ORA is always on. It's always protecting me. I value my privacy and yours. All you have to do is go to Aura.com slash Matt to start your two-week free trial. Also, we're going to leave the link in the description box. I used to finish my work before everybody else because, I don't know, it was easy. And so then I would just start fucking with people in class, and I would always get in trouble, you know. But like I said, I would get the grades.

Like, so the grades were there, but they just, the behavioral problems, you know. Right. Right. What are you going to do? Didn't you burn down your grandfather's barn or shed or something like that? The tool shed. And that wasn't, I was involved in the incident, but I was, I was involved in the incident, but What was it mean?

I didn't do it. No, see, me and my cousin. So my grandfather was like an alcoholic, like hardcore. He would have bottles hidden all over the place in the couch, in the bathroom, in the tool shed, in the backyard underneath buckets and shit. And he drank Kessler. No, what was it? Whistlers or Kessler's vodka or brandy or wine or whatever it was. And my cousin knew where he stashed his bottles.

So we used to go into the tool shed and take sips and then go down and go fishing. Well, he had like a basket of like oily rag. or something in there and we were walking out and my cousin smoked cigarettes and we're like 10, 11 years old I didn't smoke cigarettes at that time because it was just like I just wasn't into it

and I did eventually end up getting into it later but my cousin smoking a cigarette we're walking out he pitches a cigarette behind him like does one of these and apparently it flies into the shed into the bag of oily rags right we're out on the boat

on the other side of the lake and we see all this smoke coming up and so we decided to start heading back to shore. So we, you know, turn the boat around and we're going back to shore. And we see all these fire trucks and shit at the top of the hill. And we're like, is that that grandma and grandpa's house? So we think in the house and burned to the ground, you know, and we get up the hill, there's nothing left of the tool shed. It's gone. Like, there's just a cement slab and, like, remnants of everything that had melted inside the tool shed. Do they know it was you? No. Okay.

No, we never, I don't think we got, we got caught for that one. how and that was in Michigan yeah Michigan yeah so I grew up in Florida I grew up in in southern Florida like so my mother in like 1992 when I was like seven I don't know why but she decided to move me and my little brother down to South Florida for whatever reason that didn't last too long you know she ended up moving back to Michigan in 1996 or like you know 1995 1996 and I stayed down in Florida right did you get in trouble of Florida like didn't you oh I had a very eventful youth. Right.

Yeah. To what happened? What happened? Yeah. Very eventful youth. How did it go wrong? Oh, man. I think the very first time was stealing bicycles.

Right. You know, I went up to the high school or the middle school and they had this giant cage in the front where they used to lock in. They should ride your bicycle. You put it in there and they closed the gate and lock it. But there was no roof on it. What city was this? I don't remember. I don't even remember what middle school it was.

Was it Miami? Yeah. No, it might have been, I might have been in Michigan at this time. I think this is one of my, one of my times when I was in Michigan for the summer. Because I used to bounce back and forth. Like, so I used to go up to Michigan and do summers at like my dad's house or like my mom's house. And then I would stir up a bunch of shit in Michigan. I would go back down to Florida and then.

But where's your mom? When you moved, where did you move? Did she move to like home? It was at Homestead? No, it was Homestead. Yeah, yeah. We lived in Homestead. And that's basically Miami, right?

Or is that further from Miami? It's further from my, it's like. homestead is its own thing like you've got miami which homestead's technically part of miami it's south of miami it's a city in dade county but homestead's like its own okay you go down there it's farms and like alligators and there's it's like rural there's nothing but you know vegetation okay so what happened with what happened with bikes i still i thought i was going to go up there and steal some bikes uh well i did i didn't think i did i did do it i went down and uh i crawl i climbed the fence and mind you this is right in front of the school like there's big

windows right in front of the school where the office and everything they could see right into the pen right you know i just had i just didn't give a shit you know and so i climbed i climbed the fence and i jumped over and i grabbed a bike and i climbed the fence and i threw it over and then i went and i grabbed another one and i threw it over and i went and i grabbed another one and i threw it over you know this is late 90s and in the late 90s there was a bicycle manufacturer by the name of gt they still exist but they sold the company and now they just make like shitty bikes but mid to late 90s was like this golden era of BMX. Right.

You know, like when they made, they made like this certain bicycle frame, like the GT Harro vertigo, and they had like two or three of different variations of that bicycle. And they were super expensive. Like, even like the late 90s,

these things were like $500, between like $3 and $500. Like if you went to the bike store to buy one. I was into them. Like that was my thing at that period of time in my life. I was just like really into BMX. So I decided, you know,

and I'm poor. You know, so I came. I'm not afford to go buy a fine. five hundred dollar bicycle for me. Are you kidding me? And so, you know, I decided to be a thief, which I had learned. And I tell, tell a few stories from my early, early childhood, which I think kind of made me become a thief for a brief period in my life. Like I, like, if it wasn't bolted down, I was stealing it. Right. Like, at one point in time in my life, like I was like, and then it's like

it ended. Like, I just stopped stealing after that. I don't know what it was. You know, maybe I grew a conscious, maybe had a little bit of empathy. Maybe I just got a little bit older. Maybe maybe I just got tired of getting caught for petty bullshit, but I just stopped stealing at one point in my life. Anyway, so I throw these bicycles over the, over the, over the fence, and I'm riding one bicycle, and I've got one on the handlebars, and I've got one I could grab by the grip and ride out next to me. Right. And I rode them all the way to my house and took them all apart.

What'd you do with them? Sell them? Yeah. Oh, I was running like a little, like a chop shop, if you will, like a bicycle chop shop. Like, oh, yeah, I was just, I still, if I just seen a bicycle, I was grabbing it. Like it didn't matter. It didn't matter if I was already on a bicycle because I learned how to ride. I could put a bicycle on the handlebars of a bicycle and ride two bicycles at once if I had to, you know. So yeah, I was just, I was on, it's like a stealing spree. And this was a teenage year. So this is between the age of like 13 to 16. Did you get caught? I mean, did you get caught? Oh yeah. I got caught. I told some girl. I went over,

like we were skipping school at some girl's house and we went to her house after we stole the bicycles because I was with a buddy at mine when I did this. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And we were like, we got to her house and she was skipping school. And like, so I thought like everything was cool to just like kind of be like, yeah, we just stole these bikes from the next day. I was in school. And they say, my name comes on the PA getting called down to the office. And I'm like, and sure enough, yeah, I was there and the cops were there.

And I got handcuffed and walked out of school. And they waited until the bell rung and everybody was in the hallways. They could have took me out when the hallways were empty in between classes. But they waited. and they waited to all the halt, yeah, till everything filled, everybody was there

so they could embarrass me. Yeah, this is a good lesson to the other kids. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what you know. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was embarrassing and that was my very first time really ever getting in trouble. What happened? Probation. Yeah, probation that I did never completed successfully. I've been on probation

maybe 12 or 13 times in my life never once ever, have I ever completed one full term all the way to the end. so so what happened what happened after that like I mean what you and I know you end up in Miami I know you end up come out

I bounced back and forth between Michigan like I said I'll come up to Michigan I'll stir up a bunch of shit and then I'll go back down to Florida and mind you I've been doing this since I was like 13 you know because look my mom left me in Miami because I was incarcerated right how'd you get incarcerated that time

what was I doing? Oh I think I think I was stealing cars or something. Like I had graduated. No, I graduated to stealing cars. You know, the bicycles I was really super early on. I think I was middle school.

So I had to have been like, what, 12, 13 in middle school. You're like 12 and 7th grade or whatever. Okay. Yeah. And then when I finally, like, I went from bicycles and I started hanging out. I got a little bit older, 14, 15,

and I started hanging out with kids that were 17, 18, 19. You know, and they always would put me to go do stuff. Like, go do steal this or go do that. or they would show me, you know. Send John, he'll do it. Yeah, they used to take me stealing cars with them, and I used to jump in,

I used to jump in the passenger seat, and they used to be like, do this. They literally sit there and show me, and then we'd steal the car and peel off. They'd kind of like your friends, right? Growing up, no. Yeah, we stole a lot of cars in the late 90s, early 2000s.

Yeah, like from like 1998 to, I don't know, 2001 or something like that. It was like, that was my car theft days. And I think after that, after I got caught for stealing cars and they put me in, started put me in programs. Right.

That's when the stealing kind of stopped. But the behavior. You can't curve the behavior. Like, I'll stop the stealing, but you're not going to tell me what to do. Right. Well,

what happened with your mom? Why, what, I mean, what's she saying she took off? She couldn't, well, I mean,

she couldn't really handle me, dude. What are you going to do? I had no positive male role models growing up in my life. Like, there wasn't even a boyfriend present that he could lean on me.

you know, so it was like... And she's got you and your brother, Chris. Yeah. Yeah, she can't stay awake 24 hours a day. Right. So as soon as you go to sleep, I'm out of here. Right. Like, unless you put me in a room that I can't escape out of,

as soon as you go to sleep, I'm gone. Like, I'm out of the window. I'm out of a door. And then I'm just gone for a couple days until the police pick me up and bring me back home. You know, so it was like, you know, I just was super rebellious from a very young age. Like, you couldn't tell me nothing.

Like, there was no controlling me at all. So, well, okay, so at some point you said you got locked up and she took, she left. I was in a program. Yeah. I was in one of those programs where you had to go do like 10 months or whatever to complete the program. And then when I was getting, as I was getting released from the program, my mom was already gone. She was in Michigan, you know. And she basically told me like, you know, figure it out. Right. I can't, you know. Which I didn't bother me at the time, to be honest with you. It didn't had no, like I didn't. I'm like, oh, good. I get to go doing whatever I want. now because I've been doing whatever I want anyway from about 13 years old is when it started that's when I started with stealing and the staying out all night and experimenting with alcohol and stuff like that so what so what happens after that I mean if you're being really you know you're they don't just release you to nobody I mean they have to put you somewhere they can just yeah they put me they put me in a like a like a housing thing for kids yeah it was called um

shit what was that place called covenant house florida yeah covenant house florida for a lot of ale beefs that's right i don't know why my brain got stuck there for a second um but you know yeah they stuck me in covenant house which was like a i don't know it's like a homeless shelter for teens everybody there was you know 18 years and in under you know uh kids that were removed from like crazy households that couldn't go to like but they were too bad to every they would get kicked out of every like foster home they get put into then this is like what are you going to do you can't lock them up because they're not breaking the law. Right.

You know, but they're not old enough to get a job and support themselves. So there has to be somewhere to put these people. So that was like one of those little intermediary places. Right. You know. I was going to say, the only reason I know all this is because I wrote a story about John called Bent. And, you know. My memoir.

Yeah. And what's so funny is that, like, you know, I ordered all the Freedom of Information Act. You know, he sat. We met in Coleman in prison. I wrote like an 80-page outline on him. And then I went to all the different counties that he had been arrested. And really all of them. It was just asking for any information.

And I would get stuff back. And then when I would get stuff back, there would be other stuff. And I would get stuff back. I actually just came across one of the documents here where it was like they arrested him one time for being a runaway juvenile. where he went to some place called the Bridges and then ran away, and then the Bridges put in a request saying, hey, you got to find this kid

and bring him back here. He's supposed to be here. Yeah. And then... That's the, like, Miami Day version of Covenant House. So it was called Bridges in Miami-Dade County, but in Broward, it was Covenant House. So then when I asked them about it,

because I heard, I had a whole outline, we spent days together writing, probably a couple weeks writing this outline, I asked him, oh, yeah, I forgot about that one. That's right. Yeah, listen to this. and he'd tell me the story and then he was there for like two days and then walked off and then they didn't catch you count then they caught him for that like years later they arrested him for a warrant

that was taken out when he was a juvenile but they arrested him and they had to let him go right but they still arrested yeah crazy right but i'm saying it was just it's so i have like a whole pile of paperwork um but it was it was uh that's why like when i'm sitting there like i i already know the story so i know covenant house i remember that yeah yeah yeah so they sent me to like a coven house you know and it was just like a you know they get you a job right they pay for your bus fare they feed you they house you they try to get you involved in some kind of program sit down with a counselor uh you know and they just come up with the game plan you know you and the counselor just do like a one-on-one you know what do you want

to do with your life what are your goals what's your situation and that they kind of just tailor everything, you know, for you. It's a really good program, you know, if you, if you go there with the intensive. This is going to help me. Yeah. You know, but a lot of kids there, they were just like off the chain, you know, smoking, drinking, coming in, getting kicked out. But you're still going to high school. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to Miami High School at this point. So, yeah, I had to catch the bus from Fort Lauderdale all the way down to Miami to go to high school every day. I didn't want to switch high schools. I didn't want to go to high school in Broward. I didn't really, I don't You know, Broward was just their school systems were weird.

And I was used to Miami, the Miami School District. So, yeah, still in high school, you know, still homeless pretty much at this point. Because that's basically what you are when you're at this place is you're just like a homeless kind of individual, you know. And, yeah, I just going to school and selling that school. I would roll up little individual little joints and take them to school and sell that. Yeah, you know, it's just day-to-day life, not really. having a plan or anything at this point. What about the thing, the fake pill, fake action?

Yeah, we'll get to that. That doesn't come to later. Well, then where's bandwagon fit in? Sure, yeah. Or is that already passed? No, you know, so this Covenant House place, you can walk away from this place. Right. And they don't put, we won't put a warrant out for your rest.

Right. You know, so if they decide to kick you out or you don't follow their rules or whatever, they just tell you, like, you've got to pack your shit and go. Right. And there was plenty of time. So I was in and out of this Covenant House place. like this became my place to go to

because once they kicked you out it was 30 days and then 30 days you had to apply to come back and you had to go sit down and have a meeting and go over

why you were kicked out before and make sure you're not going to do it again all that BS which I did like three or four times I got kicked out

like three or four times before I decided to finally take it serious you know I would periodically get kicked out of the covenant house just for what

just for not showing up for like staying out I think all mine was alcohol related Yeah, because I started getting involved With alcohol at this point You know, my teenage years, like 15, 16 I think was like the first time I really started

Like drinking beer on a regular And getting bottles and stuff like that And that became an issue here As we'll figure out Right. Yeah, you know, yeah So it was all usually alcohol I'd come back buzzed

And somebody would tell on me Or the staff would see me You know And they'd give me a breath of eyes and I wouldn't pass and then yeah or they would just randomly give me like a test I remember this one time we were all on the smoking patio because you could smoke they would let you smoke the cigarettes there somebody was down there had lit up a joint right I wasn't even on the smoking patio I was upstairs I was upstairs in my room I wasn't even on the smoking patio and somebody said that they had seen me out there

and they tested me and everyone else out there and of course I was smoking but not that time no not that time like I would you know whatever and it was I failed to fail to test and they fucking kick me out. And this is like right when I was doing good, I was doing good this time. I wasn't trying to, I mean, obviously I was leaving during the day and doing my thing. I would get high a little bit here and there, but yeah, I got, anyway, bandwagon, you're asking about bandwagon, bandwagon, let me describe bandwagon for the viewers. Banwagon was this, this kid, this homeless kid I met in Fort Lauderdale. His, he had a mom that lived in Fort Lauderdale, but apparently she was just a nightmare. You know what I mean? Like she would just kick him out.

And, you know, wouldn't let them inside. And she had different boyfriends. I don't really know his backstory. He told me a little bit about it, but I don't really remember. But this kid was a picture Jerry Garcia, okay? With the beard and the hair and everything. This kid would walk around Fort Lauderdale with no shoes on. No shoes, no socks, just barefoot.

Get on the bus, the city bus. We'd be downtown walking around. We'd have no shoes on at all. Just off, completely off the chain. I just, you know, drinking every day, just taking out. I was on my way to work one day because I had a job doing windows. I worked for a window company for many years. And I ran into him at the main bus terminal in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

And he was going to give plasma or donate blood so he could get tickets to go to this music festival, downtown Miami, called, I don't remember, what it's called, uh, Ultra, Ultra Music Festival. It's like this electronic thing every year they have in downtown Miami. But he was going to donate plasma. He's going to donate blood so he can get tickets to go. And he's like, man, you got five bucks, man, you need to get some orange juice or something before. So I had to give him, I remember having to give him five dollars. But that was just bandwagon, you know. That's just, and, and how we got that name, I don't even, I can't tell you. I mean, I know that, I know the kid who named him and originally started calling he was another kid that was at Covent House with me

and he just said and he said something about bandwagon about the explanation he gave didn't really make sense as to why he called him that he said something about the Oregon Trail and he's like you're one of them guys that used to be on the back of the bandwagon in the old Western days

I don't know that really wasn't right they didn't make sense to me but the name stuck and that's just what we called them his actually I think his name was Josh actually his name was Josh but everybody called him bandwagon I actually got him a job working with me at the window company

but yeah that was my buddy and you know you you get this little group of of friends yeah you know because people don't i don't think people realize the homeless teen scene i mean at least back then i don't know what's what it is now i mean things are different now everyone has a cell phone you know even homeless people have a cell phone so like the game's changed now you know as far as you're being able to pool resources and reach out to people and make moves and like you couldn't do any of that back then because none of that technology existed you know so we all just relied on each other and like every homeless teen like every one of my friends that all had a skill that you know what I mean like they all had a skill like one dude was just really good talking to people he can go in he can get us in anywhere he could talk his way into anything that was our guy you know I was the computer guy like I just knew how to like make food coupons for fast food restaurants and I you know I figured out the UPC system and how to print barcodes and you know go to McDonald's and Burger King and get free food. You know, one guy could steal anything.

He could cars, boats, whatever you needed. This guy could get his hands on it. It was like a rag-tag group of Oceans 11. You said one time when I was like, how are you feeding yourself? And you were like, you knew like the schedule for 7-Eleven when they threw out the old sandwiches. Oh, yeah.

And when the soup kitchens gave the best meals. Every second Thursdays, this one 7-Eleven on sunrise and A-1A in Fort Lauderdale Beach. And if anybody, everyone knows what that. 7-11. If you know the area, you know the 7-11. And every second Thursday, they used to get rid of all of the, you know, expired sandwiches and everything. And they'd be... They're still good. They're just past the expiration. Well, yeah, he would throw them in a box, then he would throw him in the dumpster. And it wasn't, you didn't really have to dumpster dive. You just had to flip

the lid open and grab the box out, which I would do because, you know, those were good hoagies. Right. Those were, those were all right, you know. So, yeah, and then there was like, every Tuesday, this one church group would, uh, you have to go and sit through the church. church and you'd have to sing and praise Jesus. But then there was a spaghetti dinner at the end. Right. So you could have the spaghetti and meatballs. Unlimited. They brought, you know, buckets of that shit and the garlic bread as much as you wanted, but you had to sit through Jesus. So I'd have to sit through Jesus every Tuesday. I think it was Wednesday. I think they do it on the Wednesdays, because I know the people go to church Sunday and Wednesday is like the Christian, right? So I think it was

every Wednesday. And then there was another soup kitchen that did it every Thursday. And then there was one on Sunday, but I couldn't do the Sunday one because it was way too much. much Jesus for one day. Yeah, there was no doing Sundays. So I would just have to, you know, wing it on Sundays. Right. You know, so I had the, I had the city pegged at one point in time, you know, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, like that whole southern Florida. Yeah, I lived pretty comfortably as a homeless person, you know, back then. I did. I was always shower, showered every day and I had clean clothes. I always knew, I knew the spots were to go and eat. You know, I could go, I get a free bus pass. So I would hustle, I'd get my monthly bus pass, and I knew how to work

the whole public transit system and all the South, like, you get anywhere on a bus or a train. You know, you give me an address, I know how to get there. Well, back in the day, maybe not anymore, but I knew how to get there through public transportation. You know, and that's just what it was in the early 2000s, late 2000s, early 2000s, early 2000s.

But what was the selling the the fake antilles? Right. So there was a brand called Remifeng. And I think it may still even exist. And there's a brand of women's menstrual, I don't know if it's to regulate it or alleviate the pains. I think it's like some all-natural alternative to might all. I think is really what it is now that I'm thinking about it.

It's called remifeng. And each one of these little pills, they have butterflies on them. So I used to just get a box of those, open them all up, and I used to go walk down to the bodega and get those little dying baggies. And I used to just put and just sit there and bag them all up and I'd go and I'd be in South Beach and it'd be two o'clock in the morning. People were leaving in the bars, people were drunk. They don't know what they're taking. Right. And even if they, you know, even if they, sometimes, most of time, even if they take them,

they don't feel nothing, they think it's like a placebo. Right. Yeah, listen, I see people come back and buy more from me one night. I got a guy, bought four of them, came back, bought like four or five more one night. So what are you're just saying, I got a, they think it's, they think it's, yeah. Because it looks like how they, most of it, they put something like a little cross or something. It's not, it doesn't quite look like an ecstasy. Excessy pills are like, they're a little bit taller, and this looks like a regular

pill, but I mean, what do you know? It's got a butterfly on it. What do you want to do? Listen, it's in a little plastic bag. And it's got a butter, the pill's got a butterfly on it. It's like a light gray, you know, so... You put a couple aspirins in a little plastic bag. It looks like... Yeah, exactly. You know, so that was just one little scam I had. I had plenty of those. Like, the coupon scam was a good one. That worked for years. You said sometimes they would like that, even if they wouldn't,

even if it wouldn't go through, they'd still give you the food? That happened on a few occasions. Yeah. because, you know, I would just, I would either put up a stink or I would be in there so much, because I would go to, like, some of them I would go to so many times that they wouldn't honor my coupons anymore. Yeah, that's where, that's really what it came to. It was like, they were just like, no, we can't. Because they would send them off and they were coming back like, no, these aren't, these aren't legitimate coupons. Right. Yeah. So we burned out South Beach with the food coupons, every fast food restaurant. Can you explain that process? Sure, yeah. So the, what I did was is I had a

program that you could scan UPC labels and it would break down, you could see the lines of code for it. So it would show you how to program the UPC labels. So then I would go get legitimate coupons from like, you know, I would just go get like the paper out of the paper box. And I'd go to the back and I'd get the coupons for like McDonald's, Burger King, Miami subs, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and just a few other like fast food restaurants. The ones that would send out any, actually, whatever coupons were in the in the thing, then what I would do is, I would scan the UPC label on them and I would figure out the coding for it

and then I would print out my own coupons and I would change the coding inside of the UPC label and I would change the front of the coupon you know, it would be like buy one small fry, get a double cheeseburger or whatever or buy one cheeseburger

get a double cheeseburger free. You know, you always had to spend a little bit of money. It wasn't always like super free food. You always had to spend like a dollar or two dollars or whatever. Get two, three bucks worth of. But you would get, you know,

you would get a couple extra items, you know. So I would like, And that's pretty much how it just worked. And it worked for, I don't work for like a good solid. At least two solid summers, I think we did it. Yeah, two solid summers. And by the third summer, I think they were already onto it. So what happened?

So like eventually you graduate high school. Like what do you do after high school? Yeah. So I did graduate. I graduated from Miami High in 2003. You know, I walked. I got my diploma. Nobody was there for me, you know.

And I didn't know what I was going to do at this point Because I was still a knucklehead I was still getting drunk almost every single day I was still you know not really taking life serious I had no goals I was just kind of chasing girls and and hanging out You know And I had skills apparently obviously I had some computer skills Funny story is I had administrative access to the entire Broward County

public library system for years. For like five straight years, I had administrator access to the entire Broward County system. How that happened? So I used to spend a lot of time at the library. When you're homeless, and just at this point in time,

obviously, because there's no internet, there weren't screens to look at. The Broward County Library was like a big building so you could go and sit in a corner. And if you didn't look super homeless, people would just leave you alone. Right. They would think you're there studying or whatever.

And, you know, South Florida, is it gets hot during the summertime obviously and the building was air-conditioned so I used to go there and just hang out every single day that was kind of like part of my daily routine so I'd wake up I'd leave I'd go get something to eat and then I'd go to the to the library and I would just hang out in the library either read or you know do whatever and I used to watch the terminal where the the library lady sat at because the terminal where she'd always sit at wasn't inside the cubicles right outside the cubicle. And one day I watched her get up. And usually when she got up, the screen after 15 seconds would shut off. Or it would go back to the main screen where it was just the login box

where you put your password, your username password. And then one day she gets up and she walks off and I did, the screen didn't change. Like it just stayed on whatever she was doing. So I was like, you know, I just sat there and I just watched and watched. And the Broward, county public library you could see so from the ground floor if you look up you can see kind of there's like a straight up you can see the floors of each floor of the library

you know what I mean? Yeah so and I can see she was up like two or three floors above me I just seen her walk past so I got up and I just went and sat down at her terminal and I went to where they give where the administrative privileges and everything it was like window and this is like 1999 so this is like Windows 98

I think the library system was running or something like this before millennial edition and all that Windows 2000 I think it was like Windows 98 so it was a super simple basic operating system a lot of you kids don't even know what that is. A lot of these kids have never even been on a Windows 98 computer

right you know but it was really easy just to jump into the administrative privileges add an administrator and then set my own password for administrative privileges and then just back out and go back to the screen she was on no way that, you know, the librarian, I'm sure, wasn't an IT tech, wasn't an IT professional. She was an old librarian. I'm sure that she just knew how to barely log on or whatever.

So, you know, she didn't know that there was, nobody knew that I had added. So what can you do with that? Oh, you can add or remove programs from the computer because your, your access to, when you get on and you get on the internet at a public library, your access is very limited. Oh, okay. They, you're certain websites, they've got them blocked on a firewall, so you can't access certain websites. you can't add or remove programs to the computer. You can't download. You can't run Photoshop.

You can do any of that shit. You can browse the web. You basically have a computer at the library now. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, I can log in, administrative privileges, and I can set up Photoshop. I had like programs hidden on certain computers where I could go and then open up a certain part

of the operating system and go in. And I had like Photoshop set up. And, you know, Bear Share and LimeWire, this was before back in the day. This is before Napster, even. And there was like these P2P, like person-to-person file sharing sites you can go to called Bear Share and LimeWire. This is the Wild West of like downloading music in the early 2000s, late 90s.

So I had those programs set up on there. I used to burn CDs. I used to take like in my backpack. I'd have like a stack of like those blank, you know, the tower of blank CDs you get back in the day. I'd be sitting there burning CDs all day like music CDs. And I would go out and I would sell those to people. Yeah, I would burn on the DVD. and I'd go out and I'd sell, I'd be passing out all over the place.

Oh, yeah. Coupons. Right. Yeah. So what, um... Because listen, laptops didn't exist. Yeah, yeah. You mean, they did, but they were super expensive and nobody had one.

Yeah. And I didn't have access to a computer or printers or any of that, you know, because I was basically homeless. So when you graduate, what did you do after you graduate? I ended up, actually, when I was in the covenant house, um, I got, I ran into, there was a staff member there by the name of Mr. Johnson. Um, Mr. Johnson was really cool guy.

I used to hang out with him late night in the TV room after everybody went to sleep or whatever and we used to just kick it and talk shit. And he convinced me to go and get a degree in graphic design.

He knew some people that worked for the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and they had a really good program at that time, you know, before the downfall of the Art Institute. I'm not sure if you know

about all the controversy. No. Oh yeah, they took away of all of the art institutes. So, like, all that money you paid for your diploma or whatever is worthless. Yeah, so they're not, like, an accredited university anymore. And at one point in time, they were selling themselves.

I believe that's what it was. Yeah, but no, they had a good program at the time for graphic design. He kind of talked me into it. So I enrolled with the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, downtown on Los Angeles, right on LaSolos Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale. And how long, how long does that take to get? I was just going for my associates. I was just going to start with my associates, get in.

So it's like a two-year program, right, you know. And at this time, I'm still getting kicked out of the Covenant House every other month. I'm still drinking. I'm still partying, you know. And at one point, I had gotten a car. I got in a vehicle at this point somehow. I was like 16 or 17. Oh, I remember.

I was working for a window company. And I worked for this window company for years. I don't know. dude they would just let me come in drunk sleep in the back of the warehouse like they would take me to go install windows on a job and i'd be i'd be throwing up on the job site because i'd be so hung over and i'd be sweating and throwing up they let me go sleep in the van with the air conditioning on like they just i don't know why and they never fired me right ever i worked there for years and they just they just put up with it and um so i there was this Haitian i used to work with and he asked

me if i wanted to buy a car from him he's like you can pay me like a hundred dollars a month for whatever you want he had this car and this thing was a piece of shit. It was a Chrysler Sundance and it had a rust mohawk. Like the sun had just eaten away the paint on the hood and the roof and the thing. But it was just in this one strip where the sun hit it.

I've seen exactly that. Exactly what you're talking about. Paint was gone. It was just like a rust mohawk. The interior of the car, like the headliner was like when you drove, it was like hanging down almost touching your head. And if you had because there was no AC, the AC didn't work. So when I had to put all the windows down when I would drive on the

highway, the headliner would go inside the car and it would just you would get shit all over you from it was a bad experience they were like a film of like a little tiny yeah they would cover on you stuck to your clothes it's like um it was the material of the mix with the glue

yeah I was gonna say from the headliner it's not the foam it's not it's not but it's not foam it's like foam yes it's like foam but it's made it little particles and beating as soon as you touch it it turns into like sand it's like a brown like a yellowish brown yeah yeah yeah the older cars yeah but and um should be covered in that shit you know and so I had a car and I was sleeping in my car in the parking garage of the Art

Institute so the security guard actually went to I went to high school with so he used to let me in there at night and I used to park in the in the school structure sleep in my car and then get up and go to class in the morning and then you know go about my day or whatever and that's and I did that for roughly about two years just scamming didn't really have any money I did was on I got financial aid, so that paid for, you know, my college. I also got a student loan. That paid for a little bit. And then I had, I was getting assistance from, so like in Broward County, if you're a college student, you get and get like free bus passes.

Right. You can get like meal vouchers and like food stamps and stuff. You know, so I was working the system, you know. I was eating. I had the food stamps so I could go to PubLix and get a pub sub if I needed to, you know. And that's how I survived all the way. through college. That was what? So I graduated high school 2003 when started there about like it was about a year. I had about a year hiatus between my graduation and when I actually started

at the Art Institute. And then I graduated the Art Institute in 2007 roughly. Okay. Yeah, I got my associate's degree in graphic design and right immediately went to go work for a company straight out of straight out of college it was pretty cool got hired immediately graphic designs come right for signs

and stuff yeah so so at every graduating class when you're when you're getting ready to graduate they hold like a job fair

it's kind of like a job fair you know you go and you bring your portfolio everything you've worked on the past few years because while you're going through all these classes you're building

you're working on projects that but you're learning while you're working on the projects and when you complete the project the projects go into like this mock portfolio and the project's going to like this mock portfolio and the

projects are for like mock companies. So like the projects I was working on while I was in college, they were for like fictitious companies that didn't exist. But we were still creating, you know, doing like the corporate packaging, you know, build the website, do the company logo, build the, um, you know, everything, the stationary, the handbooks. So you had to go through and dwell. So I had like a decent little portfolio built that I had worked on over the past two years. They had this job fair. Legitimate companies come to this job fair. And, uh, you know, you go to each booth. You show them what you worked on. They tell you a little bit about their company. You tell them a little bit about yourself. And they're like, okay, well, here's my information.

Here's my information. Sometimes they call. Sometimes they don't. One company ended up calling me right away, like right after I graduated, asked me, offered me, oh, what was it? I think it was like 80,000 a year or something like that. It was a ridiculous salary. It wasn't like an hourly wage. It was like, you know, you're going to come, you're going to work. Right. It's not going to be a 40 hour, a week job. You're going to work. you're going to probably work double that, you know, maybe even triple. But it was a salary, salary position. It was a super high salary. And I took it.

And I wouldn't work for this company. It was, what they did was, what were all of their products? They had, they did auto wraps, they did banners, they did screen printing, they did t-shirts, they did pretty much anything, everything you can imagine as far as like printing medium is concerned. we did at this company. Yeah. And they hired me in.

There was some guy working there from the, so the company was owned by these Argentinian people. I believe they were from Argentina or Colombia. I may be wrong on that. It was either Columbia or Argentina in one of those countries. South America. Yeah, from South America. And the one guy that was there doing the graphic design, he couldn't stay in the country. There was some, you know, he was there on a visa or something like, whatever, he had to go back.

So I worked under him for like six or eight months and he trained me. And then I just became like the lead. graphic design guy for the whole company. So every project that came in the door I had three people that worked under me

you know that reported directly to me and this was crazy because I was like 19 or 20 years old at this point you know 21 I believe

I was super young you know first unexperienced completely inexperienced right like I knew what I was doing as far as you know the graphic design works

but I had no idea how to like lead a team and like organize like project manager if you will like I didn't know how I had to be a project manager. I'm just a graphic designer,

but I was project manager, graphic designer, I was everything, you know. And I had to report to the wife, the owner was always out of the country, so I had to deal with his wife, and then she would, there was like a chain of people

I had to go through to get anything done. It was, it was, they paid me well, but it was a nightmare. So what happened to the, their company, right? So I worked there for,

I don't know, I worked there for a while, and then one day I just show up to work and the FBI's there and they had the whole place they were going through it was like a movie straight up they were going through

this filing cabinets they had they wouldn't let me in the building they pulled me aside and they interviewed me for about 45 minutes an hour asking me how long I even working there what did I get paid you know

do how do how did I get the job how do I know the people that own the business and I was like do they they you know I went to our institute they came to a job fair I got the job from the job fair. I don't really know.

I don't know these people personally. It was what I was trying to. I've never been to their homes or nothing like that. So what was the issue? What was the deal? I never got the full story. Either they were using the place to launder money or they were selling something illegal

or maybe they were wanted for something else and they were, I don't know, I have no idea. Yeah. But the owner's wife showed up, you know, and she wrote me and two or three other employees a check for the rest of our salary for the year. And this was in like February, January, February this happened. Okay.

Cut us a check and was like, you know, apparently we're not going to be in business. And if we are, we don't know how long and this, that, and the other. Rose a check, you know, essentially terminating our employment and all of our contracts right then and there that we had with the company. And she said that you need to go cash these checks right now. I remember that distinctly. She's like, you need to leave here. Don't wait till tomorrow.

Don't wait till this afternoon. Leave here and go straight to the bank and cash these checks. All right. And that was it. And I never, I never, I never looked into it. I never called the people again, nothing. You know, I just knew that I had student loans to pay.

Now I don't have a job. And I'm living pretty comfortable at this point. Right. You know, I had a nice condo and brickel in downtown Miami. It was like, at this time was like $1,500 a month, which now is like it'd be five grand a month to live in the same unit probably right you know but this is 07 so this is early you know mid 2000 this is before right right before the 08 whole thing happened in 2008 the housing market crash and the recession and everything uh which funny

story i didn't even know happened until 2010 like i had so much money in 2008 like when the when the everything crashed and the housing market crashed i had no idea that that it was even going on. Like, I had no clue. Because I wasn't in real estate. Right. I had no idea what was going on in the real estate market. And from my point of view, I had plenty of income coming in.

So, like, I just wasn't feeling it, you know. And I think when they called it the recession, when Young Jeezy came out with this album called The Recession, and I started listening to that. And that's when it kind of started, I'm like, is there a recession going on right now? Because I'm not feeling it at all. You know?

And even then, like, I wasn't money smart back. I didn't even know what a recession. session was. I had no right. Yeah, I had no concept of like finances or like financial terms or anything. I was dollar dumb. Well, what happened? I mean, at some point I know you worked for

Bing, Bingsteel. Bingsteel. Bing steel. Yeah, so Michigan, right? Yeah, in Detroit. So this is one of the times after like I graduated from, this is like the year I was, like I told you I had a buy year. Right. When I graduated high school and I didn't go to the college and

like 2005 or whatever. So that year I took off and went to Michigan because I just didn't know what I was going to do. I knew I wanted to do graphic design and but I didn't know if I wanted to enroll

at the school. So I went up to Michigan and I ended up getting sucked into this program called um, let me see if I can remember this. The Detroit Manufacturing Training Center,

the DMTC, DMTCP or whatever it was, but they had, so in Detroit they had, they had, I don't know if they, they currently do, but they had these programs

where, you go in and you're there for like, it's like a 90-day intense program where they teach you how to, you know, manufacture, like work in manufacturing for one of the big three. Because the big three used to be in Detroit, not anymore, obviously.

It was Chrysler, Detroit, I'm sorry, Chrysler, Ford, and GM were all based in Detroit. All of their manufacturing plants were there. All of their world headquarters were there. In the late 90s, early 2000s, was right when the automotive industry, was just starting to fizzle out.

Like, it was starting to hit, like, this point where the unions were, like, you know, were in trouble and, like, all the manufacturing was getting shipped overseas. So, like, plants were getting closed down. And I came in right before all of that started happening. Like, right, you know, where everybody was like, oh, this is going to last forever. And we're all making 19 bucks an hour to assemble, you know, car seats or whatever. So I went through the little program. I went through the training program.

And they sent me to go work at the big. steel. It was General Motors, but it was the Bing Steel Division of General Motors. And all we did were seats for the Cadillac XLR and Ford Ranger. That were, we had two lines in the factory. It was Cadillac XLR and it was Ford Ranger. And I worked there for, I don't work there for about a solid year before I quit, you know. Is that when, that's when, in that one, you started doing credit cards or you started your car. Yeah. Well, you know, I've always been into like scams and fraud. So like scams and fraud have always been. on my radar you know and then the internet's starting to come along now right we're in the you know mid like the dot com boom of the bust in the 2000 and then going into oh eight like facebook i think is like a thing now and then youtube is just starting to become a thing now so you know i'm in i'm in like flint that's just what i do i'm tuned in and a lot of these early um carding forums i just kind of

stumbled on to, you know, one day, one day, and, you know, I've been on, I was on them ever since. But I didn't really start carding, carting until, you know, a little bit later on. But I had been on these sites, you know, researching scams. If I'm, I was looking into bank fraud at one point in time, I was going to be this, because I had watched something on TV. I'm like, yeah, let me look into that, you know, okay, there seems to be a little bit of money in that. Let me look into that. So I looked into bank fraud. I looked into counterfeiting currency. I looked into, I looked into, I looked into everything. everything. What about Chris, like your brother? Like he was, was he already doing it or?

Coincidentally, yeah, my brother, my brother was going through like a rough patch in his life. Like he was going to, I think either MSU, Michigan State or University of Michigan, one of the two. And he was living on campus in Ann Arbor. And I don't remember why he left college, but something happened. He didn't have anywhere to go. So he just called me up one day. And he's like, dude, can I come crash at your house? He was in Michigan. And I was like, yeah, I had no apartment in Coral Springs at this time. in Fort Lauderdale, well, Broward County. And my little brother came down to stay with me, you know. Is this after, is this after you graduated, or after the, no, I'm saying after. This is after I graduated from. Right, but I mean, is this after, after you got let go from the, after that company got

raided by the FBI? Yes. Oh, okay. Yep, right after. Okay. Almost, yeah, almost right afterwards. Yeah. So at this point, I don't, you know, I'm looking for other jobs in graphic design, but

nobody's paying what these people were paying. Yeah, yeah. At all. They're probably laundering laundering South America money. I think maybe my salary had a lot to do with that. And basically I ran the company. I didn't do the physical side. Like they had guys out there actually did the physical printing and the application and all that. And they had a whole sales team. They had like two or three salespeople that would go out and sell, you know, but I basically ran like the whole that end of the operation. It's like Ozarks. Like they're buying businesses.

They don't care if the businesses really make money. They're going to look like that. Angel investor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, so that was just that was the deal. And so I like,

I got all the student loan debt because I just, you know, now that I just got let go from this company, I'm trying to find a job doing graphic design, but it's like, they want to pay me $10 an hour. Right.

10 bucks an hour. I'm like, that's not going to pay my bills. I have like $3,500. I mean, back then this was a lot, but I had $3,500 in bills every month, you know? Right. And I have no job. Yeah.

And I mean, I had my, my, the little check I had gotten for my salary, and I was living off of that, and I was using that to pay my bills. But I did the math, and I was like, okay, well, this is the month and the day that my money's going to run out and I'm not going to be able to pay my bills anymore. So I need to figure something out by then. So I had a date. And every day, like, the clock was just ticking down. And I was getting closer and closer towards that.

date to where I was going to run out of money and I was essentially going to be able to not be able to pay for my apartment or my car or anything, you know, and so I'm looking into scams. That's what I'm doing. I'm just scouring the internet for any little morsel of information I can find on, you know, like I said, I looked into bank fraud, I looked into wire fraud, I looked in the money laundering, I looked into, you know, I wasn't going to become a dealer. I didn't want to go that route. Right. So you said Chris called you? My brother calls me, comes down. He drives all the way down to my my apartment moves in i saw we get in i start showing them like you know this is what i'm looking into we start you know bullshit and he's like uh he knew about it at the time

and i think he had a msr 206 reader writer on him he like he brought one with him he's like i got one of those and he's like showing me how to write the track information to the uh credit cards and stuff how does that work like physically work yeah i mean like mechanics like yeah like what what do you what i mean sure yeah so like you're not make you don't have credit cards you have to get a credit card or some kind right yeah no it um it's well you know it's it's technical it's you know so every credit card that you and i or anybody has uh there's a magnetic strip on the back and now there's uh they have the chip they have the pin where they say insert the chip yeah the same information that's encoded to the the magnetic strip is encoded to the the chip it's just a

you know different way and verify they had that over in europe years before it even came here right you know so that's just as easily exploitable as the magnetic strip but on your magnetic strip of your credit card there's two lines of code uh the first line is called code called track one uh and what that does is allows the merchant account to communicate with your individual bank account uh and allows the information kind of like this handshake between the two and allows us to pass the information in order to fund, you know, whatever purchase that you're, whatever purchase you're trying to make. The second track of information on the magnetic strip holds all of the customer data,

like the name, your name, the information that's on the physical card itself. So the number that's on the front of the card, that's actually physically encoded to the magnetic strip on the card. And then it's your name. And then, you know, just like another string of digits to, you know, allow all of the information to kind of exchange. Now, anytime you go to a, I don't know, Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Target, anywhere you go and you either stick your card in or you swipe it, that information essentially is saved to a server somewhere. Now, these servers are

compromised and this information is then resold on, you know, the black market or whatever. You hear about these breaches all the time. Target was breached. I usually have, actually haven't had a big data breach in a while, or they just stopped reporting about them, you know, but, I mean, Target was a huge one. Well, I think they did have one recently because probably a few months. Well, at least a few months ago, I actually had multiple different places or email, like companies like email me and say, hey, like, you know, your information may have been, you know, and they're just notifying me. They're just like, hey, there was a data breach. Your information may have been, um, may have

been, whatever they call that, you know, may have been compromised. You, you know, you need to change your, your password as soon as possible. But it didn't even have a link. So it wasn't because I thought, oh, well, they're trying to give me to click on a link, but it wasn't. It was actually from, like, and these were all places like, you know, like Michaels and like, you know, Target. And they were saying, go to the, go to the website, change your password because it may have been breached, whatever. You know, so. Yeah. Yeah, you hear about these. You hear about, you hear about, You hear about the breaches all the time. Within like a day or two, I got two or three of them.

I was like, oh, something happened. Yeah. And, you know, the early 2000s was really the heyday for all of this. This is when it all really began. I mean, they've been doing it in Europe for a while and it had been around. But, I mean, it wasn't like it is now. Right. You know, where you've got kids making rap songs about it and, you know, going on

Instagram and showing all their credit cards and everything they're buying. And the shit's just absolutely ridiculous now. But back in the day, it wasn't like that. not very many people were doing it. You know, you didn't have teams of people running across the United States doing all this credit card fraud. This is before all of the big takedowns and all of the, you know, FBI raids on all of the carding forums and everything. This is, I was just in the right place at the right time. You know, I was engaging in scumbag activities and I just got in at the right time, essentially.

So the equipment to make these cars is expensive. Like, if you want to actually print your own cards, it's expensive. Like, these printers are like five grand. Right. You know, we just don't have that to start, to start with. So what I did was is I went to, I think it was like CVS or Walgreens or something, and I grabbed, you know, all of the prepaid Visa gift cards that they have. I took a backpack and I just took the whole rack of them.

So I'd have like, you know, 100, 200 of these cards. Now, obviously, they don't have $100 each time because you have to go to the counter and load them. But what I was doing is is I was getting them because I just needed the, physical card. Right. Because we had a machine that was called a MSR 206 reader writer. Now, what it did was, it was a basic program that you would type whatever information you want to be encoded to the magnetic strip.

You would swipe it through and you would see on the screen that it would program the card with the new information. Now, like I explained earlier that, you know, all of these numbers that you, that are exploited from these servers are then resold in the black market. and these numbers, it's called dump information, track one, track two, is then resold to people who have this piece of equipment so that they can use those numbers,

they get them, pull them through the email, put them in the program, swipe it. Now I have your debit card information that's been stolen from your track that's been stolen from your magnetic strip. I have that now encoded to my card. Now I can go into a store and I can, when I swipe the card,

I'm using your bank account. Right. essentially you know but like I said you know you have to have a card to encode those two to take to the store to use in the first place right so that's what we're using initially that's what we're using the gift cards for right because you know getting the cards uh where it was expensive i think they were like $20 a piece or $25 each if you were to order one from a vendor on one of these websites that that would sell you the card and then what if the card didn't work i just wasted $25 on one piece of plastic and it didn't even work like that's not even financially feasible right you know so yeah

we started out super low tech we just started uh i think that and at this point i think like okay this is doable like i said i was looking into everything i was looking into wire fraud money fraud i was going to print bills i was going to bleach one dollar bills and print one hundred dollars on them and you know like jeff turner was doing right um i just didn't go that route like this that's just way too much you know and it's it's been done already at nauseam and so I was like, this is kind of new. I've never heard about this before. I don't know anybody else that's doing this.

For some reason, me and my brother just kind of fell into it at the same time. We're brothers. You know what I mean? We're into this kind of the same stuff. You know, we get into this and I'm like, well, credit card, this stuff, you know, this might be all right because the numbers were actually easy to get. Like you can go on these, these websites or, you know, these forums, these carding forums. And it wasn't hard to find a vendor that was selling these numbers.

I mean, I could buy them by the hundreds, by the thousands, if I had enough money. And they were relatively inexpensive. You know, they've started about $5 a piece, $7 a piece, depending on what kind of card it was, you know, depending on whether it was like a debit card or a credit card or a platinum or a gold or, you know, whatever. Right. So you're telling me, so you can buy my information. What if I, but if I live in like in California and you're in Florida. Right. So you had to understand how the bin system were.

And the bin system stands for a bank identification number. So you can take any debit card, any credit card, anything in your wallet, in the first six digits of that card, if it's from the issued from the same bank, it's going to be the same on everybody's card. Right. My card, your card, his card. It's all going to be the same. And that bank identification number is going to tell you what bank issued the card and in what region that card was issued because it also has a region code in there. and then whether it's a debit card, credit card, platinum, or whatever. So all the information you need to know about the actual card itself, like I said, the kind of card, what region it was issued in, all that is dictated in those six digits on the card of the bank identification of it. So once you have this like master list, which I finally got my hands on, it didn't have them all, but it had a lot. you know so back in the day you just hit control f and then control p control paste in that bank that bank identification number and then it would search the whole bin list and it would pop up okay

this bin was issued by bank of america so i knew that it was a bank of america card i knew that it was a debit card and i knew that it was issued in what region of the united states it was issued in so once you understand like what region you're in that issues those bins when you buy these cards these numbers from these sellers you give them the bin number that you want right and then they search their database and if they have any bins in that database and they'll send you those bin numbers so those bin numbers in that area so that way so those bin numbers will be whatever so whatever area you're in so say i'm in southern florida and i figure out the bin system like i know what bins they use down here and our issue down here then i'll only buy those bins from my vendor so that way they'll work in the area right because an obvious way that they combat fraud even in the beginning now it's like with AI like If you make a purchase that's outside of your normal purchasing habits, they shut the shit down sometimes. Yeah, they'll text. Because I do it when I go someplace. I'll use my card sometimes. And it'll text me. If you use your card. Or do you just use your card? And you have to, if you say yes, then the person would be like, oh, it went through.

Yes. If you just buy coffee every day and gas and now all of a sudden you're at Best Buy trying to buy free big screens. Right. You know what I mean? Now, but back in the day, they just didn't have those guidelines set in place. And so, yeah, you know, once you figure out the, once you figure out the bin system, then you can figure out what bins work and what areas.

And, you know, then you could order the cards online because now your success rate's going to be a little bit higher in a percentile than it would have been otherwise. So what are you, initially, what are you guys doing? Fast food, just testing them out, you know, going and getting McDonald's, going and putting gas, gassing up the cars. You know, making small purchases at this point, we would go into like Walgreens and just buy a bunch of random bullshit, go to the as seen on TV aisle and, you know, buy a bunch of crap from the as seen on TV aisle.

Right. You know, just little things, you know, just to see. Because we didn't know. I didn't know if this was going to work. I didn't know if I was encoding this stuff the right way. I didn't know, you know, plus the gift cards, we'd go in. And then, you know, once we started going for like the bigger ticket items, that's when we had to kind of, you know, buy the physical cards from the vendors.

Right. Okay. You know, because you can't go to, I don't say, Walmart and buy a laptop with a $100 gift card. And the laptop costs $700. Yeah. You can't do that. That's crazy, you know. Or you can't have a bunch of.

of gift cards, you can't go there with like 10 gift cards. Or if they ask for your ID. You know what I'm saying? Like it has to be the card. Yeah, it has to match. Like the ID has to match the card. And, you know, once we figured out that, we're like, okay, now we have to order cards and we have to get a novelty ID.

Right. So now you've got to step it up a notch, you know? And I wasn't paying bills at this time. I wasn't doing anything. We were just kind of like, it was like a trial and error stage. We're figuring everything out. Right. Okay.

So how does, where does it go from there? Like the progression? You know, started ordering cards, you know, legitimate cards that were being made by somebody, you know, out there. Right. And started going for bigger ticket items, you know, laptops, big screens, you know, high-end electronics. And then that kind of got burned out and you kind of got to find niche markets to go for. You know, like I would go to, say, what's that place that sells like horse feed and... uh, tractor supply. Right. That's a tractor supply place. And I'd go there and I'd buy like,

I don't know, $800 feeder system for cattle. I'd buy two or three of those things, you know, on a credit card because they're, they're not expecting anybody to come in there and, you know, so I had to start, I had to start looking for a little. And then what you just, niches like that. You just said, then what you sell it on eBay? Oh, back in the day, it was, um, it was Craigslist. Right. So it was Craigslist and eBay back in the day. This is before Amazon and all, like all the offer-up apps and all that shit, yeah. So it was Amazon and Craigslist. And Craigslist had a heyday.

Like, there was a period of time where you bought, everyone was on Craigslist buying shit. That's just where you went to. That was the go-to. You know, eBay, kind of, but you know, the Indians and all the foreigners got in and started scamming on eBay. So Craigslist was like, there was a golden era.

And that just happened to be right in the time where I was selling. Right. So, yeah, I would post a TV on Craigslist, and within an hour it'd be gone. So I'd have like 15 people already messaging me about it. And it went that way

every time I'd post something. Like 15, 20 messages immediately. And within a day or two, whatever I went and bought on the credit card would be gone. Right. You know, so. So what happened with,

I mean, I know, I already know at some point it catches up with... I'm going to tell the story? Yeah, yeah, story. Oh, man, I hate telling the story because I feel so bad. So me and my brother, we were, obviously, we're carding at this time.

We're full-blown carters, you know, and I had to pay rent at the apartment we were living in or something like that. So I know we needed a laptop. And I knew the exact laptop I needed. I had already posted the laptop before we even went and carded it. I had already posted it on Craigslist and was already getting emails about it. So it was gone before we even went to go get it. Right. So my brother's sleeping in the room. He's knocked out. I go in there. I wake him up because he had the novelty ID. So we needed an ID to go with the card. And I think at that time, just whatever cycle of cards and ideas,

we were on, he had the novelty to go with the card that I knew was going to work for the laptop, you know, because some dumps, you know, you know if they're going to work or not. Like, after you've been doing this a while, you know which ones you can process for certain amounts. Now, there's no way to know how much money someone has in their bank account. You can, there's no way to figure that out. But you can kind of guesstimate by what kind of card it is, whether it's a platinum or a gold or a debit card or whatever. And I knew at this time certain banks had higher limits for their debit cards because the account holders at certain banks kept more money and kept more money in their accounts and say, you know, regular banks. So yeah, my brother had the driver's license. He had the ID to go to the driver's license. So we set out to go to this Walmart. I know the laptop we're going to get. We walk in. We know we walk back to the electronics aisle. We asked to open the cabinet. We go. We get to the counter. Everything's going smoothly.

I pull out my phone. I act like I'm on my phone. My brother gives him the card, shows him his ID. The guy takes the credit card, takes his ID, turns his back to my brother, swipes the card, and then he picks up the phone immediately without even looking back. And he says, we got a code red back here at electronics. And I'm like, oh, I immediately knew it was a rap. So I turn around, because listen, at this point, we had been hitting Walmarts like crazy

because they were the easiest to do because usually it was just. just like some employee walking around, you would grab him and he would just walk back to the electronics counter and help you out. Right. And credit card fraud was so new at this point that nobody was expecting. They weren't just, they weren't looking for it is what I'm saying. Like they weren't suspicious. They weren't, they weren't looking for it. So you could just go back to, we could go to any Walmart, walk back there, get a big screen TV, an Xbox, a PlayStation, and a laptop. And as long as the card would not get declined, you were walking out of the front door with your stuff. Right. That's just how it was.

And so I knew what time it was So I immediately just about face And I start walking towards Because we're all the way in the back I gotta get out of the store And that's all the way at the front So I start walking I look back and my brother's still standing there

At the counter And I don't think it registered with him What was going on And like I don't know why I didn't say let's go Or let's run But I thought that he would just see me walking away And use that as a cue But my brother didn't pick up on it

So I'm walking I'd lose him Like I look back And he's still at the counter So I'm just like I'm just gonna go I get to the front door of the Walmart the doors open up automatic doors open up

and I hear the sound of flip flops because my brother's wearing thong sandals he's wearing Abercrombie and Fitch long or thong sandals these rubber thong sandals

and you can hear the sandals Flop plop Flop fluff and I look and my brother just blows past me out the door

and he's got two guys chasing him right so I see him book it through the parking he's got two guys chasing him one of the guys tries to like

hey they see me He grabbed me. He grabs me, like, the corner of my shirt, and I knock his hand away, and I do kind of like a spin move, and I just take off running through the parking lot. So they're chasing him, and nobody's really chasing me. So I get out of the parking lot. I hide. There's a trailer park. Like, there's like this wall that, if you've ever been to any Walmart, they have like this distinct brick wall.

A lot of them have around them. It's the same in every Walmart. I get over that. I get into a trailer park. I run. I hide in the woods behind a trailer. And I just sat there for like two hours. had my car keys.

I eventually got to go back and get my car from the parking lot. I don't know if they caught my brother. I don't know if he got away. I don't know anything at this point.

And so I was just sat there for hours, and then I finally went back and got my car and I thought for sure when I was going to go grab the car that that was going to be it. Right.

Like I thought for sure they're going to wait. So I went there and no cops, you know, get my car, I'm driving, I'm looking in the rear view, super paranoid, no cops.

I get it. home. I'd go on the internet real quick. I looked my brother up. Sure enough, they got him at Central Booking. I see him. And I sat up all night, didn't sleep. And I was, you know, you can keep updating on the computer and it'll keep showing every time he gets to status gets updated. Right. You can see if they move them. And I kept waiting for him to get moved because they had him in a county jail. I'm waiting for him to get moved to the county jail because I know when you get the county, you'll go to court. He'll get a bond. Finally, I updated the computer like 6 o'clock in the morning, seven o'clock in the morning, and I seen that he was, they had moved him to

Broward Central County booking in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and he had a bond. It was like $2,000 or something like that. It wasn't much. It was like $3,000. So for a few hundred bucks. Yeah, I didn't have the cash on me, but I had a car at that time, so I ran down to a bail bondsman. I brought the title to my car. I'm like, listen, this bonds like three grand or whatever, you know, obviously 10%. And it wasn't, no, it wasn't even, it was 3,000 cash. It wasn't 3,010%. So sometimes you can just go pay $300 and you'd get released or whatever.

It was $3,000 cash assurity. So he had to pay the whole three. So I had to go through a bail bondsman. Get him out of jail. No, so I'm sitting there at home. My brother calls me. He's like, man, I just got to a phone. He's like, listen, I got a bond.

I was like, listen, man, I've already been to a bail bondsman. So before my brother even called me from jail, I had already been at the bail bondsman. I was like, listen, I've already been to a bail bondsman. It's already paid just, he's coming down there to get you. You're getting released in a few hours. I'll be down there to pick you up. And that was basically how that went, you know.

And that was our first skirmish. Right. With the law, you know. So I wonder now, like now you can throw a big screen TV into things, just walk out of Walmart. They don't say shit. Well, maybe not in Florida, but some places. I wonder now if they would stop you for credit card fraud.

Like, it would be, like, if you got the whole of stuff and started bolting, like, would they try and stop you? Yeah. So. Because back then, remember Walmart had a zero. zero tolerance policy. It didn't matter what you stole

if they were prosecuting to the full extent and now they've completely changed it. They backtracked on that a little bit because of all the liberal well it depends on what state

right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're in California, Florida don't around. No. Yeah, we don't deal with the shoplifting down here. But yeah, so, you know,

and so we figured out real fast that at certain stores if you go over a certain amount, they have to physically take your credit card and they have to type in the last four digits that are on the physical credit card, they have to type that into the POS

machine in order for to even process the sale. So if the card you're using, if the four digits on the, the last four digits of that card don't match what's being encoded, because when they swipe the card, they can see the credit card number on their part of the screen. But that could be your name and your credit card number come up. And if all they got to do is hold the card up next to the screen. And if those cards, if the numbers don't match, then they've been trained, then they know that this is a fraudulent transaction here. You understand what that means is that like the card that the encoded number, so the encoded number doesn't have to match what's on the front of the card, just a few of the numbers. You know what I'm saying?

The last four. You want to know, but I'm saying, I'm saying if you're below that, they don't check it. They don't have to check it, right? So, no, what I'm saying is it's a part of the verification process. So if you're trying to process something over, say, $300, at Target especially, I know it's $300 has to cut off. After $300, they have to say, can I see your card? And they have to take the card in the last four digits that are physically stamped on the card. They have to type those into the screen. And then the computer checks, okay, do this, does the verify, does the four digits that she just typed in? Does it match what was swiped? Right. So there's an algorithm that checks those two, that cross-references those two things. But what I'm saying is if you buy some for

$100, they don't even ask for the card. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, Nothing has to match. The name doesn't have to match. Nothing has to match on the card. But you don't know until you hit that limit and then they ask for the card. So that's a lot of trial and error going to stores and figuring out what stores check and what stores don't. So depending on what items you're going to buy, you may need to have that card look exactly like what's on the strip. And you might need an ID.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say, so the cards that you're using, they don't match. The digital information that's using isn't matching the physical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So every, so the cashiers just never look.

They never really looked until this incident here at Walmart. So now you're starting to upgrade. We went over a certain dollar amount and they, and yeah, they had to look. So now, so now when you're ordering the cards, you have to order the numbers. You have to order the cards. You have to order the cards that come with the number, stamped with the numbers that you want to use. So you keep, you keep upgrading and upgrading.

It's a slow process. Yeah, this didn't happen overnight. I just didn't start printing credit cards overnight. Right. You know, it was a progression. You know, it was like every time we'd hit a wall, every time I would try and scale the operation, like go larger, make more money, I would just hit a wall. And I would have to either upgrade a piece of equipment or I would have to, you know, change something I was doing. Right.

To kind of. But yeah, that was that incident with my brother. That was the very first kind of skirmish we had. And that's when I decided that now we have to start buying the cards. Right. Yeah. So, so. So you just keep, you start ordering them or like, what happened with your brother?

Did he stay here? Did he, what happened? No, oh, so that whole court case, this is the weirdest thing ever. I've never, I've never seen this happen before ever is the bail bondsman calls me up one day and says that you can come pick up your, the courts release the bond money. Right. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, yeah, they just, they released the bond money. They dropped the case.

Right. Just dropped it. Because that's what happens when you get your bond money back, right? either they go to court and they get sentenced and then they release it or the state drops the charges and then they release the bond money. So I went and picked the bond money up and apparently the case was dismissed. Right. So a few months go by and then one morning, early in the morning, a kind of bang on the door happens and I knew it was law enforcement just from the way they beat on the door. And I opened the door and he's like, he's like Christopher Boziac. I'm like, no,

my name's John Boziac. He's like, do you have any ID? And luckily we had this little table in like the foyer when you walk into my apartment and there's a bowl and I kept my wallet and my keys and I just turned around. I grabbed my wallet and I pulled the ID out and I gave it to him right in front of him and he looks. He's like, okay, he's like, is there Christopher Bose yet? I guess my brother. And I was like, he's in Michigan right now. He's been in Michigan for a few weeks. And the cop's like, well, good thing because he's got a warrant out for his arrest for, you know, grand theft. I think that's what they were charging. They didn't want to charge him with credit card fraud or anything like that. They were charging them with, uh, I think they were just calling

it grand theft. And I was like, oh, well, I got the bond money back for that. Like, I bonded them out. I got the bond money back. They said that they dropped the charges. Like, yeah, well, whoever dropped the charges, the state picked them up, picked them back up. And now he's got a warrant. So let him know. He's got a warrant out for his arrest. And, uh, you know, be careful. I was like, all right. Yeah, he wasn't trying to run in the house arrest anybody. He was just, you know, over there to let us know that, you know, I closed the door. I locked it. My brother's room, luckily. his door was like right in the hallway. His door was closed. I opened his door. I was like, dude, the cops were just here looking for you. Apparently, you know, you're in trouble. He left the

next day to Michigan. Right. Took off, went to Michigan. Yeah. It was out of there. Right. What happened in Michigan? How, like, how much longer is the Michigan thing happen? Right. So it was a little while. He was up there for a few months. And at this point, I had started like, amateurly printing cards. That's right. Okay. That's right. Okay. Yeah, so some time went by, and I was like, I was at this point right now where I needed to scale the operation to pay the bills. Because right now it's paying, it's paying the rent. It's paying, you know, I could take a card to the grocery store and I could fill up a grocery cart with whatever I want and I could walk out of the grocery store. But you also know that you could get arrested too.

Dude, I'm putting my face on cameras. So many cameras every single day. I'm, you know, I'm being reckless. I'm pulling in the parking lot with my license plate. Like, I'm just doing reckless shit. And I'm like, I'm going to go to jail one day. I'm going to get caught eventually. Yeah.

You know. They're already looking for your brother. Right, yeah. So I'm like, you know, I have to start, I have to scale the operation somehow. So now I start printing cards at this point. Like during this whole, you know, realization of like the scaling problems and all of this, now I'm getting into printing cards. So, I mean, because it's getting too expensive to keep ordering, you know, cards from these vendors.

And half the time, you know, the cards would come and they wouldn't be, the quality wouldn't be that good. Right. Or they would take too long. to get to me and it was like well I mean and it's safe for those guys like you don't know where these people are you don't know if they're in Michigan are they in California are they in New Mexico I have no idea

yeah I just have I mean I have a postmark where the package was being sent from but that doesn't mean you can drop a package in any mailbox anywhere they're still not going to lead to their house yeah so you know I don't know who these guys are I'm just buying the cards from them and it's just getting too expensive and like the whole operation is just getting it's just getting too out of hand because listen

you know let's say I go on I go on Google Maps and I map how every Walmart between South Miami and, you know, West Palm Beach. Right. That's a lot of ground to cover. There's, you know, a few hundred Walmarts in between those two, those like four or five, you know, areas of South Florida. And let's say you hit every Walmart for a laptop. You know, you're doing good.

I was going to say that. You know, you got 15, 20 laptops. That's, you know, five, six, seven thousand dollars if you sell them all. But now you got to do it again. Yeah. And then maybe you gotta do it again and you gotta do it again or you got to involve more people

and you know and you gotta send you gotta send knuckleheads out on dummy missions and then you don't I can't trust you not to tell on me you know so I'm not doing that I'm definitely not doing that I've never done that

I've never had like a group of people working for me where I had guys going out and carding and all this shit like that I didn't I did everything by myself by myself or it was me and my brother but I never included anybody in any of my crimes

I didn't tell anybody what I was doing nobody knew how I made my money. It was just, you know, this is, this is before everybody posted every bowel movement and every meal on an Instagram and Facebook. Right. You know, we just didn't do that back then. You know, we didn't film things back then. Like, I didn't, I, that's why there's, like, I don't have any pictures, really,

of those, that time period in my life, just like family photos of, like, my son and shit. But, you know, you just didn't pull your camera out and start recording shit. Like, you just get beat up. Like, if you're hanging out with some friends and you just pull a camera out, you start recording? Are you kidding me? Yeah. Why? Why? People are going to want to why, why you got that, you know what I mean? Like, you're going to get fucked up. You know, so I don't know the point I was trying to make. I just went off on a tangent there. We were talking about like this, it's just so much safer that you just at some point realized like the safest,

the safest person in this chain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was slowly making that realization, but I didn't really put two and two together until, like I said, you know, it's like, in order to scale this whole thing, I had to figure out another, you know, mode of trying to milk money out of the situation because going into stores and buying shit and reselling it, it's cool, but it's not going to get me,

I'm not going to be able to do it for any kind of, you know, imaginable amount of time into the future. It just isn't going to happen. Right. You know, and that's when I kind of slowly came to the realization that, you know,

there is a marketplace for actually vending plastic So instead of just, you know, making cards and buying the numbers and going out to stores and, you know, carding shit, I figured out I was slowly making the realization that maybe I could just make the cards and sell the fucking cars online. Because I'm not a hacker. Right. You know, I don't know how to get this information that these people are selling. So I couldn't really sell the numbers, but I could make these cards because I kind of was getting good at it after doing it for a few months. I'm learning the software. You know, I had a background.

I got my associate's degree in graphic design, media arts, so I understand, like, you know, dPI image sizing you know i understand how to make the templates uh and then actually learning how to physically use the printers was it wasn't that hard you know once you set it up they actually have like a little program you can watch and it shows you how to use every part of the printer the tutorial yeah so learning how to print the actual physical cards really wasn't that big of a deal i think the biggest hurdle in this whole operation was getting the um so on if you look on your Visa card on the back. They used to be on the front, on the old school cards. They used to be on the front, but now they're on the back and they're smaller. There's a hologram. Yeah. So the Visa have a dove and the master cards have like two globes kind of superimposed over each other and it says MasterCard in the middle. Now these little holograms were hard to get because I don't have a printer that prints holograms. Those those printers were $10,000 for one of those printers. And they just and they were just readily available to the public. You know, I could get the card printers.

you know, you could buy those on eBay for like 100 bucks, 200 bucks for the cheap ones, five, six hundred bucks for like the medium range that are kind of used. And then, you know, the Mac Daddy printer was the Fargo HDP 5000. Now, I know they've had a few iterations and they've upgraded since then, but that was the Mac Daddy back then. That was the printer that I eventually was able to save up enough money and buy that one. And once you buy that printer, that's printing direct-to-card. It's called a DTC printer, direct-to-card, a high-definite.

images, they would bleed over the edges of the card. So a lot of the cheaper printers, you would see like a thin little line around the image. Like it wouldn't print over the edge of the card. So once you got over-edged DTC, high-definition printing, like when able to crank those cards out, then those cards are indistinguishable from the ones that are issued by financial institutions, period. Like they're exactly the same, you know. So once I figured out how to print that and then, like I said, the biggest hurdle was

getting the holograms. you know so i went on ali baba actually and i looked for companies that printed a hologram stuff and i just started messaging different chinese um you know printers and asking them can you can you make these for me and i got two or three emails back and i was like okay well this guy will do it for 10 cents a piece but you got to order 10 000 at a time right so i'd get these giant rolls in the mail like this and they were just this thin this like thinner than 10 foil. Right.

Like, the tinfoil you cook with, it's thinner than that. Like, it's this thin, thin foil, but it had these, these, these dubs, and then I ordered the ones for the master car. Are they, they just stick on? Heat press. Oh, okay. Yeah, well, initially I bought the stickers, because you could buy the stickers and those were way cheaper, but, but I remember you telling me you had gotten cards and they had

the stick on, and you can, you could, you could peel it with your thumbnail, and like, after you swiped it a few times, like, if you used a card a few times, like, the sticker would tear and they just didn't look good. You know, the heat press ones looked like once you pressed it on to the PVC card, it looked like it was just part of the car. Like, you couldn't even catch your fingernail on it, you know? And, you know, once I got those

and I got the little heat press from eBay, you had a little dial on it and you set the temperature and it had a little arm and it had two flat plates and you press whatever you want in between it. It was for, you know, people that like embossed like, you know, like, like, Bible page. Like, you know, you could put your name in, like, the front of a Bible. You know, like, had it had that back in the day, like, the gold.

That's what it was for, you know, but I was using it to manufacture credit cards. And once I figured out the foil, you know, I got that figured out, and then I got, you know, over the edge printing, there was no difference between the card I was making and the ones that were issued from, like, Bank of America or Wells Fargo or whatever. And you're able to put whatever information you want on the front of the car, the name of the, you can buy the track information. That was done with a separate machine. So there was three or four pieces of equipment you needed initially.

There was the encoder that would encode the magnetic strip. There was the printer that would print the card. There was the heat press. That would heat press the foil on the front of the card. It was called actually a tipping, hot foil tipping machine. And then the last piece of equipment you needed was the actual, it was called an embossing machine. And that's what would actually put the physical, puncture the physical numbers into the card.

I don't think they even do that anymore, do they? They print them. Some of them, some of them they print them on now. Some of them they emboss them. Some are printed. Some are embossed. Yeah. I have a lot. I think they're just printing them now, to be honest with you. Yeah, but I had one the, oh, I can feel it. No, this one. It's embossed. It's embossed. It's embossed. It's embossed. Mm-hmm. It's embossed. Mm-hmm. It's embossed. Mm-hmm. Sometimes they embossed them. Sometimes they embossed them. It's like a printed on it. Yeah. This is actually embossed. You can see the back of it. Sure, yep. And I just got this card. Yeah, full embossed. And, And at the time, I had to order what's called a manual embossing machine. Right. So you buy it, and it's this machine. It's got a giant wheel on the front of it on the top, and it's got all these different characters on the wheel. A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

It's got the alphabet, and then it's got all the numbers, then it's got uppercase, and then it's got lowercase, and then it's got your special characters. So you'd have to put the card in this tray, and you'd slide the card into the machine. You had a handle. You used to punch the card manually. Z-B-A, click, click.

Z-Z-J, click, click. so I'd have to manually punch these cards, which was BS, but that machine was only like $100, $150. And then I eventually had got the, ooh, what was the name of this machine? It was called a data card, fully automated embossing, where you just put the cards in,

you program it on the laptop, and it goes, bim, bam, bam, bim, and it just spits the card out the side. So I wouldn't have to do the embossing. But it was a slow progression up into the point where I could afford this more expensive equipment. And once I started making cards, once I got to the point where I could make cards that looked like they came from a financial institution,

then I was like, well, now I might have a different marketable product on my hands. So now you don't actually have to use the card. You can sell them. Yeah, I can just go, yeah, that's what I set out to do. I was like, man, that's taken 90% of the risk completely out of the equation. What do you sell them?

How do you sell them? I will these forums I was telling you about earlier these carding forums that's where you know this is pre silk road right this is pre onion router this is pre dark web like the dark web didn't even exist at this time like there was no dark web you couldn't go in and look up all they had carding forums you know and these carding forums were like they would get shut down every other week or they would get mass infiltrated by FBI and everybody you're talking to on the forums a law enforcement you know so it's like but that didn't come until later. So I got in the early days of the forums. And so each forum had something called a moderator or moderators. You know, they had just a group of people that maintain the, maintain

the site, they would kick people off. They would give other people, you know, certain access. And there was, like, back in the day, you know, they don't really have forums. Hey, what's the best, what's the closest thing to a forum now? A Reddit? You know, Reddit? Reddit's like the closest thing now that I could, you know,

describe what these forums were like. just like Reddit pages. And there were, they were just threads where, you know, you had this thread and you click on it and like, you know, okay, information. So they had these seller threads where I could go and I could be like, you know, U.S. Plastico, and that's what I branded myself as, which in the end came back to bite me. Because I think they just went after me a little bit harder because I branded myself. I gave up my location, first of all, you know, here I am in the United States, which it was dumb in the beginning, but I didn't really, you know, I didn't understand all of that when I first initially got involved.

Dumb stuff, too. Seemed cute at the time. Seemed cute at the time. And then, you know, later on was like one of the deciding factors, you know, why they actually decided to come after me. But so, yeah, I branded myself U.S. Plastico. I just message the moderators of the, of the forums. And I'd sent them pieces of plastic so that they could verify that I was a legitimate

sender. I sent it to them for free here. This is my product. They'd review my product. and then they would allow me to pay them in Bitcoin and I would take out like banner ads on the forum so as soon as you went on to like the main page of the forum they would have these banner ads up top

that would say U.S. Plastico plastic vendor and then would be my ICQ number and back in the day ICQ was like this chat this like encrypted chat you know this is before where they used now like a telegram and we chat and like a canoe and all that shit that's or was it canoe yeah or whatever all these like end-to-end encrypted chat systems this is back in the day so it was like iCQ no it was i rc was before icc was even way even before that so it had my irc and then eventually went to icq uh

you know and that's what yeah i would pay them to vend and that's basically how i got into it in like the very beginning that's when that's how it all is how it all started Yeah. And so what people order the, they just go on there and they say, hey, I want, I want 20 cards or I want 40 cards. Right. So I would have like package deals. Like I wasn't going to nickel and dime. I wasn't going to sell them one piece at a time, two pieces at a time. I had package deals. So I was set it up like it was a three tier sales kind of program where it was like your top tier was like your gold tier that was a thousand cards. It was $1,000. So I had a $1,000 tier. a $500 tier and like a $200 tier. So the $200 tier was like, I think you get 10 cards and you get one driver's license, but the driver's license was a little bit extra. That was like $100 extra if you wanted to include

the driver's license with the silver package. Then the bronze package was like for $500, you get 50 cards and then you get two novelty driver's licenses with the 50 cards. And then the $1,000 package, which was like the gold package, was you get, for $1,000, you get 100 cards, 100 debit cards, five driver's licenses,

and I don't remember if, and then each one had stipulations on, like, refills. So, like, with the gold package, like if you ordered the gold package, and if, like, three of your cards didn't work, you could get, like, up to, like, three or five replacements for those cards, like, you know.

But honestly, the card not working is your own fault, but I would just throw that in there, you know? Right. It's like a sales tactic. Yeah, so I had three tiers, and then, you know, I just went on about messaging. So this, how long, so this kind of goes on for what, I mean, like, what's kind of the next thing that happens? Is it Chris or is it the? Yeah, no, my brother, so I'm sending my brother cards in Michigan.

I'm making cards at this point. I'm sending him to him, and he's, him and one of his buddies, Joseph Dickens, they were out using the cards. in Michigan. And they eventually end up getting busted in Michigan at a target, which you have all the police reports on that you got. A lot of funny little bits of information I didn't get out either one of them about that whole situation. Yeah, yeah. Listen, what I always thought was funny, Colby, is that when I read the report, like, his brother doesn't say anything. Like, his brother doesn't say, you know, anything about that. He's like, I bought him off of this carding form. That's all I know. And then it was, it was Dickens. No, no, Chris does it. Chris, I don't think

Chris wouldn't talk to him. Chris wouldn't talk to him. At all. He wouldn't give a statement. I wouldn't give a statement. Now that Dickens is the ones, but he said, we bought him off of, he, he told the police what Chris told him, which was we got him off of a credit card forum called Carter. Dot S.U.

And then they pull, the cop actually pulls the, goes on Carter. Dot S.U. And, like, screenshots a bunch of stuff. And there's a guy that Boziac was like a mentor to him, and his name was Melmo Man. Melmo Man. And when I was writing the story, he kept talking about Milameman had told me this. Milmo Man had explained this. It was constant, right?

And at one point, so when I get the screenshot, I'm looking over all the names of, it tells how many people, who has been on the site during that day. They're screen names. Yeah, they're screen names. And so there's got to be like, whatever, two, three hundred. And I'm sitting there looking at it and there was Milmo man was right there. And I was like, holy shit. Because, you know, when you're writing somebody's story, you're trying to verify stuff, you know. So, and I'm in prison writing this story.

I can't verify anything. I'm ordering, I'm ordering documents and they're getting in. And most of the dates are correct. You know, like he's saying, I don't know, it was early 2008. And so it ends up being, you know, February 2008. Like, he doesn't know the dates, exactly. So, and he's saying, oh, I forget. the guy's name was this and then I'd get it and it would be but like how are you going to verify

that it's a guy named Milmo Man I'm not I'm never going to verify this and the police report that comes in Milmo Man just happened it just happened to have he just happened to be on the site at that time at that day when they had pulled it screenshots and then they've got his credit cards there was like four or five copies of the credit cards that they had used I mean there's just all of this information that just dovetailed in yeah cards that I printed right and then one of the I think that they had taken when he I mean you can tell the story but I remember, because you didn't know this, one of the other things was, you didn't know how much, what, how much he had used the card for. And I actually have a, I actually ended up getting a thing from Huntington Bank.

Yeah. It was like for 3,500 bucks or something. Like, you know, like whatever the purchase was that he had used was minor at that time. It was like a hundred bucks, 200 bucks. He had bought nothing. So he'd run that card up for 35. Yeah, I'll tell the story real quick. So him and his buddy go into a target

And they get $3,500 for stuff They then exit the store They get in their car, they drive home The person's credit card Who they used just happened to live in that city Right and got a call So we were that good at getting at the bin system Like choosing the bins

Like we had it down to where We knew like were these bins So she just happened to live in that city She called Target She's like my card was just used there For like $3,500 I did not walk into your store this, that, and the other target wouldn't do anything.

So she calls the police department. She's like, listen, my credit card was just used at this store for this amount of money. She's like, they ought to have security cameras. So she's kept pressing the issue. This never happens. And by the way, they're telling her she's not responsible. Don't worry about it.

You're not responsible. She's like, no. And she's not having it. She's like, we're catching this guy. They're like, yeah, your bank is just going to refund the money. You know, just take it up with your bank. They'll refund the money. She's like, no, we're not.

She was not having it. And she pressed the issue, kept pressing the issue. And this never happens. Like, this is why everyone gets away with credit card frauds, because, like, when you get you, when you see that, you just, you contact the bank. You're not calling police departments. You're not calling the store. It was used at.

You contact the bank. My, you know, it was used. They did like, okay, they send you a new card. They give you your money back. Right. Dude, this chick was not having it. And so she pressed the issue, press the issue. They, I think they, they found the license plate number.

No. Chris had used. That's right. My brother. His ID. Yeah. So I think my brother, what happened was, is my brother encoded a dump to his own debit card. And yes, no, and used his ID because so in his brain, he was like, listen, the credit, the name on the card matches the driver's license.

So when they don't, they don't do anything. You know what I'm saying? They don't track them down. So he doesn't care. Oh, you know, an ID. Here's your ID. No big deal. He's like, yeah.

So the name, the ID is going to match the car. And he's like, we're going to get away with it. So they matched. They let them go with the stuff. and yeah he's right he had his name i think he encoded his name to the dump yeah it was on the front of the i think it was on the front of the car yeah or something so or yeah right the dump information so they the woman insists that they look it up and they look it up and they go well there is a guy with this there is a guy with this driver's license number and his address and he lives about

two miles from here. Yep. And he's got a warrant out for his arrest in Florida for, you know, whatever. He was doing it. Whatever. They were... For credit card for all. For credit card, it was... I think it was Grand Theft. But they know it's probably fraud. And so the cop drives

to... Because it's on the police report. He goes there. He... I think Chris was just walking out. So the cops pull up to the apartment complex and they're just sitting in the parking lot. And my brother just happened to walk out of the apartment to get something out of his car. Didn't notice the cop. and they called them over, right, to the car.

I don't know what it said in the police report, and I don't know, like, this part of the story, like how exactly how it happened. Well, I know that when they went to the, they went to the apartment and they opened the door, they can see bags of stuff in there. Like, they can see Target bags. They can see, you know, and they know it's him.

They've got him, but they're like, look, we're going to, let's go to the house, and he goes, he's like, okay, and he opens the thing, and they've got just bags and bags and bags. Yeah, they had stacks of, because what they were doing is they were going to... They've been doing for weeks and weeks.

Well, they were getting $100 visa cards, but actually going and getting them with the money loaded on them. And they were there, and then they were, they had stacks and stacks of $100 visa gift cards all over the apartment, apparently. They had MSR 206 writer. They had the laptop.

Yeah, they busted them both. They're selling everything unlike they've got like an eBay store or something. They're selling all this shit. Yeah. It was all, um, and I don't even know if that's what they were doing. I think they were just like living off. I don't even think they were like selling stuff.

I think they were just like furnishing because they had an apartment. They bought a sofa. They were buying stuff. the furnished yet because I think that's what they went to Target for they were buying like you know no I know what dishes and no I know what they were borrowing it for they were buying they gave you an itemized list yeah for the receipts the receipts are and they're buying all of these accessories for like game boy or Xbox so there's all these accessories like 120 bucks for this you know little tiny things that all go with like game you know I'm saying so it's like it's not

quite the box but it's all the little stuff so I'm assuming they had or maybe they were using it for that, but for themselves, but I don't think so. Yeah, so they get busted. And, you know, I don't, I don't really remember quite how it happened, but I know my brother went to jail down in Michigan, got probation. Then they stuck his ass on the, they gave him the ride on the van from because he had to get extradited down to Florida from Michigan. And apparently that took, yeah, apparently that's not a fun, that's not a fun ride. So I've done it a few times, but in the Fed, so it's a little different. But he did it, you know, for, state, and they put him on a van, and they had to do the whole ride from Michigan to Florida,

and it took, like, two weeks to get him down there, you know. Well, I'd say there was a newspaper article, too, where the cop, the cop that had gone and grabbed him, like, he had all the credit cards and all spread out. Oh, he's sitting at a desk like this? Yeah, yeah, he's got them all spread, like, it was a massive thing, and he was like, he's sitting at the desk and all the credit cards out in front of them. And, yeah, it was a small, wasn't it like a small town or something? Like, what had a big deal in the small town? It's a, it's a, it's a decent-sized city in Michigan, but at this point, like, nobody, nobody, Nobody's getting arrested for this stuff.

So this is like a big deal. Like when one of these cases appear in the news, it's like, well, hold on a minute now. But it's not a big, you know, it's not that big of a deal. Like now it would be, you'd never make the paper probably. It wouldn't even be in the headlines now

because it just happens so much. So he gets probation, Michigan, because transported down to Florida, gets probation, gets let out. And essentially just moved on with his life at this point, you know? He briefly came to Michigan, or briefly came to South Carolina

where I was, where I was living at this time because I had moved from Miami to South Carolina because I had met you know my first wife that I was with and she lived

she was from South Carolina so we get a place in South Carolina and plus you were at this point during this whole interim you're selling cards to you're shipping

them like to Russia or something right that Milmo Man or somebody or shoulder surfer somebody introduced to you know it was shoulder surfer I believe it was the other guy I was dealing with you know he had come to me

And so the progression of me selling cards, you know, I wasn't really making any money in the beginning. Right. Like I didn't start off making thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this shit. I was barely making any money. I was barely getting any sales. And when I did, it was always like the low tier or whatever. It was never like the high tier. You know, and so this went on for like a while before I really started making any money.

And then I remember I distinctly remember the morning. I woke up and I had like 20 orders or something like that, 20 or 25 orders of the gold package. So it's $1,000 in order. It's like 20,000, right. You know, 20, 25 grand. And like, I had never, like, when I was carding stuff and selling it, like the money was coming in, but it was going right back out as it was coming in. Like, I never really got large chunks of money at one time ever before in my life up until this point, you know. So when these 20, when I woke up one morning and I had like 25 orders,

I was like 25 grand waiting on me. I'm like, holy shit, there might be something to this now. Right. You know, and that's when I hooked up with, I think a lot of those orders were this guy's shoulder surfer. Now, I never got the back end story on any of this. Like, I don't know because I never really talked to him that much. But from what I can piece together,

shoulder surfer was a buffer for a lot of guys that were either involved in the Russian mafia were actually Russian mafia themselves or for all I know were just like this go was like a kind of like an intermediary group of people that dealt with the Russian mob but I know it was some way in connected and that's how that's how it went now when I started dealing with shoulder surfer he started placing big orders with me like they were ordering 5,000 cars at a time 4,000 cards at a time 2,000 cards at a time but that didn't happen until later on. That was a progression to get to that point. And like I said, I remember the first day I made like 20 grand. And I was like, okay, now I'm just going to focus on doing this and only this.

But you told me that the shoulder surfer or somebody here, or Milmo Man or somebody had told you that they were probably, they were ordering such big cards because they were probably running like groups of people or something. I was talking to, because so Melmo Man was like my buddy. Right. And so I didn't. I didn't. I never met him. Yeah. Don't know where he's from. Don't know who he is.

I never even got a picture of the guy. Never spoke to him on the phone. But we chatted back and forth on, I think I sold him cars once. And then he would like ask me questions about carding. And so we'd go back and forth. And we built this rapport. And so I would talk to this dude every day, almost every other day on the internet for years about carding. And he would point me to like, oh, this new forum just opened up.

Do you know about this one? You look at this tutorial. We'd share tutorials back and forth. And so once I started this. selling to this other guy like I would bounce ideas off of show a memo man it's like so we came we would just go back and forth and we came to the conclusion you know that this is probably what this guy's doing because listen if you're just a single dude and you're doing credit card fraud you're not ordering five thousand yards at a time right right you know that's that's when you

order five six seven thousand cards at a time you have a group of people that's going out and they're committing fraud that's a large operation I right you know the guy um it was would take me 48 hours to print 5,000 cards. And that's, you know, sleeping on a sleeping bag in the middle of the floor. And like, I printed cards so much that I'd be a dead of sleep and I knew when the printer stopped, it would wake me up. Like, just the sound of the printer stopping would wake me up and I knew it was time to feed more cards into the hoppers because the hoppers could only fit so many plastic cars into them so that I would have to feed the hoppers. And then when the hoppers stopped, I would go back to sleep. So I, my internal clock, just because I,

I did it so much. You know, is it, God, his name, last name is a, Blanchard? You know what I'm talking about? Blanchard, anyway, he was from Canada, and I had read an article about him. They actually have a, there's a documentary on him. I can't believe Josh Blanchard. I don't know, I forgot his first name. Anyway, he was doing that.

He actually went over there and he had a group of like, whatever, 20-some-odd people and everybody's getting like five cards apiece and they'd give them orders and they would and they're taking the train around Europe and they're going in and they're hitting one area and they're buying like purses and you know shoes and they're just buying just tons of high-end luxury items because that's what they were doing in Europe right

yeah they were doing the purses the Louis Vuitton purses the bags the shoes the watches yeah that was a big thing he got he didn't get busted for that he was just I think he just told it it was an article in a wired magazine but that and I know that I mean I've read several articles where, like, these guys would kid, and I, and of course, now when I'm, when I would read the articles, I would be thinking, well, those are cards that are being printed up at thousands, because I'm thinking the whole mechanics of how it works.

And I only know the mechanics because I had already written that story on you. So I was like, damn, they're ordering those cards from somebody. Like, that's a lot of cards. And the average person can't, you know, isn't ordering but five cards at a time, 10 cards are the most. Yeah, 5,000 cards. I had three printers running for 48 hours straight. And I would burn out print.

heads on these printers because they would just overheat and burn out. And when the printhead went, that's like $1,100 to replace that printhead. And that printer would be down for like four or five days because all of these parts are manned. They're not manufactured in the United States. They're manufactured somewhere over in Europe. And it's like a specialty. Like you can't even go on like a website and buy spare parts.

Like I had to, I had like a manual. I had to buy and I had to call up like a sales person. No, no, no. I had to call. I had like a number. I had to call. and I had to go through the book and I had to find the part number

and give it to the salesperson and then they had to put in the order for me and send me the printhead. So it was like, yeah, I had three printers running 48 hours straight to print 5,000 cars. Straight. No stopping.

Just constantly printing. Hey, real quick, just wanted to let you guys know that we're looking for guests for the podcast. If you think you'd be a good guest or you know somebody, do me a favor.

You can fill out the form. The link is in our description box or you can just email me directly. Email is in the description box. So back to the video. So like at this point, I know from doing the research, there was an investigation that had been started where they were track, where the Secret Service had gotten involved,

and they were tracking the packages where you were dropping off packages randomly at different places. So they were hoping that you would repeatedly use the same drops. on, you know, you drive up and you're, so that, but that didn't work out. But I know that at that point, they had started an investigation into you on the various packages. I don't really know how that got started. I just know that they were staking out different, what do you call it, the boxes where

you drop your packages. So when you're shipping packages, they know you're shipping and they're just, they know that some of these, they must have entered, they must have grabbed some of the packages at some point. Well, I'm sure at some point in time, they had ordered from me. Because, I mean, like I said, law enforcement's on all of these sites, you know. So I'm sure they ordered from me because they want to see the quality of the product. They want to see if they can probably lift any fingerprints off them.

They wanted to see if they could figure out exactly where these were coming from. If they were actually indeed coming from within the United States, well, then that's an issue for the Secret Service. And I had no idea. Right. So where at this point? Well, first of all, Carter. S.U. had shown up in an investigation, and they were tracking multiple people.

This was an investigation out of Las Vegas. Yeah, Las Vegas. And they were tracking multiple guys, and they had picked up some of those guys. That was Christopher Aragon. No, it wasn't that one. I don't sure what you're talking about. It's not that one. No.

No, it's the indictment was filed in 2012. So January 10, 2012. Okay. So right around the same time, It's in the same time period where all this, where I was doing all my shit. Right. So, and each one of these guys, they have them, you know, they break it down, who was a vendor, who was, you know, this person, these person selling, you know, what they're selling,

what they're doing. So anyway, at some point, they had indicted these people that were trying to pick them up. I don't even, matter of fact, this may have been before. They were investigating it before they indicted anybody, but they're trying to pick them up. But you had shortly after that, you disappeared. So while they're trying to set you up and stake these places out and get some of the, not just you, other, you and other people. While they're doing that, you moved. You moved out of Miami. I took off and went to South Carolina. Right. Why'd you move to South Carolina?

I wasn't running for anything. I, like, I didn't feel heat or anything like that. I, um, you know, she, she was from there. Who? Um, the, the girl I was with at the time, my first baby's mother, uh, if you will. We weren't married, but we had, did have a child together. And, uh, she was from there, you know, so we, we, she wanted to go back to where, you know, her family was. And They hadn't met the baby. They hadn't seen really the baby or had any interaction with them. So I don't even, you know, I don't remember what was really the last final driving force that made me to leave Florida. I think leaving Florida was the biggest mistake I ever made, to be completely honest with you.

I should have never went to South Carolina. But it's just one of those things you do when you're young. You don't really, you know, I had plenty of money, you know, so we went up there. We got a town home and shit, yeah. So, but you were still making cards. Still making cards, still selling cards because that's, you know, that's my bread and butter. And I can, like, I figured, I was like, I can do this from anywhere. Anywhere from, it doesn't matter where I'm at.

I can do this because I need his internet connection. Right. You know, a place to set up my printers. And so I start, you know, sending out packages from South Carolina. And is the little town, Rock Hill. Rock Hill, South Carolina is where I was living, yeah. And I was sending packages. So in South Florida, and in Florida period, there's hundreds of UPS stores.

Right. Hundreds, you know. And you can just walk into one hand him, like, I got, some outgoing can you put this in your outgoing mail it's already got a postage label on it because I would print those out beforehand I had an account with Pitney Bowes and I would just print them print all the labels out and beforehand take them to the store and they'd be like okay set them out pay five to some them made you pay a $5 fee some just did it for free but when I got to South Carolina there

was two there's two little two UPS stores in this little town there was two in this little town and there was one like 45 minutes away yep so that you know I had no choice but to continuously use those to UPS stores to send out all of my all of my packages from. The issue with that is that they start to recognize you or they start to like,

so if the packages are, my face is a regular now at that UPS store. I'm there every other day sending stuff out and receiving packages as well. And I had to open up a UPS store box, which I never had had to do before in the past. Like I never had to go into these places and give them a driver's license

and give them, you know, this, that, and the other, you know, I didn't have to do that before, because I was just going, I dropped the package, and that would be it. You know, but since I was receiving packages, now this, this, the old man who ran the UPS store, which I didn't know it at the time, he was the owner, because all this stuff did it were franchises.

He made me open up an account, right, so that I could receive mail and send mail out there because I was in there so much, yeah. So I used, I used, I used a fictitious name on a driver's license that I had made, which actually, actually wasn't a fictitious name, It was actually a name of somebody. Right.

A guy who lived in Wisconsin, coincidentally. And I used his social security number, and I used his date of birth, and I used his name to print a driver's license. So to open the PO box with, yeah. So what happened? I mean, how long does this go on? You stayed there, what, a few months before, like, it goes back pretty quick. Yeah, I don't remember. It wasn't that long at all.

If it didn't take very long before the old man at the UPS store, apparently one day he gets suspicious and he opens up my package and he goes in and he finds the cards and he contacts the postmaster general the postmaster general comes down takes a look the postmaster general then contacts the united states secret service and they set me up right you so apparently they were there every day for a week from open to close sitting in the park a lot and their car waiting on me and on friday right before closing i came in to pick up a package because i got an email from ups store telling me i had a package right which coincidentally i did I was waiting for some stuff to come in from Mexico

I was dealing with a guy down there and he was sending me stamps and I was using UV stamps because one of the features of the credit card is a UV you hold under a black light it says Visa and all over the card but you can't see it unless it's under a black light well I was getting stamps rubber stamps set up from from Mexico

and I had UV ink in a stamper right and I would just stamp the card stamp the card let it dry stamped a card let it dry you know that way you would have that feature on it so i was getting new rubber stamps were coming in uh that day and that's i went down to the ups store and that's how they got me they were there waiting on me all right who so what do these guys look like a couple of peckerwoods a couple of white dudes you know what i mean walk in they got the bad so i'm going to walk out and i go to walk out of the store and two guys are walking and they blocked the door one's got a gun one they weren't in like uniforms or nothing like that but i seen the gun

I've seen the badge and it still didn't register with me what was going on and they were like Mr. Pearson and I sat back I was like yeah they're like well we need to talk to you

about what you've been sending out of here I'm like what I've been sending out of here I'm like what you don't know what you're talking about I tried to play stupid as much as I could and they're like you know

let's just let's just go on back let's just go back and have a chat all right so we're getting back and they're like well listen we know you've been sending out of here we got one of your packages

we know we win and we know what's in it and at that time I was like in my mind I'm thinking obviously they don't know who I am they don't know what I've been doing and they don't know the extent of what I've been doing because if they did we wouldn't be having this conversation I'd be in handcuffs so at this point I'm thinking you know maybe I can wiggle my way out of this like there's got to be some wiggle room somewhere you know I can BS I can BS my way out of most things I've been doing it my whole life maybe I can get out of this and so I'm thinking I'm like

okay, how can I minimize this as much as I possibly can? Because I'm not going to tell the truth, obviously. I'm not just going to spill my guts there, get all scared and spill my guts, because that just isn't going to happen. Plus, I had no co-defendants. Right. Nobody knew what I was doing.

There was nobody that was going to tell on me, you know. So I'm sitting there and they're like, well, we know, so, you know, we can take you to jail right now. He's like, you don't have to give us any information, but we can arrest you and take you to jail right now, and you'll sit there, and there'll be an investigation, and then we'll eventually figure out what's going on. Or you could play ball with us and you could go home tonight right now.

And I'm like, I can go home. I was like, yeah, I was like, yeah, you're just saying that. I'm like, that's bullshit. You know what I mean? So he gets on his phone and he calls up his sergeant or whoever his commanding officer was and we have like a little meeting right there on the phone. And they agreed. It's like, listen, if you, you know, obviously this isn't, you're not robbing anybody.

You're not breaking any, you know, you're not, this is guns or anything like that. This is fraud. He's like, you will have a court date. He's like, but if you just tell us everything we need to know right now, be honest with us. You know, tell us what we want to hear. He's like, you're going to have to go to court, obviously. And if you don't show up for court, you're going to have a warrant. You're going to have a warrant.

But, you know, we won't arrest you right now and take you to jail. And that was what they had told me. And I'm sitting there thinking like, man, dude, what do I got at the house? What do I have there that can bury me, you know? Yeah, the whole thing that was there. Oh yeah, my whole lab. Yeah, yeah, I had it all set up there. But you meant other, do you mean other than that?

Other than that, yeah, I'm like, man, you know, how much evidence is at the house? And listen, the night before this happened, I got paranoid for some reason, and I just went through and I threw out three big garbage bags full of shit. Right. Like receipts and like paperwork from like invoices from like orders I had sent and like piles of cards that like didn't come out right or like weren't embossed right. Like all this shit. I threw out three big giant black. trash bags of shit just cleaned out everything so the only stuff that i had there was the physical equipment itself right a blank cards that were yet to be printed and i think i had like five or

six hundred cards in the safe printed getting ready to go out on an order i was just waiting on payment to come in right plus i had a few debit cards and other things like that with where i was like holding my money uh and whatnot and i think i had i don't even think i had any cash on me at that time. I think I maybe had like 80 grand in cash in the safe. Right. You know. Um, and you just mind you throughout this whole thing, at the very pinnacle of what I deem to be my success, I was making like $100,000 a month. Right. I was doing 100 orders a month, $1,000 minimum mortar. And that's basically how I went from like 2005 to 2009 is when, you know, is when I got busted at the, uh, at the UPS store. It was in like 2009. Right.

you know, so from 05 to 09, it was a pretty good run. You know, I had, I, I made approximately, I don't know, $3.5 million or something like that. But it was like, you know, I, I never really seen, I didn't see 3.5 million at once. And that's what a lot of people fail to realize this. Yes, I did. I did, yeah, I did make a couple million dollars, but I never had all of that money at one time. You know, I think the most cash I've ever seen in my life that I ever had physically in my hands was like 80, 80,000. thousand dollars. Best most money I've ever seen in cash. I had multiple. I had millions, but it was like I had 200,000 in this account. I had 100,000 over here. I had 100,000 spread out between five different debit cards here.

I had a business account with 200,000 in it. And it was like, and you got to think, I'm a 20-something-year-old kid at this time. I'm dollar dumb, is what I call it. Like, I don't know what interest. I don't know about inflation or interest rates or like, you know, ROI, you know, return on investment. I don't know about any of that. I don't know about real estate, I don't know about money markets, I don't know about, you know, CDs and IRAs, Roth IRAs, all these different tools for investment.

I didn't know any of that. Like, I didn't know shit, no nothing. I'm meeting out three times a day. You know what I mean? I'm filling up my gas tank. I'm filling up my people's, like, friends gas tanks. I'm going shopping. Like, I had all the nice shit.

You know what I mean? I was taking vacations. So I wasn't, I wasn't like, I wasn't thinking about investing. I wasn't thinking about like buying a bunch of gold and burying it in the ground. Right. Like I just, like,

I, in retrospect and in hindsight, I really wish that I would have come across somebody that would have influenced me to save money or to invest money or to put money up, but I just didn't have any kind of influences like that in my life.

Everybody I knew was poor at that time. Like, everybody I knew. Like, I didn't know anybody that had money. I didn't grow up with money. You know, I didn't grow up being taught about money. They don't teach you that in elementary school,

or high school, they don't teach you how to manage money. The internet was relatively a relatively new thing. So you didn't have all these entrepreneur bros all over the, you know, giving you all this, about LLCs and, you know, this, that, and the other. So that information, I just didn't have access to any of that information at the time. And I just wasn't thinking about it, you know, so a lot of the money was just squandered. A lot of the money, I just, we're on debit cards that I would either lose or I would just, a debit card would get, like, flagged for like, listen, I lost $350,000.

in a Bank of America account that got flagged for fraud and I didn't have the proper information to make the documents to send to send into the bank to get the account unlocked to get my funds unfroes. You know, and that happened a bunch of different times. So, you know, so it was like, you know, it was like so chaotic. That point, that period of time, my life was so chaotic that I just, I couldn't accumulate wealth like a lot of people think. Like, so when I say $3.5 million, yeah, I did make $3.5 million, but

like you said it wasn't like i didn't have it all in one place at one time and like i could just go withdraw like it wasn't that easy oh no listen when the secret service grabbed me and they were they were giving me the numbers well you know nine million i'm like nine million i've never seen nine million i've never seen a million dollars in cash like what are you talking about you know but it's the same thing it's like the most cash i ever saw was nowhere wasn't it wasn't a million dollars maybe six or seven hundred thousand but i've never had like i've never seen that. And I've had money 100,000 in this account. You know, 50 in here, 300,000 here. You know, I've had a couple million in an account, but in an account isn't really

your money. Right. It doesn't feel like your money because I can't get it. And I can, even I can get it a little bit at a time. Like, you know, there was no, when I was doing it, there was no, there was no Bitcoin. You're not transferring to Bitcoin or, and I didn't know enough to buy gold, to buy diamonds. There's so many ways now I would have like, I could have bought diamonds. I could have bought gold. I could have bought silver. I could have bought all kinds of stuff. I didn't do anything. I just knew put it in an account and go get it out like $4,000 at a time, $7,000. And they still give you a shit.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I know exactly what you're saying. I was just spending on debit cards. Like, I would just use these debit cards. I didn't even put it on a debit card. Yeah. I didn't even know that. I just knew put it in a bank account.

Yeah. So when you had told me, when we were doing it, you were told me you had a bunch of debit cards with a ton of money on them, like in your safe and stuff when the cops go and everything. Like I was like, I didn't even think about that to putting, you know, having money just sticking on the car. never even occurred to me. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I get busted at this UPS store. Secret Service set me up. I show up. They take me them back. They're questioning me. And that's when I decided that I'm going to tell them. I'm not going to tell them. Obviously, I'm not going to be truthful with them.

I'm going to minimize as much as I can. But I'm going to give them enough information to kind of satisfy them without giving them enough information to bury myself for the rest of my life. Right. You know. So I was like, yeah, you know, listen, I've been printing credit cards in my apartment.

You know, I've only been doing it for a few months. And I just sell them on the internet. I was like, I don't go out to the stores and use them. I was like, I did it once or twice, but I was like, I get so much anxiety from doing it. I just, I can't do it. Like, I have anxiety issues. You know, so I've been selling them on the internet for a few months now,

and I gave them the name of the website I was on. And I gave them, I had to give them my login for every site that I was on. They were like, okay, well, we need to, where's your stuff? set up at. I was like, it's at my condo about a mile and a half from here. And like, well, we need to go there. So they had all of these documents faxed over to the UPS store. And they fingerprinted me in the back of the UPS store. They took me outside. They took my photo, had me turned to the side, turned towards the camera. They fingerprinted me. They had me signed a bunch of documents saying that giving them the permission to come to my home and search my home.

I had to fill out documents telling them that they could search my vehicle, all that stuff. and so they stuck me in their car and they drove me to my condo and I let them in and they searched and seized everything anything with removable storage on it they took so yeah digital cameras

game systems anything the hard drives I was going to say I know exactly what they have what they took it's funny this is another one of those things that when I got the document like you know somebody's telling you stuff

Yeah, let me read the list of everything they confiscated. Somebody's telling you stuff, right? Look, like, you know, listen, one of the biggest credit card counterfeiting rings. They had one thermal printer. Like, there was, like, this massive one, which was, what was his name? You just said it? Fargo, HDP. Yeah, but no, what was the guy's name?

The one, uh, his name was Max, um, Max, those Max Butler and Christopher Aragon. Yeah, and that was like one of the biggest counterfeiting credit card rings. He has, like, if you look at their list, what that they got from them, it's four or five things. You know, so maybe eight things. He's got like 15 things. Yeah, there is 15 things listed here. It's an Azuse E laptop computer, Adele Inspirance, 6,000 computer, Fujitsu hard drive, HP Pavilion

computer, Hightachi hard drive, another HP Pavilion computer, another Hitachi hard drive, another Tashiba hard drive, another thumb drive, five more media devices. 31 CDs and DVDs, three ultraviolet stamps, two Fargo ID card printers. Two Fargo. Two of them, they're like... Yeah, two Fargo. Yeah, those were five grand apiece.

I had two Fargo ID card printers. Century Safe embossing machine. Magstripe, Reed, Wright Machine, which was the MSR 206. And then I had a bunch of blank plastic cards. They didn't itemize that, though. 17 18, what was 17 items? 17 items on the list, yeah, 17 items. And this is just everything they took from.

my house than when they when they arrested me or they didn't arrest me when they came in and searched I know this is the indictment later that they okay yeah this is the but yeah so you know they came in they took everything they loaded it up in their car they'd left they gave me their business card and this was like the 4th July weekend I think it was

like 4th July was Saturday and this happened on a Friday so they're like take the weekend we're gonna have you come down on Monday to the secret service headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina, the big building like where they have their branch office at. Right. And I walked in, so the weekend went by and I was just thinking about running.

Right. You know what I mean? You have a question. So do they not know your name still? No, they know his name now. They don't figure out your name. Yeah, I told them my name. They had to run me. They fingerprinted me, everything. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You skipped that. Yeah, they fingerprinted me. They told them my name. They ran me, everything. And listen, at this time, I didn't really been in trouble. Like I said,

said, I had a very eventful youth, but all that shit was sealed and they don't, they can't see into your juvenile shit. All they can see is 18 to whatever. And like what I, I think I got busted stealing a pair of sneakers from the Aventura Mall in Miami when I was like 17. Right. Before this and that was the only thing that I had ever done, you know, so that's all they had to go off of. So it wasn't like I was a career criminal, you know, with a bunch of assaults and, you know, and all that show. I just, I just, I just, maybe I did those things and I just never got caught. So you look on paper Yeah

So yeah Like when they pulled me I wasn't like a career criminal And when I came to my house I had guns And I had in my apartment And in South Carolina It's not legal at all

Right Like it's not even medical And you know what they told me Like we're not the ATF Right We don't care about the Yeah we're not the ATF We're not the DEA

I mean I had I had assault rifle I had a couple pistols I had my concealed weapons license At this point in time You know I'm concealed carry. I had like a quarter pound in the in the in the freezer. They didn't take any of it. They didn't even touch it. All they wanted was the computer equipment. This is a secret service.

Yeah. You know, less paperwork for them. Yeah. So they took everything and then I had to go down to the office and I show up. I show up to the secret service office and they and I walk into this room and there's this big giant long table and there's like 10 dudes sitting at the table. Like you can tell they flew people out for this. Like this is this is like a debriefing kind of ordeal where they are going to grill me. I was in there for like four and a half hours, maybe five hours. I don't know how long it was, but it was a long time. I went in the morning and I remember I didn't get out until like the sun was setting. I remember thinking that like, I've been in here all day. And they had all these screenshots. They had all this paperwork out on the table. And every time I looked at a pile,

it was a screenshot of like one of my posts or a post I had commented on or a thread that I had commented on, like some random comment that I made on like a tutorial thread. Like they had went and found everything that I had done online, like they found all of it, and they had all of it on papers on the table, and they were asking me about everything. Do you know this guy? Were you involved with this forum? We see that you have an interaction with this individual on this, and it was different people asking me different questions. Right. You know, so I think they flew a lot of the guys out, I think probably from Vegas, probably from D.C., you know, just the different, the regions, because I think there's two or three different regions that they deal with cybercrime in the United

States. I know Vegas is a big hub for that. So after being grilled for four or five hours by these dudes, you know, asking every question in the book, I stuck to my guns, stuck to my story. I was like, listen, I've been doing this two months, you know, because it's obvious they didn't know who I was and they didn't know what was going on. Right. So I was like, listen, I've been doing this for a few months. Obviously, you guys can see, I've been on these websites for more than two months. But as you can see, I've only been vending because the website that they had me on, I was only a vendor on that website for two or three months. Had they got the other website, the other forums that I was on that I didn't give them, they would go back

and see that my vending history went back like three and a half years. Right. You know what I mean? And they could probably see a lot of the transactions and it would have been, it would have been a mess. Was your usernames like the same on all those websites? Earlier on it was not. So after I rebranded myself U.S. Plastico and I jumped on Carter.S.U, then that's what I continued with from there on. But prior to that, it was, I think it was just my ICQ number. I don't even think I had like a name. Was it something 305? 305 scammer. That's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did have a name. Yeah, yeah, right, it was. I forgot. I forgot all about that. Yeah, no, it was 305 scammer. I remember that distinctly. So that's what I was prior to U.S. Plastico. And then when I

rebranded myself, U.S. Plastico, then I went on vending with that, you know, moniker. Yeah, so, I mean, that's basically how the bust went down, you know. But they let you go. Yeah, they let me go that day, too. They're like, well, you're going to have to, you're going to have a court date. Right. And I gave them all my information. I gave my number, my mom's number, my grandmother's number, my grandmother's address.

I gave them everything. This is 2009. Okay? Right. And I walked away from that. And dude, for like the next year, I didn't know nothing happened. Right. But you went back to Miami.

I took off from, I left South Carolina. I was like, no, I was like this. They know exactly where I live. It's a small town. I was like, no, no. They could have somebody sitting outside all the time watching me. I'm not having it. You know, plus I had a storage unit with a car in the storage unit that I, because when we went,

we went to South Carolina with two cars. Right. Okay, I had a car. My wife had a car, but where we lived, we couldn't have both cars. So I just, we didn't have a need for two cars. So I kept one car in the storage unit. And in the storage unit, I had multiple IDs with my picture on them. I had, I had, I had, like, so when you're a kid, you know, when you're a kid, you play make-believe and you, like, build, like, you know, like a treasure chest and all this shit like that. Well, I had this spy kit when I was a kid and had, like, a fake passport that I made out of, like, cardboard. And I made, like, I made, like, had like fake money in there. And, like, I never, like, did anything with this. I just always kept it in a bag. Right. In my room for whatever, because you're a kid, you know, you got imagination. Yeah. Case I need to, you know, get out of here real quick. I got, because I had seen it on a movie or something like that.

So I built as an adult now I built one of those because I had been doing it as a kid my whole life now I built one as an adult but it had real money in it had my real passport

had you know driver had fake driver's licenses in it had credit cards in it I had a laptop I had an MSR 206 machine so just enough that if I needed to go I could I could you know

swipe cards and you know use dumps and everything on the run well I had all that in the storage unit that I didn't tell them about right so at this time

it's like I didn't want to leave and okay so yeah and my girlfriend at this time thank god she wasn't home when all this happened like when they came and searched she was actually at her um like her aunt her mom's house or something for the weekend and so she came home after like after it all happened and uh like a day later we're hanging out of her mom's house like two days later actually we're hanging out of her mom's house and her sister so she leaves with her, her, one of her cousins and his, her husband, they go do something. Her sister walks in and she's like, yeah, Melissa told me to tell you that she thinks y'all should just go y'all separate ways. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? We have a son together. We've

been together for two and a half years at this point. You know, the relationship's a little rocky because, you know, I'm a narcissist and, well, I was at this. I don't think I am anymore, but I think at the time I kind of was. And I, like, I neglected her. That's, that's, I did, but it wasn't like, you know, but she just straight up was like, kick rocks. Kick rocks. Right. So you know, what do I do? And you've just been, she also knows you're probably going to jail soon.

And she, and I think that she's thinking that she doesn't want to get in trouble. So she's trying to distance herself because obviously she knew what I was doing the whole time. Yeah, it's in the spare room. Yeah. And, you know, and I'd be, I'd be in there with my son making cards and he'd be sitting on the floor playing with a pile of them, you know, with, you know, so it's like everybody, they knew what I was doing. So she decides to, to not want to be in a relationship. with me anymore. I'm like,

dude, how my life can't get any worse at this point, you know? Luckily, I was smart enough to put up a little bit

of money and like an escape, you know, because I had that, a bug out bag. A bug out bag. Yeah, because, you know,

because I had an an overactive imagination when I was a child that helped me on later on in life this gave me like a new escape. So I was like, all right then,

I'll dip. You know, you want me to leave, I'll leave. Fine. You know, I didn't even, I didn't even try.

And I think the next day, like the next morning, for me to leave the next morning because she was like asking me not to leave like then when the reality set in that I was leaving she asked me not to and like I had this moment where I was like should I go or should I stay you know what I mean like I went open the door my son was like just the baby at this time he was laying in the bed sleeping I was like man this is a this is a this is a cross this is a fork in the road kind of moment like do I stay here and stick it out and or do I leave and so I left you know that's what I do I run from everything I've

running my whole life to spend like this on recurring theme that's what I do so I'd left I went back to Miami yeah and I um like for the next year I didn't know like I didn't know what to do right I didn't know if I was going to go to court next month in a week two weeks and I'm going to warn out for my rest are they looking for me are they watching me are they tapping my phones like I don't know you know so for the next year I just kind of spent money and I like so before this it's funny in my teenage years I was like a party animal a lot of drinking a lot of you know use not crazy use like I was never I was never like a junkie right you know I never had a bad I never had a bad problem I partied you know but I never you know I was never addicted

like that to where it just became like that was my mission every day and that's just this is what I need to do you know like a lot of those guys for whatever reason I just I whatever that that, whatever that mechanism for addiction is that people have in them, I don't, I don't think I have that in me. You know, so it was like, whenever I did, I could just be like, I could do them one day and the next day, I could just not do that. Right. You know, and it's been like that my entire life. I've always been able to kind of just like, you know, go and do a weekend and then Monday I'm just going back to my normal life. I'm not going to continue. And then, you know, to where it just strips me of everything I own and my health and my finances. And,

my, you know, I've just, I've never, I don't have that inside of me, whatever that is, that just grabs a hold of people. And I'm lucky because I was around it. You know, I was, I was, obviously, I was out in the street. I was around the homeless people, the drunks, the addicts, you know, the hobos, the prostitutes. I was in, I was in that life for so many years, and it just never, it never got me. So I was extremely thankful for that. I was saying all that to say this. Like, I partied in my teenage years, but once I started doing fraud, like, I wasn't, I wasn't using the money I got from fraud

to go out and party with You know what I mean Like I wasn't going out to the clubs And popping bottles And going to strip clubs And I wasn't doing any of that Because I had a wife at home We weren't married

But we were together And I'm just I wasn't a maniac like that I just didn't have it in me But now This year, oh yeah Because in my mind I'm going to prison

Right For a long time Yeah You know I don't know What the outcome Of the prison sentence is going to be And you know You automatically think the worst

because they caught me with cards they know I was on the forums you know so in my mind I'm doing 10 years so you know catch me catch me when you catch me kind of deal I'm gonna go on

so in this year I was just completely off the chain for an entire year partying going to strip clubs in Miami yeah you know

just doing a lot of not being not having like a habit but just like partying right you know just partying every day just you know

cutting loose um You know, a lot of strippers. I just got addicted to that whole real fast lifestyle. You know, I got the strippers name tattooed on my neck. It's covered up now. Yeah, but so it's funny because her name was JJ or her stage name was JJ. And my name, I go by JJ.

So it was like, hey, we got this in common. You know, let's hook up or whatever. And so I started talking to her and became like, you know, became friends. And then one next thing I know we were dating. And then I got her name tattooed on my neck. And then she got my name tattooed on her neck. Yeah, it was crazy. It was a crazy volatile relationship. It was wild. We were on every day just partying. She was still stripping and I was there every night and it was just crazy. And then we eventually broke up and then I dated like a five or six more after her. And then it just became like this whole thing where I was like I didn't even know who I was anymore. You know, it was like I was just waking up in random places. And like I just started looking like shit and I started feeling like shit. and I remember I got these sores around my mouth

like at the corners of my lips like I got these sores like these and I don't know what it was I think it was just because my pH balance was unbalanced in my body and I wasn't living right and I was you know constantly kissing on dirty strippers and you know it was just I was living gross I was living I was living gross dude

and like this is that guy what was the guy's name you were hanging out with Eric Eric yeah yeah yeah oh listen the whole cast of characters you know that you kind of just these people are off now these people are deep in the depths of like addiction and alcoholism and right like you know that i'm not on their level like i'm like i'm with them because i'm hanging out but i'm not i'm not where they're at and uh you know eric was a complete nutcase uh you know

just just an absolute muckinianic like we'd be driving around and we'd be like riding by mcdon's like pull in here pulling here and he had like this this real like froggy voice it's like real raspy let's go pull in here pull pull the drive through pulling the drive through and we pull in the drive-thru, we'd go up to the window. And he'd be like, yeah, I just came through here a half hour ago. I had a big order for like a picnic with a, for youth or something like that. He's like, yeah, you guys, up the order. I got women bitching at me and this, that.

He's like, hold on. But it's just the way he was. Like, he was so, like, overwhelmingly, like, pushy with people that they just wanted to give him whatever that he wanted, just to get him out of the situation as fast as possible. So we'd pull up in the drive-thru. Dude, he'd get two or three drinks of a large fry, a cheeseburger. burger, and then we just pull off. So they give it to him thinking they had shorted his order.

Yeah, and they'd be like, oh, here, sorry, sorry. And I remember this, and I'll always remember this. He leaned over, and he's like, you guys really got to get your shit together in there. It's like, you guys really got to get your shit together, and we pull off. And that's just how he was, man. And they have the money. They have the money to pay for it. Oh, we got more than enough money.

But that's just how he was. Like, he was just a nutcase. Like, we would be places, and he would just do random shit like that. But that was just, you know, that's just Eric is how he was. Well, funny story. a lot of people through Eric out there, party, and I met with one dude named Giovani Caramelli, I think his name

was, his name was Giovani, and this dude he was from Europe, he was Euro Trash, and you meet a lot of Euro Trash in Miami, you know, these... I thought he had money, though. His parents. His dad was some kind of, he owns some kind of large shipping company in the UK, so they had money.

And when I mean money, they had generational wealth. Like his dad's, dads, dads, dads, dad's dad, had, you know, dukes and kings and earls and all that shit he broke it all down for me one day but i can't remember you know any of it uh you know so yeah he had a lot of money like this kid had a penthouse in miami um he had we we had access to private jets you know we're flying out of uh we're flying out of uh broward um uh not not port lauderdale international but it was a little business a little business airport where they only flew like little small private charter jets and like

assassins and shit out of this airport. I think it was Fort Lauderdale executive, executive airport. We used to fly out of. So yeah, we used to fly private all the time out of Fort Lauderdale, out to Vegas, and go out to Vegas and party. So, yeah, but I met, I met Giovanni through Eric because Eric's sold, you know, he sold and so he was just plugged in because just to how he was and how he's a people person, he was a real fast talker, you know, and I think he was from Michigan.

like he grew up in Michigan was born to Michigan but he kind of came down to Florida kind of like the same ordeal I had just grew up in South Florida you know so we had a lot in common and I met Giamelli through I met Giamelli through Eric

and I remember we were at we were at Scarlett's Cabaret in North Miami Beach right off Ives Derry and we were partying there one night and we left Scarlets and we went to Gio Camel we went to Gianni's

penthouse and we're there partying and who was there that night there was a bunch of like A-list celebrities like B-list. Actually, I'm not going to say A-List. They were B-list celebrities. So Brooke Hogan was there that night. I remember hanging out with her. I remember she took so much that night that her bodyguards had to carry her out. Like the dudes who like, you know, are paid to protect her and watch over. They had to, like she ended up getting carried out and then I disappeared. I ran into so many like weird situations like that. Just hanging out with this dude, Eric. But yeah, like I said, the cast of characters you meet when you're out when you're out just doing this shit. And, over that year's time, over that year's span, I had blown through almost everything I had because I wasn't making any money at this time. And when I got caught from the Secret Service, I went ghost on everybody. Like, I just stopped because I couldn't log into anything because they had my login. So they would see if I logged in to any account that they had, you know.

Right. So they would know that I'm actually back online and, you know, back doing credit card fraud. And so for a whole year, I didn't do anything. I just spent money, you know, going from I didn't even have, like, a place of residence. I was staying at, I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in, um, and Hollywood, Florida. I would just get rooms there for like a week. And then once that, like, once that, like my money started dwindling down, like, I couldn't afford to stay at the Hard Rock anymore. So I was staying at like a little dive hotels and shit, you know what I mean?

Off like Dixie Highway and 441 and, you know, down in Fort Lauderdale, like not nice places. No cigarette burns on the comforters. You would find pipes and shit, like just hidden around the room. Like, these are, like, that's where, that's where, financially, that's where I'm at at this point. So I knew I had to, like, I had to start making money again. Right. You know, and I'm like, well, it's been a year and nothing. I don't have a court date.

I don't have a warrant out for my arrest. Nothing's going on. So I might as well gear up for another run. Right. You know what I mean? I might as well gear up for another run and just, let's go. Let's run it back up from nothing. You know, so I had, I had, I had,

enough money. I remember because I consciously made this decision because I remember I was sitting there. I was counting on my money one night and I figured I had just enough money to buy a printer and to buy all of the supplies for the printer. Because the ink, the ribbon for the printer that it printed on, those things were like $350. Right. You know, the blank cards cost a couple hundred dollars. The printer itself. Now, at this time, when I first started, they were like $5,000. At this time, I can get them on eBay used for like $2,500, $3,000. I could pick up one of these printers. I had just enough money to purchase all of my supplies.

And so I jumped back on ICQ. I had shoulder servers, ICQ, memorized. I knew it by heart. I messaged them. I told him, I didn't tell him exactly what happened. Right. I didn't tell him I had been caught. Yeah.

But I told him that I felt the heat. So I decided that it was a good idea to walk away for a while and tell things kind of cool down and blew over. And that's what I told him. I was like, listen, I walked away because I felt like the heat was coming down and I didn't want to go to prison. I didn't tell them that I got caught and I didn't tell them any of that. You know, so he was like, well, there's a lot of people that are pissed because they sent you money for order. Like, I had a bunch of orders out that I never fulfilled. Right. Because I had ongoing orders. I had ongoing business. I was waiting for money to come in. I had two or three orders in the printer in my safe ready to go

out in the mail. Those were all ready to go out. You didn't ask the Secret Service lets you finish up those last few orders. Yeah, no. No. No. They wouldn't let me. Like when they walked into my house They wouldn't even let me touch my laptop Because I went over to jump on it real quick To close a bunch of shit And they're like, ah, back up You know

I was trying to close a bunch of windows And they were not having it You know, so I was like In my mind I'm like I got just enough money Gear up for another run And I contacted buddy He's like, listen, you're gonna have to make it right

With all of these vendors Because I, you know, I couldn't Obviously I couldn't go back on to the site And start advertising again Yeah Because that's compromised all of what I was doing before is completely compromised. So it came

down to this one dude and I had to convince him to plug me back in because all of the big orders that I eventually getting when they're doing 5,000 cards, 6,000 cards I just started selling exclusively to them at one point. Like I stopped advertising

on the forums. I stopped selling to everyday people. Like I was only... There's a reason to it's stupid to sell 25 cards when you sell 2,000. And these guys are coming back every two weeks, every three weeks. Sometimes it was once a month, but I could guarantee on them, you know, on these large orders that I was making a hundred grand on or whatever, you know. And so I, that's the only, that was my only back in to the situation was this, this guy that I didn't even know that I had been talking to for four

years on the internet. And, you know, so I contacted him. I was like, listen, get with everybody, find out what I owe them. And if they want money, I don't have that right now, but I can send them out cards. Like, I'll just, I'll fulfill whatever I didn't fulfill a year ago. And hopefully I can make it right. Hopefully, you know, they want to deal with me again. But listen, there was nobody doing what I was doing at this time, not on the scale that I was doing. And even though I took a year off from doing it, I still don't think there was anybody to step in and fill my shoes. No, not the quality of the product that I was putting out was indistinguishable from something that was issued from a financial institution. Right. You know, so there was a vacuum that didn't

get filled. So when I came back, not only was I getting more orders than I was before, I was even busier. So I started making even more money than I did before I got caught the first time in South Carolina. How long does that last until like you, you, because you stop and you go to yeah, so early, so late, Florida, Temple Terrace. Yeah, I took off in the beginning of, um, or the middle of 2009. And so about a year, so about the middle of 2010, I decided to start cranked back up again. Right. And I did that for about almost, I think I got picked up. I got picked up in like November of 2011 for something completely

So how it all went down Is I met I met another girl Name was Rosalina I met her in Miami Right when I started like making money Making money again And when I started making money this time I stopped kind of partying

Because a lot of the people I was hanging out with Like the Eric type characters They were They were always like in and out of jail They were always they were leeches You know what I mean Like we'd go out and out would end up paying for everything or they and then they would just leave me plays like there was

always a bunch of crazy shit going on right so first a i had to distance myself from all of those people because now i'm making real money again you know now i don't have to associate with these people because i don't have to rely on them for any for anything anymore right because as before i did because they were plugged in everywhere you know it was just i was just running running with a crowd you know essentially so i had to distance myself from these people and that's when i met my wife, we ended up getting married, actually. And she got pregnant immediately, like right away. Like, so I met her and we were married and she was pregnant all within 30 days.

Within a month of us meeting. I'd say maybe a month and a half. Okay. She was married. She was pregnant and we were married. Like it just bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, happened real fast. I've been there. Yeah.

Yeah. And. I think maybe I went two months before I got the test. Yeah. So, you know, I crank back up and I get, I would get married and we have a kid and I'm still doing credit card. I'm still making the cards. I'm still selling the cards. But I'm not partying anymore. I'm not really not doing the strip clubs anymore. I'm not drinking. Well, I'm still drinking a little bit at this point. But, you know, I'm just, I'm just kind of living a normal life and I'm kind of going back to because the way I was doing it before is I had a normal life. I'm one of those people that I, I like, I'm, I like routine. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I thrive when there's structure and routine because of all the programs I was in as a juvenile because I was incarcerated 10 months out of every year, essentially, as a youth. You know, I was always in one program or another program or this program. So I learned that whenever I'm firing on all eight cylinders and I'm doing really well in

my life, there's structure and there's routine. So I knew to get back to that to be successful and to continue doing what I was doing that I had to create a new routine and new structure for myself. And that's where the new wife came in. We got like a decent little place in, I think I was in Pompano, which Pompano isn't really that nice,

Fort Lauderdale, but I was living in Pompano at the time. And I was just living like a normal life. You know, like I said, I'm still breaking the law, obviously, you know, printing cards, but I'm not really, I'm not being, I'm not so much as a maniac anymore.

And I'm getting a little bit older. I think I'm like 25. At this point, 24 or 25 years old. So I'm, you know, the knucklehead phase is kind of starting to wear off. And I'm kind of getting into, now I'm starting to look into, like, financially, like, investing in, like, real estate. And I'm starting to explore and, you know, study all of those kinds of things. And one day we're driving.

And apparently the tag on the, um, the car that I was driving was expired. I was driving to Cadillac and the tag was expired. And we get pulled over. And, um, the cop comes up to the window and says, you know, you have a warrant out for your arrest. So,

you know, we're gonna have to, we gotta take you, we gotta take you to jail or whatever. And in my mind, I'm like, like, I'm thinking,

I'm thinking that they're, they finally caught me. Like, they finally, you know what I mean? Like, caught on to me, like, doing what I'm doing. Right.

So I tell my wife, because like, we're sitting in a cop car and I'm like, I'm laughing because I'm thinking, like, this is just a routine traffic stop. Right.

And I'm laughing with her. I'm like, listen, when two cop cars show up, I was like, when the second cop car shows up, that's how you know you're just playing around. Right. Five minutes goes by, ten minutes goes by, the second cop car shows up. Another ten minutes goes by,

the third cop car shows up. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I knew something wasn't right at this point. And then I seen the cop car, I seen the cop walking back to the car, and he didn't have my driver's license and registration in his hand. Right. And I know immediately when that happens,

he's going to ask me to exit the vehicle. Yeah. So as he's walking, I'm watching him in my side rear rear, and I told, I leaned to my wife, I'm like, listen, I'm going to jail I was like go home

and get everything out of the house I was like everything all the equipment I was like get rid of everything because I was like this is this is going to be bad they're going to come they're going to search

so they arrest me they take me down to the it was like a Thursday or a Friday they take me down to Falkenberg Road jail right here in Tampa

I was in Temple Terrace when I got arrested and I remember sitting in jail for two days and then the weekend came and then I sat there the whole weekend no nothing and then Monday came and then they call me to pack up my stuff like Boziac you know call me roll it up all my shit I walk out still don't know what's going on I was like in my mind

I'm like I'm not getting released you know but I'm but I'm packing my shit up which is weird what was the warrant for there did they tell you what the warrant for okay they didn't tell me they're like all we know is you have a warrant out for arrest from the United States Secret Service and that's they would tell me. It was a federal warrant. And I forgot about this shit, because this is 2011. I got busted in the UPS store in South Carolina in 2009. Right. So my brain isn't even making the connection at this point. Like, I didn't, like, I'm thinking that they're arresting me now for, you know.

For your current, the stuff you're currently doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I was like part of this, like, big giant indictment that came down, what was it called Operation Open Market when it came? I remember what you, I remember what year that was, yeah. We have, we have all the paperwork for it. Yeah, the Nevada, yeah. So I'm thinking that, you know, maybe I'm wrapped up in that somehow. Not thinking about South Carolina. So I finally, so, oh, funny story about this too. While I'm on the run, or while that year goes by when I'm living with my wife and everything, I go to a gun store. And I probably go, I go to purchase a gun because at this time, I had my concealed weapons license. And even though I got,

I got jammed up in South Carolina I haven't been charged with anything yet you know I don't feel like I'm in trouble for anything yet so this is still valid like my weapons license is still valid I'm still carrying a pistol every day everywhere I go so I'm at this I'm at a gun store and I remember I was trying to buy

I was trying to buy a pistol we went there we did the shooting range and then I was trying to buy a pistol and when they do the background check when they do your thing it usually comes right back in 10 minutes right usually comes right back and then they do the paperwork and they sell you the gun but do 30 minutes went by, 40 minutes went by. And I'm like, yo, what is going on?

Can I just come back? Like, I didn't know what was going on. And the dude was acting nervous. He walked over to the corner. He's like, here, we just call this number. You got to call this number. And he gave it to me, like, all right. And I just left. I left from the, from the store. And like, two days later, I think a cop called you, right? Yeah, a marshal called me. He's like, is this John Boziac? And I was like, oh, no, this is Jason or whatever I gave my name. I don't remember what name I gave him. because I know that I never go by my real name. Like, nobody knows my name.

Like, John, nobody knows my name is John. Nobody knows my name is John. Nobody knows my name, especially Boziac. Nobody knows my last name. I go by JJ. Right. Everybody knows me as JJ. So if I ever hear my government name being called either out in public or somebody

calling me on the phone and asking for John Boziac, it's law enforcement. Right. It's law enforcement. Or it's child support or it's some kind of, it's somebody from the courts. Right. It's somebody from the courts. So I just ignore it. And I tell them, if I'm out in public, I'll just keep walking.

If I hear my name, I just keep walking. Like, I don't even pay attention. I won't even look their direction. And especially if you call me and ask my name, I'm going to say a different name and tell you you have the wrong number. Right. And that's what I did. I was like, no, you have the wrong number. This is, you know, so-and-so.

He's like, all right. And they hung up. And that's, I never heard anything else about it ever again. Right. Until I mentioned it. Until you mentioned it. Yeah. Like, he never told me that story.

And I just got the paperwork in. And I was on the phone. I didn't know He's in He was he's free And I'm talking to him on the phone I'm in prison I'm like hey bro

Why didn't you ever tell me this story Even now he just got the story wrong The cop actually called you You had just left Because I have the As you're leaving He comes in and they tell him He just you just missed him

And then he calls the Right then he calls Your cell number And he asked for John Bozziak You go you said no sir my name is john uh i don't know who that is and he hangs up the phone and the guy and the guy writes down i called john bozac he he said no he said his name was john or no he said his name was j jay or jay i think you said jay no sir my name is jay something like that and

and he hung up on him like i had the whole thing even right now you just said two days later he says he called right then yeah that day i i don't remember if it was right then or it was two days later but so but you never he never told me the stories i'm on the phone why didn't you tell me this stories like a great story? I didn't know. And he's like, I had no idea. They called the police. I don't know anything. I didn't know that the cops were coming to arrest me at that point in time. I didn't know I had a warrant at that time. I'm just going to buy a pistol. Like, I had no idea. But there's all kinds of stuff that he would tell me. And then I think, told me he was, he was race, not racing, but he was. Tokyo drifting. He was drifting. He was

drifting. He was showing his buddy how, like, he was telling him, like, it was like an argument, like who could, was the better driver. And he took his buddy's car. He's drifting. Oh, was my car. Oh, what? Yeah, it was my car. car around the parking lot in the apartment complex and he hits the curve and it shoots up and it goes into a canal yeah and he was told me that we just i put i put the car in the canal with four people inside of it yeah we're just laughing about it i don't think anything out of it yeah i'll tell that story right now that's one of the police reports i get because that's a funny one i completely forgot about that like i didn't even when we were in prison i didn't even tell you that story you got the police report on it

and i was like oh my god i completely forgot about that night funny night actually we're in i was in Hollywood, Florida. We were in an apartment complex right off of Hollywood Boulevard, like West Hollywood Boulevard, though, on the other side of 441. And I was like, we pulled into the apartment complex and we had all been drinking. I was, I was drinking and driving. Obviously, I was, we were all hammered. And we were on the way there, like, I was driving really good. And then we pulled into the apartment complex and somebody in the backseat was like, you don't know how to drive. And I was like, oh, I don't know how to drive, do I? And so I just hit the gas and I just started like drifting around the app, it was completely reckless. I mean,

Somebody could have been out walking their dog, and I could have killed him. It was reckless. But I was hammered, and I was 24 at the time. So I'm drifting my car through the parking lot. I'm, you know, burning around corners, drifting around. And then I see the parking spot where I usually park, but I'm intoxicated and I don't realize that I'm doing 65 miles an hour through the parking lot. So I hit the brakes and I'm going to skirt into the parking spot, and that's going

to be like my grand finale. Right. It's to slide into the parking spot. But when I slid into the parking spot, I'm doing 60 miles an hour. It ran, it hit the, that. that big cement thing, the yellow like stoppers. Yeah, like curb thing. We're right over that.

That didn't do anything. That just right over that, down the hill, into the water, into the canal. Four people in the car. Yeah. People sitting on people's laps and shit. Everybody's, everybody got wet. Somebody called the cops. So, so, so listen to this, this is so crazy.

So I go and we all get it, we all jump out of the car. Everybody starts running immediately. We're in apartment complex. You know, in Florida, a lot of people aren't from Florida. But in Florida, we have these canals. Yeah. That just run everywhere to, you. you know, help with, like, overrun the water and alligators and everything else.

So there's canals and there's water everywhere. So the car went into the canal. We jumped out. We ran in the house. I'm peeping out the window every 20 minutes. I don't know what to do. How am I going to get this car out? Because the car is in the water.

Like, I don't know. Who do I call? Do I call it tow truck? What do I do? We're in the house. Everybody, we start partying again. We turn the music on. We're just partying.

Like, it didn't happen. Yeah, nobody's, nobody's scared or anything. We start partying. Then all of a sudden, two cop cars show up. Three cop cars show up. And you know how it is when something happens that in like Broward County

or like, did they, there's like 15 or 20 Broward County Sheriff's deputies, the SUVs will pull up like it's some kind of crime scene because the car's in the water there's nobody around.

Right. And so they're like, dude, so I walk out there after about 15 minutes. They're like, dude, we're about to call the divers. They're getting ready

to have a diving team come out and dive in the, to find a body because they didn't know if there was like people in or whatever. And so the guy cop, the woman cop shows up and it's his point.

partner, so the dude's cop shows up, he's kind of being cool about it, he asked me what happened. And I'm like, listen, I pulled in the parking spot a little bit too fast and jumped the curb and the car went into the water. He's like, nobody's injured. And I was like, you know, it is, I just, you know, reckless driving, whatever. I was, you know, I was going too fast. His partner, so the woman cop wanted to take me to jail. Right. For a DUI, I was clearly intoxicated. I'm slurring my words. I stink like booze. And she want to take me to jail. But the man, so the dude so my, so, okay, the people, the, the people we were staying with at the house was a friend of mine from Michigan. His sister had moved to

Florida like years earlier that I, and I had known them like my whole life growing up just from being back and forth for Michigan. She worked at Carly's Scarlet's Cabaret at the strip club. His sister worked at Scarlet's Cabaret that we had just left from that night. The cop, the male cop, that was the female cop's partner knew her was one of her customers from Scarlett's Cabaret. So when she came out

and he's seen her, he's like, what's going on here? He's like, oh, she's like, oh, that's my brother, that and the other. The female cop

that wanted to take me to jail, they were roommates with it in college. So the male, the dude cop that wanted to take me to jail that knew the chick was roommates with her

and was like, no, we're not taking him to jail. He's not going to jail the night. So I skated on the whole thing. Right.

I skated and so they had one of those big wreckers come out and they pulled the car out of the canal and remember the cars hanging straight up and down like this like the headlights were pointing at the ground the tails going all the way up in the air they're like it's $800 to drop the car right now I was like it's soaked with water

what am I going to do with it you don't take it so they took the car I had another car there another Cadillac at the time I had two or three cars so it wasn't a big deal but yeah and I completely forgot about that until you told me because you got the police report right like you said and like I said so there's so many little things like that that have happened

that it's hard for me to remember. But anyway, back to the arrest, the cop car show up in Temple Terrace. So Falkenberg, I'm in Falkenberg Jail. And like I said, I was there Friday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday came, and I still hadn't been arraigned yet. Right. Like no arraignment or anything. So I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

So finally, a U.S. Marshal shows up at the jail to pick me up to transfer me from Falkenberg jail to, what's the one out in St. Pete? What county is that? Is it? Pasca, no, not Pasco, it's, um, shoot, I, I, I know, I know it's, but it's where they hold the federal inmates. Okay. Because they don't hold them in Falkenberg here. They hold them in St. Pete out there at St. Louis, in St. Lucie County. No, that's way down. That's, that's further down. Okay, whatever county it is out there in St. Pete. Pinellas. Panellis. That's what it is,

it's Pinellas County. So I went to Pinellas County Jail. The U.S. Marshal that transported me was the one that showed up at the, at the gun store looking for me. Oh, really? Yeah, he was like, you know, he's like, you know I was the one that came to the gun store looking for me and that's when I didn't even know and that and I think that's when I found out at that time is when he came is when he told me he's like oh yeah he's like I showed up there looking for he's you had just left I was like no shit but yeah no he picked me up and like a BMW wasn't even like a cop car or anything right it was like a BMW that had confiscated from some guy and he took me to uh falconberg jail and uh I went to falconberg jail and I went to court that day when I got the falconberg jail and

they let me out that day on pretrial services. Right. My own reconnaissance, no recognizance. All right. How are you pronounced that word? Recognizance. Recognizance. No bond, no nothing.

You know, you're going to have to report Monday morning or Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning or whatever. You know, that and the other. So I did that. And when I got home, you know, my wife had disposed of everything. Right. You know, all my printers, all my laptops. She threw everything out.

She didn't, like, move it to a storage unit. She threw everything out. out, including debit cards with money in it. Yeah, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the laptops, like everything. So any way to access that money is gone. And by that point, they've taken the dumpster.

Yeah, trash is collected. I thought about going to the landfill. Like, I thought about driving down to the landfill and trying to figure out, you know what I mean? Like, that's like where I was at this point. So I was like, all my money's gone. Like, I have nothing. We're at this point.

I was like, we're hit. I have no income coming in. I don't have any way to connect to anything with anybody. Like all my contacts are on my laptops. All my hard drives are holding all of my Bitcoin. Everything. It gets all gone. It's one of those Captain Kirk moments when he screams.

You know, and you never saw this movie. Cod! You know? Yeah. So. Yeah, I was, I was proverbly, you know, what they would call hit. Yeah. At this point in time.

You know, so, and like, I didn't know what to do. You know, I had no way to make. make any money she she wasn't working right you know we had uh my son aiden was we had a two year old at this point was it too i don't remember how old he was at this time uh maybe nine or ten months actually and now i'm on pretrial services so now i got to call this phone number every single day and says you have to report today you do not have to report today like so it's every single day either says yes or it says no and if it says yes then i means i have to go down i have to do a ua urine analysis i got to pee in a cup i got to see the the probation i knew it was rome

random, right, you know. And so that went on for about a month or two, and then I just absconded. I just stopped. I think I dropped dirty one time because I'm smoking at this point. I'm not going to stop smoking. You know, I'm just going to, if it says you have to report today, I would go down, I would get this flush, this drink. You would drink it, and then you would fill it up twice with water and drink two of those, and then you were good for like four hours. Like every pee you did for four hours after that was going to be clean.

And it was called ready clean, actually. No, it was called Q-Carbo-16, actually. That's what it was called. That's Q-Carbo-16. I swear to God, that stuff works. I used it the entire time. I smoked every single day, all day long, and every time I had to take a test at Q-carbo-16,

or Q-carbo-32 works like a dream. So, yeah, I absconded. Yeah. I dipped, and we moved. We, like, we're just going to move. From one side of Tampa to the other. We moved from Temple Terrace to, like, what they call a suitcase city to North Tampa.

like Fletcher and like the 20, 20th and Fletcher over by University Mall over in that area. That's rough. Yeah, it was an apartment. I was in, I was in university club apartments over there, right by the mall, right in that little row that cuts through from Fletcher to the mall right there by McDonald's and shit. Now it's kind of, it's not so bad now. I mean, it's still run down and, you know, poverty. But it's like back then there was like shootings and robberies and all kinds of crazy shit going on.

so at one point the probation officer had called you and you said i'm in michigan didn't you say yeah yeah yeah i know this because i got the report they they they stake out like they send like the u.s marshals or the task force yeah the marshals and they stake out like several of his cousins and they rate they kick in the door to his uncle's house dude my uncle calls me right after they right after they left like dude they showed up with like ar-15s and the thing to hit the door and everything He's not in Michigan. No, I'm not, I mean, I mean, yeah, I'm just on the other side of the city. I was in the same city.

I was just on the other side of the city. Where? In Michigan? No, in Florida. Oh, I know, but as what I'm saying, you're not, you're not Michigan. His uncle's in Michigan. Yeah, meanwhile, the, the marshals are kicking indoors in Michigan looking for me. They're raiding everybody's houses.

My uncle calls me right after they leave. He's like, dude, I just got dumb burning and they kicked my door in looking for you. I was like, oh my God, better you than me. So then then I knew they were looking for me. the next day after I got off the phone with my uncle, the secrets or the U.S. Marshals show up at my place and arrest me pretty much. Yeah, and they take me back to jail

and then this time they had to extradite me from Florida all the way to South Carolina. Because mind you, I'm catching the Amtrak up to South Carolina going to all my court dates up into this point. But you realize at this point that it is for South Carolina. Well, you kind of skipped over that. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. So when I would, so what I would,

So when I went to Corp, when they released me in my own recognizance, that's when I found out there like, okay, when I went in front of like, you have a warrant for your rest out of the middle district of South Carolina. I'm like, oh, my God. I was kind of relieved, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, my God, dude. Are you kidding me? Almost four years goes by. And you people will just, now, now you're just picking me up.

You know, like, what the fuck, man? So whatever. So, yeah. And then I get home and my wife disposed of everything. She got rid of all the printers. And so I had no way to make any money at this. this point. So they grabbed you. Yeah, they picked me up. Did they move you back to South Carolina? Yeah, they had to extradite me from Florida, the South Carolina. And then when I get to South Carolina,

they gave me another bond. I got a bond when I got to South Carolina. That's insane, bro. I never got a bond. Got a bond in South Carolina. And he's absconded twice. And they gave him another bond. Yeah, they gave me a bond when I got to South Carolina. I couldn't bond. They didn't bond me out. My wife didn't bond me out, though. Right. Because she was, who knows what she was on. Like, when I went to, when I went to prison, I went to jail, like my life, my wife just was like, I don't know what she did, but she didn't give a fuck about me. Like, she, I wasn't her number one priority. Like, you know, when most people go to jail and they're married, like, we're married.

Right. They are usually like on the phone every day. Like, do you need, what are you all right? Do you need anything? Do you even make phone calls? What's going on? Here we are with the judges. Let me talk to a lawyer.

None of that. Yeah. None of that. Dude, she disappeared. Like, I, like, I would call her phone from jail and, like, it would be either disconnected or she wouldn't accept it. the phone call because she didn't have money to put on the on the phone to pay for the phone calls because that's just expensive. So the whole time I'm just sitting in South Carolina like I don't know

what's going on. I don't know why you know I I'm just sitting here you know I get a court appointed attorney Catherine Abbott an angel from heaven pretty much best court appointed lawyer I you know it's federal so it's a little bit different than you know it's not the meat grinder yeah yeah You get better representation in the federal system, even though it is a court-appointed attorney. And, yeah, I just sat there going to my court dates, you know, getting my discovery, going to my court dates, and that's when I got my complete indictment, you know,

and that's when I found out in the indictment that the old man at the UPS store had opened the package, and that's how I eventually, because I didn't know any of that. Right. You know, even when I got picked up at the UPS store, I still didn't know that the old man had went through my packages I thought that they had intercepted a package

and traced it back to the UPS store and came and got me but that's not the case it's the old man that the nosy-ass old bitch that opened my... Yeah, just decided I don't know what he thought

maybe he thought I was sending out you know because I was in there every other day and my packages were going everywhere they were going to Europe, they were going to South America they were going all over the United States you know right so yeah And I had, like I said, I had a pretty good lawyer.

Like I was going to all my court dates. I got my discovery. I figured out that the old man went in one of my packages and found the cards. And so when they came with the initial plea of, I don't know, I think it was like 160 months or something, like 10 years. I think it was 10 or 12 years. Yeah, it was 10 or 12 years was the initial plea. I'm just like, there's no way. There's no way I'm doing all that time.

you're out of your mind I'm not doing all that time I was like I've never been in trouble before you know what I mean there's no victims I was like there's no way I'm doing all that time so me and my lawyer

are going through my my discovery right the discovery is that what it's called and they sent it to you we're going through my discovery and we get to the part to where and I was like

I mentioned something about the guy opening my package she's like wait let me see that and she goes back through my discovery she's like I have to go I'm gonna look into this part right here she's like sit tight

she's like I'm gonna send this initial, what did they call that? The pre-sentence report or the plea? Yeah, that initial plea they give you. The offer, she's like, I'm going to send this back to the prosecuting attorney. I'm going to go back and work on something. Two weeks goes by, I don't hear shit. I'm like, oh, man, like, I'm starting to sweat.

Two weeks goes by, I don't hear nothing. Finally, my lawyer came back and she's like, she puts a new, she said, we have a new agreement. She's like, due to the circumstances surrounding the whole, you know, unfolding of events and how the Secret Service got involved and all that. She's like, they have agreed to dismiss. Now, where are my charges at? So I can read off the charges. Well, it's count one, count two, count three.

So, oh, this just gives the statutes. It doesn't give it. Well, it's basically it's... It was three statutes. The first one carried a maximum penalty of 15 years. The second count a maximum of 10 years. And the third was a... The third one I know, because this one has a two-year mandatory consecutive

to any other sentences. and up to $250,000 fine, which they didn't hit me with. So they dismissed the probably the... It was access device fraud. It was manufacturing a fraudulent transaction device, and it was trafficking in a fraudulent transaction devices. And the third charge was aggravated identity theft because I had used somebody's name on the driver's license

to open the UPS store box. So they dismissed counts one and two, and they charged me with count three, which carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 48 months. 24, yeah, 24 months, actually of 24 months. And that's what I pled guilty to. And at this point, I had already had 13 months in. So when I finally, you know, got sentenced and got shipped out to prison,

I only had like another 13, 12 or 13 months to go or something like that. Right. When I got to Coleman, finally, yeah. So after I got sentenced, I don't think I even sat in county jail for not even a week or two. I think I was on like the first bus out going to Coleman from where was I at? I was in this little shithole county jail in South Carolina. It's one of the worst jails I've ever been in besides Irwin County Jail in southern Georgia when they kind of dumped me when they were transporting me from Florida to the South Carolina

yeah horrible experience I don't even if I want to go into that but yeah it's horrible experience worth jailhouse I ever been into no music no TV 23 hour lockdown just you know wild anyway yeah I think I sat there maybe

like a week and then they shipped me out to Coleman right yeah after I was sentenced so I think I I don't remember how much time I had in but I think I maybe only had 12 or 13 months left to do and six months of that was going to go to halfway house so that's when you met me yeah when i got to coleman i don't know how long i was there before we started talking maybe a few weeks or something i think it was probably a month or so yeah maybe maybe maybe even a few months

when i saw you you had a a little gangster walk you walk you know he like you know what i'm saying and i thought this guy you're in prison we can't walk you know what i mean you can't walk with my head down looking at the cement and i thought i thought this guy's here for mad or something. Like, you know, because most of the, well, not most of it, but a lot of the white guys. But you had the tattoos, not all of these tattoos, but you had tattoos on your neck and both arms. And I thought, this guy, he's got to be, like, it's got to be meth or it's got to be something, right?

It wasn't until we were standing in the line one day. And somebody asked, you were standing in, behind me or in front of me, and somebody asked me and somebody asked me what my charge was. Oh, standing behind you guys. Yeah. And I said, I was listening to you guys all the way through the line. and you were talking about your case and all this, that, the other.

Oh, yeah. When I mentioned, I said, oh, yeah, man, I was charged with this, this, this. When I said an aggravated identity theft, you said, you said, that's what I was charged with. And I turned around, I was like, really? And you go, and I said, I thought you were here for baby. And you go, what makes you think that? You saw something like that, you know, and you were like laughed about it.

And then you said, I said, what were you doing? You went, well, I mean, I was actually, it's funny because I was actually manufacturing credit cards. I mean, but they dropped those charges. I just got hit with this one thing. And you started telling me, and when we sat down, we got our food, we sat down, we talked for, we talked for like three, four hours straight. He just told me the whole story.

And I was like, bro, like, I got to, I was working on, whose book was I working on? Doug Dodds. Working on Doug Dodds. I was like, bro, listen, I got to write your story. And you were like, man, I'm leaving in a few months. Like, I'm, I said, man, we'll write a big outline. Like, we'll set aside a couple hours every couple of days. And I'll write an outline.

And it'll be, we'll make it expansive, and then I'll be able to, you know, expand it from there. And then that when you get to the halfway house, you can call me and, or I'm sorry, I can call you. And which is kind of what happened for a little bit. We had a good outline. Yeah. Well, and then you've disappeared. I, well, I guess we'll get to that. Oh, okay.

Well, I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you want, I don't know what you're right.

You know. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, yeah. So Coleman. You're right. Colman prison.

Yeah. I had a very, listen, I had it pretty, listen, my time in county jail was way worse than when I got the Coleman. When I got the Coleman, I slept like a baby. I remember the first night I got the Coleman, I passed out immediately, and it was the best night's sleep I had had in over a year. Coleman's a dream compared to any county. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was in, I was, listen, my, my experience from the county jails I was in was an absolute nightmare. Absolute nightmare.

I didn't, I didn't think that you could be treated that bad. and just be neglected that bad. Right. You know what I mean? Like, they just, it's like, you couldn't even, like, if I had an issue

or I needed something, like, you couldn't even talk to anybody. Like, you would try and ask somebody a question, you, they'd either completely blow you off or they would lie to you and tell you they would look into it and just don't, or they would just come at you

all kind of crazy way and start yelling at you. Like, there was no negotiating with these people. Right. You know what I mean? So it was like, there was nothing, there was nothing I could do, you know? But yeah, I had a really bad,

really bad. So like I said, when I got the combed it was like, I was like, there's no cops when we get to walk around and do whatever we want. Yeah. Yeah, you've heard me say this before, COVID.

But like, you could go, you could go a year and never have any in our act. Like, if you don't need anything from staff, you know, the COs or the staff, you don't ever have to talk to a CEO. You could go a year easy that once a year you have to talk to your counselor.

Yeah. But you could, you could completely... You could live your whole life and you never have to deal with the police. Yeah. Ever. Yeah. And this is when...

I mean, you'll see them because they'll unlock doors and let everybody in the unit or they'll be standing there waiting to let everybody out. Yeah, but you don't have any interaction with them. You're not talking to them. They're not talking to you.

Yeah, that's what I liked about it. I was like, oh, this isn't like a nursery, a nursery school, you know? Like, they treat you like kindergartners and shit. Like, they're just constantly micromanaging your every movement. Oh, sit up, stand down. Be quiet. No, no, no, no, no, there was none of that shit going on.

Right. So I was like, yeah, I can deal with this. And then your cellie was a Chris Marrera. I had a couple different ones, yeah. But Christopher Marrero. was one of them. Yeah. Just an absolute maniac.

He was great. He was great fun. Yeah, I was going to say what was like meeting him? Or when did you realize? Yeah, when did you realize? Chris was Chris, I guess. He just seemed like a normal dude, you know?

And then one night we were just laying there and he started talking about, I remember how we got into the conversation, but I think I used to listen to, um, what was that dude? He had, he was syndicated and he was on the radio, coast to coast.

Oh, yeah. He talked about aliens and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't remember his flipping name. You know why he was so big at one point because he was the only one doing it? Now everybody's talking. Well, it's podcast, yeah, but he was the OG.

He was the original. And I wish I could remember his name to give him his credit, but I can't remember his fucking name. I almost had it, but I lost it again. But anyway, but I used to listen to that, and I think I was listening to that, and I took the headphones off. I leaned down on Chris and I asked him a question.

Like, have you ever heard of this, that and the other? And that just, that was it. That opened the floodgates. and open the floodgates. This guy, he believed in every alien conspiracy, every, like, mainstream narrative conspiracy you've ever heard of. He believes in them all. Yeah.

You know, I've had him on the podcast. Like, I've done remotes. Oh, that's right. You have had him on the podcast a few times. Yeah, but, you know, I would get him going because I would get them riled up. And I would sit there and I'd be like, I was asking him some point, he's like,

he's like, John, you don't understand. The government has weapons that seem like magic. he would just say shit like that you know or we get talking about aliens or something he have like he'd have a box like literature underneath his bed and he would just go in there and pull out literature on shit you know like listen look it's it's right here yeah he would have some uh remember one time he showed me a book he's like i've got in the book i got it right it's fact it's fact it's a fact i go come on chris it's not a fact he pulls out the book and he shows me the book i'm like okay well this is just written by some idiot and published he's like no no

he flips it over and on the on the on the on the side of the book right it said um it said it was um nonfiction or it said like history or it said science or something like like that meant something it's like so the guy typed in science or typed up that doesn't meet that i go that's fiction because that's what i said it's fiction he goes no look it says right here i was like but i do remember the one time we were doing something like they we were locked in the unit for some reason we're waiting for chow and um john looked john looked to me goes let's go for chris and i went all right so we walk in there and we just walked in the room and john looks at him and he goes chris we were outside earlier and there were these planes

flying over and they had like these you know what are those those that smoke that comes behind the plane or something and he goes oh my god you mean and he immediately went into he already knew he's he goes they're poisoning us they're that's such and such and multi-chloric chlorine such and such or whatever it is and they're poisoning us you know they want they want to lower the the population you remember that time we were in the chow hall and there was another big dude big there and he was talking about all the conspiracies like man we need to hook him up with chris and then we walked chris over there and then they started talking then they started going back and forth and they were just spitting statistics going back and forth he was like oh yeah 300000 and this that and he's like oh

they're 15 years yeah yeah they knew it i was like i was like that you know about the such and such? Of course. Well, they're building the buildings right now. It's a house, all of society. You know, they want to get the, what do they want to get the, they want to reduce the population of the earth down to, he had a number like 550 million because that's all that the earth can really sustain. I mean, it's just, he just, where do you, where do you get, they're building, wait, is it, FEMA camps. FEMA camps. They're building FEMA camps all over. That whole narrative was real big during the Obama administration. That was like the go, that was like the one that that's what they're doing that's that was the plan during the

Obama administration so it was going to be a civil war it was going to be um Obama was going to go for a third term they were going to do uh what do they call that when they they do um they lock everybody down and turn everyone or whatever they're going to put everybody into these FEMA camps yeah yeah yeah that was the big and then you know good guy seemed like a good guy you could talk not violent there wasn't there's not a violent bone in his body not even angry yeah I've never seen him get angry. Here's the thing about him. You could talk to Chris for a year straight about just regular stuff.

Like, if you had a job with him, you could talk to him about work and this and that and never realize that he's got this whole other issue going on. And then one day, you could say the wrong thing, and he'd start talking to you about how they fake the moon landing, how the moon is hollow, how they have secret bases, how the government is. And he would go off on a tangent. You'd be like, oh, my God. Oh, it's fun. Yeah, occupy hours just talking to that guy. Absolutely. Yeah, so that was Coleman.

Yeah, Coleman, you know, it was a cake walk, you know. So like I said, my whole experience, my whole incarceration experience throughout this whole thing really wasn't even, it wasn't that bad. Right. You know, 24 months in and out, not even. I did six months halfway house in Miami. They sent me back to Miami where I'm from

and the halfway house. And coincidentally, the halfway house, was right in the neighborhood that I grew up in, like, right in, like, two blocks away from where my wife and her mother were staying currently. Right. You know, so I was like, okay, well, I'm right back in, you know, my high school's here, downtown's here. Like, I know, I know where I'm at. This is awesome. And then they put me in a halfway house, and I did, uh, I did like six months halfway house. I worked, um, I worked for a kosher, frozen food warehouse. Right. Yeah. I had three bosses in there, all named Abe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What about the AT&T? Didn't you work for AT&T or something? No. You had a night job. You had a night job. That was the frozen food warehouse. Oh, okay. Yeah, the frozen food warehouse in Miami was, uh, it was something.

I'll tell you that. You had, listen, you had to put winter gear on. So the whole entire warehouse was they kept it at 30 degrees and then they had like four deep freezers. One was like negative six. One was like 12 degrees and one was 10 degrees or something like that just for like different kind of foods they kept in them. So I used to have to put this big jumpsuit on

It was a one piece A snowsuit kind of thing So I had to wear that I had to put that on And I had these big gloves I had to put on And I had boots And I had a winter hat

And this is Miami The middle of Miami It's if you walk outside It's 103 degrees At 3 in the morning And in South Miami And during the summertime And I'm dressed in this winter gear

And I remember my hands Used to get so Like they would hurt They would get so cold From there just like Stack and frozen meat That I would have to go outside and I would take my gloves off

and I'd put my hands on the cement because the cement would be so high it's like, you know, it's 100 degrees outside. And I wore my hands back up before I went back in the building to stack. So I did that for like six months and it was the most horrible thing in the world. Side note, a side funny story about that is,

do you ever heard of that show, South Beach Toe? Never seen that show at South Beach Toe? It was like a reality show and they followed the tow truck drivers around South Beach and they had all these crazy. Every time they went to go tow somebody,

it was kind of something crazy situation where they're like clowns and midgets and... I probably... I'd probably seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so there was a toad place right across from this fast food or from the frozen food warehouse I was working at. And I was on my break one night and I was outside and I seen all these cameras and shit

going on. So I walked over to the edge of the road and I'm like, what in the fuck it's going on over here? And so they got this, they set like seven foot tall dude dressed like a clown standing on the corner, right? He's got the wig. He's wearing the costume. He's got the nose on and everything, right? they got the camera set up there

and it's at like a tow service so I asked I asked one of the guys I'm like what the fuck he's like that's where they film South Beach tow at and like this isn't South Beach he's like yeah we're nowhere near South Beach but that's that's where they film it it's all staged

it's all staged it's all bullshit like every every episode of that entire thing was all bullshit all staged with actors and plot lines and everything yeah yeah yeah I always wonder that when you see them on TikTok and stuff some woman will come running out

and jump on the hood of the car the guy's driving down they're not gonna do that what are you doing Yeah, it's all BS. A lot of that's BS. So I did that for six months. And then when I got out of halfway house,

so I got released, coincidentally, I got released out of halfway house on my 30th birthday. February 6th, 2015, I got released on my 30th birthday. And when I got released from a halfway house, I didn't have anywhere to go.

I had nowhere to go. Right. And the only place I had to go was this chick that I met while I was in the halfway house. So I ended up going and living with her, and they lived in like a duplex. her brother lived in like the next door unit and they lived in in one unit me her her mom

her dad her daughter and then it was her brother and his wife lived next door and when I tell you this chick was nuts um it's one of the probably one of the worst situations I've ever had to deal with and I've been through some doozies right I've been through quite a few dozies with you know women that are just completely off the rocker I've been I've been tried to trick tried to run me over you know when I was a youngster I was dating this girl the stripper she tried to run me over multiple times. Yeah, I had a trick, try and poison me one time. It just, you know, I attract broken people, you know,

because my energy is so authentic, like so authentically real that I attract people. Is this a chick to try to stab you? Yes. Okay. No, she didn't try. She did. Oh. And, yeah, so I met the chick in the halfway house, and we started dating, and then, like,

when I get out of halfway house, I didn't know where to go. So I was initially staying at this warehouse where, there was just a bunch of dudes tattooing out of a warehouse in Miami like some people I met and there was like these kind of rooms upstairs so I was just staying like in this warehouse

and there's like no bathroom there there's no we didn't have like there was no like running water or anything like that so then she was like well mom and dad said you can come stay at the house so I ended up going to staying with her and then she was just nuts

she would just start fights out of nowhere and she would have these extremely like violent just outbursts where she would throw herself on the floor and like scream like a year olds and throw temper tantrums. And she was my age. She was like 30 something. Right.

You know? And she'd throw herself on the floor and just scream at the top of her lungs and like pull her hair out and stuff. Like the chick had some issues. So one night, I'll talk. That's how I ended up at her house. But then one night, friggin, we get into it because I'm still seeing my, like my wife, when I get out, my wife had some dude living with her at her mom and dad's house.

So when I get out, when I'm in halfway, house, I could have went home. Like, I didn't really, I could only spent two weeks in a halfway house. I could have went home on not even an ankle monitor. I just like on a phone where they could just call whenever. And if you don't answer the phone, you're fucking kind of ordeal. And she kept like, my wife kept spinning me and spinning me and spinning me. I'm like, listen, all you have to do is call this number and hook up a landline.

That's all you have to do is connect a phone to the house and I can come home. What the fuck are we doing here? And then she kept spinning me and spinning me. And then one day I finally got her in the car. She came and picked me up on like an outing to go to dinner or something. and that's when she told me she had fucking some dude living with her and this that and the other

I'm like all right so then I just started you know well I'm not gonna I'm done entertaining this because you weren't there for me the whole time I was locked up never came to see me one single time

you know what I mean maybe wrote me once wouldn't even accept my phone calls and I pay for the phone calls you don't even have to pay for them all you got to is pick up the phone and you wouldn't pick up the phone so you know it is what it is

you know fuck you and um yeah so I just start dating this chick and then one night we get into it because I'm still talking to my baby's mother for whatever reason. Like I think my baby mama came, pick me up from work one day

and she found out and she just snapped on me one night and she just would not let it go. Just calling me a bitch, throwing shit at me, punching me in the head. Like her parents had to separate us and put her in one end of the house

and me and the other. And she was like, as soon as they go to sleep, I'm fucking you up. And it's just like, oh yeah, dude, just like I had to leave. Like there's like,

there's no way I can stay here because I just got out of halfway house. Yeah. If the cops come, I'm going back to Coleman. Yeah. There's no way I can explain any of this. And you're on probation.

I'm not even supposed to be staying at this house because my probation officer, like this isn't even like an approved address or any of that shit. Like I'm in the wrong here. So I leave, I pack all my shit. We get into an argument.

She, I'm trying to leave and she grabs a pair of scissors and jams them into my chest right here. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah, tried to kill me. Like the way I moved, like instead of like, if she would have hit me full on, they would have stabbed me

because I kind of moved to the side and skipped and kind of cut me open and I was bleeding all over the place and so I left. I grabbed my bags and I hauled ass. You know what I mean? I'm walking down the street. Here comes her brother. Her brother picks me up and it's like, you know, what the fucking happened. I told him what happened.

And he's like, yeah, Maria's nuts. He's like, you know, that's my sister. I know she's crazy. She's been through this with like eight guys in the past two years. She does this to every single one of them. She flips out or whatever. That was just her thing. So me and the brother got the rapping, and he figured out, like, he knew what I was doing before I went to prison.

And I kind of told him what I was doing before I went to prison. So he decided that here, and I'm fresh out of the halfway house. So, so he knew what I was doing, but we didn't decide to, like, go into business right then and there together. But he let me come stay at his house for like, under like four days until I could find my own place, which was an absolute shit hole. Let me tell you this. It was a tiny little efficiency apartment in the ghetto in Miami off of like 22nd, North West 22nd and 2nd Street off of Flagler in like downtown Miami. It was just this little tiny, horrible, you know, it was a building and like, I don't know,

it had like maybe like eight units or something like that, like four on the top floor and four on the one floor and four on the other floor. It was this little skinny unit with a little skinny, you know, piece of cement. Dude, this place was small. Like if I was laying in my bed, I could reach in my refrigerator. laying on my bed I could reach in my refrigerator and grab something

eat that's how small it was it was 8.50 a month and you know I didn't even really have the money to pay the bills so I find a job I quit the the frozen food warehouse job

and I go to work at a warehouse in Miami 11 bucks an hour to work in a warehouse now dig this I didn't have a car didn't have any money I didn't have anyone

sending me money or helping me out or doing anything for me Okay, when I moved into this apartment, I owed FPL, like the power company in South Florida, I owed FPL like $900 and they wouldn't cut my power on because apparently I moved out of an apartment way back in the day and I left a $800 bill. So they wouldn't even cut my power on until I paid the $800. So I slept in the efficiency apartment on the floor because it wasn't furnished.

I was on the floor, on a blanket on the floor. in the windows, I didn't even have, I had to go get trash bags to tape over the windows because I didn't have curtains. And you could see right in the unit. You know what I mean? Like there was no, so I had to get plastic trash bags

to cover, I'd tape those on the, on the, on the, on the, over the windows, and I slept on the floor on a blanket that I had, I couldn't cover up with. It was so it was hot in there anyway. Right. It's 100 degrees. So at night I would flip the plastic up in the bottom part of the window

and I'd lift the window up, praying that nobody came in there and murdered me because I'm in a really bad part of Miami. You know, shit like that happens all the time. Looking for somewhere to get high and they come through a window and here we go. Now I got a confrontation.

So I'm done. Not doing good, dude. When I got out of Coleman, I was living f***ed up. Like, I had nobody, nothing. Like, all I had was this job making $11 an hour. That was the only thing keeping me alive. And to get to this job every day,

I had to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning. I had to walk from my apartment all the way downtown Miami to the train station, which was probably three and a half, four miles, and then from, I had to catch the very first train leaving the train station. If I wasn't on that very first train leaving the train station, I wasn't getting to work on time. So I had to be on the very first train. I had to catch a train in an hour north from downtown Miami all the way to Hiaia, to the Hiaia train station. I had to get off at Hiaia train station, get on a bus that comes to the train station, catch that

bus another hour up Okeechobee, all the way out west, out by the by the end, by, um, by 75, which was another hour just to get to work on time every day. And then when I got off at night, I had to catch the bus stop that I had to get on to go back home was the very last stop and that route. So sometimes the bus drivers just wouldn't go to the last stop just because they're like, there's nobody ever here. We're not doing it. So I would be sitting there and like it'd be way past the time when the bus was supposed to be there, like way past. Like hours would pass. And I'd be like, it's not coming today.

So I'd have to walk like six and a half miles. up to the next bus line just to catch that bus to get back to the high lia bus station to catch the train all the way downtown Miami and then another bus all the way up or walk from downtown Miami I had to do that every single day and dude I was just like what the this is dude it drove me to the point to where I was like I'm ready to go out and like break into people's homes or like steal shit because I can't do this anymore like this is crazy and then I lived in the apartment with no electricity for a month month, over a month. And I kept telling my landlord, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to get it connected. He kept asking me, did you connect electricity? You connect? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And for like a month or two, I lived there with no electricity, none in the middle of the summer. I got out a halfway house. Well, it was in the summer. It was like February when I got out. But I lived there for six months. So middle of summer, like, it's getting hot. It's in Miami. There's no electricity. There's no air conditioning,

no nothing. You know, I barely have enough to eat because $11 an hour, I'm only making enough money to pay the rent. Right. That's it. I'm making enough money to pay the rent and get back and forth to work and that was it. So that's when I went into cahoots

with this chick's brother and he decided to buy the equipment. I was like, listen, just buy the equipment and I'll show you how to use it and just break me off a little something. You guys can go and do whatever you need to do. I was like, I'm not carding. I'm not going in stores, carding.

I'm not doing any of that shit. But I'll show you how to use the equipment. I'll tell you exactly what equipment to buy, how to set it up, how to use it, how to make the cards, everything. so what happens so we do that we get into it

he buys a printer he buys an embosser he buys the MSR he gets all the equipment he gets set up he starts printing cards they're doing whatever they're doing I don't know what they're doing

he gave me the money to get my power cut on so I got the power cut on I'm doing good and then he's making cards and then he gives me a little bit more money because they're starting

to make more cards and they're making money I buy a car I bought a Cadillac a nice DTS Cadillac. So now I got a car to get back and forth to work. But I still don't have any money

because he's just giving me money kind of money here and there whenever. Right. It's not like a regular thing where I'm like this. It's Friday. I need my, you know, stipend.

It's that, you know, whenever they make a little bit of money or they'll kick me some here and there. It's not like, and then so it got to the point to where now I have to start using cards again because I'm not, now I got a car,

now I have to pay for gas and insurance. So really it was like now, I could, I mean, I could afford the car, but I couldn't afford the car. Right. You know what I mean? I could afford to purchase the car, but I couldn't afford to have the car because it was just like, I didn't have the money for the gasty insurance. Now I got a power bill I have to pay.

Now I got to pay rent, power, you know, all the shit. And I'm making $11 an hour. Right. So now I start using cards. Like he starts, I'm like, whenever I ask him for cards, he'll just give him to me. Obviously, I don't have to pay for him. So he'll just give me cars with dumps on them. So now I'm using them for gas.

I'm using them for groceries. You know what I mean? I'm going to the mall here. there and I'm buying little things, I'm buying shoes and stuff, because I don't have anything. When I got out of prison, I didn't have any clothes. I came home to nothing. Right. You know? And then, so we started doing that. And then he starts like, well, I want to make the IDs. I want to make the driver's licenses. And I showed him how I built, I sat down, I made all the templates on graphic design, myself. I did them all on the computer. And then I sent him to him and he knows he was

kind of savvy, but not really, but he kind of understand how to use the equipment. And I was like, But for the driver's licenses, you need the holograms. Because every state has a hologram. Florida has the state of Florida with FLA on it. You can see it when you do it like this. Well, I knew I had a vendor in China that makes them. And I can get them made for any state. Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia.

The Georgia has a little peach on it that, you know, reflects. So I could get them made for any state. And I told him, we were having a bunch of shitmailed in. He were having a giant data. auto embosser sent in and we were having those things sent in and we were having a problem with addresses because we were having so much shit mailed places

that we kind of burnt out a few addresses and I was like listen don't send anything to my house right don't send anything to my house you know what I mean? Just don't do it I told him several times throughout this whole thing I was like don't send anything to my house well he sent some shit to my house he sent the printer to my house

and he sent the holograms from China to my house and the holograms got picked up in customs and customs reported that called the Miami Financial Crimes Division and turned the package over to them because it was going to an address in their district I get a knock at my door one day

and this is after I'm just I just got out of halfway house few months ago I understand I was what I look at Colby's like looking over like are you serious yeah dude I just got a halfway house a couple months ago I hear knock at the door I look out the peephole and it's two guys standing there

with DHL shirts on and these didn't look like DHL drivers like when has it taken two people to deliver and I looked and I could see the envelope in the dude's hand

and if you have anything mailed from China you'll know that they use this certain yellow tape and it's only packages from China have this yellow tape on it and I know when they send the holograms

they make like a square envelope out of this tape they'll put like a bunch of two postcards together they'll put like a bunch of different holograms in there and they'll hide them in the center and then they'll just use the yellow tape and so I seen it in his hand

so I knew what it was and I seen because I was tracking the package and I seen that it was in customs for four days when usually it takes 24 hours for a package to go to customs and then you check the next morning and it's already on its way for delivery but four days it's in customs

and they didn't release the package in the thing online, the DHL or whatever it was coming. So I looked out and I you know my brain just put all this together and I'm like oh here we go but here's the thing I didn't have anything

at my at my at my at my at my at my at my at my at my right I had anything there I had no printers I had no

laptops I had no I had nothing I had no cards I had nothing there so they come in they're like I open the door

they're like I don't remember the name on the package but it was it was some Hispanic name it was like Marco something

I was like no my name's John Boziak I don't there's nobody by that name here and they're like okay all right

so I close the door and then I just stood there and I looked out the people and they were just standing there talking to each other and they'd leave so I'm just standing there I'm waiting

like what are we gonna do here shouldn't you guys leave yeah I was thinking about jumping out the back window really yeah I was gonna jump out the back window and hit the fence

and just be out and just walk up the next block and just be gone and then they said then they'd be down the door again and I didn't come to the door and they were like police open the door

And they're like, you need to open the door and talk to us. I was like, for what? They're like, you can just open the door and just talk to us. So I opened the door and they're like, and I was playing stupid the whole time. I'm like, listen, I don't know, you know, whose package is this is. I didn't, I don't know what this is. This isn't, I know, they don't live here. I didn't, you know.

Right. This could, they could, anybody could have sent this anywhere just to come pick it up. So I'm playing stupid. And I had them. I think I had them up into a certain point. Because they hadn't run my name or anything at this point. Right. You know what I mean?

because the name of my address was still from the halfway house because when I was the halfway house I got my driver's license and they sent it to it was the halfway house address I had to use. So even if they ran that address,

the person that they, you know, whatever, they didn't know who I was. They're hoping that that person says, oh yeah, thanks. And then they arrest them. Like that's what they're, oh yeah, yeah, that's me.

Yeah. Okay, are you sure? Here, sign here. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, good. And then they grab you. Yeah, but I wasn't playing that game because I already knew. And so I'm, you know, I had them.

I had them. I had them up into a certain point. And then all of the sudden, the FedEx, a FedEx delivery driver shows up at my front door with a dolly with a big ass box on the dolly. And he puts the dolly down. They went around there and talked to him. And the name of the printer that was being the embosser

was the same name as the package that they had in their hand. And the FedEx driver's like, oh yeah, I deliver packages here all the time. And he signs for them. And I'm like, my dad. I had them up until that point. Like, if that package, if I got the FedEx driver

wouldn't have showed up, there wasn't anything they could do. They couldn't arrest me. Right. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't accept the package. That's not mine. Off.

This is Miami. Everybody's up doing fraud out here. Yeah. You know? And, uh, I had them. And then the FedEx driver shows up and threw me straight underneath the bus.

It's like, oh yeah, he signs for him every time. And so they were like, all right. And so they were like, what's in the box? I was like,

I don't know what's in the box. I'm still playing stupid. because I really didn't really have any ideas. I don't know what the fuck's in the box. So we're going to open this box right here. I was like, open the box. Well, this guy, Manuel, you know, Avere, he's going to be upset. Yeah, I was like, I don't know what's in the box.

Open the box. So they opened the box. They pull it open. There's all these peanuts everywhere in the kitchen. Big ass data card, a card embosser. This is Miami Financial Crimes Division. Like they had just two weeks earlier, they were telling me a story. they just took down a whole like credit card lab

where they busted dudes with printers and embossers and everything. They asked you. So they knew that was. Yeah, they're like, do you know what this is? And I was like, it's a microwave. What's the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing where they ask him to talk, they're talking about the nuclear bomb and he goes, is it a snow cone maker?

Oh, yeah, yeah, true lies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, snow cone machine. So yeah, and then so I was like, man, you know, I didn't I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember exactly how it went down because when the, okay, the printer showed up at the apartment and I'm just like, and then I think, uh, don't remember the next series of events, but somehow they had my phone in their hand and they were going through my text messages and they were like, who's Jose. And I was like, I don't know who you're talking about. They were like, who's Jose and they showed me my phone. They had the text messages from them. And they had the text messages going back and forth. And he was texting them because he was tracking the package. So texts were coming in on my phone as, they were there and one of the cops was holding my phone and he started looking at the messages and the things the messages started coming in I just the package should be delivered now or whatever something about the package being delivered and he's like who's Jose and I'm like man son of a bitch

dude Jose is who you need to be talking to yeah that sounds to me like that's what it I feel like Jose sounds like me like Jose knows something about this package so you should talk to him Listen, I just got out of a halfway house, dude. I just got out of the halfway house. I just got out of prison. I'm not going back. Yeah. You know what?

I told you not to send, listen, this guy told you not to send the shit to my house. Don't send this shit to my house. I told you multiple times not to send shit to my house. Guess what now I got to do. I got to throw Jose underneath the bus. I have to. Jose's got to go. You know, you don't justify to me.

Yeah. I'm ready for Jose to go. He got to go. So he's texting me. He's like, who's Jose? So I told him, I was like, hey, he's just dude. you know he's got the printers he's got everything in his house i was just i just showed him how to set it up uh this that and the other i told i didn't tell him everything but i was like you know

i kind of threw jose underneath the bus and they're like do you have his address and i gave him his address and they're like well and Jose steady and then Jose calls and i go to and then i had my phone in my hand at this time and i go to hit the end button and they're like no no no no answer answering them god damn it dude these man so i had to answer the phone while these just standing there and like all they're standing there and like all all of this happened just at the wrong time. Right. It was just a bad day.

You know what I mean? Because I'm never, first of all, I'm never home. I'm always out doing shit. Right. You know what I mean? So they could have showed up there, knocked on the door and never got to answer and then left. And then who knows?

Like, we could have missed each other. Nope. I had to be home at that time when they came. The FedEx delivery had to come at that time. Jose wouldn't stop blowing my phone up being a bug. You know what I'm saying? Then he had to call and he's just like, dude, all this is happening wrong. This is not good.

So, yeah, he calls, and then I answer the phone. He's like, yo, are you going to bring that, you're going to, did that show up? I'm like, yeah, it's here. I'm looking at it right here in my kitchen. I was like, yeah, I'm looking at it. You know, as they're standing there, I'm looking at them, looking at the box. And I was like, yeah, I'm looking at it. He's like, all right, well, do you want to bring it over?

You want to, I was like, do you want to meet up somewhere? He's like, he's like, yeah, don't bring it to my house. He's like, I'll meet you at the Publix on 132nd and whatever. It was like, all right. And so I hung up the phone. and I'm like, what are you going to do? And they're like, hold on a minute. So they all leave and one of them just stays in there with me.

And they come back in there like, how do you feel about wearing a, wearing a listening device? And I'm like, I'm not wearing a wire, man. I was like, what are we doing here? I'm like, no, no, no, no, it's not like that. It's just little something. We'll put it in your pocket and you'll be able to hear. I'm just like, God damn it, dude.

So they bring in this. So a dude shows up in a van about 20 minutes later. They bring like a pager, like a beeper. Right. I'm like, dude, this is 2015. I was like, nobody's like, no, no, he's got to put it in your pocket. So I just put it inside my pocket and I had to go take, put the printer in the back of my car. They followed me, they kept their distance.

They are on the other side of the parking lot. I pulled up. I opened the van. We met. I opened the trunk. He went around. He got the printer out and we talked for a couple of minutes outside of the car. And then I got in the car and I left.

And I went in, I had a location I had to go to after I left the public's parking lot. So then they followed him home and they raided his house. while I'm sitting at a Walgreens in the parking lot with an agent or with a cop or whatever. And I'm like, listen, so before I even decided to throw Jose under the bus, I'm like, listen, if I'm going to jail today, you guys can go fuck yourself. Right. Let's just, I just want to say that before everybody thinks I'm some kind of big rat. Right. Okay. I'm like, listen, if I'm going to jail, if I was going to jail, I wouldn't have thrown him under the bus.

But they gave me, they were like, well, listen, we're not going to take you to jail today, but we're going to have to, and you probably won't be charged, but we do have to report this to your probation officer. We have to report it to her, but it's this law. So I'm like, okay, well, if I can just get away from this situation, I can, I can bolt. You know what I mean? I can go back and grab my shit, throw up my car, and be gone. I can be at the airport and 20 minutes and be out of here. And that's exactly what I did. So they called. They're like, okay, yeah, we got them. And we, they went in the house. They're like, I called the cop at the, at the Walgreens. They're like, yeah, you can let them go. So they just, they let me go. And I drove

immediately from the Walgreens to my condo. I packed the bag. I threw it my car. I drove my car to the Fort Lauderdale International Airport. I called the buddy of mine in Michigan. And I'm like, listen, dude, I have to leave Florida. He's like, uh, he's like, you coming home? I was like, yeah, but I need a plane ticket.

I don't have money for a plane ticket. Kingsley. And, uh, it was my, my cousin's husband. And so he bought me a plane ticket and I flew from Fort Lauderdale to Michigan. And I left my car at the airport. Never went back and got it. Never, never, never, never, never came back to Florida. after that until

April of 2022 when I just got here. Right. So it was quite a while. It was 2015 to 2022. And so I go to Michigan and this is another one of those things where I know I'm going back to jail.

You know, I know they had to call my probation officer. I know I'm going back to jail on a I know I'm going back on a violation. You know, probably, and maybe even a new case, who knows what the fuck they're going to do if they decided to press charge. charges on me or not. And so I'm in Michigan.

I party. That was July. I partied July, August, September, October in Michigan, just seeing family members. I haven't seen it forever. Hanging out with cousins,

getting plastered every single day, just getting drunk, smoking, partying, going to nightclubs, you know, all the shit, because I was in Coleman

and like, you know, I was just letting loose. And then my wife calls me, my wife calls me from, uh, she's in Nebraska. and she says,

I need you to come out here and I need your help because she has my son at this point. She has my son, Aden. Apparently she wasn't with the dude anymore and my people in Michigan were getting kind of tired of me

at this point because, dude, I'm not paying any bills. I don't have a job. I don't have any money. I'm eating up everybody's food. You know what I mean? They're buying me booze every day. I'm smoking up everybody's...

It was... They loved me, but they were getting kind of tired. I mean, I could tell I was kind of wearing out my welcome at this point. So I was kind of looking for an hour, and I knew I didn't want to come back to Florida because I was like, dude, what am I going to go back to? I don't have nowhere to go back to in Florida.

So I ended up going to, I ended up catching the Amtrak from downtown Detroit out to Lincoln, Nebraska. And my wife was there to pick me up at the, at the train station, you know, and then that was turned into like this whole, that was 2000, that was like October of 2015. So I was there, and then by November of 2015, I was picked up because she had stirred up a bunch of shit in this little tiny town that we were living in. I've told the story a million times. I don't want to go back into it, but it's just too much, dude, it's just too much. I don't want to relive it. But yeah, she stirred up a bunch of shit in this small town before I had even gotten there.

You know what I mean? Like burned a bunch of bridges in the short amount of time that she was there. And then I come into the situation. I don't know what I'm walking into. I have no idea what I'm walking, because she didn't tell me anything. So I'm walking into the situation where she's just known around town, apparently, for, you know, a bunch of bullshit. So you got arrested. Yeah, so apparently somebody's trailer home gets broken into, okay, out in Nebraska.

Right. And somehow they were like, my name got thrown in the mix. And like, bitch, I just, but because they had seen me with my wife and my wife has been known to hang around a bunch of scumbags, apparently. They're like, oh, yeah, you need to go talk to him. I had nothing to do with it. I don't even know the people that did it. You don't know what I mean? Like nothing, but apparently,

so the small town in Nebraska, the cops got to come knock the door. And of course, they come knocking the door. They run my name. And I'm, here I go. I got federal warrant,

yeah, because I took off. Yeah. And, yeah, so I had to get extradited once again back from, this time from Nebraska,

not Florida. This is even further away. All the way back across the country to South Carolina. and it took me from November of 2015, let me see, December. So it was during the holidays. I got up around the holidays, you know, unfortunately. So, you know, in the feds, when you get, we're getting transferred around, they shut

everything down at like the beginning of December and they don't start moving people again until like the end of January, sometimes February. Right. You know? So I'm sitting and I'm sitting in all these little shithole county jails all across the America. I was probably in four or five different county jails. I was in two in Nebraska. The one they arrest, the county they arrested me in. And then the big one, the big jail in Omaha. Right. You know what I mean? And Douglas County Jail. And then from there, they moved me to right next,

what's the next state over from Nebraska? It's Kansas. And there's a prison in Kansas called Leavenworth. And they stuck me in Leavenworth for three and a half weeks waiting on transport, which wasn't that bad because I was on the worker pod. Right. Like I wasn't like, I wasn't in. in the shoe or I wasn't in like the whole I was on the worker pod. So it was cool. Like everybody like like the worker pod like so the worker pod had people that worked in all different areas of the prison. So like all of the shit like all of the contraband would all make it back to our pod. So there would be everything on the pod. There would be the exotics. Like you'd say we'd have all the exotic stuff like the shit you couldn't get

on commensary. There was tobacco. There was all kinds of shit. So it wasn't that bad. Leavenworth. And then from Leavenworth, they flew me out to, um, They put me on a plane and flew me out to Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, and I sat in Oklahoma for a month. That was a wake-up call. Like Oklahoma, when you go through Oklahoma, dude, and you finally get to the unit, and you're like, what the fuck is this, dude? You're like, there's like some serious, like some serious dudes there that you just get bad energy from. You're like, oh, man, I better just, you know. That was the very first time in like all of my travels of ever being locked up that I was actually like nervous.

going through Oklahoma. I remember talking to a guy. When I was to Oklahoma, I remember talking to a guy who comes up to me like Italian guy, but, you know, he's like like a white guy walks up and he's, we're leaning on the railing and he says you know, what are you looking at or so

or, you know, like how much time did you get? I said, I haven't been sentenced yet. I mean, I just got arrested, bro. I've been arrested like a month. Sorry. I was like, no, it's probably a package. I was like, I was arrested a month ago.

Like, I just got arrested. And I remember he looked at me, he said, yeah, he is, I just went to trial. He said, he has, I got sentenced. He said, I got 30 years. I got 30 years. He says, yeah, but I beat the murders. And I thought, oh, my God. But I beat the murders.

Like, that's not a good person to hang out with. Like, I mean, I thought that. So, yeah, I know. Because I remember thinking, oh, this is serious. Yeah, listen, we had this one young black dude on the pod and he would just walk up to you. What's your name, Pops? let me get your information and he would go look you up like he was asking everybody he was making he was asking everybody on the use to show paperwork to give you your information that he would go look you up on pacer like he'd hop on the computer and look you up on pacer on the pod and i remember he went up to this other one old black dude i'll go ahead and i'll go ahead and check it in youngster don't worry about it you ain't get my i'm gonna go ahead and check it in and he went and roll this shit up and checked in got right off the pod yeah so oklahoma was like dude and the whole time i'm going back through this i'm like dude i can't believe i'm going back through this again Like, I just got done going through this shit.

Right. Like, the nightmare almost starving to death in county jail. Okay. What's going on? Sorry. Hello? Oh, I jumped up. I was going to, I was ran out the back door, but I didn't have shoes on, so I ran in the closet.

They just got down telling a story about how it talks. That is that. I know. I'm on it. So there was lights in the back. Was it lights one time when? in the front and he's already out the back door standing in the backyard oh listen I'm sitting on the couch I'm high as my sitting on the couch I see red and blue

lights through that that window above the door I was out I was out yeah so what was I were we at yeah yeah so yeah go back to Oklahoma um yeah Oklahoma was yeah Oklahoma was serious and then and then from Oklahoma I went to Irwin County Jail I flew into Atlanta from Oklahoma, and then they put me in Irwin County Jail, and I sat in Irwin County Jail for three months all the way until like January or February. So yeah, and then so I get out of, so I send me to Irwin County Jail, and then finally they sent me up to South Carolina to go see my judge. And so I finally get my paperwork, and it's telling me what my violations for,

these didn't even go and tell my probation officer. So you didn't have to take off at all? Nope. I didn't have to abscond. But I didn't, you know, what am I going to do? That was, that was the decision to make was just to go. I mean, I could have been like, I'm going to stay here and deal with it and then just kept reporting and playing dumb. And they didn't even, they didn't even tell my probation officer. They didn't call or didn't do anything. So in my, in my violation report, it said that she showed up to my apartment one day to do just a random house call. And my landlord was there cleaning the place out. And he was like, no, he moved out of here. And then she actually tried to call me, and the cops, they took my phone. Right. When they arrested, when they did that whole thing. So I didn't have my phone, so she couldn't call me. And she just got me for absconding.

Yeah. So I went back in front of the judge, and the judge is like, listen, we've had to extradite you twice from different parts of the country. She's like, you know, you obviously can't be supervised. She's like, you're unsupervised. She's like, but I can't justify sending you back to prison. or because the violation didn't warrant me going back to Coleman. Because don't you have to be like there's certain violation levels?

Yeah, yeah. Like a level one violation. They can only give you so many months. There's like they call like a technical and they have like different levels, different names for them. Yeah. Yeah. And she's like, well, you know, we've wasted X amount of dollars.

I don't know what it is. She's like, we've wasted so much money, you know, on you. And she's like, you've already served the eight, well, you've already been here like eight months or whatever. Six months I've been there. she's like you served you know what you're going to serve on this violation she's like she's like we could do we keep doing this over and over and over again but she's like so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to terminate your paper right now so and

but she's like you know what I am going to do I'm going to give you 30 more days to sit and think about everything all the decisions that you're making so instead of just terminating my paper and releasing me that day she gave me 30 more days to sit and think about being how a bad boy I was. Right? You know? What's wrong with that? 30.

Dude, you know what it's like going to court thinking you're going to get it? You're getting out because I've served my, I've served all my time already. They can't keep me anymore. I'm going home. I just have to go to court and, you know, it's just a formality at this point. And to know that I got to go sit here for another month. Oh my God, dude. I gave away, come.

I gave away some of my commensary. Dude, it was a mess. It was a nightmare coming back to the, I gave up my bed, everything. I'm going home, you know? So I get back and I got a 30. more days and now I'm on a mat on the floor. Come on, dude. So yeah, 30 more days and I got released.

Let me see. February, March, April, May. I got released. It was like April 1st, or at the end of April, beginning of May of 2016. Yep, from custody. And I, I, to this day, I haven't been arrested or in trouble with police at all. Right. Nothing.

Like, no, nothing. Yeah, I've been out. that's over to almost 10 years. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. But what else are I going to say? Oh, yeah.

I don't know. The story doesn't really end there, but we can end it if you want to. I mean, the story goes on and on and on. I can bring it full circle to today. Okay. Bring it full circle. Yeah. What is that?

I can bring it full circle. So after I get out, my wife is, on some crazy BS both of our kids are taken away we had another kid at this point that turned out not

to be mine that it was the guy that she was with when I got out of the halfway house it was his kid but when I went out to Nebraska

she didn't tell me she was pregnant until I got out there and then tried to convince me that it was mine because I was sleeping with her

I was in the halfway house while she was with this dude like she would leave him and come pick me up and then we'd have you know we'd have sex and then she'd go back

to mom and dad's house where she was living with this dude it's not up this chick is. Yeah. You know? So I'm like,

it could be mine, couldn't be mine. But as soon as the baby was born, I could tell immediately, she looked just like this kid. I mean, the same forehead, the same dude.

It's, obviously it's this, this dude's kid. So I just couldn't, she got both the kids taken away from the state, by the state of Nebraska, took kids away

because just this whole thing. And so I had to leave. I had to leave the situation. Like, I couldn't do it anymore. I had random dudes showing up at the house, dropping off,

sugar and flowers at the front door for, like, dude, just, you know, every day was just something crazy. And I couldn't take it anymore. So I moved out. And I was left with this decision to make. I was like, where am I going to go? Do I go back to Michigan and party with family? Or do I go back to Florida and do fraud? Because that's really the only thing there is the do down here if you're, if you know, well, you know, you know what I'm saying? Some people get legitimate jobs. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but I was talking to my cousin at this time, and he was like, dude, go to California. Because at this time, this is pre-COVID. This is a few years before COVID.

This is 2016. You know, he's like, do, go to California. He's like, do, go out there. And he's like, I'm moving out there. He's like, my girlfriend's from there. We're moving back. He's like, we all get a place together. I'm like, all right, this is 2016, mind you.

He's telling me that. So I, like, I had. And when I'm, we lived in Nebraska, when I moved out of Nebraska, I actually, like, got us a house and, like, slowly renovated the whole. whole entire thing, room by room by myself, like tore everything all the way down to the walls and redid everything. So I completely renovated this entire home on my own for us. We both had good jobs paying. She was making $24 an hour. I was making like $1950 or $20 an hour. And in a small town in Nebraska, that's really good money because the cost of living out there is, it's nothing.

Right. It's nothing. I think, I think we're paying. Our mortgage was like $800, $650, $700 or something like that a month, it was nothing. It was a joke. And we had four cars. I had two Cadillacs. I had an Audi, two Cadillacs, and a BMW. Where is this? In Nebraska.

Okay. This is after I got out. And then after, and then remember, like, I went in, I went dark for a while when you were trying to contact me when you were in Coleman. You couldn't figure out what was going on. So that's when I went dark because when I was going through all that. Then when I got back out, I sent you an email, like the day or something I got out. and explained and then I gave you the phone number

and then you called me and you're like oh this is what happened you know kind of already that yes I was living there yeah four cars had two brand new Cadillacs I had an Audi a 6 and we had a BMW like a 525 or a 625 or whatever it is 725 we're doing good and she

she f***ed it all up got our kids taken away we look I just I moved out we I let the cars go um I kept my Audi and I took off out to California. Put everything, put what I had, the little bit of stuff I had in my car and I just drove to California. And so I started applying for jobs before, in California before I left Nebraska. And what initially sealed the deal for me to move into California was I was applying

to jobs and I applied to Tesla, Tesla Motors, and I got an interview. And that interview was all I needed. All I needed was that interview. I didn't even know I was going to get the job. All I needed was that interview. I put all my shit in my car and I moved to California. Right. And I was literally living in a hotel, a hotel six or a holiday inn. It was one of those cheap hotels because I had a little bit of money. I had a little bit of money saved up. And so I'm living in a cheap motel and I go to this interview and they don't tell me anything right away. They're like, okay, well, you're going to, we'll let you know. And like two weeks went by and I didn't hear anything. So I'm like, I'm not getting the job. So I start going to the

day labor places where it's not like a day labor place but it's more like a staffing agency right go to the staffing agency fill out the paperwork this is what i can do this is what i'm proficient in i can run the forklift i can run this i've been work warehouses so then in california warehousing jobs are like it's huge like there like there like logistics and distribution and it's all because they got the port yeah and everything comes into california and it goes in these warehouses and then it gets distributed out to the rest of the country so warehouse jobs are a dime of Well, they were, I don't know what the climate is now out there. But I knew they were when I moved out there.

So it was super easy to get a job in a warehouse. So I got a job in a warehouse. It was pet food. And all we did was unload trucks all night. The trucks would pull up. We'd unload the stuff and we'd go scan the pallet. And then we'd go to put it in the location, scan the location, scan the pallet into the location, go back to the truck, get another pallet.

And I would do that all night long. I do that eight, nine, ten hours a night. It wasn't that much money. It was like $10 an hour, 12 bucks an hour. and then Tesla called me back for a second interview like a month later after the first interview like a month and a half later they call me back for a second interview and I go back to the second interview

and this time like I feel like I got the job like I feel like I crush it. I mean granted I'm only I'm in the logistics chain there you know what I mean like I'm not even on the line building the cars like I'm not you know what I mean like I'm just unloading trucks loading trucks making sure that all of the parts for you know, each section of the line, get to the line in the right way. And, you know, because Tesla kind of builds their vehicles weird.

Like, so every single car that Tesla builds, it's like, they're all custom. Because you go online, you customize your car the way you want it. Right. So every car coming down the line is different. Whereas, like, General Motors, Ford, GM, they're building cars and batches. Yeah, they're building 500 of these. So it's the same part. It's the same door panel I'm putting on.

So all I got to do is drop 300 of these door panels off at this station. And he's going to be doing those all night. But with Tesla, it's different. Every door panel, it's like all the trim is different. So their logistics system they have at Tesla is crazy. So it was, you know, but I've been doing logistics for years. So I understood how it worked. So I got a job at Tesla.

And I worked for Tesla for shit, 2000, all of 2016. Well, the remainder of 2016, all of 2017. And the beginning of 2018, I hurt my back. at Tesla and at this time I had moved my way up from just like a forklift operator like logistics I move I move my way up to a logistics coordinator so now I instead of unloading trucks I was overseeing other people unloading trucks and making sure you know everything gets put back and gets scanned to the right location you know so all the parts so everything runs smoothly I was making $27 an hour man I had a Mercedes I had a C63 AMG Mercedes out there

I was doing real good, you know, real good. This is like, this is after all of that, after all of the Coleman and the going to jail and being homeless, like I'm finally no probation. I have no parole. I have no warrants out for my arrest. I got a valid driver's license. I don't owe any back taxes.

I won't have the IRS chasing me. Like nothing, I've got nothing. I'm like, finally free at this time out in California. 2018 comes, I hurt my back at Tesla. I do my upper back something happened to it it just took me months to recover like did I had to go to physical therapy and like I wasn't faking to get a check

I was getting disability from Tesla but I wasn't faking like dude there was many nights where I didn't sleep where I was up crying like screaming and crying like the pain was that severe like I had never it was this was a whole this was a whole new animal

like I had never experienced anything like this ever uh so physical therapy chiropractor and what finally end up helping was acupuncture. Believe it or not. I think it was a combination of a few things, but I think it was a combination of physical therapy and acupuncture that just finally just alleviated and all the pain went away. And I was like, you know what? I'm never going to work a regular job

ever again. Never. Because every time I do, something happens with like my body. Like my body just breaks down in some way. Because I, you know, I have to work hard. I have to work 12 hours shifts. I have to work 10 hours shifts. Six days a week, seven days a week to make any kind of real money. you know so your body just takes off beating and unfortunately dude my back is just i have a bad back um so i decide i made that decision at that point in time i'm never going to work a regular job again i can't because my body just can't my body just can't take it so that's when i decided to go into tattooing like full time like full full head on tattooing and i know this isn't something i covered throughout my story but i've always been i've been interested in tattooing my whole life i've

messed around i've tattooed here and there but never took it seriously I never worked on any shops or anything like that. I used to tattoo my homies. I've tattooed myself. And of course, I'm graphic design artists. So I do everything. You know, I'm always been into art. And so tattooing has always just been something that's been there,

but it's never been something that I thought I could rely on as like a full-time nine-to-five job. And when all that shit happened at Tesla and I'm out in California, tattooing was the only thing that I could think of of doing that, A, isn't going to send me back to prison. and B isn't going to tear my body apart and I was wrong about that because tattooing turned out to be worse for my back

than doing 10 hours of manual labor every day but I didn't figure that out until years after I started tattooing but so I just started tattooing full time in 2018 I just dove headfirst into it and then we all know what happened in 2020 right with the whole everything shit like the whole world turned upside down you know

I felt like just as I'm getting my life back together I'm making money I'm doing good you know what I mean like I'm working out every day I started running that's when I started running was California five miles every single day just like I do now

you know and the whole world turned upside down and I didn't like there was nothing I could do like everything was shut down like all the tattoo shops were shut down everything was shut down

so it was like I don't know what to do and this time and by this time I was living I was living in San Francisco when I first moved out there and then my cousin moved out there and rate like at the time

I was getting off a disability and shit I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles to go live with my cousin. So I moved down to Los Angeles and I lived in Los Angeles for, I don't know, like two and a half years or something until 2020 happened. And then once 2020 happened, I just was like, this.

I can't be in California anymore because the place, listen, the place was already nutty when I got there, but it wasn't like that far out. I mean, some parts, some parts were like, what the fuck is this? But it was small pockets of like L.A. would have like, the tenderloin district in San Francisco has always been off the chain, but it was a small pocket. Not what it is now. And then L.A. had Skid Row, which is a small part of downtown, I think it's 6th Street and downtown. And, but it was, the craziness was there, but it wasn't everywhere. You know, you could still, like, go to Miami, but you could still go to L.A. You could go downtown and you go to, like,

North Hollywood and go have a sandwich on the street without somebody sticking a pistol in your face and taking your wallet. Right. Like, that's just a reality. Like, it wasn't like that in like 2017, 2018. So, you know, L.A. was cool. I mean, I was hanging out in North Hollywood. I was going to the Hollywood sign. I was, you know, going to Runyon Canyon and jogging every day. I was tattooing, just having fun.

And then 2020 happened. And it was like, I have to leave California now because the rest of the country is opening up. Here we are July of 2020. The rest of the country is opening up. And we're still deep into lockdown. We're still, restaurants are still closed. People you can go out to eat in other states. but California the restaurants are still closed

it's like what are we doing here so I collected unemployment from I got a big fat unemployment check from California for like 10 grand and so I took that and I moved to from California to Phoenix Arizona

because Arizona was like one of those free states like Florida right they didn't give a like throughout the whole entire thing they didn't shut down they barely shut down anything and when they did people were still kind of doing it anyway like Arizona was just off the chain so I moved to Phoenix because Phoenix was wide open.

And I go to Phoenix and I start tattooing in Phoenix. And, you know, met some people in Phoenix tattooing. And one thing led to another. And I was, I did the concrete podcast in November of 2020. I believe it was. Right. And that kind of took off. And I don't want to say it went viral because it didn't get over a million views,

but it did get 500,000 real quick. Right. Within two months or three months, it was at 500,000. So then I started, like, going on another podcast telling my story. I did Soft White Underbelly. I did that podcast. That did good numbers. That did like half a million.

I think it's a little over half a million now. And then I did probably 15 or 20, you know, little ones that, you know, it is what it is. But I did all of those. And then started my own YouTube channel, Boziac Conundrum. Right. And I built a studio in Phoenix in downtown Phoenix. I had an office building. I had my own studio, Boziac Studios, everything.

I went down there, had it all set up, you know, was making content. I was doing kind of like, you know, I don't like doing the prison content, man, you know? I don't like doing, I know it does well and everybody, you know, those channels do extremely well, but it's like, dude, I don't like talking about prison. I don't like talk about being in prison. I don't like, you know, talking about the food we ate in there and cookups and all that shit. I just don't like making that kind of content, you know, so not coming from the generation

where everybody's on their phones making content all. all of the time, like, I didn't know what to do. Do I, do I vlog? Do I take the camera with me and go do stuff? Do I, do I just, you know, do monologues where I just go on rants and, you know, conspiracy theories? Like, I didn't know what to do, you know? And it was that, it was through that experimenting process that I, that I kind of, I lost

the momentum that I feel like I had coming off of all of these big podcasts. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't, I didn't seize the moment. capitalize on it to as full potential as I could have, because I just didn't understand what I was doing at the time, you know. So I'm doing podcasting. I'm still podcasting. I'm still doing my YouTube channel, but now I'm just, I'm all in on tattooing, and I'm traveling all over the United States tattooing. I hook up with some bikers out of Indiana, and they got me tattooing. I went up to Sturgis, North Dakota, and I tattooed at Bike Week at Sturgis, and then I went to another

biker rally in Chilacothe, Ohio, a small little town, like an easy rider's event. tattooed there, I tattooed in Indiana, and then I get swindled in, I get swindled into moving to Indiana from, from Phoenix. And this is, this is a big mistake. I should have never moved to Indiana from Phoenix, ever. I had this cute little girl I was dating out in Phoenix, super cutie, like, you know, who knows where that would I went, but, you know, because I got swindled into moving out to Indiana to go work at this tattoo shop. you know, we're like, oh, you're going to be the man here, you're going to tattoo every day, which I was, and then, but everything went south, like the people just turned out to be,

I don't know, like, nobody, like, just crazy shit would happen every day. I'm like, dude, this isn't normal. Like all these, there's weird shit, like these big fights between people and like car crashes and people going to jail and like all kinds of crazy shit. I'm like, dude, this isn't normal. People don't, normal people don't live like this. So I quit the tattoo shop. Like, I worked at the tattoo shop from like, what was it?

Um, so I lived in Phoenix for a year. So that was like 2020 to 2021. I lived there. And then I moved out to Indiana in, uh, literally in like January or April of 2021. And I went to go work at this tattoo shop, uh, in out there in Indiana. And I worked there for like, like I said, almost six or eight months. And then I quit because the shit was just too crazy. I went and worked for another tattoo shop in Indiana.

I had my own apartment. I'm doing just fine. And then. Then, then you came here. Yeah. Then Matthew Cox calls me and says, you know what? You want to do YouTube in Florida? And it's the middle of the winter in Indiana. And I'm like, you know what? I haven't seen a winner. This is my first winner, mind you, in six or eight years. And I'm like, yeah, I got to get the fuck out of here. Yeah. So I left Indiana in April of 2022. So I left April 1st, 2022. I moved here and I've been doing YouTube ever since and tattooing. Now it's more YouTube than tattooing. So, yeah, I mean, you know, so that's what I'm doing now.

All I want to do is YouTube. That's all I'm doing is YouTube. I got some big things going on towards the end of this year in December. I'm going to be leaving the country, you know, and going and doing the whole man on the street abroad thing. You know, so that's coming. I do have a YouTube channel. It's Boziac Conundrum. You guys can check it out.

All the information will be down in the description of this video. you can also follow me on Instagram at Slum by Nature and mind you if it depends on when you're watching this because my YouTube channel and my Instagram all that stuff's going to change so just check the description

for the information because I think when I do move and I update the name of the channel in my Instagram then we can go back in the description of this video and change it to the new information so depending on when you watch this video whether it's now the beginning of the year the end of the year and next year

and then that'll depend on what my social media handles are. Yeah, so I'm just going to do YouTube. I'm just going to pursue that right now, and I just want to get out and travel and see the rest of the world, I think, a little bit. I think that's the next logical step for my life. Listen, I'm going to be 40 years old in February.

I got out of halfway house on my 30th birthday, and I haven't done dick with the last decade of my life. I haven't done anything with it. I haven't built anything of any kind of importance. I haven't invested any money. I haven't done dilly squat with my life. You know, so it's like I'm turning 40 and what am I going to do? So I have to start this next, this next decade is going to be my last, you know,

useful decade of my life before I hit 50 and things have to start slowing down and my body's going to start deteriorating on me. I got about a, I told how I feel, really. No, it's honestly how I feel. I have about another decade left of me of being productive and actually being able to accomplish anything of any importance. So that's where I'm at. And that's what I'm doing right now.

Hey, if you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Also, check the description for all of Boziac's links for social media, YouTube, the whole thing. Also, please share the video if you liked it. And leave me a comment. And please consider joining my Patreon. It's like 10 bucks a month.

And it really does help. Thank you very much. See you. Nice. Yeah, that was good. You got to edit that one good. Oh, yeah.