Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Dark Web Scammer Finds the Perfect Loophole

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Matthew Handy went from addiction and high-level crime to rebuilding his life through recovery, discipline, and mentorship, and now uses his experience to help others find a way out.⁣ ⁣ Matthew's links - ⁣ https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-handy-6b321835b/⁣ https://youtube.com/@mylastrelapse⁣ https://www.harmonygrovebh.com/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ Chapters: ⁣ 00:31 - Childhood, Addiction & Double Life⁣ 03:43 - Organized Retail Theft Operation⁣ 17:01 - Marriage, Crime & Jail Time⁣ 22:24 - Addiction & Hitting Rock Bottom⁣ 46:46 - Prison Realization & Turning Point⁣ 52:58 - Mentorship & Future Plans⁣ 1:12:41 - Reentry & Reaching Out⁣ 1:15:05 - Recovery Offer & Finding Work⁣ 1:31:26 - Carding & Dark Web Activity⁣ 1:49:39 - Carding & Extortion Schemes⁣ 2:16:19 - Homelessness & Survival⁣ 2:21:51 - COVID, Arrests & Mental Decline⁣ 2:33:19 - A Major Turning Point⁣ 2:49:37 - Arrest & Investigation⁣ 3:02:33 - Charges & Legal Strategy⁣ 3:05:22 - Choosing a Recovery Program⁣ 3:17:00 - Rebuilding Family & Work⁣ 3:20:41 - Path to Lasting Recovery⁣ 3:30:22 - Recovery & Treatment System Issues⁣ 3:35:06 - Advice for Individuals & Families Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm on the dark web. The cops are not going in there. Yeah. And I think I found the loophole. Right. You can just extort these dudes. We're getting $30,000 out of each. If you really do like a cost-benefit analysis on what we're threatening versus what he's going to pay, you know?

I think it was a pretty good deal for him, you know? I'm sure you appreciate it. Dude, this is an oral surgeon. It's horrible. Dude. Hey, can you edit out the, this was awesome part? No. No.

Come on. What happened with the guy? Raise Mormon, oldest to 10 kids. All the kids, they get left with family members. So I end up getting sexually abused by my uncle. How old are you? That started at five. That started at five.

And it lasted for a couple of years. The shattering of the personality is an interesting thing, right? So like the evolution of me kind of started there, I feel like, right? Where I learned how to put masks on. And so now I could fit in here and fit in here. And there was like this blossoming of the addict that I became. And so, you know, fast forward. My, I smoked bud for the first time on my 13th birthday.

Within a month, I had smoked hard. Okay. Okay. So that kind of like sets a hell of a, that's a quick escalation. Quick progression. Yeah. And I mean, it was just situational, available, smoked bud for the first time. and I distinctly remember thinking like this was amazing like what else are they lying to me about

and they're you know that's horrible and I distinctly remember thinking this is like what else and it wasn't just because of my upbringing in the church right raised Mormon I mean strictly Mormon almost militantly Mormon a lot of things I'd already been disenchanted with because me and my mom have like a really I lived with them till I was 16 and there was like the last two years where I didn't say a single word doer and lived in her home. Right. So already kind of disenchanted with the church. Are you angry?

I mean, is there a specific thing or that's happened? Abuse that nobody knows about. Right. Right. So nobody knows about it. And that's like a nagging thought probably daily. Right. And then there's so many kids.

Like so the time that I actually needed for nurturing and like development of relationships was never there. Right. So I had parental over. oversight, but not like parental nurturing. Right. So I just, there was like a fracture in the relationship early on. And it was, I became disenchanted with the life that I was living. And I learned how to live a double life really quick, right?

So as long as I satisfied my obligations to the home, which is ultimately the church, is all the underlying principles and values and morals. And it's the church, right? So fulfill the obligations to the church. and I can kind of do whatever I want. And so I'm surfing, I'm skating, I'm doing whatever I want, hanging out with adults.

And as long as I did what I needed to over here, I was kind of allowed to do that because that's one last kid that they get. Plus, I was like a punk kid too. Like just disobedient and causing havoc. And they got all these other kids. But then my uncle calls me one day. My uncle that's abused me.

Yeah. Keep in mind, like, nobody knows. Yeah. At this point, nobody knows. I hadn't really. I mean, nobody knew until I was 31. So my uncle calls me one day and he's like, and he lives, he lives a mile down the hill for my parents. And then I live a mile away from him.

And he's like, hey, I need you to do something for me. I'm like, okay. Comes and picks me up. He goes, takes me to the Toys R Us in Oceanside, where inside of it is a babies R Us. And in that babies are us, he goes, we're in the parking lot. he goes, I need you to go in there, go to this aisle, go to this shelf, there's diaper genies, I need you to, it's the second one in behind the first one, right? So second one to the left, and then the box behind the one that's in the front, buy that box.

Like, okay, weird, right? So I buy the box, come out, he gives me a hundred bucks. I'm like, okay, well, but what is it? And he opens the box, and there's like five breast pumps in it. Well, these breast pumps are like $1,000 each. Okay. Right. So, and he's like, look, and he gives me this whole rundown.

Like me and my wife have been doing this for a while. We burned the city. Like, every baby's our essence in the city. Like, they know who I am, I think. And it's like, he's like, I need to start doing this in different counties. And he, and I'm like, okay. So somebody there at working at the store does this for them? No.

Do they, they grab a box? They then put, they dump out the box, put them in there, glue it back. stick it in and have somebody else come and grab it. Dude, it got so intricate where it was like, that's pretty good. We got packing tape for a while, but you can hear it, right? He found silent tape that USPS uses. So like now we can, dude, it got so intricate.

I mean, there was a, well, I'll tell you this part in a second, but he was like, when you start going to, and this is how he do it, you unload the diaper genie and just put it on the display case. Right, you put it on the display, and now you've got an empty thing with no, like, suspicious looking random diaper genie on the floor or something. Right. So I'm like, okay. And I don't realize what he's saying is like he's trying to scale the project.

Yeah. Like scale the operation. And so me and him, we start going to L.A. and we're doing it. And then he's like, we need to get more. We're both drug addicts. Yeah. And he's like, we need to get more.

We're going to start doing with a car seat box. Right. So you go from a diaper genie box, which is, you know, like this, to a car seat box that's like this and all of a sudden it's an orchestration right like you're going in you've got to make sure that everything kind of runs on time kind of slick right because you don't want to catch the attention of everybody because we got to come back to the store eventually so one thing leads to another what ends up happening is now we're doing the the car seat box now we actually need more people and he works it out with me where he's like we'll split the profit you get your

friends to start coming with us and we'll orchestrate it so that they they each kind of do one thing and we'll give them a hundred bucks a box because now we've got a box that'll fit 30 of these things in there right and if you do the math it's like 30 thousand dollars worth worth of merchandise but we're selling them on like pay on a eBay and things like I guess or like 30% all 30% right yeah yeah and um or you know we'll sell them on back then it was like Craigslist you could sell shit on Craigslist or whatever And so now we're- Do they still have Craigslist?

I don't know. Okay. You don't hear about it anymore. Yeah, I mean, they got Facebook Marketplace. And what's the other one? Offer Up. Yeah. If it was today, that's what we'd be using offer up in Facebook Marketplace.

But so now we're bringing a couple of my friends. And we're going into stores. And we're getting $20,000, worth of merchandise out of them each. And by this time, so the progression kind of goes like this. I started doing the diaper genie box. That's like a month. Then me and him are doing the car seat box together. That's like a month.

And now we've got other people doing stuff with us. And that probably takes two weeks to get to that point where he's like, we need more people. Well, now we burned out LA County and now we're flying San Francisco. We're driving to San Francisco. We're driving to Arizona. And we're going out there for four days. and we're hitting every store, right? And it gets to the point where they start,

you know what the spider locks are? Are they the locks that come in, where they zip up the whole thing? Yes. It's kind of like, what are the cuffs, the zip ties? Yeah. It's like zip ties and it's in one lock. Yeah.

There's like a copper wire and if you cut it, there's an alarm that goes off. Oh, okay, I didn't know about the copper. Yeah. I've seen those. Okay, so in order to, because otherwise, like, how are we going to prevent people

from just cutting it off? Oh, yeah. You know, so there's a copper wire. If that circuit gets broken sets the alarm off. If you tamper with the too much, sets the alarm off. And so now we're like, well, how are we going to do this? Like, because now we're running into, it's not. I hate it when the stories fight back.

Dude. Well, and what they started doing. So upsetting. Once, yeah, once it, they started realizing it inventory was missing. They started putting limited amounts on the, on the shelves and putting a lot of it up on the top. Right. well, babies are us, they just got a purple shirt, right? So eventually what we started doing is a couple people would go get a purple shirt on.

They just act like they work there, go push the staircase over, bring a bunch of them down and then leave. And then so they would prep the store for us to come in. I mean, dude, it just kept evolving and evolving and evolving. Does anybody get grabbed or anything? So a couple times, a store would get wise and they would see us or whatever. they would act nonchalant. And, but dude, we're, we're just so in the zone, right? We're not really paying attention.

The whole thing is like, if we don't pay attention to them, they don't pay attention to us. Plus, we're all, like, out of our minds on drugs. So a couple times what would happen is, like, they would watch the whole orchestration go down. And then as my uncle was loading the box, they would come in and rush, right? But he had this thing.

He was like, if I dump the box out before any of us get caught, then they can't say, like, there was intent. I don't think so No dude Right so a couple times But nobody got busted for it You know like the cops were never There to watch it or whatever

I think they were trying to like prove it Or like they would call them and be like Hey we think these people are stealing you know whatever They don't got like the proof That this is going down Right So Dude it

11 months 11 months of this of just I mean 38 states is what it turned into 11 months And dude, I'm so paranoid. You got a question? No, I was wondering, how much money are you making? You're giving these guys $100.

What are you're not made? You're splitting it. Splitting the profits. You're splitting the profit, but you guys are just paying the kind of the crash test dummies. A hundred bucks a box. And they're doing how many a day? Dude, so if it was a good day, and dude, we got so stupid with it. It would be like we would buy a box, unload the box in the parking lot, send them back in with the box, reload the box and dip with another box.

And so on a good day, we could, we could hit like 12 boxes. Okay. Right. And some of these guys are making five, six, six hundred bucks a day. Dude, a thousand bucks a day sometimes, you know, like maybe one day it'll be like two boxes. Right. The next day it'll be six boxes. The next day, completely dry run.

We're not hitting nothing. And the next day it'll be like 10. Right. Because like whenever we had a dry run, it would be like, okay, now we got to make money today. Right. And the way that the babies R Us would work is they would build them in like clusters. So if there was one in a city, there was probably six, right? So we would go to a city.

And the map, you could just map it too. So like before I would after a while, it was my job to plan the trips. So I would just spend all my time when I wasn't doing that, like looking for cities that have clusters of these babies R Uses. And so the money part, by the time that year was over, I tried to And keep in mind, dude Like, I'm spending this money As fast as I'm making it

And we're spending money in the cities And drug-outes Yeah, not just And like bought a car Had a house You know, like I was just doing dumb shit In 11 months

So 11 months It was probably about 800,000 What happens at 11 months though? Dude, I was so paranoid We're crossing state lines nobody's wearing masks or anything like I'm so paranoid and on so much drugs yeah I mean you know bars yeah age um a little bit of powder a ton of k just like I'm on everything under the sun that I could possibly get in like we're in front of a store and I'd have a pill bottle and like the black and like

my uncle would be like dude you got to stop like you're in front of the store with a van full of criminals with a van full of stolen merchandise and you're just like fisting pills and doing age in front of the store before you ever let anybody get out like so i dude i'm so paranoid that they continue at 11 months they continue doing it for two months and i couldn't leave my house okay you just got okay you just got overwhelmingly paranoid and just couldn't phone you got you became non-functional yes okay non-functional to the point of like uh not only was i not able to perform they didn't want me around. Yeah.

You know, I told you what happened with the guy with the iPhone scam. Yeah. He was, he would be amazing. And then he'd become non-functional because he was doing so much, so many drugs. And then his boss,

remember this? His boss would send him to rehab. And he'd do it for 30 days. Get out. You're clean. Good. He said, and then I'd have another six month run.

I'd get, get on drugs. And then over the course of 60 days, I'd deteriorate to the point where I couldn't function anymore. He'd put me in a rehab. This is just because, He was so good at it. But yeah, you know, you can only, your body can only tolerate so much to the point where you just can't.

Yeah. I'm 17. Yeah. I'm like about to turn 18. And, you know, like, there was no, the internet was vastly different. There was no social media. There was my space. Yeah.

And, but dude, I was obsessively on the internet looking up like conspiracy theories. Like, I was just whacked out. Right. And so paranoid. I couldn't leave, but what I could do is plan the trips for them, like book the flights, get the cars, like, I could still do all that. So I was still making a little bit of money, definitely not what I was making before. Because even though we were splitting the profit, we still had to go in the store, right?

Because we're trying to keep our overhead down as much as possible. So we're still going in the store. And so I get so paranoid, dude. I quit leaving my house. I have my drugs delivered to me. And, you know, probably about six months into the scam, I meet a girl. She's living with me. My brother gets kicked out of my parents' house.

He's living with me. All my friends that are doing this with us, they're living with me. It's a two-bedroom, one bathroom house in Esquidito on 13th in Maple. And we rented it from somebody from the church. Right. And, dude, by the time I left this house, there was. no doors on any hinge all the windows were broken the they i'm sure they had to replace the carpet the tub wouldn't drain like it was just i i knocked out i was so paranoid uh i knocked out the

the closets were back to back right and i had knocked out like a hole in the walls because there was security bars on my window but not in the other one and uh so if the cops came i could like go through and get out the window or whatever and it's like i'm sorry i'm sorry are coming. No. Dude, the cops were never coming. And like, this neighborhood, this is the west side of Escondido. So I watched one time where my neighbors, they would go out and mow their lawn at three in the morning with scissors and headlamps. Dude, just like out there on their hands and knees cutting the grass. Like, this was a crazy neighborhood. So it wasn't. This is just people on drugs too. Oh, yeah. Okay. I watched their house get raided. You know, like I thought they were coming from my house.

They came for their house. And then the corner house, it was like a flop house for West Side. Like, it was just this neighborhood was crazy. And, dude, I was so paranoid. But this girl was living with me. My brother was living. All these people were living with me. And now, like, when they go on their trips, it's just me and the girl, my brother.

And this relationship was so toxic, dude. Like, she was born and raised in TJ. And like Englishers are second language, but dude, smoking hot. And like, we're eight. I met her. We were both 18. She's smoking hot. You don't really, she didn't really let me speak that well of English.

No, she spoke great English. That was part of the problem. I ended up solving marital problems. Right. Right. Yeah. If you don't speak the same language, you'll never fight. Right?

So she was, it was just toxic. I was a boy in a man's, a young man's body. And I'd been doing drugs during my, formative years like my whole progression has brought me to this point where I'm just a criminal derelict like I'm the oldest but I'm the only the only example that I am is like what not to do um living with this girl going against like every moral that the church taught me right and so me and the girl get married okay because our our relationship is such a wreck what's going to save it right right we're going to get married yeah then the next thing is to have a

kid. If we have a kid, that'll save it. Dude, so we get married. And nobody gets busted for that scam while I'm doing it, right? Okay. I get busted for four assaults with the deadly weapon is what they charge me with, right? How does that happen? So, me and her are fighting. Right.

And she gets in my neighbor's car, right? And there's like, now there's four women in the car. These neighbors hate me, right? I mean, me and this girl are, like, violent towards. towards each other, we're beating the shit out of each other. And like, I mean, we were just fucking kids. Right. Doing a shitload of drugs, married too young.

Like, I wasn't in the position for the decisions that I was making. I was trying to make adult decisions. And I wasn't an adult, like, mentally. And dude, so they get, she gets in their car and they're all going to take her to her brother's house. And I'm, like, chasing him down. And, um, she, like, slams on the brakes and I hit them from behind. And they tell the cops, like the cops get there or whatever, and they tell the cops, he did it on purpose.

And so they arrested me for four assaults with the deadly weapon, saying that the car was a deadly weapon. So now I'm in jail and probably a week into my jail stay. I call home and my mom answers her cell phone. And I'm like, what? Like my mom hates this girl. All right. Like hates her. Plus my mom, like, my mom's a funny person.

I brought a girl over there one time to my parents' house. And she goes, the girl goes, hey, where can I use the bathroom? My mom goes, you can go outside. You know, like, she's just that kind of person with the women that I bring around. And I'm like, this is so weird. Like, why? She's like, hey, Barbara needs to tell you something.

I'm like, okay. And she gets on the phone. She's, like, crying. And she's like, I'm pregnant. Right? Well, I know I'm on my way to prison. Right. Right.

Like, everybody's telling me, like, oh, no, dude, you're definitely going to prison. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, what am I going to do? Well, I don't know how it works in. I took my deal, got sentenced, and I got sent upstate in three months. You know, this is like 2008. The courts were a well-oiled machine, right? If you're taking a deal, dude, you're going to get up there pretty quick.

I think I got sentenced and caught the chain like two days later. 2008? Yeah. Okay. And so now I'm going upstate and I've got this whole mess at home. She's a drug addict. Obviously, we lost that house. Right.

Like, we lost that house. My brother's a wreck. And everybody's kind of blaming me for a bunch of stuff. Which legitimate, right? Like, I did a lot of fucked up shit. I influenced my brother. Like, I don't know. It was like, I don't understand.

to this day why like if he got kicked out for using drugs why would you say it's okay for him to go and live with me right right but so he gets hooked on age and at this point you know like everybody in my house is using age and um by the time i get arrested uh this is my first kick too right and this was like so you detox in in jail yeah it's a good place to detox it actually is it is it i just thought it was horrible everybody like it's the it's like it's like it's like it's like you're like you're being sick in prison, it's the worst. Yeah, but so mentally, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is the worst. But if you have no options to get it, that desire to go out and commit a crime or go out and like try to steal something or whatever, that's not there. Yeah. And it's like, I just have to do this.

The grin and bear it. Yeah. It gets, for me, it would get massively easier if there was just no option, right? I have to do this. All right, whatever. but this is my first kick and I had never been so violently ill in my life like I'm shitting on myself I'd never shit on myself before at this point right but I'm shitting on myself I'm puking all over the floor my cellies are pissed they're like

trying to get the the depths to like clean it up I mean it's just a mess and I'm like a young kid they kind of understand what's going they they do understand what's going on and but dude my forehead's bleeding because I hit my head on the on this toilet But anyway, it's just a fucked up scene. And so like a weekend, I'm feeling a little bit better. And then I get hit with that. So now I'm going upstate. And it's just wreckage, right?

And I get to Donovan for reception. So I get the mail. It's like six weeks late. I'm trying to get like the visiting application or whatever. But then the holidays start, dude. And I end up, I end up in reception for like almost eight months, right? a little bit more than seven months. Because while I was there,

I was, dude, I got write-ups. I was just being stupid, dude. I was a young kid with no direction, addicted to drugs, in a reception center where it's flooded.

And, I mean, I'm just running amok. Already only in reception. Catch ride-ups. I got to wait for disciplinary. It takes time. And the male starts getting more and more delayed.

So the baby, is born, I have no clue. A bunch of stuff goes on at home, I have no clue. And by the time I get to my yard, I still hadn't gotten, I got to the yard in like February and I still hadn't gotten mail from November. And so a bunch of things had transpired between November and February. So when I called home the first time, it was just them unloading like, this is what happened, like this and this and this. And it all kind of like climaxed at the situation where my wife was living in. with my parents. The baby's born. She's partying again, doing drugs, drinking, and they're letting her use a car. And the car gets towed, and she doesn't want them to find out what she was doing.

So her and the guy that she's fucking break into the tow yard, steal the car back, bring it to my parents' house and leave. Because that'll never come back on. Oh, dude. The cop show up to my parents' house trying to arrest my mom. Right? So, I'm just hearing all this stuff and I'm like, okay, but all I'm worried about is, well, where is she? Like, what is she doing? Like, I don't give a fuck. I mean, like, okay, but did she get arrested?

No. Okay, then why are you telling me? Like, at this point, my parents were so sick of my shit. Like, I just don't blame them anymore. Like, they were so sick of my shit that every chance that my mom had to be mad at me, like, she was taking it. But I will say that they supported me through that prison term, so I'm really grateful for that. didn't do me any good because I was using all that money to buy drugs right so uh the girl that shit falls apart find out that she's been like sleeping with my best friend who he was the

first person in California to get prosecuted for selling fent to somebody and they ended up dying so they tried him for like second degree murder yeah yeah he was like so they made like a tv show about him and whatever. She's sleeping with him. I'm fighting all this out. And I'm like, okay, whatever, right? Out of my mind. Out of sight, out of mind for now.

Well, the baby's born, because she had been doing drugs and like all this other stuff, baby's born with like serious complications. She ends up getting kicked out of my parents' house. My parents adopt her. Okay? So, yeah. So prison was not in any way to turn for me. Right.

like California prison system. This is right when like the prison system started to change in California. There's like the tail end of the good years of prison, right? But I had a fucking blast, dude. Running around doing drugs, like getting involved in shit that I had no business getting involved in. You know, I'm like a 19 year old drug addict kid who has a little bit of money but not really. And so like I'll get stuff like fronted and then now I got to like go put in work or like whatever. And I had a fucking blast

And I get out And I overdose three days after I get out Are you on like probation when you get out? I'm on parole Parole. I'm on parole. Yeah, so I check in, immediately start using again And overdose like the night I start using.

On what age? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm living at a sober living. I miss coming home that night. Dude, it's like I still don't understand what I told them.

to get them to not drug test me and not kick me out. But I overdose and the ball starts rolling, dude. Like I'm now I'm not checking in. Now I'm like making up excuses and I'm just strung out again. And I get kicked out of this place and then I got to go live over here. And now I'm like renting a room from this lady. The cops kick her door in because I'm like, they're doing a probation or a parole check.

They know I'm home because my car is there. nobody's answering the door. They like try to kick the door and they come in through a window. They know I'm in my room, but it's locked. So they kick the door off the hinges and I'm just in there. I'm just in there like passed out, right? And so I get arrested. I convince my, I got to move out of there now.

I convince my parents that I've got to live with them. Anyway, I wake up one morning and I realize like my uncle who views me. I was involved with that theft ring. He did the same thing with his parents, but his parents are enablers, right? Like my grandparents enabled him out of guilt and shame or whatever. For whatever reason, they never showed him tough love. And I was like, I'm going down that same route

where I'm going to end up robbing from them, stealing from them, fucking something up. But my parents are not the same parents that he had, and I will burn every bridge that I possibly have with these people. And I remember waking up one morning, having these thoughts and going, I need to leave, right? The logic that I have at this point is I either need to quit or I need to separate myself from them.

And the logical thing to me was to cut all ties and just go do whatever it was that I needed to do. So that's what I did. I cut all ties, left my phone because they were paying for it, left my phone, and went and tried to just figure it out. Of course, guess the first person that I got a hold of. of her that I went to was my uncle. Right.

And at this time, he's like living in his truck. He's got three daughters, right? The whole scam thing imploded. He'll still like do, he was doing, uh, uh, turbo taxes. Mm-hmm. Right? Like he would do the same thing where he would go into like an office depot. And this is so funny.

He would go into an office depot, get like some little box and then put like a bunch of the software into it. But those have. like alarm strips on the inside. And so he's like, okay, this is what you need to do. Look as ghetto as you can. Sag your pants, like wear your hat sideways, like get a shirt that's three times too big for you and walk out at the same time with me with one of those strips so that I just

bought this box. Yeah. Who are they going to stop me or you? Yeah. Right. So I would set the alarm off. You would get out. I would try to do this like whole scene where, you know, I'm like distracting them basically,

right? Right. Oh, yeah. I don't, what are you talking? talking, I'm not stealing nothing, like, oh, whatever. And by the time that whole scene was over, they're just like, whatever, dude. And my uncle got away with like a few hundred bucks worth of software. Right.

And now we're going to go sell that or whatever. He's still got like his PayPal and stuff like it. So he's like selling stuff online. And so now we're living in his truck. Smoking in his truck. Yeah. Is this a big truck? No.

Okay. It's a single cab bench, truck. It's like purple Chevy like an 80 like an early 90s model purple Chevy box truck and I mean dude it was such a mess dude it was like so gross food on the floor from like three days ago and we're smoking crystal I'm slamming age we're going around and not shower we're we're showering at like parks

right you know or like uh we're doing the guys will get uh get a get a membership at like a membership health club yeah that's what boziac we used to do he'd move he said i just get a health club membership i'd go there and he said i could put all my stuff on all stuff that i needed in a locker yeah he said every couple of days you just change lockers you know because if the locks there for too long they'll cut it off that lock's been there for two weeks yeah they'll cut he said but if you're constantly moving it and it's there overnight they don't do anything yeah to see it for like 10 days or two weeks he says you just change it every few days. Yeah. Yeah, well, we weren't that smart. Okay. But he was able to shower. Yeah. Yeah, we

weren't that smart. In, in San Diego, like all of the city parks have showers in them. Oh, okay. And so. That's right. They're more homeless friendly. I mean, they're not homeless friendly here. No. So we're showering in the parks and we're doing this little lightweight boxing thing. That's what that scam is called, right? Boxing. Okay. And we're doing this like lightweight boxing thing. But we're hanging out at trap houses, dude. And when we're not living in, I mean, we're full time living in the truck.

But every now and then we'll get to stay overnight at some trap house. But now there's two of us. Right. You know, and it's like, dude, I got obsessed with this one trap house. And this is my first time using crystal. And so like I didn't really. Now looking back on it, it was like, like the obsession came from the drug, right?

That like I got obsessed with this house. And also like the girl that was there or whatever. And it was like, I was always like, let's go back over there. Let's go back over there. Let's go back over there. Well, the girl had another friend who was a female, right? And that friend, she was like 41. I'm 22.

She's 41. No, I'm 23. She's 41. And she's like telling what's going. You know, everybody's like sitting around passing a pipe and everybody's talking or whatever, like what's going on with you, what's going, whatever. And I find out that she's got, she's living in her friend's house who's deployed and it's going to be deployed for a long time. And I'm like, oh, so I get her phone number and now we're texting or calling or whatever. And it's

like, oh, yeah, come. Like, I have stuff. Can I come over? Right. That turns into me living with her. That turns into me and her together. And one thing, you know, conversations happened. I was in elementary school with her son, right? Like I was, appropriate. Dude, so crazy. Crazy, right? Well, what does she do? Like, how is she, how is she? SSI. Because she was like mentally unstable. Dude, perfect person to date. She would perfect. And she's mentally unstable and using crystal. And so she's like schizophrenic and like she's a, oh, man, dude, it was. She was a nightmare to deal with. She had this great house right there on 38th and national like in the hood. And so I'm. buying from this person and this person ends up like hanging out at the house all the time. Well, next thing you know, like his gang is hanging out at the house. And next thing you know, this is the trap house.

Right. Right. Not only is this the trap house. Now I'm selling. And now I'm like, you know, fully involved in this like drug conspiracy that they have going on. And they're like getting it from Vegas and driving it back down. I mean, it's like it becomes my whole life, right? It's consumed by trafficking at this point.

Right. And I've got like a girl living upstairs and I'm like, dude, it was chaos. Are you selling? Are you just using? No, I'm selling now too. I'm selling and it was like, and it started, he was like, hey, he called me one day and he goes, hey, can you get rid of more? I was like, get rid of more.

I'm not, I'm just, he was like, you're using all that? Like, yeah. like well can you like I don't know like maybe right he's like I'm gonna say I'm gonna give you some stuff see if you can get rid of it and he gave it to me and I got rid of it and I was like okay you know like I have like a network of people like I can just and that's how it starts right is like I know people that use so I sell it to them and they know people and it's like good stuff so that turns into me selling out of this house now everybody selling out of this house and at any given time now, dude, there's like three, four, five gang members. And they're all Asian

bloods, right? Three, four, five gang members playing dice, having customers at the house, like doing drugs. And is she like a captive in our own house or is she totally okay with she's cooking for everybody? Oh, okay. She's like, okay. Yeah, dude, this is like the most social. This woman's probably been in years, dude. And, but every now and then it will be like, She's locked herself in the room and she's like going through it. And like, but we took over this house, like effectively took it over. And she is like cooking for everybody. And she's like trying to mother some of these people.

It like turns into a circus, dude. All these weird dynamics are going on. Well, lucky, that's who I was buying from initially, right? And he's kind of like, first of all, I'm a small guy and I'm using drugs. He's smaller than me. He's shorter than me and thinner than me. And this is like probably the most violent person that I've ever met in my life, right? And the person that he's the most violent to is his girlfriend.

And he, I mean, dude, just up and down the street. Dude, one time they were in the car in front of my house. And I looked out the window and he's like, he's got her like by the back of her head by her hair, like slamming her head against the window. And I'm like, holy shit. So one day he's like beating the fuck out of her in the house. And this is where like my drug psychosis started, like was around this time. And it wasn't like I was hallucinating or whatever.

It was just like the paranoia in my head. Paranoia became like a constant thread in my story. And I'm just starting to realize that like as I'm telling my story recently is that like my paranoia was so crazy. drug-induced paranoia for me was a big problem. So my paranoia started around this time and the psychosis started. Anyway, he's beaten her and everybody's playing dice and smoking and like we're huddled up in a circle. But I just keep looking over and they're fighting.

And everybody's just ignoring it. Dude, ignoring it. Like it's just another day. I mean, it is. It's just another day. It's like prison. There's a fight in prison or something that happens in prison. Yep.

And you just keep right back to point cards. None of my business. Keep going. Yeah, and that's it. And he was kind of like the ringleader of what was going on. He was making the money ultimately. Like we're protecting him. Right.

Because he had the plug. And then his, you know, it was like this shame. He's more important than her. Definitely more important than her. And you know, that's the sad reality of those worlds is that like we're all kind of immoral, right? And it's like we all kind of have hierarchies of priorities. And she wasn't it.

And so. But it's so bad. where I like look over and we like make eye contact and I'm like hey are you going to play dice and I didn't know what else to say right but nobody else is looking at him beat the fuck out of her right he like catches me and I'm like hey you're going to play dice and it just completely stopped in that moment he like came over played dice whatever they left and um you know the day the day went on but at the time it was like one actual day to like for us the way that we were measuring it was in like three or four days.

Like we'd sleep every three or four days. And that was a day. And so the day went on. Later on, maybe that evening, the next morning, the next day, maybe two days later, you know, is like when I was approached about joining their gang, right? And so now, but they have, they've all been gang members their whole lives, right? And it's like, I'm 23, right? But we're all like the same age.

They're actually a little bit older than me. And so now I'm like a gang member, right? And I'm like, okay, now I feel like I'm somebody, right? What does that even mean? You paid dues, you got a 401K? Like, I don't understand. These guys are what, stand up for you? No.

Right? What does that mean? Dude, because when I got busted for all this stuff, nobody was there for anybody. Right. And it's actually a really crazy story what happened to Lucky. But, dude, it's, but all of us are fully aware we're getting busted at some point. Right.

And we're reckless. We're driving around with guns, drugs, pipes, loaded needles. Like we talked about this last night. It's just it just becomes a part of your life. You're out for a little bit. You go to prison. You get out, back out. You start over again.

You go to prison. And you just kind of feel like, hey, this is my life until I do something so fucked up that they just never, they never let me out and die or I'll die on the street. Maybe I'll get shot. Maybe I'll have overdose. And this is the rest of my life. And you know, like that's that is the reality. And we all have these thoughts.

But we can compartment, car, compartmentalize our lives enough where it's like yeah I don't got to worry about it I'm not dead right now I'm not in prison right now but lucky would call me this a bunch of times you'd be like hey look out your front window and he would drive by two cops would drive by behind like undercovers and be like hey those cops like absolutely those are cops right and it's like weird clicking on our phones and like circumstance with somebody get busted and then they'd be out and everybody was like looking at them like crazy and I don't know it's like we're not bailing each other out.

Right. Like, there's no honor amongst thieves, right? Like, so we're not like rushing to bail anybody out. It's like this person got out and it's like in the interrogation like, how much was your bail? And we're all like trying to figure out like we're all tweaking too.

Yeah. Did they cooperate? Yeah. Is this guy? Like how long was he actually in jail for? You know, like, so we're trying to like, we're using crystal math, right? Like, which is illogical to begin with. But like trying to, you know, make sense of stuff.

that makes zero sense. And so the cops are on to us. And what I don't know at the time is that, you know, a bunch of people had been busted around us and they are cooperating, right? They're like telling and they're like, they're encircling like this drug conspiracy, right? There's multiple gangs involved. There's like bloods, cribs, Mexicans,

a couple white boys in each East County. Like, so there is a task force. There's like an indictment. That happens down the road, but a task force that's like collecting evidence. And my uncle calls me one day. And I'm giving him a lot of drugs. And I'm telling him for free, right? Get all your friends hooked and give him my phone number.

Have him call me. And so now I'm like moving up into North County and I'm selling drugs in North County. And I'm in East Day going southeast and like running around. because I'm living in Southeast. We're selling a lot in East Diego. Now I'm spreading, right? Like I'm growing into North County. And my uncle calls me and he goes, hey, I got a guy that wants a quarter pound.

I'm like, okay, it's X amount. And at the time, dude, we're buying them for 800 pounds for 800 and selling them for 16 whole. Right. So he's like, they need a quarter pound. I'm like, okay, it's X amount. So I'm up there half an hour later. Deal goes off. It's great.

calls me like a couple days later. Hey, they need another. Okay. Meet them the same spot. And then like a week goes by and he's like, hey, they want to pound. That does sound good at all. But dude, I'm in this mindset of like, I'm trying to prove myself to these people because now I'm a part of the game. You are proving it.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like so and I moved up quick in like the sales game, right? Like I went from not selling anything. they just thought I was because I was using so much to being able to move quarter pounds and like half pounds and like ounces pretty often, right? And so I'm like, okay, for sure.

Run up there. I park in the same spot. And I'm like, where? Where's my uncle? Right? This is the uncle that I've had this past. Right? Like, where's my uncle?

And I'm there like calling him. He's not answering. I'm like, what? And then an F-150 pulls up behind me and a Mustang. Boom, like that, right? And I'm watching this stuff. And I'm doing like micro-calculations in my head like as fast as possible. Like, what is going on?

Oh, shit. Those are white boys. Oh, they got bald heads. Those are cut off dickies. Oh, shoot. They're wearing white beaders. Oh, my gosh. They got guns.

These are cops, though, right? Yeah, but I'm like, they look like gang members. They're undercovers, right? They look like gang members. These are the, these are like the same type of. person that I was selling to through my uncle. And so I'm like, oh my God, I'm getting robbed. That's what I think is like, I'm getting robbed.

And I've got everything on the on the front seat, right? And by the time like all of the micro calculations were done, he was at the window, but he knocks on it with a badge, right? And there's like a cop pointing a gun here, a cop pointing a gun here. And he's got a gun on him, but he's tapping on his window on my window with a badge. And I'm like, so I look and I'm like, oh. And there's like half of me is like relieved that I'm not getting robbed because they've got guns. Like will they kill me?

I don't know. Like whatever. And then the other half of me is like, I'm busted. You know, and it's like that back and forth in my head of like, is this good or is this bad? Right. Which is where it's that Henry Hill moment where he thinks he's going to get whacked, but it's just the cops that are there to arrest. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm like, can't figure out if this is good or bad. and what I find out is that I got busted, but at the same time, they were raiding houses and arresting a bunch of other people. And there was 46 people arrested, and they found like 100 pounds of meth,

a ton of cash, like hundreds of thousands of cash. They found two bodies under someone's grandma's house, right? They like, so like in the big scheme of things, I was a very small part of this. Right. But they busted my uncle. So, you know, they start with the small fish and they try to work up. Had they busted your uncle first?

Yeah. And so he gave them. He set me up. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought happened. Yeah. He set me up. Yeah.

And I'll never forget the first call. He was like, hey, I got a guy named tattoo face. Tattoo face. What the fuck? Okay, whatever. Sounds legit. Yeah. I mean, he had his face tattooed.

Right. I understand. So when I met him, I was like, okay. Like legit, whatever, right? they caught, they came out later, they caught my uncle with a very small amount, but he didn't want to go to jail. Right. So like, yeah, hey, I got this dude.

Right. And he gave me up. Like, of all people, like, dude, you couldn't give like my partners up. You gave me up. Right? Like, dude. That's how it works. Yeah.

But dude, like, you've actually abused me. I was just to say, what did you think there was a, dude? Did you think there was a, uh, there was a limit or there was a bottom to like, oh, he won't go blah, but he won't go past this line. Yeah, dude. Well, that's what I thought is like, okay, he, he is like, because he's a tweaker. Right. Like the, the mental anguish that that drug already puts you through, plus like he's

always around me, this dude has apologized like vehemently over the years. Fuck, I don't, I couldn't even tell you how many times. And so I was like, okay, you know, whatever. It's some kind of Stockholm syndrome or something because that was the family member that I always went to when I was in trouble. Right. So there's like dynamic things going on here. And so, yeah, all this, I find all this out.

But guess what? I'm going back to prison, right? And this prison term was where things started to change, at least mentally for me. So I get to jail and things had just changed. Like I don't know if I'd grown up at all, but definitely didn't want to be doing this anymore. Right. So then I end up doing 28 months. on that term.

But this prison term, higher level, more serious. Now I'm a gang member. And like I was doing things on the street and people are connected, right? Like people are hearing about stuff. And I'm seeing things. I was in a level two, my first one, right? And then I go to this one. And so it's a higher level.

And now I'm seeing more violence. and I'm participating in more violence. But I have this realization where I'm like, I can end up doing this forever. Right. Like very quickly. And I was like, I just don't want to do this anymore.

How much time did you get? 28. I got like four years and I did 28 months. Okay. Yeah. Did you say that and I missed it? I said that I'd done 28 months, but I didn't tell you how I was like,

and I was like one of the small fish on this whole thing. And so like there were like life sentences passed out. and like people were fighting that case for like six years. Like by the time I got arrested and released, there were still people like trying to go to trial and like. Right. So I mean, I was, so actually, Lucky got busted and bailed out and the dude disappeared.

No, I mean, I've tried to track him down so many times. Nobody knows what happens to him. And so, you know, there's like the two options where he was either cooperating or like he got killed, but we're like, nobody knows what happened to him. And so that prison term goes on.

And through that prison term, I meet this dude. His name is David Johnson. He's doing a life sentence right now. And he, you know, realizes, this is what he does. He, I'm doing drugs. I'm running around, participating. And he's 38 years old at the time, blood from L.A. and he's like, dude, let me talk to you.

I'm like, okay. He's like, dude, there's two dangerous people in prison. There's people with a brain and people without a brain. Not many people get to choose which one that they are, but you seem like you can choose something different. I was like, I don't even know how. Like, how? He was like, moving to myself and, you know, just moving to myself.

And dude, over the next, like, year and a half that dude just imparted dude so he was in there for pimped and pandering and then like this gang related murder that he was on the periphery of and like drug sales and you know catching 48 to life and and he just dude poured into me and was like you don't have to do this like dude you're not really even a gang member dude like and that's not who you are right like and i know like at this by this time i'm like yeah this isn't really you're me right like i'm just kind of a drug addict fuck up and he's like you don't have to do this you don't have to go down the road that i am because this is the only place that you're going to end up

this are dead and and i'm like this is definitely something that i could end up doing and be comfortable like humans are extremely resilient and we have the ability to adapt really well and i'm like yeah i could definitely get comfortable doing this but i didn't want to if there were girls in prison maybe right but like yeah there wasn't so um the resilient thing it's funny my ex-wife her grandfather was captured in like career or something and spent like two years in a three foot by three foot like or maybe it's four foot by four foot bamboo dog cage yeah exactly cage and when they got out he was that's exactly what he said he said is it you can get used to pretty much anything.

They're like, how did you survive that? He's, yeah, you get used to it. But that was what you say? You'd be shocked what you get used to. Yeah. It's just like, it's insane. It is. But I mean, you've done time.

Yeah, but I mean, I remember whenever people ask me about, because I'll get people that are about to do five years, they'll call me. And I always say the same, I'm like, listen, you know, first of all, it's bad because you were out. You're probably better off if you've been locked up the whole time. But now you're going to turn yourself in. But, you know, once you get in there and your expectations of life, what life is for you drop, you're going to be much better off.

So it takes maybe what, six months to a year before you acclimate? You start reaching for your, you stop reaching for your cell phone, you stop thinking about calling so-and-so, you stop going in your pocket to pay for something. You know, all those little things. Yeah, you acclimate to the environment. And that's when things really start being like, this is okay. I'm okay here. I can do this.

I can do another four years or five, whatever it is. But it's that initial depression. of the first six months of this can't be my life. I can't survive. I can't do this. Yeah. Well, once that's gone,

you're good. You're just get into a routine. Yeah, and I think that's a normal person's frame of mind is like they have to get used to it. Yeah. I was already fucked up, you know, you start programming,

but you can get into programming mode pretty quick once you're used to it. And so I get locked up and I'd be in program mode within a week. Right. So you have no stability anyway. You're used to dealing with whatever you have to deal with. You're living here for three weeks. You're living here for two months. Fuck, if I'm lucky.

Here for two days. Yeah. So I'm living in a car for six weeks. You're having to constantly re-evaluate what life is going to mean for you over the next period of time. And that's an interesting point, too, is like survival mode. You can acclimate to survival mode. And then it doesn't feel like survival mode. And this is just life now.

Yeah. Right. And so, dude, he pours into me. And by the time I get released, this was the most emotional departure from a to this day right the most emotional departure i've ever had from a human because now i was going out there i know he's never getting out and he's trying to impart like his regrets and his like whole experience into me so that i can just go out there and not do what he did yeah so the most he can do that is the most he can do in life yeah is trying

and help people that are that have a chance of maybe changing their mind. I told you the one guy. And that was all it was was one from the guy who did the iPhone scams. Because this seems very familiar to me. And it was at the very in tail end of his last sentence where that he had some guy. And he was like, you can, you know, you're pretty smart. You could probably go to college. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? It's just, and it wasn't much. But he said it was one of the first time anybody ever really paid attention to him and told him that. Yeah, it's that first domino that falls. Yeah. Right. You never know who it's going to be either.

Some people would be told the same thing over throughout their whole life and then it just happens that it's this one guy that said it in a slightly different way. And for some reason, it clicked and they stopped doing all the knucklehead shit and they go get a college degree and end up being an accountant or something. Well, and with that dude, very similar, right? Like we spent intimate time together. Right. Dude, like, we lived in a bathroom together for years, right? Same thing with your, with the other guy. It's like, so that's a cell.

That's the cell, cold, because there's a toilet of sink in there. So it's like, my cell that I lived in forever is, is my bathroom is the same fucking thighs. Yeah. Right now. And my, my bathroom is bigger. Our bathroom is bigger than the cells than any cell I was ever in. Yeah. So like the square footage of it.

Yeah. It's decent. But you've got lockers, beds, desk, toilet. Like, the actual usable thing. beds. Yeah. Unless you have two, unless you have two. Right.

In the low, you had two, you had a bunk bed and a single bed. I mean, there's no square footage. Yeah. There's nowhere to. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, and it's like one up, one down. Like if you're both up in the cell at the time, you're in each other's face.

You know, if you're, if I'm sitting at the desk and he's sitting on his bed, we're this far apart from each other at all times. I'm smelling his deuce farts. Like, dude, it's we really. and the stories and it's like deconstructing your lives together like going over stuff and I should have done this different I could have done that or you know and it's telling the war stories like if I had just done that different right and people talk about going to prison and getting worse it's because of this process of like really sitting with the self and deconstructing everything that you did where like you get to sharpen stuff and tighten things up and then you're exchanging ideas with people

and also like the networking expands and yeah you go to prison and typically it gets worse and that's a business set up to have return customers like we're not going in there and getting better right CDC became CDCR they just got a bigger budget there was no rehabilitation going on in there right so but this was the most emotional departure or farewell that I've ever had with anybody in my and this is after dude I left my family I left my kid right divorced my wife like dude been told on by my uncle like all this other stuff this was the most emotionally, I mean, to this day, right? And but here was, this was the plan. I was going to go out that, me and him devised this plan together. Do you know what, um, sovereign citizens are?

Yeah. Oh, my God. What are you going to do? You didn't become a sovereign citizen. Oh, okay. No. I thought this guy had some head on his shoulder. Well, or did he, what, did he think that was a thing? Yeah. Oh, God. You just lost. He just lost. He just. just lost all credibility. Dude, so we, we, uh,

we get the redemption manual in prison and we're reading this thing and we're like planning and dude, it's like a whole, so anyway, here's the plan. I'm going to get out. We're, I'm going to buy crystal.

Yeah. I'm going to sell crystal, but I'm not going to use it. Yeah. Right. And me and him are getting high the whole time, but we're just not doing crystal in there. Right.

We're doing H and, you know, some subs that come through or, you know, whatever. But yeah, we just don't do that. Because that was kind of what he got busted on too.

It was like he was making all these crazy decisions like all spun out. So you're going to get out, you're going to do that and what, become a sovereign citizen? Yeah. To buy his bonds, to clear his debt to get him out of prison. And so I hook up with these dudes. There's nothing more that I enjoy than watching sovereign citizens, get pulled over by the cops and tell him that they're traveling and then get yanked out of the vehicle through the windshield. Yeah, through the window, busting it. You're violating.

I love it when the cop realizes. And he's like, okay, all right. Are you a sovereign citizen? Well, yes, I am a sovereign citizen. Okay. I'll be right back. Hold on a second. Yeah.

Go get my window blaster. Yeah. And a pair of cuffs and order another car to come. Yeah. Back up. Because there's a good chance we're yanking you through this fucking window in a few minutes. Yeah. Have you seen some of those like successful court encounters, though?

No. Okay, they've got them like they're rare. I think it's more out of frustration. Maybe. Yeah, it can't be like, oh, you've purchased the bond. Oh, you've satisfied this is a satisfaction letter. Oh, you're a secured party creditor. Then you can leave.

Yeah. The fuck out of here. Oh, we arrested you. Oh, my bad. Yeah. Oh, we didn't even know. You're right. I'm sorry, sir.

I didn't realize this. We should let everyone out of prison. Yeah. Oh, dude. We're going to issue everyone a black card and they'll be able to have, um, uh, uh, no limit spending for the rest of their life. Like come stop it, bro. It's not how it works.

The birth certificate bond, right? Dude, like, have you studied this at all? I have looked into it. Listen, I had a guy that literally I spent three years with that went over this and over this. His name is Chris Morero. And he's absolutely hilarious. Yeah.

By the way, he believes every conspiracy out there. That was me. He believes every, he'll tell you about the difference between the North Sasquatch and the Florida Sasquatch, he'll tell you about how the aliens are running the entire world. Yeah. In combination with the world governments, he'll tell you all about, I mean, it's just, it's just straight. We should have Chris back on.

It's just straight. I never laughed. And he knows it sounds crazy and he knows I think he sounds crazy. But he has a good sense of humor. He doesn't get upset. Like some of these guys will get upset because it's serious. Oh, yeah. He knows that I think.

think he's insane. Yeah. But he has a great sense of humor about it. But he 100% believes everything he's saying. Yeah. Dude. And he's he's somehow or another. He's infused.

Oh, yeah. The Bible with. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Ezekiel. And of the, yeah. Of course. Trust me.

I was down that road. All. I was down that road, dude. I was down that road. He also, by the way, he sends me every day I get things from crazy. Did you know that? Every day he sends me stuff. Every day.

I promise you today. He texts me. I don't have to respond to him. Chris Marrero. This is, oh, look, look, hold on. These kids are not, so he sent me, he just sent me something on some TikTok. Oh, no, this is a YouTube. This is a YouTube short.

What is this? Oh, this is some kind of a car that flies. Yeah. We've got some Ronald Reagan. Sometimes it's just politics stuff, but most of the time it's just Which goes hand in hand with everything else that he's. Yeah. Sometimes it's comedy.

He likes to laugh. But he's a. Chris was huge fun. Like me and Boziak would be walking around and Chris would go, I mean, Boziac would go, you know, you get bored. You're just kind of like, hey, let's go see what Chris is doing. Yeah. And we'd go sit down and Boziac would sit down and say, Chris. And Chris would be reading some fucking book.

Listen, Chris one time was reading a book. And I go, Chris, you understand that that's not real. He was, it's, this is true. He goes, look, and he flips it over and it on the side of it, it says, nonfiction. Nonfiction doesn't mean anything. It says it right here. It's nonfiction. This is true.

It's all true. Chris, that's not, that doesn't be that self-published. You could put anything, could put history on it. You could put anything on it. No, no. Like, okay. But he, we would go and sit down in his cell and Boziac would go, he'd say, be like, don't say anything. We sit down and he'd go, because we were out in the yard earlier.

You know, Like three or four jets that flew over and they had those white lines. Those light those those those and he go, those are Kim Trills. Yeah. You know what they're doing to us, right? That's sodium oxidide such and such. They're poisoning us.

They're trying to bring down the population of the earth. Look. And he pulls out two books and he folks. Here page 127. Yeah. And he start reading it to us about how they're poisoning us because they want to reduce the population of the earth down to 500 million people because that's all the earth can really sustain.

And that that's a common, that the U.S. government is working with the aliens to do this and we're like, Has he infused flat earth to it yet? No, I don't think he, I don't think he's gone for the flat. I haven't asked, to be honest. I would think I would have heard. Okay, because if he's like already going down the Bible religious part of it, he's about to get to the flat earth.

I promise you he's about to get there. My favor is when, if you tell them about like when we landed on the moon in like 1969, let's say and he's like he's like he'll shake when he just shakes his head and he no no it is real he's he's like we landed on the moon in 1965 not sick not 69 it's like and you know what I'm saying whatever it is we're off and he's got a whole theory of how the Soviets were here and we landed here because the Soviets landed first and they told us not to land here because that's where the aliens were I mean it's just it's like you're living in it you've got a completely different reality yeah do you know who

Bill Cooper is. Mm-mm. He wrote, Behold the Pale Horse. Oh, of course. Of course. William Cooper. Everybody knows. Yeah.

Behold the fail hole. For sure. Wait, do you? No, but the book goes around. I never read it. Oh, yeah. They've got the book. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That book goes around. What's the other one? The Jackal from, gosh, something, something of the Jackal Island or Oh yeah, yeah, the mystery of Jekyll Island. Yeah. Um, there's just up there's a several

books. Yes. Like core conspiracy theory books. Yeah. Well, and then it's like the Zecharii Sitchin, the, I've heard this. Dude, uh, with the Ananaki and course, you know who we, we interviewed a couple months ago. Who? What's the Billy Carson, Billy Carson's ex-wife. Oh my gosh. Billy Carson. You know who he is? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's and, you know, we've talked to her. She could only talk and say so much because she's got like NDAs and stuff. Yeah, dude, all that stuff is like, you go far enough down the rabbit hole, everything is interconnected. You know, and now we're talking about like, what's that retreat up in Northern California that everybody go, all the politicians go to and like Alex Jones infiltrated it.

It's like the, like some of the owl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it, dude. And like all that's now, it's Illuminati and the one world government. And then, you know, I woke up one day and I was like, this is fucking crazy. Like, what am I doing? I've dedicated probably years of time to studying something that is really just a mismatch of just insanity. Oh, dude.

And then it, like, this is where it always goes. You start down the road. You all, this is, I mean, I can just tell you. It's going to go, you're going to go down this road. Sovereign citizen, aliens, the Freemasons, one world government, aliens. And then you always end up thinking that the world is flat and we don't know like what we're on. And I got to like that point where I was like, the world is. And I'm convinced, dude, like the firmament.

And like there's like this glass thing. And I'm like, dude, I'm fucking insane. Yeah, this insanity. Like I know I'm on a lot of drugs, right? but like this is I've gone and so like I tell people I used to be a conspiracy theorist now I'm a conspiracy enthusiast I just think it's all funny now like I don't know I've never been in space I don't know what we're on I know what the math says I know what the scientists say I don't really trust the authorities I just don't know you know like I could probably do the

calculations myself and figure out that we're on a ball but I'm not that smart and since I'm not that smart I guess it just doesn't really matter and so now it's just like you know I've got a five-year-old and an eight-month-old and I'm like, yeah, I've got like real problems now. Right. I've got two girls. If I only had two boys, it was two dicks that I had to worry about. But I have two girls, so I don't have to worry about a million other dicks. Right.

It's like, yeah, who cares anymore, you know? So you're going to get out of prison. Yeah, and the plan is I'm going to sell meth. I'm going to sell clear. Right. Right. And you're going to become. Yeah. So you can buy his bond.

but you're going to become a sovereign citizen so you can buy his bonds back. And once you've satisfied bottom back and you own them or you satisfy him, it'll clear his debt and he'll be able to get out of prison. Yeah, but I was going to then own like it. It's this whole, that's the other part is like we're all enslaved to the government through these papal bowls that created the situation where once we signed the birth certificate, we actually sell our kids to the government and they give us custody of them. And this is why they can come and take us and they can lock.

They borrow money against our. Oh, dude, they're trading our bonds on the market. And the reason why they can actually lock us up is because they own those bonds. They own us, right? They own the flesh and blood person. And dude, so this is how that all actually happened. There's a dude who's in prison facing, I mean, he's in jail facing life, right? He meets this other guy.

And then he comes back, like he commits this murder. He comes back and he tells us, oh, this dude's coming. And he's a sovereign citizen. And we're like, okay, what is that? And he's like, oh, he's like independent of the government. But he's coming to our yard. Like, okay. And then he comes to the yard and he just, dude, we're having like, I forget what we study sessions.

And he would like come to the cell and he would just unload all this stuff. And one of the first things that I realized like this dude was involved in like a black magic cult. Like they think that they're witches and stuff and they're like scamming the government. And that's kind of like the first thoughts that I have around this. But then he just gets more convincing and more convincing. and so when I get out, you know, I've got like this checklist of things that I got to do. The first thing is I got to support myself and I got to pay for all these filings and all this stuff. So I'm going to sell drugs, not do them.

But one of the first things that I start getting high and I realize. Immediately. Like basically immediately. Okay. And I realize, wait a minute, Paul was telling us that I could get him out of prison. Why is he in prison? Like how did that happen? And I'm telling everybody like, oh, yeah, this is.

And then now, I guess we were doing prison math in prison. Right. We're doing drug math now on the streets. And they're like, wait, what? Like, how does that make sense? Like, well, what, what, how, why was he in prison? And very quickly I realized, like, the shit's not real. You know, like, what is this?

We bought this $300 book. Like, now I'm looking into like the organization that. prints this book and it why are they selling this book if they're all sovereign why don't they just like oh my gosh we got scammed dude by like a bunch of idiots like now I'm looking him up and I'm seeing these videos and it's like traveling you know like these people are traveling they're not participating in commerce so they don't have a license and they're getting pulled out of these cars and I'm like oh my gosh like and I don't know how to tell David like there's no hope like this isn't real

Put it in for, yeah. Like, I'm sorry, dude. Like this whole... Join the softball team. Yeah. Be here a while. Dude, the saddest thing happened to him actually is that he, uh... So he's calling and I'm talking to him and then like as I start to figure this out, I stop answering.

And then a couple weeks go by and he's calling, like obsessively calling. And I'm like, I got to just tell him. And I answer the phone and I'm talking to him and he's like, you just never believed. Because he's still in there being. filled with yeah like he and paul's telling him like oh no he he he was never a true believer like he wasn't like it did it's like this fucking insanity and and this whole time i'm going i i just feel like shit dude like i told you this is like the most emotional departure that i've ever had from a human and i've got to tell him like dude we were sold a fucking pipe dream yeah uh and now it's like

is this going to cause like problems in there like what's going to you know it's like whatever and the last time that i talked to him we had this conversation and he was just like look he's got six kids and his wife's like out in columbus ohio Georgia and um they're like struggling and he was like this is what i was going to help my family with and like all this shit and the last phone call i had with him he was just like look dude like i get it like if if you can't do that like he's kind of like seen the logic behind what i'm telling right and he's like i'm still gonna try this but if if you don't want to do it i get it and that was the last time i ever talked to him and then you know years later i found out that like he like went mentally he was like mentally on became like mentally

unwell and like became gay and like i don't there's nothing wrong with that right like i guess but he uh you know he's just like a it fucked him up yeah right and uh and i always like think about it like this guy sold you guys a a load of hope that was false false and can you imagine like 48 to life and this dude has like this glimmer of hope he'd been locked up for like six years like at this glimmer of hope of like six years you still got a life to go yeah so that's the other part is like when i hear like i've never done that much time right but like i hear that when you get a life sentence you're going to do like the first quarter of it thinking like that there's a way for you to get out. Yeah.

And then you'll wake up one morning and be like, oh shit. This is it. This is it. This is it. And before he got to that point, he like mentally snapped. And now he's like, you know, doing whatever. And it's like, fuck, dude. I feel like a pain of guilt almost where it's like I fully bought into this too.

If I could have just seen through the bullshit, maybe none of that, you know, whatever. So anyway, of course, now I'm out on the streets. I'm selling and but now I'm on everything again. And I realize really quickly I'm going back. And now I have this fear too of like, if I go back and I end up back in the same place and all this stuff went down like is like am I going to be in danger for not fulfilling my obligations on the streets, right? Like I'm like, I can't do this.

So I get a Facebook. profile. I make a Facebook profile and I just start emailing people that I know. And I'm telling everybody like, I need help. I just got out. I signed this deal for AB 109, right? I was I was on AB 109. So I get out of prison. I'm on AB 101. I'm on parole. They put me on AB 109. What is that? AB 109 is when they re-structured the prison system so that you could get out on county supervision. It's county supervised parole. Okay. But now instead of doing violations, in prison, you can go to the county. And it was them trying to alleviate the population, right?

So they like came up with these schemes. I'm like, okay, county's going to supervise your parole. And now you can go to county instead of prison. So that'll lower the population. And now you've got a probation officer instead of a parole officer. Anyway, I run. I signed a deal for no paper. Give me more time.

I don't want any paper. Right. So now I'm out. I have no paper. And this is why selling drugs was a good idea. I have no paper. And so now, you realize you're going back.

I realize I'm going back, dude. It's like this is very, it's written on the wall. Like this is going to be bad. And this is probably, and I have this gut feeling like if I go back, I'm never coming out. And so I start reaching out. And this buddy that I had, I'd gone to like treatment at one point. And when this guy got there, I'd only been there for two weeks. And I just, by the.

the time he got there i had read the big book like three times and was like you know whatever and i he's much older than me and i just like this is what it's about dude like here's what this says and this is and this is the theory behind it blah blah blah and he stayed sober right and this is like five years later and i reach out to him he's like dude you have no idea like how much i owe you for the trajectory that i'm on like i've got this place i'm working for a rehab are you clean like damn no of course not I like he was like in order to come to the program you got to pee clean I was like well I'm not clean he was like well are you willing to get clean like yeah he's like okay come to my house I'll let you kid he's got five daughters five daughters right he's got like a 20 year he's got a bunch of daughters he's like I'm gonna let you come into my home and kick and just know like this is a big deal like you're not just going to come in a nobody just comes into my house with my daughters on drugs right like I have that much love for you come and get clean and then I'll take you to the program. Like, okay, this program was a faith-based work program

where I learned for the first time in my life that I like to work. And so this was kind of like another foundational piece where I was like, okay, I like to work, right? Like maybe, you know, I can be a normal person at some point, right? And it's like, okay, I don't want to go to prison. And now I found out that I like to work. And it's like, okay, I spend seven months in a day, six-month program and he's telling me the whole time if you graduate um i'll help you i'll get you in a

sober living or whatever get a job and um so i graduate the program and i think what happened was he told them like a test like test him like see if he'll actually like stick it out or whatever so they were messing with me on like dumb rules and i got extensions and so instead of six months i was there for seven months and i get out this dude pays for a sober living for a couple months and why While I'm there, I'm like, I've got these friends that are going and working for this specialty brick company. And they're like moving up. And one of my best friends that I made there, he's now mixing concrete for this company. And he's like, dude, I can get you a job mixing concrete.

Like, okay, so I get this job. And I love it, dude. I love this job. And we're working like 10 hour days. And we're coming home, like covered in concrete, concrete powder. I'm like dye. So I'm like, you know, I love this job. And they ask us to move on site, right?

So now we're opening the plant in the morning. We're getting up at like two. We're walking over. We're turning on all the machines. We're getting the kilns ready. And it's like 50 bucks a week. And they just take it straight out of our checks. And, you know, it's like.

What's $50 a week? The rent. Oh, to stay there? Yeah. Okay. So I'm like, dude, this is fucking perfect. Right. And I stayed clean for 68 days.

Okay. But in my head, I'm like, yeah, this is perfect. Everybody else is getting high. You know, and like Chris thinks I'm doing great. I'm living over here. I'm making money. I'm not actually spending money on basically anything. I'm working 10, 12 hour days now between like opening and then clean up.

It's like 10, 12 hours, 6 days a week. And do you remember Moco Space? Moco Space. Yeah. Moco Space was like the first dating apps. I get on Mokospace and now I'm like dating a different like fucking a different chick every night. Right. It's just like a hookup, a hookup site, right?

And I'm living in Fontana, California. Like everybody calls it Fon Tucky, right? So San Bernardino is where the Salvation Army was. Right. Now I'm living in Fontana off Cherry working at Coronado Stone. And so we start getting high. I start getting high first, and then he very quickly realizes, like, I'm getting high. So he's getting high.

And we're just batching concrete. And they got like an intercom. I mean, like an inner company phone system with like a real phone still. Like rings and it's so loud because the mixers are loud. So I like answer the phone. And they're like, hey, Matt, you and Adam need to come to the office. Okay. Like this has happened before for like dumb whatever and paperwork.

or something, whatever. So I don't think anything of it. And we get to the office and they make it, one sit over here and once sit over here, and I'm like, this is weird. And they're like, we have to drug test you. Like, okay. Well, dude, I could melt a cup. Like, I'm so dirty.

Right. And I just tell them, like, dude, look, I had this sore tooth and I got these Vicodins and blah, blah, blah, blah. Or I got these pills and whatever, blah, blah. And I ate a bagel with poppy seeds on it or seeds on it or something. Yeah. Do you remember that people used to say that. Oh, yeah.

That'll make you fail because you have these seeds. Yeah. Yeah, dude. So I know the poppy seed thing's not going to work. But I just tell them, I did this sore tooth and I got something for my brother and I ate it. Oh, go give me the prescription. Yeah. No.

Well, then they were like, really? Like, yeah, yeah. And they were like, okay, come watch this. And so now it's me, my boss, an HR person, Adam. There's like six of us in the room. Is there a video of you guys? No, even worse, dude. We rigged the mixers so that we could keep them open, right?

So we can like pour stuff into them and we can like scoop out the thing to test the consistency. And we're in front of these open mixers. And I'm passed out standing up in front of an open mixer. And they were like, dude, like, are you serious? Like, that's a pill? Yeah. I was like, so I thought I was like, I'm going to just come clean and maybe that'll like save the situation. Nope.

They're like, you got to go. So now I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to call Chris. I got to like admit all this stuff. And, you know, I tell him and he's like, I told you. I told you this is a bad idea. I knew this was a bad idea. All right, come home. And so I like turn the garage into my house, right?

He relapses pretty quickly after. Right, but he's a tweaker. I'm an age addict. But I'm not opposed to doing that. So now we've both relapsed. And during this time period, he connects with an executive at Amazon. This is a wild story, dude. Like, okay, he connects with this executive at Amazon who needs, they have a problem.

They're filling the landfills with new product, right? Like, they're just getting rid of shit. Like, like, pallets of TVs, pallets of Xboxes, boxes of phones. And this is what, things that have been returned or damaged? Returned damage. But then also, Amazon offers a service. They don't actually sell anything. Right.

You sell. Yeah, they hold the stuff. Right. It's all like a massive drop shipping enterprise, right? So there's, these contracts are typically a month at a time, right? So you have to renew your contracts. But then there's like buyback clauses. And it's like they will buy certain.

inventory and then they like try to sell it or whatever right but either way they end up like stacking all this inventory and they have to get rid of it and so They're filling the landfill with just all this good product and the guy's like somebody's gonna find out like an environmental agency is gonna find out what we're doing and we're gonna get fucked over and He was like smart guy used to like run RV he owned a chain of RV stores before he was an executive at Amazon and so this is what he does. He starts a 501c3, and he starts donating all of it to his 501c3. And so now he's filling up warehouses. He had a whole warehouse full of sex toys, right? And we've got a warehouse in MoVal, and Ranao Valley, Redlands, San Bernardino. And at first he just started filling up his house. And then his wife was like, dude, we can't, like the volume of stuff that's coming, like we can't fill, like we're going to fill our house up, we're going to fill a warehouse. So

they start getting all these warehouses. Well, are they selling it? Online. Yeah. But there's like a bunch of trash in there too, right? So there's just like dumb stuff in there. So him and Chris end up connecting. I'm working at the Salvation.

He's working at the Salvation Army. That's the program that I went to. The deal is you're going to help me get all of this product to my warehouse. I have separator separating out what I want and then what I don't want and we'll donate everything back to the Salvation Army, right? Okay. Good trade, right? So all you're going to use us for is basically gas because it's all like in the same industrial park basically.

Salvation Army, the separating warehouse and the Amazon cluster are all within a couple miles of each other. So it's really just really nothing, right? You send the driver over there, they pick up, they drop off pallets here, they pick up Gaylord's full of stuff and bring it to Salvation Army. So it's a good deal, right? And but now we relapse. Now he quits his job there. and we work out this thing, the executive, his name is Ron, he buys 26 foot box trucks, and now we're just transporting stuff back and forth.

But now we start to do the math on like how much money this dude's making. And he's like, oh, yeah, you guys be full time and I'm going to pay you. And you'll get like, it's a 501c3, so I can't like really pay you, but you can get stipend. and I'll pay your rent and you guys can get cars and all this stuff. That goes on for months and he keeps telling us and he's racking. Dude, one of the warehouses, he had like a million light bulbs, right? And so now I'm like figuring out how to wholesale light bulbs and I'm calling construction sites and saying, hey, are you going to use this type of light bulb?

And like now I'm selling this stuff for him too. And he's telling us, so you're going to get a percentage of this or a percentage of that. And he's just kind of like stringing us along. Well, Chris is a also drug addict, right? Drug addict, gang member, maladaptive with responsibilities and antisocial. And he very quickly, I remember this one night, he very quickly gets mad about the situation. And he's in one of the trucks. And I'm in someone's house and he calls me.

He's like, hey, come outside. I come outside. He's been out in this truck for like hours. And I get in the passenger seat. he's like, I'm going to drive this truck through his house. Like, what? He's like, dude, I'm fucking so mad, dude. Like, I think he's fucking us and like all this shit.

And I'm like, well, he is. Like, legitimately, like, the amount of money that he's making and what we're seeing from this, like, it isn't what he promised. And he is fucking us, right? But, dude, that's a fucking terrible idea. Like, you're going to drive a truck through his house. Is any of this illegal? All of it is illegal. Dude, all of this.

I mean, I don't understand. Like, he's donating it. to himself that you said that they were throwing out yeah yeah but i mean this has to be illegal i mean i don't know like maybe it's not maybe he found like this weird loophole but the whole time we're going they're going to make a movie about us right like about this specifically they're going to make a movie about this like he's going to get busted like whatever and i know it's illegal because one of the guys that was a partner or like a part owner of the nonprofit he fled to the philippines at some point right so

Chris is like I'm going to drive this truck and I'm like dude such such a dumb idea so we we hatched this plan right we're just gonna this is like my first extortion right like okay we're gonna just extort him like we're gonna make him pass and we're not gonna do shit for him anymore and I'm just like okay all right I'm just going with him at this point right like whatever dude like just don't drive a truck through his house that's like the dumbest thing that I've ever heard so the next day we like go to one of the warehouses and like it's this whole scene and Chris has a gun in his mouth, the guy's mouth, and like, you're going to pay us. Okay.

Okay. How does that happen? Yeah. So we go in and immediately, so this is what happened. As that got rockier and rockier, he started locking us out of certain warehouses, right? And we know, though, the main warehouse is in Redlands. And we know that he's just always there. So he's like, we're going to go to the warehouse.

we're going to threaten him and we're going to tell him like you're going to pay us or it's all bad right like we're going to beat him up we're going to steal all this shit whatever right and I'm like all right he's he's going to pay though like he's like an older white dude never done anything like buttoned up he's going to pass right like we don't have to do anything

the middle of illegal operation he wants you guys to go away yeah I mean and his whole family's involved Like his wife is involved His son is involved His son's wife is involved But now he's got like us wrapped up in it I mean it's just And so we get to the warehouse

We go into the office And he immediately His son is there His son's probably like 35 You know His son's like Surfer You know

Surfer looking dude And he stands up And Chris just grabs his His shirt and sits him down And he starts yelling And you could just see Chris is losing his cool very quickly.

And I don't think, well, Ron doesn't realize he's got a gun on him. But very quickly, Chris went from like 50 to 100, like very quickly. And Ron's like, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be so bad. And he doesn't have it like in his mouth, right? But he has a gun to his face. And he's like, you're going to pay us X amount.

and you're going to give us these trucks. And I'm like, we didn't talk about none of that, right? Like, you're going to give us these trucks. You're going to help us start a moving business. You're going to do this. And all with like a gun to his chin. And he's just like, okay, okay, I'll write you checks right now. Right.

Right. Like, matter of fact, like, the son is like watching all this. And he's like, hey, you know what? Go get. There was like these, we had one. He was like, you got to, if you want anything, you got to clear it with me first. And there was like just boxes. of like,

Garmin watches and, like, iPhones, Xboxes, PlayStation. And he's given the shit away. Like, the Christmas that passed, he had a palette of 65-inch Sony TVs, and he was giving those to people for Christmas. And so tactical gear, dude, tactical gear and sex toys. I mean, there's, like, whole warehouse

is full of sex toys and tactical gear. And so we're, like, bringing them these bins, and it's like, hey, we want this stuff. And he's like, okay, sit it over there. I'll look through it or whatever. Probably a month had gone by. They're still sitting there. He's like, take all that stuff.

I'm going to write you checks. And we'll get the titles changed on the trucks and blah, blah, blah. And we're like, okay. And Chris is like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you think that, like, this is going to stop, you're going to pay my wife. His big thing was, you're going to pay my wife because she quit her job. She had, like, a good job working out a different warehouse for Stater brothers. And he's like, if you stop, like, this is how I'm supposed.

my family like I quit my job for you and right you know and it's like he's like if this stops like I know where you live I know where your kids live like it he takes it so far over the top but we walk out of there that day with checks with all of this the stuff and these trucks and we're like like what are we going to like what do we do now he's like we're going to start this moving company okay whatever like he understands like bill laden and licensing and like DOT and all this stuff because he was the transportation supervisor for the Salvation Army regionally. I don't know if you know this, but Salvation Army has the biggest vehicle fleet in the country.

Dude, trucks, cars, semis. Like, dude, it's massive, right? And they've got them everywhere. And every single one of them has, dude, forklifts. They just have like tons and tons and tons of vehicles. And so he's like regionally managing a bunch of like stores too. Like, right? It's like, so he understands the logistics of starting a moving company.

And I'm like, okay, whatever. And he's a gang member, right, in San Bernardino. And he realizes that all these people in his gang, they're doing credit card fraud. And he's like, we should get into this. I'm like, okay, he was like, we have all the stuff at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at Ron has all the stuff at the warehouse. He keeps saying, like, we, because in his head, like, we own that shit, too, you know, like, we have a right to all of that now.

we get into carding right and now like this is I mean I'm on the dark web and I'm like I've already been on the dark web because this is where like a lot of these chat spaces are for like sovereign citizens and conspiracy theorists and like all this stuff so I'm like I kind of understand how to navigate it and so now we're getting like black black websites around like carding right and we're buying bins and you know this we're trying like all these different sites and these sites have you ever seen these sites? I'm not really I've never been on one but I mean I know of them. Okay these sites are always funny it's like they throw them up real quick and there's

always like naked chicks on them and like it's just like you know the underworld right right naked chicks on them they're always like called credit card super store like CC superstore like with the black web address on it whatever and so now we're like on drugs carding and And part of this whole thing was so funny. I was like, how are we going to communicate with all this stuff? Because I told them like, dude, cell phones are like the worst. Like they, if they get any idea, like they're going to tap our phones. And so we start this thing where a couple of our buddies are selling, not selling, but they're doing Obama phones.

Right. So we figure out this thing where it's like all of the runners, in order to do this, you first have to go get an Obama phone. and that's what we're going to use to communicate with you. I get really good at pressing cards, right? And we've got runners going into Walmarts or whatever and stealing gift cards, and I'm cleaning the numbers off, and I'm pressing it because they have the seals on them.

Yeah. Like the Visa MasterCard. They have the seals on them. So when you press a card, they're not skimming it. They're not sliding it. And then looking to see if the ID matches the computer, they're just looking at the card.

Right. So we have all these people, people bringing me their IDs and I'm matching their names to the cards. And a lot of people don't realize this, but those credit cards have formulas for where the numbers are. Well, those formulas are also on the internet. So I've like got it down perfect. Like these are like if a cop looked at him that was aware, he would understand that like

obviously it's by eye and I'm trying to measure it. But these are off by like millimeters at most. Like this is like really good quality counterfeit cards. And so, dude, we're again, though, so I'm pressing cards, I'm doing drugs, and we've got all these tweakers running in and out of this house. And I'm in a garage cooped up by myself again, and I start getting paranoid. And keep in mind, like, this is not my element, right? This isn't my city. These kind of really aren't even my people.

Chris is out of his mind. I start to, you know, this is months after I got kicked out. I saw this thing go down with that guy over there. And now I'm starting to realize, like, Chris is like not the best person, right? Like all these situations that we're getting in. We're going into these people's houses. Do you know where San Bernardino is? No.

It's in the desert. So, like, you come out of L.A., and before you hit the deserts, it's San Bernardino. And if you go north out of San Bernardino, and if you go north out of San Bernardino, you. County before you hit the desert, San Bernardino. And then the Mojave Desert, you have to go through. The Mojave Desert is in San Bernardino County. And so, dude, it's the Wild West, though. San Bernardino County is the biggest county in the country.

And it's just wild out there. Everybody's got guns. Everybody's doing drugs. There's five generations of people living in single houses that they've had for, you know, however long. There's people living in sheds in the backyard. You go into these houses. and it's like decades of clothes, decades of trash,

and they all have like packs of chihuahuas living in them, just shitting all over the place. And dude, it was just, I am out of my element. This isn't like my life, right? And Chris is like totally comfortable. This is like where he was born and raised. And so now I've got like all these people that I don't know that I'm nervous of. And we start hearing stories about like people are kidnapping card makers

and like chaining them to bathrooms and just making them press cards. I start getting paranoid. I don't even know if that's real. Right. Right. But like people start like the tweaker stories, right? Like, oh, wait, you heard about this?

You heard about that? It's like, people don't understand like how common carding is. Like, fuck a lot of people do this. And so like I start believing all this stuff and I start getting paranoid again. And one day I was like, I can't do this. Like, it's too much, right? And so I literally, without saying anything to anybody, just left, went back to San Diego.

And guess where I went? No idea. So I went to my grandparents' house. But guess who's there? My uncle. Okay. Yeah. And so now it's like...

I thought he went to prison for a long time. No, he didn't... Oh, no, no. Yes, right. He didn't go to... Okay. Yeah. He did get busted.

But remember, this is years later now. This is like, I went and did a prison term. went out, went to San Bernardino, seven months in the program, this is like four years later. Right. Okay, so I'm living up my grandparents' house. My uncle's living there.

But I'm like, I'm going to try to get clean. For the first time in my life, I'm like, I'm going to try to get clean because I want to get clean. And so I go to my grandparents' house and I kick and I'm clean and I got this job and I'm like hanging Christmas lights. This is like October.

This is October. and they're already like hanging Christmas lights with this company. This dude gives me this job and he gives me 120 bucks a day. Right? And that's how I'm like grinding, doing this thing. And now I find like this little car like a month later and I can make payments 100 bucks a week for this car. It was like a 1998 celica, red celica.

It was pretty cool car. But I go back to my grandparents. My uncle's there. And I'm like, I'm going to stay clean and I get this job. And now I'm got 120. And you think about it, it's like, I'm working seven days a week, and I'm just going there, going back, and inevitable, right? Guess what happens?

You start using? I start using. I mean, I've got money, and I'm back in my city, and it's like, I'm bored and I'm not really doing anything I start using, and then I start connecting with the same faces, same places. And next thing you know, I, I can. keep my job, right? But now it's instead of going to Rancho Santa Fe, decorating houses, and going back to San Marcos at night, I would go to Rancho Santa Fe, do that all day, go downtown, hang out with

homeless people, drug addicts, and then drive back up to North County, try to sleep for an hour or two, drive back. So I just start doing this thing. and I'm downtown and I run into one of my like one of the homies right and he's like dude what are you doing like oh I just kind of like kick it here or whatever he's like what like dude like and this is where I found out what happened to lucky he was like dude we're like catching up you're after them or them or whatever like no dude that's crazy oh yeah they're doing life or this dude got a 10 year sentence in the county he took county time like what that's what that's

fucking great like all this crazy shit he's like dude you know what we're doing now no i haven't heard from you guys and whatever right it's been years like oh dude we're robbing banks like what like dude isn't that like not a thing anymore he's like oh yeah but uh like we found out a bunch of information and like you know we're not robbing banks every day we're but we're like hitting these banks okay that's cool and so i've kind of like pocketed that information and so i've kind of like But I still continue to just do whatever I'm doing. But then I'm like, months go by and I'm doing the same thing. But now Christmas is over.

People leave their lights up for like a month. And then we got to start taking the stuff down. And so I think we took down the record was like 17 houses in one day. Right. We're just going and like stripping the lights off. And they store their own lights. So we wrap it up. We put it there.

right and so we're just go to the next house go to the next house go to the next house and we take down what we did in three months in two weeks right so um we're we're done and his name was ron ron's like hey uh what are you gonna do i don't know and in my head i'm already like i'm probably just gonna end up going back like living down in the city again he's like i've got a landscaping business during the off season like do you want a job like yeah okay you're like i really really really do like working, right? So like, okay, yeah, like 100 bucks a day, 120 bucks a day. Oh, that's what it was. I got to raise from him. So now it's 150 bucks a day, but it's only five days a week. Like, okay, it's enough money for me to like support my habit and do whatever I need. I'm not

living, I'm not paying rent. I have no responsibilities. I have no obligations. I like got to pay my car payment every week and pay for drugs. Like, okay, this is comfortable. And then the drugs get too expensive. I can't ask him for more money. So now I'm trying to like, we start doing this, me and a couple of my buddies, we start doing this thing where we, there's a liquor store in Logan Heights that will buy energy drinks, like boxes of energy drinks. And he pays like, I think, 50%. Right? He'll pay 50%. And so now I'm doing my job, but then at night, we're going and filling up shopping carts and running out with shopping carts full of energy drinks, right? Okay.

And I mean, we're just, and we're getting like, you know, a couple hundred bucks. There's like three of us. We go to a couple stores. I find out that they're doing it, right? They don't have cars or whatever. So I'm like, dude, we can go all over the county and do this. And I've got in my head the infrastructure of what we were doing with the breast pumps. Yeah.

So I'm like, oh, dude, we could turn this into a thing. And so slowly stop going to work there. And now I'm just doing this. And it turns into like days where we are going all over the county, going to LA, Orange County, going like out into the desert. And dude, we're just filling up my car. One time there was a gas station. I probably shouldn't say where it is, but it's in San Diego.

It's right off the freeway. And they keep their drinks inventory in like this gated cage thing. And I'm driving by it one day, and I'm like, holy shit, dude, there's thousands of dollars worth of energy drinks in there. So I'm like, okay, we're going to go hit this thing. And it's outside. Nobody works like outside, right? They're inside around the corner. So I'm like, okay, this is what we got to do.

We got to go to Home Depot and steal bolt cutters and then cut the bolt and then cut the bolt up the car. And so we bring this dude to just steal the bolt cutters, right? he goes in there and he like can't he can't do it or whatever like whatever and i run in i'm like fuck it dude i'll do it like we're wasting time and i go in come back out and lost prevention nabs me right and my keys are in the car and so they take off in the car and i'm like and i think i'm going to jail but i get a ticket and i and they release me and i'm like where the fuck is my car where is everybody at like they go do this you know whatever and this was a This was the, their bright thinking was we're going to go to the next Home Depot now and try to steal it from there.

And so I'm calling them. I'm like, dude, where the fuck are you? He's like, dude, what happened? Like, you know, and I could already tell like, they're thinking like, how did you get out of that? Right. Right. Like you're, oh, yeah, the phone's bugged. You're trying to get up and come back so we can get arrested.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, bring, okay, I don't, fuck it then, whatever. Just bring my fucking car back. Like, we don't got to do nothing. Right. And so they bring the car back and he circles around and he sees me. Like looking for the cops.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they just stole the bolt cutters from the Home Depot down the street and left that dude there, like left a dude there. Right. So now he's just like, you know, we're on drugs and not thinking or whatever. So I get in the car.

We're yelling at each other. And he's going the wrong way. I'm like, dude, where are you going? He's like, dude, going back downtown. I'm like, no, dude, the thing's over there. He's like, uh, are you sure? Like, dude, like, get out. Now we're switched.

I'm driving my car again. We go back over there. And dude, we bust this thing open and we're loading the back of my car. I have like a Sion XB. So it's like a five door hatchback with like four doors, right? And we're loading it, loading it, loading it. And the store worker comes out. and he's like yelling at us and I'm like we're for sure getting but like we're getting out of here

now right so the car is full of of of drinks and and it these micro calculations happen right it's like me and my best friend the guy who took the car me and my best friend and I very quickly realize like I've got to get out and reopen the back door for that dude or I could just leave him here right so of course I make the honorable decision. You take off. I leave them there. Right. And so now it's like, we went from five people to now it's just us two in the car.

We're splitting everything. And multiple people got busted for like different shit, right? And so yeah, we go back down to San Diego. That's what we're doing for a while. And then do that dries up. Like very quickly, the paranoia, right? Like, we're going to get caught doing this. And I hook up with my people.

like my homies and shit, right? And I'm like, they're just, they're selling drugs. They're robbing banks on the weekend for fun. And, you know, it's like, okay, where do I fit in here? So we're doing this. I stop working for Ron. Now I'm just doing this. Now my best friend's living at my grandparents' house with me.

And we try to get clean one time or whatever, and that doesn't work. Me and him get into it. And now he's back living in San Diego. and I'm trying to like, I'm on methadone. I get on methadone. And I'm just strung out on H. And now I'm strong out on that medication. And I'm paying for it.

And paying for methadone gets really expensive if you're paying for it out of pocket. And I find out that if you get on Medi-Cal, not only will they pay for it, but you can get all that money back. So I'm like, okay, cool. I go to the Escondido Health and Human Services Center, right?

And I'm there and I'm signing up for Medi-Cal and I see this girl, right? This girl's there. And I'm making eye contact with her. And when you were telling me your story last night, is your wife a redhead? No. Okay. I just kept picturing her with like freckles and a redhead because you kept saying like she was from the country. No.

This girl's from the country. She's not from the country. From backwoods, Okocheobee. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's all the same to me. Like country, backwater, it's like the same people. But I meet this girl.

And, you know, it's like, we're making the eye contact, but I could tell she's like got an attitude or whatever. And so they call me, they call me back and I come out. She's gone. And I like, sit there for a couple minutes. And I'm like, man, fuck it, whatever. And I start to walk out. And while I'm walking out, she walks out from the back. But I'm like 20 feet in front of her.

And now I'm like, how am I going to turn around and like talk to this girl that's like creep, walk out and it's raining and I stop at the underpass and then she walks up. And all I say is like, hey, do you smoke, bud? And that was it, dude. She's like, yeah, why? You don't have any? Like immediately like throwing shots, right? I was like, yeah, I do.

I just want to know if like you want to smoke or whatever. So whatever. we end up talking, we end up smoking, we end up fucking, and I move in with her that day. Yeah, moved in with her that day. And I moved out of my grandparents' house. She helps me move all my stuff out of my grandparents' house. And while she's there, she's like, you are a fucking mess. I have rigs and like empty sacks.

If you picked up a piece of paper, there'd be rigs and. stuff under it and like just everywhere like and she was like this is so fucked up you can't leave their house like this so she cleaned it all up for me and so now I'm living with her and we're doing the the soda thing and then we get into you know I try to like try to be as strategic as possible with the scams right so now I'm like back on the dark web getting cards but I don't have everything to press them so now we're trying to buy all the equipment now I've got all the equipment and Now I'm like carding. And the idea is like, oh, we could just, instead of stealing this stuff, we can just use cards to buy all this stuff.

Right. And sell, you know, so that's kind of like what's trying to happen. But, you know, the percentage of those that work are like fucking terrible. And so you were saying it was like 30% actually worked. And so it's like, you know, we have a cart full of energy drinks. And we're like using card after. Dude, it just looks stupid. Yeah.

Yeah. So card after card after card and you know that only worked like a few times before I got too paranoid and was like fuck it dude we're not doing that. So now we're just stealing him again. You know who Chris Arno is? He was a there was a huge carding thing where he he's rented the guy with the chains he was on your show. No. Okay. This is the guy if there was an article written about him him and Max Butler which was his partner and they were running a carding scam and they were renting Chris. is renting a, you know, a high-rise, you know, a part. I mean, no, I'm sorry, a hotel room. And they call up and they say, hey, you got to pay for the hotel room. I did see this.

And he goes down and he swipes a card, doesn't work. Swipes another card doesn't work. Swipes another card. Doesn't work. Swipes another one. It goes through and they're like, oh, okay. And so he goes up to his room and, of course, they turn around the, the fuck. They're like, what's what that guy?

Like, they call the cops. They call the credit card company. They call the cops, you know, and then, of course, cops show up. They open the door and he's got all of his credit card equipment, you know, and all the machines and everything. Because that's where he was meeting with all these girls that were buying stuff for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, of course, you know, like, you couldn't have spent $300 of your own money. You're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a month.

You couldn't spend three. You're so cocky and so arrogant that you go. I mean, you can't invest 300 fucking bucks to keep your money. multi-million dollar scam going no just you know stupid yeah you know i have a friend the same thing exact same thing he was his exact same thing he was working out of like a hotel room a nice hotel room and he's using fake credit cards to buy it and one day one of the credit cards go bad and they call the cops and then they call him hey can you come downstairs he was smart enough to be like i don't think so yeah and they go out the back but still it's like why didn't you just spend your you had a

$75,000 or I think I had like $300,000 in a bank account. You have a debit card. He's like, well, why would I do that when I can use a stolen credit card? Yeah. Because of this reason. Well, yeah, but I didn't think it was going to happen. Okay. Never mind.

You're just an idiot. So. Yeah, I would have never done that. Right. I just do all this other dumb shit. Yeah. Right. But he's just the same.

You know, people do. They get so cocky and so arrogant. You become and, you know, it just, it emboldens you, right? You become brazen and sort of doing all kinds of insanity. And I think what we end up doing is, like, calculating the odds. Yeah. I'm like, how long am I going to be here?

Okay, like these cards are hitting. Right. And that's the other thing is like for that kind of for a hotel room, I'm going to hit that this card has been hitting. So I'm just going to use this card. Right. The whole thing is that at some point it's going to get. And then they're going to look at the thing and go, oh, he used it at a fucking at a hotel two hours ago. Yeah.

You might still be at the hotel. Let's make the phone call. Yeah. Well, these are criminal calculations. Yeah. Yeah. Not logical a lot of the time. Dude, you know, there are some criminals out there that are really good.

I'm not a good criminal. I'm a fucking terrible criminal. I get caught for fucking everything. Eventually, it's like sometimes I get away with it for a little while. Sometimes I get rid of, get away with it for a long time. Everybody gets called. But most of the time. And most of the time, I get caught pretty quick.

Like, this isn't like, you know, the few times where like I've gotten out before. I got caught, I could feel it, dude. It was like right around the corner, right? And it's like, if it happens for me long enough, I just get so paranoid that it's like, you know, I'm definitely getting busted for this. So what happens with the, you're at the girl's house, you're making credit cards, you're. Yeah.

She's all in. Well, she, I can't kind of keep her in the dark around like what I'm doing, right? Because she just got out of treatment, right? And the reason why she was there is because she, got a sublocade shot so she can't actually get high for like another 15 days or whatever. Right. But she's got these doctors and this dentist and these dudes. She's an ex-prositute.

And she's got these dudes that are still just supporting her lifestyle. And she's getting on Medicaid to get prescriptions paid for for when she can start using again. Like she'll have the medication, right? because they can write the prescriptions all day. If she has no insurance, they got to pay for it. Like, she's got to pay for it. And so she's trying to, like, cut down the cost. And that's why she's at the welfare office to, like, get on Medi-Cal, which that's why I was there.

Right? So, and she started telling me these stories, like, oh, yeah. Like, I've got this doctor and this dent. And I've an end end end dentist and an anesthesiologist. They got me cars and houses and, like, all this stuff. They're still giving you money. She's like, yeah. I was like,

what are you trying to do? Like, she's like, I just don't want to do that anymore, but I don't know how to like do anything else. You know, by this time she'd been a prostitute for like 10 years, right? And she's two years younger than me.

Right. And so I'm like, okay, well, dude, you never have to sleep with another person again. Like we can just extort these dudes. And because, dude, they have lives, right?

Like, I know. Dude, and this is... What do you think hell will be like? You know? You think it's as bad as they say. I don't know. If it's as bad as this life, it's going to be pretty bad.

But I'm like, dude, you never got to do that again. And in my head, I'm going, I never have to do anything else again. Like, all this dumb shit that I'm doing. This isn't one guy. This is multiple guys that are taking care of her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's not a hooker like she's on the fucking on the corner of Nebraska. She wasn't like a streetwalker.

Yeah. She's like an escort that's being, right. These are like sugar daddies, right? Sugar daddies and they like, she strings them. Like she actually hooks them on her. Yeah. Right. And it's like, you know, she sleeps with one like once a week.

That was like the deal was like he paid for the house in the car and he's married. So he would come every Thursday at X time and they would spend their time together and then he just paid for all this shit. Right. And the dentist would be like he's married. And he's got like free time on Friday afternoon. So he goes on a date with her, like an actual date. They're like going to go to dinner and a movie and then get a hotel and fuck. Right.

And so and then the other guy was like it was somebody's paying for the car and car insurance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the other guy was like. We interviewed an escort like that. She had a whole setup. Yeah.

Every guy. Like five guys and she's living, make it live in a life like making a. almost like probably a couple like she was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year just these guys yeah yeah i mean so her lifestyle was probably it was probably a couple hundred thousand dollars a year right and then she had cash i think she had like 20 grand in cash on her like all the time like she had like it was it was cool right and now she wasn't doing drugs but she wanted to but then you insert me into any situation especially in this mindset you insert me and

i'm gonna fuck everything up right right that's like the bottom line is like this ain't gonna last for So what does she do with the extortion? I don't know how we can, I know how we can get money out of these dudes. And one of them, just by fluke, dude, I decorated his house. With the Christmas lights, I knew where he lived, right? She like told me his name and I remember seeing it and I was like, are you serious? And I was like, okay, maybe it's very unique name, right? Vietnamese dude in this certain area.

I was like, this can't be a coincidence, right? So I go to his house and I left a letter, right? And I was like, hey, blah, blah, blah, call me. I need to talk to you about something and I put a picture of her in it. Right? And if it wasn't the right guy, I addressed it to him. Yeah, what does it matter? That it doesn't matter, right?

Calls, it was the right guy. I was like, okay. And I had her answer and it's just like, hey, I need you to meet me, blah. blah, blah, blah, whatever. And, you know, one thing leads to another, and I give him the whole break to duty. So I tell him, like, this is what's going to happen. Where do you meet him?

I meet him at Carl's Jr. I have her say, hey, I need to meet you, blah, blah, blah. And so he already knows, obviously, like, I left this letter, right? And basically what it was is, like, if you don't come, I'm telling your wife. Right. Right. And so he meets us, it's a Carl's Jr. off Rancho Bernardo Road, like right next to the 7-Eleven. And the first day that I ever meet this dude, he gives me $7,000 in cash, right? And she's like,

okay, I guess. Like, I'm like, watch, watch. I will get money out of him today. He will give us money tomorrow. He will give us money every day that I tell him to. Right. And I'm telling him, like, I'm going to tell your wife, your kids are going to find out. I'm going to tell the hospital. I'm going to tell the news. I'm telling everybody. Right. So he just starts breaking it off, dude. And so again, we do it with the other guy, right?

But now I've got this guy in my pocket. And what I find out later on about this dude is he's just addicted to, like, this is the kind of guy that did everything right. But he wanted to participate in shit, right? And so, dude, the deal with that dude was that happened for years. We worked that dude for years. I mean, thousands and thousands. I mean, I don't know how much money, dude. Apartments, cars, I would crash car.

He'd get us a new one. I get us kicked out. We'd lose the deposit. You'd get us a new house. Like, dude, it was just chaos, dude. And this dude fucking loved it. Like, I don't know. He was like a glutton for punishment or something because every time I called him,

I'm sure he loved it. I'm sure he's what? Another five grand? Absolutely. I love that. Dude, well, that was the thing. Guys, there's a vest. No, go on.

He's fucking, he's just. Okay, look, I know it sounds weird, but this dude, like, liked the chaos. Right. Like, that's the only way that I can describe it is, like, I'm sure he would rather have kept all those tens of thousands of dollars. But you'd think. Yeah. I had, so listen, remember I told you I had a story similar to this? Yeah.

We rented to a girl when I was married 20 years ago. ago to this not to my current wife. This was the other one. This is your lifetime ago. This is a lifetime ago. Yeah. Yeah. She was super angry.

Anyway, so we had a bunch of apartments. And we, she calls me one day. She's like, I need you to pull this, this girl's credit. I'm going to rent to her. I said, okay. So I pull her credit. And I go, this thing's been, she's been evicted two or three times. absolutely not and she is and so she tells her listen I'm sorry you can't you know we can't

rent to you you've been a evicted multiple times and so she says well what if I have my boyfriend signed the lease what if he can you really read it to him and she says well and she says he's a lawyer and she says um yeah let me talk to him so she calls him says hey and you know here's what's going on and he's like no no no problem here's my name fill out the lease send it to me I'll sign it he signs it she we still wanted like two months to pause I'm sorry, two deposits, first month's rent, of course. She moves in and three months later, she stops paying. And so my ex-wife is Kayla.

So Kayla calls up and she's like, look, I'm going to evict you. What are you doing? And she's, you know, you got to pay. And she's like, well, he stopped paying me. He stopped paying. So he's not paying the rent anymore. But she calls up the guy and she says, look, you're not paying. What's going on?

Yeah, I'm not going to. I'm done with her. It's her problem. She's no, no, no, it's not her problem. You signed a year-long lease. You got nine more months. And it wasn't much.

This is 20-some odd years ago. Let's say it's $600 a month or something. Yeah. So, you know, you owe us $4,200 still. And he's like, no, I'm not going to pay that. And she says, okay, well, then I'm going to, I'm going to evict you. And I'll put it on your credit. I have your social security number.

He said, listen, I'm a lawyer. There's no way that you're going to be able to put anything on my credit. And he got to like laughs. He says, do your best. Or she hangs up the phone. And she's like, oh, okay. And she thinks about it for a minute. And she goes, you know, I think this guy's married.

You know? And so she goes, she calls really really calls me and says, hey, look this guy up. So I look him up. Yeah, he's got a house. I see the house. I'm like, yeah. She's, is he, is it with somebody else? Oh, yeah, yeah, is.

You know, Jennifer Johnson or whatever. You know, it's Todd Johnson and Jennifer Johnson. And she's like, okay, okay. And give my, the address on the house, on the lease and everything is his office. Yeah. So she calls up and she says, I'm going to have you served. And he's like, okay, he said, have me served. What do I care?

And she said, no, no, I'm going to have you served at your house. And then she reads off, you know, 13, 16, North River Hill and just reads off the thing. He goes, no, no, no, you can't have me served there. You come to the office. She's, no, I'm going to have you serve with while when I know you're at the office. I will have your. I'm going to, I'm going to serve this to your wife. And when she asked me, I'm going to be, I'm going to tell him, tell exactly what's going on.

Yeah. And he just. Oh, let's not get crazy here. Hold on. Let me just. I'll pay the rent. I'll, I'll. So he starts getting very, he's very upset.

And. And I think initially he said, he was like, well, I'll sue you. And she's like, I don't give a shit about you suing me. You know, I've done everything. I've done everything.

I've done everything. Correct. So they go back and forth. And so basically what they work out is he says, here's what I'll do. You can you please get rid of her? Because she said, Kayla,

Kayla's saying I want a back rent all you. Now you, you know, no, $600. You owe like, $1, yeah,

it's like, well, no, it's set like seven. It's been like two, two weeks now, you know, so you all the,

it's $5, 15 bucks a day, whatever it is. You have 700 and some odd dollars. Plus, you're going to owe me the 4,200. And so he's like, okay, plus the girls trash the place because she's not even She's a stripper. She met this guy when she was a stripper. He came in with a bunch of clients.

They hooked up. They started sleeping together. He put her into a place. And so he, listen, he completely confides in Kayla. You don't understand. This girl in the last three months has just tried to ruin my life. She's shown up at my office. She's screaming.

hollering. I've had to have the cops called. I'm paying her money. I just, I need to get rid of her. What can I do? Kayla says, I will evict her. You will continue to pay the rent until I evict her. And then when I clean up the place and rent it out, you're going to pay them then. So maybe it'll be less than the 4200 or however much it was. She's maybe it'll be to the door. I don't know. You know, I have to get her out first. So she gets her out. It's so funny, too, because I had a bunch of brokers working for me who also had rental properties. And one day, one of my, one of my brokers comes in. Like insurance brokers?

No, no, mortgage brokers. Okay. And he comes in and he's like, yeah, I got a, I got a renter for that property I just got. And I look over and it's that girl in the conference room, you can't rent to her. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, you can't. I said, that's the one that's the one with the lawyer, with the lawyer. I said, that's when Kayla's evicted.

He goes, fuck. He's where she's got two grand right now on her. And I went, you'll be evicting her. He's paying the rent. You're going to evict. He's, nah, she said she's going to start. He goes, I think she's a stripper. And she's like, she's, she explained she was having some problems because I saw the

evictions and I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah. Like that the lawyer has given her a couple thousand dollars to get her into a place that he's not on the hook for. Yeah. Then you'll be evicting. He goes, no, I think she's good. Bro, it's two grand right now.

You know, that's a problem for like, his name was Johnny Moon. That's a problem for future Johnny Moon. Johnny Moon right now gets $2,000. So he took the money like an idiot. She moves out. We renovated. The lawyer ended up paying three or $4,000 to Kayla. And she kept all the deposit because she had to renovate the whole place.

And he totally thanked her. Oh, yeah. And by the way, the following month, this chick didn't pay. And then Johnny Moon was in the middle of having to evict her. But yeah, same thing. She just, these guys, they think I'm going to meet this little, I'm going to get me a little stripper on the side. I'll pay her rent.

What's her rent? You know, now what? $1,400. That's nothing. $1,400 a month. That's nothing for me. I'm a lawyer. I'm making $400,000.

I can pay a little on the side. My wife will never find out. That's not the money's not the problem. Yeah. She is. She's the problem. Also, her real boyfriend is.

Yeah. Strippers have mental problems. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like these chicks that do this, they have drug addicts, they have mental problems. I've never dated a stripper that didn't have. some mental issues going on. And so, yeah, this is what happens. Yeah.

So is this the only guy that you guys, but you said there's other guys. No, no. So there's three total that, that like we really hook, right? It's like it's an endodontist, an anesthesiologist. And then I don't even know what the other guy really did. And it wasn't for that long with him. But I think he was a lawyer. She thinks he was an accountant.

But, and we're getting, dude. So when we pull the next like, okay, now we're going to like really get the next dude, right? I have the end of Donist in the car. This is the first one, right? This is the guy that's like the lifestyle problem where I'm telling you, I swear he was like addicted to the chaos. But because of things like this, dude, I told him like, we're going to drive your car, right? She's going to call him, say, hey, I need to meet you. I need some money.

They're going to meet it. It's a parking lot. We're going to pull behind him. him, right? We're going to get into his car. I'm going to sit in the front with a weapon, pointed out of him. I'm going to wear a mask. I'm not going to say anything.

I'm just going to sit there like this. And this is what you're going to tell him. And then you're going to tell him this. And then I want you to punch him. And then I want you to say this to him. And then I'm going to get out. And then you're going to get out. And he's going to start paying me money.

And the dentist is like, okay, the end of Donnis, dude. This is an oral surgeon. It's horrible. Dude. The way that you said that, it's like, is it really that bad? It's pretty bad. Can you imagine this poor guy? But then, you know, it's just funny.

When I was giving my ex-wife a hard time, I'm like, this is horrible. What you're doing to this poor guy, like just evict her. And she's like, here's what my wife at the time, right? He's a cheater. Like, in her mind, anything was everything was on the table. There is no limit to what I'm not going to put this guy. Fuck him. He's a cheater.

And I was just like, so. Well, all these guys were cheaters. Yeah. How about that? But also. They're bad people. They get what they deserve. Okay.

This guy, though, check this out. This dude, his thing, he got into like a really bad car accident and got TBI, right? He had like this piece of a skull missing. His thing was he would get the prostitutes to dress up like nurses, come to the hospital that he worked at. He would put him under and run them while they were under. Okay. Got some problems. Yeah, no, he's got, he's got fucking, and then I told the end of Donis this,

and he was mad, right? And I was like, okay, I'm going to get this dude to do it for me then, right? Like, and I know he'll punch him because that's what we're telling him is like, this, this anesthesiologist, how I got him was, I know that you've done this to multiple girls. I'm telling everybody, like, fuck your wife, dude, you're going to prison. You're going to prison, right? Like, how long does he pay?

What does he pay? Dude, so this was the thing is he would give us cash every day, right? Like a dude, at one point it was like $1,500 a day for like X amount of time. It wasn't like a lot, a long time, right? But like it was you were going to send us money every day and you're going to give us money every paycheck. And you're going to get us this apartment downtown. And I just crashed this car. You're getting us a new car.

Right. And he was just shelling it out, dude. And I mean, like, if you really do like a cost benefit and analysis on what we're threatening versus what he's going to pay, I think it was a pretty good deal for him, you know. So, I'm sorry, appreciated it. Yeah, you know. That, that dude, that probably lasted for six months. He moved to L.A., right?

And he started doing the same thing in L.A., though. He got busted doing it. He got like 17 charges of, been like just all kinds. He was bringing these girls to the hospital, and now he's doing life in prison. Oh. Yeah. But that was after we then sued him civilly, right, got paid civilly. He moves.

Dude, it was like a whole, dude, it was pretty awesome, actually. But, but dude, he was like a real piece of shit, dude. Like, this guy was like a real piece of shit. Oh, I know. He's the bad guy. Yeah. Well. There's a hierarchy to this.

There is. There's different levels of bad guy. Yeah. He's definitely up here because of the. Yeah, dude. And like, that was his thing. Like that was. Because I know that's, I know that's what.

your goal was that that was wrong and that's why you were doing it. Well, it was a moral issue. He's a cheater. Let's forget that. Yeah. For everyone watching the show right now, they're all like, that's the real problem. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So he gets busted. But the other dude, I want to say his name so bad. He'll probably see, you know, because he's, well, whatever. You might be a fan. He may be. Well, dude, you're, you know, this. Not now. Not after this.

He'll be like, oh. Yeah, walk. Yeah. Well, and what's crazy is. Unsubscribe. My wife, we're married now, right? So this is, by the way, Colby, this, the wife is this girl. Yeah.

He marries her. Yeah. So my wife now, when we talk about this, one of her funny stories about this whole thing was like, when she went to treatment, her mom saw her insurance paperwork, right? and she was like oxy oxy oxy um zan like bars like just benzos and oxy hundreds of prescriptions right that this dentist and this doctor had been writing her and so not only were they shelling out money and buying stuff dude they were writing prescriptions like they were going out of style and so her mom reported them to medical boards yeah poor guy dude and this is

Before I got my hands on them. Right? So they're already dealing with shit. Like the endodontas is on probation. He can't write prescriptions to us anymore. But the dentist, I mean, the doctor, this doctor is a piece of shit too. He, uh, it's all their fault, Colby. And they're cheaters.

So they've got it coming. Here's the bottom line of everything. They are cheaters. That's it. Next time you tell the story, start with the cheaters. Okay. First of all, I'd like to say just to put everybody's, get everybody's head straight. They're cheaters.

Yeah. Hey, can you edit out the, this was awesome part? No. No. Come on. So what happened with the guy? So, uh, yeah. So that dude gets busted.

The mom's like reported them already. So I'm already hearing like there's, you know, they hate Megan by this point. They're going through hell. They're going through hell. They hate Megan by this point. My, my wife saying that. They, like, the doctor hates me. But I built, like, a friendship with the end of Donist.

And now it's like, dude, he's bailed me out of jail a bunch of times. Like, dude, it was, I called him one time. This is kind of a Stockholm syndrome for him, right? It's like being extorted. I think he was addicted to the chaos. I like this guy. Yeah. The guy extorting you?

Yes. Yeah. He's a good guy. Well, and I played the, they were all Vietnamese. Okay. Right. So I played like the Vietnamese card too and like, dude, it was like a whole. There were dynamics going on like relationship dynamics and it's like and I'm lying to

him the whole time like, oh no, me and Megan, we're just friends, right? Like, but you're getting us apartments together and I'm crashing her cars and like and she, he just thinks that like I'm her best friend that got out of prison and now I'm just wild and now she's wild and he's trying to like help us and, you know, spun up this whole story. He didn't even know my name forever. And then I had to like tell him my real name. And he was like, and I had, I told him like, oh, I was on the run.

Right. But then that last arrest now I'm not so I can tell you my real name. You know, it was like, so anyway. Okay. Is, is, are you, um, what, Asian? What? I'm Vietnamese and Portuguese. Okay.

And like a bunch of other. What is she? She's a red-headed, blue-eyed white girl, dude, German. Okay. Right? Her last name is Botion. Okay. Right.

And, dude, she's like 5-5-120 pounds. Really good-looking girl, right? Like red-headed. I love red-heads. And, yeah, so, and, dude, I entered this girl's life. And she thought it was, like, chaos before. He did an amateur. Dude.

Amateur hour chaos. Dude. And, but she's got, she's streetwise. Obviously, she's like selling pussy for like 10 years. Right. So she's streetwise. She knows men. She's a drug addict.

And so she inserts her or I insert her next to me and do the next. We met in 2017. Okay. And by the, by the middle of 2018, I convinced her because of how many places we've been kicked out of. And then the, the anesthesiologist got busted. and that's like 75% of our income. And now this dude is just supporting us. And we're getting heavier and heavier.

And so now it's like, now I'm committing crimes again. And the whole time, like my buddies are telling me like, hey, you come rob banks with us. And I'm like. And I got this whole extortion thing going on. Yeah. I did just lose 75% of my extortion. Yeah. And I'm telling Megan like, do I really want to do this?

And she's like, dude, look what we have going. Like, you don't need to do that. Like, so I'm like, okay, whatever. But you just lost 75% of it. Yeah, but even still, dude, even with that 75%, like, dude, we're still. Yeah. He's an oral surgeon. He has no kids, but he is married.

And this is like his only, now the only thing that I can assume is like, because of how much money we're costing him, this is the only. And the thing is, like, they didn't sleep together the entire time. So I'm like, this guy, this poor guy. Like, he's not even, he's paying for sex and not even getting it. So now he's just paying for me to just run his life. into the dirt. This dude gets, her mom reports him again. Like, it's bad, right? He's the mom a big fan of yours? Now, yes. Now yes. Not then? No. And I'll, there's a part of the

story that. Okay, so things kind of spiral out of control with the, with the, with the, uh, anesthesiologist. Now I'm really heavy to the oral surgeon. And, um, I'm getting us kicked out of places left and right he's trying like trying he got us a rental car one time i destroyed this car they're probably still suing him over this car he's trying to like i mean the car was worth seven grand they wanted 14 thousand dollars from him and it's i am destroying this dude's life as i'm simultaneously destroying her life and my life and everybody around me and so that kind of slows down and now we're committing crimes with my buddies right and i keep telling her like i'm going to do this. She's like, don't do it. I'm going to do this. Now we're getting kicked out. And I get kicked

out of like 14 places in a year. Right. Like, I mean, move in, get kicked out. One place, the record was like three days. I tagged the entire elevator. I was so barred out. I don't remember doing it. But we move in. We get all our stuff in. Like, I go to do whatever or whatever, and I spray painted. This is like a nice studio complex downtown San Diego and I spray paint the entire elevator. And we kicked out three days later.

That was the record. But even still, it's like two weeks. It's what we're averaging. And he's paying deposits and down payments and first and last months. And she has this conversation with me where she's like, you're a liability to me.

Yeah. Well, I turned the conversation around and I'm like, let's just be homeless, right? Like that's the way, that's the move. Dude, I'm like, and I make this logical argument for why it's better, right? All my friends are homeless. It is California. It is California.

We can live outside. We can almost basically, they almost pay us to be homeless. Well, that's the thing, right? It's like, we're not actually going to be like a normal. We don't got to like spain. We don't got to like fly a sign. We don't kind of like panhandle or like recycled cans. We have, we have him.

And if he's not paying 20, $2,500 bucks in rent and like whatever, like we get to do those drugs. Like that's drug money. And so she's like, okay, I convince her, right? And and this is the deal though. Okay, we can be homeless because we stay up for two or three days out of time anyway. But when we need to sleep, we go to a hotel and sleep. Like, okay.

So the hotel thing lasts for not even a month, dude, before we're like, we're out there for weeks at a time, right? And then every now and then we'll get a hotel and it's like, like, everybody around us is constantly getting hotels so we can go shower. I'm not showering. Like, dude, I'm in full-blown drug addict homeless mode and I'm just like, why would I shower today? I'm going to have to shower again tomorrow. Ridiculous. Like, dude, why make your bed every day? It's crazy. That's crazy. That's what I'm saying. And it's like, uh, so now we're homeless. and so but 2020 happens okay you remember what happened in 2020 right pandemic pandemic happens and girlfriend no you got a girlfriend I said I got a girl yeah so 2020

happens a good year go ahead this is a this was that so 2020 happens COVID happens and we have the city to ourselves dude the the streets are empty and there's nobody out but homeless people And I think the assumption was that homeless people was going to be like a concentration of outbreak, right? The cops aren't fucking with us. Like, dude, we're smoking drugs on the streets, on the corners, openly while cops drive by. Like, they are not messing with us. Right. And so I was in downtown.

I went to L.A. Downtown. I stayed in downtown L.A. during COVID. And I mean, it was a post-apocalyptic wasteland with the homeless people. and nobody else on the streets. Dude. So I start to become mentally unstable, right? For whatever reason.

Like, I really couldn't tell you, like, the contributing factors. So this story thus far, you're mentally stable. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good to know. Yeah. Good to know.

In my head, I am. Right. Right. But at this point, I... These are mentally stable decisions. Oh, yeah, dude. These are... Well, I mean, if you do addict math,

This all adds up perfectly. Totally. Totally the right move. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are you staying when you're homeless? Like, what do you sleep at night? So there's a Skid Row downtown in San Diego, too.

Oh, okay. It's not like as expansive or like the L.A. one is insane. Dude, that is a zoo. Yeah. Okay, that's like the San Diego Zoo would be L.A. And like the Houston Zoo would be San Diego. Like, it's just much more tame. It's smaller.

Not as many wild animals. but they're still wild animals and it's like so and I don't know if people realize this but the inevitability of the gang members trajectory is either homelessness or prison right and so um downtown San Diego is full of homeless gang members full of homeless addicts full of homeless just mentally ill people and um I bought drugs for the first time when I was 13 on 17th Street. I ended up homeless on that same street, right? So there are people that had seen me

kind of growing up in those areas or whatever that I was now homelessness, homeless with that remembered me when I was a kid. And so there was like this safety factor there almost, right? And so we're living wherever, right? We're not actually living anywhere. We're just homeless drug addicts on the street, and we don't really sleep anywhere. Like, we'll pass out places.

And then, you know, like one thing kind of spirals into another, and we have this, like, camp now, like, under this bridge. But then that'll get taken down by the cops. And so now we're, like, moving over here, and we got this camp over. And these camps are intricate running wires to it. There's electricity and, like, pretty cool, right? And, but I did have this one bridge that I spent the most. time under because I do graffiti too, right? Figures, right?

It's a hobby. I mean, dude, and you know what? When you were talking about painting yesterday, the reason why I asked is because, dude, I still, I'll show you pictures. I don't paint on the streets anymore. I just paint my garage over and over and over and over. Like to this day,

I tell people that I was living under a bridge six years ago. That's because like that's where I would go back to you. Right. Because I could set up a tent. she can sleep i can paint and it's just you know it's just what it was and uh COVID happens and dude I get it I start getting arrested like all the time for just crazy I sold sold doing undercover again but this is what happens I I get arrested I don't remember the first time I did this and I don't remember why I did this but I get arrested and I get to the jail and in pre-screening I tell him I

swallowed drugs and they're like, okay, you got to take them to the hospital. Well, guess who's at the hospital during COVID? COVID patients. COVID patients. And guess who's not going in there? The cops. The cops.

So when I get to the hospital, they would always, he dropped me off and said, you got a warrant. We'll catch you next time. And I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah, like during COVID at Coleman. Yeah. My understanding is that like half the COs quit. Yeah. They were even close to retirement.

they were like, I'm retiring. I'm retiring. I'm retired. I'm not going in. Yeah. You know, because it was rampant. And so if you were a and several COs died at the at the prison. So one guy got dies a month later, another guy dies and they're like, yeah, I'm done.

Or are they just quit. So, you know, yeah, they're not interested in being in that environment because they're so close is, you're touching everything over and over and over again. Yeah. You've got 180 guys trying to use, you know, three. Yeah. Five toilets, four computers, four phones. I mean, what are you going to do? How are you not going to get sick?

If one guy gets sick, the next thing you know, half the unit's sick. Yeah. And then you isolate them, but it spreads past that. And then you got the CO walk in with, oh, no, but it's okay. I've got a mask. Yeah, my K-95 mask. Yeah. Have you seen those videos of like, yeah, this shit didn't work.

It's just stupid. Fucking joke. And the cops are not going in there. Yeah. And I think I've. found like a loophole right right and sure enough uh so i got over that COVID happens in March that's when like the shutdowns happen and until December dude I got arrested probably 14 times right drug sales weapons possession residential burglary um robbery like stuff I'm just getting

arrested constantly and this what I mean around like my mental stability started to slip and I was just doing the dumbest shit. Like, I was taking risks that I knew were risks. And I still don't really understand the thought process. Also, I started smoking PCP. That might have had something. That might have had something to do with it. But, uh, and, you know, by the time December happened, I'm a daily user of

fen, fennie, right. H. Crystal, Xanax, weed. smoking hard on the weekends for fun, right? Just for funsies. Yeah, because she didn't like how I acted when I was... Fucking insane. Dude, and then I tacked on the PCP and it was, it was like lights out, dude.

And towards the end there, so this is what happens. I get out... Dude, I've stacked all of these warrants, right? But in my head, COVID's never going away. I'm never getting busted for this. I'm just going to continue to do this, like exploit this loophole. and Thanksgiving of 2020. My girlfriend at the time, she finds out she's pregnant.

Well, she tells me the next day, hey, I'm pregnant, but I'm leaving you. And I'm like, what? Like, why? When are you going? How are you, you're not replacing this. Yeah. Do I show you my booking picture? No.

I got to show you this real quick. You're breaking up with me? Yeah. That's crazy. I'm the one holding this whole thing together. Everything that we've been through and like, I mean, yeah, this is my booking picture. Oh, my God, Colby. Oh, Colby, like show the camera, hold it up to the camera.

Oh, my God, Colby. It's so bad. It's so, oh, my God. You look like you're in the Taliban. Right? And this guy is telling her like, how are you going to, this guy right here, he hasn't showered in two months, okay? He is.

You will never find someone like me. Dude, never. And like at this point, we're crossing the, we're crossing drugs, right? Like we're hooked up with all these people and we're crossing drugs and like where I'm being sent across with the money and I'm orchestrating people bringing it back and we're getting paid through that and you know we're selling drugs and this is what the border yeah the border oh okay yeah yeah yeah yeah so you wanna in san diega are the same city yeah right like effectively it's the same city because american citizens can walk down with no ID no I mean it's just you could just

cross the border and you can walk back with just an ID right right and it's like they're supposed to have a passport but it's very obvious I'm an American citizen yeah like I've got an ID whatever and And so we're just, dude, we're doing this, right? And she breaks up with you. She breaks up with me. Well, and then the warrants, like the warrants start, and I'm checking my warrants every day. The warrants start popping up from all these arrests, right? I'm missing court dates or whatever.

And so like the warrants start popping up. So now I can't cross the border. So now I'm like trying to orchestrate like buys and then getting it across. And I'm on so much drugs. like I'm forgetting entire days like entire days and you know it starts to happen where people see me and be like hey black tops looking for you why like oh yeah you disappeared like four grand what when oh yeah so I call him like dude you're a fucking dead man blah blah blah like okay all right and then a couple days ago by hey ruffa's looking for you like okay

and am i I'm like oh my gosh I do this again call him like dude where's it at like dude you You were supposed to be here three days ago with a pound of this and three ounces of that. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, and I'm starting to like, I'm not holding it together. So she finds out she's pregnant. And this happens over and over and over and over. And she finds out she's pregnant. She's like, and mind you, a lot of this money is promised to like cartels.

And like the drugs that I'm crossing that were not paying for yet. Like that's not actually our drugs. That's their drugs. and I'm disappearing with drugs and I'm like waking up three days later and like so now people are legitimately looking for me. We're hiding in hotel circle and she finds out she's pregnant. She's like, I'm pregnant and I'm leaving you because you're going to get killed, but you're probably going to get me killed if I don't separate myself from you.

And I'm like, how could you? How could? And I'm like literally hurt. So now, now I'm robbing people intentionally that are next to her so that they can tell her. I'm trying to get her attention. And I'm like, and I'm like, this isn't working. People are like, and in my head, I'm going, this is, this is just a matter of time. Somebody's going to get a hold of me.

I'm like, what am I going to do? And then the most logical idea I think I've ever had came into my mind, right? I'm going to rob a bank, right? Makes sense. Dude, I mean, this is the only thing. I was going to say. For sure. Right?

Two plus two equals four. Of course. Right. Okay. So it's a given. And it's really ridiculous that you hadn't come to this conclusion earlier. You know, really. The whole thing about it is like I wasn't being logical.

Right. I was using addict math and I really just needed to use logical math. And through her like all the pain and heartache that she was causing me, like snapped out of it temporarily. And I realized, I'm getting my shit together. I'm going to rob this. I know what I'm going to do. So, you know, and I'm telling her like, talk to me. I'm going to rob this.

and blah blah blah she's just like fucking ignore and and then the distance between times that she'll answer is getting farther and farther and farther and and i'm like oh my god like she's really you know and those toxic relationships like that it's like we're breaking up and the next day they're like fucking again and then we're breaking up again and then it's like two days or we're breaking it up and then it's like a couple hours later but that's not what was happening right like i would call her and she would answer. And then it would be two days before she'd answer again. And then it'd be four days before she answered again.

And then it was eight days and I'm just like spiraling out of control. Right. And so that was Thanksgiving, okay, of 2020. And that next month, almost basically to the day, because I think it was like on the 26th of November, she tells me she's pregnant. And Christmas Day happens. And keep in mind, like, I'm still, I've still got like little hustles. like drug sales and like people owe me money and like um i'm still like supporting my drug habit

i'm not like so so out of it that i can't stay high so i'm staying high with a huge amount of drugs like um and so christmas happens and um i don't remember what came over me but i called my brother who i hadn't talked to in 10 years and i tell him this is probably the lot of is like my brother can call her and reach out about the baby right because my family is oldest 10 kids they are a very well put together family it's just me that's chaos right and i'm like you know she's pregnant but we broke up talk can you call her like maybe like we can help with the baby or something right she's strung out on just as much drugs as me pregnant like the chances of this baby making it or like nilden and then she's definitely not keeping it if

it's born, right? So, um, uh, I had, I call him. And this is on Christmas of 2020. And I don't know what it was about this phone call, obviously very emotional for me. I'm like crying, whatever. And it's like, and I realize like if, if another logical decision, it's like, if I don't rob this bank, I should probably try to go home. Right. Because when I left home, we talked about that, right? what when you left home yeah yeah okay so when i left home the whole thing was like i'm gonna cut ties with my family so that i don't burn these bridges right and if i survive because i hadn't fuck this up um i know that they'll let me come back right right like but i can't until i'm ready

right and and up until this time like i'd never taken a uh a deal for treatment like i just knew i wasn't done and this was like kind of the first time where i realized like maybe i'm done right maybe I'm actually done. And so it's like, I'm either going to rob this bank or I'm going to try to go home. And so I spend about, you know, a couple hours thinking about this. And I very quickly realize, like, I'm going to make the good decision. The bank. I'm going to rob this bank.

I'm going to make the good decision in this moment and I'm going to rob the bank. And so that was the next day happens. And I'm like, it's the day after Christmas. I'm like, I'm going to case the joint, right? Like, I'm going to go watch this. This is what I was telling you yesterday is like, such a stupid thing. Like it's a regular place of business. They don't walk money in through the front door at the same time every day.

Like, dude, they have schedules. And me watching this bank for a day isn't going to tell me fuck all. Like I'm never going to understand the workings of this bank. And I'm sitting there. And I'm like, okay, watching for something to happen. I'm like, okay, this many people came in in this hour. And mind you, this is, I believe it's a Saturday. And I'm like this, okay, bunch of,

And it's right after Christmas. And so there's like activity that's probably not normal. And none of this is going through my head. I'm like, okay, this many people in this hour and this many people in this hour and this many people. And then, okay, are they going on lunch? Oh, no. That's just another guy like another customer. A whole day is wasted.

And then the next day happens. I don't sleep that night. I'm like, I'm going to rob it today. It's going down. And dude, I went to this bank and I sat there all day. like so nervous and just so fucked up like I and a whole other day wasted and so I go that night to a friend's house and I'm telling her like I'm gonna rob this bank and blah blah blah blah and I sleep and she cooks for me and I eat and I wake up and it's probably like four in the

morning and everybody's getting high and so I'm getting high and I'm like I'm gonna do this there's this dude named Stilo that's there and he goes if you're going to do this what are you going to do for transport and I was like the bank is next like 100 yards from a trolley so if I time it right like I can run from the bank get on this trolley and be miles away in minutes

they never even know it's perfect dude so he's like that sounds so stupid I've got a car that I'm trying to uh a car yeah That's so lame. Dude. So he goes, I got this car and it's sitting and I'm not making payments. But if somebody steals it and burns it, then I'll get the insurance money. I'll split the insurance money with you.

And you'll have a getaway car. Right? And I was like, okay, that actually sounds like it could work. Right. And in my head, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is what they did in the town. They like just stole cars and like burned them. I'm like, okay, that could work. And then I'm like, wait a minute.

So a couple hours go by. I'm like, wait a minute, that's like an arson charge and car theft. It's like a whole bunch. I'm going to probably get caught for that before I get caught for the bank robbery. I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to do that. So I go to the bank. By the time I got to the bank, I think they opened at 9.30 or 10 a.m.

By the time I got there, I was so dead set on doing this that I wasn't nervous at all. Right? Like I had this whole plan. I knew you got to tell them no die packs, no tracers, no fun. funny money i want the fill drawer like my buddies have been doing this for years basically at this point right so i know exactly the script i get these clear so out of these camping uh equipment kits they've got these clear hard gloves so i'm like i'm gonna get the i'm sorry go steal this thing the night before i got these clear gloves on so they don't know that i got gloves on

and i've got layers of clothes so that i can change in random spots and like go in with the mask And during COVID, you weren't allowed in a bank without a mask. Right? So I was like, oh, they just want me to rob them. I know this is like a divine orchestration of this situation. Right. And by the time I go on the bank, dude, I'm not nervous. Like, I'd already played this through my head and, like, all this shit had happened.

And I'm emotionally fucked up. And like, the thing that I feel the least worried about is this bank robbery. Do you listen to Eminem? You're not going to believe this, but no. Okay. So there's a song called Bad. Mad Meets Evil. Okay.

Where he goes in and robs at convenience store. And he walks up to the teller and he goes, I'm here to make a withdrawal. So me being the slick me that I am, right? I walk up to the teller. I slap the thing on there and I'm all, I'm here to make a withdrawal. And in my head, I'm like the coolest thing sent sliced bread, dude. And the guy like looks at the end. Remember, I had like case the joint.

So I went in, got a deposit slip, wrote the note on the deposit slip. and I put the deposit slip on the glass because during COVID they put all the plexiglass up. I slapped it on the glass and he looks at it and then looks at it and realizes what it is. And he's all, okay, all right. And he goes to reach and I'm like, don't hit the alarm. Read the note.

And on the note it says, I want the fill drawer, no diapacks, no tracers, no funny money. I have a bomb in my backpack and I'll kill everybody. Right? That's not good. Yeah. And so- And kill everybody, the bomb and to kill everybody.

That's- Yeah. Well, that's, yeah. Wait till you see what happens. So, and he's like, and I'm like, read the note. So he reads the note. He's like, okay, like handles himself, dude. Tudos to this dude.

Hands him, handles himself very professionally. He doesn't like freak out and like, he turns around, takes money out of the fill drawer. And he goes, hey, man, it's too early. Like, we don't have any hundreds, right? and he just hands me stacks of 50s and 20s and some ones and like a couple five. And I'm like, fucking whatever. I grab it and I booked out, right?

I'm in there for a total of 25 seconds. And sure enough, I run, I cross the street and I hear the alarm go off, right? I cross the street. I go in the elevator. I take my first layer of clothes off. I throw them in the trash can and I go down the elevator. I'm changed by the time. And I just missed the trolley.

right and I'm like oh fuck like what am what am I going to do like and cars looking pretty good right now well dude and I and I'm panicking and I'm like okay what am I going to do what are we going to do and I'm changed no you should be all right you saw that picture right like that's the description that the bank gave to that the FBI web you can look it up on the FBI website they said I was 6-2 white with short hair short brown hair wow that dude almost seems like he was working with he was Dude, for sure, for sure. And so I'm changed and a cop pulls into the parking lot, right? And there's a bridge up here.

Like you got to take the elevator down from this bridge across the street is the bank. And so like I'm seeing cops and there's a cop that pulls into the parking lot. And I see him. I doubt he sees me at this point. But I just like lay on the ground like next to this wall. Right. And I think he's not going to see me. right well i just lay there i just lay there i just lay there and it's like five minutes between

trolleys so i'm like i'm just gonna lay here and then so the cop gets out of the car and he walks like walks the um landing right and he even sees me like sees me and i i like see him and and my heart's like going to explode out of my out of my chest right and but dude he just walks by and the trolley comes and I hop on the trolley and boom, I'm gone. And I'm scot-free, right? And they've got all these paper clips in the money, right? Like, I don't know if it was like counted a certain amount that was like paper clips so that they could easily count it out or whatever.

So I'm like on the trolley, taking paper clips out of the money and I'm counting it. Right? And my dumb ass, there's cameras all over these trolleys. And so I'm leaving the paperclips. paper clips and counting the money. And I'm like, holy shit, I got $8,600 bucks.

Dude, that was like the easiest, easiest money I've ever made. Right? In my head, I'm like, this is great. Right.

And should have been doing this the whole time. Should have been doing this the whole time. Plus, like, if you orchestrate like takeovers, like you can get a lot more money. Obviously, a lot more chance of being caught.

A lot more chance of being caught. And some of my buddies that have been doing this, they had done like takeovers, but they'd also done like walkups. And then they'd done. unlike some other shit too, where they were robbing carriers. One of the things they did, at the trolley stops, there's these giant things where you can buy your ticket and you can pay cash or card.

And so they started robbing the people that were unloading that and getting tens of thousands out of these things. They clean them out once a week or whatever. And these trolleys are, I mean, flood it. The Petco parks on these trolleys, like Old Town, Downtown, Petcoe. park all the way down to the border. So there's tons of cash being put into these things. Well, anyway, I'm on the trolley, and now I'm in Mission Valley.

Do you know San Diego at all? Now I'm in Mission Valley, and I'm back at one of my favorite bridges. And I get off the trolley, and I walk down the river walk, and I go across the bridge, and I go under the bridge, and I take my mask off finally. Right? And I go under the bridge. I spend like 24 hours under there. I'm giving everybody cash and buying drugs and eating food and it's just the funnest time.

And, you know, everybody's like, what? You just robbed a bank. That's so crazy. Tell it everybody. Telling everybody, dude. And it's like, and mind you, like, Megan is in Hotel Circle. It's like Hotel Circle, Fashion Valley, Mission Valley. They're like, so we're like, I'm in the same two square miles of her, right?

And my whole thing is like, somebody's going to tell her that I did this. and she's going to call me right and because i'm just preoccupied with her mentally like and emotionally and like just that's everything that i'm focusing on is i'm doing all this shit to get her attention and uh so 24 hours i come out from under the bridge i go back to that girl's house um where i hatched the plot to like take the car and all right so well she takes a pound to one out to Oklahoma every month right so i'm like like, okay, take me to Oklahoma. You know, I'm like there.

She's selling drugs and I'm just there with her. And I'm like, take me out to Oklahoma with you. I got, I've got like $5,600 on me. Take me out to Oklahoma. I'll let this die down. And in my head, I'm like, that'll give me time to like, away from Megan to like smooth this over and then I'll come back after the month. Right.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to move to Mexico where a bunch of people probably want to kill me. This is my logic, right? Like I'm forgetting all that, but I'm like, I'm going to move to Mexico and I'm going to cross the border when I need to rob a bank and I'm going to rob a bank and then just cross the border again, right? Because she's got a connect that can make me documents, like a birth certificate, an ID, a passport, and like I'll have a different identity, right? Like, I've got all these warrants. I need to like shed this person. I need a new me.

And, dude, this is my logic, right? And she's like, okay, all right, we can do that. Right. And she's like, they've been having problems with the money. And it's like, you can watch the operation out there and make sure nobody's stealing for me. I'm like, okay, this is synergistic even, right? Like, we both have a mission here and I can help you and you can help me.

So I'm like, okay, but I need a pound of weed. She's leaving me in two days. I need a pound of weed to smoke while I'm out there. And I can like maybe sell some of it or whatever. They're like, okay. So that was Saturday. I wasted the day. and that's 26th.

Then the next day, I kind of wasted the day, right? And then, so I robbed the bank on the 28th of December. And I believe that was a Monday. And so we're supposed to leave in two days. And I'm like, okay, we need to, I need weed. So I need herb. So take me to the herb shop to these dispensaries

so I can buy a pound to bring out there. So we're in the car. She turns left out of the parking lot. And I'm like, hey, dude, you turn the wrong way. She's like, okay, so she flips a U-turn, crosses a double yellow line, right? So it's an illegal U-turn. And guess who's behind us?

The cops. The cops are behind us, right? And I've got H in my wallet. I've got blues in my wallet. I've got crystal in my wallet and all this stolen money. Right. And I'm like, okay, I've got this thing where like I can give these cops this fake name, Zach Potter, with my real birth date, my social. And like, I was born in Utah.

So, you know, it works every now and then, like this false identity. And but dude, guess who jumps out of this car? Robocop himself. Right. Dude, like this is like the upgraded version, right, of like robocon. And, dude, he's not fucking with me. Like he's not playing. And he very quickly, like he writes the tickets to them.

They're now gone. And he's just like, he's got me. And he like knows there's something wrong. He knows this is a false. He knows something's up. Gets my wallet. There's drugs in it. He's like, dude, I'm going to book you on this name.

I'm like, yeah, go ahead, dude. Like that's me. He's like, you've never been arrested in California? Nope. Nope. Have you been arrested anywhere? Nope. Right?

He's like, you've got all these drugs on you. Yeah, and look at me. And money and you look like a caveman. Yeah. Yeah. And he just knows like something's up. So, dude, a couple hours go by and I'm finally, I'm like, dude, you know what?

Yeah, here's my name. He's like, see, it wasn't that bad. Like, why couldn't you just tell me? And then he runs my name. He's like, oh, dude, you're on the run. You're like seriously. And he's now he's making fun of me, right? He's like, dude, I don't, how did you think that was going to work?

So we get in the car and we're like halfway there. It's probably 15 minutes from there to the jail. About halfway there, he goes, oh, and by the way, if you think this you swallowed drugs thing is going to work, it's not going to work. He like, he looked through the arrest record. He was like, yeah, that's not going to work. And I was like, okay. Yeah, whatever. Right?

So we get to the jail. I didn't tell him, I swallowed drugs. And they're like, hey, you got to take him to the hospital. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. he does this. You should see it's documented. He didn't really swallow drugs. They're like, how do you know?

Like, oh, all right. So he takes me to the hospital. They find the $5,500 in. It's like 56. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And dude, they're not like those are two different agencies, right?

The feds do the investigation. Yeah, yeah. I understand how it works. But I'm saying they're not asking you like, where did this money come from? COVID money. COVID money. COVID. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And, and, and so we get to the hospital and this dude comes in with me. And he's explaining to the doctors, like, no, because there's a document that they have to sign saying that they found it. And that's the only time that they can sign it is if they found it. Right. So if they don't find it, they don't sign it. Found what?

Drugs? Drugs. They x-ray you. Oh, I thought they were going to pump your stomach. No, no, no, no, no. They x-ray you. And then if they find something, they will pump it, right? Right.

So they don't find anything, but they don't sign the paper. So they send me back to the hospital. Hospital. I mean, to the jail. Right. And he's like, you just don't say anything to them. Okay? Like, just don't say anything.

Like, yeah, okay, whatever. And immediately, I tell him, I swallowed drugs. And they're like, you got to take him back. You got to get this. And dude, he's furious. And he's like threatening me now, right? Like, you motherfucker. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, dude.

Like, in my head, I got more patients than you. I got a bank robbery I just did. I got all this shit. And most importantly, I still haven't reconciled with Megan, right? Like, that's the only thing that matters to me. And so he explains it to the doctors and the nurses. And they're like, look, we can't sign this paper. And so we get sent back again.

And sure enough, I tell him, I swallow drugs. He takes me back to the hospital. He has a partner with him this time. I go in with the partner. Same deal. They don't sign it. And when I come out, he goes, I just cleared it with my watch commander. I don't care how long it takes.

I'm booking you today. Like, yeah. Because this shit, dude, we've been together for like six hours by this point, dude. And I'm like, this guy's got to be getting off his shift soon. Like, you know, like. It's just to wait him out. Yeah, dude, dude, for sure. I've got more patience than he does.

And then he tells me that. And it just kind of like crystallized like, this guy's going to book me. Right? So I'm like, okay, how am I going to do this? Like, what is the next step? Like, oh, I can bail out. Right. I've got cash on me. I can bail out. Well, because of COVID, the intake process changed. Not only did the intake process change, but once you get housed, they're only letting you out once every 48 hours to shower for like 15 minutes. Keep in mind, like, the amount of drugs that I was on and not just the amount, but the spectrum of drugs that I was on, I think. I was sleeping. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that.

They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, durable, and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features premier materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces the center of the mattress where the body is heaviest. It helps keep your spine aligned and your back supported. So you can wake up ready for anything 2026 throws at you. Each mattress comes with a 101 night sleep trial and a 20 to 25 year warranty.

So you can try it risk-free, knowing it's built to last. Shipping is fast and free. Most orders arrive in two to five days. Ghostbed has great prices to begin with up to 50% off comparable brands. And inside true crime listeners can get an extra 10% off sitewide for a limited time. Just go to ghostbed.com slash Cox and use promo code Cox at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Cox, promo code Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world.

Some exclusions apply. site for details. And like, dude, it was, it was bad. And I just wasn't sleeping. And then when I was... Full-blown crash. Yeah. Yeah.

So I get up there, single cell, because it's COVID. You got to get cleared in order to... You got to wait two weeks to make sure you don't have COVID to be put into general population. And so I'm communicating with people on the door. Hey, when are we coming out? Oh, dude, you're not coming out for 36 hours. Like, what?

So I'm like, okay. And I'm not thinking like, oh, I'm going to crash, right? But I'm like, okay, I got to wait, right? Well, I crash, dude. Not only do I crash, I miss my unlock. Oh, your ability to go outside. Yeah, yeah. So they'll hit you on the intercom and be like, you want to go out.

And if you don't get out, yeah, you're out. Done, right? So I miss my unlock. Dude, I slept for probably two days straight. And I kind of groggily remember them like bring. I have like trays stacked, right? Like, oh my God. I wake up and I'm like, holy shit.

How long has it been? Like one, two, three, four, five, six. Dude, it's been like two days. Like, oh my God. When do I come out? They're like, you come out at two in the morning. It's like fucking four in the afternoon. I got to stay awake.

I got to stay awake. So I get to the phone. They unlock me. I get to the phone and I call Megan. Like, dude, you got to bail me out. She's all, fuck you and hangs up. So now I'm like, oh shit, now I got to call the, now I got to call the bail bonds myself. And I'm like calling the ones that I had previously used.

Hey, you still owe a balance. I'm like, okay, not that one. And so I don't have actual time to like orchestrate anything. And I get on the phone with one. And they're like, it's $80,000 is my bail right now. Right. Right. So I'm like, okay, this is doable.

It's not going to be doable if they book me on this bank robbery. Right. Like I just, I know it's not, right? So I'm like fighting the clock. Well, dude, I got like one productive call where I'm like, I have $5,600 bucks on me. I need to bail out right now. Okay, what's your number? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Do you have any phone numbers of people that we can contact? So I'm like, okay, nobody's on the outside that's going to help. I'm like, no, like, dude, can you just call back? Like, whatever. Dude, that never happens, right? So two days later, maybe the next day. Okay, maybe the, yeah. the next morning-ish, they're like, handy, medical, crack the door, right?

I'm like, okay. And, you know, I don't remember my intake process at all. And so I'm like, I don't know what I told them. Right. Probably just blood pressure or whatever. And I'm like, okay. So I go out the pod and get in the elevator. And I know this, dude, I've spent a lot of time in this jail.

And I'm on the fifth floor. and medical's on the third floor and I start going up. I'm like, what? I'm like, what am I on? And then I see the numbers like six, seven, and it's just not registering like what's going. I'm obviously like in a drug fog still.

And then I get to the ninth floor and I step out, the cop intercepts me, right? And I'm like, this is a long hallway. There's like trustees and people in suits. he's it says interview oh shit the FBI's here dude so I'm like oh fuck and and you start to get those like visceral feelings of like oh shit like my body can feel it like shit's going down so they walk me through these double doors and then the second door on the left and then I'm in there it's an interview room and I'm you know you've been interrogated obviously right now their their typical

tactic is like we're going to leave them in there for hours just let them like ruminate on his thoughts and like we're going to listen and see what he's saying to himself and like 15 minutes later like you know I'm preparing myself for like hours of this and I feel like almost immediately this door gets kicked open and it's like suits are filing in and half of them are going this way and half them go around this way and then I'm over here and like a salt and pepper like very seasoned looking agent sits here and I'm sitting here and then like a very young attrown attractive agent sits here and then one deputy okay so he starts the introductions i'm this person this is who i am and i'm with major crimes and this and this and this is so-and-so and she's with the

anti-terrorism task force group and i'm like yeah yeah and uh and you know we saw your photo you know so this is what he does he like he starts to get papers you may be with the taliban yeah oh dude that's such a good point yeah So he starts like situating papers. He like opens a folder, puts stuff like face down. He's like, okay, do you know who this is? It's a picture of me in the bank with a mask on. Like, nope.

He's like, okay, do you know who this is? And it's a picture of me at the trolley stop with the mask on, right? Like, nope. He's like, do you know this person? And it's a picture of me walking under the bridge with my mask off. They're like, dude, the FBI is super diligent in the way that they investigate cases. They went from camera to camera to camera to camera to business to business. Yeah, they watched you walk the whole way, right?

Yep. And then they got the mall across the river, had a camera that they zoomed in on and got a picture of my face. That picture of my face is what they put on the Be on the Lookout, who the cop that arrested me that I gave all that hard time to, the next day recognized me and called them and say, hey, I think I arrested your guy yesterday. So that's how they figured out who I was, right? But I'm looking at this at this picture of me and I'm like, nope. And he sits back and he goes, Mr. Handy, like we can make this a federal case. We're not interested in the bank robbery. Like you got less than 10 grand.

Like this isn't this isn't something that we want to spend the money on. So the state can prosecute you. But you got to work with us. We just want to know where the bomb is. that's right your note yeah and i'm like bomb he's like yeah you know the bomb that you threaten to kill everybody with and i was like all of these like microcalculations again and i'm like this could be really fucked up for me i could end up in federal prison doing 90% of my time or 95 whatever and you know like it just can't believe him that he's not going to prosecute you well so

I just start doing these like and I'm like. Because they can lie to you. Yeah. So. Well, so I just, this is what I did. It was like, do I want to take a chance on that? And then they try me for this. And then there's like threats.

And I, I didn't know what they were charging me with, right? And the conversation kind of evolves where he's like, look, we're just going to book. If none of that's real, then we're just going to book you on the bank robbery and let the state take it or whatever. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, okay, yes, it was me. No, I didn't have a bomb. I said that on the note that I had a bomb in my backpack, I didn't even have a backpack on.

And like, so. I didn't even know that. I didn't realize that. I thought at least there's a backpack. No backpack, right? And so, and I was like, did you watch, did you watch the videos? I'm like, yeah, how do you think we found that picture of you? And I was like, did you see what happened at the trolley stop with the cop?

And he was like, yeah, yeah, we saw, we're going to pass it on to the agency. Because, dude, the cop and I made eye contact. Right. Right. And I was like, you know, and the whole conversation happens. And he's like, okay, well, thank you. And he's like, you know, before it gets to the wind down part, he's like, so you've never made a bomb. You don't have like the fixings to make a bomb.

You don't have the ingredients. You don't know how to make a bomb. Right. And they're recording all this. I was like, nope. It was just a threat. Right. And he was like, okay.

Well, thank you for the cooperation, whatever. We're going to write a letter saying that you were very cooperative and thank you and blah, blah, right? So, and dude, sure enough, like, he kept his word. And I seriously doubt that the feds wanted to prosecute that. Like, I don't know how much that amount of money would have costed to prosecute that or whatever. But they're doing financial, like a financial analysis on the case versus the profit.

And they're like, we're not getting any money back. Because the federal government insures money at the bank. Right. And so they're doing like all of those financial assessments. And I'm sure they were like, this isn't fucking worth it to us. We're going to let the state do it. So anyway, because of COVID due process changed. Like there was a bunch of laws that were put in place that allowed them to not even arraign you for two weeks.

Right. So my arraignment happens. It's a felony case. You can't get a deal at the arraignment. You got to wait for the next court appearance. The next court appearance is a month away. So by the time I get there, like I'm the fog is cleared. Also, I slept through my kick.

By the time the feds came, like, I felt pretty normal, right? And so six weeks later, I meet my lawyer for the first time. Right? And he's like, you know, they're giving you a pretty good offer here. I was like, okay, what is it? He was like, so the deal's 33 years. And I'm like, what? And in my head, I'm going, what did I do?

Like, okay, bank robbery, residential burglary, robberies, weapons. charges, drug sales. I'm like, you know what? It's actually probably, this is a good deal probably, right? And I'm like, he was like, I think we can get it down a little bit more. I was like, okay. 25. Yeah, and he's like, you know what, this is a good deal because max exposure on this is 85 to life.

And they can strike you out. And did you tell him I'm just a knucklehead? I'm not an arch criminal here. I'm just kind of a junkie knucklehead. Like I didn't. I tried explaining this to him. I just, you didn't hurt. You didn't hurt anybody.

I didn't this time, right? For this series? Yeah. Yeah, for what I got caught for? Well, no, because that residential, dude, here's the thing. On paper, I look really, really fucked up. And, like, I'm not going to spend face time with the judge or, like, with the prosecutor. And they're, like, looking at my arrest record and my prison history.

And they're going, this dude looks like a 60-year-old convict on paper. How is he even on the streets right now? You know, like, and I'm like, so I'm like, this actually does sound like a good deal but on my first prison sentence I met a dude he was there for a gang related murder due in life

but he had beat two gang related murders already right and he was like yeah dude there's this place it's called Delancey Street and if your back's ever really against the wall you can write to them and if you get accepted there the courts will accept the deal

and they'll send you there as a defer and have a deferred sentence and if you make it they'll drop the charges or they'll whatever right so i immediately start like i got to write the lancy street but also there's other programs that are similar but they carry less weight with the court so there's like the jericho project uh the dream center in l a jericho projects in chastica county um the lancy street is all over the country there's seven of them in like five states delancy street's been around since the 70s and their bread and butter is uh maladaptive antisocial criminals with huge

sentences that they're facing, or if you got out of a federal life sentence, you can send them there to reintegrate back into society. So in my head, I'm like, I'm going to write Delancey Street. But because of the situation in jail that's going on with the jails, I am in isolation. For four months, I have no sally. And there was already, like, once the fog cleared and like some actual logical decision making was happening and I'm writing and I'm writing and I'm trying to call Megan and we're kind of talking, right, but she's pregnant with the baby and she's trying to figure shit out.

Also, she got caught at the border with my drugs. She was there for the residential burglary. She's got charges, like warrants over her head, and that shit's all about it. She's got, like, court dates and shit like that. So, and one of those cases that I, like, told them that I swallowed drugs in, we got arrested for the residential burglary. She did and I did.

Well, they booked her and they didn't book me, right? Because I did this, I swallowed drugs thing. I bailed her out. And so she's got warrants for my stupidity, right? And we're trying to work shit out. She's pissed off. And, you know, I'm pathetic and like she's pissed off. And just email, just send me emails.

Please, I love you. Let's all the whole fucking, dude, pathetic story that everybody does, whether they want to admit it or not. Like, just stick by me for these 33 years since. Dude. I'll get parole in 20. And then I'm going to be the man I've been promising to be. How crazy does it sound, right?

Like, and yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling her. I'm like, are you going to wait for me? Like, what are you going to do with the baby? And I'm trying to use the baby as like my bargaining chip. Like, fuck my responsibilities and obligations. Like, I'm trying to tie this bitch down, right? Like and I'm like Are you gonna leave whatever

And it's all the pathetic shit and And she's like Well can you send me some money and I'm like Oh yeah I they got these things called like an inmate Withdraw slip I could send you like because I got booked with like A few thousand dollars And and I always like hold that overhead

Like email me and like answer the phone And then she won't and then I won't do the money Right So a fucking game And And so I start writing Delancey Street, like, immediately. And I don't know, like, what's going to happen. But I immediately start telling them, I'm going to Delancey Street, right?

And, you know, court dates are getting pushed back. Like, I'm riding Delancey Street. And they're like, well, you got to do a probation assessment and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm by myself in a cell. And some of these things start to fall in place where, like, the mental component is in place. And I start turning my isolation into, like, solitude. And I start, like, making real decisions about, historically the way that my decision process went was i'm not done i'm just going to go do my time

give me the best deal that you can and i'll sign it right now right well the best deal that i could was doubling my lifetime prison so i'm like and i'm trying to make this decision am i going to just waste my time and like maybe get sent to this program and fuck it up and then end up in prison anyway or should i just go up there and start doing my time and like i'll be able to see my kid or whatever like no no i think it's time like i legitimately 30 if 33 years isn't enough of a wake-up call for anybody like dude they should go do the time for sure but it was like a wake-up call you know one thing leads to another and I get accepted into the lancy street and I get the acceptance letter and I go to meet with my attorney and he's like

okay we can negotiate this or whatever so we get a court date two weeks out and I go to meet with my lawyer Chelsea Childs this was her name public defender and um Um, she comes to me, I've reached out to her. I don't know how many times. And I'm just trying to tell her like, hey, dude, I'm doing good. Change my life. Did that in a response? She will not answer the phone and she will not return my calls.

She will not return my emails. Like, she just will not do it. So Chelsea Childs, if you ever see this, please get in contact with me. And I'm just trying to tell you, like, thank you. Yeah. You know, like she comes to me and she goes, Mr. Handy, I have a really good, I've been going through the file. This is pretty crazy, right? But they know that you had accepted into Delancey Street.

That's why they've been pushing these court dates. I need something reasonable that I can take them. Like give me a reasonable deal that you would accept that they might accept. And dude, all you got is time. So I've been thinking about this. I'm like, okay, this is what I want. Two years at Delancey Street. I'll take two strikes.

You can suspend a strike and hang 10 years over my head. That way, if I fuck this up, I'm going for 10, but you can then strike me out and try to give me 25 to life. She's like, okay, that sounds fair, actually. And I'm like, okay, so she goes, 20 minutes later, she comes back, she's all, they only want one thing different. Like, okay, what is it? She goes, they want you there for three years. Like, I'll sign it right now, right?

So. You feel living in this place for three years. Three years. But this. That's better than prison. For sure. And there is no limit of time that you can be in this program. So people that are in Delancey Street right now that have been running it for the longest, right?

They've been there for 45 plus years. They've been in the, they met their significant others there. They raised their kids there. They got their pets. They like, you don't ever have to leave. And so three years and dude,

their sentences were like, you got to go to Delancey Street for five years or seven years or whatever, right? Like, oh, you killed three people and you were selling drugs or whatever. You got to do seven years at Delancey Street. And people are taking these deals, right? And so they're like,

they want you there for three years. I signed the deal. Sentencing happened. and the judge looks at me and he goes, Mr. Handy, I've been on the bench for 20 plus years. And I've sent a lot of people to this program and I don't know many that have succeeded. So good luck.

And in my head, I'm going, challenge accepted, right? Like, I'm finishing this fucking program, right? And I remember distinctly looking at the deal that I signed in, it says three years in a residential program. And for some reason, that's stuck with me. Three years and a residential program. So I get to Delancey Street. This place is fucking insane, dude.

Like, I couldn't even, we could literally spend hours just talking about this place. Do you know what synodon is? Okay, we could literally spend hours talking about this place. This place is so insane that seven months into my three years, I'm going, I would rather be in prison, right? I would rather go do all this time than be here. And, I mean, it was just that bad. and and I'm like, fuck it, dude, I'm leaving. Right.

So I've got this plan though, right? I'm going to call my, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to call my probation officer. And I tell my, and I tell my probation officer, look, I left the program, but I'm literally on the corner and I will go back right now. But I specifically remember the deal saying three years in a residential program, not at the Lancy Street. Okay. So she's like, and I'm, I'm on. Vermont Street, 100 Vermont Avenue.

Right. Literally directly down that street is USC, the Coliseum, and across the street from that is the Englewood or whatever neighborhood that is, probation department, right? So I'm like two miles from the department. She's like, come in, we'll figure this out, right?

And I end up calling her back, like, you know, whatever, 30 minutes later. And I check back in. And she's like, you know what? We looked it over. where are you going to go though? Like what other programs program for that long? And I'm like, I know of a couple places, right?

So I start calling. And I get into a program, like, dude, that takes a couple days to like figure that out. I get into a program in San Diego. So I'm going back to San Diego, right? And there had been some slight interaction between me and my now baby mom, right? And I'm going back to San Diego. And I'm like, dude, I'm coming to San Diego, send me a train ticket. and she's like, okay, and I'm like, I can meet my baby, right?

So, and a couple of things, I had already come back to San Diego to try to talk to a couple programs, and then I was back in L.A. to talk to another couple programs. And when I was back up there, the program in San Diego called and said, if you can be here in 24 hours, you can come in, right? So I call her and I'm like, give me another train ticket. I'm coming back to San Diego. I got into the program. So she picks me up from the train station in Old Town, and I meet my, my baby for the first time, right? And then we get a hotel and we spend the night together and I'm on like cloud nine, right?

And I get to the program and I spend the next 24 month, 26, 28 months, something like that in the program in San Diego. And that was better than Delancey Street. Fuck, yeah. Dude, it was, dude, I can't even, I mean, night and day. Dude, I can't even describe it. to you, dude. It was so bad. But I wish I could just spend hours telling you about this place. But I finished the program. But about a year out, so I made a deal with them. They were like, we normally, it's a year. But if you work for us while you're here, then we'll let you stay.

Right. Okay. And it's a faith-based work program. And they've got this program up in the mountains for the men. And then after 60 days, you typically go down back to the city to their city program where it's co-ed. And they're like, look, we know you got your family. They come to church every Sunday to see you. We want you to be a supervisor up at the camp. And you can start getting weekends with your family. I'm like, yes, yeah. Okay, cool.

So I'm like, dude, anyway, they really pave the path for me to have. have success, right? A year out, they allow me to start working and I get a car and now I'm doing underground utilities for this company and I'm saving money and I'm interacting with my family and like, but I'm still living at the program, right? And then my family, like my actual family, like we reconcile as best we can, right? Like they come out, me and the girl get married, right? My family comes out. And, and then there's like, family stuff going on, Thanksgiving, Christmas, a bunch of birthdays. And so I go out to Texas to visit them a few times too, right?

And so I finish the program. Now I'm kind of going back and forth from Texas back to San Diego. I move my wife and child out there. And it looks like the writing's kind of on the wall. I'm going to move to Texas, right? And so I get everything together. I get my interstate compact. and I get transferred to Texas.

And I have no marketable skills, dude. I'm 37 years old right now. I paid taxes for the first time of my life this year. Right? So I don't like marketable skills. I'm not educated. I'm not like the kind of person that everybody's eager to hire. And what I can do, they don't even do it in Texas in Houston because the water table is so high.

So they don't trench and lay pipe. They do directional drilling. And I thought like, oh, I can go out there and just. get a job doing this. Anyway, I start to spiral. I can't find a job. I'm trying to be like a family. I'm trying to be something that I've never done.

Right. Right. And I've honestly not really been set up mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically for the yoke of manhood is really what it is, right? Like I'm supposed to, I'm expected to be a man when just three short years ago I was living under a bridge and robbed a bank, right? And it's like, I'm thrown into the situation. And my decision-making skills suck and my just me, I suck, right?

And so I relapse. After three and a half years of sobriety, I relapse, right? What year is this? This is 2024, April of 2024, I relapse. And, dude, I relapse for 11 days. And this is a relapse where I'm sitting on my couch at my house and nothing happens, right? Nothing bad happens. Like when you compare it to everything else that's happened, it's like very, very,

on eventful 11 days. And something happened in that 11 days where I realized, like, I just don't want to do this anymore. And some situations happened. Well, I'll tell you, because it's kind of important. I'm immediately I'm doing Fetty, H, crystal, and bars. And I'm out of my mind again. And I'm hallucinating and psychosis and all this. And I think I get a text from somebody in my family saying that my sister, who's like 20 years old, is missing. And so I'm walking around my neighborhood where she does not live, yelling her name. And my neighbors call the cops. And the cops come.

And I'm telling them, like, my sister's missing. I got this text message. They're like, we'll show us the text message. And I'm like, huh, I must have deleted it. So I called and I called my mom. And I'm like, hey, tell the cops that Cheyenne is missing. And she's like, what? are you talking about so they come

they live like a few minutes away they come and the cops are like we're just gonna let we're just gonna let you guys deal with this right and they immediately know like oh he relapsed right and so this intervention confrontation takes place

but at the same time as this is happening there's a bunch of shit in my family that's hitting the fan the uncle that my went on to most other siblings and cousins. And that's all hitting the fan right now.

And my mom and dad and my brother, my wife and my brother's wife, my brother, the one that I got hooked on her when he's been in recovery for 10 plus 12 years at this point. His wife's in recovery. My wife's there. She relapsed with me.

And we got this two-year-old. And you know, it's like it's just a fucking mess. I'm sure the apprehension was, we don't want Matthew to come back and then just replay the circus and guess what's happening. I'm replaying this whole fucking circus that happened with my first wife where they adopted my first daughter.

Right. Right. And now I got this 15 year old daughter that is being raised as my sister. And, you know, it's like all this is just hitting the fan. But my mom goes, were you as a kid? And I'm looking around this room. Like it's my wife, my brother, my dad, my mom. I never admitted this to anybody in my life.

No one. and I tell them yes, yeah, that's what happened, right? And they're starting to ask details. But I'm in full-blown addict mode again. I think I'm going to manipulate the situation. I didn't do it because I thought it was going to be good for me. Yeah. I did it because I thought it was going to alleviate the heat.

Yeah. And it kind of did. But what it ultimately did was open the door for me to be able to work on some shit that I needed to fucking work on. And so, you know, everything gets worked out. we get sent to treatment. I'm on an interstate compact, so I don't want probation to know that I relapsed.

So I tell them I'm just going to go to rehab for like two weeks. So I'm there for 17 days and I get out. And I think I'm going to do this. I get to probation. I check in. Everything's fine. And I think I'm going to do this like, I'm going to go to meetings thing.

And like I wasn't going to meetings for that three and a half years of sobriety. It was we were working and doing church. Right. And that kind of worked, but I was in a bubble. Right. So I think I'm going to start going to meetings and I'm going to get sober like this. And it's like because I had just been, they call it 12 step immersion at this program, right?

And I'm like, I'm going to go to 12 step. I'm going to AA or NA and this is how I'm going to find my recovery. And I'm going to meetings and I'm fucking miserable. And now I'm going to meetings in the morning and at night and I'm fucking miserable. And now I'm going to three meetings a day and I'm fucking miserable. and now I'm just staying at the clubhouse because I don't want to use, right? So, and I see a podcast

that Taylor Kavanaugh was on. Okay. And, and this dude has his phone number just blasted all over the internet. Like, if you want to get a hold of this dude, you can get a hold of him right now. Right. And I'm hearing what he's saying.

And mind you, this is May of 2020, he had just gotten out of the Legion. And he's just starting. starting to like put his message out there of like, I help men, right? He'd been out for months, right? He just got back to the States and he's been out for months. And it's he's got his head shit. Like he's got this Mohawk thing with the handlebar mustache.

And I'm like, if anybody can help me, it's that guy. And I reach out to him. And he's got the teeth. Yeah, he's got the gold teeth and like the dude. Taylor is one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life at this point. Like to this day, I wouldn't be doing anything that I wouldn't be doing anything that I'm doing if it wasn't for like some of his mentorship and then it just is he's got a unique way of thinking about a lot of stuff and I call him and I'm like dude I don't know what to do and he's

like well what are you doing I'm telling him he's like and he's like and he's in recovery too like his own brand of recovery too and he's like dude you're gonna relapse like yeah yeah I know like what do and he's like are you working out I was like no he's like check this out dude quit everything don't go to another fucking meet dude you go to another meeting you're probably going to use Okay, it's like, go to sleep as early as possible. Wake up, do some push-ups, go to the gym, and then call me. And dude, I just never stopped doing that. And that whole putting the physical fitness piece like in place changed the trajectory of my entire life.

And, you know, you fast forward. And it wasn't easy, right? I was 200. I'm 5, 6, 210 pounds. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, I was a dope. 146.

Wow. I mean, I'm in, I mean, I work out six days a week, right? I realize I hate going to the gym, so I built a gym in my garage, right? And, you know, I get clean and then I enter recovery after I meet Taylor. And I'm like, okay, what am I going to do with my life? And I'm like, I'm going to start a treatment center. And so my dad comes in and my brother and we're partners and we're building this thing. And Taylor's, you know, Taylor is a constant threat of.

like logic and reason for me because my decision making skills fucking suck but over the next that was two years four months ago something like that and my life just looks vastly different today um the person that i am is vastly different than the person that i was six years ago but even different than the person that i was last year right i've got an eight-month-old right and we've got our five-year-old that like that original baby where she was like i'm pregnant and basically none of it would be possible without me i mean i quit 12-step programming right i found peer support and i started working out and it vastly changed the trajectory and what ultimately happened now is that like i got into recovery coaching and recovery coaching is like a very small

part of what i get a couple dudes right but it's mostly through the courts right the Harris county has a couple people that i were really hard cases right so i'm 18 to 25 years old that facing life. That's, that's who I, because I can't do full time for you guys. So I donate some time to them. And, um, you know, I've, I certify recovery coaches. I own a treatment center. I work out. I'm a father. I'm a husband. I'm a brother to siblings that I had historically never been a brother to. And I'm a son that I'm trying to be that person that I was supposed to be. Now, that what I always try to tell people is that like people want to act like they're a new person, right? But I think it's a fallacious thought on its face because you're not a new person. You are the person that you are today.

I am the person that I am today because of the wreckage and the rebuild. Right. So it's like you destroyed the person that you were and then you built this other person out of it. And it's like, I don't think there's anything wrong with the only thing that I can leverage to help other people is my story. Right? And so it's like, why would I ever reject that, you know, I don't know. It's this whole shame-based recovery model where, you know, it's funny is like you hear people say, oh, I'm an alcoholic.

Right. A lot of people's first reaction is, oh, they're fucked up. But if a person is identifying as an alcoholic, they're probably in recovery. Right. Right. They're probably not fucked up anymore. Right? But it's like, it's this shame-based model where people are ashamed to admit that they're in

recovery because people kind of paint this label onto them and then extrapolate information off of it without even knowing them. But dude, I tell everybody, dude, I'm in recovery and I'm a vastly different person than I used to be. And, you know, it's like I'm getting all the comments from other podcasts. Like this dude is a piece of shit. He deserves to burn in hell. I hope he burns in hell. He should be in prison. You don't change from this stuff. And it's like, I don't know, dude. I know that it is extremely difficult to change and come back from a place like that. But you did it. Taylor did it.

And I'm doing it. And I know you probably know hundreds of dudes where it's like they will never change. They're literally going to end up going back and forth to prison. But you do know those like those people where it's like they sufficiently suffered. Then, you know, luck. My definition of luck is preparation meeting good timing. So it's sufficiently. suffering, luck, and then in honesty, it's like dealing with your trauma of the past and then

dealing with the current issue, which is your physical fitness. So yeah, it's pretty much where I just buy a place too. I did. I just bought a 250 bed hospital where we're going to be, we're going to be creating a very unique system for treatment where it's insurance based, right? The treatment industry is insurance-based, and most people have gotten so comfortable with the bills that they have and the lifestyle that it affords them that they're constantly, constantly turning away my people, people under the bridge, people that need help. Also, I think it's the people that would benefit the most from these programs because they're out there suffering and they don't really have answers, right? Whereas little Jimmy, 17 years old, gets caught with Bud, the first thing they're going to do now is send him to treatment. Well, guess what?

That kid's not going to get sober. Like the reality is he doesn't want to. He doesn't need to. He doesn't have legal problems. He doesn't have all the suffering that is almost paramount to the change, right? But the dude that's been living under the bridge for 20 years and been sticking needles in his arm and lost his family and lost the career, that dude, I think he would greatly benefit.

from some serious help. And so they don't help people, right? And it's the business of saving lives. This is the industry's little platitudes. Like, we're the business of saving lives. But really, they're the business of saving lives that can afford it. Right? And that's a fucking problem.

And here's the other part is like, they're not healing. There's no money in healing. You look at the medical industry. There's no money in healing. There's money in alleviating symptoms. there's money in return customers. That's really what it is. And if return customers is the goal for the business,

and I would never take away from the addiction professional on the ground, right? The frontline addiction professionals, the therapist, the people working face-to-face with these people, I don't think it's on them. I think it's on the owners, the investors, and the payers. They set the pace for the internal policy and clinical, like clinical criteria. That's a clinical term. that is dictated by insurance.

Okay? So there's a lot of things going on, right? But if it's true that we aren't the business of saving lives, we're the business saving lives that can afford it, and it's also true that we're not really trying to heal people, then this is a math game, right? Where we know that out of 100 people, less than one of them will get sober the first time that they go to treatment.

98.5% of people who go to, who receive treatment services one time, will receive it an average of seven times before they get sober for one year. Statistical anomalies, 0.175% of people get sober the first time. So we know they're not going to get sober. And we also know that what we're doing isn't working. And so out of 100 people, how many of them are going to come back? And that's kind of like what we bank on in the industry is like this many people are going to come back.

The problem is we know what we're not, we know what we're doing isn't working. And we know that there's going to be a certain amount of people that go out there and overdose and die or go catch a life sentence or whatever. So my whole thing is like we're sacrificing lives to make money. And I have a fucking problem with that because it isn't little Jimmy that's going to get sacrificed. Because if little Jimmy overdoses, dude, they might even send flowers because that kid can afford to go to treatment seven times. It's going to be me and my people that get sacrificed because, yeah, I might get lucky and receive services through a scholarship or like have somebody pull strings or whatever. but if I've overdosed after I receive services there, they'll probably never even know.

Right? So it's just out of sight, out of mind, and I've got a major problem with what is happening currently and the outcomes that are being produced. And so we're developing this. It isn't unique. There are other people that are doing it, right? There are people in Arizona and Colorado

and like in other states that are doing what we're doing. We are just going to do something's a little different. Let's just say someone listening to this podcast is struggling with an addiction issue or something like that. Like what is the plan of action or what is some things that they could do to, you know. Yeah. So rarely is it the person that's struggling that is going to find the solution. It's typically family and friends. And so look, for the person who's sitting on the couch right now listening to this podcast while simultaneously like sticking a needle in their arm,

my only advice that I can give you is if you survive right there will come a time where you will know that you're done but until then stop wrapping other people up it my whole story is me wrapping other people up in my shit like fucking other people's lives up destroying like their lives right to further my addiction and in the end the only thing that comes to that is death and destruction and it's never good for anybody it's not good for me, it's not good for them, it's not good for you, it's not good for your family. But for the family that hears this, when you take responsibility for somebody, you've taken responsibility from them. And now it's partially your fault. All of the things that happen, the behavioral patterns,

the things that you're telling them this is okay to do without saying those words, you are allowing them by enabling them to continually give themselves slowly. So boundaries are the first thing. But also, dude, reach out. Reach out to somebody. Dude, call people like the tailors of the world, right? Like, if you don't know what to do, get on. Dude, TikTok is full of people, advertising recovery coaching. Instagram is full.

Dude, there's like recovery TikTok, recovery Instagram. Like, there's answers out there. I don't have all the answers, right? And I don't have the answer for everybody. I have the answers for a specific type of person, somebody who's sufficiently suffered. I don't have the answer for little Jimmy, right? That wasn't me.

I'm not that person. I was the person that ran it to the bitter end and then finally learned, right? Like, smart people learn from their mistakes, wise people learn from others. I was neither. I had to make the same mistakes over and over and over. So if you're that person, you'd reach out, right? I've got resources. I can help you.

It doesn't matter what state you're in. But if you're the family member that is continually enabling your child to kill himself, reach out for professional help. You need just as much help as they do. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do be a favorite. Hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this.

Also, if you want to follow Matthew, you want to check out his podcast or you want to check out the Recovery Center. We're going to leave all of his links in the description box. You can click on there, go there. You can click on the link. Follow him. You can get in contact with him. We're going to leave everything there.

Once again, really do appreciate you guys watching. Please share the video. And if you're interested in being a guest, we're going to leave our link to our website. You can go there. You can fill out an application to be a guest. Thank you very much. See you.