Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Doctor Framed in $25M Healthcare Fraud

Episode Date: February 15, 2026

After being swept up in a $25M healthcare fraud case, Dr. Linda Varisco's world falls apart, pushing her to face devastating betrayal, fight for her family, and ultimately rebuild her life stronger than before.⁣ ⁣ Linda's links - ⁣ Check out her books here - https://a.co/d/0cFVRy2k⁣ https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Dr.+Linda+Varisco&srsltid=AfmBOop3O-3jJz66ACui_xgOALze5VViK9xHsh6xp2kvNCyx06ozunXf⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Make life easier by getting harder and discover your options at BlueChew.com! Use code "COX" for 10% off ⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Go to https://trymiracle.com/cox and use code “COX” for an extra 20% off! ⁣ ⁣ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, championed at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash win.

You might be tempted to let Taco Bell's new Lux Value menu go to your head. Because 10 indulgences for $5 or less makes you feel fancy. Like you might think you need cloth napkins. Well, you don't. Just use the ones that come in the bag. Don't let the lux go to your head. How do the most successful women do it? We ask them on how she does it with Karen Feinerman.

You'll get insights from leaders like today's Jenna Bush Hager. There's a lot I say no to. And I think it's a really important word for women to use. Rachel Weber of Paris Hilton's 1111 media. I'm going to be a much better leader. I'm going to bring more creativity if I have other things filling my life. And more. That's how she does it with me, Karen Feinerman, wherever you get your podcast.

So it was over $25 million. They had all these other clinics. I didn't come from this. First person in my family to ever go to jail. This was my grand mistake, honey. She was wearing a freaking wire. I was born in Long Island. with a gold spoon in my mouth.

My mother was a runway model back in the day. And my dad was a, he designed the lunar module. He was an engineer for Grumman Aerospace at the time. Nice. They moved out, they're both from Brooklyn. They moved out to Long Island. Got a house, had me. My dream was to be an OBGYN.

My mother gets paralyzed from her back, a chiropractor out in Long Island. And she was scheduled for surgery, and she spent like six months in a recliner, couldn't walk, left leg was wasting away. And somebody said, where my dad works, say, bring it to a chiropractor. Never forget it. And this chiropractor, his ego probably wouldn't have fit in this room, but he was fabulous. And I wound up working with him between my junior and senior year. And I switched and I said, I'm going to go to chiropractic school. I loved it.

I fell in love with the, you know, the profession. I saw the way they help people, really. So he had my mother walking and she lived a normal life until the day she died. So I switched from OBGYN to chiropractic school. So I graduated Villanova in 1984, and I went into practice with my mother's best friend's son. He was a chiropractor. He graduated probably a year before me. And he got involved with some drugs.

He got into a car accident and then became addicted. Like pain meds. Yeah, pain meds. Pain meds of some sort. The car rolled. His back, you know, he had, what do you call that, road ridge all over his back. I was changing the dressings on him. And then I realized he was totally addicted.

And I went to his mother, who was my mother's best friend. And I said, you know, he needs to, you know, know, get off. And him and I were a thing for a while. And we were partners. And she goes, no, no, that's not the case and this and that. So she didn't recognize it. And then he would disappear for two, three weeks. And I was running the practice. I came in with a certain amount of money. He came in with a certain amount of paid equipment, which was never paid. And then all of a sudden the bill collector started to come, like, you didn't pay for this. You didn't pay for that. I'm like, So I would basically run the entire practice.

Okay. And then he came in sporadically. And one of the patients goes, I think your partner is on something. And I go, no, no. And then one day he came in and I decided to do a little search in his duffel bag. And yes, he was on something. And now I had to get away, right? So she called the DPR on him, the Department of Professional Regulation.

and they come in and they go, okay, you have to pee in this cup. But he was never there when they showed up. So then one day he came in and he assumed it was me. Now, why would I want the DPR coming in to my office when I'm already practicing there, right? So he had me pinned against the wall with my neck. And he's like, he called the DPR. I mean, he was just a rageaholic at that time. And the stupid ass that I am, I was, you know, I wasn't afraid of him.

So I'm like, oh, you're a big man. Push a woman against the, you know, and he had me by the neck like this. I go, you're a big guy. You're going to hit a girl. He was like, he backed off, I mean, by the grace of God. And what happened was we eventually split. I walked in one night to get a file because I wanted to do a final report for a patient. And he's doing the cleaning woman on that.

the table, on our desk, on our mutual desk. Anyway, so after months of his mother and my, because he wouldn't talk to me, it was just going nowhere. So the bottom line. How dare you walk in on him? Yeah. I was, I was. How could I ever trust you again for violating the sanctity of my office? With the cleaning woman, right? Right. He married her. Really? Oh, so? See, it's a romantic story. Yeah, it was some romantic. From your point of view, from his, point of view, it's a romantic story. From your point of view, he's a scumbag. Yeah. See? It's all his perspective. We separated. Okay. I started my own. I took, I left most of the equipment there because it was under his name. Right. But I walked away with every file

because I was taking care of the patients. So I go on this trip. My mother, when I graduated chiropractic school, she said to me, I'm buying you because you're a workaholic and I'm going to buy you a time share. So every year, you go away. So at the time, I was dating this guy, Joe, from Brooklyn or something, he was hot, but that was about it. There was nothing, you know. So I said, Ma, why don't you come with me? We'll go together. So we get to Cancun for my timeshare. And I'm bitching about men and this and that. And I was 26 years old at the time with a body that wouldn't quit. And she goes, go take a walk on the beach and air your mind out. So I go take a walk on the beach. And I'm getting cat called by a bunch of people, like in two hotels down. And I turn to

these older gentlemen who were in the water, who turns out to be my future father-in-law and his brother-in-law. And I said, God, I don't get this kind of, you know, in New York. And I kept walking. Well, on the way back down, he sends his son who had arrived in the red eye from L.A. the night before. So he comes walking up to me and I had just graduated. You know, I was like a year out of school. And he says to me, hi, my name is Joe. I go, hi, I'm Linda. Now I'm, you know, I said, I'm on vacation with my mom. She bought me a time. I told him the story. He goes, what do you do? I said, I'm a chiropractor. He starts to laugh. I go, you don't like chiropractors? He goes, no, I'm laughing because I'm one. So he is an Italian guy, another chiropractor. He walks me back to the beach.

back to the hotel where my mom was, and he went to buy my mother and I, my mother and I a pinoclotta. And he leaves, and I go, that's your future son-in-law. And my mother goes, how much did you drink? I go, I didn't have a drink yet, Ma. I just, you know how you recognize somebody that you feel like you'd known them your whole life? Well, that's what happened.

I had this recognition. And we had this whirlwind romance. He was in L.A., I was in Florida. His first, this is before, really before cell phones. His first Pacific Bell, whatever they call it back in California, it was like $900. And we would be on the phone learning about each other. And we would fly back and forth every three, four weeks. I would fly out to L.A.

He would fly to Florida. So I flew out to L.A. He says to me, I think you should move here. You can get your license here. And I go, I don't like L.A. I don't like this place. It doesn't feel like home to me. I don't know why he thought, why he was so disappointed.

appointed, you know, I don't know why, but he thought I would love it. So I go back to Florida. He comes to the next time he comes out to, you know, South Florida, we get a call. His grandfather suffered a stroke. So I get on the phone. I start rerouting his flight back to New Jersey. He was from New Jersey where his father was. And he goes back. And I go up, I fly up on the weekend to be with him. Make a long story short, on his grandfather's death bet. He goes, we need to be together and I'm just going to sell everything, give me some time and I'm coming. It was already established in a practice. I'm just going to sell everything and move to Florida.

And sure enough, he did. So we met in 1987, I think by June of 88, he was down. And then, you know, he moved in this little one-bedroom apartment where I was living. And I already was kind of separated from my ex-partner. And so we started practice. He took the boards because he wasn't licensed in Florida. He took the boards and we started this practice. And we built this practice and built it and built it.

And we were like the Ken and Barbie of the chiropractic world. You know, like had this spectacular wedding. It was just, it was like fairyland, you know. We got married in Long Island, my father. You know, I'm the only daughter to an Italian man. It's the only daughter and the first. So I was daddy's little girl. I'm still dad's little girl.

He's 92. So they threw this fabulous wedding. His dad was a famous cardiologist from New Jersey. He's given my father cash. You know, these old Italians, everything's cash. And, you know, he's like, use this on the band, use this on the limos. It was a spectacular wedding, surf and turf. It was just off the charts.

So we get married. We wait five years. We're building the practice. We're traveling. life is like fairy tale. And I said, we're going to have, let's wait five years, and then we have our first baby. So we had our first baby in 1996.

He was born my son. And practice continued to grow. I took like six weeks off. By this point, my mother had moved down. So I would drop the baby off, go see the patients, run home at lunch, pull out a boob to breastfeed, run back to the office. And this went on. And who watches your baby better than your mother?

You know, so that went on. And then two years later, I decided we were going to have the second one. That was a miss of twins, which was a nightmare. But, and then she told me, you got to give your, you got to give your body some time. And my kids are four years apart. So in 2000, my daughter was born. Boom. Great life.

Backtracking a little bit. He gets bored with chiropractic. So he was talking to a patient in the school board one day. I'm seeing patients. I'm running from room to room, and he's having this, like, hour conversation with this guy. In the school board? The guy was from the school board. Oh, okay.

And he starts talking to Joseph about something called a drug-free workplace. You know anything about that? I would kind of assume most workplaces are supposed to be drug-free, aren't they? But this is when it wasn't popular, Matt. So we were like that. People are on drugs the whole time they're at work? No, no. So let me explain to you.

So you got a guy that works for you and he gets into an accident, okay? Workman's comp thing. You have to piss test him. If he tests positive for something, you're not responsible because he's under the influence or something. This was the start of drug-free workplace, which by the way is commonplace now. Right. So this is, so he's talking about starting like a business that randomly tests employees, right?

Well, it was called Total Compliance Network. and they would do pre-employment testing, and then if you were in an accident, you'd have to test again. And then that was it. You wrote a manual, and we started to sell it, and the business started to really grow. Meanwhile, this is in one room in our chiropractic office.

I'm still seeing all the patients. And then he meets this guy from Columbia hospitals, where they would collect all the urins. And now the business took a bigger step. So I'm seeing the patients. He's running this. And now he needed an office girl because my staff couldn't coordinate, you know, running the chiropractic in this.

So this guy brings his wife in. And I said, you know, when you have those moments in your life where you meet someone in every hair sticks up on the back of your neck. And we went home that night ago, I don't like her. There's something about this woman. I don't feel. And he goes, it's too late. They already hired her.

This woman was the shit's daughter of all shit's daughters. So she would start gossip. with my staff and she sought trouble and she had pulled in a rain on my husband that I had never seen, never seen that side of him. I said to him one day, I said, we're having the family over six o'clock, sausage and peppers tonight, make sure you're home by six o'clock. Six o'clock comes, six 15, six 30. I'm calling him, he's not answering.

Yeah, she didn't feel the good that day, so we brought us something to make her feel better, I don't know, some antibiotics that we had laying around the house, whatever. point of it is, is this woman started to take control. She's, you know, that miscarriage that I had was a very private thing. He starts telling her all the intimate details. And now I'm starting to she's a much older woman. And when I tell you, she looked like a scarecrow with like the poofy hair and she's just like caquecic in her face. She was scary. Otherwise, I would have thought he was having an affair with her. Right. Because she was, you know, she was also 20 years older than him. So he comes to me and he says to me, Linda, I'm going to make them partners.

And I said, don't do this. Meanwhile, his father got involved because when you have to... Partners in the drug testing company. Right, the compliance company, total compliance. His father is working because you have to have an MD report back to the patient that, hey, you tested positive for this. it has to be done by a medical doctor. So I went to my father-in-law, I said,

please stop this. This is not good. And Joseph and I had made a pact when we got married that we're a team. And if one person of the team doesn't agree with the other person, we have to stop and we evaluate. Well, that didn't happen. And I kept nagging him. And I nagged him.

And I said, like only an Italian woman can do. And I said, do not do this. Just pay them a lot of money for all their. their contacts that they're bringing in. I came home one day. They were in my house. The papers were on the table. I make a big scene.

I don't give a shit. And I take him in the bedroom and I'm yelling loud enough that they heard me. And he signed that paperwork. Meanwhile, he had given a percentage to my brother and a percentage to one of his closest friends

from New Jersey who was in our bridal party. Well, that guy from New Jersey turned on my husband, went with this other couple, and they had controlling shares of the business. We all saw it happening, except my husband. I don't know if it was the greed factor. I don't know why.

To this day, I don't understand what happened. So two weeks later, he gets an employment agreement, and they say, you have to go out and you have to sell this amount and this amount. And he was like, I'm not doing that. You know, like he doesn't go out and sell. That wasn't his job. He was the owner, you know. little by little

he had two weeks to sign it he doesn't sign it at this point I had to get her out of the chiropractic office so they rented a bay like four doors down so I was in one bay they were in another bay because I couldn't deal with this woman on a daily basis and there's a knock

I'm in my office and there's a knock on the back door I open it up and he's standing there with a cigarette and I go what Who's he? My husband. Okay. I mean, his face was like, he goes, I was just fired from my own company.

You're an idiot. Yeah, because you're an idiot. So he didn't have a cell phone because it was linked to the business. His Lexus was linked to the business. He didn't have anything. I took him home. He went into the bedroom, shut the door, and for 10 days he didn't come out. This is actually before my second child.

that should back up. This is somewhere like between 96, 97, 98. So I had a little, like, two-year-old kid, and he's gone. I think it wasn't documented, but I think he had a nervous breakdown. I went in there. I was bringing food in there. I was running the practice, taking care of the kid. I was doing everything.

And finally, I just opened the blinds one day. I go, you know, this can't go on. You know, you have to function. You know, my family's like, My brother already informed my family. What a mistake he really made. He saw the whole thing happen. He didn't listen to any of us.

Like how he didn't see it when the rest of us did. Okay, let me go past that. So now this pedestal that I had this gorgeous Italian man on that I was married to, well, I kicked it out. And he wasn't on a pedestal anymore. My mistake, putting them there in the first place, now he's on the ground. and I realized my marriage was in trouble. I didn't have the same feel for him.

Then I realized I was late for my period and I was pregnant. So now I'm going through a lawsuit because he didn't have any fight. So I called and made my, you know, we knew a lot of attorneys. We got involved. We ordered the highest, brought in Kassel in in Fort Lauderdale, and $800 an hour. and were involved in a litigation for two years through my pregnancy. They deposed him. He was beaten.

It wasn't the same person anymore. And they would keep him. They wouldn't let me in the room with me. So they wouldn't let him in the room with him. Did I say that right? No, you said it's wrong both times. They wouldn't let you in the room with him. Exactly.

Because they realized they weren't fighting him. They were fighting me. It was me that was driving this whole thing. And this woman, one night I was pulling out, she was pulling out, and I did my New York, Italian style. She pulls into a lane, I pull behind her. Every time she tries to change lane, I'm like, I'm behind her behind of the car. I was like, I wanted to torment her. So we're at the mediation and I push the button, and the door opens, and they're there to get on the elevator.

Or she shut the button. She wouldn't get on. I think she thought I was crazy. Like, what was it going to do to her, really? But we won the case. Yeah, we spent $80,000 to win $180,000 back, and that was it. And I had to lift my husband back to something, and he got back into the chiropractic business, right? I was going to say, you got $100,000.

You could always just go ahead and just open another business, just like that. Just like that. So. Our chiropractic practice was thriving. Right. So back up. up a little more, so I might be a little out of sync. He came with me one day, and he says to me, get in the call with me, Linder, at lunchtime. And he takes me to this building, and he goes,

this is our nest egg. He was on Oakland Park Boulevard, beautiful three-story building. Well, it wasn't beautiful, but it was a three-story building. I go, this is a shithole. He goes, I said, I want to write a check for $2,500 a month and be done with the rent. He goes, no. So he takes me through this building, and I'm like, Joseph, this is bad. The whole place is I was like a dentist's office because there was a dentist on the third floor for 20 years. He says to me, Linda, says the magic words. He said, if your father puts a seal of approval on it, will you buy it with me? I said, okay.

So that night, typical Italian style, they sat with a bottle of scotch, and they ran the numbers on the building. And this was like 2002. Okay. My daughter was like two years old. We bought this building. Okay. I didn't want it. To this day, I never wanted that building. Why? Why? I mean, if you can renovate the building, or is it just that it's just, it's too much?

It's too much. Okay. You know, you don't need that much space. You're going to have to get a bunch of renters. We had 6,000 square feet of space, and we only used like 3,000 of it. So we had this big rotundum room with PT and stuff. And she just wrenched out, like a leased. We did. So we brought in a medical doctor. now we can build Medicare if you have a medical doctor. So he would see the patients and then put him for PT, O.T., all that. And we were on the other side doing chiropractic. It was working really great. And then my father-in-law passes away.

And I see Joseph start to slump again and I start to see. Now, my father-in-law died a very wealthy man because he's old-school Italian, you know. and I started to see what I thought was depression. You know, I was sleeping all day. I remember going to the funeral in New Jersey where they buried him. And I said to him, I go, I can't deal with this, Joseph. You're like so depressed all the time, you know, you really need to, like he was there, but he wasn't there. Like, you know.

And so he comes back. I left before him. He hung out with his friends in New Jersey. I come back, run the show again, the chiropractic, and he comes back, and it's getting progressively worse. So what I think is depression wasn't depression. So he had this like accordion folder. And one day when he was sleeping during the day, I started to go through it to look at his

father's, you know, because once his father died, it was like I was no longer his wife, no finances were talked about or anything. and I find this little bag with money signs in it, and these, it looked like two ball bearings in there. I don't know what it is, but I knew it was something illegal. I put it in my purse. I bring it to my office, Big Daddy, my massage therapist of 20 years. I pull it out. I go, what's this?

And he goes, where did you get that? It was rocks. So I put it back in my pocketbook, went home, put it back where it was. and I'm thinking to myself, well, where is this happening? What's going on? Where is it happening in the house, right? I got two kids. So when he was sleeping on one of his afternoon naps,

because he didn't really work at this point, he was like in a slump for a couple of months, I decided because his father had a condo like five minutes from my house. I didn't know which key was the condo key. I didn't have the key. So I go to Home Depot and I copy every key that I don't know what it is. Okay. And then one day, when he's at the office, I take the key and I try and I go into this condo that was my father-in-laws who's now dead for two years, two months. And I walked into a rock house.

Right. And I mean, there was like paraphernalia everywhere, broken pipes. The whole place had a funky smell, porno tapes, all of it. I just, I just sat there like, oh my God, is this really, is this really happening? It like, it was like, so I cry, go home, lock the door. And that, like, two, three days later, I'm still digesting how I'm going to deal with this thing. And my trainer says to me, Linda, we can't meet in the morning. Let's meet in the afternoon.

Okay, so I told Joseph, but of course he wasn't paying attention. So when I pulled into the house at 7.30, he's standing there with the two kids at the garage door. And he goes, where were you? I told you I haven't training tonight at the gym. He's like, I have a meeting. I go, it's quite eight at night. Where do you have a meeting? So I didn't want him raising his voice with the kids.

You know, he wasn't himself. This was like, you know, and I got small kids. So I take the kids inside, he leaves. And I'm thinking myself, I know where he is, right? So I bade the kids. I read them the 50 stories that you got to read them to get him to sleep. I go take a shower. I put on my, like, Victoria's Secret pajamas and flip-lops.

And I'm laying in bed, and I'm saying, oh, I'm going there. I'm just going to walk right in. The smart move would have been to say nothing and slowly start removing all of the assets and money and everything you possibly can out of his name and get a defendant get a lawyer or get the whole start set it up so that when you do eventually divorce him it comes from out of nowhere and he's he's unprepared well I didn't do that his habit was being sustained by his father's inheritance right he wasn't listen I controlled everything I paid all the bills for the house I paid all the bills for the office he didn't know what the hell's going on your

inheritance, really. Okay. Right? To me, it's like, that's my father's inherited. It's our inheritance. We're married. That's half mine. That's right.

Yeah. Well, that's not how it played out, honey. Oh. That's upsetting. You got to get vicious. That's your problem. You're too nice of a person. Yeah, well, you're going to find out how stupid and nice I really am, as I keep going on with

this story. So I put the kids to sleep, and I'm laying in bed, and I'm like, oh, that's it. I'm going in there. Then I have, you know, the angel on my, no, don't do that. Yes, do that. He's going to deny it, you know. So I checked my kids. I would have never normally done this. And I left my kids alone sleeping. And I drove five minutes to the condo. Of course, I see his car, his Lexus there. You have a key? I have the key. I go around the back, all the windows like there was a front window when the kids, kitchen, you couldn't see anything. The master was around the back. So I went around the

back. There's a sliding glass doors, all closed with verticals. The master bedroom had horizontal verticals, horizontal blinds. And on the top, there was one that was bent in. But it was like eight feet up. So I was a woman on

a mission. And in my flip-flops and my Victoria's Secret pajamas, because the window was set in and it had two concrete pieces that came So I was able to shimmy up the wall like some freaking spider woman ninja, okay? And I'm, you know, I had to go over the bushes. I'm up the wall.

And I get to the top and I look in and there's the bed. And there's him screwing another woman. There's a porno flick on in the TV. And I just, Matt, I just stared there for like 30 seconds. Like, oh my God. This is my life. So after I finally pulled myself away from the scene, I jumped down, I landed on my two feet. I was like so excited that I was able to be strong enough to do that.

I get to my car. I ball my eyes out. Like, you know, really snotty, bawling, hysterical, crying, sweating, you know. It was like the car was red. I don't know, maybe the car was on or something. And then it was like, And I went from being sad to being very angry. And I said, the angel on this store was like, go home, your kids are alone.

Walk in there. Nail him. So I take my key and I walk in because I got a pair. I walk in, I walk by the kitchen, and then I get to the back bedroom. and I'm leaning on the side of the opening of the doorway. They don't see me. Fellas, you already know what time it is. It's time to level up.

And Blue Chew just drops something crazy. Blue Chewold is the newest innovation from the number one chewable ED brand. This ain't your grandpa's little blue pill. This is the 4-1 beast that's setting the gold standard for performance. We're talking two ingredients for blood flow. to keep that rocket pumping. Mix with apomorphine and oxytocin to turn up the arousal and connection

in your brain and body. Blue shoe gold dissolves underneath your tongue and works in as little as 15 minutes. That means you can get it on quicker and stay in the game longer. This is peak passion and peak performance in a single tablet. Next time she texts you up,

answer with a picture of Blue Shoe. Make life easier by getting harder and discover your option at bluechew.com. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. Get 10% off your first month of Blue Chub Gold with code Cox. That's promo code COX. Visit BluChu.com for more details and important safety information.

And thank you, Blue Choo, for sponsoring this podcast. So finally, she looks over and she sees me and I see her eyes look like and she like taps them. They're engaged in screwing. Right. And he looks over and he like blinks like three times. And then he goes, how'd you get in? So I go, does it really matter?

Because I'm here now. Then 30 seconds goes, why nobody moves? So I take a step into the room. So I said to this flavor of the day, and I said to Haigo, do you know he has a wife and two kids home? With this, she pushes him off. I said, if I was you, I would get your ass out of here. She wasn't the target of my wrath. She grabbed whatever clothes she had naked, her purse like this, and ran out the front door.

When she happened to push him off, there was a towel beneath the two of them. She had her period. Either that or she just lost her maidenhood, which I highly doubt that was the case, okay? And he's standing there looking at, he's gone. He's so strung out on something that, you know, all I saw that, I saw that bloody towel. I looked at him and then I started walking towards it. I picked up the towel and I started the corner of it, obviously. I started to beat him with it.

And Joseph was six foot two. It was a big man. I don't know what, I don't know what happened. I beat him. I, it was like, you know how the Tasmanian devil runs around your legs and you can't really see what's going on? Well, that was me. I only stopped when my body could no longer go because I beat him and punched him and kicked him so much. I had him on the floor like this.

And then, because I was completely out of breath, then the stream of obscenities started to come out. You know, I was linking superlatives together that I didn't even know could be linked together. And then it ended with you are the biggest effing disappointed. in my life. And I left him in the corner of the room and I curled up peep, walked proudly out of the thing and into my car and drove home, ran in the house, checked my kids. Now I was, now it's probably about 10 o'clock at night. And I'm completely beside myself. I'm not going to call my parents, you know, I'm not going to call my best friends, which is in Boston. So I, I said, I, I'm not going to call my started to do like every crazy, a raised woman wife would do. I went into the garage, grabbed the

hefty bags, and I started dumping all his shit into the hefty bags. And I had like four bags. And I'm hurling them. I threw him into the garage, paste the house for like, I think I probably went to bed at like four in the morning. It was June. So the kids were off from school. The next morning, my daughter's jumping on me at like, you know, seven in the morning, six 30. And I open my eyes as like, oh, my God, this is my life. So I, you know, do what every mother does. I bring them in. I make him some breakfast.

I hear the garage door open. I'm like, oh, my God. He comes through the garage door leads into the kitchen. Comes in, red-eyed looking like hell. And he said to me, this is what he said to me. What? He didn't make me coffee? I could feel all my Sicilian, Italian,

I almost jumped on him. But my kids were there. So, you know, they said, hi, daddy, they don't, well, they're innocence, you know. They ran off into their room. I got into his face. And I said, I will never make you another effing cup of coffee. The rest of you're like, by the way, your shit's in the garage. Get out.

And that's it. So he's living his life. I just gave him the opportunity to, I kicked him out of the office. I just gave him the opportunity to, I had a pre-up, by the way, which gave me the clinic. I forgot to mention that small little fact. Okay.

But the building was ours, right? I kicked him out of the clinic. I didn't want, you want somebody who's on that stuff? Work adjusting your neck? I don't think so. So he lives in that condo, and he's going to town with, his father's $2 million.

Do you get a lawyer? Not initially. He's burning through part of your money. Yeah. Not initially. And then came one day. It was a Saturday, like three months down the road. He was barely visiting the kids.

And when he would come, it was like he turned into something like he belonged under a bridge, like dirty and unkept and unshaven. He just looked really bad, Matt. One day he comes in and, no, no. Oh, he comes in and I said to him, if any part of the old Joseph can hear me right now, please don't let your kids see you like this. Just please just go.

And that day he turned around and walked out. Other times, you know, he wanted to see the kids and then he would pass out on my daughter's bed and she would like put all the stuffed animals around him like E.T. in the closet. Remember that scene? Yeah. Yeah. That's how he looked. And he was in the middle of it. Out cold. So one day, it's a Saturday. My son comes in and I go, where are you going, Joseph? My little son's Joseph too. Let's call him Jojo. Go, where you're going, Jojo? He goes, Daddy's taking me to extreme sports today. He's like 10 years old. I go, Daddy didn't talk to me

about this. He's no, no, he's coming at 10 to come and get me. So 10 o'clock, 1015 comes 1030. I'm thinking, thank God he didn't show up. Sure enough, quarter to 11, he shows up. Honks the car. I go out there, he's got sunglasses. I pull in his eyes a bloodshot. I go, do not take this kid right now. I promised him to get to break away from the car. I go, please do not take this kid. And he said to me, I'm fine. I go, I really don't want you to take him. He goes, Joseph, get in the car. The kid climbs in the front seat. I watched them pull away.

And my stomach... How old's your son? Ten. Okay. Just wondering if he should be in the front seat. Right, he weighed 90 pounds. Okay. Okay.

And... So you went inside. You called the police and said, I think he's driving impaired. The police pulled him over and arrested him. No. No. Boy, this is just one bad decision after another other.

Exactly. Because to me, that's... At this point, you should be building a case again. against him. Yeah, well, I did after this. Nice. It was kind of late. So he gets in the car. I start calling him.

I'm a couple hours, you know, I'll be home by 1 o'clock, you know, it's like 11. So 1 o'clock, the phone doesn't answer the phone, 1.30, quarter to 2, 2 o'clock, 5 after 2, the phone rings. Hi, this is the Broward County Sheriff. Your husband

was in an accident. How was your son? He was in the front seat. He was okay? Well, let me finish with the story. Okay. Yes and no. Yes and no.

So he was knocked unconscious. Your son? No. The husband, the husband, Joseph. We're not worried about him. Right. He hits the steering. He hits the, you know, he's got to, breaks the windshield.

He runs into a pole on pomp. Yeah. There's poles. They're tricky. They jump out at you sometimes. Yeah, they just jump in the way when you're driving. So my son is, the car. smoking. My son opens the door, gets out, can't barely walk, okay, and then a cop pulled up.

And they saw the accident. They called the ambulance. They brought him in. So I met him. So I called my father and I said, Dad, I'm on the way to the hospital. Could you, could you take Gianna, my daughter? So my father comes running over and he says to me, swear to me right now, swear to me that you're not going to find him and kick the crap out of him. And I'm like, you know, I'm not that kind of person, you know. I said, no, I'm just going to see my son. I get to the hospital, the cops.

And I said, he goes, we just found him. You know, we were patrolling, we found him. I go to see my son. He tells me, Mom, a lady, a blonde lady with a rainbow dress, stopped and told me she was going to send help. There was no blonde lady unless you believe in, you know, somebody sent an angel like my father-in-law or somebody. So they never drug tested my husband in the hospital. He said that the son hit his eye and he just lost control of the car.

At that point, they're in the hospital, state farm insurance, right? We have 100% coverage. I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't want that to happen. So I'm going to make the long story short about the hospital stay. My son was not responding appropriately. And he was projectile vomiting after this 24 hours. And most of the nurses were patients of mine in that Broward Hospital. So I said, get the doctor in here now.

He's been in here for 48 hours. Something's very wrong. So the doctor comes. It was a female. I go, if this was your son, you would have done a cat scan already. and I like God in her face. Within five minutes, he was rolled down to the CAT scan. The seatbelt had impacted his bowel.

So it involuted his, so there was nothing, there was no way to go down. It was only can come up. Okay. So that's why this kid was projectile. We give him, you know, the next thing I know, he's got to go for surgery.

Right. I was a raving lunatic. My medical doctor comes to the hospital. hospital. He says to me, his father needs to know. I pushed him against the wall. I said, his father caused this. I said, and I should be reporting his ass right now. He checked himself out of the hospital within the, I never went to see him within the 24 hours. So he comes out. Before they did the surgery, they put a tube down his throat to empty out all his contents of his stomach or fluids because they couldn't go in there in that situation.

The kid was like sitting there just crying, like tears, silently crying. And he came out of the hospital. He came out of, you know, of course I went, comes out of the surgery. And I said, okay, Doc, what's the next step? They go, we have to get them to poop so that we know that the whole system can run through. I said, okay, the kid was basically despondent. So I start on the phone. Okay, I called my dad.

Dad, how much you're going to give Joseph a fee poops? Okay, he's got 50 bucks from us. Okay, I started calling all my staff. I had to give the kid motivation to like, you know. So he healed. On the last day, I was in the bathroom. We had a private room. I was in the bathroom.

And I hear him say, don't worry, Daddy, she doesn't have a gun. He came to see his son. He knew he had, you know. I go, you're just in time to see him walk because we have to increase peristolsus. So the kids walking with like four IVs, you know, his little tush is sticking out of the gown and the nurses are on either side. And I'm like 10 feet behind with my husband. And I said, Tim, you did this.

If this is not an opportunity for you to get help, I don't know what is. This is not the man that I knew and loved. What, what, you know, he started to cry. He leaves. Instead, he did go into a rehab twice, but he couldn't sustain it. My son came home. It was pretty debilitated for like a week. You know, my parents would watch him why I went to work and so forth.

And he has this little war wound around his belly button. And life went on. And then I decided, you know what? The only way to protect my kids at this point is to either get a restraining order or divorce his ass. So I went. I got an attorney. and we showed up. He was late to show up to court.

He comes there with a black guy. He looked like he got into a fight the night before. This guy is just a wreck. He was just a train wreck. And he said to me at the end of the thing, they said, you're okay, you can go to mediation. At the end of the thing, he said to me, I can't get my car out.

Could you give me 20 bucks to get my cars in the parking garage? and I took a $20. My return, he goes, what the hell, Linda? Let him freaking rot. I go, that's not who I am. I can't do that. Call me stupid, whatever you want to do.

I just, he was the father of my kids. You know, like, do the parents, do his parents and your parents? Does everybody know that he's all fucked up on drugs? Yeah, well, his dad's dead. His mother had, his mother had a stroke was in an institution. Okay, so your parents, but your parents, no. My parents, no.

Okay. Does he have brother's sister? Does anybody in his family know that he's causing this chaos? His sister lives in California. She's a train wreck herself. She's a mental train wreck. Never been there for the kids or anybody. So I'm going, I'm basically on my own on this.

So we, the attorney, the judge sends us to mediation. So we go to mediation, who's representing him, but an attorney that we do PI, personal injury with? I'm like, what are you doing here, Will? I know this situation, Linda, I'm going to be very easy. Get him thrown off the case. Well, we're at mediation. Listen, man, I got this whole thing worked out. You're making every mistake there is.

I'll get that dude thrown out. I might have gone and scheduled events or scheduled appointments with every single decent divorce attorney in the area just to make sure he ends up with some scumbag that has to drive. Well, he did end up with a scumbag. This guy was a scumbag. Good. So we go to mediation.

and we're in there hashing things out. And this guy, William, who said he was going to protect me, he's like, I want, as soon as our daughter is 18, I want you to sell the house and I want half the proceeds. The building, you have five years to move the clinic out of it and sell it because then I want half the proceeds. And I'm sitting there. And when my son was born in July of 96, my husband traded my 325 convertible BMW to a 740.

Now the car was 11 years old. We called it Vinny Carbona because Dr. Carbona put a deposit on. Side note. Anyway, so Vinny Carbona, I'm driving this BMW for 11 years. He was, I want the car. I go, why do you want the car? He goes, I bought you that car. And he's completely strung out.

The mediator, Michael, I'll never forget this guy, he was a retired judge, an Italian guy. They were getting so outlandish with the request. I jumped across the conference table, and he's like, Linda, sit down after that BMW thing. We're trying to hash this whole thing out. So finally, the mediator says to me, come with me in my office. At this point, I'm like, and I looked at him, I go, if I was your daughter, what would you tell me? He goes, if I was, if you were my daughter, I would have put a bullet in this jackass his head. But I'm going to tell you, give him the freaking 11-year-old BMW and never look in the rearview mirror, Linda,

because he's going to go down and he's going to take you with him if you don't get away from this guy as soon as possible. So we get back, he calmed me down, went back in, and I said, fine, you could have the BMW. Fine. He goes, I don't feel like signing the papers. So now the mediator gets up because, okay, Dr. Ferranti, he said, you have till Monday at 5 o'clock to sign this. And if you don't, I'm advising Linda to bring this to court. And we're going to talk about your little drug escapades and endangering your son. I think the judge would love to hear about all that stuff.

Oh, the problem was he didn't want to give me child support. Two kids, 1,000 a month. He goes, well, I'm not working now. I don't want to give her $1,000 a month. You're working because you're a drug addict. That's not my, that's a you problem. That is a you problem. So at this point, there was a Mr. Right now in my life named Rich.

Right. And I'm beside myself. I was, you know, and he said to me, he was a counselor for adolescent drug addicts. And he said to sign the paperwork. I, for what? so you can give me $500 a month for two kids. He goes, he ain't given you a dime, Linda. It doesn't matter if it's $5,000 a month.

He's not paying it. He's going to crash out here. He's got six months before he's probably, you know, before he overdoses or himself or is in jail, or he's got a couple of years of just tragedy if he doesn't end up overdosing. With a needle in his arm dead. You know, that's how I thought we're going to find him.

So I signed the paper. for the $500. I got one check for $500. I saved it. I took a picture of it. That was the only check I ever got. Never another child. Could I have taken him back to court?

Yeah. I just wanted to kind of push him out of my life. I didn't want him coming around. I didn't want the kids to be subjected to him. Okay. He goes and spends like $250,000 of his inheritance in Costa Rica by some sort of, who knows? I brought it to some pay. I bought into some tourneys after what I go, what is this?

And they go, was the guy on drugs? I go, yeah, he was. He goes, well, this is nothing, Linda. You know, he just lost $250,000. What do? Buy into a diamond, a gold mine or something? I'm bought into some sort of, I don't know, in real estate investment in Costa Rica. No, that's a bad idea.

Yeah, it was a very bad idea. I don't know anybody that's investing in Costa Rica and said, oh, it was a best decision I remain. That's where all the criminals go, don't they go to Costa Rica? Oh, listen, I have met two different guys that were selling shares in a diamond mine. No, no, it was a diamond. I'm sorry.

It was a gold mine in Costa Rica. And it was just, you know, and they sold like, I forget it was like $15, $20, $30 million. Both of them. Like one guy had $5. One guy was successful. He did like $20 million. It was all bullshit. There was a gold mine, but the government owns it.

You don't own anything. Right. But they convince these guys to get money and they're going to get money back. Maybe it wasn't a gold mine. It was real estate. But same shit. Sometimes they fly him out there and they actually, they show them the core samples where they give the, they got an expert there. He's like, it's a guarantee.

You've got a million. We just need a couple hundred thousand. Just to start, just start digging. Yeah. So, okay, once go by, he's coming less and less to see the kids. I'm relieved. He shows up at my door one day. where the kids were at school,

is knock on the door. I hadn't seen him in at least two months. And there is the six-foot-two guy, probably 160 pounds. He'd probably wait about 220 to begin with, 160 pounds, walking with a cane. So he said to me,

can I come in? So I, you know, of course, let him in the house. Thank God the kids weren't there. And he takes a piece of paper and throws it at me. It's an MRI. He had kidney cancer

that had metastasized to his thoracic and lumbar spines. and he was basically dying. And he said to me, I'm sorry. I need to come home. I go, are you kidding me? You want me to bring you home so you could die

in the house with the kids? They've already separated that. Now, if I didn't have kids, I might have taken him in. I might have. As one decent human being to another, well, I don't know how decent he was, but I was a decent.

But I said, I'm sorry. I can't allow that. But I became his health care surrogate because we were already divorced. Right. So I had to call my friend who was an attorney. Two weeks later, he wound up in the hospital. He's, this thing was growing. Like, he died at 130 pounds with this thing that looked like a pregnant belly coming out of the side of his left kidney.

And so I had the DNR. I had the horrible story. horrible. I had the, you know, I had the decision to make, you know, I had paid for his life insurance. I said, I'd like to keep your life insurance during the divorce so that, because I know he wasn't going to pay for it. Yeah. Which was only $400,000. But thank God I had it. Okay. So basically, I'm taking the kids there to see it's right around Christmas. We brought food back and, you know, we're trying to feed him. And my son's trying to give him an insure. And he drops it. and he spills it on him, and we're trying to change him, and he's screaming in pain.

They had the Dilaudin pump, so he was, you know, pump him. And my daughter goes like this, she goes, Mommy, do you something, Mommy. And then the world went completely still for me, and I said, oh, my God, this is way too much for an eight-year-old kid. She was eight years old. He was 12. So at that point in time, I made the decision not to take them back.

And I started to go on my own. Then I met with the social worker. She's like, we need to bring hospice in. He's, you know, we don't expect him to live too long. So I called hospice. The hospice started on a Sunday. Sunday I went to see him in the morning. He was unconscious.

By the afternoon, I went back. They had him propped like this with the arms out up so they would take the pressure off of this mass. Look like Jesus on the cross. It just looked like something like he was like 80 years old. I went back at night and I grabbed his hand. He's unconscious. Grabbed his hand and I said, Joseph. And his breathing is like this.

I knew. I knew it was close. And I started to sing what he sang to me on our wedding day, Harry Chapin's taxi. It was raining hard in Frisco. You know the song? It took one more. All of a sudden his breathing. got regular. Like he heard me. Never squeezed my hand, but his breathing got regular. So I sang the

song for like 20 minutes singing the same verses because who the hell knows all the verses that. And second I stopped, his breathing went back to that. Next morning, I was running late with the kids. I called my dad. I said, Dad, could you go check on Joseph? And he said, yeah. So I went to the drop the kids off, went to the office. And then at my dad called me. He goes, Linda, it's not good, his breathing. I said, Dad, that's how he was last night. He said, does he look like Jesus on the cross the way they have? I go, yeah, let's not talk.

Like the same visual I got. It was kind of crazy. Anyway, he died. That day? Yes, I was in a treatment room with a patient. There was a knock on the door. We had those sliding doors. I opened it up.

My entire staff is standing there looking at me. They go, you need to take this phone. Call Dr. Linda. it's Coral Springs Hospital. I was working on a patient who knew us for 25 years. She started to cry. They take her off the therapy. I go into my office and they said,

I'm sorry to let you know that he passed away. I just sat there. Like, is this my life? What the heck, man? What just happened? Like, I don't understand. So I had to, that patient. she says, Dr. Linda, I'll drive Dr. Linda home.

And Dr. Wolf, my other, my medical doctor, he said, all right, I'll bring you back, Joyce. We'll get Dr. Linna's car. So they drove me home. My father and his wife were already there. My mother and her husband, everybody knew. And my mother goes, okay, the whole family is going to tell the kids, pick them up. I said, no, I think I'm going to tell the kids. I'm going to bring them, you know, because I kept saying,

Daddy's not doing well. They saw it with their own eyes. So I pick up the kids. They're like, what are you doing here, Mom? Go, come on, we're going home. They get home. They see the entire family there, my brother, you know. And my family is a very tight Italian family.

And I said, you need to come into Mommy's bedroom. I need to tell you something. So he sat on the floor and I said, Daddy, Daddy died this morning. He passed away. And my daughter started to cry a little bit. And my son goes, okay, mom, could we go back out to the family? Like, they didn't process it. They were all excited that there was company.

So then I had to borrow some money from my dad to bury him. I did the eulogy. He's up in New Jersey with his dad. Did the eulogy at the funeral. And his, whatever family and friends were there from his father's, you know, he was very popular doctor. A lot of people came out of the woodwork. All his childhood friends were there.

nobody would not know the whole story because I didn't say it. I just said he said made some bad decisions. I spoke for like 30 minutes, eulogy, and I didn't cry once. I don't know where the hell I got. You pull the strength out of the depths of your soul, and that was it. And then... That sounds like you cried a lot when he was alive. Yeah, no, I did.

I mourned him before he actually died, and then I mourned him more after he died, but never in front of the kids. Those were some angry years of my life. And, you know, I buried him and came home and just went back to my life. That time, I had this guy, Mr. Wright, Mr. Right now in my life, Rich. And he kind of supported him. He was with me through many of the dark nights of the soul. All right, so let me fast forward what happens. My medical doctor, I'm glad you're getting a kick out of it.

My medical doctor gets in trouble with Medicare. Okay. He was over billing or he's just. No, not in the clinic. Everything was legitimately built. He got involved with some pain clinic down in North Miami Beach. They take him out. Okay.

80% of my practice is now Medicare. They, they take him out. What do you mean? He was indicted. He was indicted. He was indicted. Right. So he comes in one day and says,

can't. No, he never came in. He just stopped coming in altogether. I got a phone call. From him? Medicare. Oh. I got a phone call from Medicare. He did all the billing under his name, which was thankful because if it was under my company name, Advanced Medical Associates, we would have been in trouble, right? Okay, so he goes. Joseph died in 2009. What happens in 2009, the crash of the real estate. Right. Two of my tenants on the third floor, just, I come in, they're gone. So now I got this mortgage of $11,000 a month.

I got his life insurance and I started going through his life insurance to keep the building. And in the middle of this whole thing, the city of sunrise where the building was in, they got their hand caught in the cookie jar. There was a lot of stuff about them. Some inspector comes to my office and he goes, you don't have a gate around the dumpster. I go, the building's been here for 30 years. Why, of a sudden, do we need a...

Well, that's the new code. We had a patch of grass around the building. It was a building on stilts, so you actually parked underneath it, and then there was a second and third floor, which was really the first and the second floor. I was the whole second floor. So I'm going through his life. insurance like it's nobody's business, okay? And my father actually had to give me 10,000 to bury him

because we spent a lot of the money on divorces and, you know, the nest egg was unduendling. So I went to, I said, I sat down with Mr. right now and I said, he said, okay, Linda, you just lost Medicare, which is 80% of your practice. What's your biggest, your next biggest income builder. I said personal injury. He goes, okay, start going to every personal injury attorney and tell them, you know, your husband passed away. A lot of them knew him. He used to play

golf with them. You know, tell them. When the weather cools down, Golden Nugget online casino turns up the heat. This winter, make any moment golden and play thousands of games like her new slot wolf it up and all the fan favorite huff and puff and puffed games.

Whether you're curled up on the couch or taking five between snow shovel, Play winner's hottest collection of slots. From brand new games to the classics you know and love. You can also pull up your favorite table games like blackjack, roulette, and craps. Or go for even more excitement with our library of live dealer games. Download the Golden Nugget Online Casino app

and you've got everything you need to layer on the fun this winter. In partnership with Golden Nugget Online Casino. Gambling Problem Call ConX Ontario at 1-866. 531, 2,600. 19 and over. Physically President Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See golden nuggetcasino.com for details.

Please play responsibly. What happened and start getting some cases. So I did that. I had started to get some cases coming in, but I was still strapped, $11,000 a month mortgage. Yeah, because you're not really getting paid for those cases. You're immediately, right? Big. Yeah.

You're taking the invoices. and sticking them in a file. And when they eventually, when those cases settle, then you get paid. Well, they have 10,000 PIP, so you get 80% of it. But a lot of times if they went to the hospital, that was already. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So that wasn't enough to sustain us. So I went to this one attorney who was down the block, and he said to me, I knew him for a lot of years. And I said to him, I'm in really bad trouble. I can't afford this building. I put it on the market. I had people come in there and offer me. mean less than I owed for it.

So he goes, I know these people that could help you. And this is an attorney? This is an attorney. Okay. I know these people that can help you. He calls this guy Mani in. He goes, I'm going to send Mani to your office. Mani's not a good start in the day right now.

Yeah. So Mani comes to the office and he says, he wants to see the location. He goes, okay, I'm going to introduce you to my friends. Felix and Andrew. Why don't you come down and meet them tomorrow? So now I'm driving to sunny aisles. Okay? Talk to these guys on the phone.

They had a very strong accent. Ukrainian. Ukrainian, Russian. To me, it was all the same at the time. So I go down to meet them. I have to get buzzed to get in. Okay? Always a good sign.

Yeah. And there was a big room with physical therapists. There was a lot of people in there. And then I got buzzed into another room. And I was in with these three guys who were starting. One guy was on a computer looking up my whole history, asking me about businesses that we opened along the way. Total Compliance Network. All this shit came up.

And the other guy was personally looking at. And there was another guy that was a bald-headed guy who was just a scary looking dude, looking at cameras. and we'd like to come and see your facility. So I said, okay, I said, I have a lot of room, blah, blah, blah. So we're thinking about buying the building. And I was like, oh, thank you. He said, we'll come down tomorrow and we'll check it out. So now I'm kind of excited.

Maybe I can get out of this. You know, they can start one of their clinics inside. So I left there. The hair on my neck stood up. and that womanly gut instinct told me, you know, this is scary, Linda, be very careful with this. So they come the next day. They love the space. You know, of course, it's mine.

I own the building. And they said, well, we don't want to buy the building yet. We'd like to open a clinic. I said, that's fine. I said, there's $3,000 on this side, $3,000. You can take that $3,000. Just pay me rent. He goes, great.

I said, you have to get an ACA license. He goes, yeah, we have to get that. Because you know what ACCA is? It's like it's a non-medical professional owning a medical professional. You have to have a special licensing. And it's not easy to get. He says, yeah, we have some applications in. So in the meantime, in the meantime, we'll just go on to advance medical associates.

I go for how long. Who's that? You? Me. Oh, okay. This is, this was my grand mistake, honey. I let them use my tax ID. number. And they came in and they, so then we went back and forth, but they're okay, we'll pay you

$5,000 a month rent. And we'll pay you a salary and you can see our patients. So now I had been in practice 25 years. I was used to maybe four personal injury cases coming in a month. That was a good month, one a week. That's a good, you know, because you send one to an attorney, then he sends you one back, and they had been going off for 25 years. All of a sudden there's like 10 cases coming in a day. It started out like one a day, and then it started to like five a day, and then it was like, I couldn't handle it. I'm still trying to see my own patients.

I'm trying to see theirs. I said to them, I go, I'd like to have a meeting. So they come to the office in there, Bentley, with the airlight, you know, $2,000 sunglasses on. And I said, where are these patients coming from? Oh, Linda, we are doing 411 pain and we're doing $10,000 in Google Ads, SEO. I believed them. You know, I figured it takes money to make money. Then another six months goes by, I call them in again.

I go, I can't possibly keep up with this. They brought this Russian woman, Ukrainian. She was absolute, absolute gorgeous. girl, a beautiful Russian girl. On the inside, she was pure evil. There's no emotional heart there. He puts her in my office. Okay? She's going to help you? Yeah, she's going to help me, right? Meanwhile, she's answering phones. You know, she had her own private office. In time, I started to see some shady people coming in. Did they get their license? I asked them after six months, where are we with the license? It still hasn't come through.

Come on, man. Stop, stop. Right. You even have a license there. You already get denied and you're appealing it. Like, come on. It takes like a year at least to get that ACA license. Yeah.

Well, I need to see something. Well. Okay, so just add this to the list of stupidity. Okay. I'm, keep in mind, I'm having gone to prison and I am much less trusting than I, than the average person out there be like, oh, okay. And they just keep, you know, where I'd be like, uh-uh, you got something. Give me something with a letterhead.

I want to see something. I want to copy. Right. Let me see an email. Where before I would have been like, oh, okay. Yeah, it takes a while. Yeah. Yeah.

So you become pessimistic, basically. Oh, horribly. I remember my husband always said to me, take off your rosy glasses, Linda, and see the world as it really is. Well, during that deposition, I said, you know what I did with my rosy glasses? I took them off and shattered them. I see who you really are now. So I was stupid enough.

I must have put them back on for this situation. So now I had this in my office. Okay? I was on one side. She's answering the phone. She brings her mother in to help with the billing, and they had a central billing office. Well, it turns out these guys had 10 different clinics

under 10 different doctors' names, and they were bringing in big money. big PI money. Okay. So after six, eight months, I called them in again. I go, I can't keep up with this. I really want out.

Where's your license, you know, find somebody else? I can't. She was timing me doing initial reports with patients. I almost literally pushed her down. I said, you need to get out of my face because it's going to be a problem. She calls them up. I'm rude to her.

This is not rude. My regular Blue Cross Blue Shield patients are calling up. I'm sorry, Dr. Linda doesn't have an appointment for two weeks. So my personal practice went, started to go like this. So one day, I'm into this now. They come to me. They want to open another practice in Hollywood. I said, I don't want to do it.

I can't barely keep up with this. I'm bringing home files of paperwork every night. I'm on the computer trying to do these final reports. It was just too much. It was too much for three people. people doctors to handle, never mind one. My weekends would spend, you know, either with the kids or doing paperwork. They come to me, we want to open another practice in your name. No, that's not happening. I don't want it. I don't want to do it. Oh, come on, Linda, you know, I don't,

I find somebody else. Dr. Olga, who works in North Miami Beach, have her do. Well, I don't know how many practices were in her name at that point. So they knew that I was a stupid ass, gullible, and I was the perfect, I was already beaten down, you know, and anyway, they took advantage of me. So one day, it's now 2015, five years, no ACCA, no nothing. I'm talking to Big Dad. Remember, the building's on stilts. We're talking in between patients. I look out the window and I see like 10 black SUVs pull up in the back.

I go, what's going on, Big Dad? All of a sudden. Who's Big Dad? Big Dad is my massage therapist for 20 years. Oh, okay. He was like my, but he was the guy that I brought the rocks to. Oh, okay. Okay?

It's like my brother, really. All of a sudden, like a Sifon Q, all the doors opened up the same time, IRS, FBI, State Police, Sunny Isle Police, start running to the building with, like, bulletproof vests on. I go, Big Dad, somebody's getting busted. You're the only one in the building. Well, no, I had an attorney upstairs. I mean, I had, you know. What do you think Carl did?

I don't think Carl did anything. They ran, they ran into, they swarmed like red ants into my office. They sequestered me into my office. All the patients were there. Ina disappeared. She disappeared off of the face of the earth. Her had an escape route in her mind, so if they come to go here. She was, I come to find out.

Because I don't know what the hell happened, to be honest with you. So I'm like a deer in the headlight, you know. I'm sitting at my desk. I'm sitting across from my desk. I went to walk around and grab my water. And this cop who was assigned to my door, she's like, don't you move. I go, I'm grabbing my water. Like, you know, like, so this guy comes in, state police.

And he says to me, who's that? because I was renting out a couple of rooms to a psychologist. I go, she's a psychologist, separate entity. So she had a patient in there. Everybody was dismissed, and they brought in these vans and started to take apart all the files. They had a warrant, a search and seizure, and all this stuff. So then the guy comes in, and now I got this guy on one side of desk with me, the Italian guy, who was nice. And this other guy comes in FBI, and he goes, where's your purse?

He starts going through my purse. He pulls out my makeup thing. pulling out, like, what do you think you're going to find in there? Lipstick with a razor blade. I mean, like, I was like a little bit obnoxious with them. He's like, ma'am, just be quiet. So the other guy started to snicker. So the big shot comes in and he takes my phone.

I guess they downloaded everything on my phone. And he gives me my car keys and my license. And he goes, come back at 7 o'clock tonight. So I leave. have any phone to call anybody. I drive straight home like a deer in the headlights. And the exterminator who does the building, who also does my house, my mother's house, calls my mother and goes, I don't know what's happening at your daughter's office. There's all these cars there. It looks like, like, so my, you know, my mother calls me that night. I'm

afraid. And she goes, what's going on? Linda? I go, nothing, ma, everything's fine. What's going on? I go, nothing, ma, nothing. Everything's fine. I go, nothing, everything's fine. Are you sure, and she knows that something happened? Yeah. I was afraid. I get home. I called Steve, who is now in my life.

And that was Mr. right now. No, that was, Mr. Right now, I got rid of him. Oh, okay.

This is the new book. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't go in much into the guys. I was sticking more than the story. So you're dating this guy, Steve? Yeah. It was a blind date.

He's a plumber. I didn't want to date with him. Okay. So, okay. That's another son. That's a very funny story. Like, I'm a doctor, right? Right.

I get a friend who is a mutual friend. He goes, you want to meet a plumber? I go, absolutely not. Because what do you think of when you think of plumber? That guy. Plummer crash. Yeah, butt crack. He goes, okay, Linda, let me put him on.

So, Steve was already in my life. We met. Okay. So I call Steve. I go, something just happened. He goes, what do you mean, Linda? I go, I'm at home. I go, the office was raided.

He goes, Okay, I'm on my way. Then big daddy's knocking on my door because they dismissed all my dad. He goes, what the f was that? I go, so I was like literally sick to my stomach. I go to a friend who's an attorney friend of mine, Steve, and I said, he said, another Steve. Yeah, a bunch of Steve in my life. My brother, Steve, too.

It's crazy. So he said, come to the office. I don't want to talk on the phone. So I went to the office. He had connections. He called somebody he knew at the FBI. And the woman says to him, if they came in and busted and had a search in Caesar, they've been watching her office for at least a year and a half, maybe two,

before they ever move in on that. He said, tell her to get an attorney. He said, okay, Linda. So he didn't do that kind of, you know, now we're talking criminal. Yeah. So he wrote the name of somebody down. He went back home. At this point, I get a call from Andrew.

He goes, what just happened? Because they had cameras in the office on their side. I go, we were raided. You didn't see them coming in before they turned. He goes, yeah, I see him. I go, he goes, what's going on? I go, I don't know. You want to tell me what's going on?

Felix at the time was in Israel. So that night, he comes to my house. My brother comes to my house. My family gathers, like, what's going on here? I'm saying they're like, so Andrew goes, okay, Linda. And he starts asking me a million questions. Did you talk to this one? I go, I don't know.

All I do is work. I see 50 patients a day. And then I come home to my kids. What do you think I'm, you know, like they immediately pointed to me. So they had a car registered under Advanced Medical Associates, which was my company, to Ina, the beautiful Russian. Right. He goes, have you talked to, and I go, no, she disappeared.

I didn't see her with the raid. Everybody disappeared. It was like, we all scattered, except me. They dismissed me. So he goes, we'll call her now because she won't answer the phone. She didn't answer the phone to him. She didn't answer the phone to me. On cue, about 15 minutes later, the phone rings.

It's hard. I put it on speaker. She doesn't know Andrews sitting right there. She goes, Dr. Linda. I said, did I do it good? I'm sure you could do it better. She had that thick of an accent. Oh, she had an accent.

Okay. She goes, your car is in this and this parking lot, write this address down, and the key will be under the back wheel. I go, what is going on? She goes, I cannot talk to you. I go, well, Andrew's here when he wants to talk to you. Tell Andrew, I never want to see him or talk to them again in my life. Supposedly, she was one of their lovers. I think it was Felix.

Okay. Okay. So that's how she got it. I guess they knew each other back in the day and before he got married or maybe during, marriage. I don't really care. Okay. But she, because I asked them to remove her like 10 times. Right. Her and I were like oil and water. I mean, I don't think anybody could get along with her. So the next day, Andrew and I start going to different attorney's offices. We wound up in Brickle to meet these attorneys. Nice. We all needed different attorneys because. Conflict of interest.

Exactly. So. that this attorney was going to take Andrew, the attorney downstairs was going to take Felix, and they recommended me to Bruce Udorf, who was a prosecutor at some point in Miami. So I got Bruce Udorf. I met with him. I went with different, Andrew and I went to see four different attorneys, okay? Okay. And I, the next day, Bruce came to my office and he said to me, okay, Linda, at this point, you're cutting off.

Oh, before that, the one guy that, was representing Andrew went into and called who he knew and with the prosecutors. And he comes out and he says, well, Felix and Andrew are a big problem. And Linda, you're kind of like an aftermath. Right. You don't have as much to worry about. Yeah. Okay.

You have a minor role. A minor role. Yes. Okay. Go to the attorney. I go to the attorney. What does that cost? Well, you could either get him by the hour.

I didn't have the money. I said to... How do you not have the money after all this? Well, I had like $50,000. That's all I had. Which is probably not enough for him. And you're out. And it's not like you're seeing patience anymore.

Well, I said to Andrew, I said, you guys owe me a bunch of money. You need to give me some money now. Right. And they wound up going before they took the account. He wound up giving me $25,000. I should have gotten more. So I used that to pay the attorney. Okay.

And it was either a flat rate or you pay him by hour. It turns out a flat rate was cheaper. Right. So he comes in to the office. I meet with him and he goes back and talks to the prosecutors, the three musketeers, Kaplan. I had the two Jewish guys and then there was an Italian who I never met him. It was the two Jewish guys.

Schwartz and Kaplan. They're both since retired right now. And months go by. And he says to me, okay, this is what you need to do. You need to take all these cases that you have going on. Your cases, just finish them out. And their cases, you want to call them back up to their attorney and get rid of them. You cannot treat their patients anymore.

All right. Okay, so that's what I did. And then I had to fire half the staff. Okay. And then Big Daddy, he said to me, Dr. Linda, I, after 20-something years, he said, I can't, I can, you're not going to be practicing much longer. I'm going to go find another job. I go, you're going to leave me during this?

And he goes, well, I have to worry about, you know, me. I was heartbroken. But my right-hand girl, Colleen, a Jamaican lady who's been with me 25 years, she stayed. And we had no files. We had nothing. Yeah, because they took them all. They took them all. Computers, everything.

So I said, okay, because I still had HMO patients, I still had Blue Cross-Bushiel, that, no. I said, patients come in, you give them new paperwork. It's a new year. They have to sign new paperwork. And that's how we did. And we little, I went and bought a old school appointment book. And we started, we didn't know who was coming in, who was scheduled.

You know, we just had to take one day at a time to get through it. So as they walked in, you're like, oh, Mr. Johnson. We've been waiting for you. Yeah. So we wound up, you know, the P.I swindled within a few months. gone because I wasn't allowed to see any more PIs according to the attorney. And then three, four months into it, I get a call from Bruce. So you're like hanging limbo, your life is on edge when all this is happening, right?

Nothing's happened. Right. He said to me, okay, tomorrow you have to come in and meet the federal prosecutors. And I want you to come in there and go naked in front of them. I go, will that help? He goes, no, Linda, naked in the fact that everything that you know, you got to tell them. One's going to play a good guy.

One's going to play a bad guy. I'm just going to give you a scenario. I need you to come in a suit and be prepared. So that's what I did. And I remember that night before, did I sleep a wink? No. I get to the federal. Bruce was on the 14th floor.

The feds are on the seventh floor of the same building. So we walk in, you have to go through the thing. I'm in my suit. I get escorted into this room with a giant conference table. there was the two prosecutors, Sunny Isles Police, three FBI agents, three state police agents, IRS, all around the table, me and Bruce. To say I was scared was the understatement. So I walk in on this and he goes, okay, Linda, I can see from your accent, where are you from? I go the same place you are because I hear you have the same accent.

He laughed. He goes, yeah, I'm from New York too. He said, okay, so you're Italian. I said, yeah. He goes, then could you tell me why advanced medical associates been washing, paying the shul and sunny aisles, $10,000 to $20,000 a month? They were washing money through the shul. You know what the shul is the temple.

Okay. They were giving the rabbi money, and then I don't know what they were doing. All right. So they're paying a rabbi. He may be sitting at Israel. It's coming back in another form or whatever. It's going to some. Ukrainian bank somewhere, whatever.

Do I know any of this? No. So he says to me, what's a nice Italian girl like you from New York is donating to the shul? I go, because I wasn't donating it. So he proceeds to rip me a new one. You know, people like you, that the insurance rates are going up. And he just vicious.

And I just sat there like, oh, my God, I wanted to just melt into the chair. You realize that you were paying off people to. to get cases. I didn't know any of it, to be honest with you. So at the end of this, 45 minutes of hell, they put me in a separate room. Bruce stays in there.

And then he comes out and I go, what? He goes, I don't talk on enemy territory. Let's go to my floor. So we go up to the 14th floor. And he goes, you're in a big trouble, girl. No, no, no, minor role. Minor role. Remember we talked,

these guys are the problem. I'm a minor player. They had all these other clinics. So it was over $25 million. My clinic did $5.7 million. $5.7 million and your... Advanced medical. Yeah, having to borrow or hope to get $25,000 to pay your attorney.

Yeah, thanks. Sorry. So they knew. They had been... Okay, so he said, you're going to take a plea? And then you're going to meet with these people and you're going to tell them everything you know. You're going to explain the files. And so that's what happened.

I took a plea, not really fully understanding. You know, I understood I was pleading guilty because they were using my tax ID number, so I was guilty. Right. That's my crime. So. I think the term you probably heard is willful blindness. I never heard that term, Matt. I wish I would have.

Well, I'm saying that what they typically. say is you're like, yeah, but I didn't know. And they're like, yeah, but you should have known. You should have asked more questions. You should have looked into it. So if you say, well, I just assumed, right, you were willfully blind. You intentionally didn't look into it because you didn't want to find out. You knew something was shady or something wasn't quite right.

And it took me six months to realize that. Right. Well, it's funny because I've talked to doctors and U.S. attorneys and and what they'll say is that the doctors they said it's funny because they like whenever they have the um oh shoot a proffer with with or even a reverse proffer what however it works that that they go in and talk to someone but they're like we would prefer to have a proffer with a a drug dealer or a bank robber or someone like that they said because the problem when you go in with a doctor is that it takes 30 to 45 minutes just to convince them that what they were doing

was wrong. And because they're sitting like, no, what do you? I saw the patient. He had an MRI. He's got a such, I asked him how much he drank. He said he doesn't drink every day. Yeah, we had all the paperwork. Right.

He checked all the boxes. So I prescribed the Medicare. I did whatever. And then they're like, you know, and so they're like, I have everything I did was correct. And then they have to kind of really explain to them. No, come on. You should have this. You should have this.

Matt, everything that they signed was performed. There was no illegalities going on inside the clinic. It was how they were getting the patients, right? I understand. So I go on Tuesday and Thursdays when I'm not working, I spend half a day with the feds. And I said, did you have a translator to understand what the – because Ena was talking Ukrainian.

Right. He goes, of course we had a translator. So she was doing all the dealings. Okay, so I was shown probably 100 pictures of a lot of gold teeth people, some attorneys. Right. This thing was massive tow truck companies, you know. You got to use gold teeth people. Because they were like.

In the hook, you know, in the interim. They were like scary looking people. Okay, so do you know this one? No, I don't know this one. So I would go through these pictures. Yeah, I saw him coming to the clinic a couple of times. He went into the office with Iner and the door shut. You know, you know this attorney?

Yeah, yeah, I know this one, this one. And I still didn't put two and two together yet. What are they? They wanted to understand how the files work, how the decisions were made when they went for an MRI. It was a whole thing. Like, you know, the patient has to treat this amount of times. Then you have to do x-rays.

Then they have to go for an MRI. if it's, you know, and it was a progression. And they have to see the orthopedist. All that stuff was run perfectly. The problem was they were using my tax ID number and how they were getting the cases. Right. So are the cases legitimate cases to begin with, or are they like one of those cases where the guy pulls in front of a Walmart truck and hits his brakes and it slams?

Ah, these right things killing me. So to answer that question, I had a woman come in who was a slip and fall. I interviewed her in a room. I went outside in this building on the second floor where we were. There was a fire escape. Ena was a major smoker. She'd always be out there, right?

So I go out there and I go, this patient, there's something wrong with this. I don't think she's really hurt. I think you've got to get this patient out of here. I think it's bullshit. Okay? I say this to Ena. I remember exactly where I said it. Well, guess what?

When I heard the tapes, I heard myself say that to her. She was wearing a freaking wire. She was wearing a wire. Because I know they wired several of the rooms. All the phones were tapped. Right. So they had a, what they call it?

Sneaking peek. Is it a sneak and peek warrants where they go in and they wire everything? everything up at night. Who let them in? No, they don't need one. A judge, all they have to do is go to a judge and say, we believe this is what's going on. Here's why. And the judge goes, okay, then they come in one night and they wire the place up. And because the judge gives them the right, he gives them a warrant for what's, for a sneak-a-peak, where you can, well, sneak-a-peak, no, they just go in, they just go in and they look through stuff.

But to get it wired, it's another type of warrant where they give them like 90 days to watch and they keep getting it renewed just by saying, this is what we heard. This is what saw. So that tape where you're saying, I think you need to get this person out of here, I think they're bullshit. That should have given you some credence, right? Like, like, exactly, Matt, did it. No. So all they said was, no, this proves that you know something's wrong. That's when I put two and two together. Ena was a recovering addict, okay? I remember Felix telling me that, okay, but she's got it. There was some days, man, she would look like, she'd fall asleep at the front desk. Do you sleep hot or cold?

cold at night? You know, the temperature in your room can really ruin your sleep. That's why I switch to Miracle Made sheets. Miracle made sheets are inspired by NASA technology and made with silver-infused fabric that helps control your body's temperature. Whether you sleep hot or cold, these sheets help keep you comfortable all night long. They're also way cleaner than regular sheets. Miracle made sheets stop up to 99.7% of bacteria, so they stay fresh up to three times long. longer. That means less smell, less laundry, and more time doing the things you actually like to do. And they feel amazing, soft, smooth, and breathable. Like five-star hotel sheets, but without the high price. Cleaner sheets are also better for your skin and help reduce breakouts. Upgrade your

sheets or give the gift of better rest. Go to try miracle.com slash Cox to try miracle-made sheets today. You'll save over 40% and when you use the promo code Cox, you'll get an extra 20% off plus a free three-piece towel set. They make an amazing gift and with a 30-day money-back guarantee, there's no risk. That's tri-marical.com slash Cox code COX at checkout. Thanks Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. Her head was down. I call Felix Wendago. Something is wrong with You need to come here and look at her. And it's fine. Don't worry about it.

I believe, I could be totally wrong because I really don't know the truth. I believe she got in trouble. Yeah, she probably got in trouble and said, I, and got herself, said, I can get into a position where I can help you. Get a bigger fish. Yeah. Get these guys. These guys are doing my boyfriend or my lover or my, you know, sugar daddy, whatever. He's running a whole scam.

I can help you guys. And they say, what's his name? And he's in. And that's what. happened, I believe, but I could be wrong. Maybe they were onto it. Because I remember getting something from State Farm and don't ask me the number. It was some 2BF or something like that. And I had been doing PI for 25 years. I go, what is this form? I have never seen it before. I had to prove all these treatments. It was a form that made me uncomfortable, like, as if they were

questioning the treatment plan and stuff like I had never seen that in 25 years. All of a sudden, this form starts to appear with certain cases. Okay, so for about eight, ten months, nothing's happened. I took the plea. I'm dealing with the feds. I'm going there. I'm explaining this system. Until I heard that tape, then I realized, okay, it's probably, you know, was probably got caught with something and then gave them in.

But I don't know that, Matt, that that's really the truth. Okay. So. Sounds pretty likely, but anyway. Okay. So I get a call from Bruce one day. He goes, I got really good news and really bad news. I don't remember what the good news was right now because that's what he said to me.

But the bad news was they picked the judge. And I got the worst federal judge that was possible. Now the feds, okay, they're all lawyered up, right? So you've got the other doctors are all lawyered up. And Felix and Andrew will lawyer up. Are there real names Felix? And Andrew, yes. But I thought they were Ukrainian.

Yeah. Is that a Ukrainian name, Felix? His name was Al-A-Han, well, I can't say it. Or so it's kind of like a nickname, Felix. Maybe. Okay. But I saw paperwork with his full name on it and said Felix. Oh, okay.

So maybe, who knows? Ivan Felix? No, I never saw Ivan. Drovsky. Something like that, something very ominous. I remember one year for Valentine's Day. He came in with this expensive perfume, one for me and one for Ina. and she goes, I'm going out tonight.

I left my perfume at home. She goes, let me just take yours. I never got it back. She just, she was, she's how they are. That's how they are. Anyway. It probably was a $12 knockoff perfume anyway. Maybe, maybe who cares.

So. Did he look like Drago? These guys look like Drago? They look scared. They look kind of scary. Andrew was actually, Andrew's wife. It's funny because they, They had all these clinics, but when Andrew's wife hurt their back, who did they bring them to?

Me, because they knew that I did a good job and I cared, and it was a great chiropractor. Great. Anyway, so I treated them, and I got Andrew's wife had very, I would think it's a febrile diabetes and heart condition. She was a young woman. She winds up dying in this whole idea. All this stress that her husband's going on. She died. So does Enah's mother.

And my father, yeah, dies in this process of all this. Because this is going on for years. Remember, they came in Bay 5th, the 15. Right. A lot of deaths. March of... You're still walking around. Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's what I said to the federal prosecutors. I go, you know, I go, you guys, I'm somebody's daughter. And I'm a good person. and you guys are putting me in big harm's way. Well, we've done a lot of research. They're just businessman. I go, okay, because you've got nothing to fear, Linda. Okay.

You're going to put somebody outside my house? So now I've got to testify against these people. So it's Christmas Eve week. They got me in there asking me questions, how I'm going to present on the stand. They pull me in. I think Christmas Eve was on Thursday or something. They pulled me on a Tuesday. and they're all there, and they go, guess what?

Felix and Andrew took a plea. I got up, I started jumping around, and the federal prosecutor, they go, sit down, Linda. So I sit down. I was so happy that I didn't have to go testify against these people. They go, well, Dr. Olga didn't take a plea yet, so, you know, you still might be going to court. So sure enough, she was the last one. to her attorney was holding out for whatever reason, maybe to see what Felix and Andrew did, turns out that I never had to testify against them.

See, I think that's a bad thing. I think it would have gone further with the judge had you actually testified. Well, so I get this. This is not, none of these are answers you want to hear. No, well, the whole thing is, you know, a disaster. I know, but you have to, you know, you have to, it's, The building's coming down. It's like, you know, it's how the buildings.

It's a controlled, it's a control. Is it hitting another building on the way down? Are we going to get this puppy to come down the best possible scenario for the situation? So, oh, here's the good news and the bad news. That's where I left off. The good news was, the bad news was I got the worst judge. A friend of Bruce's that he actually goes to the high holidays, the Jewish holidays with him, the high sadas and all this stuff.

The bad news is, is he's the toughest judge I could have got. So that bad news is I got the worst judge. Yeah, good news is. And the good news is he kind of knows him. What does that mean? He goes, I can't sway him. He said, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do, Linda. He says, I need to get testimonials about your character reference.

So he says, I need you to come up with 50 letters from patients, friends, family, let your kids write letters. He says, and I'm going to do a bio on you, a memorandum, he called it. By the way, I just read through it because I think I might have seen it back in the day, but my mind wasn't actively firing at that point. So he spells out my whole life, shows Joseph picture his license before and then towards the tail end of his life. After that car accident with my son, I took his life. I took his license.

The son of a bitch went and got another one. But now he didn't look like the handsome guy that, you know, and he told the story, showed me with the kids, and it was like a five-page thing. And then attached to that was all the letters from character references about me. So the feds are telling me that I was the best witness. I actually helped their case. Linda, don't worry.

I don't know if we can help your life. license, but we're going to keep you out of jail. That's what they told me. Right. Yeah, that was all bullshit. Yeah, I know. Well, I didn't know. I believed them.

So I get into court March 3rd. It was a small, the federal court's this small. It was like maybe 20 seats in the back. People that I knew came out of the woodwork. It was like standing room only, like 120 people. All the groups I was in, everybody came out to support me. including my kids. My mother was not doing well at the time. This was 2018, March of 2018. And I said, Ma, I think you're not, you shouldn't come. I have to come. You're my daughter. I have to

support you. Okay. So I remember going in there. We're all joking. You know, my best friend came in from Boston. I sat down. They list all the indictments, you know, they rambling it off. And I could remember. Remember the judge slamming the gavel down and saying, I'm sentencing you to a year and a day. And it was like, like, like, I had an outer body experience. Like, I don't know what happened to me. And I just stood there like I, so I remember, I remember Bruce tapping my leg and he writes 10 months on a piece of paper. That was all preordained because they said that Bruce did a terrible job of representing me. But at that time, I had already pleaded guilty.

The prosecutors get up. They go, you know, Linda was a great witness. She explained the whole thing. But we still believe that she needs jail time. I look over at these A-holes and I was like, I just can't believe he did this to me. I just can't believe it. And the next thing I knew that thing, I was being escorted out of the courtroom by two Zizi top federal marshals, like the long hair and the ball. He didn't have you.

he didn't already have it arranged that they were going to ask you to turn yourself in? No. So you went into custody? No. Okay. The kindness that the judge gave me was that this was March 13th, I think. And either the third or the, it's the case of the 13th. He allowed me to self-surrender on June 1st so that my kids, my daughter was graduating high school and my

son was graduating college so that I would be able to see them graduate. He allowed me that grace. So they took me upstairs. They did some fingerprinting. And then they let me go. And my whole family is down in the, I was, I didn't know where I was or what was happening. And I found some God. I'm like, listen, I need to get to the first floor. I'm very confused of where I am. He's like, get in that elevator, push number one and then head to the right, then make a left. Like I could, like, at this point, like I was not comprehending what he's saying.

I finally found my family. Oh, one other thing. When they banged the gravel down and gave me a year and a day, my family did not know that translates to 10 months, I heard my mother start crying behind me. They couldn't get her out of the courtroom. she was hysterical, like, took my son and her husband at the time to live. I mean, like, I'm not the first person in my family to ever go to jail.

Right. You know, I didn't come from this. So I'm just a stupid ass, basically. That's how I feel about myself. When I look back on it, how was I so naive? But, okay, so I go down. Everybody kisses me. I remember Steve coming up, like I, like, like this close to my face and go,

okay, baby, we're going to get through this together. He was a gem through this whole thing. We're going to, and then I remember my kids coming. My father was sitting there like this with his hand. Like, he's like, you know, just unbelievable. And then the next thing I knew, I was whisked off by my best friend and my daughter, and I was sitting on a beach. They took me home to get a bathing suit,

and they took me to Hillsborough Beach to her condo, and they started giving me some alcohol, and we were playing back at him. And I sat there, I go, hey, guys, do you realize I'm going to jail June 1st? Like, does it? Ma, just live in the moment, living in now. Isn't that what you always tell me? And then Steve and my son met us for dinner.

It was like my life was normal. I went to my kid's graduation. And that thing was looming. Like I'm thinking, I should just go into jail now. But I wanted to be able to my kid. My daughter's like one of those super geniuses. She got some sort of full scholarship awards. I got to see all that stuff.

She got the Silver Knights Award. I don't know if you know what that is. It's a big deal. You don't apply for it. They pick you. There are a lot of geniuses in my family. Okay. Not a lot.

Probably the smartest person in my family did 13 years. Okay. So that was it. And then Bruce called me up because where do you want to go? you know, I didn't know I had a choice. So they were going to send me to Miami, which, by the way, you're in Lock and Key. And you eat dog food.

Or you can go to the camp and Coleman in Orlando. Yeah. So that's the one I chose. Why do they say Bruce did a horrible job? Because he didn't say anything defensive again. Like, you know, Linda was, Linda is not a repeat offender. This is our first offense.

You know, we don't know what the memorandum said. And the judge knows that. And the judge has a PSR. And I mean, it's nice to say that. But when they stand up, you understand that the judge, the judge is all right. That just walks in. He already knows what you're getting. Exactly.

He's already done. And what Bruce told me was he was going to give me 36 months. Yeah. So, but you had gotten, but you got a 5K1 because you would agree to cooperate. So your PSI, which is probably saying, you know, the 30-some-odd months, went down to. 25 million. You were a RICO. So my number came up very high.

Oh, okay. So then, so with the 5K, it was 30, 36 months or 30 whatever months. That's what Bruce told me that the judge was going to give me 36 months. And because of the memorandum and his friendship, and he said, she'll never be in front of you again. Trust me. You know. Yeah, I don't see this.

You know, I know it sucks going to prison. And nobody, especially professionals, tend to think. that they're criminals or they've done something criminal, that they should even go to prison. But it's, it's, it's, if it's, if it's, if it's, if Bruce did anything, he should have argued against the 25 million. The problem is it's RICO and you're subject to whatever the other conspirators are doing, even if you don't know what those conspirators are, even if you've never met or knew those conspirators existed, doesn't matter. It's RICO. It's conspiracy. You're all connected. So, you know, I get it. It's unfair. I think he, if he could have argued it down,

which it sounds he, you know, probably did the best he could. I think he did. So that's what I'm saying is like, I don't see a year of a day. He still calls me. He still calls me to see how my family is doing. How's your dad? I mean, like, you know, you don't realize that you, you didn't have a lot to work with. You're in a bad position. I know you don't feel like you're in a bad position because you feel like, well, I wasn't really aware of any of that stuff. I get it, you know, but it's for, for the situation, this is probably the best result you could have asked for. And let's face it, a year and a day, you didn't have to give you a year and day. Could have said a year. You'd have done the whole year. Right. You would have got no. Because the year and a day, you know why a year and a day,

Colby? So they can get some time off. Good time. Because if they say a year, which is so stupid. I don't even understand who came up with this fucking shit. But for some reason, if they say, if they say a year, then you get no gain time. They say a year and a day, when now you get a couple months off. And you probably can get some halfway house, which I would think that, so now it's really went from a year and a day down to maybe. 10 months. No, you still got 10, 10, no, year and a day. Did you get halfway house? Well, I had the option of staying the 10 months at Coleman or staying seven months at Coleman and doing three months in the halfway house.

Right. So you went from seven months I did there. Right. So you went from a year and a day to seven months. Right. I mean, seven months. They call it a long weekend around. I was going to say that's not even worth unpacking.

You know, the problem is, and I'm sure you probably figure this out, it sends going there and coming back and we'll talk about this for a second, but the problem is it's not the seven months. It's the devastation of your life afterwards. Your credits ruined. You may be evicted from your home if you don't own it, or if somebody can't maintain your mortgage, which, who the fuck, You better hope you got some family members.

The house was paid for. Oh, thank God. Yeah. Right? So thank God. So you still got the house, which you... No. State Farm put a lien on it. But...

Well, put a lien on it, but you... We got it off. No, we got it off. Okay. So you didn't lose the house. No, I didn't lose the house. Okay. What's State Farm got a...

Oh, oh, for the insurance? State Farm Insurance put a lien on it. I'm sure they put it on all of the co-conspirators' houses or whatever. Felix was living in Trump Tower because I went. I went to see it on the 10th floor. Did he own it or rent it? I have no idea. I think he rented it.

So did you have, did you have restitution? Yeah. What's your restitution? So let me tell you what I lost. So I got a year and a day. Yeah. I got three years probation. I lost my license.

And I got $5.7 million restitution over my head. Right. Dr. Olga, who I was following Olga, of course, was a Ukrainian. She got three years. Okay. Felix and Andrew got six years. All right. So they were arrested right from the start, and then they were gone, okay?

So that served the two years before it took a plea. They were already in jail serving time. They got out because of COVID. Oh, right away, pretty much. So they did like four years. Okay. So that's what happened. And I know that, because I still contact this one massage therapist who knows the circle of these people.

And Felix opened a hummus shop down in sunny aisles or something. I don't know what happened to Andrew. Homous shop? Homous. Homous. Homous. Hummus. Hummus.

Wait, you don't understand the accent? Hummus. Hummus. Okay. So he's a little hummus shop. I don't know. I have no. Like a Mediterranean eatery or something.

Who knows, who cares, you know. So really quick, I might have just missed it. So they're finding these patients and they're not really injured and they're billing. What was kind of the scam? No, the scam was how they got the patients. They were paying tow truck drivers and runners to get the clients. So there's an accident and the tow truck driver or somebody. Or somebody shows up at an accident and says,

yo, you need to say your back is hurt. Here's the attorney to go to. That attorney knows they show up, say, oh, oh, you were told by Tommy. Oh, okay. He knows. Now he knows that that's a part of this whole network. And then they send them to this clinic because they know that clinic's going to say, going to give him the right MRI, going to say you need this.

But, like, they're going to max out the whole thing. They've already, they've already prepped. They've got someone prepping the patient to say the right thing. Everybody gets a Vig. You know Vig the term VIG? Yeah, yeah. Okay, everybody gets a VIG for sending somebody, you know, the MRI was given a VIG. Oh, so I forgot to mention one big part.

So I had left that day, and I had decided I wasn't going to go with these people. That night I get a call from this lady, Roberta Kahana, who I know for 20 years. She's got to be pushing 80 now. She was very close with my husband. She said to me, Linda, I know you're in financial distress. I know you met Felix and Andrew. I go, how do you know I met Felix Nand? She goes, well, I know them for 50.

15 years. They are really good businessmen. I go, I didn't, I felt very uncomfortable with them. She goes, you got to give them a chance. And she, and I loved, like, I can't blame anybody but myself, but she was a deciding factor for me. Otherwise, it wouldn't even had that second meeting with them. Because she knew them for 15 years. I'm thinking, maybe she could, you know, they're all in it together. Yeah, because they sent her all the MRIs. And she was getting a nice little big too. Right. So they had a good run.

You came in at the tail end of it. They never took any of the attorneys down. They knew all the attorneys that were involved because I told them who we doing business with, you know. Yeah, but the attorneys are tough to get because they know what to say and what not to say. They don't say. They don't say. So they have wiggle room and they know a lot of attorneys will go to trial because they know, I know you don't have any on tape saying anything.

anything fucked up. So they didn't get any attorney. They didn't get hard with the MRIs. They didn't, nothing. Just Felix Andrew, the other doctors, and me. So you went to prison and you were like, this is not bad. Oh, I didn't say that at all. I want to walk the track.

Okay. I'm going to get a job in the laundry. So it's going to be all right. I'm going to tell you about the self-surrender. I had to self-surrender on June 1st. My daughter is going to take me and my father's wife, who was with me the whole time with the feds. My mother was failing. She couldn't do it.

And we drive to Coleman. We don't know. You know, you pull up and says FCC Coleman, you don't, it doesn't say camp, medium, we don't know where the hell we are. We drive off this dirt road. My daughter's like, Ma, it's only 11 o'clock. Let's go back and get some coffee and some breakfast. They go, who wants to eat here? not me. And where the hell is there? We're in Cal Country here. So I said, listen, she goes,

Ma, stay in the car. I'm going to go out. So she goes out. They see her approaching. And they say, can I help you? And she goes, my mom has to sell surrender by 12 o'clock today. Is this the right place? She's supposed to go to the camp. So the doors open. My father's wife and I are in the car. And we're like, oh, my God. You know. And she comes back to the car. She goes, now you're at the right place. I said, okay. So she comes back in the car and nobody's talking. Like, what are you going to say to me? You know, there's nothing to say.

I say, guys, I'm just going to go in. What's the difference if I go in at 20 after 11 or 12 o'clock? Let me just go in and get this shit over with. So I said, I'm not going to look back, guys. So I'm going to kiss you goodbye. I'm going to walk through those doors and I'm not going to look back. So that's what happened. So we walk up, the three of us walk up.

They open the doors as I'm approaching, like I'm some superstar, right? And the guy goes, how long you're in for? I go, a year and a day. He goes, oh, that's a long weekend around here. And I hear my daughter like, like one of those cries from the, like, you know, like she's like fighting back the tears. And he goes, don't worry, we'll take good care. And I, the door's closed and I could hear them both crying and now I'm in receiving and delivery.

I knew what to expect because Bruce hooked me up with some lady who spent three years in there. So I knew I was going to go through the strip search. I knew I was going to, you know, all this stuff. So I was prepared about what was going to happen. I knew that whatever I walked in with was disposable, they were going to throw it away anyway. So I wore some old yoga pants and flip-flops and I, you know, I went in. And I held it together. You know, they, I was the only person in receiving in delivery.

They bring out the, you know, baloney, the two pieces of bread and the, you know, I'm sure you know. Yeah, the baloney sandwich. I love the baloney sandwiches. Everybody complain. The lays potato chip, the green apple, and the water. Who could eat? Okay. So he comes out there.

The woman comes in, she starts asking you about my sexual preferences and all the sex questions. You know, they want to know if you're a lesbian or not. I have some funny lesbian stories to tell you. So, um, I go. in and then this beautiful black god comes out she didn't have a personality if she did i didn't see it okay they're not hiring for personality no no they do not so she takes me into the room i go she goes we're going to need a urine sample so now she's standing i'm in the bathroom right i got to turn the water on because it's hard to pee when somebody's looking at you like that okay stay's right

okay so i'm sure men get this too yeah okay so that happens then she takes me into this room that's like glorified closet, and then comes the strip search, you know. Unfortunately, the largest size, the smallest size bra that they had or, like, workout bra kind of thing that you wear, was a 38. Nothing fit. Nothing. So she gives me a tie to tie it on both sides, so that, like, okay. And then she gives me, like, base scrubs, some, like, canvas shoes.

okay and a shirt. I look like a, you know, a bad woman. I come out and then the guy does my fingerprints, and then I'm in. And then this woman who looked like she was in a, like a Forest Ranger outfit. They were in greens. That was the outfit, the uniform.

Yeah, that's an inmate. Yeah, I didn't know. I thought she was a god. That was in a different level, right? So she goes to me, okay, I'm going to show you around. She was, this is a commissary. This is waiting. I didn't know.

I did not know. She takes me to the chapel where they have that helping hands, right? Because you got, this was a Friday. I had no toothbrush, no nothing. And then they give you, the other inmates give you a bag. Did you know about this? I'm not sure. Is this just when you get, so it's obviously different.

Okay. But let's say you're a Mexican guy and you show up and you're Mexican and you walk in. All the Mexicans will go to the guy. and be like, and they'll give him, they'll give him shower shoes and a lock. But they give that out of his own stuff. And they say, once you go to commissary, just pay us back so we can give stuff to the next guy. Okay. So, and the women's, it's different.

There's different politics also in the women. So, yeah. Okay. So they take me to the chapel and the woman, her name was Vicki. She goes, what's her bunk? And she goes, F1, 162, and she goes, welcome. Bunky, and she just, I don't even know what a bunkey is. It's a roommate.

Yeah. I know now. Yeah, we call us it Sellies. Okay, sellies. Okay. So she gives me a hug. And at that point, Erica, the one who was escorting me around, this woman takes me back to the dorm.

Now, obviously, everybody knows you don't belong with these outfits because nobody's wearing the same thing you're wearing. Yeah, they know you just got here. Right. And they all looking at you, you know, you're walking through. Well, this woman, she was something with mortgages. Her and her husband both went in. I don't even know.

Mortgage people, they're the worst. I don't even know how long she had, but she was eight years down. It's amazing how you learn these terms, right? She was down eight years. And she was a black woman. All her black friends came and they bought me. She gave me a toothbrush. Everything, the helping hands is a ministry that once you're in there, you donate

to the woman that of new coming in. Right. Okay. But her friends came with the earphones so I could listen to, like, radio, and to listen to the movies and flip-flops and grays that you don't wear when, you know. Yeah. And I was, she helped me make my bed. I was on a top bunk.

And then I just sat there. And then the tears started, it just, boom, it hit like, oh, my God, I'm in prison. Oh, my God. me this is not how like I like my life for the last like eight years was like a like it's this really happening to me so she said come on she grabbed my hand and she goes you got to get this out and she walked me around that track until I was done crying she gave me some sunglasses here she just put these on she held my hand like we were arm and arm and she walked me probably about 10 12 times till I was nice it was so nice it was so kind

And you look like you're getting teary eyed from me. I do. Yeah, because it's a horrible feeling. And then she brings me back to the monks. She goes, I need to explain to you about counts. Well, what's a count? Well, you need to be counted. You have to stand.

They're explaining all this stuff to me. And then these two girls wind up in a verbal fight right in front of my bunk. And I got so scared. I, like, climbed into the corner. And I was like, I like try to make my, I was afraid that one of them. was going to, she says to me, nobody touches anybody in here because if you touch them, you're out. You're not allowed to touch.

So you'll hear a lot of verbal stuff, but you're not going to see anything. Well, that wasn't true because a week prior, two girls in the main line where we ate, this one girl was harassing the other girl, and she wound up breaking her jaw. So there is. Yeah. Not everybody's very good of rule followers in prison. I noticed that. Yeah.

Did you notice that? Hey, did you not talk to here, talk to Janine? She said, no, nobody touches. Well, so I learned the ropes real, real quick. And what happens is that the black women stay together, the Spanish mama stay together, and all the other are lumped into a group. The others. The others.

So I was another, you know, basic white girl. And they put, they put very high intelligence. and people in with, um, yeah, I get it. Cartel runners. Yeah. You know, girls that had shoved stuff up there behind and then get caught and

you got, you know, I was in there with the mayor of North Miami Beach, some doctors, some lawyers, and then the rest. So I don't know how they expected these people to mesh. So they had told me, get a job at the library, get a job at the warden's office, or, you know, medical, medical, you know, all those perfect jobs were taken. So I wound up working at a factory job at Unicor. Oh. Okay.

And I was very happy there. Big money. Big money. Oh, yeah. We made the most money of anybody in the camp. Like 17. Maybe it was it, is it a dollar? Do you make a dollar an hour, dollar or you have to work your way.

So it's 29 cents, 49 cents, and then over time, I think comes to a dollar 29 or something like that. Nice. Big time. So the dorms were kept. Listen, I knew. a guy that left with like 10 grand or something like that from working at Unicorn. He was making there like a dollar and 30 cents.

That's big money. He'd been there forever. Kenny King. Kenny King. So what happens was there was they put me on receiving in delivery. I was definitely with a lot of the blue collars in there. Okay. And these girls are fighting in it.

You know it's receiving a departure. No, no. I'm talking about it, Unicorn. Oh, okay. Because you were like, when I went to, when you first got there, it's R&D. It's receiving and departure. You kept saying receiving and delivery. No, yeah, departure.

I'm sorry. Because that's another, that's another area. Department. Yeah, department. So in Unicor. So I get, you know, I start at the bottom. Yeah. And I'm in receiving and delivery.

The product comes in. We made office furniture. You're familiar with anything with Unicor? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Was it the partition walls? Yes, it was the desk, the partition walls, all that stuff. So I didn't like receiving and delivery.

These girls were crazy. So I went to my guard and I said to him, can I get another job? What's the next level up? And he said, you could be a row girl. I said, great. It goes, which row do you want? I got three open. I go, I pick row G.

Because my daughter's name is Gianna. I figured G may be good luck. I did look out. They had small parts. They didn't have to lug this big stuff. learned how to drive a forklift. Within one week, I had my row like perfect. So the stuff would come in.

I'd put it on the shelves. The stuff would come out. The next morning I'd do inventory. It was perfect. They started to realize, oh, this girl is good. And maybe I'll get how to correct some other rows. Next to me on row H was a Spanish mama. Wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me.

They made Cafe Conleche, prison style, after lunch. they didn't talk to me, look at me. So I was like, okay, I'll just go about my thing. I started to write my book. Then what happens is Mariana, the girl, and she wakes up with a tortacolus, like a second-degree strain span. She can't turn her neck, migraine headaches.

There's no medical in there. Let's be honest. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so. No, the medical was the inmates. I got better medical advice and treatment from the inmates than I did. Right. Yeah, then I did.

We used to say that the leading cause of death in Coleman was medical. Yeah. So, Ruth, who was in my bunk, she said to me, Mariana can't turn her neck. I know you were a chiropractor. Could you help her? So I said, I'll do whatever I can to help her. So we set up on my road, down at the end,

we made a makeshift chiropractic table, and I did pressure points on her, and I worked on her, maybe 15, 20 minutes. I did an adjustment, and she says, I pay you. What's she going to pay me? Commissary. That's at least two things of Keefe and a creamer at least. I at least get a book of stamps.

So I said, no, no, because I had to live next to her. Yeah. I just wanted to be treated like a human being. So I said, no pay, no pay. She says, I pay you. So Ruth goes, you better take something. She goes, okay. She says, I'll give you four cardboards.

You know, you have to line the palette with a piece of cardboard before you put the product on it so the product doesn't fall through. Okay. So she had pre-cut cardboard. Because it was a big deal because we had to take the exact knife out. You had to go through that whole process, go to the tool chest, leave your ID, you know, and then you have to cut it. So she gave me four pieces, and I was like, oh, thank you. I'm so grateful. What happened after that was my reputation started to change.

The Spanish mamas pulled me in. I now was having cafe con lece. I now got to use their gel pens. Then they found out I could draw. I was drawing their Christmas cards for them. I was, so I had the black mamas in the dorm. Right. And then I had the Spanish mamas.

And now the reputation comes out. Go to doc. She'll take care of you. So now I'm after count, I'm going in doing people sciatica. All I had was my hands. and I was starting to take care of and I became somewhat like kind of like Switzerland.

Nobody bothered me. Right. So then I decided I'm going to start a Pilate class because I used to teach my patients Pilates on Monday night. And I started with like four girls on the, what used to be the basketball courts. We had our, we brought our little mats. And I used to narrate the,

whole thing. And then five girls came to 10 girls, came to 20 girls, 30 girls. And then they allowed me to do it in the visitation room. And it was kind of a nice thing to give back. And I would take the girls away. Like, okay, girls, shut your eyes. We were looking up at the sky. Just imagine you're on a cruise ship right now. We had some makeshift music. And we would do Pilates for like an hour. And people loved it. When I left, I taught another girl how to do it. So I said, this needs to keep going, you know. So between my patience and, you know, my Pilates and writing my book, I was like, you know, really kind of okay, you know, I managed to get through it. I made the best of a very bad situation, you know, and the funny, the funny story was I go in the shower and we didn't

have hot water in F1 dorm. What's the, are you serious? It was like somebody would flush the toilet and we'd get moments of like 10 seconds. So we did the PTA, P.T.A. P. Tits and ass shower in 30 seconds or less just to get, I'm not joking, just to get, you know, basic shower. Then when I had to wash my hair, it became a whole different, you know, so then I would come at times when nobody was using the showers to try to get hot water. And occasionally you did. I think I had 10 hot showers in seven months until. The black mold on the ceiling and the side became so bad. They closed our showers down, repainted over it, and we got to use F2 showers, and they were hot water.

They had hot water in there, so it was like, don't fix our showers, please. So that's what happened to me. And that's, you know, so one night I'm on the top bunk. You know, I'm 56 years old on the top bunk. I have to pee during the night. I'd have to climb down. I was all the way at the end. I have to walk a half a block to get to the bath.

Oh, I asked the girls, I go, couldn't somebody tell me why there's no toilet paper in the bathroom stalls? She looked at me like I was an idiot. Did you have a toilet paper? No, they gave us rolls. Would you bring your roll? Because she said these girls are animals. They, like, throw the rolls all over. The girls were fighting over the rolls of toilet paper.

It was crazy. So you had to grab your roll and go to the bathroom, climb back up. So one night, I rolled. on my bad shoulder. Being a chiropractor for almost 30 years had its toll on my left shoulder. And it woke me up from the pain. These two girls are getting it on. I don't know where.

I can tell you the vicinity. Ah, I'm hearing the moan. Ah, ah. You know, like, and then it's getting faster and faster. And this is going on. So I had a cap on. It was so cold in those dorms, right? I've got my pillow over my head.

I'm trying to, like, escape this. I didn't think very was very erotic, but they did. So finally after 20 minutes, I just yell out. Will you just come already? Well, they must have been keeping a lot of other women up. So all of a sudden we hear this hysterical laughing among, we're in the dark, right? The only thing that you see is like the emergency exit light that's red. And like a bunch of women, they went completely silent.

Like, come on, one night I got up this, four legs in the shower. all these gods would have to do, it's changed the time of the count. And they would catch them all, but they didn't want to do that. They don't want to catch them. They don't care. They don't care. They just want to count and go home. Right.

And be done. So you went to the halfway house? Yeah. So Steve would come, before I went to the halfway, he would come every other week, Saturday, Sunday, drive, three hours. One time they took my dad. He was 87. some years old and then standing out in the heat and one of the guards was nice enough to bring

them in and then it wound up taking my whole family in there so one day steve comes and he goes oh one of the first visitations i go to the vending machines i don't know i can't go to the vending machines and buy with my family's money it's god comes out of nowhere starts yelling at me and my father's like i go dad remember seven months we can get through this don't worry, you know, because he was going to mouth off, you know, how dare them talk to his daughter like that, you know. And we learned very easy how to, you know, so one day I'm in there, and Steve goes to me, it was just him and I, we walked outside. We had a little area that we could talk outside to. It was enclosed. And my son used to go, look, my freedom, not freedom.

Freedom. We used to play what he called jailhouse rummy. Anyway, Steve goes to me, I got a surprise for you. I go, what? He goes, it's in my balls. I have to go to the men's room. Jesus, he wanted me to get into trouble. He comes out. I love figs. We have fig trees.

He comes in with two figs, fresh figs from my garden. And he goes, here, honey. I was like, oh, my God, I loved it. I was so happy to get these two figs and that he snuck it in, you know. It was like so sweet. I said, could you bring my special lipstick stain? He goes, well, we, then, you know, you get cocky. Well, that was the only two things we actually snuck in.

But the gods that came at visitation were different from the regular guards. And there was these gods that I only saw them at visitation. And my son is a very good-looking version of my husband. And when he would come in, all the gods would be like, oh, my God, who is that? And everybody would be distracted. It was great. And all the other inmates would be like, oh, I have a beautiful daughter. Yeah, I don't think so, right?

You know, and he would come and he would spend the, you know, as long as he could. and we play rummy. And anyway, so that was, then I got to leave. I learned how to crochet. I wrote my book. I read 57 books in seven months. Nice. I just kept myself busy.

Did my Pilates twice a week. And you just get through it. Yeah. And I worked at Unicor as much as possible because all the drama with the women happens in the dorms. So the best thing to do is stay away from the dorms as much as possible. Right. One night above us, there was an older woman. She was a psychologist.

She fell in the shower. She had a compound fracture. The girls run to the fence. Please, please, we'd call an ambulance, well, they wouldn't have it. These women got together, and they made a gurney, and they carried around, and down the steps with a towel. And finally, they started to make such a stink that they wound up. This poor woman, they put her right into surgery.

It's horrible. It's a horrible life. Then she came out in a wheelchair, like a month and a half later. I guess they put her in rehab and she was chained to it. It's just horrible. Just the stuff that you saw was horrible. I got to go to the dentist once in my seven months. My bunkie said they never sent her to the dentist for a cleaning.

I also had a mammography. They never sent her. She was down eight years. She never had a mammography. Now, why did I get to go when she didn't go? It didn't make sense. I don't know. Might have been the treat you a little better in the first, you know, 12 months you're there or something.

You know, I always had stuff in for dental. I got my teeth cleaned, I think three times in, and 13 years. I got, you know, it's just, you know, I mean, I did go to the dentist probably five times because I think I had a crown break one time. One time, one of my veneers, not these because these are new. a veneer come off one time and he fixed it. But other than that, yeah, it was, it's a horrible, horrible place. And there's no rhyme or reason. No.

You know, it's funny. Somebody, you could hurt your shoulder. So, like, let's say you're a black guy that's playing basketball or a white guy, whatever, somebody playing basketball and they hurt their shoulder or they play volleyball. Somehow they hurt their road reclass. Those guys seem to get work done right away. But then you can have somebody else who would be complaining about chest pains and they don't take them seriously. And you're like, bro, I have chest pain.

Like, this isn't a joke. Right. And, you know, the shoulder that you fixed for Tommy, that's a joke. Like, he's fine. You know, he'll struggle through that. But this is a, you know, and there's no rhyme or reason. And I love the doctors when you go in there. They don't really, they're not doctors.

They're, where they, they're nurse. Physicianist. Yeah. And they're like, okay, what's wrong? And they're typing it into a computer to figure out what's wrong. And they're like, okay, well, this is the problem. And you're like, it bothers me that you don't know that. You know, it bothers me that you needed this machine to tell you that.

But, yeah, it's funny if you were a doctor and you went in, the doctors would come out and say, man, these guys, they don't know what they're doing. They don't. They really don't. You know, medical was like, and, oh, let's talk about the prescription medicine that they give these people that have come in. they make them zombies. Oh, yeah, you're talking about the the cocktail.

They make their own cocktail. Yeah, forget what they call it. And then it's funny, too, because they'll have, if you're supposed to be on, let's say, Paxil, and they're like, yeah, we can't, we don't prescribe Paxil. We prescribe, and they give you something else. You're like, okay, that's not the same thing at all. Right.

Like, that's not, that's going to do, that's not going to help me with this at all. And so when I first got locked up, it was, I was taking Paxil. And then they put me on, like, three different medications. And finally they put me on, on something that had me feeling like i was like i couldn't i felt it's i don't i just felt really weird i couldn't focus on anything and people were like bro something's wrong with you you got to get off that so i just i just stopped taking it and i just said fuck it i'll just deal with the my uh anxiety and whatever yeah it's it's not good it's not a good situation people don't

people don't realize a black mold was really that was oh yeah that was like so commonplace yeah that's that's the least of of your problem. You know, it's funny is, is that, you know, you just, if you're talking to someone who's working at the BOP, I mean, nobody at the top of their field goes to work for the Bureau prison system. Who would? So for you to go in and expect like, I'm going to get top-notch care here. It's like, no, no, that's not what's happening here. They have to provide you. It's kind of like the, I think it's, I don't forget what article is in the Constitution. They have to provide you with an attorney.

And people are like, well, you know, you have to, you know, the attorney didn't do a good job. You know, you violated my rights. No, no. We have to provide you with an attorney. Nothing says they have to be competent. There's no place here. And it's true. Like, we have to give you medical.

No way, nowhere does it say. They have to be competent. Yeah. Yeah, I could tell you. you, 13 years I could tell you about one guy after another. I've seen just to go to medical and just die. Just one guy dying after another. People waking up dead.

I love it when they wake up dead and like they died at like. During the night? And they wake up and they're hard. Like they're like they're rig-a-moored. And they run in and they put him on a gurney and they act like they're giving them compression because they don't want him to die. But he's cold. He's dead.

And even though like the cell is like, what I do was dead? Like I grabbed his arm when I was trying to wake him up, but I grabbed his arm. He was stiff as a board. They put him on the thing. And you can see like they're, you know, they're like, like they're sleeping, but they're trying to do this. They can't move their arm. And they're trying to, you know, whatever, give them compressions or whatever. But the truth is they don't want you to die there.

They want to say you died in the ambulance or at the hospital because they don't want any type of investigation on the prison ground. So everybody always made it where they died at the hospital. I feel pretty sure he was dead in the bed. 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.

See sight for details. I never witnessed that. Yeah. Well, I was there 13 years. I probably saw five or six people die. A story is I was getting ready to go out. I had two weeks to go. And I was teaching a girl that might have had 17th in her mouth.

And you know, you know not to pry in people's life. I go, what are you doing here? She goes, I got wrapped up with a drug. and I go, she goes, I couldn't stay awake. I have four kids. I go, what about Starbucks? Yeah. Like, you know, so I don't know.

She was making it with battery acid and stuff. It was crazy stories. So she goes, will you go to lunch with me, my friends and I? Well, that table of four, I don't even think they had a full mouth of teeth with all four of them combined. Yeah. It was, and I felt so sad. These girls were like, it was so sad. Mm-hmm.

We had a lot of girls in from. Puerto Rico, because I guess Puerto Rico doesn't have a camp. We had a lot of cartel. We got a lot of stuff. And I started to, you know, learn about, you know, she's like, oh, Doc, you're so nice. And, you know, it was, it was so sad. And one of the stories that broke my heart that I told my family when they came to visit me, when you hear the chaplain call your name, somebody's dead. Somebody's dead, right? So this one night, we were already recalled had to be 8 30 9 o'clock they called this woman's name her son was in a gang he was murdered okay and she came back after 10 o'clock we were already lights out and this woman was crying from the

depths of her soul mat like hysterical and all of us are in there crying with any mother that's in there to have to feel that like oh my god could you imagine getting that call that your kid is dead and you can't even go to their funeral. And I remember she left like two weeks before me and she said, I'm going to the hospital. I'm going to the grave site right now. I'm going to go say goodbye to my son. I just felt just so horrible.

And then there was this other girl where her daughter was involved in drugs and she, she OD'd. And then she had kids, but they couldn't find the father of the kids. He was out on the, there was nobody to take care of these kids. I don't know who came in. they wouldn't let her go. If there's any kind of firearm involved, they won't let you go or the gang or anything. So these women just ate themselves to oblivion.

Like I was sitting at the table with her. She's like, I just ate everything in my locker. And she's talking, she's eating. Like, it was so sad. If you allow yourself to actually feel what their feeling, it's so sad. And like it's generating. Like, you know, she's a drug act.

Of course, a daughter became a drug act. One of those, it's just, it's horrible. So I remember when they gave me the row, and I know it might be going too much detail, but there was no chair at the row. So I said to the guard, I go, can I get a chair? So he gives me a brand new chair. The next day I go in there, the chair's gone. So I go in there, I go, my chair's gone.

I goes, well, Linda, you're in with criminals. They stole your chair. Yeah. steal someone else's. I go, oh, no way. I'm going to get me another chair. So he got me another chair. And then I asked him, I said, can I get a raise? He goes, do you have your GED? So I go, he says, it doesn't say anything in my computer here. He says, you got to go to education and have them upgrade it. So yeah, I have my doctorate. I'd like to, you know, so then I moved to 89 cents now. I was like a big shot, you know. But I saw and witnessed so much sadness

that if you really allow yourself to feel it, it's just horrible. You know, I just read books. I just try to keep myself as busy and do, you know, I walk that track on an average 10 miles a day. I put my music on and I disappeared because I, you know, I came out of there so skinny. I mean, I don't know about your food, but certain days, like we could mask the food,

but certain days it just... Yeah, I'm 180 right now. I came out at 150. The day I left, I was 140, I think 148 or 149. It was super skinny when I got out. But I was either running, I was running all the time and walking all the time. And I actually knew to lose weight. I lost like 15 pounds probably within a few months before I left because I knew when I got out that I was going to gain weight.

I knew, you're gaining. Oh my God, I was so excited. You know, I knew that was happening because everything out here, you know, is so good. good, you know, like I go to a restaurant and it's like, you know, oh, what do you want? Like, I'll eat anything on this, on it, because I know that nothing on here is bad. Yeah. You know, that wasn't the case at the, at the, uh, chowall. I, I, one of my worst days in there was Thanksgiving.

Really? I had a video chat. Oh, that's because of the family. I saw the family. I still, whole families gathered around, right? And then here I am, you know, my little green outfit. And I didn't expect any visitors. So after my video chat, I walked around the track, and some girl comes running up.

She goes, they're calling you. I go, no, I don't have any visitors coming today. And she goes, okay, I go, there has Verisco and there's Velasco. It must be her. I keep walking. Two other girls come up to me. She goes, I'm telling you, they're calling it. I go back in, I throw my greens on.

I get there. It was like an hour, the guy. It was one of my husband's good friends, Uncle Joey Dee. He said my family was cooking, so I didn't want you to be a lot. because I talked to your daughter and she said nobody was coming to visit you on and I want you to be alone for Thanksgiving and he came and that like just shifted me it made me feel so good you know so simple act of kindness goes so far in that hell hole that you're in so then I'm two weeks from going and then these girls try to pick fights with you because they know you're

getting out yeah they get jealous they're there yeah I'm tell listen here's the thing like prior to prison, I never really, like, you don't really understand or notice. Like, you hear it, but you don't really understand mental illness. Until you live it. Right, until you live with someone 24 hours a day and jealousy. Like, I'd always heard, oh, this person's jealous. And I was always kind of like, I didn't really understand that emotion. And I never really met anybody that, you know, maybe they said one thing or something that seemed odd or something, you know, maybe a friend of a friend or somebody. but you didn't really know it. Like, in there, you see jealousy on a scale that you, you can't imagine.

I mean, people making up stories and blatantly lying and you're like, and in the end, you can't, you're like, why do they, you start to realize like, oh, there's, it's jealousy. Like, it's, it's, yeah, the, it's, there's some really, like, there's some great people there, very far and few between, uh, but there are, you know, the bulk of them are, are, are, you know, and they're horrible situations, but, you know, they have, there's a lot of, some of it's subtle mental illness, some of it's extreme. Oh, yeah. But there's, but there's, there's some real, people have real, real problems.

And, and you know it, you see it because you're living with this person, you're living next to this person. You could watch their behavior and be like, wow, like, this guy's just nuts. Like, he's just not figuring it out. Like, he's, like, these people suck at life, you know, in a way. way that you can't even fathom. Right. And then you think how lucky you really are in life. Yeah. You know, that you got to, you know, you, they switch me. Well, that you're able to get out and bounce back. Right. Most of these people would, they never bounced. They were never bouncing.

They've been rolling the whole life. Like, they're never bouncing back. They don't have a, they don't have a prayer. And then they end up in prison. Some of these people, the best they've ever lived. And the most stable environment they've ever had has been in prison. Yeah. Like, that's the most stable environment they've ever had. It's very sad. Yeah. It's very sad. Okay, so I get out.

Can we stop for a second? Let me get a soda. I'm thinking about James. What about him? Just, he, it was the same thing where he was just talking about somebody who was just totally unprepared to go to prison. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Just, he just. Does anybody prepared? Sure. Yeah, some people are. Every first, there's got to be a first time for everybody. You were saying James was unprepared? Unprepared, yeah. Yeah, and then I was, well, I was thinking one of the girls in my case, Alice and Arnold, actually went to Coleman, called down there first and said, listen, I have to turn myself in, you know, whatever it was.

Self surrender. Yeah, self-surrendered, March, whatever. I was wondering if I could schedule some kind of like a tour of the facility. And they went, I'm sorry? And she said, yeah, she said, like, I'm going to be going. So I was wondering, can I come first so that I can kind of know where. I'm going. What's the lay of the place?

I'm sorry. Didn't her attorney prepare her? Oh, no. These attorneys have no idea. And she went, the woman goes, she said, I'm sorry. What is your name? And they gave, she gave the name.

They said, yeah, no, you'll do the tour when you get here. We'll take care of all that. There's no pre-tour. She's like, oh, okay, just wanted to make sure. Okay. So when she got there and she walked in, they looked up at her. And I dated her. She's beautiful young girl.

and looked at her and they went, you must be Allison. And she was, and she was, and they were like, Allison Arnold's here. And they were like, oh, she's he.

Why are we for the tour? They said, and she goes, how did you know it was me? They said, Allison, we've gotten quite a lot of amusement out of your phone call.

And she's like, for the tour. And she's like, and Allison was like, you know, when she was telling me this, she said, I had no idea.

She's like, I didn't realize. She's like, once I got there and was telling people that I'd called, they were just dying and laughing, like, what did you say? She's like, I had no idea.

They said it was a camp. There's no fences. They said it's very, it's, you know, because. There was a pool at that camp at one point. Did you know that? Oh, was it? No. Yes.

Probably. They promise, sir, they, you know, they allow the visitors and the kids to go in the pool. Yeah. And then something must have happened. Oh, yeah. There's, you know, here's the thing. I would say this is that, you know, the inmates ruin everything. Anything they try and do for you.

Yeah. I don't know what it's like at the camp, but I know at the medium and at the low. Anytime the staff, you know, there was like, man, they don't do nothing for us. It's like, okay. And then let's say a year goes by and they do something. Very quickly, you guys manage to ruin it. You start stealing the this or you steal that or you start, you put an inmate in charge. That inmate, you're like, hey, I want to go to the movie room.

And they're like, oh, yeah, man. Yeah, it's booked up for three weeks. Booked up for three. What are you talking about? Like, yeah, yeah, I might be able to get you in, you know. if you can, you got, you got a book of stamps. It's like, go fuck here. What do you mean?

Book of stamps? What do you talk? There's three seats right now available. Yeah, bro, no, those are taken. It's like, they ruin it, you know? Or they get the seat, the DVD, and they steal it, and they break it in half so they can cut up onion, and they sharpen it and cut up onions. It's like, what do you?

Yeah. The food, the food is the conversation in itself. Yeah, it's. The stuff we ate. The girls are pretty entrepreneurial with the. Oh, so are the guy. They, they've had some amazing meals. But not from the chow hall.

One or two, there was decent, like the, I don't know. Alfredo, chicken alfredo. No, you weren't really there for, you weren't there for the holiday meals. I was Thanksgiving and Christmas. And Fourth of July when I got a piece of watermelon that I was like so excited about. Right, yeah. Okay, so you were there. Okay, I wasn't thinking, okay, yeah, yeah, those were good meals.

I will tell you that Thanksgiving, we got a piece of flat meat. It wasn't turkey. I couldn't cut it. You know, you don't have the knives, right? So, like, you're picking it up. Like, if you came in with manners, you didn't leave what matters, you know. Some of the stuff was just intolerable. And those are the days I would eat apple and the squeeze peanut butter.

Yeah. I had a little plastic. I'd never seen that before. So I'd take the green apple, cut it, and eat apple and peanut butter. Yeah, I'd never seen, like, mackerel and all the fish and stuff that I don't eat mackerel. But I'm saying, but you could buy, I didn't know you could, you actually could buy pouches of, like, white chicken in a pouch. Yes. To me, it comes in a can't.

No, no, you get patches and all that. I actually have a bag of Keefe at my house and women used it or anything, but I do have it just to have it. Somebody brought it for me and says, hey, man, I got that for you. I was like, nice. For Christmas time, they each dorm does a different theme. So I started making these gingerbread men at a cardboard. I made them stand up.

I decorated them, gingerbread men and women. And I made a bunch for the Spanish Mamas that were in my row. Coming to work one day, they stole the gingerbread. So I'm like, they stole the piece of cardboard. Who stole it? Just other inmates? Another somebody. So the Spanish Mamas like, we're not having that.

So they go and they, you can't hide a gingerbread. Man, that's this big, right? They found it in another dorm. They stole it back. And they trashed her bunk because, I mean, they, they're like, nobody steals your gingerbread man. I should have taken one home. I made, like, probably about 10 of them just to always remember what that Christmas was like in that. Right.

It was. And New Year's good that you can laugh about it. Because if you can't laugh about it, you know, I've seen people leave, sorry, real quick, I've seen people leave and they just, it's horrible. It was the worst thing in my life. It was that. Stop, man. It's just a different experience. It was not, I promise you, people have lived worse lives.

Yeah. Worse things have happened. That may have been a bad experience or something, but the fact that you can laugh about it and joke, that makes it, that makes it okay, you know. All right. I'm sorry. You know, you have to be able to laugh about it, right? It's true. I mean, what else are you going to do?

Exactly. You have to get through it and you just wind up finding, you know. Well, it's a, I was thinking, Broody. I have a, I almost said buddy, a co-defendant who saw... I thought they didn't put him in the same place. No, no, this was, I was in L.A. Fitness. And we had, he didn't go to prison. Oh.

He's still fucking complaining. It's like if there was a, like a graph or a whatever, you know how the, if they had like me right here and then down they had like the two guys beneath me and then between then they had like a bunch of, you know, like a mob map. You know what I'm saying? Rudy would have been. It would have been me, and then it would have been Rudy and Dave Walker. Rudy was on my indict.

These two were both on my indictment, but because I went on the run, and by the time I got caught, the economy was collapsing, they didn't arrest them or these other people. Yeah, lucky. Right. So they, so instead, the $6 million restitution that I have that should have been divvied up between everybody, I got stuck with, Rudy to this day, cries like. A bitch, sorry. It's okay. That I ruined his life because the FBI came and talked to him because there's an article out there that says he was a part of an investigation. Not realizing, Rudy, you, and he makes it seem like I was doing something fraudulent he didn't know about you.

And let me tell you how involved he was. At one point, he went to the DMV and got a fake driver's light. at the DMV using a fake birth certificate, fake everything. He had a fake issued ID. Like, you were so ingrained in it. You had fake IDs. He had a completely fake profile. He made, well, probably close to a million dollars.

Of course, he blew it all. I mean, tons of real estate, like everything. And because I left and the FBI questioned him several times and he basically denied everything, Like, oh, Matt did all this. I didn't know anything about it. Never went to prison. He acts like it's the worst thing ever. It's like, bro, you should have done 10 years.

You should have done 10 years. But I remember I saw him in LA Fitness one time and he was talking to me and everything. He was complaining. I was like, right, right. Yeah, no, Rudy was horrible. I'm sorry. I feel bad for you knowing I just got out of prison. Right.

And I'm still paying $7,800, $1,000 a month in restitution every month on probation. And I'm sitting there right, right, right. And he goes, and so while I'm talking to him, a guy walks up to me and says, excuse me, I can see, Mr. Croc, I can see you're talking. And I was like, yeah, what's up? And he goes, I just want to let you know, bro, I follow you on TikTok and YouTube. I watch all your videos, bro. Like, I'm just, you're like an inspiration, bro.

I just wanted to say that and say, man, that it's, and I know you're busy. I'm sorry. I said, yeah, man, I said, I appreciate it. I shook his hand. I said, look, I said, we, I am talking right now, but I do appreciate these. No, no, no problem. but I just wanted to say hi. And I do.

I've subscribed to your channel. I said, man, I appreciate it. And he walked off. I turned back to Rudy and I said, you were saying? And he goes, he looked at my wife and he goes, how often does that happen? And she goes, all the time. And he goes, boy, you've really turned this into something. I go, what choice do I have, Rudy?

Right. What choice? Like, I could do what he does and deny it and lie and tell people that's not his fault and do that. But it's made him someone that I'm pretty sure will die of a heart attack fairly soon. or you could do what I did and lean into it and just say, yeah, this is who I was and that's what I did. And this is who I am now. And you can either deal with it or you can go fuck yourself.

You know, that's it. There's only two kinds of people. Right. It's good. There's two kinds of people. Those that will send you money when you're in prison and those that won't. Right. You know, those that will come visit you and those that won't.

And I don't need the ones that won't come. Before they yanked my license, I was going to go to the chiropractic convention because we need to get the credit hours. And I thought to myself, why would I go? Right. You know, they put the whole article up there in front of 500 chiropractice. I would have been humiliated, like I would have crawled under the table, died of humiliation. Do you know that I could have gotten my license back? Bruce came to me, he said, you have to go in front of a board, apologize, admit you're

of what you did wrong, pay me, pay a $5,000 fine, and you could have your license back. You probably could. Yes. However, I've been doing it for 30 years. I wasn't a spring chicken anymore, and I really didn't think that that was the right route for me to take. And I was so humiliated at first from it.

That's why I didn't do anything with the books, because I didn't want to, people label you. You're a fraudster. You know, it's like, So I chose not to get it. And there's a part of me that regrets it, but I probably wouldn't have done it for more than two, three years anyway. Right.

I could have worked for somebody else, and, you know. But everybody knows. You know, every other chiropractor knows which chiropractors get arrested and go down, you know, and go to prison. So it was humiliation. I remember the night my brother called, he goes, oh, you made the sun sentinel. I went, whoa, I was sick to my stomach.

they never had pictures of me because I went in voluntarily. I was never, for some reason, I was never in handcuffs. Thank you, God. And I never had any pictures of me put in there. Felix and Andrew were all over it and the other doctor, but for some reason they didn't put me in there. I don't know why. It was just a stroke of luck.

I mean, they had my name. Right. But the picture wasn't there, which I think makes it slightly better. slightly. Anyway, let's talk about the halfway house. Okay. You want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah.

So I go to Dania Beach. I got to do three months in a halfway house. Steve, Steve, Mr. Wright, he kind of goes by the halfway house parks and tries to go in. He said, listen, my girlfriend's coming here. They're like, no, I'm sorry, we can't, you know, you can't be in here. So Steve looks around and goes, oh, there's a little park next door, Linda. You're going to be really happy, right? Okay.

So they picked me up at, I don't know, it was like 9 o'clock. By the time we drove to South Florida, I had like a window of an hour to be alone with Steve. I was so excited about that hour. Right. I had been dreaming about that hour for seven months, okay? And what happened? Something like I never expected, like nothing into, like we attempted. I was so freaked.

I mean, I hadn't been to my house since seven months. everything he had exercise equipment in the bedroom and like everything was like a disarray I had lost all this weight and I you know like I just was so it just didn't happen like I expected it was just like it was such a fail it was such I was too nervous to relax right and he picked it up right away so that was the end of that and then my father arrives you know and and we went to my mothers because I hadn't seen my mother in seven months she couldn't she couldn't go there she For whatever reason, she made an excuse every time, Matt.

It was too much for her to handle. She didn't live much longer after that. So we went to my mothers and thank you. We went to my mother's in her husband's house. And in the nine months that I hadn't seen her, she looked like she aged five years. And he looked like he aged 15. He was now on oxygen full time.

And I got out in January of 19. He was dead by August. It was a lot. I came home to a lot. lot of family stuff. But, okay, so we get to the halfway house. Steve's like, I'm going to go get ice cream. My father and I walk in, there's all the gold teeth, the long hair that, you know, like, there's hardly any women there. Right. There's like 50 residents, and there might have been maybe seven, eight girls. So they put me upstairs on a top freaking bunk. I said,

you guys know that I'm 57 years old. I do that it was 57. I don't really want to be on this top bunk anymore. So this guy goes, oh, we'll move you tomorrow. So he moves me to a smaller room on the first floor. The girl that was on the bottom bunk said, I don't care, I'll take the top bunk. She was illegally bringing in people from Cuba because she was Cuban. She was so nice. She was like, do it all over again. I think she got a year. Anyway, so she was a clean freak. She was in there. We had our own bathroom for three women. So it was her, me, and this other girl who was in the camp with me who had gotten out before. Shanti.

So she's cleaning the bathroom all the time. We're in vertical lockers now. It was like I was in the Hilton at this point. So I was so excited. I had my cell phone. And this girl that was above me, Yvonne, she worked at Jackson's Ice Cream Paula, which is like two blocks away.

She would bring home ice cream for us every night. It was like, oh, thank you, God. You know, it's like ice cream, you know. So to take a hot shower and have a private bathroom where you could shut the door, it was like unbelievable. So one day I'm coming back from work. I got a job with that guy, Steve Landers. Now, he was a personal injury, but I wasn't allowed to do any personal injury. I was allowed to answer the phones, do filing and this.

I did everything for him, to be really honest. Because I knew what EOBs were. I was able to, like, he's like, I feel bad giving you $10 an hour. I said, don't feel bad because they're. halfway house is taking 20% of it. So it's okay. I don't really care. Right.

And it's getting me out of the halfway house. Right. I was so thrilled. I cleaned up his entire operation. I went through fire. He's like, how did you do that? I just keep myself busy. I shredded all his old file.

I went through everything. So the first two months, you know, the second month, they allow you to go home on weekend visits the second month. So Steve would pick me up and you have to, you know, You know, you need a house line because they have to be able to call you at all hours of the night, right? And you're not allowed to leave. And I was thrilled. We stop at a Chinese restaurant order, bring back food.

We, like, had time, you know. So we're having Chinese food this one night, and the phone rings, and it's Wells Fargo. Linda, did you bill $500 today? I thought, no. So she goes, I'm going to send you an email. My roommate, when I got home from work one day, I left my purse. on the bed. She went inside, made a copy of my debit card,

and the stupid ass, the stupid ass, does a square with her name on it. Right. She was two weeks from being completely done. I mean, like, okay. I mean, some people. So I call up Mr. Tate.

I'll never forget this guy at the halfway house. He's like, well, you need to press charges. I go, ah, no. I said, I've got to be in a room with us. going to be a big girl she's going to take a pillow and put it over my head i'm not doing anything of the sort so he goes linda we're going to move her so i come back sunday night she comes back from work and they he comes in with her he says okay you're moving i didn't look at her i stayed on my phone i was watching netflix i didn't want to make eye contact with i was scared man right okay she would

have taken me out so um i'm surprised they didn't just call the marshals and just have her have They wound up doing it. So the administrator, this woman, she pulls me in there and she goes, why the hell would you do that? I go, wait, why are you yelling at me? She was, you're a criminal. You should think like that. She's going to say, I was like, well, you know, I understand that I'm guilty of fraud, but I don't think like that. She goes, oh, that's pretty stupid.

Like she said to me, I was ready to lunge across the. Be like you work at a halfway house. Yeah, like, yeah. Right. Right. Right. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's be reasonable here. Let's let's do some critical thinking here. There is no other situation where you're lecturing me ever. Even when I leave here, I promise I'll be in a position where you never get to lecture me. But like, okay. So after she was done, giving me my little reprimand, okay, the next day the cops come and I have to give, she, they called the cops. And the cops says to me, what are you doing here? I go, I live here right now. He goes, oh, you're a felon? Oh, yeah.

I'm like, I almost laughed. I mean, these were two cute little, you know, cops, like, looking at me like, oh, my God. It's like such judgment that comes out, right? Well, the next day, the marshals came, and they took her away. I don't ever know what happened to her to this day, nor do I care. And then the third month, I was able to go home. and they fitted me with that little ankle bracelet, which, by the way, tears up your ankles.

So Steve devised a thing where you put a sock through it and then you wrap it underneath so the actual, it's not scraping your ankle bones. Right. You know? And I would sit there at night and charge the thing. And I looked at him, I go, when did this happen to my life that I got an ankle bracelet?

Like, I'm still like, I still can't believe that I live this, you know? I look back at it. And now I laugh. So one night, the thing is beeping yellow. He goes, it's not charging window. They're going to kick in the doors. The SWAT team's going to come through the windows. So I called.

I go, look, my thing's not charging. My ankle monitor is not charging. He goes, it just coming tomorrow morning before you go to work. We'll fix it. But that night, they called me like four or five times, like all hours of the night to make sure that they didn't go anywhere. I don't even think they monitor those damn things. Because if they did, wouldn't they know that the thing was losing its power?

I mean, I guess. Who knows? Who knows? I know that they do because I know they can look it up because they can see all the places you've been. They can see there's a line that will go all through the city. But they have to, I don't think it's automatically telling them much of anything. I think they have to go out of their way to pull it up and be like, oh, it's dying. Well, I don't think they would know it was dying.

They know when it dies. Well, I got in trouble a couple of times because I got to work. I didn't call. I forgot. I did that. I had to clean for two hours. When I got back, I had to clean. Yep.

Yep. They yelled at me. Yeah, I got yelled at too. My boss said, I bet you won't do that again. It happens, though. It happens. And then you forget to call when you're leaving. And then you get that panic.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Like, they're not sending you back to prison because you forgot to call, but it does that shock. We had this one lady, she was mean. Mr. Tate was great. I don't even remember her name, but she was mean. I did it like three times. And she said to me, Verisco, you do it again?

I want to send you somewhere where you're not going to forget to do it anymore. I was like, oh, my God. And one day, my girlfriend, she goes, I'm going to pick you up and take you to lunch. I got a monitor on me. Maybe they'll see. I was scared. Right. I did it anyway.

And they never found it. out but I was the whole time I couldn't relax it's just not worth it I to me I just want to get through this and you know I initially when I went there to it would go to work you know you you leave you sign out you go to work you call when you get there well after a couple weeks I call and then they would call work maybe once a week twice a week to say hey is he yeah yeah he's here you want to talk to him now I just need no he's here okay because they expect that your boss is a good normal citizen that is.

So, right, mine wasn't. So I called and said, listen, my boss wants me to take a piece of furniture to Ebor City and get it welded. And he's telling me like, I'm going to wait.

I have to wait there and then bring it back. And I'm using his truck. And is that okay? And they were like, uh, hold on. And they came back. And then,

okay, well, yeah, yeah, it's part of your, how long you're going to be gone. I'm like, I don't know how long it's going to take.

I don't know if it's an hour or if it's four hours. I haven't, no idea. Yeah, that's fine. Now, I don't have an ankle monitor on at work. So, you know, my boss, his name's Trian, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go, do whatever you want, go. So I would leave and go visit my mom for like two, three hours, and then I'd come back. And he's paying me. He's paying me a minimum wage, whatever that is to be, and I was working at probably almost 80 hours a week. I worked every day except for Sunday from the day when the gym opened to when it closed. It was close to, it was like 76 hours or something.

But so I got to a point where I could leave during the day and go do stuff and come back. Like I could go to the bank and come and he would cover for me. Right. So that, that, but, you know, that makes a difference. It makes a huge difference because, you know, it's just, and I used to think like, I mean, like, I can't go to the bank. Like, I can't go. Do you know what I'm saying? It was like they make it at least now.

Now, your halfway house, I think, was a little more laxed. And I know that because my buddy Boziak was there. And he was telling me like, oh, you get a pass, you get this, you didn't really get any of that at the place I was at. And I think you could get a pass after a month. You got to go, you got to leave for the day. And then, like, the net two weeks later, they would let you go for like the weekend. It got more and more as you got as you went on. But I'd have nowhere to go.

So I was there for seven months. But what I was going to say is, I was a long time. I was lucky. Everybody else was always complaining because they were taking like 20. 25% of what we made. And I used to, oh, I can't wait to get out of here. And these, you know, they're, and they would complain. And I used to always think to myself, like, where am I going to live for 25% of my gross pay?

Like, I get it. It sucks here. But, I mean, I'm gone. Six days a week. I'm gone. I basically leave in the, eat breakfast, leave in the morning, come back that night, get counted, go to bed. Wake up in the morning, go do it all over again. And then during the day, if I want to leave for an hour or two here, I can.

I didn't do it too much. Right. You know, push your luck. Right, because I have coming up with excuses, like these guys are getting to the point. Like, how bad is the equipment in this place that you're constantly getting it welded? But we had different excuses. And sometimes Trian would go with me. But it was, yeah, it was like, I got to a point.

I was like, you know, it's like, you have to lie just to be able to do some stuff. And I'm not doing anything wrong, but like going to see my mother's in a wheelchair. Right. They want my sister to bring my mother to the halfway house to have a little visit with her in the halfway house, in the main room with people walk around, guys cussing and screaming and my 90-year-old. Like, no, I'll go to the – I'll lie and I will go to the visit. And I was like, like, they're making me. Like, you're almost – I almost felt like, you're forcing me to break the rules. Right.

You know, but, yeah, I was lucky I never got caught. Well, we talked about. I'd be scared, though. Scared. I was like. You come out of there like. like a deer in the headlights, and then you stay like that. It takes like a couple of months after the halfway house,

even starts to unwind that you could have a normal life. Oh, listen, for six months after I would say, for six months after that, around 3, 33, 45, I would get this feeling in my gut, like I'm supposed to be standing next to my, I'm supposed to be next in myself being counted. And whenever there would be a knock at the door, I would immediately think, they realized they fucked up.

they let me out. They came to get, the marshal to get me. If I had opened the door and there were two marshals saying, hey, turn around, cuff up, I'd have been like,

I would have thought like, yeah, yeah, something went wrong. Like I'm, because I'm not supposed to be out. I'm supposed to be locked up. After 13 years, that's where I was supposed to be.

This was weird. It becomes in your, it's in your, yeah, it takes a while. It takes a while. But for me, it took, I'm sure, longer than you,

but you know that feeling of, and then just, just scared, like somebody, goes to get in your car, it's like, does this person got anything? I've heard some horror stories. Like, if this guy has a weapon on him and I get pulled over and he drops it underneath the seat, he doesn't take, say, oh, I don't know who that is.

And I'm the one going, because it's my car. He's going to be like, well, I don't know. It's his car. It's exactly right. And then you're just scared. Like, it's just a scary feeling. Well, I didn't want to work for this guy much longer. And he said to me, I'll give you more money.

Now I realized, I didn't even realize I had to be probation ahead of me after that thing. That's how I'm telling you, I was, during that whole period, I was kind of outside of myself. Yeah. You know, I knew it, but I didn't know it. Like, now it was there. It was in my face, three years probation. So I go to my probation officer in Hollywood, and I'm like, listen, Steve wants to take me to Hawaii. It's my dream vacation.

You're not going to Hawaii. Who's paying for that? I go, he is. Yeah. It's not, no, that's an expensive vacation. I'm not going to allow that. I said, I wrote a book. Yeah, no, no, you can't.

You can't do anything like that. You know, she, she. Like write a book? You can't publish a book during that? No, it wasn't allowed. That's not true. Okay. I wasn't going to argue with this.

No, no, I understand, but I'm saying that you have to understand that they, they have complete control. You get some, some probation officers are great and some are just jerks. She wasn't that bad. She really wasn't that bad. she came to the house and did an inspection. Okay? Steve's got guns.

He shoots, carries, you know, my son's got all these taekwondo weapons. I'm like, get the stuff out of the house. You know, get it out. So all the stuff is brought to my mothers, you know? Like, it's so stupid. So then they go in the, I have a little shed because I garden. They find a machete in there. They're like, you need to remove this.

Get the, get out of it. goes, there's knives in the kitchen. Well, that's not a weapon. Yes, it is. A machete is not a weapon. We had to get rid of the machete. But the kitchen knives, I mean, if I was going to stab, it just doesn't make sense to me. So I didn't want to keep going back and forth, like 45 minutes to Fort Lauderdale to work for this other guy, Steve.

So I looked at Steve, the boyfriend, Steve, who's got a plumbing company. I go, how can I help? Could you hire me? He goes, yeah, I'll hire you. started marketing his business, got a degree in backflows. I was the only woman in there with all these plumbers that were like looking at me, like, what's she doing in here? Got the backflow license.

I started doing backflow to him, started marketing. What's the backflow? Backflow is so the water from the house doesn't back flow back into the main. That's how Legioneers disease spread. Do you remember that time, like the 40s? Yeah. Where Legioneers at that hotel. Yeah, no.

I've heard a Legioneer's disease. So you have to make sure the water that goes, can't back, flow back into the main, the city main of water supply. It's amazing how much stuff you learn is a chiropractor now on plumber, chiropractice slash plumber, Dr. Plummer. Well, I have always, I had heard, and this is, I heard this from a doctor, by the way, that when I was locked up, that the sewer system, that the modern sewer system has saved more lives than doctors ever will. because that's how disease was, that's what wiped out, you know, that's all the plagues, all the infections, all that it's all because of the, and that backflow, it stops that. Yeah. Now, on private residential houses in certain areas, you need backflows, but like where I live,

there's no backflow, but any kind of commercial is always a backflow, and they have to be tested every year. A big side note. So I start marketing his company, so I went to this one group. I was a chiropractor, and now here I am, a year and a half. later coming in as a plumber. Everybody knew my story. And I started marketing, and, like,

all his company started to grow, like, immensely. He's like, I didn't know you could market. I go, either I either die. You know, I just got up. I said, like, your number two is our number one. I had, like, some taglines that were plumbing taglines that were funny. And people just took to me.

And so now I almost marketed full time. I market it as plumbing company. It's crazy. It's just so crazy. and I've met so. I brought so much business into him that it's just crazy. So, yeah, I'm not embarrassed to say that, well, you know, doctor to plumber, it's fine. I'm not the plumber, but, you know, I can tell you a lot about your systems because I listened when he's talking and I've learned. You know, people say, oh, you know, every appliance in my house,

every faucet, everything. I'm getting hot water except my shower. So now I know how to diagnose it. Do you know that showers have cartridges that come out? They get replaced and then they're putting in. Like a $100 fix to get a new cartridge and have a plumber and stall it. Who knew this stuff? Like, you know, so.

Anyway, so that's the story. So that's what I'm doing now. Interesting. We're about the book. Okay, the book. The books. So I wrote the book, the book. And I brought it to a publisher and he read it and he goes, oh, my God, this is great.

But it's too long to be one book. I don't know what do you mean? It's too long. He goes, nobody reads 900 pages anymore. Yeah, that's insane. That's too much. So he decides to divide it into three books, book one, book two. So book one, and it's funny, they call it the girl with a million-dollar smile.

You didn't pick that. They picked it, right? Yeah, actually, they suggested it. Yeah. Because how could you smile through all the crap you've been through, right? Well, I mean, also, I was just going to say because, like, people don't realize that you write a book. Like, you don't actually get to choose the title. They actually had the right to choose the title.

I had no idea about the title. I didn't even know. You know, they gave me, like, three options. So this book ends with me climbing up and finding Joseph in bed with the other woman. Boom, that ends. This book, the journey to Mr. Wright, starts with his drug addiction, the whole thing with the kid. and then ends with me the banging the gavel down. So this book's thoughts sad, takes you down, he dies, all that, the whole eulogy thing.

Then it goes up again. I meet Steve, Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright now is in the picture, too. And it gets exciting. And then it goes down again, and they bang the gavel done. And that's the end of book two. And then book three, rising after the fall, is prison, the self-surrender. and then my takeaways about forgiveness,

about aging, about grieving. Because I went through a lot of death after, you know, I came out of the prison. And it's just, it's an incredible book about one person's journey, you know. And I loved it. And they wrote the back of it. They wrote all the back, you know. The cost of choosing yourself when the word is,

you to sacrifice the courage of parenting through the fallout of someone else's chaos. The tenderness of loving again while protecting your heart. Because I was afraid. I didn't think I was capable of love again. You know, Mr. Right Now was fun for a while, great sex. But there was no way I was going to trust ever again. Yeah, you've had some bad experiences. Right.

And then I met the plumber. And he's trustworthy. And then I open my heart again, which is not so easy as a woman, you know, who's been so screwed over, you know. So these books are about, they're about my life, but they're about resilience, about persevering. And a lot of times women get what happened to me. They don't get up again.

Or they live miserable, why is the rest of their lives? That's not, that's not me. I found the good and threw everything, and I kept persevering. I got two really great kids, daughters in her third year of medical. school. She's, she's been through a lot in her life. She's so, so, so much death, you know, her grandfather, her nanny, my mother, her father. And she, she plows through it all. She's probably the strongest. She was, well, Ma, you were, you know, you taught me about strength. Because when she was a kid and she, you know how little girls, they start to whine. I go, I don't understand that

language, you want to whine, go in your room and talk to yourself. When you can come back and communicate to me, I just did not tolerate stuff from my kids. Same thing with my son. He was a little different. You know, some boys get into a little more trouble. Ma, we have a situation. You know, I was off-roading. Eight of us on a four-seater, and they were off-roading, and they got, they flipped the thing, and some of the kids were hurt. I dealt with it. And I, you know, I was tough with him. And now he's successful in real estate. He's got 11 guys under him. He's 30 years old. So something, I mean, I did a lot of wrong, Matt. Made a lot of mistakes, but it did a lot of right. And at the end of the day, when you look at your life, like,

let's say 20 years from now, and I'm going to be 80-something years old, right? I look at my life and I'm going to say, what's my biggest accomplishments? Yeah, I was a great chiropractor for 25 years. I used to have people come from all over to see me. It was really good. But is that my greatest accomplishment? I think it's your kids. When your kids are successful and doing great, that to me is my greatest accomplishment. That's what I'm going to look back on my life. Yeah, I made a lot of mistakes and so what, so does everybody. You know, I thought losing a husband was the worst thing. I dated guy, Steve, lost the son to leukemia. So that's 10 times worse. So you just, it's all comparison, you know. You have a kid, gets diagnosed, dies four days before a six birthday,

and you watch your child, there's nothing to do. You can't, doctor's kind of, there's nothing we could do for you. You know, that's a lot worse than losing a husband who, you know, you left anyway. On his deathbed, he grabbed my hand before he went into that semi-comasos, and he looked at me, he goes, so sorry, Linda. And I go, you know what? I already forgave you because you're going to make a transition right now. I'm left to live my life.

and all that ugly, ugly, bitterness, you know what that would do to me? It would make me sick, turn into cancer. I'd have a bad mouth to him to the kids. I just explained it like dad had, like, mental illness with addiction. I don't know how else to frame that. He had serious things that happened, and he got addicted, you know, and that's it. And we got through it. We got through it all, and I'm still smiling.

Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so get notified of videos just like this. Also, please share the video to anyone you think might like it. Also, if you want to grab Linda's book, go into the description box. We're going to leave the link there. It'll bring you right to Amazon where you can get all three books.

Also, she has done an audible where she did the audible herself, unlike me. I hired somebody because nobody wants to hear me read. She said people love the audible because it's in her voice and people really enjoy that. Thank you very much again. I really do appreciate you guys watching. See ya.