Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Hollywood Counterfeiter Steals Millions From Celebrities

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

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Something like a Medea would come out. I would make a thousand of them in a day. The actual popularity is the thing that was starting to be a problem. They're banging on the windows. Hustle me, hustle me. Like, it's a big deal. I'm a local celebrity. So I opened the door.

And that was the worst thing I could ever did. Working at Lowe's, Lowe's was a pretty good job for about Oster. Almost half of the population had worked at the Lowe's distribution center. It's like your job, your dream. dream job to get on to there. But when your own child support, that money is so great. So now my check is cut by 25%. So I need some extra money to make up for what's being took for child support. That's when I got into the bootleg game. I was already burning CDs with the computer just for my personal use. Just to ride around in the car. I had an old 84 cutlass supreme with the

speakers in it and you know I'm playing the music and I'm and everybody like, dang, you got all the music like, but I never really tried to get into selling the CDs. I just made them for my person because back then it was Napster and line wire and stuff like that. We had dial-up in the beginning. So I know a lot of people don't know about the dial-up, but if you know it's going to make all those noises and take forever to connect and probably would take at least 15 to 20 minutes a song to download. But, you know, at that time, that was no problem.

I mean, I'm just making them for my personal use. But people asking me just, you know, can I buy those from you? Like, you know what? I think I should start selling these since people asking me because my car was known around town. I had Roaldwick records all on the side of the car. It was just a big show. And I ended up making the CDs. And I put them in the cases.

They looked like CDs out the store. And I would make mixtapes and then I started downloading other artists, music and albums and all that. So eventually I built up enough in the crates To start really getting out to, hey, y'all, I got CDs. You can get $5 a piece or whatever. Where do you go? Like a flea markets or just hang out at a spot where everybody goes?

That's it. You go to the spot where they're at and what's a better spot than my job. I mean, half the city works here. It's like five, six hundred people on each shift. So when they get off, I pop to Trump. I got CDs. And it wasn't a lot of stores that sold CDs. And at the time, CDs were expensive.

So you might pay 20 or more for a CD in the store back then. I'm selling them for $5. So, of course. Are these full albums or you're just pulling the best songs of the multiple? I'm doing both. Okay. I'm doing both. I'm making my own mixtapes and selling full albums.

And my, when I popped the trunk, it was so many people lined up to get. CDs at that point to the managers was like, yo, you got to get off the lot with like, you got traffic held up like it's crazy because of course everybody looking through them and taking so much time. People, people not even tired from working all night. They get off and they get to get $5 CDs. That wasn't a big thing then later on. Everybody has CDs or we're burning CDs. But back then, nobody really. had the capabilities of burning CDs, so I had them lined up, but they made me stop selling them in the parking lot. They didn't bother me about it being illegal, anything like that.

The problem was, I'm holding traffic. I got gobs of people every night buying CDs. So there's a little park down the road from the job. I would have them follow me to the park. And, man, of course, it was dark. I worked the night shift. So from 6 to 4.30 in the morning, I'm at work. So these people are lined up at like 4.35 in the morning to buy CDs. So when they made me go to the park down the road, of course, it's dark at night or early in the morning.

I had a light that I could clamp to the little over, you know, it was like a little building in that the park. So I would run a orange cord and from my charger in my car and hang up the light so everybody can see and get to see these. I even set up a grill and grilled hot dogs. It was a big event just to sell CDs. I mean, isn't this going to raise the, like aren't the police going to get notified or people around it going to be like what's going on it's four o'clock in the morning there's there's 30

people out here buying or doing something absolutely but at the time you didn't really it wasn't really a thing you never heard anybody getting in trouble right selling CDs so even though I'm making noise and it's a lot going on shoot the cops was getting them too right you know because who wants to pay $20 for a CD so this guy has $5 CDs. Everybody's buying them for me. And that was like the start of building an empire. How much were you making like a night selling those CDs? In the beginning, probably a couple hundred dollars. In the beginning, I probably was making maybe two, three hundred dollars. But you got to think, five dollars a CD, that's a lot of

CDs to make that much oh well how much do you have in each CD how much is a CD just a blank CD if you do the math probably less than 10 cents because you're buying them in bulk you're like a hundred a time yeah I'm buying them like that so you might get a hundred pack of CDs for ten dollars or twelve dollars for a hundred pack so five dollars a pop I can take ten to twelve dollars and almost all profit yeah it's the most profitable business i could possibly think of um so i did that for a while but it was the demand was so high i couldn't just burn on my computer i was just burning on one computer at the time so uh and i was printing the labels for them too so they looked packaged like

the store um but the demand was so so high. I had to get a duplicator. So I just went for the, I just splurged. I had made enough money where I could afford to splurge a little bit. And I think I spent $1,800 on one that burns 10 at a time. That was unheard of. Nobody, especially in about Austin, even heard of a duplicator. So they knew that you could burn CDs on the computer, but a duplicator, that changed the game. So now I can make a master copy on the computer, take it to the DVD burner, to the

duplicator, and make 10 copies. Back then, it probably took maybe 20 minutes, but you're burning 10 copies in 20 minutes. Right. So that's 30 an hour. Yeah. So that changed. the game um so now it's starting to be a demand because the VHS tapes are fade into black but now they're putting DVD burners in the computers now that really changed the game um but in the

beginning we had to come to Atlanta go to flea markets to find the DVDs. It wasn't downloading at that time. Not DVDs. You could get music, but it wasn't movies. I mean, with download connections, I doubt. Yeah, yeah. It's too much.

Yeah. That would definitely be too much. So we would go to Atlanta where they actually go in the theater. I don't know if they went in the theater in Atlanta. These could have came from anywhere. But they would go in the theater and record it and burn it. on a DVD. Who would do that?

You never know who the person that actually recorded it. Have you ever seen these? Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah, my brother used to download some of them. I've seen some of them are horrible. And some of them are like, I'm not, like, you can't tell.

You're almost like, I don't, is this a bootleg? Like what's, I'm like, because the audio is good. Yeah. I always think those, it's got to be some kid that works in the theater. Yeah. That must be like, look, we're to run it tonight. when nobody's here, and we're going to get our camera.

We're going to do it like a really good one because you couldn't do that. Yeah. You can't. You don't have the silhouettes of people getting up. Yeah, you can't. Oh, man, it was bad. You'll hear people snoring. Yeah.

You just got like a plug of somebody in Atlanta. Yeah, I did. That was, that was getting these people. You would go and buy. Well, we would go to the flea market. Okay. He's buying a bootleg one. And then you're mass producing it.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So that's a three-and-a-half, four-hour drive from Vauxite to Atlanta. But it was worth it for the money that you was going to make. So I would go sometimes other friends that were in the business would go and buy. All we needed was one master copy.

But I was the only one in the city with a duplicator. So if I go up there and get a DVD, I'm going to be the only one that can make 10 copies. Within a few minutes. So that started the wholesale business. It started retail at first. I was doing DVDs for $10, much better than $20 some odd dollars. What they cost. I was selling them for $10 or you could get three for $25.

I think I was doing some kind of deal like that. And, oh, man, like hot cakes. The DVDs changed. my life more than the CDs. The CDs helped me out with child support, helping maybe pay my bills a little sooner. But the DVDs changed the game completely. What are some of the movies at that time?

Man, every, like Miss Doubtfire and, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's what I think of in the eight or the 90s, you know, or the early, late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah. No, doubt Miss Dalphire must have been in like the early 90s. Yeah, but I had stuff like that. But what are some of them? The number one, and boy, if he was to see this, he would hate me.

But the number one was Tyler Perry movies. Tyler Perry movies, because, you know, we're in the Bible Belt. About us is like a big part of the Bible Belt. So a lot of the Christian people liked the Tyler Perry had the plays. And it's all kind of Christian-themed. They're horrible. They're horrible. you know what was not a bad one and they're actually remaking it is uh Alex Cross yeah

when he played Alex Cross and he was serious yeah like a serious role yeah okay fine but those ridiculous uh yeah oh god that's just the worst oh my god but down there Medea is everything well you know they're redoing the Alex Cross series that's like it was it James Patterson who wrote Alex Cross series but Tyler Perry bought those yeah Man, he's filthy rich. Oh, he's filthy, filthy, he got his own airplane runway next to his house. He does, yeah. Ridiculous.

And a crazy studio. Outrageously large. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But, yeah, when those Medea films dropped, everybody wanted it. He was mass-producing those two. Oh, my God. You can make those movies, those comedies that these guys make.

They make them for $5 to $15,000 million, and then they end up making $250 million. It's like, are you serious? Yeah. They. I think about the money I made, so I can only imagine what he made. So when something like a Medea would come out, I would make a thousand of them in a day, and I would sell all 1,000 of them because people buying wholesale from it. at this point so you don't have to go down to the um to the flea market or yeah at some

go to where the kids hang out you don't have to go there right you just these guys are coming to you and you're selling them they're going there right right well there actually all that came to a screeching halt when i met uh of a friend of mine fresh i met fresh and um he was a younger guy tech tech guy that's who you know when i was doing my music thing he would shoot videos like super tech guy he knew how to download the movies and at that point so you eliminate the bootlegger i eliminate the bootlegger that that really really changed the game so when he came around my money tripled i was already making a killing but now for a limited time at mcdonalds enjoy the tasty breakfast trio your choice of chicken or sausage macmuffin or mcgrittles with a hash brown and a small

iced coffee for five bucks plus tax available until 11 AM at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Don't have to go to Atlanta anymore. So now I'm getting the stuff as soon as it hits the internet. So that's keeping me, other people. Nobody had to go to Atlanta anymore. Well, you're getting a better quality or is it still?

No, it's still crap. It's still bootleg. It's still bootle. But you were saying like you were downloading them from like, you know, HBO or something. Sometimes you get like screeners. You might get a. screener early it might say at the bottom this is a screener not for resale or something like this so those will be crystal clear but the ones that everybody wanted was the bootlegs so even though

you're going to see somebody walking in the theater or talking or snoring that's the ones they want now with these uh DVDs are you having to sell them before they get released like or like are they time sensitive like hey i got two months before this comes out and Walmart where people would rather just watch the original. Well, back then, too, they weren't coming out that quick. Yeah, they was. That was back when, like, movie theaters were a big thing where they put the way they used to do it.

Like now, if it comes out, it's like a couple months, maybe. Yeah, or sometimes if it's within weeks, you can go on YouTube and buy the thing. It's like, it's expensive. It would be like 30, 40 bucks. Yeah. But you can buy it almost immediately. But back then, they would run it in the theater for six months to eight months. Right.

And then they'd wait. another few months so it'd be like after a year after the release date then they would put out the DVD so it comes out yeah they run it for six or eight months of the theaters then there's two to four months of it's just there's nothing yeah no way to see it no way to get and then the then the DVDs come out yeah so the only option is theater or the bootleg because right unless you're going to wait a whole year right right yeah because I feel like nowadays it's like yeah pretty available soon it comes out in the theater some guy goes and gets a really good a really good spot in the theater in the very middle and pulls his camera out and records the

whole thing and then he they put it on a DVD he could then download them yeah yeah so that made due to them not coming out for a year they're willing to watch the bootleg I mean you're pretty much still getting the theater experience you're gonna see somebody walk just like you would if you went there you'll hear people laugh in the background just like you would if you went there so you're getting the theater experience but those sold like hot cakes and um it only took probably a few months everybody wanted to become a DVD seller like people it was old people young people everybody wanted to sell DVDs they'll want to buy them from you to sell them.

Yeah. So, and even if they didn't want to deal with me, they kind of had to because I was the only option. So even if you didn't deal with me directly, you still dealt with me indirectly because I was the only one with the capabilities of doing that. So some people bought wholesale from me. some people get one copy and go burn it with the computer one at a time or they might have a burner that only burns one or two at a time believe someone would do that the time they have no respect for your fraud i know how long uh i guess how much would you what was you like profit margins selling wholesale and then like how long does it take them to burn a movie on the computer back then like half a day a day Back then, it probably took 30 to 40 minutes to burn a DVD, to burn one. But once you burn that master copy, you take it to the DVD burner, the duplicator, and you can make 10 in 30 minutes.

Right. So some people came and bought 100, 200, 200, some even up to 500 DVDs every day from me. And I'm wholesaling for a dollar. So the property margin is still good because I only have maybe 10 to 12 cents in each DVD. Right. So even at a dollar, I'm still making 10 times when I got invested. So I still had retail going on. And what's so crazy, I knew people that worked at Walmart.

So when they got ready to throw away their displays, I say, hey, don't throw that display away. the DVD display, let me get it. So you got the display for Die Hard. Yeah. Die Hard 4. Yeah. And where are you selling those or just putting them in your house? I have a room that's, that was like blockbuster.

Right. You walk in my room and it's three or four displays with DVDs and CDs. I'm still doing the CDs, but the DVDs are way more profitable. Are you still working at, um, Lowe's? I'm still working at Lowe's. You're going to say, hell no. No, I'm still, I'm trying to keep something, you know, legit and, you know, I got insurance and, you know.

At this point, what's the income ratio? Is it like 50-50, like between lows and the, in the blue? Oh, nowhere near it. I'm making five times what I'm making at lows on the DVDs is blowing it out of water. So before I would even go to work at Lowe's for a day's work, I probably after taxes and everything, I probably didn't even gross $100 a day. But I probably made $1,500 before I even went to work. Right.

So it's kind of not a lot of motivation to go, but work, you got to keep in mind. Work is where I make a lot of money too. what about the like at some point they start cracking down on these types of things like they like they'll they'll notice something like this you know how that how they get on to it I don't know if people just tell them or if people get arrested for something else and they see the bootleg yeah or I know that like the sheriffs and stuff will go through the flea markets and stuff right so are people getting arrested they they wasn't cracking down like this was just free game for for everybody you know they'll do that like the FBI will crack down on on counterfeiting counterfeit clothing right for like five years and then they'll just stop because like we've really put a dent in it right and people realize it's serious now and people are getting sentences so you know it kind of kind of um you know quails the enthusiasm for that crime for a while and then they switch to something else like hey we're going to go after guys that are doing

doing um insurance fraud you know because like every 20 years or so there'll be a rash of guys who will drive in front of like a truck yeah and then somebody cuts them off and then they hit the brakes and they hit the truck and then they ah and then they sue walmart yeah like it's a walmart truck or a chevron or something yeah and so they'll see such a pattern and then they'll go you know what we're going to go after all these guys they'll spend five years doing that but i know it's some point, because I remember when I was younger, that there was, it seemed like for at least six months to a year, I was seeing like every few months, I was seeing these big busts for people counterfeiting

CDs. Right. It always seemed to me, although this may be, I may be completely wrong, it always seemed to me like it was in the flea market. They just busted some guy with 250 CDs for whatever it was, you know, DVDs or CDs or something. And that went on for a while. And I was like, man, they're all over this. And then you never hear about it again.

You know, so I was just wondering at some point, these guys start to get, have to start getting busted. Not so much in Valdosta. They wasn't really hip to the, because that's something that's technology. They really don't even know what to do. If they do bus you, they don't even know.

It always takes them a while to figure out. Yeah, yeah. So any new technology is going to, there's going to be that lag time. Right. You know, they'll come up with a new drug and it'll be five years. before the federal government will be like, hey, wait a second. This is killing people.

Right. They're going to make this illegal. Yeah, we kind of slid through the cracks for years, like at least five, six years. It's going on with no problem. The thing that really brought the attention was me wanting to be a celebrity still. I'm still doing music. And now I got money to finance what I'm doing. And so I'm getting features with artists. I'm buying beats from known producers. You heard the swag surfing song? A swag.

A surf. And they all just do the... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy that produced that is from Baldosta. So when he was doing beats, he was doing them to keep his phone on. He was doing just to pay his phone bill. Just buy little things or whatever.

It was his passion, but he was making a little change just to get by. He produced my whole first album. Once I heard, he was young at the time. He probably was a teenager when I had him produced my album. But I seen the talent there. So, you know, he did the whole hour. I did a double CD because he would call and say, hey, I give you four beats for $80. I just need to pay my phone bill.

I bet that'll work so I end up just making a crazy amount of songs I had a lot of features because you know I'm my rep is starting to build up a little bit I'm getting known with the DVDs but now I'm still doing the music so I'm getting features from known artists as well as the local artists so everybody want to be a part of my movement as it looked like I was moving pretty good and that kind of got me known a little more in the industry more so locally than nationally but I wanted more notoriety

I didn't want to just be local so I had the brilliant idea of shooting videos shooting commercials whatever and putting them on the front of every DVD Oh, that seems like a good idea. That seems like that's like write down your address.

Right. And right. Here's who's producing this illegal bootleg CD. Yeah. So that actually, I wasn't even thinking of jail or this is illegal.

At the time, I was so hungry for notoriety. Notoriety and to, you know, make it in the mute. I love to end up. entertainment business. I'm one of them guys that, you know, once Snoop Dog, that's what kind of motivated me to want to rap. When I first heard Snoop and Dre, I was like, wow. Because before then, it was, I didn't hear any gangster music. The only rappers I heard was like Chris Cross or

Heavy Dee and the hammer and the people that didn't really curse. So when I heard Snoop and Dre, I was like, oh, this is fantastic. They, they send a lot of cuss words and I love it. So, So saying that, I wanted to be on that level at some point. So putting the videos and everything on the front gained me a ton of notoriety. Like, because the other people that were distributing the DVDs, some of them was in the military. So they would come home. We have a military base in Valdosta. So some of them are in the military.

military, and then they'll go back to, you know, they'll get deported, you know, go somewhere else and take the DVDs with them. And some of them were selling DVDs. Right. So these DVDs ended up at some point probably in every state in the United States with my commercials on them. So I had people calling me from New York, California, and everything thinking I'm in those States. And I'm in Valdosta, Georgia, you know. So if I have a party going on, I'll put it on

the front of the DVD, hey, come check out my party next month. It's going to be big. I'm bringing down such and such, such and such. And somebody in New York might see that and think, oh, I'm trying to come to the party and bring 20 people with me. I'm like, I'm in Vodas of Georgia. I'm not in New York of California. right are you leaving your contact info or website info on this trailer at at that time it was the my space page i was leaving my my space page and my personal number on the DVDs i can't imagine how that would go wrong and you would think that would be the thing that gives me in trouble but the actual popularity is the thing that was starting to be a problem so i bowed to myself if i

didn't make it by the time i was 30 i was gonna stop rapping like this a young man's game so what's the guy who's uh what is that god what is that movie that's hilarious for the guys um is it hitch where the the the chick is with the guy goes on a date with a guy and he's unemployed and he says he's going to be a rapper and he's called what's he called himself 50% off or something better 50 yeah he's and she's like you're a little old he's man people say that what yeah you're 40 years old like what do you're yeah you're you're rapper you've never seen that oh it's funny yeah i remember i can't think of the name but i remember it but um i vowed that at 30 years old if i hadn't made it big with the music business

I was going to tap out. So I'm... The new BMO, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some.

Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. visit bemo.com slash the i porter to learn more 25 26 27 it's doing okay but i'm not making money the money is in the DVDs i'm not making money from the music yeah it's uh you're you're going broke to prove to everybody how much money you're making or you know these guys that they're selling drugs to finance their wrapping career and after a couple of years it's just that's where all their money's going to.

It's like, okay, well, the only reason I'm appearing to be a successful rapper is because I'm funding it by selling drugs. And then they get busted and they get in prison. It's like, and I mean, man, I'm shooting music videos. I rent it like I have a song called South Side Love. I brought two well-known artists to be in the video. We don't want to mention Diddy at this point, but Diddy had a group called Danny Kane.

One of the group members, Dee Woods, I brought her to be in my video. And Rashida, which she's known for being on love and hip hop right now, but she was an artist too. I brought her to be in the video. I rented two stretch hummers, rented out a building, like a whole nine just to shoot a video, bought her crazy. You know, the cameras were still big then. So I brought a brand new camera. The video still looks horrible. but at that point

that was nobody in my area had a music video this was like big for somebody to shoot a video so I did it in my hometown everybody came out

I probably spent like seven or $8,000 just on paying people renting the hummers and all that but I didn't mind spending

you know that type of money just to shoot a video because I was going to make it back in a few days. But that's how bad I wanted the music to work. And it just, you know, stuff wasn't really on. YouTube wasn't the number one place to go for videos. You wanted your video on TV.

What year was this? This was early 2000s, probably 2005, 2006, maybe. I think YouTube, I think it, and I can be wrong, but it was close to around 2005 because it had been out about a year or so before I got arrested and at that time people were uploading like their home their backyard barbecues or kids opening up you know or silly videos lots of silly videos were a big thing yeah but it wasn't podcast right podcasts weren't even the word wasn't even developed until 2009 right and music videos weren't really being uploaded right for years

after that by by big time musicians right because they don't want my shit to be on on right like i want you to buy it from me right so at that time you still have the dream of getting a record deal and getting your video on tv and that just looked like it wasn't going to happen so i'm like man i love this entertainment business um what else can i do i really don't i didn't have a playing B. I could sell DVDs forever, but I wanted to really make it in the entertainment business. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe I could be a journalist. Let me just try that. Let me just pop up next time somebody comes about us to perform. I'll see if I can get an interview with him because I was so deep into it. Like I'm, I keep mentioning Snoop, but I'm the

guy like Snoop is 6-3, graduated from Long Beach, son and such, married to such and such, kids' names such and such. I was a entertainment business historian, not just with Snoop, with Master Pete, everybody that was in the music business, I just was obsessed with. I had every source magazine and double X-L. I was huge into the business, the whole entertainment. The whole entertainment business. So you want to be on the cover of magazines and, you know, really make it too. And that wasn't happening. So the journalist thing, like, maybe I can interview some people and still have that entertainment aspect to what I'm doing. So my first interview, I didn't even have a camera. Well, I had a camera, but it was one of the little cheap, little Panasonic

I think it might have been a mini DV. So they did have many, like the little small tapes at that time. So we had graduated from the VHS. It was those. But the quality was not the greatest. I didn't have a microphone or anything. Was it 4K? 4K wasn't even thought of at that time.

But a guy, his name was Dre. He's a pretty popular producer with a group called Cooling Dre. He came to my hometown. So I looked on the flyer, seeing who was doing the promotion for the show, and called him. And, you know, everybody knew like, hey, this hustling me. And I'm trying to do interviews now. And I see Dre is coming. I want to get an interview.

So he gave me the manager's information. I called the manager. manager like okay i think we can set that up so i ended up i could get in it all the clubs for free so end up going to the club and recording some of his performance and then catching up with his manager like where y'all going to be after the show i want to do an interview so he went to the lobby of maybe the marriott or something like that and i caught up with him and impressed him. Like, I knew about a restaurant that he had just opened. I knew about his dating life. I knew about kids. I knew about everything, what all you produced, your music career, and every

question I asked him, he was like, oh, you, you know about, yeah, I love this. So once I seen that, I'm like, let me see how to get on these red carpet. and maybe go to other events and see if I can interview other artists. This still being funded with the DVDs. Still not making money. What are you doing with these? Are you writing articles? I'm not writing the article.

I'm freelancing. You're doing the interview, but you're not posting it or writing anything? Well, the interview is going on the front of the DVDs. Oh, okay. So that made me super popular when they see Rick Rawls and, TI and all the popular rap trick daddy and all that stuff, they're seeing me interview them on the front of the DVDs. Since I can't go mainstream,

I can't get on MTV, BET, VH1. Right. The DVDs is my VH1, MTV BET. So what's crazy is I'm interviewing the same people on bootlegging. so I might be on the red carpet interviewing red roast and I got 50 his CDs at the house you know burnt up so but I started to getting on started to build a little resume so now I'm applying to go to the BET Awards I'm applying to go to the Billboard Awards I learned how that process works yeah we got that down yeah we got we go to like we go to like crime con

and pod fest and we'll say, hey, I'm writing, or we're writing an article, and then we'll get a couple free tickets so we don't have to pay the $250 to get in. That's exactly what I was doing. And even if I couldn't get in, I try to get in as a seat filler. Sometimes they're holding up a sign like, hey, seat fillers needed. Well, you can probably get in as a journalist to interview. Well, you don't actually get in the show, but there's where that journalist sit. So you can actually interview people, right?

I had a good run. Well, I've seen all the pictures. There's a bunch of pictures of you with all these different celebrities. Absolutely. So I got into a lot of places. Some of them, I might have had to climb a fence. Go in the back door to get in, but I work my way in. And when you're coming in with a camera, at this time now, I have a microphone.

Like, it's looking super legit now. So when I say, this is Hustleman with the Hustleman show. We're coming in, da, da, da, da. And you've got to be confident when you. You're doing it. You can't act scared and all that. Yeah, like they should know who you are. Like, you should know, like, yeah, exactly.

Like, you don't see my name on the list. Yeah, I'm Matt Cox with Inside True Crime Magazine. Right. We'd like to schedule a, you know, like. This is a thing. Right, right. So now I'm going to Vegas doing interviews on the red carpet at the Billboard Awards, B.T. Awards in L.A. and hip hop awards in Atlanta.

at the time it was an ozone awards in Miami and I'm starting to bump into the same people so these artists are starting to know me and if you watch some of my videos they'll come up to me I'm saying man what's up man like they's starting to know me and don't forget I'm still doing the CDs and DVDs so when they come up the same people

probably dapping me up right now I'm gonna go back home and sell a lot of your stuff stuff so you should put the I was well yeah so you're putting are you putting the the interviews on the DVDs or the or the the CDs because I was going to say if you're if you interview Snoop dog yeah I would put the interview at the beginning and then put his CD you know put all of his music on the back of that then you got a package that would have been dope they got an interview and we got 20 of his best songs that would have been dope but I was

putting them on the DVDs. So at some point you were watching 20 commercials. It was almost like watching television. You're watching 20 commercials before the DVD even comes on. But so for the people that didn't have a remote where they could skip them, you had to bear through 20. It's interviews, it's commercials. I'm even doing commercials because at this point, retail-wise, I'm selling DVDs, five for ten dollars so all the other bootleggers hated me yeah they can't make any money but

i'm still y'all suppliers so even though you hate me you still got to deal with me but i kind of crossed them up by putting the commercial on the DVD saying hey i got them five for ten right you know like i'm like look at me and uh but still that's not the that wasn't the smartest thing that do, but that's not really what the problem was. The show that I was doing with interviewing celebrities, it was more than just interviewing celebrities, the Hustleman show. And I didn't name myself Hustleman, a guy that I worked with at Lowe, Cedric Tyson. That's my guy. I would come in with a book bag and every day I'm popping the trunk and all that. He started calling me Hustleman. They get that from Martin, the Martin show. There was a character on there. They called Hustleman,

which was Tracy Morgan's character. So Tracy Morgan, he hustled everything. If you needed a wedding ring for your wedding and you lost yours, he'll come to a house with a wedding ring. It might not be real, but he had it. If he was hungry, he might not bring ribs and chicken, but he might bring some roasted pigeon from the window seal. It's really an episode like that, too.

they were snowed in and they didn't have nothing to eat so he brought in the roasted pigeons but so they started calling me he started calling me that and it spread so everybody at Lowe's Hustleman Hustleman Hustle Man so I didn't name myself that people well he gave me that name and it just spread spread spread so I built a brand with it so the Hustle Man show now back to the Hustle Man show it aired locally from Tallahassee to Albany, Georgia. You actually got a Hustleman show? I got a Hustleman show. Is this like an infomercial type thing where you can buy space?

Yeah, it was. It was. But on the show, we would take the many DVD tapes to the station in Tallahassee, and the commercial would already be in it. and I went to local businesses to try to get commercials and most of them was, I'm sure the name didn't help the Hustleman show. You want me to give you money for a commercial on the Hustleman show? So I did commercials for free for all the local businesses.

I'm like, this one for free so you can see it's legit. Next one is cheap as $50. Just give me $50. Right. To shoot edit in air your commercial, I'm only charging $50. $50. But my spot was only $200. So it was room for 12 commercials. So I was going more than double my money. And then eventually as the show became more popular, you know, raised the price. I'm just trying to get started here. And so the interviews were on there. But the catcher was I was

on some civil rights somewhat journey some power to the people type journey because in my hometown a lot of injustices going on with the cops and the jail system and all that

and I'm bold enough to speak on it that doesn't seem like when you're running a criminal you know I don't say organization but you know enterprise yeah then uh bashing the the local cops probably not a good idea definitely not a good idea especially since since all the all the merchandise you're selling can be directly relate you know directly tied back to you right right but i'm interviewing

local activists i'm going to the malls and interviewing uh you know just random people And, but I'm doing positive stuff too. I'm saying, we talked about teenage pregnancy and AIDS. I interviewed a guy that had AIDS. And, you know, we talked about his life. And a lot of just random, like, I show you the fun stuff. You see me interviewing celebrities. But we put a little, little medicine in the candy, too.

And actually. One thing that probably was more than a problem, we're going, we're traveling, we're going places for me to do the interviews and everything. And one night on the way back, we seen, we were kind of like ambulance police chases. We see them like, where they're going? We're going to record it. You know, so before phones, we was rolling around with this big camera recording stuff. And one night, it was like this big thing going on coming back from Tallahassee. We were in a city called Thomasville.

I don't know if you're familiar with Thomasville, Georgia, a small town. And it was just, to be that small town, it's like 100 cops at this gas station. So we pulled over at the little car dealership next door and kind of hid and set the camera up because something big had to be, it's no need for 100 cops to be in Thomasville. It's probably not even 10,000 people in that town. and um who knew that we would record a cop kicking and punching a guy on the ground um bringing that to the local local local uh whatever affiliate station a news station no no we didn't we didn't do that i actually called the n wacp and um because no matter what the crime this guy did

They was beating him to a bloody pulp. So it was like, oh, and we got this on tape. NWACP, if it's not making, getting a lot of media coverage or is it. They didn't seem very enthused to deal with it. So I kind of was like, I don't think I need to touch this in this way. So what I thought was smart was to cut up the clip of them beating the guy and put it in my intro to the show. So you'll see me interview. people but you'll see a little two second flash of cops beating this guy and at this point

I can't say that's what turned them on to me but it's very possible that could be something that pissed them off um but in doing that every time you've seen the show on TV or even on the DVDs for my promos that little clip was in the intro to it. So I end up doing one season of the Hustleman show at this point that's not really making money because the people didn't want to pay

for the commercials. So I said, I don't need to air this on TV. I just put the whole interview, the whole show on the DVDs. And it got to the point where some of the artists that I would see on the red carpet knew me from the DVDs. They had bootlegs too. So when they see me, Hustlemen, like, I never, how you, you know me? I had to realize they watched bootleg DVDs too. Even though they got a little money, they watched bootleg DVDs too. So I did that.

And in June of 2009, that's when things came to a screeching halt. With me being the guy in the city that was known for making money, at this point, if I made 7,000 a week that was a bad week yeah 7,000 was a bad week usually there's more than that

so I'm getting to be known to be a guy they more so thought they didn't believe the DVDs is what made the money they thought what I was doing with the celebrities was making money so in my hometown a lot of people thought I probably was a millionaire, but I wasn't making money off of that stuff. I was, the DVDs was the money, but people would bring stuff to me when they, everybody who

needed help, your kids need money for football, you're selling cookies, donuts, whatever they're selling, they're coming to me. And usually, yeah, I'm buying, and I gave kids money for making honor roll. That was part of my show too. So the kids made good grades. I would give them $50 and all that type of stuff. So when you see stuff like that, that makes you think, oh, yeah, he's making money.

And he's giving it away. Let's try a shot. So people would come to my house, and I was very accessible. Everybody knew where I stayed. I was the DVD man, and sometimes I would have a line outside the door. I was doing more DVDs than the drug did the drug dealers were was trying to sell DVDs it was to that point um but people would come with vacuum cleaners they would come with uh dishes I want you to buy them any anything they could possibly hey I have a set

of dishes I have this vacuum cleaner I have a stove I have just like man just give me $50 for this laptop and it would open open a pawn shop it was becoming that but really I didn't even need that stuff but if somebody tried to sell you a laptop you like nah I'm good and be like just give me $50 man I really needed them I'm messed up my kids need this and they come up with some excuse and like all right. $50 for a laptop, cool. Well, I did that with the wrong person. So I bought a laptop from somebody. And it was old. It was an old lap. It had a floppy disk drive in it.

It was that old. But just to help them out, I'm like, $50, I can have my guy that I told you do my recordings. He could take a computer apart piece by piece. put it back together, might take this floppy disk drive out, put a DVD room in it, you know,

and maybe we can sell it for $100, $150 or something. So that's what I did. So a guy hit me like, hey, you got any? Because I was known to have little stuff so people would call, say, you got a DVD player, do you have a computer? or do you have a vacuum cleaner?

You know, people might ask for that. I'm like, yeah, I got something like that. And it was no need for me to even involve myself. I was making too much money to deal with something petty like that. But I did. And a guy called me and say, hey, it's a lady that works with me that's asking me about a laptop. And I'm like, okay, I do got a laptop. Now, it's old.

It's really cheap. You can just give me $200 for it. And the guy was like, okay, well, I'm going to tell her $300. I can make $100 off of it. And I didn't even have to do nothing really, you know, invest in it to make that $100. That's a petty hustle, but I'm not thinking too much of it. But I told them, don't brain the lady. to my house

I'm not thinking law wise I'm thinking this is an old laptop if it tears up she's going to bug us to fix it right

so don't bring her here because if you tear up I don't want to deal with her he did the opposite of what I asked him to do

he still brought the lady to me because he didn't want to give up the initial $200 to make the $300 that he wanted to sell it for. So he brought the lady. The lady gave him to $300. He gave me mine.

Done deal. Lady left with the laptop. Done. I mean, you're not thinking nothing of debt. I wish the lady knew that we worked on laptops because just like I thought the laptop did tear up and she put it in the shop. And when she put it in the shop, and when she put it in the shop, shop turns out it was reported stolen in 1998 from one of the colleges down there from the technical college um which i don't know where this stuff come from but the computer was so old right i was like i would never thought it was you know stolen it's a very good chance it could have been stolen but definitely not from you know the technical college the worst place like maybe you stole it from somebody but not the college so i guess when they worked on it they've seen

signs that it came from technical college so they called her in the police called her in and boy she started turning like no other and she pretty much told them everything i had going And the little time she met me, she bought a couple of DVDs with the laptop. So it wasn't a setup from the beginning. She was just there for a laptop. She actually, I guess they scared up. They probably told her you'll do 100 years. This was an older lady.

This lady probably was at least knocking on 60, at least at the time. So I don't know what they told her, but obviously they scared her. and she came back to my house with a wire. Jeez, all this for a laptop or are covered? A laptop. So the police, I didn't know at the time, they was in a van across the street from my house, surveilling it, doing, you know, surveilling it.

And her and the husband came back over and like, hey, this such and such, you remember me? I'm like, yeah, it's cool. but I'm still working at the time. So I'm working the night shift. So she came like eight and eight, nine in the morning. I just got off at 4.30 in the morning and then I get off and do DVDs and all that. So I probably had just laid down at the time.

So she came to the door and I opened the door. And that was the worst thing I could have ever did. But I opened the door instead of just saying, hey, I'm tired, come back, another day. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of night or all of the above. That's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, ghost bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patented technology that adjusts to your body's temperature,

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Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off site wide. I opened the door and she was looking to buy another computer. The only reason I had a computer for sale at the time is because somebody asked me. I had kind of, that was becoming an annoying, aggravating thing to deal with electronics and all that. So I had kind of backed off of it.

But Fresh, the guy that helps me with my editing and the computer nerd guy. Right. He, I shouldn't call him a nerd. he's too cool to be called a nerd but he's a smart guy right but home the nerds really like when you and i grew up it was uh i'm a little older than you but when we grew up nerd was a an insult but the nerds are basically running the world yeah the nerds running the world for sure for sure but his aunt wanted a computer and of course i knew somebody who had one so i'm like

I got a computer a desktop computer It didn't even have a DVD burn It had it like a DVD one Hey so what did you want to talk about Well, I want to tell you about Wagovi Wagovi? Yeah, Wagovi What about it? On second thought

I might not be the right person to tell you Oh, you're not? No, just ask your doctor About Wagovi Yeah, ask for it by name Okay, so why did you bring me to the circus? Oh, I'm really into Lion's Tamers, you know, with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name.

Visit wagovi.ca for savings. Exclusions may apply. Oh, man. So I had that and she never came to get it. Therefore, making it available for this lady to buy it. When she bought that computer and a couple DVDs, they had me. They had her own surveillance, had her wired up, and, of course. They got you on the wire.

Oh, I'm on the wire. I definitely have the discovery to this day of the wire. Because when I first got locked up, I had no clue. Like, I'm thinking it's the DVDs. I'm thinking, oh, they finally got me. I'm going to have to pay a big fine and get out of jail and never worry about it again. I'm thinking it's something with the DVDs. actually it was the computer stolen property stolen property so um they came later that day

they didn't come right then they came later that day and but as we as i heard on the wire later when i got my discovery she told them the whole in and outs of my house he has a room in there that's set up like Blockbuster. He has other computers. I don't know if he's selling them, but he has like eight different computers. He had these big burners that he's using to burn the DVDs. And if you go to the right,

he got computers over there. You go to the left. It's over there. And she told the whole ends of out of everything. So when they came in. Yeah, they know exactly where everything is. But, you know, I- They kicked the door down.

Did they knock on the door politely and ask to come in? It wasn't polite at all. So when they came to the door, I'm like, Lowns County, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Like, I'm thinking they're already trying to knock the door down hard as they're knocking. So, of course, I'm hesitant to open the door. I'm like, oh, Lord, I got a whole enterprise going on here. Like, I wasn't prepared to, it's like, where can I hide, you know, if you got a little bit of drugs you might can flush it or something you can't really flush a whole blockbuster business um

so i took too long to open the door of course they kicked it down they kicked the back door down they kicked the front door down they came in with guns move we'll blow your brains out get on the ground it was like you would would have thought i was pablo right um so i'm on the ground with my hands Like, they tell you to go, you know, put your hands on your head, get on your knees and all that. So I'm scared because I've never been, you know, I've never even had detention in school. So this is my first time being in any kind of trouble. And this is around the time where cops are starting to get known for killing young black men. So I'm like, ooh, I hope I make it out.

out of here. Not to mention when they came in, I had cameras everywhere. So I, you know, seen what was going on beforehand. But when they came in, they cut the wires on all my cameras. I even had dummy cameras with wires that wasn't even real wires. It's just a dummy camera. They cut those too. So that really scared me like, you coming in here, kicking down my door, putting guns to my head, and these guys are cutting the wires on my camera. I thought it was over for me that day, but it didn't kill me, obviously, but I had to sit there on my knees while they take everything out of my house. And they took more than just the DVDs, they took TVs, they took computers, every single thing I had in my house, including my cars. They took, at the time I had an escalator, bends, I was.

living the life that would appear to be a drug dealer's life off of DVDs. And as they're taking all of this, they're saying, yeah, I bet you won't be on a red carpet this year. So obviously they know, oh, you've got a benz and the escalade. We can't even drive anything like that. I'm like, if y'all only knew, I know somebody worked at the bank, these repos. But, yeah, F-150 probably costs more than what I paid for this Benz and Escalade, but cool.

So it definitely was a little personal. So they already, this was something definitely planned because the news crew, as soon as I got in the police car, the news crew pulled up shortly after. And, you know, they took me on the jail. by the time they booked me in it, I'm still not knowing what's the official charges. It's not like they read me any Miranda rights.

Of course, like, what's going on? I can play dumb all I want. But in my mind, I'm still assuming it's the DVDs. Right. But once I finally do get booked in and see the actual charges, the charge

initially is theft by receiving something like like that's the original charge but once they empty my house out i think i ended up with 36 new charges what are the what are some of those i mean this is manufacturing is it they call it a legal reproduction of copyrighted material and they call my DVD burners a tool to commit a crime so i'm like because it's just saying a tool to commit a crime. I'm like, I didn't have any illegal guns, anything.

Yeah, but if they find a screwdriver in your backpack, that's a, that's a, that's a burglary tool. Not a screwdriver. That's what my lawyer told me later. He used that same analogy. Like, if you had a screwdriver, it's a tool to commit a crime. Yeah, when I'm charges, I was, or one of the enhancements I got on my fraud was using a specialty device in furtherance of your crime you know what the specialty device was at a laptop oh my

god it's like well everybody in america has a laptop yeah if you were using it to further your crimes like okay whatever you guys are just making stuff yeah see that's what i thought when they said the burner was a tool to commit a crime i'm like what you can buy burners i you know i'm not realizing how how that works so by the time they got me booked in and it was a long way Because in Lowndes County, they're locking people up like water. So if you go into jail, it probably takes you a little while. You're going to sit in the holding cell for a while. And they put me back in population just soon enough to catch.

The news, yourself on the news? That's a good feeling. Yeah. So the people in jail knew me. So as I'm walking down the aisles of the jail, they're banging on the windows hustle man hustle man like it's a it's a big deal i'm i'm a local celebrity so it's like we're seeing a celebrity some of them had never seen me in real life some of them didn't even know i stayed in about austers some of them thought i was in hollywood

somewhere and um so i'm coming in and as they close those doors behind me of course all the people in there greeting me hustle man man what's going on and look on t and the news, I was pretty much the caption for the rest of that day, tune in at 12 o'clock to see Hustleman get locked up for DVDs, tune in at 6 p.m. to see Hustleman get locked up for DVDs, tune in at 11 p.m. to see, I was the highlight of the whole news. For the next news cycle. Oh, the news cycles had me. And it was on all the stations, all the local stations. So the Tallahassee station, Albany Station, all that shone about us. So everybody's seen that.

Everybody's seen my mugshot. They've seen videos of them taking everything outside out of my house and loading it up. And it's just a big deal. And on the newscast, they actually said he may be facing federal charges. And even in my mind, I'm like, because I'm still not knowing how deep all my charges are. I don't even have all 36 charges at that time. I only got the theft by receiving. So they had to call me.

They ended up calling me out three times to like rebook me type situation. Once they come up with new charges, they book you in again. So those initial charges, go book me in for 12 more. Go book me in for 10 more. Like, oh my God, what? And then I don't know how they're getting these numbers because I had thousands of DVDs.

So I would think I would have thousands of charges, but I don't know how they was coming up with this stuff. What's your lawyer say? Had to find a lawyer with no money because, you know, I had cash money in the roof of my house. and I had money in the bank also. They seized the money in the bank? They said they would, but they never did. That's what I was always scared. Even though I knew this was illegal,

I never thought it would get this big. So I kept some, you know, I keep like 20, 30 grand in the roof. Just in case something goes wrong with the bank, I still got money. So when they definitely called me in the interrogation room and they was trying to get me to give up somebody on a theft ring. Like it had been a lot of burglaries around that time. So of course they, hey, you want something to drink?

You want a hamburger? Like, no, I'm good. You want a cigarette? I don't smoke. They're thinking, what are they thinking that the, that's part of the burglary ring? what part of the burglary ring had stolen the computer from Valdosta

technical school? Right. They're trying to tie me in. And you would know where you would know that person. Yeah, they was trying to, if I didn't give up somebody, they was going to look at me like, I'm the guy that's sending these guys

to break in people houses or something. Like, it's not that serious with me. And I got old, like this, this was junk, really. that I bought. But as they sitting in there, I'm like, okay, I watch First 48. I know not to say nothing. These people always tell on themselves.

So I'm like, I want to see my lawyer, man. I'm not talking to y'all. I say I watched, and I actually told them I watched First 48. I know what y'all trying to do. I'm waiting on my lawyer. So one of the detectives came and whispered in my ear. you say yeah and we found what was in your roof too which was my little stash my stash and it wasn't obvious something was in the roof right like but i didn't know they didn't leave no part of my house

on turn they pulled up the carpet tore up my refrigerator uh sofas like they were looking for more than DVDs. But once he said that, I knew, oh, I'm in trouble now. This was my get out of jail free money. Like I could call my mom, like, Mama, get somebody to go in the roof for me and get me out of jail. Well, they took that ability. So I had to call Mama. With the worst call you can possibly want to give. I thought the worst call was my mom about to be a daddy. I thought that was the worst call. But to call my mom, her only child, I'm the only child, and tell her that I'm locked up in the Lowndes County Jail,

which is notorious for unexplained deaths, scared of the death. So, of course, she did everything possible to get me out. I made so much news coverage, we couldn't get a state-appointed attorney. We had to get somebody that was powerful. so we end up well she had to big and borrow and take out mortgages and all kinds of stuff but we hired one of the most known lawyers in Voddoss's name Converse Bright he's he's got off potential uh murderers drug dealers everything he takes those cases not saying they did it but he takes those type of cases i'm the DVD guy so he's already looking like you you know i'm

kind of like the drug dealer murder type lawyer like you know i doubt there's a DVD guy yeah the specializes a pretty unique yeah it's a unique uh the first time this has ever happened uh really as i found out later in the state of georgia or in most states but definitely Georgia and so definitely about ossa so they didn't even they just get it's just a guessing game what to charge me at this point because this is the first time so the lawyer he gets some you know the discovery and kind of show me what now i'm seeing what all they got and he told me from jump he said man you made so much media there's no way i can get you all scott free from this you're you're gonna get something only thing we can do is try to make sure you don't go to prison on july 18th get excited for the summer's biggest adventure i think i just smurf my pants that's a little too excited sorry smurfs only did is july 18 and um so of course i'm nervous never been to jail well i went to jail fight broke out

at the club for a disorderly conduct as a teenager, but that got dropped later too. So that that was nothing. But now I'm in here for something that might be a little more serious. And my lawyer is up here already telling me, you're going to get something. Now I'm like, I don't know if you're worth the 10,000 I gave you all top. Like he wanted 20. we gave them half then had to give another half later so like for $20,000 you seem like I should get something decent so I end up sitting in jail for a few weeks a few weeks I didn't get bun I got denied bun and finally I was able to get a bun three weeks later um but the bun was crazy high the bun was 75,000 so you need 7,500 bucks just to get out yeah just to

get out so my mom you know we we already had well she had to beg and borrow and take out mortgages to get the money to give him now you need 7,500 to get me out and that just wasn't going to happen so my escalade that they took eventually they had to give it back right it was actually my mother's name but eventually they gave it back and when they did that's how we paid the bunsman the escalade was worth way more than seventy five hundred dollars um but oh it hurt my feeling And my mom say, I got you out. But see, this is what I had to do. Had to give the bunsman.

And he didn't really want it. He wanted money. But, I mean, who's going to turn down an escalade sitting on 24s? And dashed screen, pipes on it. It was all hooked up, tinted up for $75. That broke my heart because I put a lot of money and time in that vehicle to just really just lose. it um so now i'm out on bun i'm going to see the lawyer probably every couple weeks you're not really getting too many updates on the case but he's more concerned with hey i need

the other half of my money though right so now i'm like i don't know if this guy really going try to help me with my case because he won't the other half of his money. He's ready to drop me but you already got 10,000. It's like I can't hire another lawyer. So now with me making the news, I'm in Vald-Austa so everybody knows me. Everybody knows the family. People in my mom's church like, he's your son, okay. Like it's like everybody knows. So I'm not. getting, I went back to Lowe's. They still have my job. I went back to Lowe's.

I was still working at Lowe's. So at this point, I've been at Lowe's for years. And I went back. And of course, when I showed up, it was all lies on me. And I knew I didn't have long to be at that job. From that day on, they were trying to come up with just anything. because technically I hadn't been officially charged. Chargers were pending, so technically you couldn't say,

hey, you got this charge, so you're out of here. But they were coming up with anything. Like, hey, you scan this product in wrong. Oh, your production isn't good or whatever. So I was able to last on that job for eight, nine years. And now of a sudden I can't do my job right for nothing in the world. So I think they let me work for maybe two weeks Then they fired me

So with my back against the wall Guess what I went back to doing What I know best I went to found I didn't have the money to buy a big DVD burner again But I knew somebody that was selling one That would burn three at a time That's a long way from the ones that would burn 10

I had like three of those. So I was burning at least 30 at a time. And I had like five or six computers. So it was, I had all that stuff running at all times. They took all that, didn't they? They took all that. So I found a guy that was seven to three burner. And at this point, Fresh was still around my tech guy.

But I had to learn how to download these movies myself because no, Nobody was really, I was hot. Right. He didn't want to be a part of it. No, nobody wanted to, and I didn't want him to be, you know, be around me and, you know, possibly get in trouble too. So I started doing the DVDs myself. Right. I had to buy another computer.

I had to start from scratch. So I had one computer in a three DVD burner. And not too many people would mess with me. But the feud out was like, man, I'm glad you're back. Man, we've been out here starving because you've got to think. These people, I worked a regular job. These people were living off of selling DVDs. They were taking care of their families, making their car payments, mortgages, and everything from DVDs.

Yeah, you're just helping the community. Yeah, that's it. Just helping the community. And so those type of people were glad that I was back. so it was a long road in the beginning so I might have two or three people that would buy a few from me so I was make a couple hundred dollars here and there

and gradually over time I bought another 10 burner and another computer while these case still pending but I have to pay a lot pay this lawyer he's going to drop me and no job is going to hire me i'm i'm big time news it's not like i went to jail and just made a small article i made the front page i was on the front page so it's not like everybody in the city don't know what's going on so i went back to doing that slowly built

myself back up i was able to come up the money to pay the lawyer i couldn't give him another 10,000 But I'm like, hey, here's 2,000. Right. Here's another thousand. So he worked with me. I still had that ambition to be a celebrity, too. Even with all this going on. So what happened?

So I'm still trying to do the music a little bit. Now I got a chip on my shoulder. And I want to release it with some new music. I haven't quite hit 30 yet at the time. I'm knocking on it. I'm like 29. I'm like right there. I'm like I said 30.

So I'm going to do one more album. And on this album, I got a chip on my shoulder. So I'm probably like Tupac. I'm like going crazy on what I'm talking about. And I'm still on my. I, with my chip on my shoulder, I'm still on my, the police are bad type of situation. And like a fool, they had an NWACP meeting in about Austin because I think another person died at the jail. And this, this has been a thing there, and it's always mysterious.

So they had an NWACP to meet, NWACP meeting, and people like our Sharped in and all that, they all been about outside. I don't know if you heard about the Kendrick Johnson case where the young man they found rode up in the wrestling mat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was my hometown. So that type of stuff and it's still no,

they won't even call that a homicide when there's so much evidence saying that it is. so just to give you reference on how my city works so i went to the end of acp meeting and after going to jail i had some positive words too i was like listen i've been through the mill a lot of people been through the meal with the legal situations here but jail is not supposed to be paradise right jail is supposed to be tough it's just they got some inhumane things going on or whatever and who knew that the local newspaper was there so the next day you're on the they printed what i said my lawyer said stop talking you did you you just got to be the

dumbest person ever he didn't literally say that but in so many words he was like don't ever go to another nwacp meeting because he's trying to figure out why do they hate me so much and I'm thinking that he's starting to see why they hate me. They don't hate me over DVDs because when I went to court for my bun hearings, even the judge had a thing for me. This person might have a cocaine charge. This person might have a theft charge. They were like, okay, no bun, keep it moving.

$500 bun, keep it moving. Oh, you got cocaine, no bun. Like, everything was, like, no problem. When he got to me, the big, bad DVD man, Mitchell, you know better. Why are you doing the DVDs? Huh? Why are you yelling at me?

Like, you... So it seemed like it was something personal, but to this day, I'm like, I know I was wrong. I know I was doing something illegal. But why did it seem like everybody from the detectives to the DA to the judge had something personal against me for DVDs.

It was weird, but now, you know, thinking back, I did go to end of ACP meetings. I did have a TV show. I kind of spoke out. So what did you end up, how much times you end up getting?

I actually, when this was all said and done for this case, this was not the last time I got jammed up okay but this case I ended up getting probation the lawyer did his job right they gave me five years probation I paid once you pay that fine they kind of don't need you no more right so I got off in like two and a half years how much was the fine the fine was um two thousand dollars and so I paid that off and two and a half years I'm off and I pleaded under the first offender so if you complete the bond they dropped the whole thing the whole thing so you don't have a felony right so I was able to still have my gun rights and everything because I had they thought they had something with that

they found I had a gun in every room really I thought at some point somebody would try to rob me so that's why I had cameras everywhere guns everywhere I was more so worried about that. I was never really thinking about the police. So when they came and they found all the guns, they thought, oh boy, because I'm sure they thought I had felonies. And then I had an AK-47 under the bed. So, you know, in their search, I told you, they left nothing unturned. So when they flipped the bed, here goes a big AK-47, and they definitely thought that.

that probably had some bodies or it was rigged up to be automatic or something like that. And it was, I bought it from the pun shop. Like all my guns I bought from the pun shop legal. I had a license to carry everything. So they couldn't get me with that either. So I was able to restore my gun rights and everything. And I was back to being a law-abiding citizen on paper. Yeah, we back at the DVDs.

after you got out after i got out i'm i'm back doing that again um but with a smaller device with a smaller device one computer instead of five or six and um but slowly but surely it built up into becoming just as oh we left off where i uh the case was yeah you have five you have I've got five years probation. All you have to do is not make more CDs and you'll be fine. Yeah, that part. So in my mind, I'm thinking, well, the laptop got me in trouble. So I just won't let anybody else bring hot stuff to the house.

I won't buy any electronics because initially it wasn't the DVDs. So I'll just stick to DVDs now. So, yeah, I crank it back up and tons of people started slowly. At first, they were scared of me, but it was a drought. Right. But, I mean, yeah, I don't know how much trouble are you going to get in buying CDs. Like me buying the CD, I'm probably not going to get any trouble. Right.

But some people, knowing how Lowndes County works, people are a little more scared of the police than the average. So, but once time went by, they got where, like, oh he fine he all that's said and done and he back at it so go get your DVDs so slowly but surely end up buying a bigger machine more computers started doing the DVDs all over again um you remember my dad that I mentioned that was a drug addict yeah uh he would come by time to time to ask for money And, you know, I got a business going on, people coming in and out. I don't have time. Here, $20 seed.

So against my mother's advice, my mom was like, don't give him no money. Like, you aid in what he's doing. Like, stop giving him money. It's like you making him depending on you. You're an enabler. Yeah. But I just want to rid of them. So I don't care what you do with the money.

I just need you gone. I'm already hot right now. And, you know, you're going from the drug house to here and back and forth. Now you might make them think I'm doing other stuff, which they may already think that. So, you know, here the money, go. So all that did would just make that be a habit of him coming and getting money going. So it become a regular thing. And I'm back jumping now.

I'm back. People coming by the house. And I got people lined up just like they were before. So one day, later on that night, I'm kind of done with 70 DVDs, another bang at the door. happens, just like the police before. Lowns County, Robert Mitchell, my dad and I have the same name. So, of course, I'm thinking, oh, they got me again. So I wasn't going to open the door. It wasn't, it wasn't the huge amount of cops like before. It wasn't as aggressive as before. So I was dealing with a young lady at the time. And she's like, You're not going to get me killed.

I'm going to open the door. She opened the door. Of course, that gives them permission to come on in. They looked at me, Robert Mitchell. Yeah. And it turns out, once I've seen, they actually had a warrant and everything. So as I'm seeing, they're already in my house now,

so they're seeing the whole setup. but they were really looking for my father he had a warrant for failing to go to court he got pulled over and i didn't even know this but he got pulled over um had drugs in the car and went to jail i guess he got out i had no clue all this was going on so i guess he gave them my address and And so now, even though your objective is for him, you're looking for him. But now you came in, you've seen I got the same set up again. DVDs everywhere, burners, computers, the same setup.

And everybody in the city knew. Every cop, everybody knew what initially happened. So when they seen that, because they didn't even, these cops wasn't the same cops that got me before. or so. But once they seen all that, they realized who I was and like, oh, let's call for backup. So once again, every cop, everybody flooded the house. Once again, they took everything. I didn't have quite as much as I had last time, but it was enough to take me to jail once again. they ended up finding my pops and locking him up too so we was locked up at the same time not in the same cell but at the same time so when i went to court uh it was actually a guy in there that knew my dad

and he he seen me and he was like hey i'm in the cell with your dad you want to pass him a message or anything and even though i didn't care too much for the guy He actually gave me some good advice in life. He told me you don't have any friends in this world, just me and your mama. That's all you got. Well, with friends like him. Exactly. I mean.

So I was like, I don't really, you're not too much of a friend. And he told me about my daughter's mother. He was like, because he actually smoked dope with my mother's mother's mother. I mean, with my mother, with my daughter's, mother. I don't want to say baby, mom. Yeah, yeah, I hate saying that. But, yeah, so he told me that girl. I call up my ex-wife and I call her my baby.

I said, how am I my baby mama doing? She's like, just don't, don't do that. Yeah, man, I just hate that. But he warned me about her and I didn't listen. And he was like, yeah, you're going to get her pregnant. She's going to put your own child support and make it like, and that's just what happened. It's all good now.

You know, my daughter's 22 years old and I have a granddaughter at this point. So it's different, but at that time, oh, it was horrible. So he gave me good advice, but coming from him, I didn't listen to anything. Right. And that's what I told the guy to tell him. I said, man, I should have listened

to some things. I just didn't want to hear it coming from you or whatever. And I actually told him, um, still love you though. Because, shoot, at this point, I don't know what my future holds. So, um, and he did pass the message and, um, but, of course, we had to call the lawyer once again. The same lawyer? The same lawyer. Of course, he was very, disappointed. Well, I mean, he should, he's, he should be doing it for a slight discount this time because he's all caught up on the law. You understand what he understands.

You already knows the case. You don't need a 20. You need 10. I do. I need another 20. I need another 20. And this time, he won't all the money up front. He really pushed.

I want it all. But my mama is such a sweet churchgoing lady, great at sweet talking. We was able to negotiate, giving you half of it and more. Of course, my mother is just distraught at this point. And I've made the news, the newspaper again. DVD Kingpin? DVD Kingpin. That's exactly what it was.

That's how they labeled me. They had all the DVD, just like the drugs, we lined up on the table. They had all the DVDs, the burners. It was like a trophy, just lined up all on the table. And even when they got me, they said, how many DVDs you got here, about 1,000, 2,000? I'm like, I don't know, but y'all would probably say it's 10,000 anyway. Y'all would add to the number. So I guess since I were being as smart as, they was like, you know,

what? When we put it in the paper, we're going to say 12,000. I hadn't built my rank up back. Now, before, yeah, it was more than that. This time, I probably had built it up to maybe three or four thousand. Right. These are just the masters. This is not the ones that I'm selling, but I had like three, four thousand master copies, like different DVDs. But that took me having to call all the other bootleggers. Hey, can y'all bring your notebook over here and let me copy all the DVDs again? There's no way I can download all this stuff. So people let me hold their notebooks and I work all day and all night, re-burning every DVD that I ever burned. So I accumulated them all over again, started back selling them. And I had got to the point where I was almost

where I was in the beginning but I got jammed up they took everything starting from scratch got to pay a lawyer now so am I going to get a job

with this pending probably not did you get out on bond I was able to get out on bun actually in one day um But, okay, about what?

Yeah, another 75. Did, um, uh, so what did they offer you? It wasn't even any, um, I had, I, it was, they didn't have like complete charges at that point. They had the legal reproduction of copyright, you know, that same old stuff, but But before we could get the resolved in that case, I think I had, I think they gave me four charges that time. It was just four. I don't know where those four.

They actually charmed me with specific ones too, like Superman, the Man of Steel and Angels and Demons. It was a movie called Angels and Demons. Yeah, I remember that. Of course, Tom Hanks. Yeah. See, I had every kind of DVD. you can possibly imagine. So they charged me with specific ones.

Come to find out later, it was people that bought them from me. And, of course, the tool to commit a crime with the DVD burners and all, you know, the same charges the last time. But all the first stuff is gone now.

So it's like I'm starting from scratch being charged. But people, I didn't realize I thought everybody loved me in the city, but apparently not, because people was, writing statements and it was people that wrote statements the first go around um people that worked with at loz wrote statements hey i worked with them at loz i knew he's so you're not even involved in this situation you're volunteering the right statements um i'd ask girlfriends and stuff

people that had nothing to do with my case at all contacting the fbi and and say listen if you need if you need to know anything if you it's like you don't have anything to do with this right right So that's where the charges came from. Somebody brought a DVD, brought some DVDs back while the police was there. I was already, they had already hauled me off the jail. But while they were there, somebody brought some DVDs back. And from my understanding, I guess they didn't play good enough for them or they didn't play or something like that.

So he brought them to the police saying, hey, I was bringing these back because they didn't play or whatever. Yeah, I write a statement on them and all that. So those were the only things they really charged me with in that situation. So I get out,

I bunned out. We had a house in the country. My folks owned a house in the country that was actually in my name. So the mortgage and all that stuff I could take out in my name. You know, with my

mom's help because I'm still, you know, somewhat young and new, like, I don't know how all this works. So we took out another mortgage, but it's a big house, man, and so that's how I was able to get the money. So now it's like, might end up losing the house because now we got two mortgages. And of course, my mom is just at this point, my mom, the first time, the first time, you my mom had left my dad my mom left my dad had left my dad at this point so it's a it's a battle so my dad like he didn't he he rather me sit in jail but he was in jail too but he got out shortly after me

so he played the card of i'm a drug addict i go to rehab you know whatever stipulations whatever he had to say to get out he made that work and he did have to go to a rehab place um but he was fierce with me because he thought i was going to make him lose his house and property ignoring the fact that when i was really rolling in the money i saved that house several times from being lost because once my mom left you just consumed yourself with smoking and um didn't pay the mortgage so the bank would call me because it's in my name. So since it's in my name, of course, here, so I'm fawking off thousands of dollars

to save your house without asking for anything back. So long story short, I'm a free man, case still pending, but I'm out. But you know what I did? The thing that I always had to do, went back. Downloaded more DVDs, downloaded more movies, burnt them on the DVD.

And at this point, somebody was selling a one burner. They were pretty much giving it away. I think they told me, man, just give me $40. Because at this point, other people was buying duplicate. I mean, I keep getting jammed up. So they learned that we're going to have to be self-sufficient because we can't depend on this guy.

we got to be able to still survive when he get locked up so they started buying duplicators some of them learned how to download the DVDs and whoever the person was that learned to download the DVDs became the new me right so they would go to them get the master copy burn them whatever they had to do but nobody ran business like me so I bought the one burner Of course, that was super slow, but it was enough to start getting back. At least I can start back paying the mortgage and paying the lawyer and all the stuff I need to do. The few people that were still dealing with me helped me get back on my feet a little bit. but this is the thing my pops got out he uh came by just like he always did want to borrow

money of course i'm super hot but at this point i'm like i really need my money so i'm kind of being a little more uh against him kind of like i don't want to give him the money now i'm being a little more resistant now like no you're not getting the $20 today i need my money i'm Well, I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm out of gas. So if you don't help me get gas, I'm going to hang around here. Like, he knew. So he told me one thing.

He said, and I know you're still selling DVDs or whatever. So I'm like, yeah, I got to, you, you're going to make it hot. So I was making enough. Remember the apartment that I first started. with that I was only paying $240 for rent. I skipped a whole part where my mom gave me a house that was left to her. So all of these raids and stuff happened at the house that my mom gave me when it was left to her.

It was a pretty torn down house. But I put in my money, fixed it up. She helped me decorate and everything. So it's the house that she was born in. So I was a little resisting on, I don't know, Mama, I might rather stay in these apartments. This house, the roof is missing and the floor is, you know. But I put some money in it, fixed it up. So this whole time, I was in like a family house.

And so that's, every time I got raided, I was over there. Right. So now, once my pops found out I was still doing DVDs, I knew I had to, I've been jammed up. up twice at the same location. I mean, I shouldn't be doing this here anyway, but I know it's time to go when he said, hey, I know you're still doing it. Because always...

He's suggesting that he might say something if you don't help him out. Exactly. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go see if it's a space available at those old cheap apartments that I used to stay in. I went over there, found an apartment.

At this point, I think it was maybe $350,400 a month. now, which is still a dirt cheap compared to what we're paying these days. And I'm only using it to pretty much trap DVDs out of. So I moved my whole operation to those apartments. And I still got a case pending at this time. So I'm doing the wrong thing, but I'm trying to move a little more carefully and pops is like the thing that's going to trip me up so to get away from him i moved it so i'm sure he came to the house plenty of days i wasn't there then he didn't know i had to place the old apartment again so i probably spent the next two years or close to two years

the case still pending this whole time it's like really no court dates it's still pending i don't know what's going to come out of it but people are coming to the new place and I'm actually in a better location because I'm on the south side I'm crossed the railroad tracks at the house

and some people didn't really want to cross the railroad tracks because that's the, you know I was on the bad side of the time I was on the south side of town what most people, I stayed where older people stayed so I wasn't really where all the crime other than myself was going on. Right.

So, but people just, the south side is the south side and it just has a rep, but it's good people that way. But the rep or the south side, once you cross those railroad tracks, you might be in danger. The other places in a key, the apartment is like in a key location where all the businesses are at. It's more central to. It's more central. Absolutely. So I set it up like Blockbuster. I've still got the same Walmart displays,

and I turned it back into what it was the first time. So now I'm back to making five to ten a week, five to ten grand a week. And the people don't mind, like it's so much going on. But all the neighbors, I made sure to somewhat look out for them if they ever needs, like, I know I'm filling up the parking lot. I know I got a lot of traffic, but hey, here goes some DVDs, he'll go a few dollars, get you some cigarettes.

Like, I took care of everybody out there, so nobody was going to tell on me or really bother me because I looked out for people. But one day, my pops came by the house, and he said, I don't know how he's finding out this information but I'm pretty big so I'm sure somebody said something yeah somebody he knows yeah so you're like I know you at those apartments where you used to stay back in the day I know you at those apartments and he said the police watching I'm just letting you know so I don't know if he had I don't know if he became an informant or he was just trying to scare me or whatever passed him but he was he he he broke it down he's like i know you at those apartments sending

the DVDs and the police watching you you're gonna go down he said it just like that so of course i'm yeah i got to get out of here instantly so that same day he told me that i found another place it was in a horrible location but it was the only thing i could find that i could get in that day i was that shook i wanted to be gone and I found this location, moved all my stuff to this location, and I had to get everybody because I'm not in a central location anymore, so I'm not as accessible. But I have people that come on bicycles, people that walk, people that now a lot of those people weren't going to be able to do that.

And I had to reach out to everybody to let them know where I was. and so I had to kind of work on that and in working that out I was only at that new location three weeks and it was a guy young guy he was trying to sell his DVDs but he was poe hustling he would come and buy five here 10 here two here three here and he was I didn't know he was young as he was um i thought he was at least 18 or 19 this kid was probably like 16 or something he would ride a scooter like a moped to the you know come get the DVDs he would come several times a day because he i guess his parents probably put him out so he wanted to get a room something to eat so he had to you know scrape up his little money his 10 dollars 20 whatever till he got up enough well one day he

came over there, the police came behind him. I've only been over here three weeks. The police came behind him, seen that he came in my place. The moped, he didn't have a license or nothing. He's riding it in the road and everything. And apparently the police had already gave him a warning. They seen him again doing it, so they pulled in my yard at the new place. He came in my door. And shortly after he came in, I heard a knock. It wasn't that aggressive police. It was just knock, not, knock.

So I'm thinking maybe it's another customer or somebody that was with him because it was like five seconds after he came in the door. So I just opened the door. When I seen it was the police, I tried to close it. He put his foot in the door. He's like, oh, whoa, oh, open his damn door.

And so, just, just, This is the city police. This isn't the Miles County police. This is the Vodas, the city police. So they've never been involved in nothing I've dealt with. So it was a Hispanic cop. So I knew he didn't know nothing about what was going on. So he came in and boom, the whole setup, blockbuster.

I always used blockbuses. I know it was others, but that gives you an idea of the setup. And he came in and said, do you have a business license for this? And I actually did. This whole time I had business license because I had my production company.

So I'm like, I sure do. And okay, well, show me your business license. I'm going to pull that out right behind him. A black cop came in. And he knows everything about Hustleman. And that, uh, is skinfolk kink to Kim folk type stuff, uh, he came in and said, no, it don't matter if he got a license or not. This is illegal.

This is Hustleman. He's been in trouble for this before. And I should call the detectives because he knew the detective. It was one that was, I don't know if you watched American Gangster. Yeah. Um, the cop that was after Frank. Russell Crowe's character. Yeah.

I had a cop. I had a detective that I won't even say his name because it might bring me nightmares. But I had one of those. He was at me. So this guy obviously knew that. And we'll, we'll just call him Russell Crow. Hey, I'm going to call Russell Crow and telling me you over here doing this again. I'm like, oh, God, you call Russell Crow.

Crow, I'm in trouble. And so he made a big deal. I probably could have got away because the other guy didn't know. This guy made a big deal out of it. The guy on the scooter, they called his parents to come pick him up. They was done with him.

He caused all the trouble. But, hey, once they got the big fish, let him go, call his parents, pick him up, get him out of him. We got Hustleman now. So they called back up, and it was a big scene. There's people standing all around just like the other times.

They took everything. And in my mind, I said, if I ever, keep in mind, the other case still pending, it's not resolve it. Right. In my mind, I know I'm in trouble because I still got a case pending, so I'm not, I know I'm not getting bun now because I'm already out on bun, really. And I thought about death by cop, whatever the, I'm like, I should just run.

Or a counterfeing charge? Man, listen, I was so, and it's all my fault. I had to take accountability, but it became like, man, these people. It's them. They're the problem. But I didn't run, and I sat there the whole time. They was a lot more nicer. they was more of hey man you thirsty you want me to get a bottle of watering like they had me in

handcuffs on the ground and all that but they was like you want me to get a bottle of water and you know put the bottle to your mouth that you yeah please i'm dying over here like this is this is a lot which is my fault but who thinking DVDs are this serious y'all um So they load up all my stuff. Now I got a city charge. Now I'm in with the city. The whole other time I'm in with the county. Now I'm in with the city.

Still going to the same jail. So they locked me up this time. Go to my bun hearing. And once again, we make the news newspaper the whole night. Like we got them again. I always made the front page. Always make the news every single time. So that definitely don't help my.

case. Of course, my lawyer is just, dude. You should have been paying him the whole time just for a retainer, just to build up that retainer and be like, I already paid you your 20 grand, 25 grand into you for this one. All right, prepaid for this fucking thing. So this time, he gave me the half off. It's like, we haven't resolved this other case, so we're going to try to do it together, but give me another 10,000. So now I'm 50,000 in with him. Of course, didn't have all of it, had to give them five. My other's distraught by to lose her mind. I know I took some years off her life.

Your son is constant. Like, I can't go to jail in private. I'm going to jail for the whole world to see every time. Well, yeah. So what is the U.S. attorney? I mean, it's the U.S. attorney. What's the district attorney saying? But you don't know or what are they saying now?

Now they've got to be wanting to wrap this up. Yeah, they definitely want to wrap it up. So, of course, it's more... Before you can get any more charges. Oh, God, yes. They don't let you out, right? They don't let me out. So the other times, first time set three weeks, next time I got out in the day,

this time it's no getting out. This time you try looking for a bottom bunk and a regular chess game. Yeah. In your case, Checkers game. Yeah. I tried the chest, I couldn't, but I was whooping them in checkers. I was killing them in checkers. But I sat in there, like, I'm watching everybody because keep in mind, it's still something pretty new.

I'm the only case study you got to go by for these charges. Yeah, yeah, these guys don't. There's nobody else in there with that charge. Yeah. Even in jail, like, I can't get any casework because it don't exist. So they're trying to figure it out, too. so why they're figuring it out. I'm sitting in jail.

I'm watching all the drug dealers get out. I'm watching all the people that rob people, horn robbers. All kind of people getting out. I'm like, I'm the DVD guy. I know I've been in here several times at this point, but, man, like, is there any info on my case? My lawyer, he's not communicating as good as he.

He wasn't really communicating the greatest before, but now it's like dead silence. And I'm talking to my mom like, are you hearing anything from the lawyer like no he's where when you were outside you care less when this case gets fucking settled but now that you're inside it's it's going in slow motion it's slow we got to hurry this up we got hurry this up right but really you're working on whatever time you that you got coming anyway absolutely absolutely so I'm thinking the law you're not working but you know of course especially being from about the lawyers they all in the DA and the defense

it's a turn. Everybody plays golf together. They gamble together. And so I know a lot of those negotiations go on during those poker moments or whatever. So my lawyer is, you know, I can't say that for sure, but allegedly he's one of the big shots like, hey, we'll negotiate this one. We'll give you this one and a little bit of this and whatever. So he came to me with an ideal once I sat in there four months. So I'd never been to prison. I never did years and years. The longest I did in one stamp was this period here, which was four months.

But they came up with a negotiation. He said, if we take this to trial, you're going to have to give me another $10,000, and risk doing 10 years in prison. But I talked to the DA, everybody on the same accord, we can banish you. Banish you? Banish me.

Let's just get them out of the county? Get them out of the whole district. So you can't drive through Valdosta no more. You can't drive through the district, the northern district of, Georgia. Is it the North, no, it's not northern. The southern district of Georgia. The whole southern district of Georgia. You should be allowed to drive on the interstate at least. Yeah. Should be. Should be, but no. So, of course, that's like, you know, after four months in

in the Lounge County Jail, like I didn't have it been. I was a good deal. Yeah, it sounds good, but at the same time, I don't have nothing no more. And y'all banned me from like, I can't go stay with my cousin that stays in another county or another city because you banned me from the whole southern district. Is that like a elite, like that's something that they can hold up legally? Like you're banished? Like you cannot. It's unconstitutional as they call it.

But at this point. But they'll enforce it. Like the young thud, I'm sure you've been keeping up with the young thug trial. You know, they just did that with him, banished him from Atlanta. on. Listen, Pete, they told Pete's lawyer, they came to Pete's lawyer and told him if he ever comes back to, I want to say what county it was. It was like, whatever the county it was, they came to him and they said if he, if when he gets out someday, if he comes back here, we're going to arrest him and we're going to put drugs on him and we're going to make sure that he never gets out again. It says to tell him that if he's ever thinking about coming back to this county, forget it.

He told him that, and Pete was like, oh, I have bigger problems right now. It's like, okay, I'm good with that. Yeah. So, of course, that was a no-brainer because at this point, who won't even go to trial in a phase 10 years. So, yeah, I'll take the banishment. Where did you move? That's how I end up going to Atlanta. Well, Atlanta is a better market, bro.

That's a bigger market. But see, at this point, D.E. You can make moves in Atlanta. Man, listen, streaming is starting to come in now. DVDs starting to kind of... Fucking technology. Technology. So that...

Technology killed the bootleg. Blockbusters just like it killed the real blockbuster. Yeah. It did. It did, man. So, of course, I'm like, yeah, let's negotiate that. So that was negotiated. in two or three days, and they let me out.

Like, as soon as you get out of here, report to the probation officer. I report to the probation officer, and he's calling me dumb and stupid and, oh, yes, I've seen you've been in jail several times for the same thing, you're stupid, and it's like he's trying to provoke me to cuss him out, which I'm not really that type of person, but I'm definitely not going to cuss out my probation officer, so, yeah, I'll be dumb. stupid for now. I'm about to be out of this city. But I had to call my friend that stays one of the guys that I did music with. I called him up and I give him a shot back. At that time, he went by the moniker Jimmy Hennessy, but his real name is Jimmy. So my friend Jimmy, I say, remember you

said if I ever wanted to move to Atlanta, I could sleep on your couch until I found a place. that was when I had a lot of money and I know you didn't mind but now I have nothing is that option still open he's like yeah man you know you good come on you can stay with me till you figure it up

so because that was my only option he was the only person that I knew that stayed by itself that was out of the jurisdiction of places I could live but keep in mind they took all my money

You know, so it's going to be a little hard to maintain. When you started selling counterfeit, Cologne, which is, I'm assuming. Now, those are real. We're smart enough not to sell anything counterfeit ever again. But, so once he gave me the thumbs up on that, I'm like, okay, I know where I'm going to go. I just got to get up a little bit of money to. You mean by getting a regular job? But not that way.

I just wanted to, a few things in my house I had that they didn't take. I had maybe a rice cooker. I had a five-gallon jug of grease. I had some shoes, an old printer, just anything around the house I could get up a little money. But I didn't know only had 24 hours to leave. So when I reported to the probation officer, fresh out of jail, Uh, after he got done, calling me dumb and stupid and all that stuff. Is this a felony charge, by the way?

It's felonies, yeah. Seriously, you got to sell your guns. Yeah, the guns, they never gave them back. Oh, that's bullshit. I didn't even try to, uh, get them later because. That's bullshit. I want my guns back. Yeah, I didn't.

Since your mom up there to get him, I could pawn. Yeah. That would have been a thought. That AK was worth 500 bucks. For sure. Minimum. Sure. I had two nines and a 38.

Ruger. Listen, you got a grand right there. Yeah, so. it might still have it might be worth a call I don't want to worth a letter right up I don't want no more problems with them people

but um so when I reported to the probation officer he was like so where are you gonna move to I'm like I'm gonna move to Atlanta I just need to get up a little money so it might take me

two or three weeks to get up enough money to leave he like two to three weeks I need an address right now where you're going right now like i literally just stepped foot out of jail after four months so of course my whole life is going down to drain in those four months especially financially uh you're like well i need an address before you leave here like are we going to lock you right back up for violating so i had to call my friend like hey i'm going to have to come to you like sooner than expected can you handle that he's like yeah come on

i'm in lena now right there's no such thing as a 240 dollar rent and the stuff that i had in about austin now we're approaching a thousand dollars a month for rent before the pan this is way before the pandemic not now yeah it's nothing under a grand but i think the rent was like six hundred some dollars and then they add all these extra little charges bring it up about seven something a month that was crazy so the job wasn't paying me enough to cover everything because i still got a car payment now i still got insurance i still got legal bills that's still lingering so um but when somewhat of a blessing that happened my pops burnt the house down oh good for him yeah i've always made money on a fire so uh i can't say he did

it on purpose because he was a smoker so he claimed that he was smoking a cigarette and went to sleep and you know the cigarette caught the bed on fire or whatever it was and that could happen but i doubt it was a cigarette he was smoking but regardless uh he burnt the house down So that took care of the mortgages later. Okay. So that helped me out. That saved me. But I'm still trying to, you know, figure life out.

And that's when I stumbled across a young lady came up and wanted to, wanted me to show her Atlanta and, you know, a lot of these young ladies open boutiques now that sell a little costume jewelry and clothing and accessories and stuff like that. So they knew a place that, you know, sold all that type of stuff. So I took her over there and it just so happened. It was a fragrance supplier in that area too. So when I first. Bootlegs fragrance.

That's what I thought. When I first, see, see, I always was a fragrance guy. Until a TikTok came out, that wasn't a thing to talk about. So you weren't going to tell somebody, hey, I got 50 bottles of cologne. Like, that wasn't something worth mentioning, but I always was into it. And so I seen it and I kind of looked in the window, I was probably fake and think nothing of it. So they wanted me to take them back to the place that, you know, has all the supply, the beauty supply boutique stuff and all that. So I took them again.

And, of course, I don't want to shop with women. And I don't want to go looking at women clothes. I'm like, let me just step foot in this fragrance spot and just see what they got. As soon as I walked in, I knew instantly, oh, this is not fake. This is the real deal. And, of course, they got a whole, they got a showroom, but it's almost like a warehouse in the back. And I'm like, oh, God. So I went to him and I was like, yeah, what do I need to do to be a part of this?

Like, and they told me, we need your business license. We need your text ID, you know, the whole now. I'm like, okay, I got that with my entertainment stuff. So I'm like, can I use this? Hey, you don't care what the name and whatever it is. We just need that tax ID. and bet. Grab a few bottles, just to test,

because people used to try to undercut me on the DVDs, and I was selling them for $5, then later $2 a piece, and people would try to shortchange me on that. So I was scared that, you know, fragrances are expensive. So I was scared they would try to shortchange me on the fragrances. And to my surprise, I sold the first little batch I bought, I sold them instantly, like within an hour, made a post on Facebook. It was over.

Went back and bought another batch. Same thing. So I'm like, okay, I think I found something here. Profit margin not crazy, but I can make some money. I got some extra income now. And as time went on, I have became a major player. in the fragrance game, just to mention the, I'm still going by the Monica Hustleman, so that don't really fit in with fragrance, but I still kept that because I built the brand

with it. You know, it was a lot of ups and downs. I bought, I bought, um, Cologne on a lot from, like I went on, um, Amazon and bought, and it's like they got the same size bottles. Yeah. For like 75 bucks. And then this was. It's 40 bucks. And then I'm looking at them. I'm like, there's no way that this $40 one. But I ordered the one for like 40 bucks. Yeah.

And it smells the same exact thing. Yeah. And it's in a bottle, I'm in the box and everything. So I don't know if it's real or not, but probably not. Probably not. But it's fine. It's almost empty now. It's great.

But if it works, you know, but. Yeah, I'm not buying it for the label. Yeah. Yeah. If it works and it, you know, you smell good. And yeah, it's. There's a couple guys mixing up in their bathtub. Yeah.

And that does happen. But with me, it's a, I got a little niche, uh, customer base that look for certain things. So I kind of got known for getting hard because I'm a, what they call a fraghead too. I love fragrances myself. So when I sell you a fragrance, I'm coming from, uh, like I say, I'm the dealer and the user, fragrance wise. So you feel a little more comfortable. getting it from somebody that really uses it, uses it, and enjoys it themselves. So I have become a major player in that game.

And actually, my celebrity, and I still interview celebrities to this day, I end up getting all my rebuilding. I got all my equipment back. And now I'm bringing fragrances into the interview space. So now when I sit down and interview somebody, I'll have fragrances lined up on the table and we'll discuss that as you ever watch the hot one show where they eat the chicken wings

while they interview people I'm doing something similar but with fragrances so we'll smell fragrances as we talk so that's becoming a thing now and I'm getting more looks on that Instagram it's on Instagram YouTube Facebook every platform TikTok TikTok definitely TikTok

So, and that's getting more looks. The celebrity that I wanted to become and the big time rapper and journalists and all this, I'm getting bigger with the fragrances. I never would have thought that. The fragrances get more looks than anything I did with celebrities. So who would have known? Who's this that came? That's my guy, man, Alan Worthy, man.

He, uh, he the one that put me on. the podcast and I actually met him when I first started working at Lowe's and we've been here ever buying CDs you can tell me you know what it's just you and me you know what maybe a few but uh

he was the guy that he's a true collector he had thousands of CDs out the story he collect them like he still have them to this day that's a potential raid right there so there's no way to do counterfeit lotto ticket You know what?

If it was, I would have a talk with my mother since because I'm not able to play myself since I worked for them. But I probably would have a talk with my mama. No. I did have one question. So I think everybody had recognized the FBI warning at the beginning of those VHS tapes. So that never came about because it says, you know, what, $250,000, $250,000, five, five years in prison. right so that never really came about even yeah they probably just didn't focus on it since the locals had him yeah and and when you don't see anybody else like we seen a million people get jammed up

with drugs but never seen anybody get jammed up with DVDs so also like I said they they focus on it in different period they'll focus on the insurance they'll focus on mortgages they'll focus on counterfeiting they'll focus you know they kind of shift and it's not you were so selling locally like the FBI might have a minimum that they'll accept like they might have been like did you did you hit this guy did he have more than 10,000 DVDs and they were like nah he had the 1100 they did yeah and it was he shipping them internationally they're like no they might have been like yeah it doesn't really meet our criteria you've got him charge him you don't charge him you don't charge him but then they're like we already got him he's yeah he's done we got him on

tape right got the whole thing lined up right so you ever try to record a a movie by yourself No. Not at all. I didn't have the balls for that one. Yeah. You know what's funny is, like I got, what is it, YouTube premium? And when I first got it, you could buy, like, I could buy, like, a movie. Yeah.

And you can, you know, whatever you spend 14 bucks and you buy it. Now it's in my library. So I could, I would do that so I could go on, I could go. on an airplane and listen watch movies for four hours while I'm flying but then just recently remember this like six months ago maybe four or five months ago remember oh no no oh it wasn't he was jack with uh with um ice coffee hour um what happened was and I could do this keep in mind I had Tom Cruise movies everything I'm downloading like this great so then I flew to Vegas and I downloaded dune and you can download it I can watch it I got both the dunes now

but if but if you if you download it to your downloads yeah it changes the language so it's in french and i'm like what the what is going on um or it doesn't play it at all it does like a transcribes it and tells you what so it stops playing like the music and this is not just this one this is multiple ones yeah yeah so like because i was thinking they're letting me buy these and download them like somebody could just mass produce these things you not anybody's really yeah it's just oh for that but but yeah they I think they kind of figure that out yeah this has nothing to do with anything by the way but it just was funny that that happened because then I went to the I went to Las Vegas and I went to the ice coffee hour and I actually

went to Jack and I was like hey bro can you figure this out from me I did something wrong he's looking and he's like sounds to me like when they download it or when you save it to the downloads it's changing it so you can can't record it on other devices right yeah i've tried downloading videos to edit like uh and they they transcribed like yeah yeah they have a dub it's like yeah they're very slick yeah it is it is wow man so are we good good all right hold on let me wrap this up do you have anywhere you want people to go yeah uh you can check out my website shot with hustle dot com and if you want to see some of my interviews, you can go to the Hustleman Show.com to see the interviews also.

Where are they? Are they? Or is it, is it a YouTube, TikTok, are they all? If you type in the Hustleman show, you can Google it, if everything is going to come up under the Hustleman show. And my tags, Hustleman 101, across the board. Everything. Yeah. All right. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. If you like the video, please share it with anybody you think might be interested, please subscribe, hit the bell so you get notified videos like this. Also check in the description box. We're going to leave all of the Hustleman's social media links in his website. I have no doubt that if you want to buy a fragrance, he'll mail it to you. So also, please consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month. We put Patreon exclusive content on it. It

really does help Colby and I make these videos. Really appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much. See you.