Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Hackers Sell Your Stolen Info | Underground Credit Card Markets
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Transcript
Discussion (0)
In my mind, I always thought having a million dollars would make me quit the game.
It never would.
What I end up doing was brokering information to other people who decided they wanted to go do that kind of fraud.
Use Bitcoin instead of cash.
You can transfer it anywhere.
It's untraceable.
I jumped on a plane under an assumed identity that I had been holding on to in case of an emergency.
And I went to Miami.
Now, I had the connect that changed my life.
Some say for the worst, some say for the better.
I mean, I'm going to say it just changed my life for that.
because okay so I was born in Oakland California um born at a time when Oakland was
transitioning it was kind of like coming away from the Black Panther movement to
black people just really being independent owning property a lot of the white people
and upper class people were moving out to the valley but here it is in Oakland we had
we were middle class my mom worked at a bank my dad he got into law enforcement
Mind you, they came from Mississippi together with about $200 between them,
and they were able to, like, build something before they started a family.
So what happened was I came along, and then a couple years later, I had two smaller brothers.
My dad, he always wanted more.
I'm sorry, how old were your parents when you were born?
My parents was like 23, 24 when I was born.
Mind you, like my dad got a job for the city, but basically it was a government job.
So that was a great job to have back in the day, because.
he knew he had some type of security and then my mom worked at a bank until an accident happened
at a bank where someone threw some keys across the bank and a hit her in a head so from there
she went out on leave for about four months and she was having like blackouts and things of that nature
so she ended up having to retire early with the settlement I think it could have been like about
15 or 20k but we're talking about 1982 yeah about 15 20k is a bunch of money and this is when
they bought their house they bought a house so I never lived in an apartment before
We always lived in the house.
We always had money.
I mean, not rich, but we had money middle class.
But the thing about that is she didn't work no more.
So she became an entrepreneur right then and there.
She opened a child care center.
She opened up a janitorial service.
My dad still made more money I want to say, but we made it all the way through.
But we went to public school with the rest of the kids that didn't have a lot.
Right.
The kids in my school were on fixed things.
comes single parent homes just a mom welfare or food stamps and I didn't even understand why
my my major question was like why are these kids disadvantaged and we're not one of my friends at
school told me that they didn't have any food at their house and that bothered me I was like what do you
mean you don't have any food at your house but I kind of overlooked it thought he was joking
because when he came over our house he got to make food ate good even took some food home with
him but after a couple times I thought this kid is telling the truth he doesn't have any food
But a light bulb went off in my head, too, when I went to school and I couldn't get free lunch.
My lunch was $1.25, but all my friends got free lunch.
So I ran home that day, like, Mom, why do I have to pay $1.25 for the same food that they get for free?
And she said, well, we both have income.
Their parents don't.
They live in the projects.
They're renting about $40 a month.
If they even have both parents.
If they even have both parents.
Yeah.
So we have a mortgage here, and it's a difference between rent and mortgage.
But I don't like it.
I want to eat with them because.
They're looking at me some kind of way because I pay for lunch.
But she's like, look, get over it.
You know what I mean?
If they want to come over after school, eat with us, they can.
But, you know, just get over.
This is the way life goes.
It's called societal norms, and this is where we are.
However, we probably won't be here forever.
So I'm hanging with guys.
We ride bikes.
We ride skateboards.
We're all around the community doing what kids doing.
This guy, actually a white guy, he came into the neighborhood,
and he asked us, did we want to make extra money?
The white guy is like...
How old are you?
I'm about like nine or ten at this time about nine or ten he's like you guys want to make some extra money
I got some things that you guys can do you can come with me and we can sell candy and I'm like now I don't
want to sell candy because the school always made us sell candy and we got nothing out of it but a teddy bear
or maybe a note pad so I don't want to sell candy it's not interesting for me he like no you're
going to make 40 bucks in a day mind you this is 1985 84 40 bucks for a kid like nah he's lying
So myself and a bunch of my friends, we got in a van with him.
He took us to the banks.
That already sounds bad.
We got in the van with him and he takes us to affluent areas like 20, 30 minutes away.
And we got this candy from price clubs like thin mince and wafers and all this stuff.
It was like a dollar each.
And we wouldn't sell it.
We would just go ask for donations.
And I'm like, wow, this works.
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So he'd give all of us like 20 boxes.
we work like six hours we get back in the van count up the money he takes about 70% we keep 30 but
we still had about 40 to 60 bucks a piece I'm like wow that was that was kind of cool man so my
friends that don't have food can go to the grocery store buy food like iGA or whatever those
corner markets are and um now they have food to bring home and their mom is happy but my mother
told me to not do it again don't do that again don't get in that van with him I don't trust him
how come he didn't come meet me how come he didn't talk to your parents he's a crook he's a slickster
that whole that whole thing's bad yeah he's in a van you mean you got in a van with a stranger
i'll beat you if you do it again and she she meant it so i couldn't go anymore but my friends kept
going but my younger brother told me something he's like how about we go to price club we buy our
own candy get on the bus and we go to the opposite side where he is that day and we sell our own
candy first time we did it we made two hundred dollars in one day 200 bucks
my mom didn't like that either you're lying to people you're not taking donations for any
support group or you're not helping anybody out you're doing this to keep money for yourself
so i don't want you doing that either so she stopped us from doing that but my friends that i went
to school with they kept doing it and it was cool because now they have an extra money we go to
school after school they take me to the store everybody buys each other stuff we all have a
bunch of snacks and a bunch of treats so now remember i said my parents they worked they had money
We weren't low income, but I have family members all around the city that were going through the same thing that a lot of the city was going through.
Single parent homes, living in a not so good area, and the crack came in.
The drugs actually came in heavy.
Actually, Oakland is one of the first places where they say that drug landed in the first place where it was turned from one thing to another.
Is that where the, I want to say snowfall?
Snowfall actually was based on that.
And it was, oh, God, what, what's his name, right?
Franklin.
No, no, I'm saying the drug dealer that went to prison and got out.
Oh, Freeway Rick.
Freeway Rick, yeah, yeah, Rick Ross, which became a kingpin, a major kingpin at a young age.
But he was like so, and we heard of him when we were kids too, but it was like unbelievable that a black man doing these type of things made that kind of money.
But obviously, and I've tried to verify this because I met people that say they were around.
when people first start processing it and I think actually probably was in Berkeley these hippies
found a way to do it and it was a special thing it was meant for rich people it wasn't meant for low
income people it started off as a free base right free base exactly exactly it was very dangerous
to process that because it caused explosives explosions it caused explosions but some of those early
adopters of that if you were in the right place you made millions at a young age and really
fast but um here it is that stuff came in heavy you were either a participant or a victim and even
if you didn't directly participate or become victimized somebody broke in your house they broke in your
car they stole your vCR a family you're still a victim your family member had to go to rehab now
they're out of their mind they can't function properly in society that thing was terrible in that
city so i'm like maybe it did start here so here it is we're seeing guys not much older than us
having a lot of money
they're buying custom cars
Cadillacs and Mercedes Benz's this is around
1986 so I'm wondering
like how the hell are they getting
this money because I was never exposed to that
but once I started traveling throughout the city
on my bike and going around
people who were doing it it became
very clear like okay this is a lane
right here so I start
hanging around at a car watch where these guys
with these new cars these flashy cars
kind of hung out
at and my friends and I
They got over the candy business because they were getting ran off of those locations, which we used to go to banks and stuff like that.
So now we're hanging in a car wash trying to make an extra 15, 20 bucks a day helping people wash rims.
But it was a few guys there that would give you 40 bucks.
And I'm like, wait, you gave me 40 bucks for cleaning the tires?
What do you do?
And they had big bank rolls, right?
Like big old grips of money.
How old are you?
At this point, I'm 10.
I'm about 10 or 11.
But I had a curfew, be in before the streetlights come on.
Don't go to the liquor store
Don't go to the laundromat
Or don't go near the check cash in place
That was a rule by my parents
They were very strict on
Right
They knew what was going on there
Do not even go to that car watch
Which is like four blocks around
Four blocks away from our house
Mind you, we lived in the house
Three blocks away is projects
And housing authorities
And most of those people
Are low income
But here we are median income
Not even five blocks away from where they are
So I'm like
Hey, bro, I asked one on a pot and a slim.
I'm like, Slim, what's up?
Can we get in with these guys?
He's like, no, because they want us to go to school.
They don't want us doing that because it's dangerous.
You know what goes on, right?
And I'm like, nah, not really.
He's like, we're going to go to the liquor store tonight.
Just stay out an extra hour.
We're going to go to the liquor store tonight.
I was like, nah, my mama kill me.
My mama kill me.
And then if my dad finds out, he comes from work,
he'll bust my head open, wide open.
So what's your dad doing at this point?
At this time, my dad's working a bunch of overtime.
He's on the forest, but in a whole different city.
so nobody knew my dad works about five cities over as a police officer but my friends don't even
necessarily know they just know both of your parents work and you guys have money and food you get
things for christmas you guys have bikes and you guys get new shoes like every other month or
every month or whatever because i have two brothers right so here it is he knows nothing about it
my mom's basically since she runs a business of her own she's there most of the time but again
financially we're not rich but we're far from broke so uh i went to this liquor store and i saw
that activity these guys are making hundreds of dollars within 10 or 15 minutes and it blew my mind
i wanted to know more i wanted to know more i'm like oh no this is it now my friends that don't have
money they had to do it or else but for me i'm like well if i start too i'll be able to make
extra money and take stress off my parents and buy my own clothes buy my own shoes and
everything will be fine but literally i know it's just so much more dangerous than whatever i
anticipated everything to do with that is just danger pain hurt it's just it's just everything that
you should know but you may not if you want to make extra money yeah i was just but you're a little
kid you know you're not you're not thinking past you know an hour or two of your life you know
you're not thinking even a week in advance no i can't see that far but one of my friends like
11 years old had made enough money hustling to buy a moped now moped cost like 400 bucks i'm like
wow you bought a moped he like yeah and i still have money left so then i made up my mind that i would find out
exactly what to do and how to do it but it wasn't going to be easy mind you at this time we're hearing
stories on the news of a 17 year old millionaire that's running part of the city selling drugs he's 17 years old
he's a millionaire already he has about 40 workers he has a bunch of problems
properties that he deals drugs out of and I saw him I'm in person so I knew he existed and I'm
like wow this guy's only 17 years old he's still in high school but what he had did was found
a plug went directly to the source and from there he was able to advance in the game real fast
he was able to advance and just go go past all other dudes whoever was doing it on his level and
even the older guys so um of course I couldn't hang out but one of the older guys asked me one
time to go to the mall for him he's like hey go to the mall for me here's 150 bucks go buy me a pair of jeans
a pair of nikes and a white t-shirt and you keep the change so i roll my bike to the mall like oh i'm
getting an opportunity right now roll my bike to the mall i go get the jeans i knew the size the white
shoes and the white t-shirt and i bring it back to him he's like thank you the change i kept was
40 about 40 bucks again i'm like that was the easiest 40 i ever made i'm gonna hang around these
dudes now so i started just hanging there every day now i can hang since i did one little thing for him
he's like hey youngster go iron them pans for me and um you know bring them back to me because i got
some girl i'm going to see later on man but i'm not trying to leave over here where i met so you go
do that i did it and one of my friends like you're stupid i never would go iron this pants for this
guy why would you do that and i'm like i know what i'm doing i know what i'm doing so i did it i ironed
them i put those creases in them had them really really nice for him and i came back to the car
while she was in a brand new catalact
He had gold rims on his car.
He had white interior in there with a sunroof.
This was like a $20,000 car at the time.
That's a lot of money.
Yeah.
And he had a gold nugget watch on, so I brought it back to him.
Oh, the gold nugget.
The gold nuggett.
The necklace is in the watch.
He didn't even know.
Remember they had the watches?
You could get like a little pendant.
Oh, man.
Some guys had a whole change.
Yeah, so I knew he had money.
But he started trusting me.
He's like, okay, you did that.
You did that, Yonster.
And I just kept hanging there.
And eventually I asked him.
I was like, hey, can you put me in the game?
He's like, nah, man, because your parents work, man.
You don't have to be out here, man.
This is not for you.
This is not for you, boy.
And he wouldn't do it.
So I was disappointed, man, that everybody else was getting an opportunity to jump in it except me.
And I'm like, why?
I'm like, come on, man.
I can do it.
I'm trustworthy.
Finally, one day he had somewhere to go.
And he said, hey, hold this for me.
I'll be back in a couple hours.
And he gave me like a 200 count, 200 worth.
only had to see about six people while he was gone and I was finished long before he came back
actually yeah I finished long before he came back and when I came back I gave him the 200 and he's like
oh you finished all of that and he gave me 50 bucks man and that was my entry into the game like
now I can do it I started doing it like twice a week three times a week these guys just pulling up
they're just pulling their car up saying hey I need something and you're just giving it to them
either they pull up or they kind of walk up because mind you this area where i had to go from
home to go over there where they were doing this at it was like called uh it was near mac arthur
so it's prostitutes it's uh it's a lot of uh everything going on there hustling you got people
doing running numbers you got people gambling shacks you got a bunch of stuff so now this this drug
was expensive it was 20 to 50 dollars per use right it was 20 or 50 it was nothing small at that time
So you couldn't be a broke, broke person smoking that drug.
You couldn't be broke using that.
So they were coming up, walking up, driving up.
A lot of times people came that weren't from that neighborhood to come get it.
So he gave me the money for it.
And I was like, wow.
And then we did it again.
And we did it over and over to the point where I had a couple hundred of my own money.
I was like, oh, yeah, I love this.
I love this.
Now, can I spend my money?
He's like, no, no, because you'll stop going to school.
You're going to, you know, get caught up and get.
wrapped up in this and we just don't want that and plus i don't want your mom to find out man
once your parents find out man they're gonna kill you they're gonna bust you up you just just go home
just go home so i start talking to other people that was doing it that saw i was a young trustworthy
kid i'm now i'm 11 12 and i'm about 11 at this point and i've already did my first transactions
so from here i'm thinking of ways to make more money but my friends that are doing it they're
doing it again a lot of their money have to go towards their household groceries food
for their mother even or their father whoever was there their clothes they didn't have
nothing so with me all my money was my money my parents could not find out that I
was doing this so I was like having four or five hundred dollars at a very young
age a very young until I start spending once I start spending it of course I
go back down to about a hundred bucks and have to work it back up but the bad
part about it is my mom started noticing I was hanging out too much and she start
coming after me she told my father like oh he's hanging at the liquor store and
then I was what they they got on me they was like hey you get caught at that liquor store
again man you're in trouble we're gonna do whatever we have to do to keep you away from those
those scoundrels or vandals whatever so you call them scoundrels or something to that effect
but okay so I couldn't go and I used all my money now my family that lives on a different
part of town I'm going over there standing at their house I got ran out of the game by my mom
I'm scared of my parents still at this point so I'm not going to go
against them. Are you going to school? I'm still going to school. I'm going to school. I mean,
we're in elementary school at this time. We're in elementary school six graders, six
graders, right? About 11, 12, 5th and 6 graders. So what happens is I go over to some of my family
members. I was coming to find out they're ahead of me. They've been doing it. They're already
buying their own cars. They're teenagers buying their own cars. They have money. They're running
rampant. So I started telling my mom, I want to go there on weekends because I knew I couldn't do
what I want to do at home because once my dad finds out, he's a no-nonsense kind of guy.
So now I'm going over my auntie's house and my cousin's house and I'm sneaking and doing
this anyway because now once you, what do they say, it's better to never give a bear
honey than give a bear of honey and tell him he can't have no more.
So now I made some money.
I don't want to not make any money.
I know this stuff is dangerous.
I know I'm not supposed to be doing it, but my cousins are doing it now.
And now I'm over my aunt's house.
My mom can't tell me I can't go over there.
We go outside.
We go hang out.
things are happening so I'm back you know getting a little motion getting a little rotation and then here it is
one of my friends go to jail and I'm like oh wow he gets called he gets stopped by a cop they take they check his pockets
he has like four or five pieces on them they take him in he's in juvenile hall and I'm like all scared
because I was with him but they didn't check me I was with them and I had stuff too but they just didn't check me
so I was like wow man I was too close I don't want to do this I don't want to go to jail because a person that
never been to jail is scared of jail.
Yeah.
But a person that been to jail is not as scared of jail because they know what jail is.
Like, oh, I've been to jail before.
I can handle it.
I don't know somebody there.
I can make it.
But I was one of those guys that just did not want to go to jail, especially my 12-year-old
friend with the jail.
But he came out three, four days later and told me how much fun he had and how great it
was and he grabbed another sack.
He grabbed another sack.
He didn't even think about quitting.
He was actually saying he was going to quit school.
He's like, I'm quitting school and going full time.
I was like, no, no, no, no.
you can't you can't he's like i'm not listening to you you got both parents at your house
actually i don't even know if i want to hang with you no more because you don't even have to do
this you're a turnout that was the word of you you're a turnout you don't have to do this i have to do
this or we don't eat right and i was like damn he right i don't have to do this but i want to
and i want to be accepted by my friend so i'm gonna keep going so he kind of disses itself from me
but i said so what i kind of knew the concept i didn't necessarily need him the older guys
embrace me the only rule was go to school and make
make curfew. When your parents tell you to go inside, you go inside because they're going to come after us or they might call the cops on us. Now everything is transitioning. The drugs got cheaper. Everybody can afford it. They're selling $10 worth, $5 worth on up. So now it allowed more people to get in the game. Once that happens, the crime started. They're still in VCRs. They're still in cars. They're robbed doing burglaries for a hit of this. Everybody's affected. Like I said, you're a victim or you're a participant.
In one way or the other, this, in our city where they're saying this drug started at, you were going to be affected by this drug.
So now the police, they're looking for people that's doing it.
They're posting up.
They're sneaking up and all kind of bad stuff is happening.
So I'm back home and I'm starting to do it closer to home now because I'm tired of traveling across town to my aunt's house on the bus, riding bikes, traveling somewhere else just to make a couple dollars.
And it's so much of this going on five blocks from my house.
So what I start doing is thinking of ways that I could pass up the competition.
So I was like, okay, if I buy more and sell it for cheaper, then I'll flip it faster and I'll be able to make more money.
So I tried that a few times and next thing you know it worked.
Now I'm making $200 and $300 profit every single day at about by 12 years old.
I'm making about $300 a day minimum because I made us, I formed a system.
I had a system that we're going to buy this.
we're going to cut process it get some clientele that'll call me on my pager only come to me
and then I'll be able to advance past these guys that's on my same level really quick so um my
younger brother he's playing baseball at the time and he's like yo I need some cleats and I'm
like well how much are they and he's like um they're like forty thirty six dollars and I'm like
well won't you go ask mom and then for it he's like well she said they'll do it next weekend but
I need them because we got a big game we're going to travel and I was like here took the money
Damn the money for the cleats. He went and bought him. He was happy. He's like, wait, wait, wait. Are you? He's like, you, you, um, got. And I was like, yeah, I got it. What's up? He's like, well, I want it. I'm like, nah, you're playing baseball. You can't get in. He's like, well, I need to make extra money. So I don't have to be asking you for money. So therefore, he was like, um, all right, I got you. I give him like 20 worth. Told him he can make 40 of it. He made the 40 and he immediately wanted to buy 40 worth to make 80. Within three days, he had 300 of his own money. Right. Just from
starting at but the problem with that is that he didn't want to play baseball no more right he said i'm
done with that baseball man i'm gonna make some money man you guys held this from me all of this time
and i could have been out here with you so um what what what i didn't like was he was pretty good at
baseball and the coach came over to the washhouse we were hanging in front of at the time
and got out of the car and begged him to come back to practice and come back to play i see
something in you man don't hang with these guys and your brother over there and he called me a name
your stupid brother over there that gave you that shit because one of the other players on the team
told the coach that his brother gave him some and now they're right they're doing it right
so he's like your stupid brother i'm tempted to go knock on your door and tell your parents i was
scared to death i was like oh shit if he goes and tell my parents i'm done my father kill me
himself or he just might arrest me and just just book me and take me in that didn't happen
he just steadily pleaded with my brother to come and get away from hustling and get
away from um doing that illicit activity but bro didn't listen he was already in too deep and
it was kind of like my fault i felt like it was my fault but once he caught on and got the hang
of it he blew past me pretty quick because he had a better structured program my younger brother
blew past me he's only two years younger to me by the way but he blew past me in the game
because all he did was that no hanging no talking go there make my money go in the house
hide the money somewhere else so my parents will never find it if they search his room
and he was more disciplined so he was like yeah but i got like 1200 dollars already he wasn't even
in the whole game a month i'm looking for a car to buy at junior high school 7th grade he was looking
for a car like i'm like wait a minute what am i doing wrong but it was some of these guys who i were
hanging with they didn't want anything but to do it for survival all they wanted to do was to
hustle to take care of themselves and not to make it into a business right you know what
me but again things drastically change in this industry because it's so dark it's just it's dark man it's
just bullshit man because what i didn't know was the guys who had went to prison some years before
were coming out of prison and they had a chip on their shoulder what did all these youngsters
doing all here why y'all got these kids out here give me everything you got and get up out of here
so we're hearing stories and we're knowing people that are being taken advantage of by the
oh geez like I don't want these kids out here man no kids you know you got to be at least 18
to do this the um the least you can be a 16 to do this like it was structure it was some
structure involved because these dudes they didn't want the cops to say okay they're running
through kids now we can go shake them up because of that we can shake them up because they
have kids doing this thing so some of the guys my age were getting robbed they were getting
robbed by older guys taking all of their shit and they're all having to start over
from scratch and it's just a bad situation so one of my 16 year old friends he was like bro
yo you want this to be you or do you want a 38 special and i'm like well how much is a 38 special
he's like i can get you for a hundred bucks and all you got to do is when one of them guys come around
you demanding your shit just whip out on him and tell them to back the fuck up they're fresh out
of prison they don't have money yet that's what they're taking our shit so they can get on their
feet and come up and then push us out the way but we're better than them so
I had my first weapon, my first gun at about 12 years old.
That was all mine.
I had to hide it outside of my house.
I couldn't bring it in the house.
I couldn't let my parents find out any of this.
So now I have a pager.
I'm dealing drugs.
I have my own gun.
And I'm just like, I stopped going to church.
I stopped doing all of the things that I was doing.
Are you going to school still?
I'm still going to school at this point because it's junior high.
But the bad thing that came up next would be my first time.
going to juvenile hall one of my friends one of my friends man he getting to it with a girl
at the bus stop after school we're in the seventh grade so he's like um arguing with a girl they're
going back and forth and he does some stupid like push her her boyfriend standing like 20 feet away
comes over there and punches him in the face and he like bust the whole side of his face mind
you we're 12 11 about 12 and then this guy's about 14 or 15 he fires on my friend punches him
the face in front of everybody they're laughing and everything
he runs off didn't get on that bus he found another way home so he comes to my house and he's like
man that guy did that to me man and i don't appreciate it let me borrow your gun so next day at the
next day when i catch him again at the bus stop i'm gonna shoot him i'm like nah you're not gonna shoot
him bro i don't want no parts of that bro he's like yeah yeah man come on bro he you see what he did
to my face man am i your boy or what i'm like yeah you my boy man and i don't know him he's
like well let me get your gun let me shoot him i was like all right it's fine here take it
Now, mind you, this is the inner city where these things should be unheard of.
These things should be unheard of.
I give him a 38.
He brings it to school about three days later.
So I don't think nothing of it.
This all happened at my house.
Did you think it was just talk?
Well, I thought it was just talk, but my boy, I at least want him to whip it out, pull out your guns, scare him.
Let him know that you're not a punk, and you will take care of him if he ever put your hands on you again.
Just let him know.
That's a huge assumption that he's going to take off.
Right. Yeah, right. But my thing was, how bad could it be? People get shot. People get shot in Oakland every day. Mind you, in Oakland, where I'm at the time, this is one of the things that desensitized me. You know people that got killed and you know the killer. The person you know is dead, but the killer is still roaming the streets. The cops don't look hard enough for the killers. So here it is, I'm knowing that these killers are amongst us and they can get any of us at any time.
But we can't tell.
We can't cooperate.
None of the neighbors are willing to cooperate.
So I'm like, they forgot about us.
We're lost out here.
We have, like, San Leandro, Hayward.
They don't have killers roaming the streets in Danville, Blackhawk.
None of these other areas have killer.
Like, we do.
So I don't trust the cops.
I don't trust nobody.
I don't even care what they say.
So he takes this weapon to school.
I'm going about my way.
We don't even hang together that day.
It's fourth period.
Are you thinking about it at all?
I really didn't because I had a girl that I liked and I just wanted to eat some chili fries with her or some nacho chips with her.
I just figured after school everything would transpire because that's where everyone meets after school and that guy that punched him in the face would be there.
So I will sit back and watch from the sidelines whether he shoots him, whether he scares him, whether he hits him in the head with the gun.
I would just watch from the sidelines.
So fourth period right before lunch.
No, no, no.
Fifth period, right after lunch, to campus security come to my classroom.
And it was like, hey, True, it was like, pointed to me, like, come here.
And I was like, I'm looking at what I don't want me.
I don't talk to you guys, whatever.
Mind you, I don't have any drugs on me at this time, though.
I'm just, like, it's no need for me to bring it to school.
And they bring me in the office, and he's sitting there, and the gun is on the desk.
He said, he gave it to me.
He said, he gave it to me.
I went to his house three days ago.
He knew what was happening because cuffed me up, call my dad.
My dad had to leave work.
He couldn't even believe it.
When they told my dad that I gave another student a gun to shoot another student, he didn't even believe it.
He thought that it was a joke until he got there and saw it.
I'm arrested in Juvenile Hall now fighting a case for giving a minor a gun to cause body be harm to another.
I said, but you're a minor too.
Yeah, I'm a minor too, but they held me there for about five days.
I didn't know what to do.
I'm all mad.
I'm stressing.
I'm confused.
I'm like, damn, what am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
Ultimately.
Was it as much fun as your buddy?
he said. It was a bunch of fun. It was a whole bunch of fun because all the kids that I
hadn't been seeing from the different neighborhoods and the different schools, that's where they
were. Like we used to see each other at basketball games and baseball games, football games. Now,
I hadn't saw them for a while, but they're in juvenile hall for stealing, doing things like that,
just petty crimes. And then their parents were unfit so they wouldn't send you back home if you had
an unfit household. You had to stay in juvenile hall until they found a foster home for you. So it was
pretty fun, but it was only a few days. But how did I get off of that?
I got expelled from school, and I ended up, I got out by, I got expelled from school, and, um, probation,
formal probation, start reporting, truancy officers come to the house every day, but I'm going
to continuation school now, and it's a junior high school. My dad didn't like that. So he paid
to put me in a private school for the rest of that school year. And yeah, for the rest of that
school year, he paid to put me in a private school when he was so mad he had to do that because
that you had to pay. But other students, other kids in my neighborhood were like, how can you
afford that. Your father, you're, oh, you come from a working household. Why are you going to
private school? We can't afford food, but you're paying three, four hundred bucks a month to go to
a school and you don't even want to go there. So now I knew what the inside of jail was. Now I
decided I couldn't be playing around with these same guys. They didn't want what I want. We
didn't have the same plans. I need to find a way to go past them real quick. So I found my own
supplier. Once I found my own supplier, and my own supplier, he would be somebody that bought enough to
supply one neighborhood meaning he would buy like um two or three units he would buy like two or three
and he had enough where he was making a good living having like one couple hundred thousand dollars
he would be worth about a couple hundred thousand and he would sell to lower level dealers and i
once i got a line with him he told me he don't want anybody that plays games i would have to get
serious and then it was a minimum that i would have to buy which would be probably spending about
a thousand at a time so once i got with him it was all the way up from there it was all the way up
I just took advantage of building a little brand for myself.
What about school at this point?
I still had to go to school because at this point now I'm in the ninth.
So junior high, it was overweight, went to the private school.
The very next year we petitioned to get me back into public school and I went back to a public high school.
That wasn't a good idea because now the school I went to was Castlemont High School.
All of those guys were hustling already at the ninth grade, 10th grade, 11 grade.
They had cars.
They had jury.
they had all of the fly stuff that I would want and I'm like wow so this is right where I need
to be so I did go for about another year and a half but by 15 I was done with school by 15 I was
done with school because what I started doing was um instead of going to class I was shooting dice
we was gambling behind the building got suspended for that we're gambling we were cutting class
we were messing with girls we're sneaking girls back to our house while my parents were at work
all I had to do was rush home and erase the answering machine before my parents got there
and they would never get the call from the truancy officer and then one day they came to the house and knocked at the door telling my parents that i hadn't been in school in the last two weeks and i they never returned the cause so i was in trouble for that you're on punishment you're grounded you can't go outside you're gonna have to get out we're gonna we're on the verge of putting you out i'm like nah no you won't you won't put me out however they probably they this is what led up to me now starting to advance in the game and now i'm making real money
And I don't want to say real money, but as a kid, like $10,000 at like 13, 14 years old, that's a lot of money.
That's a ton of money.
But that's a ton of money.
And I'm not even ready for that mentally.
I don't think at the time, like having a direct connect is so much better than using the middle, man.
And that's what anything, because now I was able to get my own shit.
I was able to flip it and sell it for lower than the other dealers.
And I was able to grow my little small little business.
I treated it like a business at that young age because I knew better.
I knew how I wanted to, I knew how I wanted to live.
I didn't want to have to do it forever, so I thought.
But things only just went from bad to worse, though.
It just wasn't a good feeling.
It wasn't a good thing because one day a couple guys were asking me to hook them up.
Hey, hook me up, hook me up, man.
I'm trying to get on with you because your stuff is better than our.
So I started hooking a couple guys up that were in the neighborhood on my, on my same level.
And then from there, they started getting a little jealous because they was like,
nah man
I don't think I should be buying from you
you should be buying for me I'm like well but you don't have
enough good product man I don't want to buy anything from you
man just keep it like this or we don't have to do business at all
so they start hating on me a little bit trying to find out where I hid my
shit at going to go steal it after I leave
just little cutthroat stuff that's in this industry
mind you nobody's coming to save you
at this point the police officers
they'll take you to jail but then they also were mad
that they had to chase little black kids around that were selling these drugs in their community.
And I want to say, everybody I know has had at least one fight with a police officer.
And what I mean by that is if you get caught by a police officer and nobody's looking,
they'll fight you literally, literally.
And you can try to defend yourself all you want, but more than likely with these sticks and
batons they had, they probably would get the best of you.
But I've had several fights with Oakland police officers over the year.
And then police brutality wasn't a big thing at the time because they're like,
Like, they're nothing but drug dealers anyway, so who cares?
And there are no phones at the time.
No phones at the time.
Nobody saw it.
If you reported, they'd just be like, no, I wasn't even over there at that time.
It was just not enough in place for the cops to get monitored like it became over the year.
So at that point, what I'm saying is I had to watch my friends.
I didn't want to have to watch my friends, but mind you, I had a weapon and everybody else had one too.
So it was more so we watching each other and we're trying to almost compete with each other for who's going to be better.
at
hustling who's going to be better
who's going to make the most money
instead of becoming a team
I didn't understand team building
really at that age I was just still
just trying to get my stuff off the ground
because I saw how much money I can really make
and what ended up happened was
I come home one night
and my dad was sitting in my bedroom
waiting for me
it was kind of dark I turned on the light
and he was like what's up what you doing?
Were you supposed to sneak out
or you just came home? No it was like like
I'm supposed to be in at nine
nine 30 but i probably was coming in about 10 and he's home at the time because i saw his car in a
driveway and i'm like okay he's here okay well let me just go in my room everything's going to be cool
so what he did was he um he said so look this how this is going to go you're going to give me
all your money you're going to give me your cell phone no you're going to give me your pager you're
going to give me all your money you're going to start making care for you every day that's it
no more hanging at the liquor store no more doing this bullshit that you're doing
you're out the game now and I'm like how the hell did he know he said I've been hearing people from
church you haven't been to school you the people from the church and the neighbors see you hanging at
the wash house and they see you hanging at the liquor store it's only one or two things going there
you're using it or you selling it and I want all your money mind you at this time I'm about like 15
k I know I had about 15,000 I had a pay he said you're not a doctor you're not important
give me the pager are you getting the fuck out tonight and I'm like I don't have nowhere to go
he's like give it up all of it everything or go so i looked around my mom comes into the room
she hears the yelling she hears a commotion she's begging for him to allow me to stay he tells
her no shut up get out of here i run this house i will not let this kid run my household it's
no way in the world he's getting out so i looked around almost had some tears in my eyes and i left
i'm not giving up everything that i made to live what i was living as like a normal kid like a normal kid
I'm not big mistake that night I had to go stay at the prostitute motel 20 a month
where there's nothing but prostitutes nothing but drug dealers nothing but other people
that are in the game nothing but people that are hustling that grinding actually at the time
and you're what you're 15 I'm about 14 at this time about 14 at this time about 14 because now
I'm not going to school no more school is over with I'm hustling all day no one even can tell
me what to do so I go stay at that hotel for that night and I was like no I don't want to do
this, I asked one of my friends, he only lived there with his mom. I was like, hey, well,
your mom let me stay over here at your house for a while? And he asked her and she's like,
yeah, but he has to give me 200 bucks a month. And I was like, 200 a month. Okay,
that's fine. I'll make that in a couple days, whatever, maybe even one day. So I want to
stay there. Everything went downhill. I'm hustling all night.
Stop caring about people. I'm getting into altercations with dealers and
the users. I'm getting into altercations all the time. I start
drinking, you know, beer and whatever the, whatever the E&J, the lightweight stuff
or what I called it.
But it's still bad for a 14-year-old kid, but I'm so stressed out that I just didn't
know what to do, man.
I'm stressed out.
So I'm hustling every day.
I got a gun on me every single day as a kid.
But mind you, everybody in that community does.
Right.
So you're looking at people who are dangerous and you have to be dangerous as them or getting
taking out the game.
So what I ended up doing, I'm standing over there with him.
We still hustling.
I had to hide my money with my little brother though I'm like well look I need you to keep this money safe
I can't bring it over here I can't keep no more than about a thousand bucks on me at a time because I'm
sleeping at somebody else's house and I don't have my own space so he's keeping the money for me
and he's like um hiding it over uh what he had a secret hiding place that I probably couldn't even get to
but in case of emergency he knew how to get to it so uh that was going cool I bought a car stopped going
to school but I would show up at school maybe to meet a girl or something something like that
every now and then but I'm really really learning the game now how are you 14 years old and
you bought a car well back then you got to think you didn't need license you didn't need insurance
it's just finding somebody that had a car like like like um thousand dollar car you look in a classified
flea market paper i'll never forget you go get this classified flea market paper and then you
get an 18 year old to just go sign the papers i mean i never didn't i didn't even have an id right
i didn't my brother had this first car at 12 i waited it took me to a full
14 to get my first car. He had one at 12 and he had to sit on phone books and pillows.
He even got pulled over by campus security in the seventh grade driving the car and she took
the keys and said, well, have your parents come get the keys from me tomorrow. I'll be in my
office on the campus. But what he did was he went and found a mechanic that happened to use
drugs, took the mechanic to where they left the car at, popped the ignition out, switched the new
ignition in. It costs all about 80 bucks. And he was back driving the same day, but he didn't drive
the car close to the school where the campus security could get him again so he knew better he
he was intuitive enough to know that he didn't want to get his car taken twice right yeah so what i
did was um i was doing that but it just wasn't working out man i was sleeping some nights outside
i was sleeping in cars i was like miserable not showering every day because at this house where
i was living at paying 200 bucks a month still had to catch the door unlocked i didn't get a key
if I catch a door lock I can come in but if not I might have to sleep outside which would be in the neighborhood where they're dealing drugs and so it was nights when I woke up and all of my bundle was gone all of my shit was gone one night I woke up I fell asleep but at least 200 bucks and about another 200 worth of product woke up everything was gone because somebody caught me slipping but it was it was a lesson that you don't fall asleep out here on the block because we could have just killed you like these are murderers mind you murderers are roaming around this community
regularly like it's no mystery is no surprise so I mean me being out there is just dangerous enough
and then um after about eight months I ran into my dad one day he was going to work and he's like
come here and he's like uh how you like it out here in these streets because you chose the streets
over having a house you know your brothers are doing good your mom's doing good and you don't even
really come by but uh I think you must have came there and showered a few times but you knew to hurry
up and come and leave he said but um I'm gonna offer you to come back but you can't be doing
the shit you was doing you have to come back under my terms my rules my regulations and uh i considered
it because it's like damn i'm living in the streets man i do have money i'm doing pretty cool for a kid
my age i want to go home man so he offered me that i went and got my clothes from over here at this
house i was living at and went back home but at this point my bedroom is the whole bottom of the
house which is like a studio so i get like a studio since i'm the oldest where i have my own
entryway the rest of the family's upstairs only time they had to walk through my studio is to go to
the washroom i mean we were doing pretty good for a middle-class family living in the urban community
ghetto whatever you want to call it we was doing cool how old were you then now i'm about 15 right
so at 15 he lets me come back home so i didn't hustle as hard because i didn't want to get caught
i mean i dabbled at this point but i told one of my friends that i made it up to nine ounces
Most of these guys were getting about one or a half of one and I told one of my friends kind of like he's like you got money. I was like yeah I got money close to 20k and I'm buying about nine ounces now and it costs like four thousand dollars nine ounces cost you four K at that time about 30 3800 so he's like what I was like yeah man I made it man so I don't have to go out every day because I can get a couple workers to work my stuff and I can go home at curfew and I don't have to be in a way well he didn't like that yeah he didn't like it at all he went and told three other people my father. My father's
he had let me come back stay at the house conditionally under the conditions no drugs in the
house be at the house at a certain time don't disrespect your mom i'll be watching you so one night i'm
coming home and um as i'm coming back up mind you i'd go about four blocks away from where we hustle at
to go home and this is all houses no apartments on our block everybody's pretty much a homeowner
nobody's renting over here everything's everything's pretty cool and it was a guy kind of
standing across the street acting as if he was looking for address. He asked me, do I know where
a certain address is like 27-18? I was like, nah, bro, I don't really know where that address is,
but I'm trying to hurry up and get inside of my house in my gate, because once I get in my gate,
I can lock the gate and go into my house. By the time I get in the gate, it's a dude in the
bushes. He runs out the bushes, slaps me in the head, and walks me into the house. Now I'm in the
middle of a home invasion at 15 years old. My mom's in the house and my little brothers are in the
house they come in there immediately
where's the nine ounces and the $10,000
that we won it all so
I knew the person
I repeated to had to say
something even though he didn't have the numbers exactly right
but the fact that he asked for nine ounces
it just told me that this dude
went repeated what I told him to these
suckers they were suckers to me
so we're going through it they're running
through the house ravishing it
my mom heard the commotion
ran and locked herself in the room
called my dad and called the police
but this is like the worst three minutes of my life though they hit me in the head i still have a
split under my head on top of my head right now from getting hit in the head with a gun at 15 years old
so i'm like wow just please don't let them go after my mom i mean i'm giving them what i have
close which is nothing but about five or six hundred bucks they're like no we want the big
shit we want the big shit which is not even really big but they wanted that they're trying to
take me outside to a stash spot in the back of a neighbor's house
to find the drugs
I opened the door
the police were standing there
freeze it's the police
they grabbed me
the two assailants run
jump through a pitcher window
run now it's a manhunter
helicopters come
everything is so many police in the neighborhood
my father comes home from work
he's coming in breaking through the police line
panicking worried about my mom first
what the hell happened
he found out the story it was over
that was the last straw
I never lived with my parents again
you put us in danger you put us in jeopardy they put the house up for sale this is 1993 the house
were for sale within a week we're leaving this we're done these dudes invaded our home they came
in here with guns they found the weapons found the guys everything at this point whatever she said
on that phone they're in my house two assailants with guns ski mask on my kids are downstairs
we were opening the door for them to take me to go get the big sack
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
I'm just saying that they did chase them down.
They caught them.
They caught those guys, man.
And then they asked me to identify them.
Of course, I didn't see the faces they had on ski masks and all of that.
But my dad was done, man.
He's like, you know, you put my family in danger.
This will be the last time you do that.
You can understand that.
I'm done with you, man.
You're not welcome.
You're not welcome.
We're moving and you're not welcome.
What did you think of that?
What did you at the time?
At that time, remember, I'm desensitized to a lot of shit, but those words of a father could kill me.
for dangering his wife and his kids.
I was scared.
I was scared.
I was terrified of my father because I know he will do it.
He's from Mississippi.
What I'm saying is you understand why he said that.
Oh, I understood.
Oh, okay.
I didn't even argue with him.
I understood.
I didn't know if you were like, it's not my fault.
You know, you're a little kid.
You know, you don't fucking know.
You know, I didn't know if you realized like, yeah, I fucked up.
I fucked up royally.
My mom looked at me differently.
It was in the newspaper.
a short segment on the news so not only am I embarrassed my whole family's embarrassed
oh they raised another drug dealer look those good upstanding people I told you I knew it
and because whenever whenever something bad happens everyone says I knew it or I told you so
so that means people look for the most negative outcome because what did you know and how
and who did you tell who did you tell that I will fail who did you tell that I was a fuck up
because that means you never were rude for me or that I think that people in general when
other people are doing well, almost root for them to fail.
Does it make sense?
If you're doing well, you're doing everything right, you deserve to do well, but when
you, and I'm not doing well, you know, probably because of my, just because I'm not doing
the right thing, you know, and then you fail, then a lot of people are glad about that.
Yeah, it's almost gratifying.
I knew it.
See, I told you they weren't all that.
See, they're such a drug dealer too.
See, they raise a fucking drug dealer.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
So my mom, I mean, people looked at her a little differently,
but then they said, wait a minute, those kids have their own brain.
Those kids did whatever they wanted to do on their own.
She tried to raise them right.
But see, here it is.
How are you going to write your mom's, how is she going to fucking, you know, keep all,
your dad's at work all the time.
How can your mom raise three teenagers?
Like you guys are, you know, it's almost impossible to keep control it.
It's impossible, three of them?
Three, boys.
It's almost impossible to keep control of one.
In the ghetto.
Right.
In the ghetto.
Three blocks away, you might get shot.
knowing that these people around you all have guns everybody has guns so i have my own 38 special
like i said i didn't mind using it even though i didn't have to but i didn't mind using it so he was
done with me they were moving the worst thing happened after this so they're packing up the house
they're getting ready to move i'm back in the streets living in twenty dollar night motels
sleeping at any friend's house that i could sleep at but i'm full-fledged in the street so at this
point i found a house they call them trap houses now but we called them rock houses it was a house
where everything was going, prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, three-card molly,
uh, people were manufacturing, whatever you could think of was going on. So it wasn't a rock
house because people sold rocks there. It was rocking and rolling. Anything you think of can go on
in this house. You want to get a girl. You found a girl on the street. You want to bring her
here. Go in the back room. It's 10 bucks. You want to cook up. Okay. Kitchen is 10 bucks an hour
and you leave something for the house. So it was one of those things where I'm living in that house
now coming from a two-parent household clean nice food now everything just goes downhill so here it is
one day a neighbor saw me hiding my staff one of our neighbors sold their house and it was on the
moved out of their house and they were selling it and it was on the market so i decided to use it as a place
to stash my drugs at so one of my neighbors saw me running back and forth behind that house all day
and he went and told my dad he's like hey i know you threw your son out because he's dealing drugs right
But I keep seeing him run back and forth behind the house over there that Aetna sold.
And I think he's stashing drugs back there.
I already called the cops and told them about it.
So just to let you know, I called the cops and he's probably going to get caught, right?
My dad didn't even tell me that this had happened.
I went back there to pick up my drugs and the cops were back there waiting on me.
I was 15 years old.
Got arrested.
This time it was enough drugs to hold me.
They held me down.
They told me we sent you to youth authority because you're no.
you're doing you this is not a possession maybe you was trying to make an extra couple dollars
nah you knew what you were doing this is enough for us to charge you you're going to youth 30
call one of my friends who happened and he passed away now but i was like bro they're saying youth
authority man three to five years man i can't do that i need a lawyer no problem i got one for you do
you got the money he's going to want the money i said yes i got the money how much he said
starting off 2500 and whatever else he tells you from there you're a juvenile talk to him he
gonna come see you i pay for my own lawyer fought the case for about a year and end up getting a
boy's home for one year so i was gone less than two years on a case that should have sent me to
youth authority right so okay so when they arrested you did you bond out or did you do the all this
lawyer and as a juvenile is no bond out and my parents was not messing with me so who gives them who gives
the lawyer the money me i was hustling i'm a kid hustling you were in jail oh no my brother
you make a call you make a call and you get free calls
as juvenile because you're a kid and everything.
But my parents made it clear.
We're not coming to get him. No, we left him
out. As a matter of fact, he chose to leave.
Right. He's a delinquent. And then, oh, you're
delinquent? You're delinquent? You left
home and you're under your own
rules. They lock me up.
They have no mercy from me. Matter of fact,
that lawyer,
he came to see me. He's like, where's the cash?
I told him who to call. My brother
took him to cash. He said, now we're talking. I'm talking to the DA.
This is when I knew. If you have a few dollars, you get
a little bit more privileged than those that don't.
He said, well, you're not going to youth authority, but you're
going to a boy's home. You're going to a
boy's home. They're thinking about giving you
two years. You can probably do about eight months
and get out. But the thing is,
your parents are not supporting you. They want nothing
to do with you. They won't come pick you up
and the judge knows this already. So
you have any family members, aunts, uncles,
anybody that will speak on your behalf
so we can solidify this deal.
So I talked to one of my aunts,
I begged her and I told her, please
just trust me, I swear to you, I will not
do this again when I get out just give me a chance I learned my lesson and I know better
she said all right and she talked to the judge and they signed the deal no youth authority
youth authority is just a miniature prison you it's very few people who come out of there normal
they set you up for psych meds in there they kind of already give up on you when you go there I'm
sure you may have heard of it so I did a little eight months in a boys home and came right back I was
so happy to be out everything was the same
a lot of things happening people that weren't in the game when I left are in the
game now so how old are you now 17 I'm about uh it's going on going on 17 going on 17
going on 17 when I get out of that came out hmm this really wasn't working for me I
told them I wouldn't do it no more I'm not going to do it no more but the marijuana
industry was wide open so I went straight into that found all how to do that
excelled in that pretty fast too came up from like starting
with a small amount of money built that up to a miniature empire had about two three workers working
with me never for me they worked with me on side of me so we were able to give three four even five
pounds but this time instead of selling it retail we just sold wholesale to the public we're
able to make three five 700 profit a day every single day and I was happy so again back in the game
just not doing the hard shit I'm thinking well it's only weed they can't really bother me for weed
What are they going to do?
Blasted, it worked.
Everybody was happy.
We were making money.
I started buying cars.
Oh, I had to go back to school for the last year of school, though.
That was a stipulation when I came out of the boys' home since I was going to school there.
I had all of my credits.
You just go back to school.
You'll finish school.
Everything's going to be cool.
Going to school every day, I bought me a car, had enough money to buy a Grand National, which was a big deal at the time.
I bought a 1987 Burek Grand National, all the older guys.
I wanted to say I paid about like 15.
thousand for it they couldn't believe it but everybody wasn't happy for me again i was going to say those
were the ones they were kind of kind of boxy but they had like a ton of horsepower right like didn't they
have like 300 horsepower 300 yeah something like a lot of horsepower buick grand national they were
beaten like the uh the Mustang 5 point oh they were beating Mustang 5.0s and it didn't look like it didn't
look like it looked like a little boxy moni carlo some little two door coop but i bought one of those
i bought me an old school Chevy but at this time i'm having like 506
thousand at that age 16 going on 17 I was close to 100k and everybody wasn't happy for me again
because they start competing with me um calling the cops on me but this time like I said it got
really vicious because the police didn't like it either you guys are making all of this money
we have to make 60,000 a year or less to chase you criminals around so they start playing dirty
like I said everyone I know has had a fight with an Oakland police officer that was around my age
group. So what they would do is, again, they would watch from a distance, watch you hide your
bundle, watch your workers, and if they catch you on those backyards or they catch you in one
those alleys, it's on. So one day, I run in the backyard. I'm going to go get some stuff to hand
off to one of the guys I work with, and it's a cop standing right there, and I ran right into his
arms. So he grabs me, but I'm like, who the, and I'm not really seeing this fully as an officer,
yet we're wrestling, we fall on the ground, and I hear his keys and his badge fall. I'm like, oh shit,
a cop we're literally fighting in the back of this house it's a grown man i'm a kid i'm
probably 120 pounds this dude's 180 to 200 pounds strong working out everything we're fighting
we're wrestling he's trying to beat me i'm trying to get him i kind of like elbowed him on the
side of his head that's when he let me go i try to run away grab my leg i know what you're doing
i already got your shit already got your shit i'm like i start yelling help help he got me he got me he got me
So people in the front are like, what do you mean?
It's who?
It's a certain cop that came around that beat named Maxick that was known to beat guys up.
Maxin.
He was known for beating ass.
He was known he don't care.
He's not going to report it.
Right.
He will not report.
He fought you.
So he's like, help, help, help.
This dude hears me in the front.
He's like, oh, shit, where's his car?
Where's his car?
So they drive her on a block.
They find his car and they break his window out of his car with a big brick.
So one of the neighbors come like, like, hey, somebody just broke a police car window.
He said, you motherfucker.
He curses me, you motherfucker.
He takes the weed, takes all the money out of my pocket,
kick me right in my ass, as hard as he could, and he left.
Never turned anything in.
Right.
I've seen him three days later.
He said, fuck you.
I hope I catch you in the backyard again.
Now I knew it was a vendetta between me and him,
because I elbowed him on the side of his head.
It kind of put a scar on him.
But this was normal.
All of the guys, either it was him and three more rogue cops.
They don't mind fighting you.
They don't mind going around or two with you because,
this is what it is they didn't get paid enough or they just pull up on you do you want to go to
jail today how much money do you got in your pocket six hundred dollars drop it in my car
and walk away real talk i'm like no drop the money in my car are you going to jail today motherfucker
you'll be there at least three days do you want to go to jail or not all right man all right
man but i got tired of that shit man we all did man so we got to a point where anytime they came
just run get away from them don't let them contact you don't have any contact with these
fuck-ass cops because they will take your shit
they'll take you down and then they don't mind
fighting again and this is a true story
the playing clothes one with just the jeans
and the t-shirts on they like they came to fight
it's almost like the school yard thing it seemed like they
just came for that um did you ever see
not that we were talking about uh shorts and b-roll
did you ever see the movie um
with uh Morgan
is it Morgan Fishburn
Lawrence Fishburn
Lawrence I knew it sound right
Lawrence, did you ever see it was called
Undercover? Deep cover.
One of my favorite movies, man.
I love that movie.
Man.
I used to have that movie when it was VHS.
VHS, yeah.
One of my favorite movies, yeah.
But in that movie, he also said, where you from?
They asked him where he was from.
Oakland.
He said, no, you ain't from Oakland.
I know Oakland.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, when you were talking and he punt, remember he punches him
and he says, do you want to file a police report?
And he's like, no, no, that's all right.
When you were talking about that,
I pictured that scene where he runs up and he calls him Judas and he punches him and they were in the thing yelling and you were talking about the bad cop even though he was a good cop that was a good cop yeah yeah but the fact of the matter is they were doing that and it wasn't getting reported well it's like the Rodney King thing everybody always said when Rodney King was happening everybody was saying well that was an isolated event and now you look back and you go it was isolated it was an isolated event that they had a camera there they had a camera
because you're smart though that happened so many times in Oakland I'm talking about so many times
but it wasn't on camera right my brother quick little story my brother we're driving around in my grand
national we smoking weed we're driving around we're kicking it we're hanging these two cops get
behind us I'm like oh shit man these cops are behind us man damn man I don't really want to stop I got
my gun on me man I got some shit on me man just keep going so they get behind us we high speed
we leave them by blocks and block but he was able to see the face of
myself and my brother so he knew to come back to the neighborhood later that night so we get away we
leave them by distance and we're outside now hanging we're drinking some hennessee we was just talking
shit so they pull up they say you think that was so smart earlier huh wait till i catch you it was like a little
micro threat these cops waited down the street for hours my brother pulled off about 10 o'clock at
night in a whole different car going to see his girlfriend and they pulled him over four blocks later
he's like get out the car brown get out the car so he gets out the car full-fledged fight
full-fledged with two against one they beat them they wrestled them they drug them on the ground
how much money you got on you took the money six 700 bucks and drove off and like all right
we'll see you later we know you we know we'll see you again never reported no one said anything
and this is in the 90s where it seemed like nobody care so why do we care about cops they don't
even care about us they're taking our money they're fighting with us kicking our asses and every now
and then we might get one of them nobody cares about nothing
Nobody cares about even like, I've been to jail already.
I'm like, well, jail ain't the worst place to go if I had to go, but I never actually did any time.
Everything was in and out.
So from here, things went kind of good and they just started growing fast because the weed business was growing.
I was able to start selling weight.
I made it into a business where buy more, get it cheaper, sell it for hire.
I'm able to supply enough guys to keep me kind of out the way off the front line and I made a good living.
So now I'm kind of rolling in money and everything is going smooth.
Like I said, everything is going smooth, but not without incident.
Again, you get a few losses here, a few losses there, but nothing to never take you out the game.
So how long does that go?
That goes until, that goes for a couple years.
That goes for a couple years while I ran into a little case where I got caught with a pirated cell phone.
Like you remember those phones, they used to put these chips in where you don't have to get the bill.
One of these cops caught me
One of these cops caught me with that
Mind you, I go into jail for that
But get right out
It's no big deal
It's nothing major
You just bail out at this point
17 you can just bail out of jail
Okay cool
I just bailed out
Got right out
But I was able to just really
Really get rolling
But things started to change again
I ended up
Meeting a girl that I liked a lot
So I didn't hustle as hard
I was just working my process
Because I had enough money
Where I'm beyond
the survival level, I'm hustling to make things
kind of like, I'm like, well, once I get
100K, I'm out the game. And I'm like, wait a minute, I got 100K
already, so what's next? Okay, I'll get 200K, I'll get out the game
once I get about $200,000, okay, I can go do anything I want
then, go work or go get something else going, buy me a house.
What, houses were like 70K then in Oakland?
You get a good house for 60 or 70K at that time.
So I was thinking on those terms, I met a girl.
She wasn't the one for me, and she showed me that because all she wanted was
money right i mean she knew i had money she knew that things were going good for me so all she did
was kept her hand out and she kept asking for money so i had to get away from her man get away from
her meeting other women now but not getting too serious with them and then i finally met one that
i ended up having a baby with but that scared the hell out of me uh you know going into fatherhood
now i'm like i said 18 19 years old my daughter's 26 now and um i'm thinking like what am i
gonna do i need to make more money because i'm about to have a baby so my cousin um older guy he's the one
to help put me in the game gave me a bunch of resources where i didn't have the trip he said look
you're doing it all wrong man you're trying to sell wholesale what we need to do is sell retail to
the public with the shit that we used to you that we used to before and they're like nah i don't really
want to go back to that man this weed is easier and it's less time if something goes wrong he said
you mean to tell me you're in this game trying to get rich and you're thinking about what's
going to go wrong you'll never be successful are you in or not so i'm in so what we did is
in our neighborhood we ended up setting up operation we brought everybody from the neighborhood
together mind you this is not my operation he brought me into this operation so when people think
i'm going to start selling drugs i'm going to become a kingpin you're probably not only one
percent of people get up to high level in drug dealing. Same thing with fraud and scamming. Most
people are not successful in scamming because they're doing it for survival or as soon as they
make some money, they go buy something, start over from square one and they have to start doing it
all over again. So it's only a few people that will make it to high levels, even becoming a millionaire
from hustling or selling drugs so rare that you, the people who are saying they did it, probably
didn't do it. Most rappers never did it. Most people just won't do it, which is not even something
to even brag about anyway because it's so hard to do so we put this plan together that we would
have um watchouts on each corner one person collect the money one person hands over the drugs we were
going to set up a complete organized operation unlike the city has ever seen and we're going to do it
just like this but it's going to be 15 people 12 to 15 people on the on the team they're all going to
get paid they're all going to be happy so we will survive and we won't take no losses first i was like
nah it won't work he's like but we're going to do it in a neighborhood that's an underperforming
neighborhood and they need to help so we're going to move across town a little bit and we're going to
try this see how it goes and it worked start off making about thousand a day 3,000 5,000 10
000 a day i'm like wow you were on to something he's like yeah i told you just all you have to do is
listen to me and you follow the blueprint but now you have the blueprint and you can implement
this on your own i wouldn't give this exact blueprint to nobody but i'm giving it to you because
you was here with me from day one and it's like wow what did we call it he said we just call it the
machine we just call it the machine so if anybody says the machine we know what they're talking about
we know what they want it's going to work it's going to work man this thing went so
it started generating so much money man it was unbelievable everybody was making three to 500 a day
on the lower end so they were pretty happy making what 10k a month in the 90s it was right well what is it
would you bring it into a house was it what what do you so you get an apartment building you get
full access to the apartment building you put a gate around there you pay for the gate around
the apartment building and then you put your crew behind the gate so the person that's dillon
stays behind the gate nobody can never access him he's only going to be able to serve through
the gate it's another new jack city new jacks kind of sort but i'm
Outdoor. Outdoor. Oh, New Jack City was outdoor. You just had to get into the Carter complex. You had to get into the complex.
Yeah, well, no, they were selling everything in the complex.
In the complex.
Yeah, you could get it.
It was similar to New Jack City except like open air, I guess you could say.
And then you have a lookout in the front.
You got a person collecting the money.
Somebody handed out the drugs and you have a lookout to a walkie-talkies on each corner.
And this ends up being a big thing also because when the police finally came for it,
they couldn't bust it for years.
But when they finally came, they had all the insight about the whole operation.
So what we ended up doing was making sure you had those guys on three different posts to make sure if they even see a cop, you call into the person that's actually dealing so he can disappear.
When they come, everybody's gone.
So this worked for years.
This worked for two, three, four years to the point where the guy who put it together, when he felt a little heat at all, he had a meeting.
He's like, listen, I'm out.
What?
Everybody, what?
I'm out.
do it you can handle it all I would all I would ask you guys to do is to be generous if you find
it in your hearts to be generous so what he was just basically saying kick something back for me
you know on the back end but it was so much money involved that was easy that was no problem to
do so we outside every day in me no lie I didn't even have to go there but I found a thrill
and going there every day just watching this operation that I was a part of and I'm like wow
look at this money that we make it man who would ever thought some kids coming
from where we come from could set this up and everybody can be making this kind of money and again
the officers didn't like it they could never find nothing so what they did a few times is how they got
inside of our operation they would come so heavy 12 or 14 deep even with the lookouts being on
their post and they'll run everybody off and then they would set up the operation exactly how
we had it set up one guy behind the gate one in the front one on the corner so all the
the customers that came to buy shit they would arrest the customers to get the whole
operational blueprint once that happened they were able to come make arrest right but that's not
that's around the time the feds start watching because they did not like a person having that
kind of operation in a neighborhood where it was almost unpenetraitable but in a way they
they just didn't like it they didn't like it because um a few
things happen like people get shot a neighbor getting affected by like uh i can't even come into my
house i feel like a prisoner in my own home because these guys are set up all around the whole
perimeter and they have lookouts and you can't see their face they have these masks on and they're
talking to somebody looks like on phones or walkie-talkies and i just don't like this anymore so they
had a couple city hall meetings and they crack down on this hard they really really did crack down on
this hard but at this time when i'm climbing up the rank as a i guess i don't want to say a
boss but as a person that's significant in the game my name starts ringing so i can't come around
as much now because uh one of the guys he was like a lower level worker he said uh um i got to talk about
the cops the other day and they asked me who you were who's the guy that drove off in a white car
and i mean he's i'm just letting you know man that they did ask me about you so i don't know what
their surveillance is but just kind of be aware come to find out they had been watching me
and label me as a supplier so all my my whole job now was to not
get caught with anything just don't get caught all you have to do is don't get caught like because
i mean they can think whatever they want but if they can't catch me with anything or in the same
place with the drugs i can do this for five more years and then i can come to you guys and tell you
guys that i'm off the game whatever amount of money that i have but it's just not that easy it never
works that easy i mean once you hustling once you're dealing drugs it's almost like into deep
that's another movie that they made about being deep in the dope game and it was kind of like
What I took for it is like, when you get in the game, it's so hard to turn away.
It's like, what's going to happen if you turn away, man?
People might get mad at you for leaving the game.
People might get mad at you because they depended on you, and now you're out of it.
They can, who knows what can happen.
So from there, I backed off, but didn't quit.
And that's when the best connect that I ever had came to me through a good family friend.
He, uh, he, he, he, uh, met up with me.
One day we was at the park, nobody's around.
No cell phones, no pagers.
And he was like, yo, uh, yo, bro, what's up?
I was like, nothing.
He said, bro, you've been getting to, getting a lot of money lately.
I know you have.
And I'm like, no, not really.
It's all right.
I downplayed it.
At this time, I'm like, close to about five or $600,000, $400,000 to $500,000 at a young age.
I'm not, I'm like, like, like, like 19 years old.
About in between 18 and 19, I'm all the way up to about $4,500,000.
not even knowing that that's what it was but the thing about that was he was like you know every time
you call me i make about three to five thousand off your order and i was like what he was like yeah man
i make like three five gs every time you call me man but this the thing i'm thinking about moving man
and um you're gonna need the guy who i go to but the only way to get to him is um through me and i was
okay well introduce me to him he's like nah don't work like that he's like i want that rolex off
your wrist and i want 15 000 and i was like what this the first rolex
I bought, I'll just buy you one. Don't worry about it. He's like, no, no, I want that one off your
wrist. And if not, then you're going to have to find somebody else. And I was like, wait,
how it sound like you giving me an ultimatum? You know, I don't fuck with that. I don't deal with
no ultimatums. I don't even need you, right? I don't know why I told him that because I did need
him. Right. He had the best plug that I ever had in my life. So I started scratching my,
he said, well, think about it, I see you tomorrow. As a matter of fact, next time you want to
do this, just let me know, but that's what I want. So I called him back. I was like,
bro just let me buy you a watch and give you 10k he was like nope already told you the terms
let's do it and i'm like oh shit oh shit so i knew i couldn't switch the watch off he knew the
watch i had it i paid a lot of money for it i probably paid 17 000 for the watch back then
in 97 98 i paid 17000 for and then he wants extra money but he just told me he makes three to
five thousand every time i call him so it didn't take me long to think about it the next
Next time I call him, I took it off my wrist and I gave it to him and I handed him the money.
He made a call.
We went together to the connect.
Now, I had the connect that changed my life.
Some say for the worse, some say for the better.
I mean, I'm going to say it just changed my life forever.
It changed my life forever because I was able to go straight to the source.
It was stipulations with that too.
Who are you?
Where are you from?
Take me where your family live.
What about your aunts?
Your uncles?
I need to know everybody.
I want to know everybody.
and this is how we're going to do it no other way you don't make the rules it was kind of strict
and firm but the guy ended up being the coolest duel in the world he just didn't want me to give
him up or run off on him with his shit or have somebody backdoor him and rob him or some shit like
that so basically this is cartel this guy's cartel he's cartel for sure because the amounts he was
able to get in some of the stuff i saw with him he was a level of like um yeah he was cartel level
for sure like scary type of shit bring me into the uh to the to the
house we walk to a house with a secret basement and it's full with cocaine i'm talking about
stacked 10 to 12 high all around the whole room i'm like that's like three to four hundred of them he's
like yeah but you don't have to worry about that but you do have to stay here tonight while we get your
order i'm like no i have somewhere to go i got something to do he said no don't worry about it man
you have to stay here tonight while we load your car up and all of that shit is rules to this shit
did not tell you that so it was no in and out nobody could never knew when i was coming or going
because he never told me when I was coming or going.
So that way he said, you can't tell nobody you're going to meet me because you don't know when you're coming to meet me.
And you couldn't leave to say, hey, they're loading up the car right now.
Couldn't leave.
By the time I left, everything was gone.
Everybody was cleared out.
So it just took a lot of my time.
But what that made me do also never run out.
Now I won't run out and I won't run low because this is going to be inconvenient.
I never know how this is going to go.
I don't know which house we're going to go to because some of those houses we would meet at three weeks.
later those houses would be completely
empty on the market for sale
like they never kept them more than a year
never so that's when I knew I was dealing with some people
who was like way beyond my level
and I was like oh shit so never bring the money with you
never somebody else is gonna pick the money from you
random person random car we won't even tell you
till they get there so just kind of be ready so it was
always a kind of a balance I wouldn't say he was
giving me to work on
consignment but it was a balance like um like um you got 200k okay somebody's coming to get that
you give them that okay but i still got this left it was it was a thing where you're not going to
get me busted right mind you this guy was so serious that he he was from mexico and didn't deal
with a lot of his own people because he said they want my position they don't think i should be
here doing it on this level they believe they should so if they knew this they would take me
out okay never got caught never he never he never came on the forefront so he just had it where
he dealt with me and then no one else couldn't bring nobody couldn't refer nobody he didn't
want to do none of that he had enough people so from there i mean i just have to say from there
the money i was able to make from there is the shit that got me in so much trouble because now my
level went up they called me a supplier you're a supplier you're a supplier you're a high level supplier
you're supplying half of this area and we want you right how long did that take for them to come
and grab you or that's so so from about night i was and again only about three years i lasted
doing that about three years but i was able to make about a significant i make a significant enough
amount of money to kind of position myself if i had to go to jail i i kind of was almost ready for it so
what happened was um was over i was over at an apartment
that I didn't think anybody knew about, and I was in there kind of processing the drugs,
kind of processing it.
But let me rewind.
What happened was I started buying cars.
I bought another Rolex.
I bought a brand new Denali Chevy, I mean, Yukon Denali, fixed it up, put the 22-inch rims on there.
All of this music and all of this stuff.
And I used to keep storage lockers, so I didn't drive this truck to my suburban home where
school teachers and clerks and people lived in this suburban neighborhood.
This car didn't match that neighborhood, so I kept it in the storage locker.
So one night I was in a rush and I went to my storage locker and I hurry.
I'm like, oh, I'm running late.
This thing is going to, this gate is going to lock in about 20 minutes.
So I hurry up and went in the storage locker.
I drove my truck in there and I grabbed a duffel bag out of a truck, backed my other car out,
which was a white late model sedan, threw the bag in there and hurry up and drove out.
Well, it was an off-duty police officer just happened to see me do that move.
And she went and reported that she saw a guy do would look like a suspicious move.
Right.
They took my license plate and started investigating me from there.
Followed up on the license plate.
Start finding out who I am.
Ask the people at the front desk of the storage who I was.
Like, who's this guy?
He has a storage locker over there, man.
And we just saw him do something.
He's like, he told me that.
He was like, some people ask some questions about you, man.
And they seem like they're cops, man.
So whatever you're doing, man.
I hope you're not doing any illegal activity out of this place because you know that I'll
avoid out your contract but I just didn't like the way they came in asking me about you
and they gave me your unit number but needless to say they were already on me so I'm
inside this apartment and I'm processing cooking up doing my stuff and um a lady knocks at the door
and then she knocks at the door I look out the peephole and I'm like I'm like wait a minute
what is she doing here and I'm like okay I'm not I mean they're not they got the wrong house
and she keeps knocking
So I
I go back to the door again
I open the door
She was like what's going
She was like
He is this the unit for rent
I'm looking to rent this
This condo right here
And I was like no
This is not the unit
Why would you come here
Go to the office
I think get away from
I was like no
And I close the door on her face
Three minutes later
They were through the door
20 deep
Right in the mix
They caught me in the mix
In the act
I was right there in the house
Me and one of the person
and it was bad right then and there.
And this is the big case where this is a big enough case
where I had to go to prison.
But again, I had money.
They found that time, I want to say about $250,000,
about $100K worth of drugs.
They found a couple guns,
but it's another person in the house
and my name is not on the lease
and I did not have the keys on me.
My lawyer made the case.
He don't live there.
He was there visiting.
Who's your informant?
We need to know.
We got all the way to pay.
preliminary hearing this is on the state level got all the way to preliminary hearing
they were offering me 10 year state got all the way to preliminary hearing and he said
well look this is what we'll do you guys know you fucked up on this case you had bad
information wasn't his house wasn't his shit he happened to be there I end up pleading
for three years would have you do 12 months off of that okay so again here it is I got
off by the hair my chin did you were you out on bond during this or were you in
nah I stayed in because I was on probation from like a minor infraction
of just getting caught in the car with like $10,000 in some weed.
I took informal probation.
Okay.
I took, no, no, I took formal probation, which is three-year felony probation.
But they was like, okay.
So you're on probation.
You just get caught in a house with drugs.
With drugs, which is my main thing that I wanted to never wanted to do.
But they're like, okay, forfeit the money.
Like I said, it was almost like $2.30 in cash, all cash.
The drugs equal close to $100.
a couple guns in there
so it's me and another guy
the guy's like well you know
it may be worth it for me though you know
I mean I can handle some of this man
I got a strong back I can handle some of this pressure
so needless to say he got a little bit more time
to me but he knew once he came out of jail
he would be straight he knew
don't have to worry about nothing once you touch down
everybody's going to know this noble act that you did
and they're going to look at you a certain way
you won't have to worry about anything
right so you went to prison you did state prison San Quentin are you serious San Quentin state
prison mine this is in 2000 is that a pen or is that a medium that's a state prison that's a pen
that's a that's a prison that's a prison that's a prison stand quentin state prison on the island like
uh they closed Alcatraz and open sound San Quentin I know but I'm saying is it a pin is it like
a medium oh that's a that's a that's like it's death row that's death row maximum and then
they have a camp in a you like the federal prisons a camp in a low time
to support the high levels, but I went to the higher level since it was like a higher end crime.
But again, once I got there and I got processed and the amount of time I got left, I didn't
have to stay long again.
The money I had saved me again, but I was able to see what it was and get a CDC number.
That's why I'm bringing it up.
I had a CDC number and I'm in the system and I did plead guilty to a drug charge.
I fucked up by pleading guilty to a drug charge because it feels like if we get them on a drug
charge if we ever catch him we can charge him with a prior we if we ever catch him again we'll
give him a prison prior since we actually sending him to prison even if it's just a turnaround so that
messed me up but again when you give a young person money that doesn't understand the money
then it's almost a disservice because I'm now running running around I'm running while I get
right back out I don't waste no time and I jump back right in the game and within 12 months I was a
millionaire this is about 21 to 22 years old
I got right back out.
I had no consideration for the law.
I hated police even more.
I hated the system.
I'm like,
you guys brought this shit to us.
Y'all allowed us to sell it,
but then you get mad and try to take us all the jail.
I kind of like made up a reason in my head to justify my actions.
Even though I knew this shit wasn't true,
it's just like it's easier to make up a reason to do some bullshit.
So I got out and I just went full-fledged.
I went full-fledged now.
Another guy that I was really close with,
he's the one that starts saying bro
every since you got out you've been going
harder than ever you stay away from the shit
you're never around it and then this is
the guy that told me he was like um
once you come over here and um let me give a millionaire
a hug or something to that effect like
uh because it was a song out at the time called
uh like uh hot boys
and they had a song like that and it's like the people
who were high level they would give each other hugs
when they greet each other and shake hands
and embrace and show love and I'm like
what do you mean give a millionaire a hug
he like bro I know how much money
I've been making and um that means you have to have at least one point two you i know you're over a minute
i'm like nah no i'm getting there though i'm getting there though i hadn't even counted up my money
before never counted up all my money before i'm a young kid i don't have a clue of what's going on
all i'm doing is hustling working messing with girls hustling hustling working some more and working
i mean going in a lab nobody can know what these labs are at private once you're there three to four
months if the neighbors start noticing you you have to get out of there and already have another
one to transition into because that's the way you won't let that one get busted and then you just
I just like I don't want to be in another house with drugs in it I just can't be in the same place
with these drugs and as long as I'm doing that I don't even think I understood conspiracy back then
all I thought was don't get caught with drugs right so when I um he told me that I went
counted up all the money and he was right 300 here 200 there 350 here another 140 there
170 here 170 here so once I counted up this money and I realized it was about what he said
and how he knew was intriguing to me because I'm like goddamn I'm not even paying attention
to how much money I'm really making but I'm out here in these streets every day I'm slipping I'm
thinking in my mind I'm slipping I'm not applying myself how old are you at this point I'm
about 21 I'm going on 22 my first daughter
is born this is when I really decided that I was going hard full-fledged no plan just like I'm hustling
every my whole life was grinding waking up in the morning a joint before I brushed my teeth a shot
of gray goose or whatever we were drinking at the time maybe some crystal maybe we was drinking
moed and crystal all the time because we just knew that we were winning but I didn't know I was winning
at that magnitude but the the bad part about that is once he told me that I start acting like I was
what he told me I was spending money so fast another Rolex a different car another car that
rims music just old school cars just like go buy Chevy put 10 G's in music just like this money
start dwindling so fast and I slacked off my grind the same guy which is a drug dealing
mentor if that makes sense I know a lot of people didn't ever hear of a drug dealing mentor but you
need mentors in whatever you do because he's the one that
pulled me by the collar snatch me up and like bro tighten the fuck up get back on top of your game all
you doing is spending money you're drinking someone told me you was in a club drunk disrespecting
people get over yourself and get back in the game but i had already blew about a quarter of the
money so i went down and i was like oh shit he's right he's right let me snap out of it
and i jumped back into my bag which means got back on my grind and start going hard all over
again i reset i did a reset from there like uh i was not having to go on the streets anymore
because i made a crew where we can just wholesale to the other dealers that was buying at least a kilo
this is when i'm like okay if this guy want a unit and that guy want a unit we can just serve
them and then we can make the profit because we're getting them so low i mean i never have to
get up to a hundred units if i can get the best price on 30 to 50 and make more profit because i have
a better connect than them, then I don't necessarily need to go all the way up to the highest
level in this, which most people would never reach the high level. So from there, I mean,
I just rolled around doing it over and over, getting, you know, 20s, 30s, sometime 50. That was
like my biggest order, getting like 50 of them at a time, which was a heavy responsibility. I had
to hide them at two or three places just so if we took a loss at one place, we knew we didn't
lose the whole load but again people were assuming but they just didn't know the exact level i was at
they knew i was having money they knew i was making making waves and my name was kind of ringing
but they definitely didn't know exactly the magnitude of it so when i got the big state sentence
what happened was this i got into it a guy over him wanting a lower price he's questioning me
about my connect and he's demanding a lower price for me uh which is about a thousand to fifteen
lower than the going price.
And I was like, no, I'm not doing that, man.
I'd rather not deal with you at all than cut my price down.
So to make you happy and you're not even buying enough.
And he's like, well, I'll buy three at a time or five and I'm like, no.
He mentioned my name to an investigator he worked directly with.
But he's not considering an informant because he didn't snitch on me.
He mentioned my name.
I'm not sure how that works.
Well, the investigator would give him shit sometimes.
Like, oh, I took some shit from over here, bro.
you take it and give me a certain amount like all right cool or he'll say something like man
them dudes around there man they kicking up a lot of noise with that violence man go tell them
to stop all that violence and keep them gun that gun play out of the mix and i would uh and i'm
gonna back off of them so he he says it's a relationship with the cop the cop end up getting
caught fired and going to jail too so that's why he don't think it was snitching he don't think
he was telling which it is though so him mentioning my name to this investigator that
investigator had a personal vendetta against me he starts following me around every day for two years
every day he said i know your girlfriends i know where you live i know who you sleep i know everything
about you and how he got on to me is he uh had my p.o call me for a meeting at the parole office
because i'm on state parole i go there the middle of the day switch my clothes put on a work
outfit and i go there as if nothing's going on and uh this dude follows me and he gets a fucking
trail on me and he's able to keep up with me like i i didn't even know this until i get arrested
for months and months and months he's keeping up with me like i said almost two years and then
finally one day again a house it's filled with money and it's filled with drugs i leave out i'm
about to go over to another place that we just got we barely got this place within a week
and i get pulled over by a plane closed officer so i'm like uh i tell the guy i'm like uh that
I'm on the phone when I'm like hey bro I'm getting pulled over by a plane clothes officer
this shit never works out good they got guns on their legs and it's another car in front of me now
that won't move so I can't drive off it's all bad so he spread the word that I was getting arrested
and it was just what I said they picked me up threw me in a car took the keys out of my pocket
and took me right back to the house that I had just left and now they go in there another 200k in
the closet not as much drugs though but I have a
Prior, prison prior from before.
And this is when they give me the big amount of time.
And that's when I was a house in your name.
House wasn't in my name, but having keys to that house gave me control over it.
And this investigator testified that he saw me entering that residence over and over doing drug dealer activity.
Right.
So I'm like, wow, this is, this is not good.
This is not good.
So we're fighting.
We're fighting again.
I'm in.
I can't bell out.
but they ended up um
when it happened
oh i had a co-defendant he was there
him and his girl was there
there was another guy his girlfriend was there
so they uh
get arrested too
and all they're trying to do is get them to say that
everything was mine but they wouldn't do it they wouldn't say
everything was mine we all were there
except it was a room that was locked up
and then one of my keys opened that room
and they found a majority of the shit in that room
so definitely i was like i was uh possession
what they say you had
access to it so you possessed it right so that time I got a lawyer but they weren't giving up
they was like now you going down they offered me 14 years they offered me 14 I ended up getting
that 12 with half times because it was no violence involved and then you can get additional good
time for good behavior like a fire camp community service and all of that stuff so they asked me
that I want to go home on bond I said no I want to get this time out the way I'm telling them
I rather sit here
So I end up sitting there
Off of that
I did about 40% of that sentence
Because I went to the fire camp
Go to fire camp
You know you have to go through San Quentin
Now San Quentin is only a reception center
You only go through there
You go through there
Before they find you your regular placement
And since I was considered a low level offender
Only a drug dealer
They allowed me to go to fire camp
Once I signed up a fire camp
It took another year for me to get there
I'll get into the firefighter program
I'm like oh wow
I'm gonna get a good gap of time off of this sentence
so I should be out
and this is 2005
this is no 2004
and I ended up getting out like around 08
I ended up getting around in the end of 08
going into 09 so so I did a substantial
amount of time on this I did some time
About four years?
Yeah I did a third of that
I did about a little over a third of it
So but that was a big sentence
And the reason why I'm saying
And it was a long sentence because I never got sentenced that long.
I was ready to start trial.
But this officer was going to come in there lying and telling them.
It was your drugs, though.
It was my drugs.
But the way that he got to me was he said he watched me go in and out of this house,
which he couldn't watch me going in out of his house because the way that the door is positioned.
But he just told I was a known drug dealer.
He had information to know that I was doing all of this stuff.
And he was going to testify that.
But, I mean, you were a known drug dealer.
I was a known drug dealer, but he used, he used some slick methods to get me.
I hate it when they're underhanded.
Well, he underhanded me, but I'm like, you know what?
I can't fight him.
I mean, what's the best deal possible?
I dreaded having to go do this time in prison.
At this time, I never did more than a year.
Never did more than a year.
But here it is.
It sounds fun.
It sounds, hey, it wasn't the worst.
It wasn't the worst.
But, I mean, it changed my perspective, man.
We're going to the woods.
We're fighting with.
We actually working with direct firefighters, man.
We're climbing mountains.
We're hiking.
Actually kind of like,
don't those guys get killed everyone's wild?
Everyone,
everyone,
people die up there on those mountains.
The fire burns over some of us.
We're inmates.
But the thing about the firefighters
who actually work for the Department of Forestry,
they don't treat you like an inmate.
If you're on the side of them fighting the fire,
your civil duty is to protect this dude's life.
That's how you made it there.
You said you would protect somebody's life
and they will protect yours.
So if you see something coming,
some flames,
animal a rock falling off of a hill you you should protect these people so but my perspective changed
after that though it was kind of almost like this shit ain't worth it for me man i'm doing pretty good
i'm having money everything is cool but this is right here the time when i knew i couldn't do it
because remember i said i was on my way to a brand new place that no one knew i had so since
nobody knew i had this place except for the person that helped me get this apartment what i was
able to do was uh hide a bunch of shit there so i called home from the county jail and i was like
hey um you know i didn't feed my animals man i got like three or four puppies that i had just got
and they're over here at this new place so the person on the other line they knew exactly what i meant
so once you go over there and pick them up and make sure they're all right so by the time he gets there
he's like oh they're gone already and i'm like what do you mean like somebody let them out
somebody let them out there's no it's no dogs there's no puppies it's nothing there and i'm like what
he's like yes nothing there the person that helped me get the apartment broke into the apartment
and took everything right this was about about another 200k close to 250k worth of product inside
of an apartment that nobody knew about so um so when you got out so you knew that before you went in
that what you knew all that stuff was missing before you went in no no no he took it the day i got arrested
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Before, so you got arrested, he took all the stuff, then you do your time, then you go to get out, and what happens then?
You get out, you thought she had this stuff.
No, I didn't think I had the stuff.
I knew he had got it.
I know.
I'm saying you thought, you knew that stuff was gone.
So you're getting out to nothing, and you know this guy ripped you off.
I know he ripped me off.
He did it maliciously.
He never had any intent to help me out.
He just used it for himself, but he never came up off of it.
And then he went and told everybody that I would come after him for, I was accusing him of doing it and I would come after him for that.
Did you accuse him of?
Well, I didn't even accuse him of it, but he figured I got word.
I never asked him about it.
I never even told anybody that I thought it was him.
He kind of put his foot in his mouth because within three to four months of me being arrested, he starts all of a sudden having shit.
He starts having more things than he should have had.
and he wasn't on a certain level that he should be having brand new cars going on trips and doing this type of stuff he was doing so he used the money that he didn't work for to do his own thing like which is what people do i'm not really mad at that but the fact that you didn't give the fuck about me man you just counted me out because you really thought that i would get the 15 20 years even though it still would have been with halftime you still thought i would get that 20 years after the newspaper and all of these articles said that i would get so you thought that you had a one up on me but when i came out i didn't even
even think about him. I didn't even show him any consideration. I didn't even pay attention to him.
You know, here's the thing. I mean, obviously that happens to everybody across the board. People just
immediately start cannibalizing you. But I mean, I knew a guy who lived in over a million-dollar house
was friends with his neighbors. They went to barbecues. They hung out. He got arrested. It was in
the newspaper. He wasn't getting bond. And then he ended up, and he
He didn't get Bond.
His brother went to his head.
He said, look, go to my house, lock it up, do this.
He goes to the house and literally his brother shows up and catches one of the next door neighbors stealing his, like, he had like a $10,000 grill in the backyard.
Whoa.
And so you're living like a multi-million dollar house.
Your neighbors live in a multi-million dollar house.
They're like, like, you know, they're successful business owners.
They know you're, they think, oh, he's not coming back.
He's not getting bond.
hey he's got a really nice grill let's go over there and steal it like what are you doing
what do you do he and i remember him telling me that being like what scumbags and i was just
like bro like that happens all the time to right people that are in the game you know what i'm saying
like guys all your buddies immediately go into your place and take your tv or this or that you're
like what the hell's going on yeah where's on but but but these people are worth millions
people are just scumbags in general what i've learned from just reading the comment section
is people are just scumbags.
They really are.
People are?
They are.
Listen, my wife and I were talking about that.
The things that people say in the comment section really let you know who they are.
And what I've decided is that the bulk of people are just scumbags.
They say scumbag things.
They have scumback opinions.
People are horrible.
It's a horrible species.
Well, I think that automatically are sometimes a lot of people's first thought is,
the negative like what can i do to uh to show this guy he's not this or he's not that some of their
opinions are jealousy because i ran into it and i couldn't even believe it i'm like bro i'm like
why would you play me bro i'm the i'm the person that you can trust enough i'm the person that will
help you make something of yourself if you really want to do it i'm not the person that wants to
hold everything for myself like i mean i know it's not nothing nothing to really uh glorify but
But anybody that worked with me made money.
It's no way you were working with me.
And then I'm the only one in a group making money.
No, what you need?
You want a car?
You're trying to buy a jury.
You want to help your parents out.
Okay, let's do it.
Do it like this.
Okay, I'm going to cut you in.
You don't even work for me.
You actually are a partner.
Whenever you tell somebody they work for you in that industry, that breeds jealousy right there.
So I knew better.
I don't have no workers, man.
We just a crew.
We're a team.
We all work on the same team.
So let's get this money, man.
Oh, no, that's yours.
That's not mine.
That's yours.
you have a vested interest in that like i'm not getting nothing off of your stuff man i already got
mine anyway so you're right so what i do is um i just don't listen to people who i don't want to be like
i stop doing that because a lot of people they judge me for being a person who i am but then when i
say something to them it's kind of like they're better well okay all you did is listen to other people
your whole life you worked for other people your whole life and you still live in payday to payday
bar on money taking cash advances from your check but then you want me to listen to you only because i've
been to prison. So if I'm a horrible person for going to prison, you're a horrible person for
never taking risk, never believing in yourself. You've been out this whole time. Yeah, you've been
out this whole time and this is all you've accomplished is needing to borrow $100 and you're 35 years
old. Right. You should be feeling very bad about yourself because you're going to blame me and
fault me. I mean, I paid my debt to society, right? Why did they create the prison system? Because
if you get caught up, you have to pay your debt to society. What the Congress and the government
decided was acceptable, right? Well, they're like, okay.
Okay. If you do this, you get a year, but if you do this, you get 10 years. I fell into that. Going against the state was one thing, but I never felt a certain way until I went against the government. I knew my ass was out when I went against the government. The state prison, I was always almost ready to buy myself out of it. You get what I'm saying? Like, if you have a few dollars in the state, man, a good lawyer that knows a U.S. attorney, I mean, that knows a judge and a district attorney, they can get you out of these things, man. I probably should have had no lie, man. I should. I should.
should have had about 25 years for all of those infractions in the state now mind you i didn't kill
anybody so i would have only got about half of that because it was only drug offenses let me's like
look for instance one time we had a stash house it's like in a good neighborhood in Oakland that i
knew i shouldn't have been in i knew fucking well that all of these people in this neighborhood do
not like my kind of people so people act like racism doesn't it doesn't exist will change the word
because it exists so i'm in this neighborhood and i'm kind of in and out i don't work i got a
a brand new car I look good and I wear a nice jury so one night I'm leaving one of the neighbors
reported me that it was illicit activity going on out of my unit he reported me so a cop came
around there looking at me watching me he came around there he looking he watched me he followed me
and he got off of me but he had my license plate number and he kind of said okay he comes here
once or twice a day but he I really don't see nothing one night I'm leaving there and um I get in the car
I'm getting on the freeway.
I got like about a unit with me.
One unit and I got about like 14,000, about 14,000 bucks, two cell phones.
I'm leaving this, I'm leaving this apartment.
Like I said, it's a good neighborhood.
I get on the freeway.
It's an all black vice car behind me.
So again, I get on the phone and I call the guy that I'm going to meet.
I call the guy that I'm going to meet and I'm like, bro, what are you?
He's something at the same place we always meet at.
So he's not saying the exact location, neither am I.
I said, bro, it's a vice car following me, man.
I got off the freeway and I got right back on it.
He did the same thing.
He like, you sure?
I said, bro, this is a vice car.
The front windshield is tinted.
It's all black.
Now, it's about 8 o'clock at night.
So he's like, all right, well, just get to the safety zone.
That means our neighborhood.
Get to the safety zone.
No matter what, get to the safety zone.
And I got you.
So I said, let me do this again.
I'm going to get off on our exit and then I'm going to see what he does.
I get off on this exit and he flips the light.
I hit the gas.
I'm in the Chevy Trailblazer, the SS versions of it.
It's a fast SUV.
I hit the gas.
We're going.
He's behind me.
He calling for backup.
I'm doing about 70 miles an hour through residential neighborhoods.
We're high speed chasing.
He owned me.
I'm like, I knew he was on me.
I'm going down for this.
It's all bad.
I get a one block jump on him, and I hit the corner doing about 50, and I crash.
Hit my head on the steering wheel, all of that.
I'm kind of dazed.
But mind you, I got a block on him.
I snap out of it, jump out the car, and I start running.
I'm unable to grab anything out of the damn car.
Because I just need to get away.
So I run.
He's chasing me down the street.
He's on me.
He's chasing me on foot.
I'm talking about he's pretty quick, but he got all of this weight on him.
And I don't, but I'm kind of dizzy.
I jump into a yard.
It's a dog back there.
Jump right out of that yard to the next yard, the next yard.
And I run across the freeway.
That's the only reason why I get away.
I run across the whole entire freeway, barely escape death and get to our safety zone.
The guy who I was just on the phone with, circling the block.
And I see him driving slow and I'm able to die.
in the back of his car he picks me up and we drive out the area this motherfucker said where's the
shit at i said fool i left it what do you mean where's the shit i barely got away i'm sweating
i'm pant i mean my face is white like i saw a ghost everything goes down i had the person who the
car registered in go find the car go find out what's going on see what's going on get a police report
nothing reported found in the car hmm two ounces a dope you got lost two ounces of dope
no money in two cell phones is all that's on the police report maybe did you have the window
open maybe maybe the window was open come to find out it's one of those rogue you're very negative
it's one of those rogue cops now i'm not going to sit here and listen to you come to find out
come to find out when the feds get me the same cop showed up eight years later eight years later
he showed he said i bet you won't be running across any freeways today i guarantee you you won't they
finally so this motherfucker let me know
that he was the officer, which we thought he was, that got my car, that nothing was in.
They really couldn't charge me because I didn't get caught at the scene.
So I got away from that, but by the hair of my chin, but here it is, like, that's a mistake
that I overlooked, just trying to be better, but going somewhere that I absolutely was not
welcoming.
They was not welcoming in.
No person would know.
These people here work, and you don't work.
You're home all day.
And they look like you're in and out.
It looks like you're doing some trafficking, buddy.
and they called the cops
and they really
literally start watching me,
literally.
And, you know,
it was a big deal to me
because it was a loss
but not a significant enough loss
to put a den in my program.
You know what I mean?
So what happened when you got out of prison
with the guy that ripped you off?
What happened then?
Did you track him down?
I didn't want to track him down.
You know what?
After doing that much time in prison?
I know you didn't track him.
I know.
The thing about that is
I looked at him
and where he was in life
and I looked at me, come to find out those guys.
So while I was in prison in a state prison, this happened to me then, and it happened
to me when I was in federal prison, I get a random letter with an address on there of one of
those old houses that we used back in, like, 0304, that they had been moved out of.
And I remembered the address.
So I get a letter with a random name on it, and it just says, we really appreciate you.
We love you.
Your family is fine.
Everybody's doing well.
we don't work at the factory anymore but just let us know when you get out that's it that was a letter
from my connect that had since stop messing around with that shit because shit was getting too hot
shit was getting too close for comfort and he definitely knew that i stayed solid because they could
have came after him on that time when they asked me hey let us go after him we know you don't have
all of this stuff on your own you have a connection we'll take them down but it's a state level
so it's not so intense they just asked me to cooperate what do you want to do you want to get out
this trouble help us out we need bigger bus well they didn't even offer to let me out of jail
they just like help us out give us bigger bus we'll take them instead of you absolutely not man
I don't know that but the guys that I dealt with knew that and they knew nothing came their way
nobody came to their door but once I got out I was done with that shit I said I'm done with that
shit I don't want to get involved anymore I didn't go after my cousin he ended up moving out of
state we fell out completely we still haven't spoke we probably won't ever speak you betrayed me you didn't
care about me my family my children so therefore we have nothing to say to each other but i decided
while i was in fire camp from talking to miscellaneous people when you make it to that low level
you end up being in there with some people that know a bunch of stuff you don't know and that's how i met
this guy and i met a lot of people but one guy in particular named evan he was like um
walking laps with me we talked a lot you know telling stories and stuff like that i knew we had money
but he didn't brag about having money.
You can just tell he never missed commissary,
but he used to like to smoke that bugler.
And at this time, that bugler,
which is those cigarettes that you roll up yourself,
people that smoke that kind of have bad nerves
because you're sneaking around to smoke cigarettes in jail
and these cigarettes or illegal.
They're illegal.
Contraband.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Contraband.
So if you get caught with it, you'll lose good time.
But I don't smoke.
I have never smoked.
The most I smoke with some weed.
But he asked me when I was getting out,
He asked me, would I be able to meet up with his sister and give her a few cans of bugler?
And we talked about linking up when he'd get out, but I didn't realize he was getting deported.
So once he got out, he was going to get deported.
I don't think he knew either because had he known they wouldn't took him to a fire camp because he could have did a walk away.
Right.
So what I did was, he was like, you sure are you going to do it, man?
I don't think you're going to do it because I asked four or five guys that go home to just.
And the buglers was $17 a can.
It's $17 a can in 2000.
nine right 2009 about 17 no 2008 what yeah 808 or nine so i was like i'll do it i'll give him um
i'll give him um the bugle he's like no you're not you're not going to do you're not going to do it
so i got out first week i was out i had his sister i was like hello hey you going to see him okay
well he wants some bugler she's like i know i don't know why he likes that stuff i was like i can
meet you or your other sister and i'll give it to so i gave him that a couple lighters and all
this stuff so i did it i actually delivered from there he said thank you so much you kept your word
now call these people and they got you back and like well what do you mean by that like i said
while we were in prison we were fighting fires together we were eating together sometimes i mean um
kind of like learning each other's lifestyles he was a different nationality from a whole other
country so therefore um you know uh i didn't know if he was serious or not but when he gave me
to contact information to the people who gave it to me for it was amazing because all they had was
money plays up that didn't consist of anything drug related like i said first things they said
they was like we have uh we have some loads for you and i'm like some loads and he's like yeah
this one's first one's going to be in between three and five thousand but you could double or triple
that i'm like well what's in it he's like uh we don't know we don't know but evan says you cool
he says you're one of his guys and we can work with you so the first time i did it mind you i got
out i tried to get a job i tried to take a trade i tried to do something other than what i have been
doing all my life, which was dealing drugs.
I've been dealing drugs since I was at this point, 11 years old, and I decided that I
didn't want to do that no more.
And if this was another way to make some money that nobody was getting hurt and I didn't
have to deal directly, I was ready to do it.
So I got the first one.
I was like, okay, cool, cool, what's in it?
I found out, and I looked at the retail price of everything.
And then I knew some store owners and business owners that wouldn't mind buying it for a cool
little upsell.
So I was like, damn, that was easy.
What was in it?
So this one was just only computers.
the first time it was only laptops a bunch of laptops and that was it so how are they getting
the laptops do you know well i didn't ask at the time at the time i didn't ask but you gotta know
i kind of know and that's what i was gonna say on the next one when they're asking for more
money for another box it was like we got another box and it's really just a crate it's just a big
old crate with a bunch of shit in there so they have to have somewhere to deliver it to so
come to find out they were doing the um the dumps and the fools they order stuff and they get this
stuff delivered but they got a bunch of people sitting on the computer all day long just
ordering stuff and then back then it was so easy to order stuff on the internet with other
people's information so that this is fake credit card information credit cards uh uh uh you can give
check by phone they had it figured out at some point he asked me did i want to get into that part
of it and i can have my own stuff and i didn't have to pay them for what they got because you got
think they spent a thousand to two thousand on information and they can get 20 or 30 000 worth of
stuff. I don't have to go in a store. I don't have to send anybody. I don't have to see anybody but them.
So if they only spent $2,000 or $1,000 on the dark web for this information, they got
somebody like me to come give them 12 to 15, but I can still go make the rest of the difference.
Then here it is, I'm winning. So I took advantage of that. I did that for a year.
How do you make the rest of the dam? I mean, the rest of the difference. Are you, you're selling it directly to hotelers?
or I'm sorry, to retailers, or are you selling it to, like, on eBay or something?
No, I sell it to people who did import, export.
I sold it to people who had flea market and small shops.
I sold it to people who had just someone else that'll pay them more for.
Like, this is a quick little story.
One time I had 300 iPhones at one time, 300, it was iPhone 4s, or 3s or 4s, whatever it was, 300 of them.
But this was back when they were available.
They were available, yeah, they were like 600 each, 500 each, which was a lot of money.
It was a lot of money.
I paid $2.20 or $180 to $2.20 per.
And then I was able to go sell them for $5.30 to $5.50 per because the, so I asked the guy,
why would you pay me this amount and they're only going for $6.5,700?
He said, well, my people aren't like your people.
We're in value.
If I make $30 per, you're not, if I make $30 per phone times $100, I make good money today.
And I got $300 and you're not my only person.
So I make way more money than you because I know all you guys.
Right.
So he messed me up with that.
Like I know all.
He just put me in the you guys category and let me know he was much bigger of a boss than me.
He said, so me with 30 bucks per unit is way better than what you're trying to do because you're taking more risk.
Because I guess he thought I was going in the stores and getting this stuff myself and actually doing the footwork, which I wasn't.
So he said, I sell in volume, which made a lot of sense.
50 bucks per times 300.
You get another 100 from somewhere else.
and you're importing them or whatever it is that you're doing with him.
He was making good money.
He was right.
So the guy offered me, no, no, it was his time to start getting out of prison.
He didn't know he was getting deported, but instead of him going home, they took him straight to
INS and he ended up getting shift out the country.
I thought we were going to link up and become partners because I spoke to him the whole
time, but he never made it back to the United States.
So he ran a business internationally, and then for a minute he started having me send him
Western Union, right?
but I sent so much money yet Western Union it was only so many times that I could switch names and use these other people's identity and pay people to go to Western Union to try to send a big bulk of money so that's when I found out about the digital currency which was Liberty Reserve at the time and then the other one called perfect money where you can just buy into it at you use exchangers and you give them the cash and then they upload your digital account and at the at the time like I said was a small percentage of a broker's fee and
and I was able to pay him, pay them, because he never said it was him.
I paid them, which I'm sure it probably was him.
Right.
And he, from there, I mean, shit, it just went up, man.
It just went up, man, because I was able to still run up another high six figures off just doing this.
And that's when he offered me, do I want to get in the game with the dumps and the fools and the, you know, dealing with people's personal information, which I said no.
he had a bunch of profile information information that he knew that if i got a hold to it i could
probably resell it and make extra money because again he trusted me enough to talk to me himself
as many as people as he sent to meet me to pick up money drop off money mind you we're trading
um digital currency they didn't call it cryptocurrency yet because i hadn't even bought my first bitcoin
yet so what i did was um made sure he got his money always made my money and i said well you know what
I will try to be a broker of information.
I'm like, it's worth a tribe.
Well, if I make extra money.
So from there, I was able to get the information.
It would be on a hard drive or he would send it to me through an encrypted email file,
like a drop file, and I would get it.
And I'm like, damn, this just looks like a bunch of numbers.
To me, I mean, it just doesn't really look like much.
But after I told three people, I realized that people paid up to $150 for one person.
information, but they could turn around and make $1,000 off of it.
So I start scratching my head thinking like, so these crates and these containers
and have containers that I'm buying sometime for up to $40,000, like a $40,000 one
would make me back close to $100.
And I didn't have to do anything but get it, tell three people about it, see which one
wanted that container or crate, like a big old crate, a cargo crate, and then I just hand it
to them, always get my cash, and then I start taking digital currency too.
A couple things happened after that. Liberty Reserved. Liberty Reserves got seized by the feds.
They had a message on their site one day that if you have any money with this company,
traded, bought, or bartered any business with these people, contact the U.S. Department of Justice right now.
Needless to say, I left about like $21,000 in there. I didn't contact them.
The owner that ended up getting like 40 years.
They said you were running an international money laundering scheme.
and they like a lot of people I know lost money but we just didn't want to chase it because we
have made so much money in there and a lot of people will know about it but then some won't the
early early adapters would know about it and then from there you had to use perfect money and I'm
only saying it's to say that this is how I exchanged money because Western Union wasn't feasible
and it's not it's an all cash business if they're close to you but now I'm dealing with people
on an international level so with that being said I um start using this one called perfect money
So with perfect money, with them, you can almost be an investor in there.
So if you got 5, 10K, with 10K, 8,500, you'll make 3 to 400 a day.
Because it's people in third world countries that take a $4.50 loan and pay you back $4.50.
A $40 loan to pay you back $4.50 pretty much off of $40.
And it don't seem like a lot, but they're leveraging all of your money that you have in there.
And then you'll get your deposits and you can withdraw your deposits whenever you want to.
So I didn't believe it was possible.
And then one day I woke up and they said, you live in the United States, you can no longer use this website.
Whatever money you have here is here, you can't deposit or take more money out of it.
And I'm scratching my head like an idiot until I realize all I need is a VPN and some socks to change my location to Spain.
And I took my money out of that real quick before I losing it all.
I might have left a thousand bucks in there at this time.
But from that alone, I was making 400, 4 to 500 bucks a day, just from digital.
currency then bitcoin came around changed my life like uh i was able to accumulate bitcoins
when i again they were like eighty seven dollars to about 115 but a lot of people well the
three people who i dealt with were dealing with bitcoin instead of cash you can transfer it anywhere
it's untraceable the silk roll used it in every fraud forum used bitcoin now at this point
mind you this is 2009 2009 10 no 10 11 this 2010 and 11 so it wasn't a big deal to me because
I'm like why does the price fluctuate of this thing so much man the other ones were more stable
and he's like don't worry about that because whatever it's at at the moment is what it goes for
nobody's judging you off of if it drops or if it raises just um you know let's just do it like
this because we can remain anonymous and nobody's going to find us out so I did
that I'm broken information but I'm taking cash for these people's information that I'm
trading I'm actually trading it and sometime I still would get a whole crate of shit
because it's just too good to be true $24,000 crate I turn around and sell it for 37 and
then a person who gets it can still make their money off of it if I didn't give it to my one
particular Asian guy which sold in volume he told me for sure but another guy he told me
that he would break it down and sell it and he can make almost double his money so i knew it was a
deal i knew i was in on the right lane and i thought i wasn't taking a lot of risk because i'm not
dealing drugs i'm like um i'm tired of that drug shit i don't want to go back into it it's not for me
i took a substantial amount of money out of that where i came back and i wasn't struggling
i'm able to help my family i mean again a lot of people think all i have to do is one scam
and i'm gonna get rich but that's a lie you will not get rich off of one scam what it does is it
draws you into it and you become a fraudster so don't think like um i can do that too like um even
what you did is it's it's about like 17 more people in the united states that can do that on the
level that you did i don't believe that a person who had a mental capacity to even be disciplined
enough to go through all of the chains and the links that you went to to make your situation what
it was because it was millions and millions of dollars created when one person might lie on the
application just to get $4,000.
You lied on the application trying to get a micro loan that the bank still caught
on to because you're just not putting enough energy into what you want to do.
So I put the energy into some shit to get the best return.
That's what I'm pretty much just trying to say.
So I realized putting energy into drug shit and illicit activity,
it just always still only ends like with partial satisfaction, like only some fulfillment.
So here we are
We trade in Bitcoin
I'm exchanging it with him for
Any type of
Uh
merchandise or information
Sometimes he's like
Hey can you fly in New York
And I was like I don't really want to fly in New York
Man he's like somebody needs $25,000 in New York
I swear I'll make it worth it
I'm like I don't want to fly across the country
We know 25,000
You tell them to come to me
And then we end up resolving it
And they'll end up probably coming to meet me
Or we could just like
And that would be
for them to convert it into Bitcoin without having to go through all these other channels of
exchangers that require all your personal information because when the government, when people
got hip to it, they start wanting to know if you had an ID to upload and stuff like that.
So now I'm hustling.
I'm doing that.
And it's actually going good.
I made good money from that.
I was able to save money, you know, get a house, get everything that I needed, but still
not happy about it.
Wanted more, want it more, want it more, one and more.
So I put my own crew together, my own crew together.
And instead of selling the information, I told them, you guys take this information, do what you got to do with it.
But I want 50% of everything you get, which was still a lot more than the information was worth.
So we did this for about a year, but I didn't really have to go chasing the money myself.
I didn't have to because about four people would do it for me.
well with me they didn't do it for me they did it with me because if we ever had ran into a situation
well we're equal partners you don't work for me i'm not your boss you don't have to report to me
even if you decide to quit today you can walk away and i will not even be mad at you for one minute
so um it was going cool but i still realized i had to do something else like this wasn't going to be
enough so we start doing concert promoting promoting parties doing stuff like that that was kind
of a cash business was doing uh getting little venues and stuff
linked up with a promoter that was experienced and he had resources to a lot of big artists and
well mid-level artists because i didn't want to go too big we wanted to see how the events went first
and we did that made a little bit of money and i was able to maintain a bank account maintain
you know some legitimate money coming in but it was never enough to just move the needle so i did
always like my gray area red area stuff i always liked that until this one guy came into my life
He came back into my life, like I said, I knew him for a long time, and he just kept asking me for work.
He's asking me for work.
He's like, yo, I need some work.
I was like, no, we're not on that right now.
You don't have to worry about that.
And he just asked me over and over to a point where I was even getting irritated, like, bro, we're making good money doing this.
We don't need that no more.
So he's asking me about some product, and he's telling me he had some guys from another state that's willing to even pay more for it and how much we can make on it.
But I just didn't want to get involved with it because I'm like, man, this is the type of stuff that brings people down, man.
And whenever I was doing that shit, I always was having mishaps and missteps.
This right here is indirect.
And why aren't you?
Is this like, is this Coke or crack?
No, this is just Coke.
The crack to me, we were past that.
It was just like, get him some good powder coke, let them get it.
And then we move him right on and we still focused on this.
So I don't want to do it.
I'm steadily telling him, no, I'm not getting involved.
but he's not taking no for an answer.
And so I started testing him.
Well, how much did you make last week?
He said I made about 10 or 12 grand.
And I'm like, but you still want to do a play for some dudes from me.
He's like, well, yeah, but it be with my cousin.
And I know them and it can lead to something else.
But I just was not showing any interest in it.
And then finally one day he asked me about 2011.
2011, he was like, hey, man, look, man.
They're coming out here, man.
My guy is here, bro.
He'll fly dude.
Man, he cool.
I know him good.
D.A.
I was like, well, I'm not doing it.
I don't want nothing else to do with it, but I'll make a call.
Making the call was the worst thing I ever did, man.
That right there put me right in the middle of a federal indictment, and I didn't even know.
So I'm running around, I'm partying, I'm traveling, mind you, I'm having a good month, a good year.
My last few years, I became a millionaire again.
So I became a millionaire for the first time in my life at about 21, 21, 22, I was having almost 1.5 million, including money that I used to cop with.
lost 70% of that over the time.
I lost about 70% of that before I turned 30.
So when I came out of state prison right around 30,
I started something completely different
and was able to do the same thing again,
starting from where I was at,
all of the losses, all the mishaps,
all of the thieves, all of the vultures.
I was able to run it up again,
making 30, 50, 70K in a month.
So a lot of people think you're going to become a millionaire
there by making 500,000 in one year, 300, that's not how it really goes.
You first have to start making 20K a month, 50K a month, 70K a month, and then you can accumulate
it like that if you're disciplined because you've got to think.
And I'm sure you know this too.
You can give a full any amount of money they think they're supposed to have, they'll blow it all.
And when Jim Rohn said, you can put the money in the hands of everybody who thinks
they're supposed to have it and they'll give it right back to the people who are really
supposed to have it. Yeah, if you took the 95% of the wealth that is accumulated in the upper
5% of society and you redistributed it equally within three years, the 5% of the society
will have all that, 95% of that money again. Yes, and it's a true story. How I know that's true
because all of the hustlers that I knew if they were selling crack on the corner or if they
make it up to selling weight, 95% of them only do it for survival or
or image because I go check them how much money you hold man I need 50 I need 70 I have a big play
up for 70 and they can't come up with 70 grand wait a minute you mean you hustle every day
and you can't come up with 70 grand I'm gonna put in 130 you put in 70 we're gonna make
354 but I'll split it with you evenly and then they won't have it the same thing with the
scamming and the fraud most fraudsters are only doing it until they get the next play
they're doing it like um all that they're getting to pay their rent and then they're
they goof off for two weeks and then they skip then they suddenly um freak out and and and and they're
they're scattering around trying to get together their rent again yep that's exactly how it goes
exactly so they're doing it for survival and then the ppp the edd all of that government surplus
money showed you that that all of these people that got an extra 50 70 hundred k they wasn't
supposed to have it they're back borrowing payday loans they're back trying to find a job at walmore
or do whatever they can to make some extra money so what happened was um
I decided to give him a phone number for someone who can get him that cocaine.
This is not my original plug because my original plug got out of the game.
Mind you, when I got out of prison from the state, he made sure I was straight.
He bought me a car and he gave me a small bag of money.
It wasn't nothing serious, close to like 15K, but in a car.
I think it was a 2008 GTO, 6.0 leader, about a year old, year and a half old.
He gave that to me, didn't say nothing about it.
actually asked somebody bring it to me I was really happy about that and it was just like thank you
for not giving me up like thank you oh my god like because I mean I'm sure he probably thought
I would want to get out of a 20 year sentence but I didn't get the 20 years but he heard about it
and he kept up with it that I'm facing 20 years most people roll over so I gave him the number
for the cocaine deal didn't hear nothing else about it he did it he took it to his guy
it's over with we back to the fraud we really like um hey
I got somebody need 100.
I got somebody that need 200.
Like, I'm talking about, like, profiles or whatever their information is required to do.
Like, people would go apply for instant credits.
They would go download and do, take a card in there that only punches into the system.
It was so a multitude of things you can do with this information.
But I'm getting the information from somebody in another country.
I don't mind selling it for a handsome profit.
I mean, whatever.
Five or six months later, here he comes again, asking me again this time.
like no so it's non-negotiable this time i'm like nah man i'm just not doing it i'm not focused on
i'm not taking out of my time to make three thousand dollars to hook this guy up tell him to go
somewhere else bro you know a lot of other people unbeknownst to me he's already working for the
federal government he's on their team for sure i didn't even know this it's no way i could have
known this but he got in trouble and he took the deal that let him right back out but they
wanted something a lot more serious than whatever he was able to provide them which was me so he we
having these conversations and he's coming up he's like bro how much does that Bentley cost how much
you pay for that Bentley man you uh you bought this Bentley it's a 2000 that's a late model man
you got that when it was less than a year old and I'm like well come on bro you already know
the story about that I didn't buy that shit I told him you know um I told him the story thinking
is just me and him. I said, Jay
lost some money on the road
and he needed the money. He needed
80K. I gave him 80K and I paid
off the balance basically so he
can get back in the game. You knew that
already. Why are you asking me this again?
He's like, no, no
man, because I'm just saying, bro, you're the only one with
this car, man, the only other person with this car
in our city. He's a rapper and you
living like him, bro. You must be making a lot
more money now. You sure you ain't doing that
selling that coke on the side because the shit we're doing
Just boosting you up, making you look bigger and bigger.
And you know what male ego would do.
And making you look like, definitely letting these guys know this guy's in the game.
He knows other people.
He fronts people money.
So I'm like, yeah, you know what I did for that car.
And that's how I got it.
But who cares about that?
You got a new Mercedes Benz.
He's like, yeah, but it ain't like yours.
And you got your girl arranged, bro.
Bro, you rolling, man.
How much money you've been holding?
I'm like, come on, man.
You tripping, man.
We ain't on that.
Well, anyway, let's focus on what we doing right here.
So he wants more coke, though.
He's like, hey, can you get anything heavy?
And I'm like, no.
So about another three months later, here he comes again.
My boy is coming out here and they want five birds.
And I'm like, five.
He's like, yeah, they want five.
And they got the money.
They bring the cash.
I'm on wiretap caught saying, well, if they have the cash,
they're going to have to bring you the cash first.
Me and you are going to count it.
I'm going to take it to the connect.
He's going to count it.
And then somebody else has doubled back down a few hours later.
and drop the shit somewhere else and then we walk away i don't want to be in the same place with the dope
and i'm not getting involved with this he said but we can make it happen right and i said yes on a
fucking wiretap it was over for me right then and there everything's going cool everything going
smooth i'm thinking my life is on top of the world i got access to money i'm traveling i mean back
and forth to miami man we just my my life is amazing as far as i'm concerned i'm like wow man i'm
me being a millionaire is not that bad but I still want more like it's no number in my mind
I always thought having a million dollars would make me quit the game it never would when I was
16 years old my whole goal was to get a kilo when I was 18 years old all I wanted was a hundred
thousand in cash neither one of those things once I accomplished them were a thing to make me fall back
it only made me go harder so I know a lot of people that don't have money they'll tell
themselves like all i have to do is get my first 30k and it's going to change my life forever
no it won't all you're going to do is find something to spend it on what's going to make you
go harder and it'll lock you into whatever it is you're doing whether you're working whether
you're hustling whether you scam whatever it is it's only going to put you in a position to
have to keep going because it's not the end-all be-all right so here these guys come
allegedly he's calling me trying to line up this deal and i'm i'm leery because at the time some
light bulb went off in my head because my girl at the time said that um baby you know what man
i didn't like how your friend popped up at the restaurant we were eating at that night coincidentally
and you didn't even tell him we was coming there he popped up there and it just didn't feel right
i don't know i mean sometimes i feel like he competes with you and i feel like he's a little jealous
of you i told her shut the fuck up don't question my friends where were you at when i was in prison
I met you when I got out
and I don't want to hear your mouth
Almost brought her to tears
But she was right
This motherfucker was a paid informant
Not just an informant
A paid informant
Even worse to me
You getting money from the government
You asshole
My lawyer showed me in the paperwork
This motherfucker
She's like a police officer
This motherfucker told the DEA ages
I'm tired of chasing this dude around
Calling him over and over
He seems like he don't want to do it
Give me more money for a rental
And I need an extra thousand dollars
DEA agent says no
You're not getting that
We'll give you four or five hundred and we'll pay for your rental car
Throughout the whole investigation
I almost cried bro because this dude making a deal with the government
To line me up man
I fed you off my plate
When you got out of federal prison motherfucker
I fed you I made sure you had money
You asked me what I was having going on
I put you into my mix
I came at you with whatever you wanted
You didn't need no clothes when you came out
He's like I heard you been out here
winning yeah now you win in too that was my attitude if i'm winning you're winning we know where
each other live man i know your whole family i know your grandmother man we're all winning together
not just me you know how i do it it's not me it's us so uh dee he's working for the dea and um man
i'm about to do the deal but my way bring the money first i'm over at a bar with nice bar
i think it was a new bar grand open a lot of women there we're having a good time and i get the call
was a person who I trust dearly and he was telling me hey that deal that you're going
tomorrow he says uh that deal that you're going to do tomorrow don't do it you're already
indicted they have enough information already that they're going to arrest you but that deal
tomorrow will be the will be the uh one that sinks the ship i said what deal he said you know
what the fuck I'm talking about don't do it it's all bad the cake is already baked man and
you're done and he hung up
I walked back in the bar.
I think I took down my shot that I was drinking,
but my skin was noticeably flush.
People were asking me what's going on.
I was kind of lightheaded,
kind of flaming and burning sensation through my body.
I said, I've got to get out of here.
And he's like, why, why is I got to get out of here?
I just got some bad news.
Did you think, was it so, was the call so vague
that you thought maybe the guy's full of shit?
Or did you 100% know?
This guy knows something's happening.
He's absolutely on point.
I know that he knows.
I know.
Or were you like...
No, I knew that he knew because the person who said this to me was a person that told me when I got out of state prison,
stop selling drugs, bro.
You're smarter and you're better than that.
This is not a lane for you to be in.
So I never told them that I was even back dibbling, dabbling.
Mind you, this is the only deal I made.
No one else.
People stop asking.
So I was in East Oakland, in the ghetto, in the hood.
known as a coke dealer right you ask anybody about me that knows me they'd be like oh that do
sell all kind of coke that dude he's one of them ones i backed all the way away from it completely
so it's no deals being done so for somebody anybody to call me and ask me about a coke deal that's
about to go down told me right there i only talk to this motherfucker about that deal because i don't
want nobody to know about it man because if i do that more people will start asking me and it
will draw me back in and now that's a full-time job the phone does stop
bring that that drug if you get in certain circles you got people that want to buy a half a kilo
for a party they want to buy they they they really got money man and these people won't meet you
but they'll send somebody in like who are these people that want to pay 7500 because they're
having a party all weekend and they want all of their guests to be happy but you got people
like that that won't stop coming and here it is they why do um what was the joke i heard on
Halloween he says uh why do black people always go to white neighborhoods to trick or treat
because they had a best no the same reason why white people go to black neighborhoods to buy their drugs because they have the best stuff so these people will come and get the cocaine from us knowing that they can take it back and be stars with the people whoever they like um go back to like celebrity suppliers are wealthy they're not just rich if you supply celebrities you're probably wealthy because they don't they it's a minimum they have to spend right so i just didn't want to go back into that i said no and no meant no so this
call was was telling because nobody else knew this so once i left there i was like let me get
rid of the phone let me not do it but i'm like well if he say it's already bad let me just see
what this dude says when he calls tomorrow so he called and he was like yeah um i'm ready let's put
it together man my people are here we're all waiting for you i was like all right cool i just
do the phone out after that i never showed up never answered for him that was the last time i talked to
them. I knew it was true. I had
I had some people in position. I said,
go by the house. Go by the house on
Mountain Boulevard. Go by the house
in Hayward. Just drive by. Just drive by and see what
you see. They drove by the two little spots that I
used. And he said, yeah, surveillance
team's there. It's true. The surveillance team's there.
Just don't go back. So at this time,
knowing people involved in fraud,
I was able to get multiple fake identities.
I jumped on a plane under an assumed identity that I had been holding on to in case of an
emergency.
And I went to Miami.
I got a hotel room.
I stayed there for about two weeks.
I stayed there for two weeks.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
They already got me.
The dude already told me.
They already got me.
Once I met up with him and he told me where the information came from and how he got it.
And this girl, she wanted to be compensated for this information.
I was already, it was a done deal.
I mean, they pretty much saved me because that deal for 5,000 grams would get me 180 months to 240, 180 to 240.
That is no way around it.
The guidelines, the point system, it's just no way.
If you do over a certain amount of grams of that product, that cocaine, they don't even want to hear it, man.
You're a high-level dealer.
So the fact that I didn't do it, it helped me out.
it might have saved the day for me but I was already indicted it was true but they didn't come
for me right away so I come back home and I start back living a normal life just had my girlfriend
move I moved somebody else moved all my stuff out of that place and I just roamed around freely
and stayed away from police contact for almost two years a year and a half about a year and a half
without coming in contact with them at all but I still had to make money try to get all my
fares organized but in the meantime that's expensive take care of the family
Can't move completely freely, but I'm able to move enough where people know that he's not doing bad, but I don't know if he's going to the magnitude that he was going at before.
And this is around the same time where my entire neighborhood, where I came from, where I used to deal drugs in, everybody in that neighborhood got indicted at the same time, like 31 people.
And they have my name all throughout the indictment as being a part of them, but never any deal.
Mind you, I backed away from the drugs, but they had me on a couple wiretaps telling people
that I can get them information, uh, that they can go, uh, that they can go hit with.
Like I had the best list, the best bin list.
I had the best, um, personal information like starting at $2,000 start the order started to,
they had me on a wiretaps saying that, but the government didn't care.
They knew they had me on a separate indictment already and, and that they would get me
eventually.
Right.
So I didn't get caught up in a big indictment that.
all of my friends got caught up on because I wasn't hustling and their drug their drug case is a
slam dunk and they their drug case yeah they got me on a slam dunk but that case was a gang slash drug
case that I was affiliated with those guys but I didn't participate directly with any of those guys
with these crimes that they were committing right they were still outside hustling dealing these
drug I didn't participate in none of that so to see my name in that I'm like well maybe I'm in a
clear I started having a little more optimistic outlook but it was
was just a matter of time before they would run up on me and you know and actually take me down so here
it is um i'm driving around this this lady that i know man she was helping me out a lot she was going
in stores and she was like making accounts opening instant accounts she was doing a bunch of stuff
where we kind of like we we did cool i mean three to five k a week but she goes to jail uh
inside bloomingdale's for having um fraudulent id and fraudulent um um um profile she had to
whole profile in her purse she goes to jail so she's in jail call me from jail and I'm like
I'm like okay I'll go I'll be there don't worry about I bail you out in the morning don't worry
I leave my house condo at the time like a townhouse condo in a good area a new townhouse that
I felt like they never knew I had and never knew how to find me there how they found me is the
lady that I was dating they had surveillance on her too so her moving never changed anything
They just found out where she lived and knew that I would come.
It wouldn't take long for me to come there.
So at four in the morning, he said he slept there all night.
And I got up that morning at like 7.30 to go to the bail bonds place.
And this plane car followed me the whole time.
He's behind me again.
I'm like, this car must be following me.
So I'm going to get off the freeway.
I got off the freeway.
I got gas.
The car was gone.
So I'm like, okay, I'm in the clear.
I thought I was tripping.
Maybe he wasn't following me.
Get on the freeway.
Hold another car is behind me.
But I don't trip on there.
I'm like, uh, I don't.
I don't know, maybe they're doing something else.
I ain't doing shit anyway.
I'm not hustling.
What the fuck do they want with me?
I pull up in the front of the bail bonds place
and an Oakland police officer pulls me over.
Mind you, I know this cop.
I jump out the car.
And I'm like, how the fuck you won't?
Man, what are you pulling me over for?
I got to go in here and bail somebody out, man.
He's like, get back in the car, man.
It's not good this time.
It's not good.
I get back in the car.
The SUV and the same car come block me in.
It's the U.S. Marshal.
They're like, hey, what's up?
Mr. Brown?
We got you, huh?
I said, no, you got the wrong person.
Don't talk to me like that.
You don't know me.
He said, we know everything about you, man.
We spent the night at your girlfriend's house today last night, and that's how we knew you
were.
Looked at him, and he had to look in the eyes like, don't try anything, just get back in the car.
So they searched the car.
I said, you got a gun on you?
I'm like, nah, I don't have a gun on me.
They searched the car anyway.
Take this car to X-ray.
Put me in the car, but before they could.
Remember I said earlier in the story about an officer that I high-speed chased with
and I ran over the freeway to get away from him.
left he pulls up to the scene he said i bet you won't be running across no freeways today they told me
everything you did and you probably get about 15 years 12 to 15 on this one with your criminal history
and he just told me fuck you gave me a middle finger slammed the door and walked away now i'm in
trouble but i'm like damn what is this for what is this for and they take me into an interrogation
room and explained it all to me a year and a half ago man you sold some cocaine to somebody right
I'm like, no, no, no, I didn't, I didn't.
And they showed me everything, played a little bit of the tape, and asked me, so what you want to do?
Do you want to do what your friend is doing and work with us?
Or are you going to be a hard ass?
I said, man, you got the wrong person.
I don't know what you're talking about, man.
It's no way I can walk out of here right now.
You're talking about some drug thing.
And he asks me, who told you that we were coming for you?
I said, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
You got the wrong person, man.
Take me to my cell.
So they take me to my cell.
Now, once I read the charges, it pops up in my head.
It's him.
Nobody's going to believe me.
I have to let people know it's him.
It's no way in the world that this guy, he knows everybody that I know.
He's in the game.
They need, like, people need to know to not deal with this guy.
If this is what kind of hype he's on, people need to know to not deal with this fool.
So they get me in there, they book me, they read me these charges, myself against the government.
and I panicked man I just was like man I'm probably not coming out soon I told my girl that she can go
told my kids I wouldn't be seeing them for a long time they tell me that the mandatory minimum is 120 months
in 85% which which I'm like oh my god I'm gonna be so old when I get out of here man
but with enhancements in the criminal history he told me that man you probably won't be getting out for a long while man so
I mean be prepared and you don't want to work with us so I mean there it is but of course you never
supposed to listen to the agents and the cops you have to talk to lawyers right you know what I'm
saying they don't know what the cops can't help you out man all they want to do is get somebody
like we know you have a person that can get this much weight we want him just get out you can
make it you can do what you do for another couple years I mean if you get any time it'll be
under five years man and we'll make sure you straight we just want you to come over here
and help us out it's an absolute no for me is no thinking about it we don't have anything
else to talk about just let's get this ball rolling so what i did was i um prepared myself mentally for
knowing i'm going to do a lot of time so you know like paid attorneys don't necessarily matter in the
federal federal judicial system because it's kind of like the guidelines if you are the guidelines
and if you're not cooperating they pretty much hardly give downward departures what what you
what i think is if you were let's say you was questionable if you were innocent and you could go to
trial, then a paid lawyer probably does help. But in your situation, you're going to plead
guilty. So no, I don't see that a paid lawyer is going to make much, like if you're already going
to say, what's the best deal I can get? Because you can't go to trial, then yeah, there's no reason
to pay a lawyer. He's not going to help you any. Like, you know, what I'm going to give you 50 grand,
I'm still going to get, you're still getting the minimum mandatory no matter what. That's the best you
can do. And you're, and with your criminal history, you're probably already over the,
the minimum mandatory. And I was. And I was pretty much because. And I don't see that a paid
lawyer can help you. So we reached out to a couple of them. And just be straight up with me.
Anybody with me, if I like it or not, be straight up with me. Don't coddle me. Don't bullshit me or pull
my leg. So he comes to visit me. I tell him everything. He looks at the case, listen to the tape,
sees the evidence giving me. He said, you don't need me. I charge 75,000. But what they have here,
you only want the best deal possible, man. Your guy knows you very well.
Oh, he describes you so good, man.
The little retainer that you gave us, that's, I can give it back to your family.
You're probably going to need it, man.
You're going to prison for a while.
I'm like, Mama, I call my mom.
He said, I'm going to prison for a while, man.
He read the paperwork, man.
He said, he won't even take my money.
She said, well, you know, at least he was honest because there's a bunch of them out there that would have took your money,
had you sign up for that $75,000, knowing they would still get you the exact same amount of time.
so the mandatory minimum was 10 i didn't do the big the big drug transaction they wanted me to
how i ended up with the 84 months was the judge saw something that the u.s attorney overlooked
and my attorney overlooked and she said wait a minute one of these prior convictions that you guys
are charging him with was when he was 18 years old and that's past 15 years we can't use that
that dropped my guideline points level down enough where instead of 120 i played to 84 months
and still because of your criminal history
still because of my criminal history
because without that it could have been 60 months
because the deal that I actually did
was for like a half
you know
isn't there a minimum mandatory
or wouldn't it so yeah
is there a minimum mandatory
a mandatory minimum after the 120
is it like five
which we'll put it up to 180
right okay well that'd be 60 months
but that plus your criminal history points
is what got you to
the 84 to the 84 yeah that's what got me to the 84 months no downworked departures no it's just
she calculated it and you're like oh yeah wow he did that was when he was around 18 years old
yeah you're right it was over 15 years ago yeah it is it's no way we can use that it's no way
we can use that so your lawyer should have caught that he should have but again this is now
i'm on a uh what you call it a a court appointed but it's a real real law firm but it's like
they got so many of these cases and this is right around the time when shrimp boy this
crime boss along with the city council members they all got indicted around the same time so my case
became small compared with the corrupt government you're talking about shrimp boy yeah man he was there
he came in there right while i was there the chinese chinese my boss all those yeah big story about him
man he made international nationwide news so they wanted to get my case out the way i pled guilty
send me up the road i'll be back but this is why that's changed my life because federal prison is
completely different i get in there i go to the medium immediately s i s come sees me they're like
look you're going out there on the yard man if your paperwork's not good tell us now we'll put you in a
shoe we'll let those these guys will never see you and we can ship you somewhere to a whole
another state because as soon as you get there as soon as you go out there they're gonna want to
know what's up with you man he says uh asked me a couple names of the guys that was running the yard
that had the keys and i'm like i know them he's like you're
know them you're like all right well they're they're back there and they're still going to want to do
the check so i get there told them that um pretty much my paperwork was going to um be here shortly
and everything you know everything was coming and they said man we already knew you was coming
we had got pretty word pretty much got word that you was coming and we know your case already
because it's a thing that people don't know where people can just put you in a pacer system
and pay the money and they can order all your public transcripts because it's i mean it might
cost a hundred bucks but if you really want to know something about a person
You can get that easily, being that, uh, asking a person to see their paperwork,
they can just leave some pages off or they can even make it up themselves and have somebody
type it up themselves and just give you whatever they want, whatever you want them to see,
whatever they want you to see, like judgment commitments.
I saw all of those being altered while I was down.
So, um, I got in there, hooked up with my guys, got with the crew.
They kind of was telling me how things, um, was going, but they had some key questions.
Like, you plan on hitting here?
because the way we do it is the way we do it if you plan on hitting then let us know that means
bringing in any contraband having some videos are you going to get any visits i said yeah i plan
to get some visits he's like well uh let us know before you do so we can let you know how i kind
of kind of go because we already running our own program here you know the rules man stay away
from the woods the south siders don't be intermingling gambling gambling mixing messing with no
homosexuals you i said man come on man i know that man i know the script we just got to tell you
that way if we ever catch you doing that is no passes here we at this medium it's um in her
alone California man a newer medium in the middle of nowhere so they was running a pretty tight ship
there like kind of like no cross mingling but I knew I didn't want nothing to do with that I didn't
plan on hitting I didn't want no parts of that man at this point I'm almost kind of feeling defeated
like everything I've done only led to this meaning I'm not a great decision maker like I thought
I was I'm really questioning myself looking around at that yard with these guards and they
tripping and a riot might happen any given day man but uh here it's
is i'm here already so i might as well program it's hard to get a job find a job in a wreck
see the most in see most terrible shit on that wreck yard man people unburying weapons knives
just just just whatever comes with that man at this medium man but i mean i guess you get used to
it like i said i was desensitized at a young age to people getting harmed hurt even killed like
it didn't really matter that much but still you don't choose to see that but you know um mainly there was
people dealing with their own kind like if you slip through the cracks and they find out you did some
crazy stuff then they'll kind of get with you themselves and i didn't have to worry about that because
i chose different like i'm like i'm gonna do something different i'm not gonna hang with dudes that's
planning to do better crimes i'm not going to go around people who are you know carrying on these
same conversations and want me to tell these prison war stories i'm just not into that right now
so i did everything that people didn't want to do start hanging around people i can learn from so
I only got around people that I can learn from and um I guess that was a way to kill time for me
but not without incident because here it is when a riot comes or if it's mandatory you have to show up
so with several occasions where I was like okay here it go I'm about to blow all my time here it is
we got to go at it with the southsiders it's about to go up right now because the rule is over there
is that uh the southsiders don't have one-on-one fights with the blacks or with nobody they're only
It's supposed to discipline their own people.
So it's an altercation between a black and the South Sider.
Now the whole yard is going up.
And we're all about to have to jump because this one little incident.
So what I did was, it was a few occasions when I almost, you know, a riot or a jump off happened.
And then it's like if you end it, you in it, it's no turning back.
They expect you to go hard with that.
But what I did is kind of like, I was just kind of, I didn't run from it.
But you said I have to go to the bathroom, you guys.
I'll be back in a minute.
No, I didn't run to no bathroom.
me it's just kind of like being there alone don't make you getting don't make you guilty and then
sometime if you do have a visit you you you had a couple dudes that tell you man we're going to pop off
at a yard time stay in a building but what i could do is kind of like be ready but stay back like
the one time i was like okay i'm gonna stay back but if somebody you know what i'm saying like
the incident is all the way across the yard and shit like that by the time i run over there you got
the guards with the big fire extinguisher pepper spray spraying a whole group of people and
They're screaming. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. So it's like not much I could do to avoid it, but I didn't duck it. I never ducked it per se. However, I just didn't run to it. Like some dudes will tell you they ran to every riot and every incident. Well, you should be dead because those people are stabbing and killing and cutting necks off if you ran to every single incident. But I didn't necessarily do that. But the thing that- Did you over here, Zach, my buddy Zach's story about-
being in uh where he he was uh he was a member of the florida car and he
do you remember something they called them all these guys there's like fucking 10 of them in a room
and somebody sell like the the shot caller they call them in there and he's like brings them all
in there and he's like listen man we these motherfuckers that disrespected us you've heard this i never
heard this one so he's like you know you've seen zach yeah so you know they call
Zach and
Coleman
they were
you know
the black guys
would call them
Oreo
and so he's
he's in there
and he's like he's like
he's like I'm concerned
you know
these guys like they're
I'm like look you guys
I don't I don't have a shank
I don't we're gonna get you one
we're gonna get you one
he's like oh man
he's like I'm concerned
he said like
and the guy the guy
the shot caller like
listen man tomorrow
we're gonna go out there
we're gonna face these motherfuckus
we're gonna this
they ain't disrespecting us
we're a Florida car
And they go, he's going, he's like, they're all like, we're going to war.
And they're all like, yeah, man, yeah, yeah.
And Zach, I don't know where it just goes, um, excuse me.
And they're like, yeah, what's up, man?
He goes, well, why are we going to war?
And the guy goes, man, the motherfuckers, they, they disrespected my boy.
He's who, who's, who's your boy?
You know, my boy.
And he goes, you, you mean the, the punk?
you used to be with
you're old sally and you
he's kind of like you're you used to be
yeah man they disrespected him
somebody tried him he's like
he said we're gonna want to show these motherfuckers
they can't just can't just talk to us like nothing
nobody and he goes
yeah listen man I don't want to I don't want to go to war over
homosexuals oh wow and he said
literally all the other guys immediately were like
yeah bro I don't
no I'm not we're not we're not
we're not with that we're not
and he's like so when the guy got like
Like I upset and kind of, you know, wandered, it broke up.
And he said when they broke up, like, guys were like, man, thank God you.
I didn't even think to ask why.
Like, thank God you.
Just ready to go for no reason.
Yeah, yeah, not even looking into it or asking.
Of course, you know, you're not really supposed to ask.
You're just like supposed to be a soldier.
But.
That's hilarious.
When Zach tells that story, bro.
I don't think I caught it, but I'll send you the short.
It may, it makes sense because they will take you down for anything because, I mean, a pan of fish is what we almost went to war over in a medium.
A pan of fish.
Who was supposed to get the fish?
It was mine's not yours.
They sailed for three stamps apiece, and you took my fish, man.
And they came to the dorm and told all of us report to the kitchen ASAP.
I was like, it's fish day.
I never go to dinner on fish day.
Well, get your ass up out there right now.
They're waiting for you.
So everybody black has to go.
We get up.
We put on our jackets.
Everybody's, you know, kind of in combat mode.
We get in the kitchen.
And right before everything kicks off, the CO that probably was one of the coolest ones on the yard came in.
and just like man don't do this look y'all this is going to go completely bad let's try something
different it has to be a better way man and then he just calls for backup every everything every resource
come to the kitchen right now come to the kitchen right now they all run in there take us all down
and we all get like because it's still inciting the riot it's still a um an issue so they come
raid our sale come to find out my celly was seen on camera with weapons they came in my cell they
raided my cell cuffed us both up find them they found about found two of them two bangers in
our cell my cellie said that's not his it's mine's I had them both and one of them lieutenant
said I didn't go to the shoe he said that and he said I seen him on camera with it
he in line he said I never never even saw this guy before I'm talking about me I never even saw
him before this dude saying right here in front of us that there he is not his cellies
book him he booked him took him away I never saw him again I mean they ship
him of course but he could have not said nothing and we both would have been booked but on cameras
it's cameras everywhere at the medium they clearly saw him with it because he takes it out at the
time and he's like ready for anybody that runs our way to just start dancing with it and
I mean you know I was like damn I that was kind of close but ultimately right after that though
I end up getting transferred to the low I get transferred to a low which is much different than
going to a medium at the low it's kind of like almost becoming um
a college college like a like a like a like a rough high school a rough high school man because
you run into so many different characters from so many walks of life i get there they're telling me um
well if you don't like chomoles and if you don't like informants man we can put you right back
on the bus to the medium man because we're not going to have any of that bullshit that happens
at the medium here we run this thing our way and either you get with it or you don't so i was at lompoc
low but when i get there it's like um like i know everybody there and i'm like
Wow, wait, this is what's going on here, man.
It's just free, no unlocks,
and we can move back and forth all throughout the day.
So I appreciated that.
But that's when I really start going into these ace classes
and learning from people that knew things that I didn't know.
So what I did was...
You got a better quality of inmate at the low, too.
Definitely.
Some sharp guys at the medium, but nothing like the low.
Yeah, I think I heard something on your platform one time
that most of the hardened criminals are at those mediums,
the ones that have killed, that will kill.
You don't make it to the low when you're super hardcore
because you're never going to comply with any rules and regulations
and before they send you to the low, you're going to catch another shot.
You have to behave for a while.
You have to behave.
You keep catching shots.
You'll never make it to the low, which a lot of guys do because they like,
I like myself.
I'm not going to do dorm living and I don't want to be around certain individuals
that we know we can't check paperwork.
We know we can't regulate like we do here.
But at least at the low, like you've got you got sharp guys.
You got guys that have, you know, own banks.
They've owned financial institutions.
They've owned their lawyers.
They're doctors.
We had like two or three guys that had worked at NASA.
See?
You know, we had sharp, sharp guys.
I'm going to tell you what the NASA guys' charges were for.
But regardless, they were still smart guys.
You know, like, I mean, you had people that you're like, like, you can, you definitely,
this is a knowledgeable person that can teach you something.
You don't get a lot of those in the media.
You don't get a lot of all that things.
medium the ace classes are way or much really really watered down and teaching basic stuff like at the medium i found
myself helping guys prepare for the g ed test i found my guys like a lot of grown men in prison
have basic reading skills like third grade level which i didn't know for sure because even if you
never go to school you can pick up a book and teach yourself how to read but i found myself helping people
with that but once i get to the low it was time for me to shut up and listen like these guys have
so much knowledge on real estate they have knowledge on building
businesses. It was a guy there that actually helped Unicorn launch their coffee. He worked at
Unicorn. He helped them launch their Unicorn coffee brand, source it, bag it, price it, kept the
invoice. He like literally was such a great businessman from starting companies that became worth
over a hundred million that, and he was exactly who he said he was. His family would come visit
him in Rolls Royces and brand new Mercedes, Bentley's, everything. And that's just to say that he
didn't lose everything when he went down but he lost his time freedom like he only made it to the
low because he his time dropped his time dropped he was like a 20 year guy he stole millions or allegedly
allegedly because i didn't check his paperwork he was a white guy but for him to help them build a
coffee business over there at that prison where instead of keefe or what maxwell house what we used to
buy now they put the unicorn bags at 2.35% becomes the bestseller on the commissary and they used
him paid him what 200 bucks a month while they're making but i mean honestly that was probably like
that to that probably past his time i got a you know what i'm saying like some people like why would
you do that but he probably had a blast doing it like you get to build something it doesn't matter
about the money because the money doesn't mean anything no i didn't mean that it's it's building
this whole thing and they realized that he knew what the hell was going on because he looking at how
much they're buying the coffee from from the vendors and what they're making what they're selling
it for and he's like wait why aren't we well we don't know how
And he, again, start sourcing it, bringing it, bagging it, packaging at the facility,
and now it's on the commissary on all the West Coast.
I mean, I don't know what happened on the East Coast, but in the West Coast,
they were all selling Unicorn coffee now instead of that.
Keefe.
Keefe, yeah, Keefey, right?
So meeting guys like that can show me how to actually run a business.
When only thing business was for me was a way to cover up my illegal money that I was making.
So we did start doing business, legal business, but to me, it never moved.
move the needle and I always resorted back to what I was doing that was making the most money.
But now going into low meeting some of these guys, like I said, I would never be able to speak
to some of these guys on the streets because they're super high level.
Like I met guys that had $100 million corporations and guys that had $10 million corporations
that when they decide to give up information, you better be listening because they don't like
repeating themselves.
And here it is, like they'll even ask you like, have you ever met anybody like me before?
and I'm like no he's like exactly and I'm giving up information that I would normally charge about
$5,000 an hour to consultate to console somebody for so basically this is the only thing most people
will get this information and they'll never use it so if you can use any of this information to make
your make your life better and not have to resort to those things that you did before use it don't just store
information because it's it's almost it's worse than never knowing this information so I took heed to that
And I just start really, really learning how to set up business entities legally without any illegal or illicit activity going on whatsoever.
So once I learned that, I was able to go tell people who wouldn't participate in eights classes and couldn't come around those guys because, you know, those kind of guys don't speak to everybody.
They have their own private circle.
They have their own table.
They have people to help them cook their food.
They're kind of private.
They're really private.
actually i mean i became a high level individual that made a mistake that got sent to um prison but
you're not going to downplay me i'm still who i am and um from there me going to help other
people with some information i learned they wanted to listen to me so they're like wow you know that
and then we can write it out we can put it all all into paper and and i felt a little sense of um
no i felt a sense of like um gratification that i was able to say okay you're getting out soon go there
and make you a LLC, go get an E-I-N, go register a fictitious business name.
Now, you got guys from the inner city that never heard someone tell them that in their
life.
Well, where do I go to do that?
The county clerk's office.
Like, it's so simple, so we think, until you meet a person that don't even know anything
about it.
They don't know anything about it.
So hearing it from me, to me, they would want to know what else did you learn today or
what else do you know.
So what else I would do is order books on a subject that I really want to.
wanted to go deeper into and I would learn from a book and then learn it from somebody that
actually did it. So now here, I'm at this low. At least you have some base knowledge of the
subject first. I have a base knowledge because I don't want to just be talking out of my head just
because Joe Blow told me some shit. And then now I'm just telling it as this if it's 100% accurate.
So now I got that information. But my time was coming for me to go to RDAP. So they didn't
have it at the low. So they tell me, oh, we're going to send you to, um,
A camp. Your points dropped. We're going to send you to a camp so you can do your ADAP program.
The camp happened to be shared in Oregon. Now, my visits and everything that I had gone and I really
started liking Lompagolo. Based off my program, I started running. They're shipping me off again
to another whole, another place. But again, I ran into even more high-level individuals at Sheridan
camp because they all were camp-level points qualified for R-DAP. So I go on R-Dap this time around
R. DAP is a program.
Some people hate it. Some people love it.
I had mixed feelings about it.
I went in there with an open mind.
Like, these are concepts that I never really heard before and put myself under complete
evaluation from a DTS, which is some sort of therapist.
Are you right?
Therapists or not?
Yeah, yeah.
Drug treatment specialists, right?
So I put my-
It probably got some kind of little certificate or something, but, yeah.
I put myself under evaluation by doing that.
And I'm not the best.
speaker or the worst speaker but most people are can hardly articulate themselves at all so since
they forced me to talk in ardape and you you have to share your story i told my story on the
mic inside group settings and even in front of the whole community and a few of those guys who i had
the catch up with at lompoc low only if they were given the eighth class or only if they were
doing some type of group training a few of them guys came to me after programming was like hey um brown
you told a story
Is that stuff true about what happens
In East Oakland?
Like are guys really over there
Cutthroat
Like dude are they really against each other like that
And I'm like yeah that's how it is though
You just don't seem like the type that come from that man
I see your friends man
They look like they probably participated in that
But I don't know if that's you man
You sure you were there man like
Okay well come over here with us
We're having a meeting in one of the classroom A's man
It's only gonna be about four people over there
I think we want to share some information with you
So instead of me having to ask to go, they invited me.
And now I'm getting information.
One guy had a private jet charter company grossed over 200 million, but he started playing with the books.
They came for him.
He ended up getting about eight years and stuff like that and a heavy restitution.
Another guy, a partner in a major casino corporation, just like a minority partner,
but he's telling me the money he made.
A lot of people at lawyers, just just people who I couldn't imagine able to be around.
without going to prison.
So I absorbed all of the information I can
and I made a decision that
this information is useful.
I would rather help people than hurt people.
I'm going to use this to my advantage
and I'm going to do something with it
because one of the guys told me,
if you don't do nothing with it,
it's worse than never knowing the information at all.
So once I, I want to say once I got out of,
I've completed R-Dap, got my year off.
So off my 84 months, I still did
66, 64.
Is it halfway house?
halfway house for four months it was too crowded because i think i heard you said trump let all
those people out at the same time yeah and it was overcrowded it did it was so i didn't get my
guys the guys that should have got a year six months and i was supposed to get nine months and i end up
getting like four and a half but i got the year off yeah yeah you know what i'm saying but one of the
things that rang with me was when i was getting out my my case manager she's like um well
you end up getting all that time in state prison and you got seven years in the federal prison
so you know that you qualify for SSI
being that you're a disadvantaged minority
and I was like, what?
She's like, yeah, you're a disadvantaged minority
and you can get like 800 a month
and Social Security
and you don't even have to worry about anything.
I said, what?
800 a month, you must be crazy.
I wish I would take $800 a month
to not do anything.
She's like, well, I only offered it to you
because a lot of guys take advantage of it
and you don't have to work
and you can just go do that.
Can't live off $800 a month?
In California?
I'm like, she lived in Oregon.
I said in California?
that won't do anything for me
that absolutely nothing so um
got out i went to the halfway house i did that um
after treatment after care stuff
went and worked uh uh one of my partners he have a uh he started a car business
whereas uh work sell we sell cars
also we work on cars sell cars
all about cars it's like really called all about cars
so it was everything car related so i started doing that with him
but a lot of the people who came in there
had subpar credit and didn't know anything about building their credit so i was able to build a
small business from people with subprime credit helping them out to repair their credit disputes things
get a higher credit score so they can qualify for a better car than even what we were selling we were
selling like the um low in four to ten thousand dollars but will you fix a person's credit up they
qualify for 20 30 so i was able to do that for a small fee like 500 bucks people paid me they got a result
they were able to go get something done so here it is i'm coming out of prison thinking people
won't trust me but people trusting me enough to go um fix their credit fix their credit get a new car
and then actually become a credible individual some people even went on to buy houses i heard a lot
of people say they did well with it so what ended up happening is um i realized that it's something
i like to do i found out by helping a family member get a small business loan one time i just
went all over the internet and went to found a bunch of resources and got some referral to some
companies where I was able to help people get personal and business loans. So now this is how I became
a loan broker slash business funding specialists because I don't want to say a loan broker,
which is like a regulated industry where you really need to be certified and licensed to become a
loan broker. But I do help people out with getting personal loans, business loans, as well as building
credit and starting their own entities which you know i feel like most people need more people than
need this service and everything like right so these days that's exactly what i'm doing and um
i just feel better being able to help people leaving all gray area illicit activity out of my life
because here it is that that no matter what when i tried it it could be one thing or another it's just
so short-lived it's just so short-lived i mean the money is good but the concept of being a
one percenter in fraud a one percenter in drug dealing you have to stay there or else you just
won't make it you know what I mean they'll come for you you'll lose everything or the people you
work would have come after you so either way you'll end up losing everything and it's just like
it's just so many factors that push me away from that but it took me into my 40s to really
realize and decide that that shit is absolutely not for me at all how long have you been uh doing the
the loan thing so i got out of prison in 2018 i was doing a credit repair and helping people
established themselves in a private entity since about 2018 but the um loan loan specialist
business loan specialist i started that in 2019 so you still do the other you still do the credit
well i stopped doing a credit repair so much because it's better for me to refer that out it's a lot
of uh dealing with credit repair it's a lot of work and it's time consuming to a
point where I can give them to somebody that has automated resources and you know just get a
referral so I I moved away from the credit repair but what I do is I'll take clients and then help
them do it themselves I'd rather help you do it yourself and if if you have the money refer you
to a expert that's going to get you three to six months to a better credit score so right now I mean
I mean we're still at a point where about 45% of America have bad credit so it's never a lack
of people that need their credit repair, but also most people have not established their own
entity that they can do business under and separate themselves from their business.
I mean, even a common person that does landscaping, he's just doing it under his name.
He just established himself, okay, I'm going to do landscaping, go get a business license,
and it's just me, the landscaper, opposed to starting a business, building up business
credit with that entity, and then becoming credible enough to grow it without using your own money
are bootstrapping the whole thing so i mean i mean the industry i want to say is it's a little
it's a little um it's a little complex because the money the people that we deal with they
mainly come from um people that the bank turned down right unless you establish yourself in the
beginning so that you'll be credible to the bank so uh most of the time people didn't so you
go into the bank and say my business makes 30 thousand a month and here is how
But you got 28,000 going out the bank is going to say no. So here it is if you establish yourself the correct way. You will be able to go into the bank and get money. But if you if you can't private investors still have money for you probably a little higher interest rate, but they have money for you. Right. So these days, that's what I'm into moving completely away from that kind of deal like hustling, doing any amount of fraud, participating in illicit activities based off of the fact that it's just like.
Like, we kind of know what that is already.
I've seen enough of that to know that.
It's just not even, I mean, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
Put it like that.
Yeah, I'd rather look at McDonald's.
I mean, I mean, or just, just start something.
Start something.
If you fail a bunch of times, you will end up making it.
But just don't quit, man, because, I mean.
No, wasn't the statistic 90% of, 90% of the millionaires have claimed bankruptcy at least once?
At least once, exactly.
So they always talk about the number of 17.
100 new millionaires being created a day,
but they don't talk about 3,700 fall off the list every day.
Maybe about 4,000.
It was 3,700 in 2021,
fall off the list of being a millionaire.
So a lot of people want to tell you it's so easy to become a millionaire,
but it's really not.
It's easy to go make 20,
easier to go make 20K a month
and do that consistently until you build up something
that'll be able to double, triple, et cetera.
But if you only won,
You don't know what it is to lose, right?
If all you ever did is win.
I mean, look at you.
You were able to overcome whatever you've done and create something from scratch.
So, I mean, I look at it like, you're a model to me because I could possibly create a platform that will grow over time.
It's not a push button to success, but working on something organically, it will eventually grow.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just consistency and sticking with it long enough.
It'll happen.
And that goes for almost anything.
So, I mean, I'm here, man.
And, I mean, I definitely appreciate being able to come here and talk to you about this true crime story.
But the part of it that I would say would be the most impactful to me, though, is just like, my uncle told me before he died, like, you always go truce the hardest path and take that path.
It's just so many things you could have done different.
Yeah, you ran up some money.
He said, you see your mom in him?
Yeah, they made their millions over 30 years.
They're not ducking nothing.
they're not running from nobody you had to bump your head three four five times to make the
million but you gave it all back then you did it again and then you gave it all back and here it is
now you're on the path of success but you didn't even have to take such a hard path and he died a
couple years ago man and i actually told that story at the um at his homegoing service that uh
he told me before he died that uh you see that mountain instead of you finding a quick path to the top
you'll run around it two times and then decide to go up,
but you're going to already be tired.
So your hike up is going to be much harder than mine
because I'm going to just walk straight up.
It knocked some bushes along the way
and I'll be sitting up there waiting for you.
And I took that to heart because it is about what I used to do most of my life.
It's just create some shit.
I created a complex situation for myself that I probably didn't have to,
trusting people, trying shit that probably didn't lead to a good outcome.
So therefore, I'm just like, most scammers won't get rich.
Most trappers won't get rich.
I mean, if I had to say anything, I just want people to know that, man.
You'd be better off just working your way to the top, being consistent, finding a path, something that you probably like to do.
Don't just pick something that everybody else is doing just because it makes a lot of money because that won't even be it.
You won't even, you'll hate it.
You make a bunch of money, but you'll hate it because here it is.
I had money, but I was never at one point.
You see, I never said I was happy.
At no point through all of this stuff that I went through
could I say I was so happy and so glad and grateful
because I had money because that wasn't going to ever do it for me.
Just having the money alone was never going to bring me to a place of happiness.
So, I mean, right now I feel good, man.
I met a lot of people that I still have good relationships with to this day.
And then I just feel like, you know, as long as I'm making some sort of impact,
I will feel better than I ever have in the past.
but it took like I said to all the gray hairs it took to all these gray hairs start coming for me to actually realize that and then my dad who now we have a much better relationship he looks at me and be like well I figured you would get it at some point and him as a senior citizen sitting there and joining his latter years said you know just didn't think it would take you this long in your life to actually realize what you actually what was actually in store for you that can make you into a better person okay well look I I I
I'm glad you came out.
I appreciate you
coming.
Do you have a, you want us to leave links
in the description box?
Or do you have any social media links,
a website, anything?
I normally communicate people
with people through Instagram.
I got an Instagram page.
It's Trulane's way.
I mean, I answer all of my DMs myself,
man, I'm looking to work with people
who definitely want to change their situation,
but it does take work.
I mean, nothing easy is worth having.
So I have a simple process to help people
but most people won't follow the process but if they do they're guaranteed to
probably get a better result than what they're having right now so yeah my instagram is mainly
the way to reach out to me i mean i don't i don't promote heavily online but i believe that
if people reach out to me and they're serious about changing their situation i can definitely
help them out well we'll put the um we'll put it in the description box and i i appreciate you uh
i appreciate you man i mean like i said i watch your content all the time man and it's a lot to
learn. It's a lot to learn watching this kind of content, man, because it's easy to assume we
know what other people go through or what they were thinking when they did something, but
here it is, you may want to hear from the person exactly what it was before you just
guesstimate what it is, is the reason why they made their decisions and why they did what
they did. But thank you, man. I appreciate you, man. All right.
Hey, if you guys liked the video, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you
get notified of videos just like this. Please leave me a comment.
Check the description box for all the links that we talked about.
And I appreciate it.
See you.