Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How I Made Millions With Stocks, Credit Cards, & Grass

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

How I Made Millions With Stocks, Credit Cards, & Grass

I had connections with offshore banks. The stock opens up at $15. The next day, it goes to $100. So now they got $60 million, but you're going to leave at least $10 million behind for Bob. And we were processing credit cards for mostly gambling sites. We were making money hand over fist. But here's the scam. So I grew up in Emerald Hills, which is in Hollywood, Florida.

One of my neighbors was a man by the name of Randy Lanier. Randy was the biggest pot smuggler in history to that point. He has a Netflix. series about him. Anyway, I got a chance to offload a boat when I was 14. I was just going to say, how old were you? 14 years old. How does that happen? So my friend says, hey, Randy's wants us, wants to get five or six or seven or eight guys to go to his house and hang out. Right. And he's going to give us 200 bucks. Okay. So we go to the house. It's on the intercoastal. Isn't that how Epstein started?

Yeah. This is, there was no win. and involved, unfortunately. And basically, he lived on near a coastal. Right. And as soon as the sun went down, we had 10, 14-year-old kids hanging out by the pool. The sun goes down, boat pulls up. We daisy chain 6,000 pounds of Colombian into the house. And the first time I'd seen pot.

And I knew what it was, but I'd never seen it. And so I came from an entrepreneurial background. My parents, my brother, are all entrepreneurs. And I'm asking questions. What does it cost? How much is it away? Blah, blah, blah. And stuff, the other kids aren't asking.

Right. And so when it was over, we all, I got to the back. I was going to be the last person in line. So everybody leaves, gets paid off. I'm like, I don't want any money. I want one of those. Right. And he's, well, you're on a bike.

And I'm like, well, I'll call my friend's sister. It will come over with a car. And so he laughed. And he's like, well, the $200 is he going to get you one of those. but he gave me enough to when I got home. And in those days, there was no scale. Someone had a scale. Right.

And we did four finger lids. So we got a baggie, and we just put enough cannabis in it to be four fingers. And that was a lid. $30, $25. And I started selling it. And the first time, I had never, me and my friend had never smoked a pot before. And in those days, it was pressed. It had seeds.

And there was a method where you took an album cover and you opened it up and you broke the pot. up on the album cover and then you use the rolling papers to separate the seeds and the stems from the flour. Well, no one told us we didn't know anything. So we knew we had to separate the seeds and the stems, but we thought the seeds in the stems were what you smoked. So we took the seeds and the stems, put it into a big pipe, threw away the flour, started smoking the seeds in the stems, and the seeds are popping going up, you know, and it

tasted like crap, and I got this headache. And I'm like, what are people seeing this? Right. They're buying it. I don't care. I'm making money. And then my brother came in and said, what was it like? You did the first time.

I said, that sucked, man. The seeds were exploding. It was the seeds. And so he's laughing hysterically. And it's like, no, no, no. The stuff you threw away is what you smoke. Right. So the next day, my friend comes over with a joint.

And he had an album under his arm. This is 1974. And it's Bob Marley's first album. And I had tried cigarettes, hated it. I'm from an Irish family. Every one of my family is an alcoholic, highly functional. Two of them have had to retire from drinking. But everybody drinks.

I just never liked a taste. It just never, it wasn't for me. When I smoked this joint, I knew I found my life's purpose. It sounds funny, but it just made me relaxed. So how could this be evil? Who would, you know, why isn't, you know, if it's legal and there was a risk premium, this risk premium meant that there was money in it. Right.

And you're 14. I'm 14. And so all through high school, I'm dealing weed, making money. When I went off to college, I convinced a friend of mine to front me 100 pounds. Well, wait, 14 to college, what did you do? You sold that whole time? I was selling ounces in high school. Okay.

And quarter pounds. Are your parents figure this? Oh. No. No. No. I would have gotten killed. Okay.

And so, yeah, but I'm making, and I didn't have to, you know, it was a nice thing because my parents, we were, we grew up in a nice neighborhood, but they made us work. So I pretended like I had a job. Right. But I would bicycle off to my other friend's house as parents didn't care, and we would deal out of his house. And so I'd made a nice little living for myself all the way through high school, got to college, started dealing out of college out of my dorm room. met some growers. I did my first grow in 77 and then 78 and 79. And then one of the guys in the grow moved out to California to work for another big pot smuggler named Joel. And when I graduated from college, I went to San Francisco and started, you know, doing, I was a very small cog in a 40,000

pound Thai smuggle. Go to Thailand, barge, 40,000 pounds. In those days, this is 1981, the smuggler, Joel, owned a big ranch in Marin, now worth millions. But in those days, you couldn't give them away. And they would fly helicopters out to the barge 10 miles offshore. Big cables on the crates. Helicopter lower the, you know, the boat's going, the wind's going. They're trying to grab the thing. And they would get all 40,000 pounds and landed in Moran.

in on a hilltop and then we'd have these huge box trucks that we that he bought from rider and those rider trucks of that era were all wood paneled on the inside and he hired a guy to put fake walls in the back and we could get about 2,200 pounds of pressed tie into these box trucks and then they all went in a different direction to a different storage place in san francisco okay and it was an introduction to professional, big-time pot smuggling. Did you know people that had been busted? At this point, not so much. So there's not, doesn't seem like a lot of danger in it.

Well, yeah, and I was, one of the things I did in the 80s is I started to, you know, I purposely kept myself at a certain level. Right. Because I was making way more money than I needed. No family. you know, I didn't have any bills to pay. Right. And I was living in the life of Riley.

I didn't have to, I didn't work, I didn't have a job until 1994. So from college in 1976 to 94, I never worked. Right. But I had money. And so I just, I purposely, you know, I buy, I passed opportunities to do things. And a couple of those, those people got busted and, you know, I wasn't. are going to take. I knew how much risk I would take and how much risk I wouldn't. And I didn't mind driving my, at a Volvo, at a 76 Volvo, two-door that I could put about 200 pounds of

Colombian in. And I put 500,000 miles on it, and I would drive it all over the country. And, you know, it doesn't sound like a lot, but, you know, seven, eight thousand bucks a month in those days, a lot of money. A lot of money. It's practically like 40, 50, that's like 40 grand or something It's just, you know, and so, you know, my rent was $300. I own the car. I didn't have a bank account or a credit card. And in those days, you could get it on an airplane, okay? No ID, and we all fall under fake names.

The D.B. Cooper just wrote. Yeah, yeah, just put here. And so, and another cool thing is to transfer money, you could go to an airport in 1980 with 20 grand, cash. go up to the Delta desk by the most expensive first class ticket 17, 18, 19, 20,000 bucks, pay for it in cash

those tickets were cash if you lost it, you lost the money. Right. So we'd get the ticket in someone else's name. We'd overnight it to that person back in California.

He would get the ticket in the mail. He would go to the San Francisco airport and they'd give him 20 grand cash. Jesus. Yeah. That's, when did that stop? That seems like that.

In the, probably the 90s. Yeah. But the whole 80s, I flew under Mark Phillips. Oh, Mark. Okay. Well, I was going to say, at what point, I was wondering, at what point, like, if you go to the bank now and you get like 10 grand, then you got to fill out a form. Well, this is all before that.

Yeah, yeah. This is way before that. I'm wondering when that happened. I think in the 90s. In some time in the 90s. say this is enough. And the other thing I would do is I would take red eyes from San Francisco to either Orlando or Tampa Airport direct. So I'd get on an airplane in San Francisco with two big suitcases filled with 20 pounds, a tie in them, get on a one way direct flight

to one of those two airports, figuring that I'm landing at four or five in the morning. The cops aren't going to be there looking for stuff yet. Right. And I never had a problem. No drug dogs, nothing like that? Well, they're usually, people weren't nine to five. Right. In those days, it was a, you know, and we never got caught. I never got caught driving. I mean, I drove or flew thousands and thousands and thousands of miles.

I had my little scene. I was doing 20, 40 pans of this, that, and the other, and making a good living doing it. And basically avoiding growing up, avoid getting a job, avoiding responsibilities. and I was having the time on my life. And I was also with deadhead, so I followed the dead around a lot. Were you married? No, no. No.

No, I didn't get married until I was 60. No. Oh, my God. Did you have a girlfriend? Yeah, lots of them. Okay. Yeah. And I just knew.

Bob Dylan said in the song, if you live outside the law, you must be honest. Because everything's on a handshake. Right. You trust. Oh, I'm fronting you this money. And, you know, there's no recourse. So it's, it's, it's like prison when these guys are stabbing each other, getting into fights. They're like, oh, it's so horrible. I'm like, yeah, but you have to understand. You bring that on yourself. You know, you run up a debt. You talk bad about somebody. You gossip. You, you know what I'm saying? Like, you brought that on yourself. I'm like, these guys have, that's their only recourse. I'm like, they're not going to sue you. Right. That's the legal system in prison is violence. So I've always been a man of my word.

And when you get married, you get up in front of your family and friends and you swear to forsake all others, sickness and health. And I knew that if I got married in those days, it would be really hard. Right. And plus, I never met anybody that I'm all about trust. Right. Lie cheat, steel. It's a low bar, but you'd be surprised. and I had some awesome girlfriends, but they all lied, cheated, or stolen from me in some form.

Yeah. And so I was having time of my life, no interest in getting married or having kids. And I met somebody when I was 55. We got married when I was 60. I'm 66 now. And she had three kids, and I've helped to raise them. And we've got a great marriage and lover and, you know, and I'm too old to cheat. That's what I keep telling my wife.

I'm a way top. I'm going to work my aunt. I mean, I'm at work every day. Do you know how much effort that is? Yes. And I don't have somebody, you know, and plus I really love my wife. I mean, it's just a plus. It is a plus, you know, and I just, and so I knew that I knew myself.

And I wasn't going to, I don't like to set myself up for failure. Right. And I knew that was going to be. And there was nothing, I mean, if I was going to get married and have kids, I mean, have kids and, you know, but I didn't have a job. I didn't have any savings. You know, I made it and spent it. made it and spent it. And so it, you know.

Well, how long did you kind of stay at the, whatever, 30, 40 pound just kind of? Pretty much. I had a nice couple of niches where guys I went to college with, rich kids, Charlottesville, Virginia, Westchester County, New York, North Carolina, in the beach towns in North Carolina. And so I could go up there with 50 pounds, 40 pounds, 30 pounds. 30 pounds and sell them in smaller amounts and hang out because these guys all had money. And I'd make a three-month, you know, and I'd make 30, 40 grand. Right.

And so, you know, over a couple of months. And it just was enough for me. I, you know, I never wanted to be the Ferrari guy. And I watched all those Ferrari guys go to prison or die or, you know, whatever. And so I just, I purposely kept myself, you know, down here. And I was never Mr. Big. right were people getting busted around you well Kenny got busted a bunch right twice yeah twice and you know Kenny was always yeah and Kenny was doing more stuff and he did some stuff too but I also wouldn't

touch right and I would sort it yeah I never really liked I like the way it smelled yeah so but selling it not so much it's just the people you dealt with I didn't like like guns, like violence. There was two cultures. There were people that were in the culture, and there were people in the culture. And these were all hippies and deadheads and, you know, peace, love, happiness.

And the crowd was Ferrari's, guns, and hookers. Right. And this wasn't me. Yeah, I had a friend that used to make LSD. And where did he make it? He was in a St. Bart's. And then he would come in and he had a bunch of girls. They would go to the dead concerts.

They, you know, they did a little blotter paper thing, whatever, just a little thing. And they cut it up and he'd go and meet the girls. And then they would walk around and sell them for whatever it is, 10, 15 bucks a piece. I forget. It's a good living. He looks like Jesus Christ. He looks the exact time of you. It's amazing.

You feel like if he sat there and did the whole, you know, and he, and that, he's like, I think that's where they exclusively sold to just the concerts. That was a nice market for that. He did that for a long time until he got busted. Of course. He got busted, and he had picked St. Mart's, St. Bartz, specifically to sell it because it was owned by, I want to say, whoever, it was some, it's a Dutch, whatever. Dutch or English or not, yeah. So they didn't, so the drug laws were super laxed.

The problem is he was, because he was mailing stuff into the United States. He, you know, he thought he was smart, you know, he didn't know how the federal system worked. to the United States where he thought, I'm not in the United States, and, you know, I'm not making the United States. So I'm good. No,

so that works. No. So they got a shipment from somebody who he'd sent it to, and that guy set him up, and then they came one day, and they just, they busted him in St. Barts.

Or St. Martin. How are St. Barton? Anyway, and yeah, they eventually got him back. I think he fought extradition for like four or five years, and they eventually brought him back in the game 10 years.

Yeah, because it was a super serious crime. Yeah. No, You know, they were trying to give him like 30 years or something. They kept going, kept, you know, as time went on, eventually they got him down like 10 years. And he was like, I've already done like five, you know, so. LSD was an interesting dilemma because the way the law was written, it was written on weight.

So you could take a thousand hits and have it in a liquid form and it would weigh nothing. You take that vial full of liquid LSD And you would soak the paper It's the same 10,000 hits But now it weighed a life sentence Right So you went from Yeah, you know, six months

For the same 10,000 hits When you put it into paper Because it weighed, that's how they That's how they The guidelines were what was the weight And I had a good friend that went to prison Got sentenced to eight years, federal And it went

for Congress, and it was like, this is unfair. And he actually was one of the few people that he got a reduction from eight years to like four years. So, but yeah, LSD, it's like the when they, the powdered versus the. Yeah, how do you determine that? Right. Yeah, exactly. So all these poor black people from the ghetto got these huge sentences and all the white kids got, you know, probation. I was going to say, it's funny, he showed me the article in St. Bars.

It was like, they had said. they seized $11 million worth of. And he was like, he was like, I don't know where they got that. He's like, there's no, because don't I wish. It was 11 million. Oh, yeah, they take, you know, he would make a tons of money, but not. Not like that. No, that's, that's one of the tricks is when you got busted with 100 pounds, they'd take, well,

if you sell it on the street in a gram, it's $30. So they multiply whatever 100 pounds is in grams times 30, and it's a $6 million bust for $30,000 for the $1. Well, I mean, what happens? But do you ever get busted? I mean, do you ever, like, are there- So, Kenny, so you're going to love this. So Kenny gets busted and he says, hey, they were after you, too. If I had been there, I would have gotten, you know, been right in with them.

But how does he get busted? His best friend. Okay. Mark Donald. Okay. So the audience knows, Kenny has been on the show previously. Yes, yeah. So Kenny gets busted.

Then another friend got busted with a bunch of my stuff. Do you know how we get? Can you tell how he got busted? Well, Terry, his best friend from high school, moved back to Ohio. It was a big builder, and he got popped, and he had kids. Right. And he owned a piece of property with his parents, and they were threatening to put his parents in prison, put him in prison. You know, they get you by the boss.

Right. And so he flips. And then he also set up, there were three of us that went to high school together, and Kelly Vickers. so he calls Kelly out, sets him up. Right. Calls Kenny and me, but only Kenny showed up. And it was like the way that works is when you get busted, they want you to, the more people you roll on, the better deal you get.

Right. And so he was just looking for numbers. And the state of Ohio had no interest because they had no proof for me. They were not coming after me because they, you know, if I had gone to Ohio, I would have gotten busted, but I didn't go. So, you know, Kenny had gotten popped for the second time. My other buddy got popped with a bunch of my stuff. And again, my name came up.

And he was nice enough not to turn me in, but he said, hey, they, you know, so. And then I had worked with these guys in the 80s who in 1972, which is way before I was, if I was, you know, ninth grade, they were living in Gainesville, Florida at a time that you could grow 10,000. thousand plants five miles outside of town and nobody knew right and they did it two years in a row and made millions a couple million anyway right they bought a horse farm in o'cala they were boarding i don't want to say the name of the horse but a type of horse that is expensive right a prosecutor from gainsville boarded her horse at their horse farm A male.

That's nice. Okay. She popped in one day and found them taking the male horse and jacking it off to get the sperm that they normally, stud fee is expensive. Right. So they were stealing. Sperm. $20, $30,000, $40,000 or more worth of her horse's sperm. And she got all upset and pulled her horse.

And so a friend of mine who was a lawyer. this woman knew. I'm sorry, he's just like walking in on his, he's all like... Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that's so embarrassing. They get some, they literally get the horse, the smell of another female, and they have it in these restraints, and then somebody... The new Bimo, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card,

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Literally starts jacking the horse off. I just feel like that'd just be traumatizing. As a job, like if this is your job, just feel like there's got to be some trauma. Well, if you're a woman, it's going to basically, how do you live up to a horse? horse long. I mean, he's used to the sting two hands. I mean, if you're a guy, there's got to be something going wrong. Yeah, then there's a whole different, you know, a whole different deal. So,

an attorney that I knew, knew this couple, I'll call them Jack and Jill. Okay. And knew that this couple that I knew them, and they were horse people. And so they get busted by the feds in a big way. And I had walked away from them because I just saw trouble. And so I didn't work with them for two years. and I'm at Kenny's house in Miami Okay And I get a phone call from this lawyer And she says Doug and Sue got busted by the feds last night

And it's hush, hush, no one knows They busted them and they let them out To round up everybody in the group And put them all away So But they wanted you And the lawyer called to let you know? Yes

Their lawyer No Oh, okay She just do So she's at the courthouse And one day This prosecutor walks by and goes you know, Doug and Sue got busted last night.

She had, the prosecutor had no idea that this lawyer knew me. Right. None. And she's, he should say, because the, the prosecutor knew that this other lawyer knew Doug and Sue. Just saying, hey, don't, you know,

and obviously it's hush, hush. She calls me. I get back home, and this is in the 80s, so I have phone machine. And I turn on the phone machine, all the messages, click, Bob, man, Raleigh's back in town. You got to come down to the farm

and get a bunch of a bunch of, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I ignored it. I never, but the interesting thing is I was going to buy a car, and my brother was in the car business, and he runs my credit, and he goes, you know, the federal government just ran a credit check on you, and it was right after. So they were going after assets. I've seen that inquiry, by the way.

They're going after, because they just wanted, and I had no bank account, no credit card. I didn't know anything in my name, and so they never came. you know, so they knew who I was. I was a name on some asshole's desk. Right. And, you know, this is just like one after the other effort. So it's 1992. And I was a business major in college and all my buddies went to Wall Street. And in the 12 years that we graduated, they were all big shots of Goldman Sachs and Solomon brothers and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, and I had no job. I had no, you know, my resume didn't look so good. And I had never filed taxes to that point. So I

filed all my back taxes, I used the references from my buddies, and then I got my friend of mine to say that I worked for him in this business for 12 years or whatever, so I had some sort of resume. And I bamboozled my way into the Smith Barney training program and became a stockbroker. And I'm a workaholic, and it worked really, really, really hard and got really, really lucky right same time and did really well and but smith barney was corporate it was 15,000 brokers you know many you know and it was just I was never going to be you know but so a friend of mine was running the dLJ office Donald solomkin and generette small boutique 300 brokers for rich people and they were taking internet companies public okay at the beginning of that and so I because

of my success, I got a job in Miami working for them. Then the internet bubble burst. We got taken over by Credit Suisse versus Boston, not just Credit Suisse, biggest investment firm in the world at the time. And the problem was... This is the firm in

Miami. Yeah, okay. But they're out of Switzerland. And then because the internet thing cratered, I only had six customers. They all were the same guy, essentially. Founder CEO of a startup internet company. So this is 2002?

This is 96, 97, 98. Okay. And so I'm going around making money, hand over fist. I would find somebody that was either a founder, CEO, and they would get six million shares of that company. When you start a company and you go public and you're a control person. Right. Okay, you can't sell those shares.

So the stock was given to them at no cost. It opens up at $15, out of the IPO. The next day it goes to $100. Right. So now they got $60 million. Right. More than that, $600. But they can't, but DLJ had a special program.

We're going to loan you up to 35%. With an unwritten quid pro quo, you can take that, you know, we're going to give you, say, 50 million bucks, you're going to take that money, do whatever the hell you want with it, but you're going to leave at least 10 million behind for Bob to spin around and make money on. Okay. And it's six guys like that. And in 1997, 98, 99, my best friend had a private jet.

We're jetting all over the world. We're making money hand over fist. It was crazy living in Miami on the, on the ocean. May 9th, 2000 is the peak of NASDAQ, 5,000. And from that day, for the next four years. The bubble burst. The bubble burst and just slowly. So here's what happens.

It's $100 stock on May 9th. That summer, it's down to 50 bucks. Well, yeah, so it's cut in half. but hey I still got you know 300 million I still have an outstanding balance I can't sell the stock I'm not worried but then the stock starts going to 30 to 20 to 15 now all of a sudden the loan value is equal to the stock value still can't sell it then the stock goes down now the stock's at five dollars as soon as the stock hits five bucks it's no longer a marginal security New York stock exchange rules, and we sell them out into a market that's already declining, that $5

share gets sold for $2. So he owes his $50 million. We sell his $6 million shares for $2. He owes us $38 million. Call it in, pal. Well, he's got a, you know, a mansion he's building that he can't sell. He's got a plane. He's got a Ferrari, and he's got a stripper girlfriend with big tits, none of which he can monetize. Yeah, I was going to say. And so I had six guys like that. So it's never their fault. When you lose $60 million, it's never your fault. And in the brokerage business, you sign saying that if there's a disagreement, we're going to go to arbitration, binding.

And I spent, so all my customers basically went bankrupt. DLJ, well, at this point, Credit Suisse, and I also had taken these shares as payments and borrowed against them. So, my commission, I got commissions where I'd get 50,000 shares, and I had $25 million worth of restricted stock, but I had an $8 million loan against them that I turned around and blew on the Internet stocks that crashed. So I was upside down about $12 million. Credit Suisse says, good news and bad news, Bob, you're fired.

The $12 million bucks, we're wiping it away. Oh, meet Mr. Kushner. He's your new lawyer. He's a $500 an hour He's going to defend you and all Because of course everybody You know sued It's not their fault

It's your fault Yeah so we're going to arbitration It took three and a half years For these six things to play out We won them all Because we didn't do anything wrong Right And they flew me around first class

Put me up at the Mandarin Or the Four Seasons Paid this $500 an hour lawyer Forgave my $12 million But I went from the White House To the outhouse I had no money And I also had a

you know, I've been indulging in things I maybe shouldn't have. And so I'm a mess. Right. And if it hadn't been from my parents, I'd have been homeless. That's when I moved. That is all the way down, right? Yeah. And so, you know, I would have been on the street.

So my mom and dad were successful. And they, you know, let me move into the family house. My other brothers and sisters are all very successful. And there's Bob. And it took a couple of years. And I got into one of my customers, at Credit Suisse was the largest work for a company at Amsterdam that was the Almsmere auction house where 70% of the world's cut flowers went through every day. And so I was going to

Amsterdam for two weeks every 10 weeks. And I met these guys who started internet. And did you see the movie? Did you see the movie, Middleman? No. It's about the guys that started internet. So these guys were Dutch. They owned the Casarosa, which is the largest live, oldest live sex show theater in the world. Been there for 100 years. They owned the Banana Bar in Amsterdam and other, you know, you go in people having sex. They owned Windows. They had all these actors and actresses that worked for them.

And another friend of mine from Gainesville was a computer guy. And this is going to realize in the early 90s, said, you know, you could set up a camera and you could start filming these. And they started with Python video. And back in those days, people paid for money. And they got out right before the bubble burst, before it became free. And then they bought a company called Party Poker, which was the largest online poker thing. So when everything cratered, after a couple of years, I started a company doing credit card processing for gambling sites and market market market market market market. it's because it was really difficult.

So the guy in the movie, middleman, that's the premise of the movie. It's like the guys aren't making the money. It's the guy that's doing the credit card processing. He's the one made. And then, of course, he also has the additives and of just saying, we're just processing. Like, I don't have nothing to do with it.

We're just processing the payments. And here's the scam. You've got to see that movie. I'm going to send you that movie. Here's the scam. It's a good one. When the Internet started, okay? And the first.

Commerce. How do you pay? Credit cards. It's all new. We've never done this before. MasterCard and Visa US came out and said, we're going to allow people to do online credit cards. But when you go to a restaurant or a store and you present what's called an in-person credit card transaction, the credit card company takes all the risk. So if I steal a credit card, I go somewhere and charge up a bunch of stuff, an in-person transaction, I signed the MasterCard visa takes care of the risk. They give you your money back. Okay. They said, but for online stuff, the merchant's taking all the risk. So you can't have more than one or two percent chargebacks. Yeah.

Well, people knew that they could watch for six months, call up and say, I never did that. And they reverse the charge. And they charged back. Same thing with gambling. And so there was an arbitrage because you've got the U.S. MasterCard visa saying no to gambling. Sorry. But MasterCard Visa International said yes. And so from my credit suite days, I had connections with offshore banks.

So I got a partner who knew credit cards. And we had a merchant account on offshore banks. And we were processing credit cards for mostly gambling sites because it was. easier. And we had systems set up. So when somebody charged back once, they were put into a no, no longer, not only would we no longer process their charges, but nothing from that house. Because a lot of times they would have roommates. And their roommate would use a card, blah, blah, blah. So anything, any credit cards that went to that address or these cards. And we were fairly successful. And we were growing. We had an office in San Jose, Costa Rica.

We were making money hand over fist. And then in 2006, December, an innocuous bill comes before Congress. The idiot from the junior senator from Arizona, Kyle, K-Y-L, attaches it to an innocuous spending bill, a writer, that made what we were doing against federal law. And so I had just blown up a few years before. And now all of a sudden, it blew up again. And I was left with nothing. So just like that, one day you had to just stop. Yeah, or go to federal prison.

Because what they did was, the feds are smart. There was a company called Bet on Sports that was on the London Stock Exchange. They were the biggest sports book in the world out of Costa Rica, legal in London. Gambling's legal. When they passed that law, his name was David something. You can Google it. He was flying from London. London to Miami, Miami to San Jose.

When he landed in Lunt and in Miami, they got on the plane, they took him off, and they threw him in a hit. Do away the key, 20 years. Because he was the biggest. And when you do that to the biggest guy, what do the other guys do? Yeah, they get scared. They get scared. They can do it to him.

And so we're not, you know, I'm not going to go to prison. So we shut it down. Hey, real quick, just wanted to let you guys know that we're looking for guests for the podcast. If you think you'd be a good guest, you know somebody. do me a favor you can fill out the form the link is in our description box or you can just email me directly email is in the description box so back to the video so now it's you know 2000s and i had made enough money to where i went a couple of years without working and i was depressed right and you know it's like my whole life everything i ever did blew up that's what it seemed like

anyway and then the laws in california started to relax they started to allow dispensaries and In 1996, they passed that law that basically said dispensaries were legal with a medical card. Right. And so basically, the risk had gotten less. The prices were the same. And so I was down to my last $10,000. And this is 2009, say, 2008, 2009. I go out to California.

Is it still just medical? Yeah, still medical. I bought three and a half pounds. It's all I could afford. were 30, between 3,000 and 3,500 a piece. I brought him back to Austin, Texas, to see if I could sell them fast enough to where I could live off the profits and reinvest. And then so I did it the first time.

I went back and I got six the next time. And then I went back the next time and I got 12. And I was going through the same two growers. And then I went back the fourth time and I said, all right, I'm going to buy 20. You're going to front me 20. And I started leveraging that. And then I figured out ingenious ways to get it back. And then I met somebody who wanted to buy more that I could produce.

What's a way to get it back? Well, there's a couple of them. I would buy 1970s and 80s Volvo station wagons. In the back seat, the station wagon popped up and faced backwards. Right. Underneath that seat was a spare tire. And you take out the spare tire and all the stuff around it, and it's a round circular storage area. I had a friend who would cut that out and put in a square surface storage facility, and I could put about 80 pounds in it.

And so I would drive them out to California, load them up, ship them back to a friend of mine at a hotel in San Antonio, big hotel, huge convention center. And people were shipping cars and stuff to them all the time. And so I paid him. And so, hey, if anything comes, if anybody pays attention to this car, just call me, I won't come pick it up. Right. And so that's what we were getting. And then I met a guy who's, you know, that I still know, that wanted more than I was bringing back. And so I said, I got to go get a house.

So in 2010, I got an apartment in San Francisco on the ocean, three-bedroom, two-bath, its own garage. And we just, and then another buddy of mine, the three of us would go out once a month. They'd each buy 200 pounds. I'd buy 100. And we used this apartment. My wife used to call it the hideout because it was three beds and a bunch of tables and sealers. And we'd bring back the 500 pounds and seal it, seal it, triple seal it. And then we had a, I don't really want to go into how we got, how we mailed them back.

But we had a really ingenious way because the guy's still, you know. But we had a foolproof way to get it back. In fact, one time we shipped 20 boxes. that had about 15 pounds each. So it's a lot of, you know, a lot of work. Right. And it was over Christmas. And the way it worked is, even though you're ascending at UPS, it was actually going by rail.

They would load, because they were going ground. So they'd load these things on a train, and it would go from San Francisco to L.A. to Texas. Well, somewhere in Arizona, the train derailed. And so when you go check the tracking. Oh, the train derailed. So we run it off. Well, six weeks later, they show up, banged up, holes inside, showed up, nothing was missing. I mean, this is...

I'd have been terrified. You'd go near them. I'm afraid to start opening them up, and there'd be a tracking device or something. Yeah, it was, but, you know, so it was just the... And then the laws kept changing, and then, you know, they got looser and looser and looser, and then recreational came to Oregon, to Colorado. to Washington State, to California, and the danger, danger kept getting less and less, and the prices didn't fall as much. So there was still a real premium in the product.

Well, eventually, because there is no more risk premium, that it just became a regular product. So if you cost you $200 to grow, you've got to sell it for $400. Right. And that's where the prices went to, and people went out of business, went bankrupt. You know, it was a boom bus cycle. And I was lucky enough to be smart enough to, you know, hold on and during the bad times and participated when the boom happened. And so I've been, you know, I had the largest permitted, the first multi-acre permitted farm in California. So, I mean, at what point did you decide that you were going to get it permitted?

I mean, you just saw it coming. Yeah, we saw it coming. You got to get a lawyer. I mean, how did that? Oh, yeah. And I had a billionaire partner from my credit suite. I had another guy with $400 million who was a bipolar lunatic, and then I had a buddy of mine that I knew who went to college with my sister, who was worth $40 million, and that I was the little peon, but the farm was one of my farms that I was supporting through the whole time, growing 99 plants legally, but it was the most incredible farm you've ever seen. I mean, the product was amazing.

and the opportunity to buy the land around this farm just happened to pop up because it was all owned by the same family for 150 years. And then the head guy died and the kids just wanted the money. And so we bought $3.5 million for the farm property. And just by the way Humboldt County wrote the law, we had many parcels, five acre parcels. And so we just somehow qualified for eight acres instead of one. And so we were the only one that got multiple acres that year. And so we grew 20,000 pounds We threw half of it away because we couldn't trim it

We couldn't store it We didn't realize how much, you know And again, first couple of years Money, hand over fist And then the guys run on it We clashed And the guy that ran it Used his brother

The lawyer, idiot lawyer To draw up the operating agreement And he fucked it up He made, gave me all the power Because the four of us The billionaire 400 million, 40 million, Bob with 30 cents. No decisions could be made without unanimous consent.

We couldn't bring another person in to invest. We couldn't spend more than $10,000. And so we needed unanimous for all four of us. And we didn't like each other, and they wanted me out. And so they wanted to give me a million bucks. And I said, no, I want $2 million. And they said, go fuck yourself. I said, fine.

I was allowed to put whoever I wanted on the board to replace me so I put a bulldog lawyer I knew from college and he started making their life a hell so two months later two million dollar check in the mail and then I used that to go to Oregon and start CBD I got into CBD when it was you know just starting and that went boom and bust I had a friend who went to oh gosh

Colorado and bought up huge warehouse and started growing and he couldn't make it work. I mean, they tried for like two years. He just, he was just, he was like, it's just too difficult, you know. And of course, he hired a guy that knew how to grow and he was going to do it all. He didn't want to use any pesticides or use any, he all had to be organic. He's like, but he didn't really know what he was doing. He was, which is great, but he goes, he didn't know what he was doing.

He's like, we had like multiple failed crops or that's the most common. failure is that these guys have the money. They buy the infrastructure. But no one's ever grown in that scale before. So they get some guy that had four lights in his garage to think that he could go have a 500 light facility and manage people in the process. My buddy, too, the problem with him is he's one of those guys who wants to go build a website. And this happened when I was, you know, read, well, a few years ago, you know, wanted to build a little website. He's like, yeah, I got a quote for like 3,500 bucks. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I mean, that's a little website. Like what you want, you want to be able to take, you know,

you want to be able to take credit cards. You want to be able to do. There's all this interactive. You want everything. That's probably what's going to cost. And he's like, oh, people do for two, three hundred bucks. And I'm like, yeah, but those are like, cookie cutter websites. You have a specific thing you wanted to do. You wanted to work also with the software at your, at your, at your, you know, at the, it was at a gym. And he's like, you don't know anybody. I'm like, I just got out of prison. I don't know anybody. But I'm like, but I'm like, That sounds about right. Like, and I, you know, so called around, got a couple of quotes.

They're all like $3,500, $4,000, whatever. So find somebody who says they're going to do it for, they can do it for $500. Pays the $500. Never even gets close to being done. Then somebody else who does websites, goes to the gym. And the kid mine drags them for three or four months until they realize. So now he goes to the guy that said he can do it. He wants $1,500.

He's like, what, $5. Oh, no, it's going to be at least this much. Oh, yeah, yeah, I can do it. Pays him $1,500. That guy actually just disappears. Stop's going to the gym. He's like, I know he's good because he comes in here every other day. Like, for $1,500, you think he's, you know, you don't think he'll switch gyms.

LA Fitness is only two blocks away. So he drags him for about two months. I got another project. I'm almost there. I'm going to do it. I'm going to start, you know, give me this, give me that. And then so two months later, boom, the guy just stops coming in, stops returning his calls. Oh, my God.

Then he pays, he paid someone. No, no, wait. he paid someone else, gave him, like, so much up front. So now he's into this for, by the way, he ends up being about $2,500 in before this guy realizes this guy is not going to be able to do it either. And then he ends up going back to the other people and pays $3,500 like you should have. Plus the $3,000 that he puts. Plus, by this point, it's been over a year.

So you spent over a year, still spent $35,000, plus the $3,000. And yeah, that's, and all I could think of was that was the same thing that happened in, in, uh, when he, he had gone to Colorado saying, I was like, you got a guy who was cheap, who full of confidence, but had no real experience and just, he, this one guy devastated your entire thing. Yeah. But it's because, and it's, oh, you were just trying to save a little bit of money. I get it, but, you know, and I, I do that all time. Every time I try and save a little bit of money doing something, I always regret it. It's, it's the biggest mistake. an e-commerce site is not easy right the credit card processing how do you handle returns you know

how do you camp inventory how do you do the accounting you know it's it's complicated i mean 35 i mean you know we've we've spent a lot we've spent 25 yeah you know i mean it's it's hard and you got to hire professionals yeah that sucks because i built some well i built a bunch of websites like all the little websites i have right now i you know i built with somebody you know but they're all like goadad and they're all I'm sorry they're all like wicks way like you know you build them and then you go to go daddy buy the things like they're cookie cutter if you're not doing heavy transactions it's fine you can do that but not not to sell stuff now suddenly you want oh we need to take credit cards we need to do that okay now you stop we

can't do all that's too much and the other thing is if you're going to have any commerce site god forbid you start getting real traffic you have to be set up for real the go daddy things Because if you've got a thousand people came at once, it'd blow up. Yeah, it crashed. You've got to have, you know, that's got to be built into it. So. So that's what you're doing now? So I got Trapp House, which is a brand of super high-end indoor, what they call

THCA Hemp. We've got a couple other brands called Red Dragon and Minotaur, which are a little bit less quality, outdoor, light-depth stuff. So everything from $20 an eighth to $60 an eighth. And we're going to sell pre-rolls. blunts, but just flower. Who's coming up with these names? Trapp house we kind of stole.

It's a, it's an urban word for, where you know what trap houses. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking minotaur, dragon. Yeah. Is this something that you guys should, like, sit around on things? Like, I'm going, what do you think? Dragon? No, definitely dragon.

Yeah, that's the way. Well, so we were talking to a friend of ours who was in this business and he said, you know, I've got this brand called Red Dragon I'm not using. You want it? I'm like, yeah, because he had the logos. It was kind of ready to rock and roll And then we needed another one And we're sitting around the three of us

And we're kicking around names And you know, what's something? You know, because a minotaur From the mythology Is a bull's head on a man's body Yeah And of course a muscle bound man Yeah

And so that's what the logo is This you know I mean it is Most of the customers are going to be men So, you know What is what is flour Like if I ask these questions Yeah, no, no, no.

People in the, well, I'm thinking people in the comments will be like, Cox is so square. Like, you know, like, I've never smoked pot. So what is powder? So flour. This is kind of interesting, I think. So in 2018, the only positive thing I can think of for the last president, his name I'm not going to mention, signed the 2018 farm bill.

Okay. And in that, because they were. The farm bill was written to help out the CBD industry because up until then, CBD was legal, but it wasn't legal. And you couldn't get, the banks were afraid that if they took CBD accounts, that they get shut down, even though the Fed said we weren't, remember Obama's holder was his name, the AG under Obama said, we're not going to go after, but he just said it. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. Okay, but it was still a Schedule 1 narcotic. Yeah. So there was no banking.

And so this bill was supposed to memorialize in writing at the federal level and a law so the banks can feel comfortable doing CBD business. There's only one genus and species of cannabis. People say cannabis indica or cannabis setiva or indica, but it's just cannabis setiva. It's one kind. Some have high THCA, some have high CBDA. But the one thing none of them have is THC or CBD. Those don't exist in the plant. Okay.

They exist in acid form. And so they said any cannabis setiva plant that tests under 0.3 THC is hemp. Period. End the story. Well, it turns out that there is. no THC in the plants. The problem is, is the way cannabis is tested, it's tested by a machine called an HPLC, high-pressure liquor chromatography machine. And you grind up a gram of flour, you mix it with a solvent, and the solvent depends on the machine you're using,

and then you heat it to 50 or 60C for 10 minutes. And the general thought was, Well, we're not heating it long enough or hot enough to convert the THCA to THC, but they were. So, a smarty pants in California came up with a room temperature test, but all of a sudden, everything that he tested passed. So this exotic indoor, outdoor, light depth, everything that he tested passed. So it basically leaked. And then so most people, when they hear, oh, I'm not smoking any of that THC. bud, it's thinking that it's different. It's not.

It's the same stuff. And so it's this loophole that we can now ship to 24 states, Florida being one of them. In fact, it's kind of interesting. The Senate and the House passed the bill in the state of Florida, outlawing THCA. And somehow DeSantis vetoed it. I'm sure somebody paid them off. I'm sure. So Texas, Florida, I mean...

No bias there. Yeah, no. But so basically they, you know, there's 22 states that I can ship to. No problem. And we test everything. I mean, everything has a test. And because of there really is no THC in these plants and people always thought that there was, but everything exists in the plant in acid form, CBDA, THCA, CBG,

A. It's all an acid form and doesn't convert to what's called a neutral form, THC, heat. Decarboxylation is a fancy term for heat, essentially. So when you've got to, that's why you can take a joint and you can eat 10 joints. You don't get high. You take those 10 joints and put them in the oven for an hour and heat them up. Then you put those in brownies and eat them. You're fucked up for a month. Okay.

Because you've turned on, you've converted the THCA to THCA to T8C. So I still don't understand what flower is. Okay, so the flour is in this acid form and passes the tests. Vap pens, dabs, the stuff that you, I don't know if you know what dabs are, the concentrates. Okay. So concentrates, vape pens, most edibles have already been converted. So when they get tested, they're way over 0.3 T.HC. but the flour doesn't convert until you smoke it.

Okay, so you send the flour, then they can make brownies with it and need it? They can whatever they want with it. Okay. You know, but it's, you know, it doesn't convert until they heat it up, you know. So we're only selling flour. Okay. There are other, I mean, you go on Facebook, and my feed is filled with people shipping to all 50 states, which is a no-no, selling every product there is, which is a no-no, they just don't care. Right.

Because they're probably switching up to site. and they're probably all in Bulgaria. Yeah. And, you know, but we're going to do it the right way. We're only going to ship the states that want it. We're not going to sell any of the products that are, you know, anywhere near close to not passing. And we're going to follow the rules. And we're going to, you know, pay our taxes.

And, you know, it's kind of a, it really is interesting because even people that think they're into business have this perception that T. T.HCA is some special genetics, some special thing that somebody found that they grow, and there's no T.A. Nah, it's all the same. It's just the way the testing method has changed for the better. So they don't heat up the solvent and they keep it at room temperature so it doesn't convert. And so everything, I mean, my friend has tested tens of thousands of plants. All of them pass legitimately. I mean, I get it. So it's like precursor materials is what I'm considering it too.

Like it's like it's not meth. It's, you know, Sudafed. So I'm just giving you Sudafed. Now, if you cook it up, that's on you, but I can sell you the suit of fat. Right, yeah, right. So, and we're selling the, you know, flower smokers, people that want to smoke joints. Right. And, you know, and there's enough, you know.

And what's illegal? T-HC part of it? Yes. Is anything that's got more than 0.3 T-HC by weight? Yeah. Is illegal? He's saying like if they took those, the same product he's sending you in powder form and turned it into brownies and then tried... Then it would be illegal.

Then try to send it to you. Now it's got T-HC and now it's illegal for him to sell it to you in Florida. But with your marketing, is there any, like, gray areas or like... Sounds pretty cut and dry. Are you still able to market it as like, hey, like this is what it's going to be used for? Yeah, we want people to smoke it. We have pictures of it. We call it T.A. Hemp.

This is, you know, technically, you know, what it is. And but it's, I mean, it's the same flower that we made 20 years ago, 30 years ago, three years ago. Nothing changed. The testing changed. Yeah. And the law changed. Did you ever see, did you ever see the movie? Oh, gosh.

Lord of War? No. I almost said no before you asked, but no. He's never said. This is a good movie. It's got Nicholas Cage. But basically, it's like they are, they're shipping a helicopter to one place. And then they're shipping, they're shipping, you know, whatever, these missiles to another.

The missiles are on the helicopter. So, but you're shipping them separately. They're going the same place. As soon as they get there, we'll just take these, the missiles and stick them on the helicopters. You can't, you're not allowed to ship a. armed helicopter, but if you ship them separately, even though they're going the same place, and, you know, it's perfectly illegal. But if they put them on the helicopter and shipped them, now it's illegal.

So it's the same thing. It's like saying, hey, I can't mail you, I can mail you the, you know, the flour. And you, when you get it into Florida, now you can make it into brownies and eat it. But if I had made it into brownies and shipped it then, now it's illegal. It's just, you know, there's lots of little tiny, silly. Same thing was like if you go to the supermarket, if you were to go to the supermarket and buy, I'm going to make up something, you know, buy ammonia and then go, you know, buy ammonia and whatever, some other, you know, some other cleaning product and then go buy gasoline and mix them together and create a bomb, well, you know, you're allowed to buy ammonia, you're allowed to buy this other cleaning product, you're allowed to buy gasoline, you're allowed to ship all of that stuff. Florida and then if I you know so that's perfectly legal but if in another state I were to buy those products mix them up into the bomb and mail the bomb now that's illegal but you can mail all

the other stuff to you mix it up and it's perfect it's perfectly fine to ship those pre they're precursor kind of material now is it illegal for these people to consume or is it just illegal to sell a no they're allowed to it's because they're smoking THCA hamp that passed and it was when it was at the time that it was tested it was under point three T8 Yeah. Now, they're not allowed to make it and sell it. Like, if they got it here and they made brownies and then went sold brownies with them, they'd be in trouble. They need to be in trouble. But they're allowed to make it in their own home. But they're not to make it and say, like, they're not getting in trouble for using it. Yeah. If they're going to do it in their

own house, I'm sure it's fine. I mean, but in Florida's got medical. You can go to a dispensary in Florida and buy edibles. Yeah. You can buy vape pens. And the flower that we're selling is from small boutique farmers. So I've spent my life doing this. So my website is cannacureator.com. And I've got three brands on there, one of which I'm part of, this trap house. And so I've identified six or seven or eight farms that will put under three brands. And it's by far a higher quality and fresh than the stuff that you buy in dispensaries.

Right. And that's why the dispensary, the guys in Florida are so mad because they don't want the competition. And a CBD store doesn't have any erroneous taxes. They don't have the regulations. They don't have the licenses. They don't have all the overhead, all the problems. And so right next door to the dispensary is a CBD store that's selling better product, cheaper, with none of the overhead. And there's another problem with dispensaries is 280E.

280 is the IRS tax code. So, believe it or not, a dispensary can't write off the employees. They can't write off their expenses because they're drug dealers. The IRS has said, no, you're a drug dealer. You cannot write off anything. So there's no way to make money, which is why all of the dispensaries that you see are owned by billionaires. Because they are, no, they're going to lose money until that law passes, until they change the law. All right.

And so they're trying to get it changed right now. So they said they're going to lower from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. The whole reason for that is so they can get rid of 280E. So they're going to tax them. So the IRS, because if you make a million dollars in a business, okay? And that's, if you have to pay taxes on a million dollars, you're going to go out of business because 500 of that was employees. Right. I mean, there's no way to be profitable.

Right. And so it's just, it's just such a joke. I mean, the laws are screwed up. The, you know, the scheduling screwed up. Now we've got this T.HCA thing. I'm just basically following the letter of the law. It makes so much sense. You'd think Biden would have fixed it in the last four years.

Yeah. How long ago was this law changed? 2018. Yeah. 2018 Farm Bill. Um, I mean, I just got random questions because I don't know. anything about this. I don't either.

What exactly is CBD? So CBDA, the acid form exists in an abundance in a hemp plant. So a plant has very little CBD and a lot of THCA. Okay. Okay. So hemp has more, it's been bred to have more CBD A and less THCA. What is hemp for? Well, plants, you milk, you smoke them, right?

There's two kinds of hemp plants. You can grow hemp where for fiber and oil in a huge field with males and females together and acres and acres. And it's great in a place like Kansas, because Kansas doesn't have outdoor grows. The problem in Oregon and California has always been. The mindset, oh, hemp, males and females together, seeds. I got this huge outdoor grow that I legal. And if my next door neighbor is growing hemp and it's seeds, he's going to seed my whole crop and it's worth nothing.

So there's the oil fiber type where there's seeds, there's males and females that produce pollen and we'll seed a crop. The stuff in Oregon is females only. What do you mean by males and females on the plants? Well, the female plant has males and females. So you only smoke the female. The males are killed. No idea.

Yeah, exactly. Never took a horticulture class. Never, I don't know anything about. Yeah, so it's interesting. So in today's world, it grows don't buy seeds. They buy clones. So somebody has a big plant of something that everyone likes. They take cuttings from it, and then they root those, and those go into ground, and they're all

identical to the mom. Seeds have way too much pheno variety, variability. The phenote, I mean, you can take the seeds from one type of plant, say, Blue Dream. You've got a Blue Dream. You've got 100 seeds. You grow those 100 seeds. You kill all the males. You can identify them when they're about six weeks old.

And now you've got an acre of just female. blue dream plants. But there's going to be a variety. The phenotypes, there's going to be some shorter ones, some purple ones, some, you know, it's, it's hard to grow a consistent crop. So people find clones that go into the business are producing identical plants. What exactly is the difference between CBD and THC? Well, THC is, has a psychoactive property. CBD and CBDA and all of the other regular cannabinoids do not have the psychoactive properties. And then he really, and then do other things, but they don't

get you high. Okay. CBD is great topically. You can put it on a cream and if you've got a sore shoulder or elbow, it'll relieve that. Oh, yeah. Okay. My, like I say, my mom had that, you know, for stuff, like for your back or she had achy, her hand. They put it on your hands. Real medicine is in the acid form, CBDA. And I have a lab that we, in 2018 and 19, we produced high CBDA oil that we removed the THC from. And it works incredibly well.

And there are actually tests done by the British Journal of Pharmacology and real testing facilities that tested CBDA from 2010 on. and it relieves internal inflammation, so not a broken wrist, but your organs, an inflamed prostate, an inflamed intestines, Crohn's disease, enlarged prostate. Listen, my roommate has Crohn's disease. He's got, he's got, he's got, he needs something. He needs something. All right, so here's the thing. He's, matter of fact, his stomachs all the way.

I always joke he's got a pot belly, but he doesn't have, I mean, he does have a pot belly, but it's because of the chrome. the Crohn's. It also is an immune boost. Now, there's kind of a problem. And God sometimes is the biggest joker in the world. When you take any, there's 150 cannabinoids, THC, THC, THC, CBD, CBD, CBGA, there's a hundred of them. If you eat them, it goes through your stomach and into your liver. Mouth, stomach, liver is called first-past digestion. God, as a joke to all humans, has the liver takes every single cannabinoid

and converts it to an innocuous metabolite that has no effect on the body except for one. THC. It takes THC, so when you cook brownies and you eat the THC that's been decarboxylated, your liver takes that T-8C molecule, converts it to 11 hydroxy metabolite that's 50 times more potent, which is why when people eat cannabis, they're 12 hours or they're in the emergency room where they freak out and they have your problems. All the other CBDA, all of them, it converts to useless metabolites. So we've got this oil that we know works internally.

How do we get it in the body? Right. Well, unfortunately, into poop chute. So we made suppositories. Well, how? Like, he can take care of that himself. Well, if you can do it, it's a one-man operation for a girl. But here's the problem is that, and we're the first people to do this, there's a trip V1 response.

A trip V1 receptor is sometimes called the capsaicin receptor. Capsacin is the active ingredient in hot peppers. So when you eat a hot pepper, chew, chew, chew, the receptors are in your mouth that fires off. It's spicy. The next day, when you poop it out, those same receptors were in your butt, and you can feel the hot stuff going out your butt, right? When you eat hot spicy food? You've had that happen? I don't eat hot spicy.

Well, I believe you, though. I've heard, I've heard all the jokes and the... So, it burns going... So CBDA is the only cannabinoid that we found that has an incredible... affidavable affinity for the strip 3-1 receptor so first of all getting somebody to put something in your ass is hard okay this is this is a barrier i've had a few so now you've got girlfriends have that talk with me it's not that happening so now you've convinced somebody because they're hurting they've got Crohn's they've got a large prostate they've got problems all right i'll give it a

world and then as soon as you put it in it burns not like oh my god i'm going to die but i'm not ready for that. Right. Okay. And so if that was the only problem, we would have probably been successful. But then there's a 5HT1A response. A 5HT1A receptors are in your brain and also in your butt. They do a lot of things.

One of the things, it's a muscle relaxer. So when you put it up your butt, not only do you get a woo-hoo, but you poop immediately. Most people don't realize that. Oh, I don't have to poop now Well, let's realize Poop is sitting there for hours You don't know it You don't feel it

You don't know it's there But it's there So when you put this up your butt You poop So now you pooped out The dispositori That we tried to get you to do And then the second thing

So the next overcoming That objection was Okay now you've cleared your colon Now you do another one And it's just got to be too much people We were in seven doctor offices in Oregon and we had great results, but it was just too much.

So then we, and of course I got enough oil to make three million suppositories. We started making enteric capsules. An interic coating around the oil will not dissolve in the stomach. It's pH-based. So your stomach is a one-to-one-and-a-half pH, very acidic. This capsule will only dissolve at 5 pH. So it goes through your stomach, it gets into your small intubes, intestine where it's at three won't dissolve there. It works its way down to the large intestine

into your colon and dissolves. And we've only made these, which are called two piece and tera capsules we make by hand, but to do it, to go to market, we'd have to get a one piece made by a nutraceutical or pharmaceutical company. And we're not quite there yet. So when we go live with Trap House and Cannock Curator, we're going to put on the suppositories strictly for constipation because they work every single time. And it's 100% organic. It's 100% cannabinoid oil without THC in it. And man, you mean, that's the, so we're going to take what it's good for and sell it for that. And so when you can't poop, trust me, instant relief is worth it. And we're putting 100 milligrams of high CBDA oil in a suppository.

Our competitors are using CBD, which doesn't have this effect. And they're only putting 10 milligrams in. It doesn't work. It just doesn't. Ours are going to work. So I think we'll find a market for people that – and a lot of people have medicines or diseases or just that's the way their intestines are built where they have a hard time pooping. Well, I mean, if you get the other thing, the Crohn's thing to work, I'm willing to volunteer my, my, uh...

Well, he has to realize he's going to poop out the first one, and then he's going to have to immediately put another one in that'll stay. And then for three days, he's going to do three a day. I'm... All right. And I'll give it to him for free. All right. We got it. I got you.

I got you a guinea pig. Yeah. And then when we get eventually down the road, we'll be able to do the entire capital. but it's just another, you know, $100,000 we don't have right now to, you know, because we've got to find a nutraceutical company. And the one that we like has a minimum order of $200,000. Why does it have to be one capsule? I mean, why does it have to be one coating?

Why can't you just make them in capsules? Well, because the two piece is sometimes they come apart. Right. And if it comes apart in the stomach, you have a, Psychotropic effect. Now, they're psychoactive, which is, you're, whoa, wow, colors, I'm stoned. And psychotropic effect is coffee. One cup of coffee and you're good.

But let's just say you drank 10 of those. And I'm exaggerating for effect. Yeah. You get all jittery. That's a psychotropic effect. So if one of these 100 milligram capsules, the two piece are not really, you know, you don't put things in there that could cause problems in the stomach. Because if they come apart, you're going to get a jittery, psychotropic effect. It's not pleasant. So we really have to go with the pharmaceutical or

the nutraceutical one. I'm more of a risk taker. I mean, when you're going to get a phone call? Yeah. I mean, I've got maybe a lawsuit. We're making enough money. We can handle the lawsuits. Well, exactly. Lawsuits are good. That's great publicity. I mean, people don't sue people will have money. Okay. Being sued is a sign you made it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

These are, it's like I, you listen to guys who complain about having to pay taxes and having to tax shelters. Like if your problem is hiding your money from the IRS, like that's a problem I want to have. Me too. That's how much money you have. You're looking for tax shelters. You don't have problems.

No, you need a good accountant, a good CPA, good lawyer, and you're done. But so I've got some of these capsules that we made. And we haven't had a lot of people that had this happen, but it has happened. but it's just not something we're going to go to market with a two-piece. We're going to go to market with a one-piece, and we'll do that next year. But I really think that these suppositories are, I mean, because they work. I mean, that's the one thing you can count on where you put, if you're constipated, or even if you're not, if you got poop, what they call poop on deck,

and it's, you know, you don't know that it's there, you put this baby in. You better be close to the bathroom. It's coming, baby. I mean, if you need somebody to check this out, I'm willing to volunteer Colby. Hey, sorry to interrupt the video. Just want to let you guys know that we're going to have an extra 15 or 20 minutes of content on my Patreon. It's $10 a month for about an hour's worth of extra content every single week. Back to the podcast.

What is the life cycle of a plant and like how much product can one plant produce? Oh, God, that's a great question. All right. So here's the cool thing, is it's a business decision to the power of X. Every strain is different. So there are early blooming strains and long blooming strains. Our sweet spot is 60 days. When we put a plant into a flower room, in 60 days, it's got to get harvested.

But that's our optimal. But there are some strains that are really popular, that are really amazing, that takes 70. Right. And it's just, you know, and some take 55. And you've got to figure out, time is money. And so how many times can I turn this room a year? Bottom line. Right.

And so we've got to, you know, juggle, you know, so we've got seven flower rooms. And we've got two smaller ones that are 12 lighters that we put the plants that are 70 days or 68 days. or 72 days, the longer ones. But the big rooms, we've got to get in and out every 60 days. And we've, over the four and a half years, we've been in this spot working together, we've identified, you know, six or seven strains that are amazing to look at, amazing to smell, amazing taste, and work amazing. And, you know, we know that we can, you know, get four or five or six turns a year.

And then we've got the two smaller rooms that are growing incredibly exotic. and we deal with the extra days because we sell those for more. What is the difference between synthetic and natural? There's no such thing as synthetic. So organic sungrown is outside. God provides the light, the CO2, the soil nutrients. I mean, you add something to that. But those plants don't look, smell, or taste like the stuff that's exotic.

And so those are $20 aides. indoor plants, we use the same chemical, the same chemicals that the manure has in it. But we use calcium and nitrogen and phosphorus that we just buy that are made for hydroponic growing. So it's not synthetic. It's the same exact chemical makeup. It's just that we're buying them in chemical form and putting them in water and then putting them to the plants.

You asked another question about, we have a metric, two and a half pounds per light. So that's another thing. When we grow something, let's just say it's, you know, fits the 60 days. It looks amazing, but it only yielded 1.5 pounds of light. We've got to throw that one away. Okay. We have to have at least two and a half pounds per light to make it profitable. Okay.

Because we have, you know, we have only so many turns, so many days. And so we've got to get, you know, two and a half pounds of light. what does exotic mean like what are you doing to like are you treating the plant the plant differently or what what makes a plant exotic the exotic indoor is grown in an environment that doesn't exist in nature you can't control the weather you can't control really the soil the soil is the soil. Even if you truck in soil, I mean, you know, it's, you hope that you've done a good job, but we feed. Some plants get fed 20 times a day, but just for a minute. Because we grow hydroponic, which means it's in a, it's in a cube that's basically has no nutrients in it. And so we just send

nutrients into these cubes and that runs off and we measure the runoff. We measure what's coming out of them. So we know that, you know, to adjust the pH or we adjust the recipe. And, but we're creating an environment that doesn't exist in nature because we're raising the, the CO2 where we have the temperature and the humidity at levels that you just can't find. So basically it has a different, each strain has a different type of an effect on you. You know, some might make you feel whatever woozy. Some might a little bit, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like you have, certain types of coffee that you like you know what I mean or a certain type of like oh I don't like this or some people like spicy food some people don't you know yeah you can't get the exotic look

smell and taste that we get outdoors or even in a greenhouse it really has to be you have to control every aspect and there's a blessing and a curse to that because if you screw it up or god forbid the power goes off or somebody makes a mistake or a humidifier goes out or one of the employees does something stupid, you know, you lose 10 weeks into a room and you lose it. I mean, that's painful. So it's hard. And it keeps the riffraff out.

I mean, you would, I mean, it's there. And the other thing is you've got big competitors. Jungle Boys is a big competitor. Backpack Boys. They're growing, you know, 3,000 light facilities. Well, when you grow that big, it's like anything. Ford makes more cars in one day than Ferrari makes in two years. Right.

Right? So we have a 300 light facility, boutique, exotic, hands-on. I mean, we're looking at, I mean, it's, when you grow, you know, it's just a, you can't be all things to all people. You can't have 3,000 lights and think that you're going to have the same type of quality that we do. But you can have a lot more of it. And these brands are big, and they're selling to hundreds of stores. And, you know, so we're not going to do that. What are some common misconception about those products that maybe aren't true?

All right. So this is one that I'm kind of passionate about. People will have a strain. It doesn't matter what it's called. And, oh, that's an upy. I want an upy high. Or I want couch walk. Or I want trippy.

I want, you know. But here's the thing. It's just like I had a girlfriend. in college. That was the nicest girl. One drink. Maniac. Right.

Well, that doesn't mean all humans do one drink. I'm Irish. I can drink 10 drinks. You don't know I've had one. Right. So the effect, I brought a joint, just I don't know if you guys smoked or not, but I could smoke it and I could get real trippy-dippy-dippy

and see colors and lines going and start, you know, really thinking about really. cool Grateful Dead shows I went to as a kid. You could smoke it and you could be knocked out. So it's every individual is different. You've got to figure that out for yourself. So you've got to buy a couple of different strains. You have a variety pack?

Buy a variety pack, yes. Do you? Really? Oh, no. We're going to have a thing. If you spend more than $100, you get a discount. So buy an eighth of this, an eighth of that, an eighth of this. Okay.

And once you find a strain that has the effect that you're looking for, Whether it be couch lock or whether it be an up high, you know, a mellow high, oh my God, I'm going to die. Whatever it is, that's individual. It's not written across the board. So there's no such thing is, oh, this is a couch lock strain. Well, for some people it might be, but for some people, it might give them energy. Right. So it's just like everything else in life, everybody's got a different metabolism.

Going back to your crime days, I guess we're smuggling days earlier, did you ever get caught busted? I never got busted, but I had some pretty close calls. I mean, I got pulled over a number of times with a trunk full of weight. So this is in the 80s. We bought the first diesel Jettas that came out, 1983. And the diesel jetta had a small car, big trunk. And the diesel got 50 miles a gallon. And we were driving these things all over the country.

I drove from Gainesville, Florida to Jacksonville. I picked up 200 pounds, put it in the trunk. I'm coming back to Gainesville. I'm on 26 between Melrose and Gainesville and the thing dies. It was like a three-week-old car. And obviously, before cell phones, it was hot. It was the summertime. I get out of the car.

I see a gas station. I walk to the gas station. I call my friend. Hey, man, I'm broken down. You know, you've got to come get me. So I go back to the car, put the hood up, and I'm sitting in the car. I got the windows down, it's hot as shit. State Trooper pulls up behind me, comes up to the window, wants to chat.

And then he said, what's wrong with the car? I said, it's a diesel, man. And so we both go around and we're looking at this diesel. And he goes, I don't know what any of this stuff does. And then he kind of just wants to talk. And so I'm chatting with them I'm trying to get them to go And so I just walk back into the car

I'm sitting in the car Literally with my leg out the window And he's standing above me Talking to me And I'm looking this way As cars are coming from Gainesville And all of a sudden I see my friend

He keeps on going Keeps on going Two seconds later The guy leaves I have no way of calling him Right I got this 83. And I sat there for two more hours.

And my friend, you know, waited two hours. And now it's still the middle of the day. He backs up his car to my car. We open the trunks and we transfer into daylight 200 pounds into his car. And we take off and go back to Gainesville. Jeez. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor.

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