Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How I Survived America's Prison | Former Gang Leader

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

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How do the most successful women do it? We ask them on how she does it with Karen Feinerman. You'll get insights from leaders like today's Jenna Bush Hager. There's a lot I say no to. And I think it's a really important word for women to use. Rachel Weber of Paris Hilton's 1111 media. I'm going to be a much better leader. I'm going to bring more creativity if I have other things filling my life.

And more. That's how she does it with me, Karen Feinerman. wherever you get your podcasts. Pelican Bay was considered the worst of the worst. They gave me the keys to the yard. Seven inmates got murdered by the correctional officers. I've never mentioned this on these other interviews I've done. I'm tired of hiding it.

After high school, I didn't really have a lot of direction. And unfortunately, I started going right down the path of, like, committing more serious crimes, like armed robberies. Well, I mean, are these other kids in that? Like, are you a part of a gang? Like, I think of California and I think of gang. Like, is it that you're a part of a gang or you're just hanging out with, like, like other kind of bugs. Yeah, so San Francisco is interesting, right?

So I think the whole gang culture is very big in L.A., right? You think of a gang culture and you think of L.A. San Francisco, the Bay Area, although there's little pockets where there's gangs, remember, this is the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up in San Francisco, there weren't many street gangs during my era, especially like Mexican street gangs, right? Mexican-American street gangs or Latino street gangs, right? But for me, I had friends that I grew up with.

You know, we're always out partying. We're getting in street fights. We're getting in brawls. That was the kind of crowd I was with. And so I had these friends. We're like, you know what? We're not working. None of us had a job.

And we're like, well, how can we make some money? And I hooked up with a couple of my friends. And the next thing, you know, we went on a string of doing all these home invasion robberies. So pretty much the entire summer of 1992, I was 19 years old. We did this whole string of home invasion robberies from like June all the way up until September when we got caught. Can you explain like how the basic robbery is, the robberies are happening?

You know, you said robberies. Like, I mean, we're talking about three guys with guns kicking in the front door of a house? Or are we talking about jewelry stores? It's a smash and grab. Like, what's the average? I know they're all different, I'm sure, but what's the average robbery? So are the robberies we were doing? So I was basically like the muscle, right?

I had the gun. I had a 380 that I'd borrowed from another friend. And my two partners, one would be literally tying up everybody in the house. And the third friend would be ransack in the house. How do you know what houses? So because during this time, remember, this is San Francisco, like in the early 90s. San Francisco has a very big, like, Asian, Chinese community. And during that time, the ammo was a lot of home invasion robberies were going on.

during that time. Like, that was, that was a thing in that era. So my friends who were Asian, they're like, you know what, we're going to hit these different Chinese houses or Asian houses. So we would literally, like, for example, one of the ones we did, we would drive around early in the morning, like on a Friday, right? Or when I say early in the morning, it's like eight or nine o'clock, right? So eight or nine o'clock, people are leaving their garages. The garage doors are open. we might drive in a neighborhood and see somebody in front of their home with their car, the garage is open. We would literally walk up to somebody who's like standing in front of their home.

I would put the gun on them and tell them to get into the garage. We would kind of scoot them into the garage, close the garage door, and go in their house that way. Okay. So that's the kind of stuff we were doing. We did kind of barge our way through on a couple of occasions on different robberies where we like push the doors open. But I think the easiest way to kind of get into a home during those years was just to catch somebody in their garage, the garage door open or maybe in front of their home and just kind of put the gun on them and take them upstairs. So that's what we were doing.

And then your, you're, you're to Code of fitness. They run up in the house. They run through the house, tie everybody up. Yeah. So initially when you go in the house, right, you want obviously from a security standpoint, there might be somebody in another room. There might be somebody in the bathroom, right? And we've caught people like in bathtubs and shit like that, right? You might catch somebody in the bathroom.

You might catch somebody in another bedroom. The first thing you do when you go into these homes is really is to make sure you get everybody in one room if there's more than one person in the house, right? Get everybody together, lay everybody down. My other partner would be zip tying people. He had zip ties. Zip tie everybody.

Make sure we have everybody secure in a room. I would stand there the whole time with the gun, watching them, making sure they're not trying to do anything, while my other friend is literally looking for valuables, looking for cash, looking for jewelry, looking for watches, that's the type of stuff we're looking for. Yeah, the zip tying makes it seem way more serious.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, you know, saying robbery, robbery is one thing that the zip moving people. That's like, I take it. These are, that's like serious. Those are serious charges. Yeah.

Not the robbery is not serious. But in general, it's different than running into a 7-11 and saying, give me the cat. Yeah. It's so quick, but when you actually move, people don't realize when you move as someone, or even instruct someone, even in a bank robbery, like if you tell a teller, get back, get over there, get over there, oh, man, that's it. Like that you just got hit with him. Yeah. And that's so much more serious. Yeah. So when we finally did get busted and they hit us with the indictment, we had kidnapped charges, we had false imprisonment, we had armed robbery, burglary, interrupting phone lines,

assault, gun charges, like everything racked up. You know what I mean? Do you realize when you're doing it? No. I mean, I'm a 19-year-old kid. I've never been in like real serious trouble before. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But yeah, just like you were saying, like, if you move somebody 10 feet, that's kidnapped.

Yeah. If you hold somebody against their will, that's false imprisonment. And so like I said, in the commission of all of these different things I was doing, I never, never for one second thought like, you know, I'm going to get hit with all these charges. But, yeah, once you finally did get arrested and they hit us with the indictment, all of these charges racked up. And yeah, I did have like kidnap and false imprisonment charges. Yeah, I wouldn't even know that was a thing unless I'd been to prison. And I remember meeting a guy who robbed a bank.

And I remember he said, but it got me so much time was telling the teller to back up five feet or something like that. I told her, get over there, get over there. He was like, so I got hit with kidnapping. I was like, what? Yeah. And he went, yeah, yeah, I got hit with, how's that kidnapping? He said, if you instructs, and he explained it to me, I was like, holy shit. Like, that's what went from, it went from like five years, four or five years with a note.

But when he said, he gave him the note, he said, back up, get over that. Boom. You went from a five-year charge to a 15-year charge like that. Yeah. It was like, holy shit. I would never have had any idea how serious it gets. Yeah, and the whole kidnapping, right, it typically, it's like 10 feet,

or if you, God forbid, you're like moving somebody from one room to another or you're moving somebody from the garage upstairs. I mean, those are all kidnapped charges. And so we probably did a total of about seven to eight different robberies during that time. And by the time we got arrested, and we're sitting in the county jail, they hit us with like a 47 count indictment for everything that we did that summer. And from that point on,

that's where my whole prison story and so on and so forth took off. How do they grab you? I'm like, what... Yeah. So what happened was leading up to that, you know, mind you, this is a summer of 1992, right? And I'm doing these robberies literally like every Friday light clock work with my friends. and, you know, I'm flat, we're getting jewelry and we're getting, you know, different types of things during these robberies, right? So I'm 19 years old. I'm flashing jewelry to my sisters and like, hey, you want to see this jewelry? I was trying to sell a jewelry to my sisters, right? Like a dumb kid, right?

And so what happened was I was trying to sell jewelry to one of my sisters. She's like, what the hell are you doing? Where did you get that from? she went back and told my father. So as I mentioned, growing up with my dad, the whole domestic violence thing, my dad actually got arrested right around that time or a little before that time. My mom put him in jail for domestic violence. So at that point, my dad was no longer in the picture. It was just my mom living at home with, I was living with my mom, some of my sisters, but my dad was gone now. And so my dad got wind of this from my sister.

My dad was on probation. And my dad actually dropped a dime to his probation officer. Like, hey, I think my son's involved in doing some things. Whoa. And, yeah. And sure enough, you know, there weren't any leads because we were doing all these robberies the entire summer. There weren't any leads. And so when they got this, like, M.O.

of this one Mexican kid and potentially with two. Asian kids because my, my, my, my, my crimeings were two Asian kids, right, that I grew up with. That, that's not like the normal crew you would see. You know what I mean? Like, it sticks out. So, um, what happened was one of the very last robberies we did, um, on my way home, I'm sure when it was kind of a botched robbery. I'm sure the person we were trying to rob, the house we ran up in. I'm sure they got on the phone and called the cops immediately. And by the time I got home within like five minutes of me being home there was a knock on the door it was an sfpd and um i opened the door like a dumb ass you know not knowing that they can you know they probably need

they needed a search warrant i opened the door they grabbed me threw me on the ground my entire block where i grew up at in san francisco on uh fourth avenue in the richmond district um that entire block was like shut down with police right it was like a crazy scene And from that point on, I got arrested and kind of the rest is history with that situation with all the robberies we were doing. Once I got arrested, the day that I did get arrested, the cops were waiting for me at home. You know, my friends drove off, so they caught them like maybe 30 minutes later. And from that point on, you know, we were sitting in the county jail for about an entire year fighting the case. What is your lawyer say?

Yeah, so I had a court-appointed attorney. I didn't have a paid attorney. And so keep in mind, I'm a 19-year-old kid. I didn't have any record, but I have all these serious charges, right? So basically as we start getting into court and going to court, the first few months were like waving time, waving time. And it's crazy. They took us to a lineup before they indicted us, right? The reason they indicted us.

So we were all wearing, like, masks when we were doing this stuff, right? I was actually, like, wearing a beanie with holes in it, and then I'd pull it down. and we were going into these places masked up, these houses masked up, right? Clubs, everything, right? So that's why we got away with so many for so long before we got caught. And the only reason we got caught is because, once again, my dad told on me and got us busted. But basically, the reason we got indicted is because they took us to a lineup. And when you go into a lineup, I don't know if you ever been in a lineup, but you go on a big stage,

the lights are on you so you can't really see who's in the crowd too well. But when we went to this lineup, I probably seen like a crowd of at least 20 to 30 people, right? It's a lot of people. And, you know, as soon as I got into the county jail, I changed my appearance right away. I shaved my head. I had like a big head of hair, right? So as soon as I got in, I shaved my head because I wanted to like change my appearance, right? And so when we went to this lineup, you know, you're hoping somebody doesn't recognize you

or point you out. But also during a lineup, they make you talk and say things because keep in mind, when you're doing a robbery, you're yelling at somebody, hey, get on the ground, move over here, move over here. They can hear your voice. And for most people, if, you know, they're getting robbed and you're putting somebody through something that traumatic, they're going to remember possibly some of my mannerisms, my voice.

So when we went to this lineup, they picked us out, they picked me out. They picked out my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, this is when they hit us with this 47 count indictment, with all these charges. My favorite story, by the way, is a defense attorney said one time, this is probably bullshit, but he, this is, he was, he was, he was in a, he, one of his clients went into the lineup, and he's there with the victim and the district attorney and the cops, and they're standing there. and he said, but my guy had a mask on. He said, so they had like five people, and they said, and he's number three. And the first person, they go, number one, stand up, and he walks up. And they say, repeat this. He says, he reads the card.

And it says, give me all the tens and 20s, bitch. And the woman goes, no, that's not him. And then the next guy, number two, he comes and he goes, give me all the tens and 20s, bitch. She goes, no, that's not him. And then number three stands up. His client, he goes, that's not what I said. Oh, shit. That's crazy.

Sorry. Yeah, yeah. So what is your, what is your public defender telling you? Is he telling you you're looking at X amount of time? Yeah, so after a few months, and like I said, we're going to court like every other month. And keep in mind, I'm 19. I just turned 20 now. So I got busted like literally like 11 days before my 20th birthday.

And this is a San Francisco County jail, which obviously, you know, there's a lot of different dynamics going on in the jail with, you know, obviously there's the Mexican inmates, there's, you know, potential gang stuff going on with the Mexican inmates. There's blacks, to the whites, the others. And so I'm getting a crash course on like prison or excuse me, jail politics and the way things are like right out the gate. You know what I mean? And so once again, we're going to court like every other month. We're waving time. We're waving time. Finally, like around the ninth month, they start offering us deals, right? Like we're going to plea bargain. Right. So like around the eight or ninth month, And also keep in mind, the kidnapped charge is like the false imprisonment charges. Those are like the hardest charges, right?

They actually dropped those. Those are like the first ones they dropped. Okay. So they offered us the first deal or me. My first deal was like 25 years. I'm 20 years old, right? I'm like, that's not a deal, right? It's crazy.

You think that's the first of my life? Yeah. I'm already thinking like my life's over. You know what I mean? And then come back to court like a month later. now they drop it down like 15 years. I'm going to drop all these charges. We're going to run with this one or two.

This is going to be your controlling case. And I'm like, oh, 15 years is going to deal to me. You know what I mean? Came back about another month later, trying to offer us 12 years. Still, I'm like, in my mind, I'm a 20-year-old kid. I'm like, if I can get it down to like single digits, then, you know, I guess I take it if I have no choice, right? Because we're not going to trial. There's no way we're going to go to trial.

and get picked out or beat a jury, we're going to, if we go to trial, we're going to get, you know, 30 plus years. Yeah. There's no way we're going to win. What are your code? Are you in the same pod as your co-defendants? Yeah. No, so they had to separate it the entire time, you know. Is anybody cooperating?

No, yeah, that's a good thing. Nobody cooperated. We're all, you know, keeping our mouth shut. And so keep in mind, I'm the one that got caught with the gun, red-handed, whereas they, you know, got singled out for other stuff. So some of my charges, like I had the gun charge, they didn't have gun charges, stuff like that, you know. So they're getting offered less. Yes, correct. So finally, the last deal they offered us, and they're basically told us, my lawyer said, if you guys, if you don't take this deal, they're going to make you go to trial.

Right. So the last deal they offered me was 10 years, four months. They're going to give me six years for a first degree robbery. And they're going to give me four years, four months for firearm. So that was going to be my controlling case. they dropped a bunch of stuff and then I had I still had a plead out to a bunch of other charges

but my one controlling case was basically the robbery and then the gun and then my co-defendants they one I think got like eight years and the other one got like seven years so we all got you know a nice little chunk of time

for being 20 year old kids you know but yeah so I got the most time because of the gun and then I took 10 years and four months Well, how much time do you do on 10 years ago? I mean, if you're, if you don't lose any good time. Yeah, so in the state of California during that time, you had half time. So I could have did like maybe five or five and a half years. And already spent a whole year in the county jail. So already had a credit for time served of a year. That's not even worth unpacking. I do just as you. It's great. Go there, you know, you start reading the Game of Thrones series. You know, I mean, keep yourself.

Yeah, but keep in mind, this is California. Yeah. All right. So off of the 10 years, four months, I ended up doing close to eight years. Okay. But keep in mind, you know, once again, California, once I got sentenced, and I'm not going to lie, the day I got sentenced. I remember I probably cried in the bullpen by myself thinking my life was over. You know what I mean?

I cried like a small fucking child for hours. Yeah. It was uncontrollable. Yeah, no, I remember. I remember crying that day when I took my deal and I pled out to everything and they leave you in the holding tank and you're sitting there by yourself and you're like, my fucking life's over. You know, that's how I felt. I thought my life was over. You know what I mean?

I was 20 years old. And in California where you're going to be sent it, you're not a white collar criminal. Right. You're not in the federal system where they're going to send you to a low or a camp or even a medium, to be honest with you in the federal system. is nothing compared to probably the low security camps in the state of California. You're being sent with gun charges, you know, violent charges, even though it's your first time. And the problem is you are young. So that's also going to up.

People don't realize that ups your custody level because you're young. So you're probably going to go, you're probably going to a pen, right? And that can't eat. And by this point, you've been locked up a year. You've got to know what's waiting for you. It ain't fucking good. Right. I would be fucking terrified. Yeah. So that whole year I spent in the county jail, I started getting indoctrinated into like the gang stuff, right?

And I wasn't a gang. I wasn't a gang bag around the street. I didn't grow up that way. Right. But when you get to jail or you get to prison, you kind of have to make a choice, right? Am I going to run with, you know, a certain group of guys or am I going to try to do my time on my own? If I try to do my time on my own, I'm probably going to run into my own set of problems, right? if I choose to kind of run with the gang, I'm still going to run into some type of problems, but now I have backup. You know what I mean?

So once again in the county jail during that year, I probably got in like four or five different fights. I started hanging around certain groups of guys. So in California, in the jail system, the prison system, the Mexicans that are from Northern California, they call them Northerners or the Nortennios. Whereas in Southern California, you have the Southerners or the Soutreños, right, which are enemies, especially during this era.

So the first prison I went to when I got transferred out of the county jail, I went to San Quentin. So obviously San Quentin, I think a lot of people know San Quentin. It's like, you know, one of the oldest prisons probably in the state or the country. And when I went to San Quentin, if you have more than 10 years, they put you in what's called Carson's section. So there's a bunch of different sections. At that time in that era, San Quentin was only a reception center, but they still had death row there. Death row is there. Obviously, that's a whole different animal.

But then you have the reception center where basically people are going in and out. Basically, you're going in there from the county, and then you're getting shipped out somewhere, right, to where you're going to go do your time at. And then I think they also had like a really low level, maybe level one or level two. In California, there's a level system, right? So there's level one, two, three, and four. Basically, level four is the highest maximum security. So right out the gate when I went to Stanton and you go through classification, they made me a level three.

So I was literally one point away from being a level four. It's like a point system. And I think I had like 52 points. And I think a level four is 53 points. So all I had to do is get one write-up and now I'm going to maximum security. You know what I mean? So in San Quentin, I was only there for about a month. Once again there, the indoctrination continues with the gang stuff, right?

And now I'm like a full on Nortenio, and I'm running with the Nortennos. And, you know, it's basically everybody from Northern California, like the Mexican Americans or Latinos from Northern California. So I was only in San Quentin for about a month. Nothing happened while I was there. It's just a reception center. There's no like enemies or anything going on. But then when I finally got transferred,

I got transferred to a Southern California prison, which is a brand new prison in Imperial Valley, which is literally by the Mexican border called Centinella. And so we were on the first bus from San Quentin to get shipped down to Centinella. And I'll never forget that day. it was like a, you know, 10, 13-hour bus ride. And, you know, they, they, you put on your belly chain.

You put on your, your ankle bracelets, right? And you're sitting on a bus like this for, you know, 10, 13 hours. You got to eat like this. Thankfully, I didn't have to take a piss or go to the bathroom because you kind of, like, trying not to eat and drink because you know it's not the most comfortable situation. You know what I mean? And so, from Stanton, they took a lot of them. us all the way down to Centinella. And when I walked on the yard at Centinella, because you got to get

off the bus and walk the yard and walk into one of the buildings, you can see everybody out there at Nightyard, right? And to me, all I saw was like a bunch of like Cholo looking, you know, Sudeaños from Southern California. You know what I mean? Everybody's all tapped back. I was a young kid. I didn't have any tattoos or anything. And so you're, you're checking out the yard. You're scoping out the yard and they're checking you out too like where'd you guys come from and you tell them like yeah we we just got here we're from san quentin they know where you're from so they're already eyeballing you you know what i mean like all right these are some northerners we got to keep an eye on them you know what i mean and so um i went to the went to the reception you know blocks that they have there the buildings

and you stay in these buildings until uh you go to classification right and so in classification you know, they basically clear you, your general population, they clear you to go to the main yard. And so I already knew with some of the guys that I was on the bus with, they're like, this place doesn't look so good, we're probably going to have to get off and get out of here. You know what I mean? Like, you know, get into a fight, stab somebody, start a riot, something.

We need to get out of here because if we stay here, we're just going to be like sitting ducks. You know what I mean? Like something's going to happen to us. There's not enough Nortenos on the yard to feel safe. Correct. Yeah. From a number standpoint, there's probably maybe like 10 to 12 of us,

whereas it looked like there's maybe like 50, 200 scenarios on that yard. And it was a level 3 yard. Okay. So right out the gate, you know, the game plan was I met this dude on the bus. His name was Weddo from Sacramento. He was my cellie. We ended up becoming celli. He was an older guy.

So I was kind of like taking his lead, right? because he's been to prison a few times, and I'm kind of taking his lead. He has the experience. And so he's like, you know what? We need to get some knives. We need to get some pieces. We need to make some knives. And what we're going to do is...

It's all bad. Yeah. What we're going to do is we're going to make these knives, and we're going to go do a melee, and that's how we're going to get off the yard and get out of here. You know what I mean? So probably we're on the yard, maybe not even a week. like barely on the main line. And, you know, we don't have jobs.

We're not going to school. Our program is literally, we're in our building. We go to yard, and that's it. That's all we're doing, right? And so we found some other northerner guys that were working on the yard crew. And so they gave us some welding rods. Like, these are nice steel rods, right?

These can be turned into some serious pieces, right? And so we got these welding rods, and the plan was, We're going to sharpen them, take them, come out to the yard, and find a group of Southerners and just rush them. That's what the plan was. And that's going to basically get a cent to the hole and transfer to another prison up north. Because we're, keep in mind, where's Centinella's Imperial valleys, like from the yard, when I ended up going to Adseg to the hole? You can see the mountains, like the mountain range and Mexico's right there.

Right. So we're like, you can't get any further south than that. you know what I mean? Are there cartel members locked up in this prison or no? Not in that era. You know what I mean? This is already early 90s. And it's just, you know, during this era in San, excuse me, in California, the governor

was a guy named Pete Wilson. Okay, I don't know if you ever heard of Pete Wilson, but he was one of these very hard-on-crime governors, you know, right-wing. But his dad, I think, actually was murdered or something like that. So this guy just hated criminals. He was tough on crime. And so during that era in California in the 90s, not only was there was a huge gang problem and a lot of crime,

but they were building prisons all over the state. Okay. So that's kind of like the background of what California was during those years. But it wasn't like the cartels. I don't think they were like so prevalent as to, you know, obviously the way things are now. Well, I know in federal prison, there's, you know, a lot of the federal prisons in California are like stocked with cartel members.

Yeah, for sure. Like, I mean... But that's federal, so... Yeah. In this day and time, I think it's like that. But not so much then. It was just very, very... It was very active with the gang stuff, right?

Okay. Very, very active, right? Because you keep in mind, this was, you know, the early 90s. Gang banging all over the state was, like, hardcore in those days. And during... During the, in the reception center, when they ask you, like, are you a gang member? Did you say, hey, yeah, I'm a Nortena? And if so, then why would they send you to a place where they know is dominated by another gang?

So going back to St. Quentin, right? When you go through classification, automatically, if you have like a Spanish surname, they're going to only sell you up with somebody, obviously with the Spanish surname, and that's from your part of the state. They did ask me, I think, when I came in and I did say I'm a northerner, right out the gate. So that's in my jacket as soon as I come in. You know what I mean? So the thing about California during those years, they're opening all these new prisons.

It's like wherever there was open bed space. So ideally, your safety is not that big of a concern. I mean, even to this day and time, I don't know if you see all this stuff that's going on in California now. It's a total shit show, right? back then it's like we're going to send you wherever there's open bed space you know what i mean and so they ended up sending me way down south yeah of course ideally it would have been nice if they kept me somewhere in the bay area but they sent me somewhere you know obviously next to mexico and there's already you know a bunch of southerners because during those years the the southern california

reception centers i think were wosco and delano which were like in central california and like maybe Kern County. So all of the guys that got in trouble in Southern California, they got sent to either Wasco or Delano, which were the reception centers, and they got shipped out from there. Me, I went to San Quentin. But anyway, going back to, you know, Centinella,

so we're making these knives now. We're going to make knives, and we're going to come out to the yard and do something. That's what the plan was. But before we could even try to execute something like that, we're barely in our block for like not even a week and we got these rods and we're literally sharping them

and sharpening them during a break between yard and our chow time. So during that time you got like a couple hours of kill, right? We're in ourselves and we're literally sharpening during that time. And then one of the things we noticed, we heard a bunch of keys like in the coming through the block, like keys like COs, right? Correctional officers.

You heard all these keys rattling and then the water in the building went off. So basically all these COs were coming into the building to do a search. And sure enough, we were in the first cell on the bottom tier. And so they came straight to our cell. Keep in mind we had just pulled up, right? So we don't have anything in our cell but betting and that's it. Like we don't own anything yet, right?

We don't have like TVs or radios or anything like that, right? So they came straight to our cell, told us to come out. We had tucked the rods like in a little lunchbox back then. They used to give you lunch boxes, right? We tucked them in like a corner and tried to hide them. But there is really nowhere to hide this stuff, right? So they pulled this out, searched our cell. The COs ended up finding the welding rods.

They were like sharpened a little bit. They started having a little bit of a point. But, you know, once again, this is something that we were just, starting to work on. So they ended up sending us to the hole and we got basically busted for having contraband, which could have turned into an inmate manufactured weapon. And so we ended up staying in the hole for about three months. During that time, I'm in the hole and once again, the whole indoctrination stuff continues. I'm learning all kinds of different stuff. I'm being groomed. I'm being schooled down, you know what I mean, on, you know, how to be a North Daniel and do things

a Northenio way, you know what I mean? And they gave me a DA referral. So the DA or DA referral is basically they can, if you get busted in prison with, you know, whether it's an assault, a weapon, contraband, drugs, whatever, they give you a district attorney referral and they can try to prosecute you and give you more charges. Okay. So here I am. Apparently, I, I just turned 21, right? Now I'm 21. I got my first DA referral. I'm in my second prison. And thankfully, the DA did not pick up the case because it wasn't like we had a serious weapon. It was something that was being turned into a weapon. But since the DA shot it down, you still have to go through a little process within the prison. And they give you, in California,

they give you what's called a shoe term. Shoe stands for security housing unit. So during that time, if anybody gets in trouble for contraband, assaults, fights, whatever, that are very serious, you can be given a shoe term and be sent to a different prison where you're going to be around other people that have been in more serious trouble. So that's the road that I was on. So is that, where did you go?

So they gave me a 10-month shoe term, and from that point on, they're going to transfer me to the Corkran shoe. The Corkran shoe during this era Was already under FBI investigation You can Google it During this time in Corkren They had what's called the gladiator fights going on Is this where they were

They had the control doors And they would let two rival guys Into the same thing lock it up And they just let them fight And the guys would like bet on it So that's where I was at That's where they sent me So this is 1993

I'm on my way to the Corkran shoe You know Up to this point I've heard all these stuff stories about Corkrin, right? But now I'm on my way. And so Corkran is like Central California. So probably like a six or seven hour bus ride from Cintanella up to Central California. So Corkin was in Kings County, which is right by Fresno County. So now I'm like considered more northern California where I'm at. And that's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to get the

hell out of being in Southern California. You know what I mean? Obviously I didn't want to get caught with contrabanding myself, but that's what happened. Right. You know what I mean? So anyway, on our way to Corcoran with a bunch of guys that are basically caught chew terms. So I'm in a bus full of people that have been in serious trouble in the prison

and other prisons because we stopped at a couple places along the way and picked up more people. So by the time we got to Corcoran, it's probably like, you know, six or seven at night, and we pull up to the prison and there's a welcoming committee

of about like 50 COs, correctional officers, right? I'll never forget because one by one, they're pulling us off the bus, they'll call somebody's name Smith, Johnson, whoever. The first person that walks off the bus, they get snatched up, ran down, like, and you can't really run because you got the ankle chain on, right?

Basically, you're getting roughed up, ran, slammed against the wall. I see people smacking their face against the wall, the concrete walls, and that's your introduction to Corcoran. They're letting you know. The CEOs are letting you know you're in our prison now. Right. You know what I mean? And obviously you're here for a reason, so we're going to treat you a certain way.

You know what I mean? So one by one, I'm seeing all these guys get off the bus and they're getting basically manhandled, ran down, slammed against the wall. You're seeing guys hit the wall, faces hitting the wall. So I see all these guys getting slammed against the wall. I said, okay, when it's my time, I'm going to stick out my chest, right? because I don't want to, like, I got to break, break that impact. You know what I mean?

So when it finally got to me, I was kind of towards the end. They snatched me off off the bus, ran me down, tried to, you know, manhandle me. I stuck out my chest. I didn't hit my face on the concrete. And welcome to Corcoran. That's our introduction, you know what I mean? To basically let us know, like, we're running shit here. This is how we do things here.

you know what I mean? Do you, and do you go straight into the shoe there? Yeah, so this is another prison, and they're, they're, the blocks are smaller, right? So like on the main line, you have these big buildings that, you know, probably fit like what maybe, I don't know, 100 inmates, right? In the shoe, we're in little blocks that are only going to fit like maybe, I think in Corcoran. They had 10 cells on the bottom, 10 cells on the top. So these are small little buildings, right? They're blocks.

and so there's, you know, at Corcoran, they also have a main line there, but during this era, the Corcoran shoe had the shoe, and they also had what was called the PHU, which was the protective housing units. And that's where Charles Manson was at during this time. Sirhan Sirhan was there. I think he killed one of the Kennedys, I think. Sirhan, Sirhan, Sirhan.

Yeah, yeah, Robert Kennedy. He's the one that shot Robert Kennedy. So these are the kind of people that were at Corcoran when I was there, but they were in the PHU. And I'm watching documentaries right now. On the way here, I was listening to a documentary on Charles Manson. Yeah. It's a little weird.

So I'll tell you my Charles Manson story in a minute. Oh, nice. So I'm in the court. So basically when you pull up to the cork and shoe, they do all that stuff on the bus, get us off the bus. And then right out the gate, they take us to our different blocks, right? Everybody's going to different blocks, right? And so when you go to your blocks, they sent me to like a cell.

I was by myself, like the first night I was there. They sent me to a block, and I walk in, and by this time it's late. It's already like, you know, nine, 10 o'clock at night. Lights are out. But any time the block opens, like you mentioned, with these electronic doors, when somebody walks in, you got, you know, you got a new guy on the block. You know what I mean? So when I walk into my block, you know, they keep you cuff the whole time, right?

They're not letting you walk freely. So, excuse me, they're cuffing you behind the back. And when you're, when you, when you go to the block, you got to stick your hands out the tray. They unlock you. And then from that point on, you walk to your cell. And now I'm in a block. I think at that time, there's tensils on the top, 10 cells on the bottom. Everybody there already had like cellies.

But because I just pulled up and it was so late at night, I went into a cell by myself. And as soon as I got into my cell, closed the door, I could hear people upstairs like, hey hey homie where are you from you know they want to know who i am where'd i come from you know who are you you know what i mean and i i remember when i pulled up there's some guys upstairs and they're like hey homie where are you from up north and then right after i say i'm up from up north there's just silence you know what i mean you know what's like the wrong answer exactly there's i wasn't that wasn't the answer they were looking for you know what i mean and so there was just silence and then after that nobody else tried to talk to me that night, right?

So it's late, though. It's already 10 o'clock. Nobody's going anywhere that night. And so, you know, I go to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that.

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See sight for details. First thing in the morning, they feed us in ourselves. They're not mixing anybody, right? And remember, I still got to go to classification. So I'm in my cell early in the morning. I eat. And then now it's probably like around 7, 8 o'clock in the morning. And there's some movement, right?

People are like going to medical or people are going to the law. library, stuff like that. So somebody runs down in my cell and this guy's like, hey, what's up, homie? And I'm from San Jose. So some guy, some guy came down and got at me like, hey, I'm from Northern California to where'd you get here from? Hey, keep your eyes open, be ready. It's on here. So he's telling me right out the gate, it's on, meaning if the door pops, if there is an enemy on the tier, you have to engage with them. You know what I mean? So that's my literally good morning, second day. This is what I'm being told. You know what I mean? So I stayed in that block for maybe a couple of days and then I went to classification. After I went to classification, they cleared me

for integrated yard. So keep in mind, the integrated yard is where all these fights are happening, right? So they moved me to another block. They moved me to another block. And, and, you know, And once again, I walk into a cell by myself, but I can tell someone's living in this cell. So the way that I've been already schooled down and trained, when you walk into somebody's cell, you have no idea who's cell you're walking into. So for you, for me, the correct thing to do is just kind of like,

not get too comfortable, kind of like, you know, be ready. Because as soon as this guy comes into the cell, I might have to engage and get into a cell fight right out the gate. You know what I mean? Because I don't know who cell this is, right? So for me, I'm sitting there, not even like an hour. I'm waiting to see who my cell he is, right? Because he's obviously not around.

So I seen this guy coming to the block. He's walking to the cell. I guess he was at the law library, right? So he was, you know, going to the law library just to get out of his cell. And so he comes up to the cell, and we start talking, just filling each other out. And I can tell, all right, this guy's cool, right? I remember his name. I remember his real name, but I'll call him Rabbit.

from Santa Rosa. He was from Santa Rosa, which is like 50 miles north of San Francisco. So this is my cellie. And the first question he asked me is, did you get cleared for integrated yard? And I'm like, yeah, I got cleared. He's like, all right, so we got yard tomorrow. When we go to yard tomorrow, we got to rush our neighbors. So. Yeah, man, I said, I just got here. That's the way it was, right? So basically it's warm. Corcoran Shoe is war. It's all war. There's no peace treaties going on. So in this era, 1993, 1994, the Northerners and the blacks are basically together, their allies against the Southerners and the whites.

That's how it was. So now I was on the top tier in the first cell. So my introduction to the Corcoran Shoe, keep in mind, I've probably been there about a week now. They've been going to the yard for my very first time. So they let you go to yard like maybe I think it was two or three times a week, like on different days, right? You're in the shoe. So in the shoe, it's like, it's like the hole, but kind of on steroids where you have, you know, you, you know, your canteen's limited, your commissary is limited, you shower maybe three days a week, you go to yard, two or three days a week, and that's it. That's all your movement, unless you're going to medical or unless you go to the law library and that's it so uh so my cellie once again he's like you know we're

going to go to yard tomorrow our neighbors are you know these white dudes we're going to rush them and i'm like okay you know i'm just like going with the flow that that's what we got to do you know what you have no weapons no weapons so these are like mostly like all fist fights right but when you go to the yard um they they let our they let our sell out first right we'll go down cuff us up walk us out to the yard, which is a different area. There's a sally port, right? The sally port goes from R block to the yard. And keep in mind, these are small yards.

These aren't like a big mainline yard, right? These yards are maybe, they're kind of shaped like a V, right? And so when you walk out, it's narrow and then it opens up. And this is like 20 foot by like 80 feet or 60 feet? Exactly. 20 by 60. Yeah. The concrete walls?

Yeah, exactly. Barbed wire. Exactly, exactly. It's like 20 by 60. So typically if you went out there, you could play handball, and that's it, and maybe work out, and that's it. But so anyway, we went out to the yard. We're the first ones out there, and My cellie's like, all right, when we get out there, we're going to stand at the back of the wall away from the gun tower, right?

Because the gun, the gun tower is right there, right? And so back in those days, they shoot the block gun first. A block gun is basically like a, it's a beam bag, or? But they're blocks. kind of like a bean bag, but they're blocks. Yeah. Like a wood. Yeah, exactly.

And it shoots out like 10 blocks at a time. So we go out there. And so that's the warning shot. And if you guys keep fighting and it looks like somebody's going to like really, you know, get hurt. So if somebody's getting hurt or maimed or even killed, they pull out the real gun, which back in those days, they use what's called a mini-14. And so the whole thing about Corkin during this era, they were killing inmates. Yeah.

I think during this time, about seven inmates got murdered by the correctional officers, by the gun tower. Because people are fighting and they won't stop. And back then, they would just shoot. Like, you know, I think now they don't shoot as quickly. They don't shoot as quickly, right? Because you see people getting killed all over California right now, right? But back in those days, they were trigger-happy. You know what I mean?

So, anyway, we're outside in the yard. with the back wall, posted up ready, and we're wearing t-shirts in our boxers. That's all we got, right? It's not like we have any clothes, right? And so the guys, the two white dudes walk out, and these are like big white dudes, right? You know, these guys are both like plus six foot plus, right?

So you got two shorter Mexican dudes that are going to go rush these big white dudes, right? And that's what happened. As soon as they came out, they knew what time it was. As soon as they came out, we kind of like wait for them to like walk, a little bit towards the back of the wall, and then we just rush them.

And it's basically a two-on-two fight. It happens really quick. You maybe have like five or ten seconds to throw hands. And then at that time, the gun tower is like, get down, get down. And if you don't get down, you keep fighting, you stay engaged, they'll shoot the block gun. And then when they shoot the block gun,

they'll tell you, get down, get down some more. And typically at that point, we would back off and get on the ground, face first. If we would to keep fighting, that's when they pull out the real gun. So are you getting shot with the blocks? Yeah. So are they, is it? So the very first time that fight, I actually got hit with the block gun the very first time I went out there. How's that feel? I mean, it's like a little stinger, you know what I mean? You know, like, I would have thought it would yeah. I actually remember like I had a, I literally had a scar on my body for like 10 or 15 years. Like it's a little,

it's a little, it's a little, you know, it grazed. It doesn't sound like a little. Yeah, but it's staying on my body for like 10 or 15 years, and I remember, I'd go look in the mirror and like, okay, I think it finally went away. You know what I mean? I mean, is it hard enough to knock you down? I mean, if it hits you in the head, if it hits you in the face, you're going to be fucked up, right? For me, it hit me in the back. This is horrible. Yeah. I mean, guys probably get concussed if it hit him in the head. Right. You know what I mean? If it hit you in the face, he could hit your eye out, you could take your eye out. Yeah. You know what I mean?

If it hits you in the head, you definitely probably get into concussion. You know what I mean? or, you know, or worse. So they fire the gun. Do you guys stop? Yeah. So they fire the block gun and then we back off from each other and we get on the ground. And they put the yard down. So we're not even on the yard.

So that yard for the day is over. Everybody else that was on the top tier does not have yard because of what we did. Right. You know what I did? Because we were the first two cells out there. So for the rest of the day, top tier, they don't get yard anymore. You know what I mean? And so.

But they would have done the same. same thing, right? This is standard. Exactly. This is standard protocol. It's war. It's on site. And that's just the way it's everybody's a green light on everybody. It's war. So that's just the way the program was there. You know what I mean? So, you know, once again, we're on the ground. The COs come onto the yard, cuff us up, take us out, give us write-ups. And then, you know, nobody got seriously hurt. And they're just sending you back to your So, and that's my welcome to Corcoran first yard. Do you lose gain time for that?

Yeah, so each ride-up you get, my points are going higher. You got to go to like a little classification hearing. They find you guilty of whatever you did. Yeah. And then they rack up your points and you're losing good time. So is it typically like 20 days? I think it was like 90 days. 90 days.

Yeah. So every ride-up I think back in those days, like 90 days. 90 days, even some cases, maybe even more, depending on what you did. But that was, that's at Corkran. That's where I started racking up all my points. And then also, too, that's where I started getting all these ride-upset, then increased my points. And then also, too, took a lot of time away from me.

Colby's just like. And it's like thinking, like, what is, is there any difference? What's the difference, like, between the northern and the southerners? There's no difference. Yeah, is there a race? It's just alliance? So let me give you the background on the north and south. So you probably heard of La Eme, the Mexican mafia.

I mean, I heard of the Mexican mafia. Yeah. Would you call it? La Eme. That means just M in Spanish. La Eme, right? So a little background on why are the North and South fighting? Why are they been at each other's throats for now since the 50s and 60s?

Okay. This is a long time. Okay? So the Mexican mafia was like one of the first prison gangs in the state of California. So the original prison gangs in the state of California, you had the Mexican mafia, you had the Aryan Brotherhood, and you had the Black Gorilla family, which were the BGF, AB, and La Jemé. This is like, I think, I'm not sure when the AB and BGF came along, but La Eme came around in the mid-50s. Okay, and they were, they, La Eme back then wasn't like Southern California based.

They had some guys from Northern California that were the originators. But as time went on, as years went on, they basically became like the parent to the Southerners, okay? But originally when they first were put together, you had some guys from Northern California that were actually in La Eme, right? And so years later in the 60s, and, you know, this is, you know, gang culture, people are feeling oppressed. They have something that they call the shoe wars where I think they're saying somebody that was in La Eme

took somebody's shoes. Oh, yeah, yeah, I was just going to say, I actually thought that was what the Crips and the Bloods. I was going to say, aren't the Crips in the issue with them? Like, someone stole someone's shoes or didn't pay them for? but I guess you're saying it's yeah so that was actually between the Mexicans right so apparently the story goes they call it the shoe wars where somebody from you know the Mexican mafia took somebody's shoes and obviously you take somebody's shoes no I know it's funny like

like out here it seems silly or or something that's not worth right going to war over or even you know well maybe I get into a fight over but but in prison it's like you don't say yeah you it doesn't matter if it's your fucking comb yeah in prison and you you you You can't take something from it. Yeah, you can't take anything from anybody. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I can honestly say that the time that I did, my entire time in prison, nobody ever took anything from me or tried to take anything from me.

If somebody would have tried to take my lunch from me, like, you know, like, you see people, like, you know, getting punk for their food and stuff like that. I mean, anyway, so with the whole shoe thing, somebody supposedly, you know, got their shoes taken. and then from that point on, that birthed a new gang, which was the NF, La Nuestra Familia, which also had Southern California elements to it originally as well, but as time progressed, became the Northern parents and the Mexican Mafia were like the Southern parents. So this is talking about the 1960s.

Here we are today. It's 2026. I hear today there's actually, I don't want to call it a peace treaty, but they have it where they're not fighting anymore in prison. That's what I hear. In the streets, it's a little bit different, but you have basically Mexicans from Southern California, Mexicans from Northern California,

fighting at each other's throat since the 60s over a pair of shoes. Let's say you go into prison with no affiliation and you're right on the line, your center, your center in California. Do you just have... Can you just be like, hey, I'm not interested in being a part of this? So what's funny is in Central California is Fresno. So once upon... So Fresno used to be like the dividing line, right?

And so in Fresno, years, for many, many years, people from Fresno, the Mexicans from Fresno, they were considered North Daniels too, right? But years later, Fresno turned into the Fresno Bulldogs, like the University, Fresno State. So now you have the North, the South, and the Fresno Bulldogs are like the three different main gangs in the California prison system that are Mexican. So what if you went in and you had said, you know, I'm just not interested in being affiliated with anything. Like I wasn't on the street. So if you're a level one or a level two, like maybe you're in a camp or like on a row. ranch. That'll fly. You could probably make that fly. But in my case, number one, I made that

decision early on that I was going to run with these guys. And after the Corcoran shoe, I was already a level four. And in maximum security prison in California, the politics are very heavy. So what would happen if you did say I'm not interested? Then you just be what? You're just basically a victim. I'm basically like an outcast and anybody can try to come at me, whether it's black, blacks, whites. Nobody's helping you. Yeah, and I'm on my own, and I'm going to stand them out. And honestly, I never seen that.

Like, I never seen, like, I was never, like, on a main line years later and be like, oh, you see that dude over there? He just rolls by himself? No. I never saw one dude that just rolls by himself. It wasn't like that. It's like, when you're on a level four yard, you're with, you're riding with one of the factions. I never just seen, like, those five dudes over there, they're the outcast, they do their

own thing. No. It wasn't like that. So at this point, you, I mean, how long do you stay in the shoe until you go, do you go to, do you go to general population? So I was in the Corcoran shoe. So remember, they gave me a 10-month shoe term. So that was like my term.

I was supposed to stay there for 10 months. Mind you, those 10 months, I probably got into about 4 or 5-yard fights. So got into fights with whites, got into fights with Southerners, got into fights with even a border brother. I've even mentioned the border brothers yet. The border brothers were back in those days were like the Mexicans from Mexico. They're not California-based Mexican-Americans.

The border brothers back in those days were from Mexico. And keep in mind, and you asked kind of like about the cartel thing. I wouldn't say these guys are cartel, but they're probably like trafficking stuff in the 90s, but we called them Border Brothers back in the, those days. And they were just on their own. They, they kind of, um, sympathize probably more with the Southerners versus the Northerners, but they were once again, there is enough of them where they

did their own thing too in those years. Um, okay. So, so you do your 10 months and you go to, uh, general population? So right before my 10 month shoe term was up, they put another Sudanian on, on our yard. Okay. And I was, I was still with my, my sally um this guy rabbit right i was still with my celly and um he was getting close to going home though because he'd been sitting in the shoe now for probably like beyond like you know 20 months already he'd already been in the shoe for a long time right he pretty much did all of his time in the shoe and then he was going to go home so i'm like 21 years old at the time and he's like hey they got this one southerner on the yard instead of both of us rushing him can you just take him because i'm

going to be going home soon. I'm trying to go home. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, sure, no problem. Like, that's just, you know, I'm very gung-ho. I'm like, you know, I'm down to do whatever. That's just my mindset was during these years. You know what I mean? So I go out to the yard, mind you, my 10-month shoe terms up in about a month. I go out to the yard, and there's one southerner, I go out to the yard, and I basically attack him. I rush him. I beat him up pretty good, where they gave me another charge. they gave me a GBI, great bodily injury. And so now they're giving me another DA referral

for great bodily injury because they're saying like I broke his nose or something, right? And now I got another DA referral. And now instead of being out of the shoe in 10 months, it's dragging on for a couple more months to see if the DA is going to pick it up. The DA didn't pick it up, thankfully. But now they gave me another 18-month shoe term.

So from, yeah, so from that point, they're like, you've gotten enough trouble here. We're going to send you to Pelican Bay, which at that time, Pelican Bay in the mid-90s, it just opened up. I think it opened in 89, I think. But Pelican Bay was considered like the worst of the worst in California. So I graduated from the Corcoran shoe to the Pelican Bay shoe. And around like the 11 or 12th month while I was at Corcoran, they transferred me to Pelican Bay. and I was going to go to the shoe up there. So when you go to Pelican Bay,

it's a completely different setup. It's no war. So the politics are different. I go to the Pelican Bay shoe. The yards are different. A lot of, you only go to a yard with your celly. These yards are tiny, right? So the yards in Pelican Bay are probably like 12 by 24.

Tiny. It's like, and the walls are tall, you know, 20-foot walls. They have like a metal, metal gate, metal mesh on the, on the roof. So keep in mind, Pelican Bay is in Crescent City, California, which is what now you're like by the Oregon border. So the climate up there is like rains like seven months out of the year. So the weather up there sucks, right? I went from 110 degree heat and Corcoran to rain pretty much year round

or just like cold weather year round, you know? And so I'm in the Pelican Bay shoe. when I get into the shoe My cellie there Was a guy from Fresno actually But he was like an OG So he wasn't with the Bulldog He wasn't with the Bulldog stuff

He was, you know Considered a North Daniel I was in a pod With a couple of NF members So I was in a pod with a couple of You know Well-known

Big reputation type of guys And you know I'm a 21 year old kid now You know what I mean And so we're in the pods up there in Pelican Bay There's only five cells on the bottom Five cells on the top So they're very very small units

There's no windows in your cell You can't look out at anything You're basically stuck in a box You're stuck in your cell You can go to yard every day for one hour But it's not really a yard It's just basically like a little walk area You know what I mean

And you go out there to get some fresh air Because you're stuck in your cell all day If it's not raining Exactly And then if it is raining, you find a little corner to just stand in that's not getting hit with the rain. Right. Yeah, like literally, that's what you do, right?

You got going to a little spot and you just stand right there and you see how the rain coming down, right? But that's how it was. So I ended up going to Pelican Bay. I stayed in the shoe there. So I think there because I didn't have any contact with anybody instead of me doing the entire 18 months, I think I did like 10 months.

and then from that point they kicked me out to the main line. Okay. So you get a new cellie. So going to the main line, but now keep in mind, this is Pelican Bay, 1995, and everybody in Pelican Bay is doing like life or, you know, they have a lot of time. So in the politics are very, very heavy, right? So you're surrounded by killers up there, you know what I mean? and I kicked out to the main line.

When I went out to the main line, I was like super pale, you know what I mean? Because you've been stuck inside for so long, right? I'm like super pale. I had a bald head back in those days, you know what I mean? And I go out to the main line. I think initially I went out to B facility, and I was only on B facility for like a couple of weeks. I went to classification.

There's no wars. There's nothing going on. You know, the segments are, you know, You know, you have the Sudeanos, you got the Northeños, you got the different white factions, you have the different black factions. So different white factions you have like A-B, you have the Nazi lowriders, you have skinheads. Those are like the different white factions. And then the black factions are the bloods, the Crips, and the 415s, like the blacks from the Bay Area.

So there's, you're on a, you're on a yard now with basically with people that are considered, like, the worst of the worst, all on the main line. and everybody has their own little real estate on the yard. People have different tables. People have handball courts. The blacks are on the basketball courts. Back then we actually had weights. And then I think Pete Wilson took the weights away.

The governor, they took the weights away, I think, in 95 or 96. And then that was a big thing when they took the weights away from the inmates. That was a big thing. But I was on that B facility for like a couple weeks. And then they ended up moving me to A facility. And from that point on, I got with all the Nortenos over there. There's probably like 20 or 30 of us on that yard. And it was good for like about a year or two.

I was programming. I had a job. I was working in vocational eyewear. And I think I might have even been in PI. They had a PIA class, prison industry where you're like making glasses. You're making shades. That's why I've always said like a thing for shades, right? So keep in mind when you're working or you have a job, you're not on the yard all day.

It's when you're on the yard where bad shit can happen. Right. So I was in eyewear, vocational eyewear. You know, I would get up early in the morning. You know, I'd go to chow, go to work, and I'm gone all day behind the wall because it was behind. You're technically on a level four yard. You're behind the wall. But now when you go to vocation,

actually let escort you and let you go outside the wall. So that was kind of a big deal, right? And so anyway, I was in Pelican Bay on the mainline, A facility for a couple of years. Towards the end of 1996, there was a big riot that jumped off on the yard between the Southerns and the blacks. And I was actually on the yard that day when it happened. since we're not involved, we basically just get out of the way

and obviously keep an eye on each other. But this is a riot that was like, you know, maybe 100 people. So, you know, shots were fired on the yard, people are getting stabbed, people are fighting, you know, this went on for, you know, 15, 20 minutes. It's a riot, you know what I mean?

Like, you look at videos online, there's all kinds of stuff you'll see on social media, obviously now with stuff that happened back then and even recent stuff, right? But, you know, when that happens, you just really got to get out of the way. And so we got out of the way. Nothing happened with us. The big riot happened between the blacks and the Southerners.

And then from that point on, they were locked down for months. So during that time period, the only people that were allowed to go to the main yard were the northerners, the whites, and the others. The others are, you know, like Asians, Filipinos, Samoans, whatever. whatever, that's like their own little segment, right? They're not really affiliated. They're not politically involved with anything. They're really separated and they do their own thing, right? So anyway, during that time period since the blacks and the Southerners were at war,

each time they let them out to maybe come out to the yard, another incident would occur. And they wouldn't just let out the entire yard. They would let out maybe one block here, one block, to just test the waters. And as soon as they go out, they would fight. so they locked them down again, you know what I mean? So during that time period where the only people on the yard are the northerns and the whites and the others, there starts coming up, some words start coming up that maybe the whites are going to try to rush the northerns because it's a war going on, right?

Anyway, keep in mind we're going to yard all the time, right? I remember up there at Pelican Bay, since there's so much rain, we had mandatory yard. Like I couldn't wake up one day and just tell my cellier and my homie's like, I'm not going to yard today. It wasn't like that. Like we had mandatory yard every day rain or shine. So if it was 50 degrees outside in a rainstorm, we put on our raincoat, we put on a rain hat, and we had to have our presence on the yard. That was mandatory for how we functioned as a group.

You know what I mean? So that's just how it was. So as time went on, now it's like maybe early 1997. there's one day on the yard it had to be the weekend because I wasn't at work that day so the way our program was on the yard we had certain tables that we would always go to as soon as we come out at yard and we would like set set up and we would put security on our tables where we would have guys standing on corners of the tables to make sure nobody would try to like infiltrate us you know what I mean that's the the

the seriousness of how we ran our program, very militant, how we kind of posted up every single day. And so one day, I'm on the yard, and we would also have people walk in the track, keeping security, keeping an eye on everything that's going on on the yard. And I remember I'm walking around the track on the lower yard. There's a lower yard and the upper yard, and there's a gate in between them and the yards, right, so you can go back and forth. And I'm on the lower yard. This is the main line.

Walking around the track with like, you know, two or three other homies where we're doing security. And you see a wave of the whites running up to days. They start, like their approach, they're like 20, about 20 and 30 of them. You see them approaching. You see it like happening from across the yard. And you can see the whites rushing towards,

where the northerners are at. So when we see them kind of, we see them making a move, we start running across the grass of the yard from where we were at. And so by the time the whites got over there, by the time we got over there, it was a melee going on.

It was a little mini riot going on where there's like maybe 20 or 30 whites, maybe 10 northerners. I'm running across the yard with my other homies. Back in those days, we used to always carry a razor in our mouth, right? Every time we're at the yard, we always keep a razor in our mouth. So pull out the razor,

and you're just trying to hit anybody. You know what I mean? Whether you're throwing hands or you're hitting somebody with the razor, I was able to hit somebody, got rid of the weapon, we're fighting. And it's a melee or a riot, so it's sticky move, right? You're not just standing there, hitting one dude, you're hitting one dude, you're moving. And, you know, it's chaos.

You know, there's like 30, 40 people going at it. The gunner's saying, get down, get down. They didn't shoot any live rounds. That incident, we all got on the ground. Keep in mind, Adseg and the hole was already packed because of the blacks and the Southerners. So they let a bunch of us go back to ourselves that day. And so now the whole yard is locked down.

The only people that are allowed to go to the main yard of the others during that time because the blacks and the Southerns were already locked down, and now a new war jumped off between the Northerns and the whites. So we're on lockdown for a couple months. Keep in mind, I got out of the shoe, I think, in like May of 95. I was on the main line for about two, almost two years. So now we're already like almost the middle of 97. And during that lockdown, one, I got away with.

being involved in that riot. I didn't go to the hole. But two, I went to classification. Every year you go to classification. I put up for a transfer during lockdown. And so I had put in a transfer. They're going to transfer me to New Folsom, which is in Sacramento,

which is like two hours away from San Francisco. During that lockdown, where all these wars are going on, I got a transfer. And I skated out of Pelican, I literally skated out of a war and I got transferred to another place. How was that?

Was that a lower custody? No. New Folsom is still level four and New Folsom has their own history too. But when I got to New Folsom, I ended up on a yard, I think they call it C yard, C facility. I got to this yard and now that was like our stronghold.

I was actually on a yard where there was like maybe 40 or 50 northern You know, there's the white factions, there's the black factions. The Southerners, there weren't really any Southerners on that yard. So there were a few Southerns on that yard, but they weren't considered like active Southerns. The Southerns at that time, if they went to C yard, they were told to basically get off that yard. You know what I mean? So there is a small group of them, but I think these guys are like hiding.

They didn't want to be active. You know what I mean? So they weren't a threat to us. They weren't like active Sudenios, right? So they just had their little part of the yard. They didn't come near us. But so I got to New Folsom, and here I am. I got a job right away because I had a job at the other place at Pelican Bay.

I was working in the laundry room, making a whopping 30 cents an hour. Nice. I was bawling. Yeah, right. And, you know, by now it's like 1997. By this time, I'm like 25 years old now, you know, already been doing time for a little bit. And I start thinking differently.

You know, I'm maturing. Maybe this isn't working out. Maybe this isn't the life for me. Maybe stabbing guys and having the potential of getting stabbed or killed or... I actually had like a little light bulb moment when I was in Pelican Bay, right? Right. And I think it was probably during the lockdown. And I'm like, you know, at the end of the day, right?

I didn't go to prison so I can, you know, get maxed out and never go home or catch more time. Obviously, you're just a little kid. You're fucking 19 years old. You can't be in a position to make major decisions and have it follow you for the rest of your life. Right. So, sorry. I'm just, I'm also thinking about the Supreme Court where these kids are like you're 18 years old. and you do something horrific,

and then they never have the possibility to get out of prison. It's like he's 18. I get it. What he did was horrible, but he's 18. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so, like I said,

I think I had a little light bulb moment in Pelican Bay, and I'm like, you know, do I want to keep going down this road or do I want to do something different? So I kind of, when I left Pelican Bay, I already had like the mentality that hopefully I can go to New Folsom

and just do my time, right? And, you know, hopefully get out, because now I didn't have really a date. Keep in mind I'd lost all this time at Corcoran. I got some of it back on Pelican Bay on the mainline because for a very long time, nothing was happening. But, you know, I was hoping to get out. And remember, this is the mid-90s.

I was hoping to get out by 2000, you know, which was like a big deal in those days. Like, you know, I think they had the Y2K thing, right? So there is like all this like talk of like maybe, the world changing in 2000. Obviously nothing happened, right? But that's the hysteria that the whole Y2K thing brought that

if you remember those days, right? Yeah. You're worried about all the power plants going offline and things shutting down. Do you remember this? No, I mean, I was in kindergarten. Yeah, maybe. Well, because their issue was

that all the software that's running everything is only isn't based on like four digits, like a lot of it's based on, like two digits, right? Like, you know, 91, 92. And they're like, what happens when it hits 99 and flips? Everybody's like, oh, everything's going to shut down. And it didn't really shut down.

Nothing really happened. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, so my whole thing was hopefully getting out before 2000. It was already 1997. And I was already like five years in and doing my time, right? So if I didn't get into all this trouble that I got into initially when I went to prison, you know, I would have been getting out like in six months or like a year, right?

I was supposed to get on like 98, right? That didn't happen. So when I got the new Folsom, everything was cool for like a few months. And then one of the northerans on that yard, he got into like a one-off with the white guy. And there's never one-on, on those yards, there's never one-on-ones.

But if something sporadically happens, then it happens, right? So there is actually a one-off that happened with this one-on-one. Puerto Rican guy from San Francisco that was a northerner with the white guy. And there was talks that the war that was happening up in Pelican Bay was now going to come down to New Folsom. So they locked down all the Northerns and all the whites at that time when there was this one-off that happened. And keep in mind, when I was at New Folsom, anybody that comes from Pelican Bay is considered like you have clout. You have like.

a certain level of schooling because back in those days, Pelican Bay was looked at as like the bar. It was like the spot, right? So when I got down a new Folsom, you know, people knew who I was. Back in those days, you know, obviously people know me as Mario Sanchez, but I actually went by the name of Chopper back in those days. That was my name. I see. That's a solid. That's a good nickname.

Yeah. Matt's nickname was chainsaw. Yeah. I tried to push chainsaw. It didn't work. So that was a little nugget because on like some of the other platforms that I've been on, I've never told what my nickname was. So I went by the name of Chopper back in those days.

How did you get that? Somebody gave it to you or did you push it? I just think right out the gate in the county jail, I was getting into a lot of fights. And I mean, I'm not six feet tall. So I was always fighting guys that were bigger than me. And I kind of just got the name Chopper because I chopped guys down in my size. Oh, okay. So that's kind of how I got that name.

So like I said, I've never mentioned this on these other interviews I've done. And so, yeah, so once again, that happened, a one-off. And so what happened was they put us on lockdown. The one Northerner that was in charge of us, like every prison you go to, right, there's always a leader. There's a shot caller. The leader, and then there's a shock caller. There's security.

And then you have the different soldiers and warriors, right? so, you know, chain of command, right? And so at New Folsom, at New Folsom, I was always a Northerner, right? There's different, there's different gangs, like I mentioned, there's the NF, there's also the Northern structure, but I didn't join an actual prison gang. I was just considered a Northerner, right? And I actually was asked on a couple of different occasions to join the structure, like in Corcoran, my...

Selly wanted to pool me. They call it pulling right to pull you. And you basically politely decline. You know, I would say that I'm not ready. But the whole thing with me, the whole time, I was in prison, I never joined. Because I knew the repercussions that came along with if you dropped out. You know what I mean? Where it can be very severe.

So that's the main reason I never joined, like, the structure when I was in prison. I was asked on a couple different occasions, one at Corcoran. by Micelli, who was running our block. And then even when I got out to Pelican Bay, Marcelli, who was on the main line, he wanted to pull me, and I politely declined again. So now, you know, even though I was just considered a northerner, I was around a lot of really good dudes.

I was a very school down. You know, I had a good reputation wherever I went. And so when I got the new Folsom, and this new thing was about to happen between the northeres and whites, the guy who was running the yard at that time for the northerners, he got rolled up off the yard. And what we found out was down the road, there was a snitch among the northerners

that was basically telling on people because they were trying to keep the yard a certain way. They didn't want the yard to get heavily political. People were going to visits. People were getting drugs. People were doing a bunch of stuff on that yard. And they felt that if it got too hardcore political, It might jeopardize their program, their visits, their drugs, you know.

So anytime they felt like there is potentially a new dude on the yard that may have been a threat or was making the yard too political, they're getting rid of them. So we found that out later. So during that lockdown, they rolled off, they rolled up the shock collar for the Northerners. Because he's kind of pushing the whole, hey, the Pelican Bay thing may need to be, it may need to kind of spill into us and we might need to go to war with the whites. Exactly. And then these guys are all like, fuck that, we're getting in.

Dope, we're getting in. Visits. Yeah, visits. I'm getting my conjugal visits. Yeah. I want to fuck that up. Exactly. So you know exactly what I mean. So what happened was this guy got rolled up off the yard. And during the lockdown, we were locked down for like two weeks. They basically somebody came up to myself and they're like, you're running the show now. They gave me the keys to the yard.

And so now... Did you say thank you, no? You can't. You can't. It's not the same thing as being asked to join. No, I mean, when they tell you, like, you got the keys now, you got the keys. That's not something. If I would have declined that, then something would have potentially happened to me.

You know what I mean? So here I am, five, five and a half years into my prison sentence. I'm like, you know, 25 years old. I never joined a prison gang. I never wanted that kind of responsibility. I never wanted to deal with any kind of repercussions that would come along with that kind of responsibility. I really respected what they did, and these are my people, but I also knew, once again, the repercussions would be very severe if I decided to do something else. You know what I mean?

So that's why I never joined up like that. And so now I got the keys. It's up to me to make this decision. Are we going to go to war with the whites, or are we going to try to talk this out? we never talk nothing out, right? When it's time to go to war, it's time and go to war. So from my cell, there was still porters running around doing stuff in the block, right? And they're like, well, what are we going to do, you know?

And so I gave the word when they let out a block, the northerners have to rush the whites. That was a call that I made. And so once again, when you're on lockdown on the main line, they don't just let out the whole yard so they could have 100 people have a row. right, they're going to let out a controlled block where they can keep it small. If something happens, it's going to be on a much smaller scale. You know, they're not going to lose so much control, right? Is this like 20 guys at a time?

20 guys at a time, 30 guys at a time maybe, right? Like a melee, right? So they let out another block. And as soon as the Northerners came out, there's maybe like, you know, five or 10 Northerers in that block. There's maybe about 20 white guys in the block. The Northerners rushed them, but also, too, some of the northerners came out. the blacks got involved. In Sacramento, during that time, they have some bloods from Sacramento

that helped the northerners. So now you have the bloods from Sacramento and the northerners that got into it with the whites and they locked everybody down again. Okay. And so literally, not even a week later, guess who gets rolled up off the yard? You? Somebody snitched on me. Yeah, yeah. Somebody snitched on me. Yeah, you weren't the, you weren't the right replacement for this guy. Yeah. They're looking for somebody else that was just going to, you know, mediate, you know, they rolled me up off the yard, like a week later. They're like, Sanchez, roll it up, going to the hole. And here I am.

You keep in mind, I had been basically, you know, clean for like, you know, going on two or three years now. I'm getting time back. I had a job. I'm trying to go home. I like to go home, right? And so when I got rolled up off the yard, I had a choice to me because they roll you off the yard and they put you in these holding cells, right? and they make you just sit in these holding cells for like hours. And at that point, I made a decision that I'm going to walk away from the gang stuff

because I wanted to go home. So in the eyes of my partners and the gang that I'm running with, they look at me like, I'm no good or I'm a traitor. But in my eyes, all I cared about was trying to get out and go home. Because I already knew if I went to the hole, and somebody didn't like the call I made, they could have asked me to do a cleanup or a hit, or they could have hit me if they didn't like the decision I made,

or I would have just caught more time or got validated as an associate of a prison gang. So it was like a lose, lose, lose all the way around to me, and I didn't want to get maxed out or maybe even catch more time. Yeah, I was going to say everybody's heard of that. There's hundreds of examples of guys that went in there with five or 10 years on a dope, well, at least in federal prison.

I'm sure it's even worse, 10 times worse in like a state prison. We go in there for five or 10 years, and you join a gang, and they say, hey, you got to hit this guy, and they go and they stab him, or they get into a fight, the guy falls down, hits his head.

Or maybe they stab him, happen to stab him in the right spot. He dies, and now you pick up a charge, and you get 20 years, and you're like, I was going to be out of prison in four years. Now I'm, now I've got my original charge and an extra 20.

Like, I'm now going to, be in my 50s when I get out of prison, you know, just for something that's fucking stupid, only because I wanted to feel safe and I was told to do this thing. And then to ask somebody to do something like that when you're just walking in the door. Yeah. It's just, you know, these guys aren't, they're not, they're not necessarily looking out for you. You may feel safe, but they're not necessarily making a call. Because you would think some guy who's short time and young, if you were an older guy and wise and had been in that lifestyle, you would think you would have the wisdom to say, this fucking kids, he's 22 years old. Yeah. You know, let's keep him out

of trouble. Let's get this fucking guy home. But that's not how they look at it. Yeah. Necessarily. Yeah. And keep in mind, like you said, the age, right? Even I had 10 years, like, I was, I was in there with guys that were like 20, 21, 22 that all had 25 life. You know what I mean? That's the kind of yard, the kind of yards we were on. You know what I mean? So, like I said, I'm sitting in the holding, holding, cell, you know, thinking, my mind's racing. I'm like, lose, lose, lose situation. I think right here I'm going to walk away. And I'm going to tell the COs like, you know what, I'm done.

I want to walk away from this. So at that point, I made that decision. And like I said, now my associates or gang guys that I was running with, they're looking at me like, they call it like you're no good now you know what i mean and so from that point on they sent me to the um basically the soft yard or the um what they call it like the p c r right and over there on on those type of yards you have all the all the gang they call them gang dropouts right and during this year during these years this is you know this is in 1997 it's a completely different makeup than it is now i mean it's 2026.

I hear those type of yards or even the California, they're all like mixed now. You know what I mean? But in those years, you can go to one of those yards and just program and do your time. So we were kind of joking about earlier like one guy just walking around doing this time.

I was that guy now. I went to this other side. I went to the other yard. And here I didn't associate with anybody. I kept to myself. I was working, working out. Stay in myself. I was programming because I wanted to go home.

You know what I mean? But it's not that easy, right? When you decide to make that choice, they put you, they still put you in the hole again. They leave you in the hole with a bunch of other, like, they call them dropouts or whoever, and they make you go program there to prove that you're trying to go home. Or you're, excuse me, that you're just trying to program that you're not going to assault anybody, that you're not a threat. Right.

And here is where when I was in the hole there, as you know, the Menendez brothers, I was in the hole with Eric Menendez. So Eric Menendez was actually on my yard. And I'd play handball with them. You know what I mean? And he was in the hole for like contraband. You know what I mean? But those are the type of people, like whether it's like high profile or dropouts,

those are the type of people. I was on around now. You know what I mean? And I forgot to tell you my Charles Manson story really quick. I was going to ask at the end, but go ahead. Yeah, so real quick, going back to Manson, right? When I was in the shoe, they still give you visits, right? They escort you to the visiting room, right?

You're once again, like, belly chained, and you get escorted with the few COs. And so I'm going to the visiting room, and I could see people leaving the visiting room. You know, you're literally walking by them on the track, right? And one day when I was leaving a visit, who do I see walking towards me? Who's going to a visit, Charles Manson? So this is like 1993, 1993, 1993, 1994, early 94, maybe. He was in the PHU, I was in the shoe,

and I literally walk right by Charles Manson when I was leaving a visit, and he was going to a visit. He's tiny, right? Tataani, like, he's a little old man, man. He was probably like five feet tall, a little old guy. That's what I was, I was always shocked that I was watching the documentary, and they're talking about him, you know, multiple times trying to kind of be like a pimp. But he could never keep the girls very long.

And I was like, well, I mean, you're 100 pounds. You're five foot, like two and 100 pounds. Like, what, you know, how are you going to keep control of these, these chicks? You know, most of these guys do it with obviously manipulation, but partially that. violence, you're 100 bounds. Yeah, yeah, he was a little guy. Yeah, he was like, but yeah, so that's my Charles Manson story walking right by him, um, leaving a visit and he was going to a visit. He passed away, right? Yeah, he died recently. Um, so how long are you, uh, um, locked up? Where is this that you're, that you go? So I'm in new Folsom, but I'm just on an AdSec yard now.

Okay. I'm still a new Folsom. I'm in AdSec. I'm in the hole. They make you program there for a few months to kind of prove yourself that you're not going to go assault anybody. Yeah, that you didn't make it, you didn't, you didn't just say it to get in there, to get at somebody. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. That I was going to be like a sleeper, that I was going to just go in there and hit somebody,

right? So they want, they want you to prove yourself that you're really going to program, that you really want to change, that you're not a threat to anybody, that you're not going to be associated with any more gangs, that you really want to go that route. And so, um, I was in the hole for a few months and they let you go to the main line. But now it's a big yard. It's a sea yard. It's a sea facility. But it's everybody there is like either like a dropout or had some other type of case that, you know, they're on a basically like a sensitive yard, right? So I ended up staying at New Folsom probably like another six months. And then they

transferred me one more time. They transferred me to Mule Creek. So when I got to Mule Creek, that was considered like a soft prison. And when I got there, I really tripped out because there'd be like people laying on the grass on the yard, like sunbathing and shit. Like it's like, people were just like totally chilling there.

You know what I mean? It was like no gang stuff going on, no crazy things going on. Like it was like basically considered like a soft prison. Right. You know what I mean? And there I was like playing football,

softball, soccer leagues. You know what I mean? Working. I was working in, I think, vocational automotive. And now it's like 1988. I'm getting all this time back.

I'm working. I'm not having any problems. I'm not associated with anybody. I'm only about two hours away from San Francisco. My family's visiting me like every weekend. My mom, my sisters. And then finally...

You have like six sisters. How many sisters? I have four sisters, four sisters and two brothers. So... It's a lot of visits. It's weird. Everybody,

Like all my siblings came to visit me, like my duration that I was in prison. My older brother never came to visit me one time for whatever reason. Just angry at you? I don't know. It's weird. I actually asked me, how come you never came to visit me the whole time? You know what I mean? But my sisters always came.

My mom, you know, my mom would always come. And it's crazy because I had a little brother at the time and I had these nephews. And it's just crazy. You know, I was in there almost eight years, seeing them grow during that time. You know, they're little kids. and then by the time I'm getting out, they're taller than me, you know what I mean? What did your brother say?

My older brother? Yeah. He really didn't have nothing to say. I don't think he wanted to see me like that. You know, he didn't want to see me locked up. So it wasn't militia. It wasn't like, fuck you.

No. Okay. He actually gave me, when I got out, he gave me a bunch of money to like kind of get going a little bit, you know, like buy some clothes and stuff like that.

But anyway, I ended up getting out finally in March 25th, 2000. I never forget the days. finally got paroled March 25, 2000, after about seven and a half years. And when you parole, they let you go to R&R, receiving and releasing. My sisters had sent me some dress out, some nice clothes that I could wear when I leave. And so put out my dressouts early in the morning. And then at that point, you're just sitting around waiting until they say,

all right, you can leave now. They walk you out. and I remember walking out of the prison my sisters were waiting across the street for me in a car and I remember just like thank God I'm out of here you know what I mean and by this time I'm 27 years old now

do you go do you did you get like a halfway house or you're just done you're just done but it just kills me bro the state prisons just fucking let you go yeah I mean I if you don't have luckily you obviously had support of some kind you know you have a you have a support

system, but a lot of these guys who get out, they got nothing. They got, they're going right back to the same thing. Yeah. I actually got a friend that just finished doing 27 years. He got out in state. And they put those guys, when you did that much time, or if you were a lifer and you got out, they dropped your L. I think they put you in a halfway house now in California for like six months and try to help you out a little bit. Almost all federal inmates go to a halfway house. Yeah. Almost all of them. Yeah. But like for me, when I got out, they just cut you loose. And then I was on parole, they call it high control parole. So I was on high control parole, which is a little bit more stringent. I was on that for three years. What is your, like you're, you know, you're being released.

Is your plan? What is your plan? Because if you're, you know, you need to have a plan. It doesn't have to work out exactly the way, you know, needs to be fluid, but you got to have a plan. And it's like, just to get your head right, you know, and something reasonable, because I can't tell me how many fucking guys are going to get out and they're going to be a rapper. And they're going to start a studio and they're going to, you know, or they're going to open a restaurant. It's like, bro, you have no fucking money. You've never run a student.

You've never run any of these things. You've never worked in a restaurant. You know, and they have these unrealistic. But what was, did you have kind of a plan? Like, here's what I think I'm going to start here, do this, do that, you know. Yeah. So I really, I do really remember this visually because I remember New Year's, New Year's Eve, 2000, like 12, 31, 99.

I remember sitting, and I knew I was getting out in like three months, right? I remember sitting down at my desk in my cell, looking out the window, and I wrote a list. Like, I need to get a job, making X amount of money so I can live a certain way. You know what I mean? I need to buy a car. I never even had a driver's license. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Never really had a lot of work experience because I went away when I was 19. And then, so I did write a list, like a game. plan of stuff that I needed to do. And I try to stick to it as best I could. But keep in my, remember, I went away when I was 19. I got out when I was 27. And I literally did not like really have any skills, like professional skills or job skills. I definitely didn't have any money. You know what I mean? Except like the money that my brother gave me or my family gave me to kind to get on my feet a little bit. But I was starting from scratch. I didn't like a said, I didn't have any particular skills.

Back in those days, you know, there wasn't like LinkedIn and Craigslist. You know what I mean? You're literally looking in a fucking newspaper to look for a job, job opportunities, right? So I remember, like, the very, very first job I had, I found like some marketing job on some ad, right? And this is like maybe two or three weeks fresh out of prison, right? I'm living at my mom's house, 27 years old. I don't have a car.

I don't have a license. I don't have shit, okay, starting from scratch. And I got a, I went and did like a little interview for some marketing company and I was literally going to be working downtown San Francisco

handing out flyers on a fucking corner like a loser. That was my first job and I'll never forget because it's funny now, you know what I mean? It's funny now.

I can laugh at it now. But literally, that was the first, job I had. So, you know, guys that get out of prison, there's, if you don't have any connections, if you're not educated, there's nothing glamorous about getting out of prison with no skills. And unfortunately, there's a huge percentage of guys that do that. You know what I mean? So that didn't work out. I did, I literally did that for like half a day. Hated it. I literally walked off. I'm like, fuck this. I'm not doing this. You know what I mean?

Like, what did you expect you to do you were getting a CEO position? Like that's where you're at. Yeah. Seriously, right? I was cleaning, listen, I'm cleaning toilets at a gym. Yeah. It was a reality check. Very, very humbling reality check.

And I'm like, all right, I got to figure out something else to do, right? So I started looking in the newspaper again, looking for more jobs. And I found a company. It was a modeling and acting school in downtown San Francisco called John Robert Powers, JRP. And they were looking for a book. agent. So basically somebody who's going to come in and make calls to book people to come in and do these appointments for people that are aspiring actors and models. Like so our demographic was kids like like they had the the lower age demographic for kids that were like 12 to 18 that maybe wanted to

get like get into like Nickelodeon and Disney shit like that right. And then you had the older demographic where there is girls that were like maybe 18 to 25 that were like wanted to model. So I went in there, got a job as a booking agent. So here I was now making cold calls. I'm in a back room with like another girl. And what was cool about this job and what helped me, you know, it allowed me to like put on a suit and a tie and feel better about myself and help my confidence, help my ego as a young man. Because keep in mind, two months ago, three months ago, I'm sitting in the cell. So I'm trying to, like, navigate and, like, do these little things that are helping boost my self-esteem so I can continue to grow as a young man now, right? And so

I did that pretty successfully for, like, six or nine months. And basically, it's sales. You're calling people on the phone. And that's when I learned. that I maybe had a gift for sales and calling people. And I liked it because it was a little challenging, but I felt like I was pretty good at talking to people. And I thought I was on to something, right? And so I did that for about six months. At one point, I had like my own office and like,

I'm making a little bit of money, feeling better about myself. But I'm like, all right, what else can I do, right? So you mentioned like working at a gym. back in those days, that's when 24-hour Nautilus, it just came out back in those days, right, which is now 24-hour fitness. 24-hour Nautilus was like this new cool gym that everybody wanted to go work out at back in, like, 2000, 2001, right? And so I started working at 24-hour Nautilus as a sales counselor.

Now I'm selling people gym memberships and training and supplements. and I'm like grilling people every day. And now I'm doing face-to-face sales like we're sitting down right here, pitching you, Matt, on how you're going to get this membership. And if you work out three, four days a week and you start taking these supplements and maybe work with one of our trainers,

you're going to start getting buffed, Matt, and that's why you should buy this membership right now. So that's what my pitch was, right? And so I started getting good at this, you know what I mean? And I'm around a lot of good salespeople there. It's funny looking back on those years. There was about 10 guys, right? And we're all, you know, early 20s, mid-20s, you know, lots of high testosterone.

You're working in the gym. And I'm working with these guys that I learned a lot of great sales skills from, right? Like there are some gifted, talented sales guys there, right? So I'm working at 24-hour for about, you know, six months now. I remember pitching this guy one day grilling him, like I'm pitching him hard. Like, why are you going to get this? Why are you going to take these supplements? Why are you going to get this training with one of our trainers?

And I'm drilling him, I'm pitching him. And he's like, you know what? You're a pretty good salesperson. Have you ever thought about doing anything else? And I'm like, yeah, of course. I'm always trying to improve, right? And keep in mind, Matt, I'm taking these jobs. You know when you fill out a job application,

they ask you if you've ever been convicted of a felony in the last five years? Yeah. I would write, no. Right. Because I was convicted of a felony eight years. You know what I mean? So I wasn't lying, but that's what my little loophole was in order to like find work and get jobs, right?

And then as the jobs got better, I really kept that out of the way. You know what I mean? But anyway, so this guy I'm drilling on on training and all this other. So he gave me a business card. He's all, hey, we're looking for some new salespeople. Maybe this may work for you. I work for a place called household finance. HFC, and he was like an account executive there, gave me his card.

I called, I called HFC, and within like a month or two later, I was hired. I got a job as an accounting executive, and there, that's where I started getting training on becoming an accounting executive or selling personal loans, home equity lines of credit, and first and second mortgages. Keep in mind, I didn't know anything about any of this stuff, right? But I had the energy. I knew how to talk. They could mold me and train me to be a good little HFC worker.

And that's what they were looking for, right? Somebody that was hungry. I was hungry. So you're actually like, you're a loan officer. Yeah. Okay. So we used to have the account executives were typically what we called account executives were the people that would work for like, you know, countrywide.

And they would come out to the broker. brokers offices and they would pitch their products, but they didn't actually close the loans. But you're an account. Account executive in the office. But you're like a loan officer. But I did that later. And I'll get to that. I did that later.

So that was like my first step into the loan world. They called it account executive. But yeah, you could be, you can call it a loan officer too, right? Right. So I actually stayed at HFC for about a year. Things went pretty well. I learned a lot, but I was always like, you know, fresh out of prison, I'm hungry. I'm always trying to like maybe get a new job every six months to a year to like grow and,

you know, get more, make more income and get more responsibility. So that's what my mindset was, right? And so I worked at HFC for about a year. I then went to go work for a mortgage broker in South San Francisco. and I weren't to go work for this mortgage broker, and that's where I got introduced to the wholesale industry, like the other stuff you're talking about with like the wholesale reps that would come into the office, right?

And so I was working with the mortgage broker. I wasn't licensed, but I was getting familiar with the wholesale business, right? Because as you know in lending, you have the retail business, you have the wholesale business, you have the depository banks, you have the mortgage brokers. The lending space is very big, right? there's different roles. So to work for a lender and be a loan officer or an account executive, you don't have to be licensed in Florida. Because I don't know how it is in California. But the moment

you became a broker where you're brokering loans to multiple different lenders, that's when you do have to be licensed in Florida. Well, that's how it used to be. Who knows how it is now? Did you have to get licensed at that point? You said you're not licensed. When you became the broker, is that how it works in California? No, you still don't have you licensed. there is a main broker in the office and she had a license and we would do any we would do everything under her license okay okay so that's how that worked and back in those days in california as a loan officer or whatever nobody needed a license that didn't come along years later till they came out with the whole patriot act stuff the dodd frank law yeah that came years later but so during those years

i didn't have a license i didn't need a license i was actually helping them sell homes so actually sold property through the broker's license, and I was also funding loans as a loan officer, too. Okay. Did that for about a year, learned more about the business, and during that time, as you mentioned, like these account executives would come into our office and pitch us on all their different bank products. I'm like, I think I want to do that.

They seem like they have a cool job. They don't work in an office. They're in their car, driving around all. day meeting people, shaking hands, schmoozing people. I think I can do that. Yeah, they show up with, they show up with the, they would show up with the, um, the bagels and cream cheese or donuts. They would take you to take the, the manager to lunch. Like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was much, much more fun than just sitting at the desk talking on the phone. Exactly. So I, I, I, I met a lot of bank reps during that time with the whole

schmoozing thing. And I'm like, I think I want to try to do. that. So while I was working at the broker's office, I started applying the different wholesale banks. And during that time, there is a new bank that I kind of targeted in Walnut Creek. They were called Oakmont Mortgage. And they later, they became Own It Mortgage years later. You know who Oakmont sounds like? It makes me think of the Wolf of Wall Street. That was a Strattano. Stratnope. Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay. Go ahead. We partied like that. We partied like that. that years later.

But so I sent my app, I sent out an application to this one company in my resume. I kept sending my, I'm like a very persistent person, right? I remember sending my resume to these guys like maybe three times over like a two month period. They finally called me, brought me in for an interview, got the job.

Now I'm that wholesale rep that's going to broker's offices, schmoozing them, getting their loans, taking them back to my bank and we're funding the deals. So that started going pretty well. I mean, remember, this is 2002 now, excuse me, 2003, right at the beginning of the whole subprime mortgage era. I went from making maybe, you know, five grand a month at HFC to Oakmont. Now I'm making like 10 grand a month, which is, you know, pretty good money back then, you know.

And, um, 20,000 a year. Yeah. I mean, back in those days, that was, that was a lot of money, you know. In Florida, that's a lot of money now. Yeah. You know, if you could make 10 grand a month in Florida, you're fucking kicking ass. Sorry, good. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, 10 grand in California probably doesn't go. No. Probably doesn't go a long way. But anyway, um, so Oakmont started working out. I'm funding deals. I'm learning the ropes. Back in those days, they would give me a list of brokers from like San Francisco to San Jose, which is like a 50-mile radius. And I would have like maybe a list of 50 brokers. It's like,

you just got to go meet them and talk to them and build that rapport so I can take these loans back to my bank and we would fund these deals. So as time went on and Oakmont mortgage became own-it mortgage, now I'm like rolling. Now I'm funding, you know, five, 10, 15, 20 million dollars a month in loans. At my peak, I was making about 100 grand a month. You know, as a lender, as a wholesale rep, as an account executive. So I was like one of the top guys in my office. I'm funding, like on average, a good month, 10, 12 million. On a great month, I'm funding 20 million a month.

You know, we're rocking and rolling. You know what I mean? And everything's great, making a lot of money. You know, by now I bought a house. I have, you know, nice cars, toys. I'm partying with the boys. you know, I'm taking trips, started partying hard, like we talked about the Wolf of Wall Street.

I got into use and blow, okay? I was always at the strip club, just doing, you know, what comes with making a lot of money, right? The crazy lifestyle, when you're a young guy and you're single, you know, the womanizing, the strip clubs, traveling, we were having a lot of fun. Well, your parents must be thrilled, though. That, I mean, obviously they don't know that aspect of it,

that they're like, this fucking guy, this kid was in fucking prison. And now he was pulling up in a Mercedes. Yeah. Like, what has happened? Like, what a turnaround. Yeah, I remember, like, 2005, I bought my first house. I bought, like, a five-bed, board bath, house with the pool. Had a big party.

All my family members came by. And my older brother, who has a master's degree. And worked in Silicon Valley and did well for himself, too. but like they came into my house and I had the fat pad and I remember his wife was like I should get into doing loans you know what I mean like it's not that easy but obviously the lifestyle and everything that I had my family of course they're very happy for me right and you know I was always taking care of my mom giving my mom money helping my mom helping my sisters helping everybody you know what I mean so it was a good time but once again this is now 2005 2006

2007, this is when the market starts changing. The market starts collapsing, you know. And by now it's the end of 2006. I think 2005 I made almost 800 grand that year. So I was rolling. I was rolling for somebody six years out of prison. You know what I mean? And but also I wasn't investing.

I wasn't saving. I was just like blowing through this money. You know what I mean? Like a lot of young people, unfortunately do. top of that. I'm partying. I'm drinking. I got a couple DUIs, messing with the blow, have all the girls. And so at the end of 2006, I remembered with Own It Mortgage, something weird was happening with the company. All of a sudden, we quit funding deals. Our main investor was Merrill Lynch, and apparently a lot of the loans that we were selling a Merrill Lynch were coming

back is bad loans. There is all this fraud going on. So that's when we find out all these brokers are doing a lot of fraud. And we had a batch of like $500 million in loans that Merrill Lynch was like, we're not taking these off your hands. You keep them. And our company was not in the business of servicing loans. Right. We were selling these loans to the secondary market, as you know. And so just like that, this amazing job I had where I was making all this money, the CEO did a conference call with the entire company. There was like 2,000 employees. And it's like, sorry, we're closing our doors. Like, it's over, just like that.

So that happened at the end of 2006. And now I'm in scramble mode because I didn't have a job. I was making anywhere from like 60 to 100 grand a month during that time period. And now I have like these mortgages and car notes and all these other responsibilities and I didn't have a job. I ended up hooking up with another lender in 2007 and trying to make that work as a wholesale lender. But it just wasn't the same. The market was collapsing. You had the whole mortgage collapse, the financial markets.

You had, you know, this whole recession that was. we had. And so 2007, 2008, 2009 were like really tough years for me, you know. By the time 2009, 2010 rolled around, I'd moved back into my mom's house. I'd like lost everything. Okay. I was doing blow. I was drinking. Like I went backwards. Like I was really kind of down on my luck, but I also shot myself in the foot with everything that I was doing wrong. You know what I mean and so um 2011 2012 um i actually went back and i started working at wells fargo home mortgage that wasn't the same the business just wasn't the same now we have all these new laws the dot frank law came out um it was tar it was hard to get loans funded you know what i mean funding deals

it wasn't fun anymore you know when i was doing loans and three four five and six it was fun It was a party. We were making a lot of money. But now with all these new restrictions and regulations and home values had dropped, it wasn't fun anymore. So I went after that to go work for a startup called trulia.com. Trulia.com was acquired by Zillow years later. And this was a, they called this like a prop tech company. I was one of their top salespeople. I took the, we took the company public. I was making good money. I was still making like the low hundreds. But, I mean, I went from making 800 grand to 120. It's not the same.

So I always felt like I was chasing that carrot. Like I was trying to find lightning in a bottle again. You know what I mean? So I kind of relapsed again, 2013, 2014. doing a lot of blow. I wasn't working. I was literally living at my mom's, really down on myself.

And I came up with this amazing idea that, you know what, let me go rob a bank. God. Yeah, I came up. You're still making $10,000 a month. I know, but it just, I felt like I wanted to go,

if I can go rob a bank and maybe get like, let's just say, you know, 20 to 50 grand. that can hold me over and I can maybe go find another job. So this is how fucked up I was in the head that that's what my plan was. Okay? From being like, you know, basically being a millionaire and having everything I wanted to now a low point where I'm going to go rob a bank.

Okay? So I remember by my mom's house there is this bank of the west. It was probably like a half a mile away. I would always drive by and, you know, banks close at five o'clock. So I'd drive by like around 445, 450. It was always dead. This branch was dead. So I'm like, I'm going to go hit this bank. So I went and drove, cased out the block, parked my car here, I could walk in the side door, run out the bank, make a U-turn, skate off, get away. That's what my plan was. So I went and went into this bank on, it was Black Friday, Black Friday, 2014.

So this is 2014, Black Friday right before Christmas. that's how like the fall from grace from like 2007 to 2014 this is where I was at now okay and I'm going to go hit this bank I go in with a ball cap I'm wearing like a parka jacket pulled up to here so you can really like just see like my eyes right and I'm going to give the teller a note I don't have a weapon I don't have anything I'm going to give them a note and that's what I did. I went in there, I parked my car, walked in the side door. Nobody was in the branch.

I gave him the note, gave the teller note. The teller's freaking out, running around, grabbing cash from that was right there readily available, put all the money in a bag, gave it to me, and I ran out. Well, I don't run out, but I walked out. As soon as I hit the door, I ran to my car, jumped in my car, did a U-turn, sped, off and I went to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Golden Gate Park has underground parking. I drove down there and I just sat in my car for like two hours. Like the fuck did I just do? You know what I mean? I robbed the bank. Right. And I counted the money. Only had like 12 grand.

It wasn't a lot of money. But I sat there with this money and I was like, that was really easy. you became emboldened so i said you know what it's only 12 grand let me do it one more time and um and then i'll go like look for another job it's like do something that's this is i was literally thinking man and it's funny now and like i've done so much um self work over the last 10 years, 12 years since then. But I can look back and I could honestly say during that time period 2014, 2015, I hit rock bottom as a man for me to go do something like that. You know what I mean? Like all that confidence I had, all that ego I had, I went backwards, you know? And so I I went to go case out another bank.

I found a city bank kind of in the neighborhood, like a mile away. And it was a more busy neighborhood, but I had focused on this bank. I kept going by for a couple of days, checking out the neighborhood, going there at $4.50. And I said, all right, let me, I'm going to go hit this bank. Same M.O. Parked my car over here, make a U-turn, take off. I had the same plan as the one I just did, right? So remember, I'm building a pattern now with the police. I'm doing this on a Friday as well, another Friday,

the next, like two Fridays down the road. And I remember parking near City Bay. And I remember standing in the street looking in the sky. And I'm looking in the sky like, if I get caught, they're going to give me at least 15 years and I'm going to be fucking done and I had a little dog back then like my little dog was like my prize possession

I had a little half Yorkie half-y-a-Maltese. It was a morkey. That was like my prize possession dude like my dog. I said if I go do this robbery and I get caught I'm never going to see my dog again. And I had this self-talk right before I went into the bank

went into the bank 450 455 I'm in the bank by myself I had right when I hand the teller the note I see somebody walk in the bank behind me I see the reflection in the class

and it spooked me but I already gave the teller the note so at that point I decided let me just leave I walked out because I wasn't going to stand there and do a Robbie where I got some dudes standing right behind me You know what I mean? So I walk out the bank and it's a little hill.

I ran out, I ran out the bank and as I'm running out the bank, I'm taking off my coat because obviously when you rob somebody or do a robbery, you want to change your clothes or look different or whatever, right? I take off my coat, run up the hill, jump in my car. I could already hear sirens nearby. I jam out of the area. I parked like maybe two miles away and I'm changing my clothes

getting out of my clothes take off my hat I'm looking for my cell phone I can't find my cell phone did I did not leave your cell phone in the bank so I'm looking all over my car I can't find my phone and I'm like fuck did I drop my phone

so when I was taking off my coat when I was running out the bank I had like a little pocket right here yeah it fell out It must have fell out. Oh, my God. I dropped my phone at the scene of the crime. I know it sounds horrible. That's like...

Did you leave the note, too? Yeah, yeah. But the note, you had gloves or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so drop my phone. I actually, I'm like, I need to go back and see if I could find my phone. Because now I already look completely different, right? Change my clothes.

I drove back to the bank, parked my car. And I walk around and I'm like, you know, there's cops everywhere. But I'm looking on the ground to see if in the area around, I'm looking for my phone. I can't find my phone. I'm like, fuck, you know what I mean? So I just left. I took off. I went back to my mom's house.

I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out because they have my, they're probably going to find my phone. If they grab my phone, it's not locked. I had like an old Samsung phone back in those days, right? So if they open up my phone, they're going to see. all my pictures and probably make a connection, right? So I basically started like telling my mom, hey, can you call my phone, you know, block your number, call my phone and see if somebody answers a phone.

Sure enough, my mom blocked her, block her house phone. She called, she called my phone, somebody answered it. It was a cop. And I was like, fuck, man, they got my phone. and she's like, my mom played it off. My mom was like, oh, I think I dropped my phone there. Can you hold it for me? I'm going to come get it.

So my mom was kind of playing along. Like she was going to help me, right? But my mom was scared. I'm freaking her out because I'm all, you know, yelling, screaming, freaking out. I'm going to get caught. I'm going to go back to prison. And so I asked my mom, can you please go over there and see if they'll give you the phone? So my mom left for like a couple hours.

And I don't think she ever went over there. I think during that time she freaked out and called one of my sisters. And my sister said, don't get involved. He's going to get you in trouble. Turn his ass in. So sure enough, two days later, there's a knock at the door. I never got my phone. I never got my phone.

I never got my phone. I never got my phone. like two days later, there's a knock on the door, and I go to the front of the house, and I'm like going to look out the window to see who's at the door, right? And by the time I go to the front of the house and I'm looking out the window, I hear somebody already opening the door.

So I come out the room, and it's a cop opening the door. My mom had gave you the cops the keys to the house to come get me. And I walked around, and it was a cop. like, pulled out his gun, freeze, laid me down. The same way I got laid down when I was a kid in 1993, 92. Now it's 2014, 22 years later, same situation on my porch of my parents' home. I got arrested. And now they're like, you know, they took me downtown again, San Francisco, California.

They take me to the brand new jail now. I was in the old jail. Now it's 20 years later, they're taking me into the new jail. During that walk, the cops talking shit to me, robbery detail, robbery task force. Oh, you're going to go away for a long time, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, fuck you. I already, I already, this, you know, this ain't my first rodeo. I'm being a tough guy.

You know what I mean? This ain't my first rodeo, you know? And so they take me up to robbery detail, cuff me to the chair, lock the door, and leave me in there for, you know, hours. And hours later, two dudes walk into the room, sit down in front of me, pull out their badge, FBI. I robbed a bank, or I was trying to rob a bank. So now it's federal.

You did use a note. I did use a note. Thank God. And the first one was a small amount of money. The second one I didn't get anything. It was botched. And so they try to ask me some questions. Of course, I didn't have anything to say.

And they ended up booking me later on, hours later. And now I'm in jail. Here I am. Back in jail. At this time now, I'm trying to think I was 42 years old. Okay? And I'm back in jail. I'm the old guy in jail now.

You know, when I came in, when I was 19, I remember I'd look at these older guys, and I thought they're fucking losers. Now I'm that fucking loser. And I'm sitting in jail. And once again, I got a court-appointed attorney. Her name was Rebecca Young. To this day, she's like a mother figure to me.

She's like one of my best friends. Still amazing criminal defense attorney helping out a lot of people in the San Francisco area. And so she was my attorney. And she was like just very nurturing. and she was like, you got to get out of this jail. You got to bail out somehow. Pull the money together. You got to bail out because if you don't get out of custody,

they're going to make you go through a speedy trial and you're going to go to prison. You're going to go back to prison. If you get out of custody and fight this case from the streets, then maybe you have a chance. Is this federal? No, so the feds never picked it up because it was minor.

To them, it was minor. Okay. So the feds and it, pick it up. So keep in mind, I'm in the county jail now for like five months. And during these five months, I sobered up now. I start thinking differently. I'm like, I got to get out of here. I got to somehow bail out of here. And that way, I have a fighting chance from the streets to get out of here, you know, to at least fight this case. So I'm in the county jail for like five months. And keep in mind, I'm like in a little tank in the county jail.

So in the county jail where I was at in 850 Bryant on the seventh floor, I'm in a tank with like five other dudes, right? So there's two bunk beds, two bunk beds, two bunk beds. There's a phone in our cell. And, you know, no one's fighting over the phone or anything like that because everyone in our tank were cool. But I'm always on the phone trying to call people, call family. No one's taking my calls.

My family won't talk to me. My family cut me off. Somehow I get a hold of like my nephew. I'm like, go in my old Facebook. I don't have Facebook. I deleted it, but you can still like put in my password and get into it, right? Go into my old Facebook. Get my ex-girlfriend, Janelle's, send her a message.

Tell her I need help. So my nephew goes into my old Facebook messages Janelle. Hey, Janelle. Mario needs help. He's in jail. So she gives my nephew her number. I call Janelle and I'm like, look, I need you, I need you to help. This is where I'm at.

I need to get out of here. I need to raise some money to get out of jail. I need you to reach out to this friend, that friend, this friend, that friend, put the money together. And then I need to find a co-signer so I can get out of jail. So that took some time, right? It didn't happen overnight, right? That probably took at least a month to piece the money together.

So I crowdfunded my bail. from like 10 different people. How much was that? 10 grand, because my bail was 100 grand, but in San Francisco, 10%. Yeah. Okay. So put that together. So I had the money.

I was able to put the money together through all these different friends. I had friends that chipped in, right? But I didn't have a co-signer. And so even if you have the money to bail out, you still need a co-signer that's willing to put their name on the line for you to get out of bail. and if you don't have a co-signer, you cannot bail out. So that took a minute to work out. I had asked Janelle, she's like, no, I'm not going to this co-sign.

I try to reach out to a couple friends. They're like, no, I can't. I can't do that. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not going to put my name on the line for you. And then I thought to myself, you know what? Who can I reach out to? I have these cousins that I thought about, my cousin Monica and my cousin Eli.

I'm like, let me call them. Let me see if they'll help me. And sure enough, Janelle called them. They're like, hey, Mara's in jail. He needs help. He needs a co-signer. Will you help him out? Will you be his co-signer?

And they're like, sure, no problem. So now I had my co-signer. And they co-signed for me, posted bail. I got out of jail. And now here I was again. 2015. May 2015 is when I got out. but now I have nowhere to live

my family's not talking to me I'm like in a bad position and I have no money again I lost everything lost my dog never saw my dog again lost my car lost my place lost everything right so here I am again

square one but I'm 42 now okay and but also too this was like mentally and emotionally I'm telling myself if I don't fix this if I don't get this right I'm done like my life

over. You know what I mean? That's how I feel. So it was extreme desperation that I had, but also extreme motivation to change my ways and get my life back on track for good. Okay? So I had a friend in Vegas, a good friend of my name Tony, who was working on a film about his own life. Mindy, he was fighting his own federal case at the time too. This is my buddy. And he's like, come out to Vegas, lay low here. You can help me work on this film. We ended up making a short film about his life with the rapper G. Easy. I don't know if you're familiar with the rapper G. Easy. Pretty big name.

We made a short film. It came out a couple years later. It went on the film festival circuit. They even did it up in, what's that place in Utah? Did they do the Sundance? Sundance. The director went up to Sundance, pitched the film. So we made a successful short film while I was out on bail.

and he was fighting his case, he ended up going to federal prison, like a year later. I ended up moving back to San Francisco. And I had nothing in San Francisco at this point, right? Because, like, my whole family disowned me. I'm still fighting my case, just waving time. My lawyer is like, you need to leave San Francisco, because if you don't, you're going to fall back into your old bad habits with your friends.

You're going to start doing drugs again. You start drinking again. And at this point, I was like, not doing drugs anymore. And so at that point, 2016, April, 2016, almost 10 years to this day, I said, you know what,

I'm going to go to L.A. I'm going to try to get into this film business that we just make this film, and I have nothing to lose. So I literally drove down to L.A. with like four suitcases. I bounced around in different Airbnbs for like a couple of months.

I got a job. got a job selling gold at a gold company. That didn't work out. Then a few months later got a job working at like a marketing company, did that for like six months. I was making money, but I was just like barely getting by, you know what I mean?

And so then I said, you know what? Let me get back into the loan business. I started working for a mortgage broker again, worked there for about a year, got settled, it got back on my feet. So now I'm back in L.A.,

fighting a case that I would still go back to San Francisco for like every couple of months because I had to go to court, waving time, waving time. Now that I'm out of custody, I'm not like important to the courts. You know, they have a bunch of people in custody that they're trying to prosecute. Right. You know, and, and now I'm getting like letters from my different employers, like character reference letters at Mario's working here. He's doing good. And so things are, I'm rebuilding my life. I'm getting back on track. Right around 2017 or 18, I got a job as a manager

at a loan modification office. We're doing loan mods, and I'm managing a team of like five to ten different reps, and I'm making good money now, and I'm rolling, and bought another Mercedes. I got my own place again, and I'm doing good again. And most importantly is I'm sober, I'm not doing drugs.

I still go out and have a few drinks here and there, but nothing crazy, right? And so now I'm like totally on the straight and arrow. I'm working. I'm making money. Still going to court. You're, you know, this is like three years already go by. And I'm still, you know, going to court. And it's weird. Like I would wave, go to court, wave time. How are you doing, Mr. Sanchez? You're working. How's work going? Good. Keeping your nose clean. Yes. All right. We'll see you in three months. That's, they're just letting me wave this. time. It was crazy. Could do that forever. Yeah. More than happy to do that forever.

Yeah. So that's what went on. So then right after that, COVID hit. So COVID around 2020 or whatever, 21, my business that I was working at, business really slowed down. And now the world was obviously changing. People started working remote, remote environment. And so I'm like, you know what?

My business here is really slowed down. I want to look at doing something different. I started like applying to all these other jobs. I actually got recruited to go work in another mortgage bank called American Advisors Group. They're a reverse mortgage bank. They wanted to hire me to become a sales manager, but I had to go get licensed. So mind you, now it's like 20, 2020, 2021. I got recruited to go work at this mortgage bank.

I'm working from home. I went to go work for AAG. They give you like a $25,000 bonus after six months and another $25,000 bonus after a year on top of my $120,000 salary plus commissions that I'm making. So here we are. I got licensed. They also paid for my licensing.

I passed a national mortgage license. I had an NMLS license. I'm a licensed mortgage banker fighting a bank robbery case this whole time. Okay? Now, keep in mind, it's 2021. The markets are going crazy again. I think that's when they had like the first crypto crash. Interest rates went up. The company started losing a lot of money. They started doing mass layoffs. They laid off like 500 people from our bank. And keep in mind, we're the number one reverse mortgage lender in the country, okay? Tom Selleck is our number one spokesperson.

Okay, if you see those commercials. I've seen the commercial. That's who I was working for. And so, they're like, Mario, we're going to have to either let you go or demote you because we don't, we have 30 managers. We don't need 30 sales managers anymore.

I'm managing a team of like 10 loan officers. We're rolling. We're producing every month. I'm making good money. I thought this was like going to be my last job. Like, I was rolling again. But still fighting my case. and now they're saying,

we're either going to demote you or we're going to lay you off. They said, if we demote you, you're going to be a loan officer now and you got to get license in this state, that state,

this state, this state, like I got to get multiple licenses, right? Because as a sales manager, I was managing a team of loan officers. I didn't have any interaction with clients.

I wasn't selling anything. Right. Okay? But now as a loan officer, I'm going to be receiving Social Security numbers. I'm going to be doing application so the laws are different.

Once I started applying for all these different licenses for different states, every state has different regulations. They did an FBI background check on me. Bingo. That's when my whole history came up from what I went to prison for in 1993. Also this pending case that I just beat. That came up. That you beat?

Because so what happened was when right before I took this loan modification job, excuse me, right before I took this job at AAG in the reverse mortgage, it had been like six, six and a half years. It was 2020. There's an election in San Francisco, a new DA, district attorney's name is Chesa Boudin. You can look him up. He was one of these rehabilitation DAs, one of they call like the woke DAs that wants to really rehabilitate people and give people a chance. He knew my attorney. My attorney said, look, my client, he's been out of custody now, six years, clean.

He's been going to substance abuse therapy, alcohol abuse therapy for years now. I did that stably employed. Stably employed. Look at his income. Look at his pay stubs. Look at his W-2s. Look at his 1099s. He's doing well.

Give him a chance. Let him, let him, you know, walk away credit for time served and give him a chance. Keep in mind this, this DA, Chesa, his own dad is still in prison to this day. His dad went to prison for murder bank robberies years ago. Okay? So Chesa is all about helping the little guy, giving people a chance. And ironically enough, they actually impeached him too. like a year or two later.

Like they got him out of office, right? They had a recall on him and got him out of office. But before that happened, he gave me a chance and let me go. He just dismissed the whole case? Dismiss the whole case. Credit for time served. I actually gave a big old speech to the judge when I got out talking about how I changed, how I rebuilt myself internally and externally.

And I'm on the road to good now. they let me go and then I got hired at AAG and that's how that happened but anyway the FBI background check they found me um they found out about my background and they suspended me and within like two weeks they fired me so that's when around 2020 22 that's when I decided you know what all this shit that has happened over the last 30 plus years I'm going to write a book about it so from 2022 to like 2024, that's when I started writing my book about everything that I just kind of went through with you. And that's where the whole relentless mindset things come from because I never gave up on myself. I changed my ways.

The whole relentless mindset was born in jail when I was down on my luck and I thought my life was over. It's like I got to have this relentless attitude from now on. How are we going to get out of this situation? and so I wrote this book now that hopefully will be out by the end of the first quarter called Relentless Mindset. I'm tired of hiding my past. And the whole purpose of the book is basically sharing all this now with the public because I've been working in corporate America essentially for the last 25 years.

Nobody knows about my criminal background. And I'm tired of hiding it. So that's what I'm doing now. I mean, I've written many books. unless it's a bestseller. And even then, you know what I mean? Right. It's like, what are you doing for a living?

So over the last, so when I lost my job at AAG, I took a year off, I took some time off, and had money saved. And also, that's when I had some downtown to write the book. And then I actually went back to go work for a home builder. I was working for a home builder for about a year and a half, called Circa Homes. But we got laid off there too

because when Trump came in with all the tariffs, we were doing all of our manufacturing overseas. The tariffs really crippled the company. We got laid off there. And now I'm actually back at the Lone Modification Office running that office again. So ironically enough, a lot of people are losing their jobs again.

People are having struggles, keeping their homes. So my day job, I help people stay in their homes, but on the back burner is pushing my book, pushing my merch. I also want to hopefully develop this for a series or even a film. I'd love to do a documentary about everything that I've done. And I still have the film bug. We're also the short film that we did. We're trying to turn that into a feature film.

We already did it as a short film where we did that successfully. we're trying to get funding to do that as a feature film or even as a series. I still live in L.A. I've been living in L.A. now for almost 10 years. So that's what I'm doing now with myself along with the real estate stuff. Where's your buddy that you did the film with? He's back in Vegas and he's doing great. He flips houses for a living and he does great.

And so we're back together. I actually just saw him for New Year's. So really good friend of mine, one of my best friends. He's out of federal custody. I beat my case. And now I'm just really trying to make this book stuff work and still continue doing some film stuff too. Is the book on Amazon? It will be.

It will be like on Amazon and stuff like that. It's not out yet. It's not out yet. It's not out yet. But I'm trying to get it done by the end of Q1. Okay. Okay. I mean, is it, is, can you do pre-sales?

Yeah. Yeah. So I've done some pre-sales. Oh, okay. I've done some pre-sales. Obviously, coming on platforms like this will help me continue to do that. And thank you for, of course, having me today. But trying to do pre-sales.

But, you know, ideally, I mean, when I moved to L.A. 10 years ago, I'm like, I came to this town to somehow make a film. I made a short film. I really want to make a feature film or do a series. Obviously, streaming is so big now. But I think between my story and my friend's story, we have something. We just got to get it in the hands of the right people. How do people get in touch with it?

Because if they want to, if they want to buy the book or do a pre-sale or something, do you have like a website? Yeah, my website is Relentless-Mineset.com. So, www. Relentless-Mindset.com. There you'll see my story. You can see some of my merch. You can see the pre-sales from my book.

And then also to my Instagram is The, like T-H-E-E-E-E. Mario Sanchez. They can find me there. And yeah, I'm just really trying to get them, push my story out there so people can become familiar with who I am, learn about my story, and then like I said, ideally turn this into a series or film. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button to the bell so you get notified. A video is just like this. Also, you guys, if you want to get a hold of Mario, we are going to leave all of his links in the description box. You can go there, click on it. You can get in touch with him. You can do a pre-order for the book. Once again,

Thank everybody for watching. If you're interested in being a guest on the show, you can go to our website, which we will also leave in the description box. You can go to the website. You can click on the Be a Guest. You can fill out a form, leave a short video, and we will get back with you. Thank you very much. See you.