Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Valet Scams Really Work | ADDICTED TO STEALING

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

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For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th. While I walk up to the hotel, I wait for him to park a car, I go and I grab a set of keys,

I get in the vehicle. I hear, hey. Fat, you ever run so fast you fall? Your legs can't keep up with yourself. My name's Nathaniel Smith. I'm from Rojoboth, Massachusetts. Growing up in a small town, a lot of things you get away with that are criminal, but you don't really think of them like that. You're just kind of a kid.

You're kind of just breaking the law. I think it's kind of growing up and sewing your oats and stuff kids do. People's houses are on fire, stealing their cars. Yeah, I get into that later, but I didn't think I was really a criminal until I got arrested. But looking back before I came here, I was looking at my life. And I was like, boy, second grade, I stole a stopwatch so I could trade it for a pocket knife. I was a thief in second grade. So I started really thinking about it.

And I get into like six and seventh and eighth grade. And we're all into trading baseball cards. That's like the big thing in the late 80s, early 90s, right? I'm 44. I was born in 1980. So we had a history class. And in history class, they were showing us how you can take tea leaves and maybe. documents look old, you know,

Fortune documents. Right. So in my sixth grade brain, I think I can do that with these baseball cards. So it's the time tops would like make a Mickey Mantle reproduction card or Phil Rizzuto, right? In the in the 1989 tops, it was just a throwback. Right. But it looked like the original 1956 Mickey Mantle or the 1951 Phil Rosuto. You couldn't tell them apart other than somewhere on the back it probably said reprint. So I'd take it and some I started, I'd put them in the oven and I'd burn them a little bit and I'd do the tea leaves and then I would convince friends at school that they were real and I would get them to trade that one card for possibly their whole collection because they're thinking they got a $5,000 $5,000, $1,000, $1,50s Mickey Mantle, I'll give you everything I got. Right. I actually got two Michael Jordan rookie cards in my collection from back in those days, you know, just from hustle and right from trade it from.

I'm trading these counterfeits. Counterfeits, basically, right? I had a, it's funny, I had a buddy of mine who would take, he would take, I guess they, I guess across them in like a hologram, it would say reprint or something like that. It was like a, whatever, a rookie card or something. He said, you know, he'd order like 10 of them. And he is, but, you know, it says reprint, he would stick them out in the sun. He said, if you do that for, you sit in the sun over the course of a couple days, he said, it, it heats

it up so much, and I guess the UV rays lift off the thing, and it starts to crumble. He said, you basically could just, yeah, wipe it off. He said, now I've got, I have a, like, I have a, whatever, I don't know what. It's probably the Michael Jordan, because it's the number one counterfeited card. And then he would sell them on, he'd sell them on eBay or whatever. Yeah. It's wrong, you know. Yeah. Have you ever gone online and searched your name and seen how many data brokers have your information available for sale? These brokers sell your information to spammers, scammers, and anybody that's targeting you. In my day, I had to go out and either survey people,

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If my information was compromised in the AT&T data breach, I wouldn't be worried because ORA is always on. It's always protecting me. I value my privacy and yours. All you have to do is go to Aura.com slash Matt to start your two-week free trial. Also, we're going to leave the link in the description box. school. I was always an athlete, played sports, never the best, but good enough, you know, to make the team, but I wasn't a starter on the team. So I always was involved. I had great parents, both self-employed, both own their own business, both hardworking, never saw my dad as a kid

except he'd make it to baseball practice them, you know, and then he'd end up got a side job at night. I mean, self-made guy, both my parents, hard work and people, great people, never saw my mom have a sip of alcohol until I was 21 years old. My dad would, you know, indulge. So they, they didn't raise us with, you know, drugs and alcohol or acceptable. We were always taught the normal morals of life, you know. But I always always looked for an edge. I always looked for a little hustle, you know. I played golf in high school. Golf was what I was best at. I probably could have went to college to play golf. But I was a knucklehead. I was a wise guy. I was a little guy. I had a big mouth.

I didn't like being bullied, so I would be a wise guy, you know? And it got me a couple of butt-wopens that were in that hard way. But so I get kicked off the golf team. Once I get kicked off the golf team, I didn't really care about school anymore. So that's when kind of smoking pot was kind of going around. But I was still like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. And I got put into a peer pressure situation, and I tried it.

And I liked it. And then so pot became big in my life. a long time. I quit school. I went to work for my dad. And he's teaching me the trade. And now I go from 12 to 15 to 20 and things are good. And I'm learning. Now I'm able to he could send me out on my own. So he makes me a subcontractor. I buy a van and I get insurance. And I'm a subcontractor through his company. And we had some in-house and we had dealt with some subcontractors. But he knew for me, best way for me to make the most money would be a subcontractor. Right. So that was 2001, 2002.

I had met my, which is now my ex-wife. I met her in 2001. She was just getting out of college and starting her job. And I was kind of rocking and rolling in the flooring business, starting to make some good money. Things were going good. We fell in love and we bought a house and, you know, did all the things you're supposed to do, right?

You meet a woman, you, get married, to have a kid, buy a house, the American dream, right? So they say, I'm making great money flooring. She's a college grad. She's doing well. We buy a house. Things are good, but I'm miserable. Like, just miserable. I hate, I never liked the flooring business. Right. You know, I did it because I thought it was an honorable thing to do. She, she decided to quit her job, come work for the company, our company, country, country, country, country, which was a good idea in hindsight, bad idea working with your wife is too much time. And then when you're off, you're always talking about business. So there's no, you just grow apart personally. You have a

business relationship. That's what it turned into, unfortunately. And, but we did it. We did it. And we did it very successfully for about five or six years. Because it was third generation, we had a lot of good commercial accounts that kept us steady. And then all the residential stuff, On top of that, you know, was the profit. And I have a sister, by the way. She's two years younger than me. She wanted, my mom owned a flowering gift shop. Beautiful antique store.

She had six or seven forests downstairs, cranking out. I mean, she was the only flower shop in town. My mom had a tremendous business. Started from scratch. She was a forest at a supermarket and said to my father, I want to do this for myself. And he went out and built her a beautiful place. and she was very successful with it.

And my sister wanted no part of it. So, like, right out of 18, 19, she was gone. She didn't want to be around because if you're around, they put you to work. Right. So my parents weren't, you know? Like, my day has never ended. It could be 5 o'clock, and I was driving home, and I thought I was home for the day, and the phone would ring.

It would be dad or mom, and they needed a flower delivery, had to go out, or samples had to be brought somewhere, and so I just did it. I mean, I gave my 20s to my parents. I really did. I just thought, I'm this what you do, right? I mean, that's what I thought.

Right. So my sister ends up meeting this guy. He's a local guy from town. I knew him. I knew him before she met him. He wouldn't have been my first choice for him, but they got together and I grew a liking to him. He was a tough kid, you know,

just one of them kids from the neighborhood that, you know, just was a cool guy, you know, he always was the guy. Right. came from parents that didn't really watch over much of his growing up. So he had a lot of leisures that we didn't as younger kids. So he was kind of a little bit ahead of us, but he was the same age, right?

So he was a little more worldly experienced than we were. So he was kind of like the cool guy. So my sister ends up with this guy. They live, they buy a house. They live together. He's about 25, 26, starts getting headaches. they bring goes to the doctor they look at them do the scans they say you got a tumor in your brain but it's benign don't worry about it well yeah i know don't worry about it right you're good right yeah

you're good what about the headaches they said but don't worry it's benign we're going to operate we're going to remove it you know it's not going to be pleasant it's going to be long recovery but it could be worse so they do it he goes through it all he's a big strong kid he's down to about 130 pounds after surgery, but then he bounces back, you know. But now this is mid-early 2000s, right on the opioid, right? Now, he's got a brain tumor, and it's causing a lot of pain. Right. The doctor that's just pushing this stuff on him, right?

And he's selling it because he sold, he was in that business, that line of work. So he's selling him, giving him away, kind of became like a party drug, you know, like, hey, give me one of them purgazettes, you know. And so I kind of got like the taste of them, but they didn't really do anything for me. It was like, well, it's cool. You know, you feel a little relaxed. So every now and then I would buy a couple from them.

And I was a smoker. So they just sit around and maybe on a Sunday watching a Patriots game, I would take one just chill out. And then that turned into, I mean, tomorrow, try it again and try it again, third day. and before you know it, you're kind of like, I don't want to do it unless I got one of those, you know?

I had no idea like these things make you physically sick or anything like, like most people. So I'm doing that and function, highly functioning, running the business. My job in the morning would be get there, line up the work, coordinate all the crews, coordinate all the work, load up all the trucks, get everybody out by 8 o'clock,

then I would make my rounds checking on everybody if they need anything, run for supplies, whatever. By 1 o'clock, my day was usually done, unless it was, I had appointments in the evening to meet other customers of showing samples, measure the house, whatnot. What I was going with this is, I started taking those and then, hey, chick, can I, you know,

so I'm taking them now I'm taking them daily, but I'm not taking a lot. I'm only taking one 10 milligram and really not noticing it when it wears off. At the end of the day, smoke a joint. I just fall asleep. You're saying, hey, chick? Yeah, his name was Charles, but they called him chick.

Okay. I apologize. I was like, chick like I am. Yeah, yeah. No, his nickname was chick. Okay. It was just the nickname they gave. So, yeah, so I buy more from him and so on and so forth.

That went on for about a year. It was kind of functioning, not really anything that I thought was like. Your wife's not noticing anything? She did, and she would take them as well, but she doesn't have that gene. right so she would even with smoking weed even she could care a lot she can't take it or leave it like sure or no or whatever like just didn't nothing that ever she didn't even really like smoking pot she did it if i did it you know once in a while to about a year year and a half has passed chicks getting these headaches again now we're about 26 27 now and they bring back the doctor tumors back this time

The benign tumors back? A benign tumor is back? Do benign tuber does come back? Or just cancer? Cancer comes back. Now we find out it's cancer. Right. And they're going to operate and they're going to get it.

Don't worry. Okay. So they do the second operation and they said everything went well and he's still getting copious amounts of pain medication. Did you imagine every five four or five years? Right. They go in and they got to remove something. And this kid,

tell you what, he never complained one time. He lived his life when he was big, strong chick, you know, from the neighborhood, and then he was whittled down sickly. He was always the same guy. Right. You know, it didn't kill his spirit. But they did the second to surgery. Of course, with that came many more painkillers. And for a little while, he seemed to be okay, bounced back, got his way back. Then my sister and him ended up marrying between the two surgeries they had married. So now after the second surgery, I don't think it was a year, they say you've got cancer. And within, now, let me back up a little, it would be here.

I wasn't abusing the percassette. So I thought, I was taking them just here and there. But my sister was abusing them because they were at her. She was married to him. He had multiple bottles. So for her, it was an everyday thing multiple times a day. You know, like it in the morning, Berkis that at lunch, and two to go to bed. So before we knew it, my sister had a full-blown addiction.

Right. And Chick was still alive at the time trying to get her help. She would go to detoxes and come back. and then he'd hide her pills. She'd break the safe open. It was ugly. Eventually, they separated, and his cancer started getting stronger, stronger, stronger.

Now my sister has turned down because she can't get chick's pills anymore. So my sister's running around the streets of Boston, while her legally husband is dying of cancer. And long story short, he passes away. Right. He ends up passing away at the age of about 27 years old. And now my sister's a full-blown addiction, had this guilt on top of it.

And so she's 25. She's going to go to Florida. She's going to, everyone, small town, she was kind of villainized, right? She was taking his pills. She turned into a junkie before everybody else did. Because all them people, all them same 20, people in this group all battle addiction at one point or another maybe one or two didn't but she was the first right so she was ostracized they to all the girls in the group turned on her

she was just made to be and this was before addiction was like now it's like almost like socially acceptable right before it was like i mean i was the biggest hypocrite of my sister Like when I, so I didn't want her around. She moved, she was going to move to Florida and start her life over. Everybody's moving to Florida to start their life over. That's where you get healthy in Florida. Florida. Because there's no, there's no, there's no junkies in Florida.

No, no insanity. That's where the pill problem originated was Florida, but there's nothing here about good church-going people. Right, right. Yeah, you must live where I live. So, so, yeah, she goes to Florida after he passes and. We really don't hear from my sister much other than when she gets locked up. We'd get an occasional call. She's living in a car.

Basically, I don't talk to her at all. I'm like a, and I'm still taking the Purgocet. Right. But I'm thinking. But you're like a functional. High functioning. High functioning addict. Right.

Because I'm working six days a week. I'm working five days for the business. And then I always had a side job on Saturday. So I was always keeping cash in the pocket, right? So it wasn't affecting anything. bills, social life, nothing. Where are you getting them from now? I was getting him from Chick.

Right. When Chick passed away, I found an uncle. Okay. Who had a prescription of 90 Percocet Tens every month. And he was an alcoholic, so he wanted to sell them all. Right. Beautiful. I wanted to buy them all.

Just people helping people. People, you know? I mean, it's networking. So I end up doing that with him. And in the beginning, it was like I'd buy his whole prescription. and I would sell half and get my money back. And, you know, it didn't take long before the fifth month. Yeah, I'm running out.

I was not even using them all. I'm running out before his next script is due. You know, so now it's financially kind of becoming an issue. Not socially yet. Never affected work or anything at all. It never really affected the work. But it started, the people started to, you know, started with the ex-wife and then family, my mom and dad,

because they knew the signs, right? Right. My sister. She had already kind of tipped them off to the signs. So everybody would ask about me, okay, okay. But I was doing really well, so there was nothing. They were really, like, to be worried about as I was hiding it really good. And going back to, like, being a, not being a criminal when I didn't know it was a criminal,

was part of covering up the... the addiction as it was ramping up, I always had these hustles. I always had these little hustles. So I got, I did football cards at the barbershop. I had three barbershops. I would go and bring the parlay cards. They would fill them all out. I was the house.

Right. So, like, there's a, like, a mob in Rhode Island. Small, it's, you know, the mob's gone, basically. But they do still have their rackets. And that's one of them. and they wouldn't like that if they knew I was doing it. But these were little barbershops that were kind of hole in the walls and I was able to pull it off.

So on a good week, I might make 500 on a bad week. I might lose 500. On a great week, I might make a thousand bucks, you know? Because most of the time, these guys are picking eight or ten games to hit the jackpot.

You can't pick eight games on a Sunday if I don't even put the point spread involved, you know? Football is so it's a hardest sport to bet on. And I'm a big sports better. Sports gambler. So, yeah, that was one of my rackets for a while, and I would use that money to buy the Purgaset. So it wasn't coming out of the business,

wasn't coming out of the house money. She's ex-wife wasn't too hip to it. She would catch me nodding out at the end of the day, and she would stay stuff. I'm tired. And I had reasonable to be tired. I worked a lot. So she fell for that for a while.

My parents fell for it for a while. until they didn't. But so, yeah, so I'm buying, now I'm buying them from him, and now I'm running short. And so I'm doing, I was doing the card thing for a while. So I had some money and I'm living off savings and all the savings is gone. And my new thing is I'm going to grow marijuana, right? Of course, it's a lot logical thing.

I live in the country. I'm shocked. I wasn't already, you weren't already doing this. I just assumed that was already happening. Yeah. I wish I thought. of it sooner. So my first experience with that was with a friend who was also into pills and he was going to finance a whole deal. I was just going to do it on my property and I was going to tend the

plants. We were going to split it. So we got 50 plants. We put them all. We planted 50 plants outside. We don't already plant them. We just cut a X in the bag of soil and stick the clone. Like it's a tree. It's already grown plant in the bag of soil and just drop them every 10 feet through the woods with his sunlight. So you don't have to dig a hole, none of that. And then when you're done, you just pull the plant out of the ground, pick up the bag, and throw it away. It's the easiest way to do it.

It's like using the bag as a pot in the sense, right? So I do that. We get done with our first crop, our first cycle. We're like, it's the end of August. We're going to cut the second week of September. And I can't get a hold of him. I won't say his name just because I can't get a hold of him. He's not answering his phone.

So I'm kind of. I'm kind of like, cool, you know, like, don't answer. Yeah. And he's a, he's dating my cousin. So that's how I know him. My cousin comes over one night and she says, hey, did you, have you heard from so-and-so? And I said, no, I've been trying to call him, like, I don't really know what to do here and we're getting towards the end. Right. So what's up? She's like, he was caught in Virginia coming back from Florida with 20,000 percassettes. So he's in jail in Virginia. and we don't know when or if he's going to be getting out anytime soon. I'm like, oh, bummer.

All right. So, needless to say, two more weeks go by, I do my research. I harvest the crop. Got about nine pounds in total. Do you know what trimming and drying nine pounds of is like alone? It is torture. It is boring. It's tedious.

That's why these guys out in California hire guys to come do the trimming when it's that time. I did it all. So now I got nine pounds of free weed. And I got, you know, I got kids that work for me and smoking is very high. I smoked daily at that time. So it wasn't hard to find people, right? So I found three people that I trusted and I said, listen, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you one.

give you one give you one and I want $250 back when it's gone on the front and I'll give you another one right so this was great right and you got nine pounds 16 ounces a pound multiply that by nine times that by 250 that's great so so now I'm taking the money as it's coming in and I'm buying pills so the ex-old lady is none the wiser she's just wondering why I'm not like really coming up off this, you know? So the outdoor season ends and I have money left over. I'm like, I'm going and buying lights. We're doing this inside. Right. So I set up my basement and I do it inside, yeah, but a much smaller scale on the inside because you grow much better quality of bud. So I did this for like maybe three years, four or five harvests to finance my pill addiction.

And like everybody knows, I'm sure you've heard it a million times on this show, the addiction just ramps up. You start with one, turns the two, by the end, and this is when I was taking 10 milligrams, by the end, I'm taking the blue 30 milligrams, and I'm taking between six and 10 of them a day at $20 apiece. Right. That's a $200 day drug app. Yeah. You've got to be pretty successful to have a $200. or a day drug habit and act like run your life like nothing's going on right you know so little by little the walls are closing in on me what's her wife doing she figuring she's got at this point

yeah the trust issues are gone where she's now calling when i'm not home 10 minutes after i say you know it's it's affecting the relationship a lot you know she tried to get me help she she said you know she's i went to her detox in um massachusetts i stayed for now now i'm running a business clean cut don't look like a drug addict they sent me up to boston the state fund detox i go in there about 15 people are the 15 people there might be 30 teeth total uh i'm sitting in this room the first night i'm looking around this one's talking about robin pharmacies this one's talking about selling herself on the, I'm like, I don't, please, I don't belong here. Yeah, so they, I discharged, they were kind enough to drive me home. It was about a 45 minute

ride. I come walking in the door. Now, it was two days I was gone. I come walking in the door, big smile on my face. My mom and my ex-wife were like, what the, are you doing home right now? You are supposed to be there for at least 14 days. And then when we were hoping, you were going to do the 30-day program after it. I was like, no, these, you don't understand. Like, these people are losers. Right. I'm just not there yet.

Yeah. So, yeah, so that goes on by the group. I'll kind of sidetrack here for a second. While I'm starting my addiction, my sister is at the tail end of hers. So she is in Fort Lauderdale, living in her car, shooting, and shooting meth, but she had this little favorite spot. She'd go copper drugs, and she would go over to Hollywood, Florida, and she'd go up in this parking garage, and she would do her thing.

And this particular Friday evening, she's up there, and she's doing her thing, and, well, Broward County Sheriff pulls up behind her. Gets out, what are you doing? Oh, do you see this, boom, boom, boom, walks her up for possession of meth, possession of paraphernalia, like three or four charges. she goes to jail for two nights

they release her on her own she's never been in trouble so they release it on her own recognizance and she's got like court dates to follow up with now that's a Friday so she'd probably get out like Monday or Tuesday

the very next Friday she cops her drugs she goes to the same spot same parking garage same cop a week later her same charge you figure it out right probably the same time i didn't ask her but so this was actually good it was a godset it was i we were waiting for the phone call she was gonna be dead you know yeah yeah

that's what i thought you were i thought you were gonna say i mean she passed away she didn't see my son until he was three because i wouldn't allow her around him that's how much of a hypocrite i was about addiction right it can't happen to me and i only happens to losers so so fast forward that she gets the rest of the second time now they're not just going to let you out you are out on a recognizance right so they keep her in there she's in there for like 30 days she she finally we thought she was dead we finally get in touch with her her find out she's in jail there's her rehab right so she so she kicks which is nothing nice she kicks in jail in florida we have drug they have this thing called drug court i think a lot of states do now but first time i heard

of it was Florida. She does like 30 days in the county and they release her to a drug court. And she gets out and she does everything she's supposed to. She checks into her halfway house over in Delray Beach. And for some reason, it stuck. And she did with, you know, she got a sponsor. She did what she was, all the things they asked her to do. She ended up getting her year sober. She ended up working in treatment, still sober to this day. She's just celebrated her 10th year. I was for sure waiting for you to say that, you know, we found her dead, you know. Yeah, and I wouldn't have, wouldn't have knocked me over if I got the phone.

I probably had been like, thank you. Right. You know, because we were all expecting it. So she, yeah, she ends up completing drug court. She's got her year sober. She goes into work for a treatment center. She's working there about a year or two as my addiction is now ramping up.

It's getting back to her. And I was the worst big brother. You know, in the beginning when I was naive, she would call me, my car's out of gas. Can I get 40 bucks? Sure. You know, and this is happening frequently, but I was hip to that.

Enabling, enabling, enabling. And my ex was the one that was like, you know, my brakes are bad. My tires are. She's using you. Her car can't run out of gas every two weeks. I was just because this car is a nightmare. Right.

Yeah. If it wasn't the car, it was the cell phone. It was something. I want to get mom and dad this. For my parents, we just had their 50th wedding anniversary. But when we had their 25th, she was in the middle of her addiction. Right. She tried conning me out of, she planned the party and then tried to hit me with, you know,

I spent $2,000 on decorations. I'm like, you had 12 balloons and eight streamers. I'm like, I'm not giving you $1,000. Right. I know what you're trying to pull here, you know? That was just her. So I wanted nothing to do it. But anyways, now going down that road, and it gets back to her,

and, you know, they teach you as you get sober, forgive those ones that have harmed you, you know, help the ones you can help. So what she wants, she wants to help her big brother, right? So she reaches out, she's working for a treatment center, Del Rey. I don't have health insurance at the time because I was paying $1,200 a month for me, my wife and child, that Blue Cross and Blue Shield will, that was one of the first things to go when things were going. I was starting to, you know, really lose it at this point. So I, I'm still running the business. I, just 2012, I agree to it. I said, she's like, and I be like what

you saw in Boston. This is a private. It's in Florida. They take you to the beach. They take you to do all these. Yeah. I don't know. She sold me on the whole. And it wasn't too far off. Really. They did. They did do something. But they'll be somewhere there rub your back the whole time you go through detox and put a cold compound on your head and rub your feet. And it would be like they were in the beginning because it was such a scam that they would do all these things. and then they would take you the movies and then they charge your insurance company $500 for an outing, you know?

Right. So they would do these things because they could double gouge the insurance company until they got hip on that. So this is the first time I come down to Florida. Now, I've had family in Florida, so I've come and gone my whole entire life and my parents actually built a house

in the 99 in Fort Myers. So I had always been vacationing to Fort Myers or the East Coast. whole life for for family florida was like a second state but for some reason i always thought like florida was like no rules i don't know why i had that in my mind like like like every time i came to florida i flew down with an ounce of weed i did whatever the hell i wanted and there was never any repercussions i was only here a week right so i in my head like i just figured like i had same old shit i did at home i couldn't get away with down here in florida right so but anyways i do the the

rehab for her detox. I do 30 days in this PHP men's program where we all live in this one house and then you graduate and they separate you into like halfway house, but it's part of the next phase, which is 90 days. And my goal was to finish the 90 days and come home. But they kicked me out. They kicked me out because they said my ego. And they were probably right because I still didn't think I was an addict, right? Because I'm in there with, I wasn't shooting drugs at the time. I was only eating pills. Right. These people are smoking crack. They're doing all these crazy stuff to support their habit. I didn't have, I had the luxury where I didn't have to do that, but doesn't mean it couldn't have been me. Yeah. Just wasn't me at that time, right?

You just had enough money to keep yourself hovering above that. that level. Exactly. So while I'm there, I met some great relationships like the guy Jerry I was telling you about, but a lot of the stuff was going in one ear and out the other. I was doing time, right? Just for family to appease people, maybe fix a broken relationship. I had a young son at the time. So I get kicked out of the program, but I didn't want to come back to Massachusetts yet because things weren't good with the ex and we always wanted to move to Florida even when we were together in Massachusetts. We always had these plans on selling the business and moving to Florida and doing something we wanted it. So I get it kicked out of the program. I don't tell

her I get kicked out. My sister knows. My parents don't. My ex doesn't. They just think I finished it. I get an apartment, month to month apartment, with a roommate, and he's got a year sober. So I'm thinking, great. This guy's got a little more sobriety than me. It'll be a good influence. He was real heavy on the meetings. He would share at meetings. He was funny. He was from Massachusetts too. So we had that in common. So we moving together. We're living together for about three, four months. Kind of thought he started to relapse just because I could tell this change in personality, but who am I to call anybody out, right? I'm not, I'm just doing me.

I don't know them that well, but we know it's, you know, close enough to where we can, we trust each other, but we're best friends. So I'm working a night job, so I got home about 10 o'clock, and my routine was I would come home, I would change, and I would go to the gym. So I came home that night, and the bathroom door was shut and the light was on, TV's going, his bedroom doors open mine's shot I come in

I sit on the couch I'm watching TV just waiting to get in the bathroom to kind of freshen up 15 minutes 10 minutes has gone by I'm like yo no no response

no think nothing I almost got up and just went to the gym I'm like this guy's doing what I was like he's doing there right we give him some privacy so I had to go by the bathroom door to go to the front door so as I go by the bathroom door

I'm like, yo, nothing. I go, hey, boom, boom, boom, nothing. He don't have a car, so I don't know if he was like, home, not home, right? The door's locked. Jiggle the handle, it's locked. What's going on? Boom, I busted open with my shoulder. His feet were by the door, his feet were up against the door, holding the kind of holding

it shut. His head's between the tub and the toilet. He's blue like a smurf. I've never seen this in my life I've never experienced it Is he done? Is he dead? He was okay Yeah I thought he was

Like I couldn't even dial 911 right I called 911 I made the big mistake on when I called 911 I said my room I think my roommate overdose Right Del Rey Beach is like the rehab capital of the world They get more overdose calls They have no sympathy for overdose I mean I'm running out to the parking lot

to meet these guys so that, because it's like a windy way in, they're just sluffing. All right. The other day on the jab. I'm like, this is a guy dying in my apartment. Like, you know, they go in there, lips are purple, faces blue. They grab them by the ankles. They just dragged them out in the living room and hit him with Narcan a couple of times. And his eyes opened up.

As they got him on the stretcher, his eyes open. They're professionals. Yeah. They don't do it. They're like, you know, we still got 15. seconds, 12 seconds, 11 seconds. Still got some brain function there. Yeah, yeah.

So, thank God, they saved. Now, that was my first experience with any of that because I wasn't into the, or the needles at that point. That was kind of like scary. He ended up having to go back to treatment. I couldn't keep the place by myself. I said, you know, maybe a time just head out back to Massachusetts. I'm still sober.

I mean, I got like four, four months. You know, I can do it. Sure. I can do it. I still have all the same numbers in my phone. I drove back to Florida. I had a car down in Florida. So I drove back.

Did your wife think that you were in rehab the whole time? Yes. She knew, well, she knew I got an apartment when I got out of the rehab. She did know that because I wasn't coming home right yet. So we were figuring stuff out. So I said, yes, I'm going to come home because we had a house up there. We had to figure out where we were going to finalize a lot of things, right?

So I had to go back home. So I go back home with all intentions and being, staying sober. Like I had four months. I was when it got through the withdrawals, I felt better physically, but mentally I was still obsessed with one. Because I'm sure you've heard it explained. And for everybody, it's probably different. But for me, opiates numbed all.

emotion. Okay. I didn't worry about, I didn't feel. I didn't, I wasn't sympathetic. I wasn't romantic. I wasn't, I didn't feel pain. I could work 16 hours. I was in a good mood. I didn't mind getting back to people's emails, phone calls late at night. I mean, it just kind of was like a super drug, right? Right. I was like, wow, this is great. You know, I don't want to, I just want to, I want to figure out how to make this work. I don't want to stop doing them. I'm going to figure, I'm to figure out how I can do this and it not negatively affect my life. Maybe I'll just do one idea. It won't be so bad. Right. So I come back. You need a dispenser. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't in South Carolina before. Like one of those, like one of those hamsters is waiting for it.

Yeah. It's like if you ever see. They basically wait by the machine for the next 24 hours. If you've ever seen like the cocaine test they did with rats or mice. same thing like they know when it's coming and they're like they don't even want the cheese yeah for the cocaine right same thing so i'm not even in south carolina i leave florida with all good intentions i'm in south carolina i'm already romanticizing i'm gonna get pills i'm gonna get pills and i'm like all right well i'm gonna stop in south carolina tonight eight o'clock i'll get back on the road so i should be in massachusetts by about eight o'clock the following you evening. Okay. So I'm driving and it's obsessing. It's obsessing. I'm picking up speed. I'm

going to say 75 now 90. I want to try to get home before 8 because I know this one drug dealer that's always got him, but she goes to bed early, right? She's got a job. So I end up making it into Massachusetts. I don't even go home. I go straight to the dealer. From rehab, well, from the apartment after rehab to Massachusetts telling her yeah I'm coming through Connecticut as I'm in Rhode Island you know so she's an hour I think I'm an hour behind I go past my house go to the dealer get my couple of hills take one go home I'm feeling like a million bucks you know it's like she she hadn't seen me in a few months so things were pretty good we're catching up my son's three you know he missed me

I missed him, about playing, catching up. She thinks I'm sober. She's proud of me. Little did she know. Right back off. I mean, I might have bought three that night. It just went right back to the same. Same thing.

But now I'm not in the financial situation. I am. She's got control of almost all finances. So now I have to sell something. But when I was successful, I was always a wheeler and a dealer. So I had multiple vehicles, dirt bikes, full wheelers, toys, baseball cards, coins. I mean, I would buy things on hot sales, not hot sales, stolen or anything, but say you just needed money and wanted to sell it.

I always had money on me, always because I worked from the time I was a freshman to the current state. I always had $1,000 in my pocket for that reason. Case you had a $3,000 vehicle, but you were willing to take $1,000 today, I got it. You know, I always had $1,000. When things were good, I always kept a grand in my pocket. So I could take advantage of, not people, but situations, right? The guy who's got the cash. Whatever it makes you, wherever it gets you through it, wherever you have to sell.

In case some guy down on his luck, ready, quick claim to his house for a thousand bucks and a couple of boxes. I need to be there. Right. Just helping people. Thank God we didn't know each other. Thank God we were in two different states. He's just trying to do the right thing. Yeah.

Just trying to help people. God, I would have been your little protege. Matt, what do I do next? What do you need from there? Go in the Bay, say this. Exactly. And you know, it's funny. One of my big guys that was in the baseball card fraud game with me was my best friend at

the time. Shout out to Greg. He was a mortgage broker. No, no. He's a hot shit. He was in the mortgage business, and he did some scrupulous things to get himself a very nice house when he certainly couldn't afford it, but he was successful enough and rode at the ups and downs, and he still got the house today. Greg did very well for himself. Greg was the kid who was the best looking guy in school, the best athlete in all sports, and he had, he was the third of four brothers, and they were all that way.

Every one of them was best looking, quarterback, basketball player, pitcher on the baseball team. They're that family, you know? Right. They were just studs. And so, yeah, I figured why I meant, oh, Grace of Greg was in the mortgage business, but that was his connection to you. And the baseball card. Yeah, and my base, me and Greg, well, our first dry run was on his older brother, and it worked like a charm, so we knew we were on to something.

And we don't talk anymore, but. Now, you end up stealing a lot of my cards. Greg was a slime ball. And I'm like, Greg, you're a slime ball in a good way, I guess. But, yeah, Greg was always out for Greg. There's no slimeball mortgage brokers. Yeah. He was just, to this day, I wouldn't doubt he's narcissistic.

And I probably am too. probably have a little bit of it, too. No. I mean, they'll throw me in that category. I think it makes a little bit of narcissism you need, I think. I mean, you know.

Well, most just successful people are. Right. I mean, and Greg was very successful. And feel comfortable enough to get in front of a camera four or five times of a week. Yeah. You got to have something. Right.

Even to take the chance that you did with all this. I mean, yeah. Working for me now. Absolutely. Yeah. Except for any relation, anybody who has to have a relationship with me. I feel bad for those fuckers. Which kills me when you tell you, when you tell your story about the ones that

won't talk to you. Yeah. It's like, dude, come on, life goes on. And you don't know what's around the corner for you, you know? You know what? Yeah, it's easy to speak on things. Like, it was easy for me to call my sister all these terrible things when I didn't understand it until it happened to me.

Right. You know? And then I, she is the one that's. coming to my rescue right right ironic it's kind of kind of crazy but i don't think any of these people are coming to my rescue but i hear you right but yeah i was i was tough on her and but she knew it she had now had a few years over and she knew it was it was the disease really more than the person you know there's an argument to be made but so yeah so back from rehab one nothing changed Except I got a plan this time.

Right. Now she's met a guy, and he's sober and clean, too. And his brother, my sister, my younger sister. Now, I had gone back home after the first time she tried to get me help. She thought I was doing good. Six months later, she finds out I slip right back into it. She, in the meantime, had met a boyfriend, and they were getting serious. and his older, they were from Kentucky, both addicts, both came to Florida, both got sober.

Travis was about a year or two ahead of my sister. Travis is the older brother. Justin is my brother-in-law, great guys. Travis got sober before Justin, and in the early 2000s, smart guy, got sober with the right guys, and they opened a laboratory for the testing of the drug tests, for these. rehab centers, right? So they would send them to them and they would build the insurance company. And within a few years, Travis became a millionaire. And he took that money and he opened a rehab center. And every time he would make money, he would open another one. And now he has, don't quote me,

I know he has at least two in Florida that he's a partner in. He has one in Tennessee, one in Kentucky, and Tennessee, Kentucky, and there's one other one. There's one other one. There's There's like five or six of them now that they have going. So anyways, the second rehab, she gets me down in 2014 to go to her boyfriend's brother's rehab, another freebie. They're going to do me a favor, another freebie. Because these are like 40 grand, right? You go to these private places.

So she gets me in, gets me down there for free. I come down. I go to detox. It was awful. they did like a week out in Okeechobee and some house with a bunch of wild people and then they shipped me down to the center in Fort Lauderdale and I did my

I think I did 30 days in that program and then again they send you to a halfway house associated with them for another 90 day part of the portion and in this time you can work and you can kind of reintegrate back into society They try to, but you've got to go to meetings and you got to go to some therapist and you have these things. Drug testing. Yeah, oh yeah, drug testing. Brethelizers at 9, a curfew, so on and so forth. But getting a job was adamant. You had to have a job. You couldn't just lay at the pool all day.

So. I had the pool. Where is this? Reh. Yeah. I know. This one's out of business because of some shady dealings, but nothing to do with the brothers, but the partners. But yeah, they, It was probably the nicer of the two that I went to. And so I did the, I went over to the second phase. I was there probably 60 days. I had gotten a job at the Weston Hotel on Fort Lauderdale Beach as valet. What year is this? 2014.

Okay. This is 2014. And I got maybe four months over. And they hired me. It's a $10 an hour job plus tips, right? And nothing great. But tips, you could do pretty good at tips. And I immediately figured I got to get some kind of hustle with this, right?

So when you value your car, if you leave money in your car, if you left the $5 bill and it was gone, you'd know it was gone. That's a tip. But nobody misses change. Okay. So every car I would park, I would take a dollar and change. You know, I put in my backpack. So if I parked 40 cars, I made an extra 40 bucks on top of the tips. Nice.

Plus. It was back when there was change. Right. Yeah. Plus, another scumbag move, I would always keep a dollar bill in one pocket. And then when the customer tip me, I would always put it in the other pocket. And when I went back to the booth, because we pulled our tips, I always took the one. No matter if the guy gave me a 50, a 10, or a five, place it to the one and put it in the thing.

You believe this brick gave me a dollar? Right. So this is my little hustle. So I got to tell you, I have a buddy who was a valet at a Brickle in a hotel in Brickle. One time he pulls, he gets a car, pulls it in, and he said, I pulled the vehicle in. He said, in the parking garage, you know, you drive up. He said, when I stopped the vehicle, he said, you know, you stopped. He said that the parking is cock-eyed, right?

He said, so I ended up parking, you know, pulled up somehow. another, he pulled up and he's hitting it. And as he's like hitting the one level after another and he pulls up and parks the car, he said, you know, I, I, I turn it off. I go to get out and it's something hit my, hits my, the back of his leg. He's like I lifted up and I look down and he said, it's, it's a bundle of money. He said, I don't mean like a bundle of money. He said, I don't mean like it was like one stack. He said, I mean it stacks and stacks of rubber bands. took that and walked out and left the garage and never came back. Thank you, right? Okay, so it's not me. I was like, oh, that's a tip. Well, that's a hundred percent. Proof to me that was there

when you're talking to say. Right. Are you calling the cops and saying, hey, I had half a million dollars tucked under my fucking, you're not going to say shit. And, you know, and he was, he was like, I said, what did you? I said, what did you do? He said, I mean, I just kicked it back up there, freaked me out. I, like, what? You didn't take it? He said, no. And he said, no. He said, because, you know, when they get out, what if they check? They're going to know that I drove the car. don't give a fuck it says right on your ticket out of every valet to this day any valet you go it says we are not responsible for whatever he's left in your vehicle he was i think these guys appeared to be potentially drug dealers and he felt like they would come back for him well he was saying they

these guys you know he's like they'll figure it out he started throwing in i got three kids a wife i'm like you don't even like your wife and those kids half a million come on i can get new kids well i parked a million i parked a car with a couple guns in it You can get, like, I think you get Brazilian kids for, like, 10 grand a piece. You know, yeah. Shipping some Brazilians. I mean, this is half a million. You know, I got him cheap.

Then I told him, I said, I said, bro, what do you think? He's all freaked out. I go, I go, listen, at the very least, I would have opened it up and pulled some of the money. Right. You'll figure that out. Later. Later. Yeah, maybe later.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, no, nothing. Fuck. Yeah, you got, you got to take advantage of those. See, I feel. Yeah. This is good.

Yeah. Yeah. Colby, Colby's just going to leave and be. He's probably going to tuck it back up and then tell the guys like, listen, you need to make sure it's secure. Yeah, next time I would, I would recommend you. I kind of do a little bit of funny story like that. I mean, I look at the casino, and I was playing on the machine, and there was a $100 bill stuck in the machine, and I couldn't put anything in there. So I called the service attendant, and they came, and they came to get it out, and they got it out, and they handed it to me.

I was like, oh, no, it wasn't mine. and I don't know they asked me if it was mine you're a good man Kobe and they said oh they're they're they're they're they're disappointed they're like you should have said it was yours right I mean I don't know I guess I just assumed they were going to give it to me anyways but then you know they just had to I don't understand that's not a good man that's just what are you thinking there's no good man in that situation no because you know who got it that that that guy was like the catino attendant he went oh it's not yours and then you know it's mine pulled a dollar bill out of the other pocket and said hey I thought there's a dollar

dollar bill listen i knew something let me tell you real quick and once you get back this is just funny i remember this i think i've told this story before i was i was dating this chick who was a stripper i don't know i have to tell you that but anyway sounds better yeah yeah nobody knew she was stripper but we were both going to college we're living together and we we used to have my mom used to have a family dinner like once a week and everybody came and so my sister a month or beforehand had lost her wedding, I mean, her engagement ring. And so we go there, have you heard this? So we go to this, so we're at dinner and we're sitting there.

And my mom says, oh, did you ever, did you ever get, you know, because, so State Farm, she had a policy. Sure. State Farm's supposed to give her like $12,000, $15,000, let's say $15,000, whatever, $15,000 to replace to go get another ring. Yeah. And she says, oh, did you ever get a new ring? Did you get this check from State Farm to get your new ring?

And she said, oh, no, I didn't tell you. Oh, Mom, this is what happened. She said, you know, I lost the ring. I claimed it was State Farm. They sent me the check. And we were going to go and look for new rings. And she said, I go to pick up. She goes to pick up her son.

I want to say it was Jake. Anyway, my nephew goes to pick him up from school one day and walks. As he's getting in the car, he said, Mom, he said, you got to park my teacher wants to see you and she goes like oh boy yeah parks the car walks in she says what's going on jake said you wanted to see me and she said we had a like a show and tell kind of thing you know where we talk about what we're doing in the weekends and this and that and jake had said that you were planning on you were supposed to go pick up another ring you had lost your engagement ring a couple months ago and you were you and your husband were going out

that that was something they were doing this weekend. And she said, yeah, yeah. And she said, what type of a cut was the ring? And she said, oh, it was a two-carat or whatever, diamond, whatever the cut is, you know, princess cut, whatever. And she said, okay, she's, what kind of gold? And she's, oh, no, it was white gold or whatever, platinum band, the whole thing. She was, did it look like this? And she went, oh, my God, that's my ring.

Where did you find it? She said, I don't know how, but it was, I went to walk to my car. after school a couple months ago and she said it was like I saw it on the on the ground I picked it up I realized like it's I brought it home it was real my brother was like that's real brought it back and it's been sitting in my desk or in the you know lost and found whatever and she said here's your ring what an honest right what an honest person all around yeah and you know good and listen and this country's made up of those people God bless them so I I sat there and we're listening and my mom said so you know She's like, I got my ring back. And I went, sweet. I said, and you got the chef from State Farm. Everybody in my family, keep in mind, I've got, there's my brother, two sisters, their spouses.

I mean, there's like 12 people sitting around this huge table, my mother. They all look at me and they go, well, Matthew, she can't keep the check. She got the ring back. That's what the check was for to get another ring. I go, right. I go, but State Farm doesn't know that. And I look at her and they went, well, that would be dishonest. And I wish to remember thinking.

Yeah, because insurance companies are the most honest. Are you people? Entities out there. I'm not. I'm not. We're not. And I mean, my, listen, my girlfriend looked at me at the time. Like, she's looking at me too.

And I just was like, yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. I'm like, okay, clearly. My reaction isn't correct. So I remember, listen, as soon as that whole thing died down, I turned around, I said, is something wrong? She says, I don't know what the fuck's up with your family. She said, I'd have taken that $15,000, it pocketed and kept the ring.

She's like, I don't know what they were thinking. Oh, yeah, but they're not. Like, listen, my dad one time, I had to have, I had a deviated septum and went to a doctor that he knew. They were both in AA. Go to the doctor. He, you know, they put you under the pad one. Yeah, they break your nose. You know how they do it.

But they do the whole thing. Well, when the check comes in or when he goes to bill State Farm, we had health insurance through State Farm, my dad worked for State Farm, goes to build State Farm. He calls my mother and says, listen, what's your deductible? And he says, it's for the, he's where I'm about to bill them, what's your deductible? And she goes, oh, it's, it's $1,000 for the surgery. And he goes, oh, okay. And she goes, why?

He said, well, I'm just going to bump up my fee to cover the deductible. That way you don't have to pay me the deductible. or pay state farm and we're flush. And my mom went, you know what, don't do that. Just wait a second. Just let me call my husband, calls my father, tells him, my father calls him back, says, absolutely, do not do that. He said, I'm paying the $1,000, it's my deductible.

I'll pay it. Do not bump that up. And he said, this is a doctor. Yeah. He's like, okay. And so then that night at dinner, they're talking about it. And they're like, can you believe he would do that? And I'm sitting there thinking, I can't believe you said, no.

I'm at 22 years old, and even I know, Dad, this sounds like just the way things are. Yeah. Like, I think you're going against the grain here. Yeah. You know, but no, no, that's just who my parents were, you know. Just good people. That's mine were cut out of the same cloth. Yeah.

They're on their honeymoon, driving to Florida, a prisoner escapes on a Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts, steals a police car, flying down 95 South, rams into my, parents, drives them into the woods, totals the vehicle and the cruiser, gets out. My parents thought it was a cop. So they get out to help. This guy gets out to run. This is like 1976. Come to find out it was an escapee, yada, yada, yada. Do you think that they called the lawyer? They'd have owned the city. I'm sure. The ambulance shows up. They say, we're fine. The police department. You know, yeah, no, they didn't go, they didn't get no medical, nothing. No, no, they just, I'm like, Dad, you probably had a half a million dollar lawsuit back in the 70s.

You know, sometimes whiplash takes a few days. So even if you said, I think he kicks himself for that out, you know, I think he's played that one a few times. Oh, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. Some people, you just can't help. No, no. And, you know. Two gooders.

Yeah. It's like, who, who's keeping score? you know, at the end of the day. Yeah, it's, come on. In an insurance company, any chance. No, they wouldn't, they're all playing by the rules. Right, right. Listen, I'll tell you, I got another one.

Listen, I got another one, and then I have to go to the bathroom. But listen, I got this one. This is insurance companies, by the way. Okay. So I have a, I bought this piece of property one time. I won't go in the whole thing because that's actually another funny story. It's fraud. Anyway, I buy a quadplex.

And so as I'm buying it, the, They were in the middle of victing someone. And basically, I'm buying it. They're like, look, we're going to have the eviction like tomorrow. We can either close today and say nothing and let us evict them or we can hold it off a couple of days, you know, until I go, nah, we'll close the day, just the guy won't know, whatever. So we close the next day, the guy gets evicted.

The cops show up. The old owners actually show up and throw them out. The guy leaves, gets into his car and leaves. He drives down the street. He gets like, whatever, a, like a gallon of gas. He comes back, walks into the, into the house. They don't change the door. He walks back into the apartment, sorry, takes the gasoline, pours it all over the place, lights it on fire, gets in his car and leaves.

The neighbor sitting next door in a duplex who's in a wheelchair who does nothing all day but stare out her window, sees the guy. You see, watches the eviction, watches him leave, watches him come back, watches him walk out, getting his car drive off, notices the, there's smoke billowing out of the, out of the apartment. he's like, huh, I might, should, maybe I should call the cop. Let me write this guy's tag number. I mean, I know him. I see him every day for the last eight months. So calls the cops. This is the guy.

I have his tag number. He walked in. You guys just evicted him. So clearly arson. I end up, so the insurance company, so I end up getting a phone call, what's called a public adjuster calls me. Yeah. And he says, listen, he says, I can itemize everything in that place and get you.

Yeah, I can get you more money and blah, blah, blah, blah. A spoon fork knife in that place. Right. I can get you more money. The insurance company, don't off, don't take their first offer. I had a house buyer too. Right. Call me back. But it's legal. Call me back. And he said, call me. You know, so once they come, call me. Okay, fine. The guy comes. He gives me an offer. It's like $32,000. And I, so I call the guy and I'm like, it's $32,000. And the guy goes, yeah, give it to me. He said, look, he said, I want 10% of whatever I get you. He said, if I can get you enough to cover my extra 10% Is that cool? I said, yeah. He said, I'm literally 10 days. Give me 10, 15 days, whatever. Give it to him. He comes back, $59,000. And at first I'm like, bro, I don't know that you're going to get me anything more than this. I don't want to drag this out. He said, no, no, it would be real quick. He says, you don't seem to understand. He said, you're paying on your premium. If anything that smoke touches in that, in that entire apartment, anything. If there's a fire, all the drywall has to be replaced, including the ceiling, everything.

So that's what they do. What they do is they, they don't pay you the $8,000 to pull out the old drywall, to redraw it, to replace all that. They don't pay you for that. Pay you for the drywall. No, they pay for the paint. No, you can put kills on it and paint it and this and that. Here, that's going to cost $2,000, not $8.

Right. Plus on the eight, I also need a new paint job. So I need another couple grand. There's just 10. And then it's like also, then they also have to replace all the insulation because it may have. They have to replace all of the duct work because the smoke went through the duct work. They have to replace anything. That whole thing has to be gutted because that's what your premiums based on.

But when the insurance adjuster comes in, he says, oh, you need some new carpet and paint. They can wipe that. We can resurface all of that. You don't have to have that replaced. No, no, I do. Because that smoke smell gets into it and it destroys it. Now I've got a smoke. My whole place smells like smoke.

But most people don't know that. He said, so I'm going to go through and I'll do it the way your premiums based. And so he did. He went in. He did the whole thing. He tried to give it to them. The guy argued, that's not true, starts trying to go through. And he says, okay, look, he said, let's just go to the insurance commissioner.

And I'll explain. And we can send him what you just sent me. The emails you just sent me, we'll send the insurance commissioner all that. We'll see what he says about what you're trying to do my client. Of course, he comes back immediately like, okay, where do I send the check for $59,000, right? So he sends me a check for $59,000. But, I mean, that's what an insurance company does. An insurance company, you get into an accident, the adjuster shows up right away and says,

look, you know what, you're hurt, you're this, we're going to go ahead and give you $10,000. Then you go get a, you go get a lawyer, and you end up getting half a million dollars or a million dollars. You're like, you're going to give me how much? Like, bro, come on, right? Like, what do you fucking do? That's what I mean. And you charged me for the premiums.

Like, I've been paying based on these premiums. That's why I tell all my parents. So I was like, any chance you get to get an insurance company to pay you, you take it. Yeah. Because how much in your lifetime have you paid insurance companies from life insurance to homeowners insurance to liability to health insurance, car insurance? I mean, all we do is pay insurance. Yeah.

So if you're in a position where money is owed to you buy an insurance company, you can go get it. And by any means, get a lawyer if you need to. that's all I feel about it. Oh, listen, yeah. I'm getting next car accident, I get out, I get in. It's going to be, I don't know if I roll out of the car. I mean, I feel bad. Yeah, I feel bad.

You get a whole state, I'm sorry. You better hope that that driver has insurance in this state. I have uninsured motorists. I'll sue myself. But anyway, yeah, listen, I know I'm big on insurance. Yeah. I just had such a small mind. You know, I never, such that small town, small mind, work hard, save your money, you know.

If you said with that, that sounds like it would have worked. Yeah, probably would. You went off in a different direction. Yeah, probably would have. But, you know, it all comes back to not being happy. And that's why you start searching for stuff. And that's when you find stuff that, you know, can be detrimental. When you're looking for something to help.

Right. And you don't know what you're looking for. You can find yourself in the wrong end of life. But, yeah, so we were back. We were at the valet. We were talking about your buddy there, found the money, and driving like a dummy. So I would do the coin thing because I was always afraid, like, people would set traps with, like, bills, you know, leave three, four, five, ten bucks, and then it's gone, make a big stink. We wouldn't get fired.

They could never, but it would just be a bad light on you, right? So I did this job for about a month, and I was about four and a half months over, doing good, love the job, having a ball, really enjoyed the job. It was fun, a lot of exercise, you know, because you're four floors in the parking garage, and you're running back down to get the next car and bring you back up. You're constantly moving. The shifts went by fast. I still wanted to, like, get high. Right. Something, you know, and drinking's never been a big thing for me.

So it wasn't like I was going to go get a beer and watch the sunset. Right. And that was going to do it. Right. So if you ever heard of cratum, cratim, crat him? Yes. Yeah. Remember the guy?

I did the smiles for days. The nurse guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So I knew exactly what he was relating to when he talked about the withdrawals. They're no different than Perkinsed or withdrawals, but they sell this stuff at head shops. in, I mean, vitamin shops, some places you can buy online.

So, I had tried it in the past, but when you were doing pills and you try it, it's, you don't even really know, feel it. But if you're sober and you try it, feels like the next best thing. It's not quite what you're looking for, but it's in the same family of euphoria, little extra energy, a little better mood. you know so with valet it was like good you know because now i'm extra chatty i can and you get a lot of regulars and if you can strike up first name basis is with these people you tips get better you know it's just the hospitality business is moving and shaken and and how you take care of people and i also

had so it was $25 to valet your car per night at the west and it was also $25 if you wanted to day park for the beach so i would always screen my customer When they would come, I'd say, hey, guys, staying at the Weston. Oh, no, no, we're just going to park at the beach. Far. Well, hey, it's $25, but if you're giving me $10, I'm going to go park your car. I'm going to give you your keys. When you leave the beach, come in the backside of the parking garage, find your car and just drive it out.

No one's any wiser. I just put $10 in my pocket. They just save $25. Right. If I do that. They save $15. 15 right if I do that on no tip though because they get there they get their car right but I get the 10 bucks do that one or two times you know that helped and uh now I'm doing the create them they test for that

they test for cratum oh I got a better one down the when we a little bit further down the line yes they test for and they tested and because I was a scholarship I didn't pay it go, I didn't get like a, hey, Kratom's not allowed. We're going to watch you and make sure it's not in your system and, you know, just don't do it again. It was pack your bags. You have 24 hours. No, no, pack your bags. You have like six hours to be off the property or we're calling the police. What scholarship? Were you in school? No, no. So like these rehabs. Oh, because that's right. They make so much money that they have to give away a few as right-offs, right? So if you're, like, if you said to me, Matt, my nephew is struggling, I could call my sister, most likely, and get you a free scholarship.

If you're like, man, he's down and out. He doesn't have insurance. His family's tried everything. I have the resources that I could probably get you a scholarship. You know what I mean? It's common. A lot of people have, they do it. They do a lot of places they'll do it out of the kindness of their hearts if they're truly believing.

helping people, and it's not a financially motivated. They're all financially motivated, but some will give a scholarship out just to meet the tax audits, and some will do it because there's a guy in a jam and he needs a scholarship. It could be if we don't get them in here and get him treatment, right? So just out of the kindness of their own heart? Yeah, they can scholarship anybody. I don't understand. They could say, hey, go ahead.

Sorry, right on my head. Did you say you can scholarship them for free? Yeah, no, I said out of the goodness of their own heart. Yeah, yeah. No, no, there's always, yeah, because they're getting paid for your UA's, then they ship those off, they're getting paid a couple hundred dollars, a racket. I will say my brother-in-law and his brother run a truly all above board rehab, which is very rare.

I would say probably 20% of all rehabs out there run. truly above-board businesses without any of the patient brokering and the slimy stuff that goes along with double-charge and insurance company. They decided that we're going to do it and do it right. And Travis is a sharp business-minded guy, and it didn't take them long to figure out how to do it, do it right, and be successful. He didn't have to do these little corners where they pay you mad. I'll give you a thousand guys for everyone you can go out and get at me who has an HMO policy.

There's a thousand dollars. I'll give you a thousand for everyone you can get that will sign up for a 30-day detox. Right. I'll even give them, what's their drug a choice? All right. Here, go get them this. You know, I mean, it was when that was going on rampant, I mean, ever look up Kenny Chapman? No, but I mean, I know there was a movie about, they did a whole movie on.

Well, Kenney Chapman was on American Greed. Oh, okay. Yeah. And these guys, maybe that was him. Maybe the movie was based on him. It could have been. He's a black guy. Yeah, yeah.

They were going out and they were just getting like young kid, like, young, but like 22-year-old kid. Like, they were like, they're like drug addicts or they're homeless and they're going and getting their information. He was keeping them in this cycle and to just continuously bill insurance companies. He'd get him clean. He'd get him high. He'd get him clean. He'd get him high. And he would like, he got charged with like kidnapping with some of his charges because he was actually like holding people against the will.

They went out. And he was like, no, like, you're a cash cow. You got Blue Cross Blue Shield. When we ain't letting you go until the benefits are dry, you know. But he's in jail for 16 years. They hung him on the cross to make a big, I mean, they, I think it's Delray. I don't know the county. Is that Broward?

Or Hills, or not Hillsborough. It's got to be Broward. It might be Broward. But anyway, they actually have a task force for this. rehab fraud. Right. It's an actual task force going out, busting these guys that are doing it,

rounding them up. And, you know, a few years back, a bunch of guys I knew got hemmed up, and, you know, they got slaps on the wrist, most of them, unless they were making millions of dollars.

So these guys throw you out for Kratom? They throw me out for Kratom in six hours. I have nowhere to go. I can't, like, I have a couple hundred bucks from my last paycheck in my pocket. so and I had everything I could had was in a duffel bag and a carry-on backpack so I kept a fresh change of clothes in my carry-on backpack and I found a place to stuff my duffel bag in the

locker at the west and down we had locker room area we also were provided a meal and we had like a like a game room type room with a couple of couches and a big screen TV it was for in the hotel to break room. It's a break room. Right. But they, they cooked breakfast, the lunch, and the dinner, and whatever shift you were on, you could go down. And so that was one meal a day I didn't have to pay for.

Right. So when I get kicked out, and these are all the things I have to start thinking about, right? So first night, Fort Lauderdale Beach, I go to work because I was working nights. I was working the 3.30 to 10.30 shift. Now, right before they kicked me up or create them, they promoted me to supervisor so it was $15 an hour plus tips plus tips but you're the guy who takes all the tips into the back room counts it divvies it up amongst the X amount of employees right and then says all right hey Jimmy shifts over you made 90 timmy 90 Bob 90 okay so I go in there I dump it all

out and I'd be like, five, five, five, five, five, five, ten for me. One, one, one. You know, so I'm walking out with 150 and everybody else is making 75 for the same shift. Plus I'm getting 15 bucks now. I don't understand why everybody just keep your, keep your own. That's, why can I just keep my own? Because then it's not fair if. I got a $50 tip because I was the only guy that could back a truck and trailer. The guy came in with his race car and a 24 foot and closed trailer. And Once he pulled into the West and he couldn't loop it around, it had to be pulled in, backed up, three-point turn to be put, he couldn't even do it. So I'm like, I got it.

I grew up with tractors, trucks. I came from the farm. So I just jumped right in it. I should get to share in that tip. I can't do that. Oh, I put that 50 in my pocket and five came out and went in the book. I was going to say the sharing, the pulling all our funds and divving up feels like kind to me. Like I'm not paid of Colby's.

He goes, I'm going to be here for. for three days. If I don't see you when I leave, he goes, take this now. He gave me a 50. I folded a half. I put in my pocket. It was about 100 yards to the booth. By the time I got to the booth, I was in the other pocket. Hey, guys, $5 bill. You believe that? Yeah, that was awesome. Jerk off. Yeah. He said he's going to take care of us on his way out. So, yeah, so now they kicked me out. I go to the hotel. I work my shift. I go take a shower, grab probably a $40 nice linen sheet

from the Weston. Right. Out of the laundry. Go out on to the Fort Lauderdale Beach. Lay it down. It's about 11.30 at night. Put my backpack on the ground. Laid on my backpack because that's big

as people steal your shit when you're sleeping out there. And I got about three hours of restless sleep on the beach until the sun came up. And I did that for about a week. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that.

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slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off sitewide. Every day I would shower at work. I would go walk A1A and eat and kill time until it was, because they patrol the beach, but about after midnight, they don't patrol it like normal. so after midnight it's pretty safe because it's illegal you can't sleep on the beach right so yeah that whole florida is anything goes things at this point it was not what it is

at all yeah they love there is a caveat to this one particular story that i'm getting to um so this particular night i had laundry to do i'm not much because i'm living out of a duffel bag so and i know that only one guy where midnight 8. So when he's parking a car, the booth is empty. So I walk up to the hotel. I wait for him to park a car. I go and I grab a set of keys. I go up in the parking garage. Push the panic button until they find the vehicle. I get in the vehicle. I take it for a ride to the laundromat. I do my laundry. I bring the car back. Put it in its spot. Wait for him to park car, hang the keys back on the rack, and go back to the beach, and I spend the night.

No big deal. So that was like midweek. Friday comes along. These two young girls in there, now this is 2014, so I'm 34. These girls were probably 25. Good looking girls. I don't know what they were up to, but they came in. They were only going to be there two nights.

I was working both of those days so I did the deal with them I said I said give me 20 bucks instead of the 50 I said and when I leave tonight I'm gonna come upstairs and I'm gonna knock on your door and give you your keys and whatever she told me a room number

she was in all right so 11 o'clock came it was time to punch out me and another guy go up to the room they're good looking girls so everybody wanted to come with me right right and so we go and knock on the door they open the door they're like scantily clad bottle of a patron i'm sober other than the cratum right right they're like you guys want to do some shots like okay sure so they're pouring shots of tequila and the next thing you know she's cutting up wines you want to do a line i'm like all right i mean i nearly never met a drunk i didn't like i was

just they they they bambozzled you into it yeah i mean i was forced at this point i couldn't get out so no so no we no no we stop it yeah right so yeah we're doing that we actually go through what they have and they're like let's go get more i'm like okay it's a bad idea yeah no i have a car we shouldn't do that i got to be that's my Porsche they the girl had a car they had come in so we get in their car and we drive to the slums and we get more and we go back to the hotel and now it's like like free and the kid that was with me knew he wasn't getting anywhere with one girl she kept saying she had a boyfriend the other girl and i had a little chemistry and he's like the coke will do that he wasn't and he wasn't oh yeah

absolutely i'm thinking She was, she's in love. Yeah. And I'm in love, you know. So he's, and he didn't do it. This kid was a good kid. He was younger. He didn't do it.

So he didn't get involved with the COVID. He's like tapping out at 3 o'clock. He's like, I'm going to go home. Amateur. Tomorrow. Yeah. I'm like, puzzy. Yeah, I can analyze this.

So he leaves. We finish up what we're doing. I want to say the girl's name was Sarah. That's my sister's name. I want to say the friend was Sarah, and she said, Sarah has to go to her boyfriends. He only lives in Boka. We're in Fort Lauderdale. It's right up one-A-1-A.

She goes, Sarah was drunk. And I'm, whatever. She goes, I'll drive Sarah's car to Boka. You just pick me up, come back, and stay with me at the hotel. I haven't staying on the beach. Yeah. So pretty girl in a hotel room looks like a win for me. right yeah no

a bed in air condition you mean I don't have to get up and shake the sand off me I know I get it I get it your wife would understand right but I'm not going to say tell them well that'd be great but I don't have a car right so I'm like perfect you guys

go get your car and I'll meet you I'll call you when I'm heading up A1A and then you send me the direction so that was the plan they get in their car they head up I wait guy parks the car I grab a set of keys, do my thing, boop, boop, it's an F-150, freight, four-door

nine, some look like a pimp. I get into that. I'd rather get into a fight with a guy in a Porsche than an F-150. I feel like that guy's six-two. Well, listen to this. This gets even crazy. This gets even more bizarre. Like, is there a Fiat?

Like, is there a mini? Like, that's what I'm taking. I can take this guy. I don't know. This is after we finished the blow, and now, I've never done any benzos in my life. Of all the drugs, I've never done a Xanax, Klonopin, none of that stuff. I just never had the opportunity, or it just was never around. So as we finished the Coke, and we're getting ready to bring the girl home, she goes, here, take one of these. It will help you come down. And she gave me a Xanax.

I don't know what milligram it was. Right. I just took it, didn't do anything, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, didn't do anything. So we're all doing the thing. She's heading up 8-1-A to bring the friend home. I'm looking for a vehicle. I find one. I'm out.

I'm on to A-1-A. I'm driving. I had like a thousand bucks at the time because I was living on the beach of everything I had on me. And I was waiting on this big paycheck because I paid us every two weeks. So I just had to make it to that next paycheck and then I had enough to find a room or something. you know uh so i remember i was the pill must have been kicking in i remember i had all my money in my lap and i had my backpack with my wallet in it on the passenger seat and the next thing i know

i wake up and it's smoke and i don't know what happened i fell asleep and the only part of a1a between the Weston Hotel in Boca Raton is about two miles from the Weston. It is a double-lane road. Nothing, no median in between, except for this 50-foot median, about two miles from the West and heading north on A1A. And don't you know, that's the truck veers into the median, hits the trees, total. I jump out of the truck. Money goes everywhere. I'm like, I'm scrambling for money. People are coming out of their house. Dude, are you okay?

What's going on? When I get out of the truck to pick up my money, because it was like 20s and 50s, I shut the door of the truck, my backpack and wallet in it. Now, people are like coming. Hey, you're okay, man, sit down, sit down. I can see the red and the blue cherries coming. Right. And I'm like, this, I started taking off.

I had my cell phone. I had whatever money I gathered. up, but I left my wallet and my backpack in the lock truck. So I'm not even thinking about that right now I'm running because as I'm like about 50 feet away, the first cruiser is pulling up and he's pulling up like to get out and chase me. Right. So I just go. And I am, I would be west of A1A between the ocean and the intercoastal. So there's only about five blocks there. I am, I am, I am ziggin, zagging, hopping fences. I fell in a hot tub.

I busted a glass patio table. I tore my shorts on a chain link fence. I mean, I am just hopping six-foot fences going through neighbor's yards. People must have been like, I mean, when I went through the patio table, I was out of there so fast before a light came on, but I guarantee you that somebody had to come outside unless they weren't home. Cops are going by with the big flashlight on, like, laying behind pine palm trees. and this is going on for what feels like hours and I make my way

I make my way north a few miles by cutting through backyards and I seem to have found seem to be safe there's no cars around I get out I cross A1am I'm now on the beach side and I'm walking I'm three miles from the Weston Hotel

it's about 5 a.m. I'm supposed to be to work at 11 a.m. No, no, I'm supposed to be to work at 3 p.m. that day. I don't remember this, but I must have been exhausted. I laid down on the seawall. Like, you know the seawall in Fort Waterdale? It's like a big, like this wide. I just kind of laid down and I passed out. And around 1030, I feel, and I come to, and it's a lifeguard. He's like, hey, bro, he's like, You've been weighing out here since I came to work at like 7.30s. Like, you better go get some water in you, man.

He's like, you look like a lobster. I'm like, all right. And I'm looking and there's blood on my hands and my shorts are torn. My shirt's torn. And I'm like, oh, my God. I, now it's coming back to me. What happened the night before? I'm like, what am I going to do?

So I just started walking to the Westin, right? I mean, I got to, you're going to come looking for me, or I got to go to them. So I walked in. They're probably already been there, right? Have they been there? Nobody, I got in, I got down to my locker. I was actually dumb enough to be putting my uniform on,

like I was going to work. And I hear Mr. Smith, and I turn around, and it's the owner of the valet company who's from Texas and he only flies into town like twice a year for... When someone steals cars? Yeah. And two-foot-Loddale Police Department

and the security for the Western Hotel. Mr. Smith, would you come with us? Yeah, sure. Just tell them I know exactly what this is about. Have you found my stuff? Yeah, yeah. Like, you guys got my bag, I got mugged, someone told my stuff.

Right. And I saw them leave in an F-150. I know that. Yeah. The guy that had my backpack, did you find it? I was just going to call and report it stolen. I thank God you guys are here.

First thing you should have done when that guy tugged on, you should have picked up your cell phone and said, so glad you woke me up. I need to report some shit stolen. So they take me into this security booth. And I'm still like foggy and hazy. Like this Benzo that didn't agree with me. I'm still like groggy, hungover.

Yeah, it's caused us a problem. Substances in me. I was laying in the sun. I'm dehydrated. I still haven't even gotten water. I just, like, dragged myself to the west in another two miles up. And so they got me in the room. They go, you know, they knew what happened.

They saw the video. They saw me go in the room and get the keys to the truck. And do you want to explain yourself? The owner of the vehicle. is what would like to meet you. I'm good. In walks, this 70-year-old black man, there was a convention at the hotel for mayors.

He was the mayor of some small town in South Carolina. He goes, son, what happened? I said, I got kicked out of the place that I was staying. I said, I had been sleeping on the beach for the last six, seven months. I'm waiting on this six, seven days. I'm waiting on this paycheck so I can, finally get in a place. I said, I took, took the truck to go to the laundry mat to wash my clothes because I had done that. Yeah, yeah. I went lying. Just wasn't that night. I said, I've been

working so much. I must have just fell in asleep. Like, well, why'd you run? I said, I didn't know what to do. I knew I wasn't supposed to be in the, in the truck. He goes, do you have any kids? I go, yeah, I go, I go, I do. I got a, he's about four. He goes, you seem like a really nice guy and he just made a terrible mistake. He goes, I don't want to press any charges. The Fort Lauderdale Police Department was like fuming. If steam could come out of their ears, steam would have come out of their ears.

They literally said, you're fired, you're trespassed, you have, go clean out your locker and get off the property, you're not a lot back. Okay, and the cop, throws me my backpack. inside the backpack is a bottle of percassettes that I had stolen out of a valeted car that I had parked a few days prior

so had they unzip my backpack at any point one of those pockets they could have got me on possession of a controlled substance brand theft of motor vehicle fleeing and alluding DWI potentially I mean the list goes on right

your whole story breaks that breaks apart false part of that so you would think boy that is a huge break like that is a gigantic break dude like you could have gone to prison over just that one thing and i don't so they fire me i i i bum around for like two or three more days because i'm not calling nobody and telling them how great i'm doing right right so i'm just kind of avoiding everybody oh in the melee i just bought in a brand new iPhone 6. It was when iPhone 6es were else. That's how long ago it was. I lost the phone in the melee of the jumping and running through backyards. So I didn't even have a cell phone. So for these three days after the accident, families reaching out to me, my phone's going right to voicemail.

They don't know. They've called now the halfway house. I'm not there. My brother-in-law drives down to the Weston because he knows that's my last place of employment. They look for me there. And they're Like, oh, yeah, Nate, he doesn't work here no more. You didn't hear what happened? And he didn't hear, of course, didn't know. So then he gets filled in. And he keeps that to himself. Circumstant.

He doesn't call everybody in the family. Yeah. No, they all found out. By circumstance, Fort Laudado Beach is big. And he leaves the Weston, and he's just heading south, basically to get back on the highway, hit La Solis Boulevard, and get back out of Fort Waterdale. and we we see each other like he's just and just my brother okay he was sent to look for me because i'm a m a m a for three days because i lost my phone and there's m i am missing inaction

yeah what i didn't say may i am i asked me oh edit that one colby so yeah so he finds me gives me the old like dude you got to grow up you got a son Like, what the hell, man? Like, this is serious stuff. Like, the how you didn't get in any trouble, I do not know. He said, I'm going to take you with me. We're going to Del Rey. You're going to this halfway out.

And, again, another freebie. Another, no, I had no, like, I had some money, but I wasn't telling anybody because I, so he gets me in this halfway house for free for two weeks. I stayed at the halfway house. I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing, but I didn't cause any major problems there. I convince my mom, which I don't know how I did after the story with the car.

I convince her to let me come back to Fort Myers. I'm like, you know, I want to be close to Colton, my son, and I want to, you know, I think I'll get involved in Fort Myers. I'll go to a halfway house. I was telling her everything. She wanted you. she did she came and got me and so now i'm back i'm back in fort myers and i'm using whenever i get my hands on things but i don't know anyone in fort mire's so the only way i can get drugs is

in fort waterdale and i have at the time i went from owning many new vehicles and extra vehicles and antique vehicles, and at this time I'm driving a 97 Chevy Blazer that won't make it to Fort Lauderdale and back without shutting it off three or four times in the meantime to let it cool down, but I'm still pushing this thing to get there because I want to get drugs, right?

So I'm doing that for maybe about a month. My addiction isn't like where it's to every day, but it's heading back in that direction. So my mom's like, you've got to get a job. I'm like, okay, I'm flipping on whatever, Craigslist and whatever it was at the time. I see this used car dealership in Fort Myers, and I'll leave the name out of it. And I, so I applied. They hired me.

It was a shitty job for a shitty owner who sold shitty cars. But they were like nice. He'd get nice cars, but it all from auction and yada, yada. So at this point, I need to get better transportation to Fort Worth. Waterdale, right? So I come up with this idea that at night, when I need to get to Fort Lauderdale, when we close up the auto shop, I would take a dealer plate, and I would put it in my waistline and put my shirt over it. And then I would, hey, good night, guys, see you tomorrow. And leave, and I'd get my car. And the other bid, too, the other one would be locked in the trailer, which

It was like a construction trailer on the site, which only the owner had the key to. We didn't. We only had the key to the gate to get into the lot. So I would take a set of keys for whatever vehicle I thought would make it to Fort Lauderdale. It was usually an FJ 40. Remember those FJ 40s the Toyota came back out with? Oh, yeah. They were kind of like looking.

They don't make them anymore. I'd love to get like an older one. It drove really nice. It took it to Fort Lauderdale a few times, unbeknownst to the owner. So, yeah, I would come back at like 9 o'clock. I would open the gate. I would go in, put the dealer played on the FJ cruiser, and head out to Fort Lauderdale and go,

cut my stuff and come back. And that went on for a while until I finally upgraded jobs to a caddy. Because I didn't want to go back into flooring. Like, when we sold the business, we had some money and have to, but the lifestyle I was leading. I was going to have to because that money wasn't going to last forever. Right.

So I was doing these, like, little jobs that didn't have a lot of responsibility because I didn't want the stress because I thought that was what made me unhappy with the flooring business, right? Just wanted a job. It's a paycheck. And, like, these hospitality jobs,

you can actually do pretty good. You can make two to $500 a day if you get the right people. And caddying was super easy. It's four hours a day. We do around 18 holes. And a good day. you make 400, a bad day you made 200

in four hours. You're up. But you're still using drugs, which you said was what made you unhappy. I mean, which was the flooring thing was supposed to make you happy, but not doing the flooring would have made you happy, which would have made you stop doing the drugs. Right. But you're still doing the drugs, even though now you're happy. Because my brain is scrambled eggs at that point.

I don't know what wouldn't make me happy. I didn't know up from down at that point. Right. You know. So I won't say why, but I lost the job at the golf course in the particular day I lost the job I'm caddying for this NBA

alumni tournament that's the Ritzkall in Naples the all ex-hall of famers Chauncey Billups Rip Hamilton guys that were relevant in my era and guys from the 80s and stuff nobody crazy like

Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton Tim Tebow was there for another event it's about the biggest names guys that I rub show shoulders with them by rub shoulders carried their bag. But although the Pistons, guys, Chauncey and Rip were actually, because being from Boston and having like the Boston

Detroit rivalry games back in the 90s and 80s and stuff, they were fun. They were fun guys. They talked to me like I was. They weren't any better, you know? They were just good for guys out playing golf and I was their caddy. So I went from like highs of highs to walk in, across the parking lot to get in my car to get an approached by two detectives from Naples

for a theft of what of something from the golf course okay yeah is it a secret no I mean I probably should I probably can say it's well past statute of limitations was it a child got in trouble no it was a set of rental golf clubs but there are a thousand dollar a set of clubs. That's fine. I stole him. Everybody's doing it. If I wasn't an idiot and a drug addict who needed money immediately and all I had to do

is take a simple sticker off the bottom of the club, they would have had no idea where they came from and I would have never get caught. Did you? Took it to play it against sports and took $300 for him. And they left the sticker. And they went, Tiburon. Hmm. Hey, you guys getting rid of your rental sets down there?

Because I told them, I said, oh, I bought it. They were selling their old rental set, so I bought it. Because he mentioned it. And I was like, fuck. But it's too late. Did you, I just said to you, when they said, we know it's you, did you say, how'd you put it together? No, it was just like, it was like the walk of shame. God, you guys are good.

I'm in this parking lot of the Ritz calling with celebrities, all the guys I work with, and two detectives are coming to talk to me. It was like the walk of shame. So. They need my help. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to help him solve a crime. Which is very...

This is true. It's still, that's exactly true. So this is funny because this is my first introduction to, like, jail and, like, not politics, but, like, kind of how it operates, right? Now, I had money in my pocket when I get arrested, so it immediately goes on your books, right, when you get into jail. Now, I'm calling dad. he ain't even answering he's certainly not bailing me out so i'm thinking i'm sitting there we're at least a month for a court date right i'm starving you know you know the typical jail stuff right so i'm like well people got stuff i'm like how do i get stuff they're like oh there

he does he's got a store it's two for one wherever we're just got to show him you got money in your books like okay cool so i go over and like hey man i got like 400 bucks my books pull up my computer, show them. I'm like, I just like to get some stuff to hold me over to like an order. You know, say like you can order on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this was like a Friday. So he gives me like

$25 worth of items that I had to pay him back two for ones, right? And I had no problem. I was going to do it. All intentions are doing it. Monday morning, my dad decides to bail me out. So he had a phone call on the intercom. Smith, broling up. I'm like,

what are they moving me now I get like four guys making their way to my bunk they're like you're going home I'm like I don't know this is the news to me nobody said they would bond me out I said I'll go find out what's going on and then I found out

and they were yeah you're going home you got bond I go okay I said as soon as I get out I said give me your number I'll go put it right on your books they're like okay you promise got you bro out of there from the agreement with my dad was

if he'll bail me out I have to go to Fort Lauderdale to I'm drawing a blank on the name of the place it'll come to me it's a religious

run rehab where they pray the drugs not you they don't do any like meds or nothing you just

so basically it's a cult work camp where you it's a year-long program you they put you to work eight hours a day and then the rest is filled with church and Bible study stuff maybe an AA meeting I lasted there a month they kicked me out they said that I wasn't taking it serious and I probably wasn't because I don't take that stuff very serious you know I'm goofering around as soon as I get sober my sense of humor comes back I start being my old self again. Ego comes back, right? I'm sorry.

So I was immediately non-conforming to, I wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid. The guys that were there a few months ahead of me were drinking already. So they're like, we're kicking you out. Right. Again, you've got to get your stuff and go.

Like, no notice. My mom's in Fort Myers. I've been Fort Lauderdale. Nobody, I don't know nobody. I'm always shocked that when you, you don't conform to the program, and they kick you out, you feel that you've got something coming. Like, just like that?

No, not really just like that. More like a month of us trying to get you to do the right thing. And now you have to go. Exactly. And they did. Is there a grace period? Yeah, six hours. It is.

And it's like, and then they're kicking you out and just like, I can't believe you're doing that too. You guys are acting like, this is my fault. Well, yeah. So now here I am, again, walking down the streets of Fort Otterdale with a backpack. And they were kind enough, though, because I had more stuff there. They were kind enough to at least hold it until someone could get it for me.

So my poor mother drives all the way over, picks up my belongings, and then I had no cell phone because part of this program was you don't have a cell, you can't have a cell phone the entire year you're at the program. A lot of those programs, they'll go six months or 90 days or, you know. No cell phone, period. What? I just happened to be walking and a guy was kind of walking

the same pace as me and we kind of hit a couple blocks at the same like time and waited at the red lights so I felt kind of comfortable enough to say like, hey man, like I'm in a jam could I make a phone call? And he's like, cool.

He's like, what happened? And I told him and I think I kicked out of a rehab and anyways, I had to call my mom. and he lets me call my mom and I give him back his phone and he peels a 20 he pulls out a lot of money and he peels off a 20 and he's like here man he's like get yourself some lunch like thanks man he didn't have to do that he apparently he was like a pool hustler he was headed to the pool we were just on the same path that day for a few minutes so my mom comes and she's like begging and pleading with me that I need help

and I got to get in a program and all my, I burned all my bridges and all that's left for me is the Salvation Army. And I'm like, well, if I'm doing the Salvation Army, I'm doing it in Fort Myers. I'm not doing it in Fort Waterdale. My son's on the West Coast. My family's on the West Coast, although they probably rather keep me on the East Coast. I was able to convince her to take me to the West Coast with her. Right.

So she brings me back to the West Coast. And I go, Salvation Army had like a three-month waiting list because they were taking guys out of jail over guys off the street. I don't know. It's the way they were doing it. And so she finds this other place called Job's House. And I will put that on there because this guy was the biggest scumbag of scumbags. another religious-based pray the drugs away

and you know you'll be fine but you're going to work eight hours and we're not going to pay you we're going to put you on food stamps we're going to control your food stamp card you can't have any cash, can't have a cell phone they take me I'm there one day

it costs $100 to get into this program too so my mom writes him to check for $100 the first day I spend like half a day at the site seeing like it's basically just a garage these guys work out of and then at night take a druggy buggy back to the house and it's in like the slums of Palm Beach Boulevard in Fort Myers and they go oh your first night you sleep on the couch if after the first night then we'll see about finding a bed for you I'm like all right and it's weird like like No floors in the house. It was like plywood everywhere. Cockroaches in the kitchen.

I am like, I don't even know if I slept that night. I laid on the couch, fully clothed, shoes on. I don't even think I unsip my backpack. I am like playing along, you know. Yeah, okay, okay. We'll go to the office. Get to the office, do like a thing in the morning, go around the room, take a 15-minute break, 15-minute break. I stop walking. It's like seven. point five miles from my mom's house took me four hours i think i she couldn't believe it i showed up at her door she's like what are you doing here i'm like i can't stay there i'm like it was awful i'm better than this exactly exactly it's crazy i love the responsibility that you're taken in this whole none no no no no no i know accountability to everyone else's fault but it's

chicks fall back you know but yeah but when you're in it that you talk to anybody that's you are the most selfish human being on earth an addict is the most selfish the only thing i can say i didn't do what and it was because i had a business to rob from was i didn't ever rob from family members like jewelry or or like you know stuff that mean sentimental stuff like that type of stuff you know i didn't I didn't do any of that kind of stuff, but I didn't do any other good, I did bad stuff to other people, just not family people. So, yeah, so that one, after the Job's house, she says, well, I don't know what we're going to do. You know, until we find out, you're going to a meeting every day, and you're not a lot out of my sight. I'm freaking 35 years old, 35, 36 years.

Super responsible. Right. Super responsible. I mean, once again, he's reasonable. I mean, all these reasonable people, we got to get rid of these people. Yeah, I know. You got to get these people out of our lives. They are squares, I tell you. Do-gooders.

I obliged, and I did pretty good, actually. I, because I wasn't, like, fully dependent, so I was able to divil-dabble and without it being full-blown. And I stayed at Fort Myers, and I took a job on the beach at the parasail rental place. I'm like, what better place to meet girls? Get paid nothing. But you work on the beach, you get a good tan. It's fun. You know, again, you get tips.

There's ways to finagle a little extra. Has it dawned on you at this point that your life is not going in an upward trajectory? If I didn't have a child, they might have found me hanging somewhere at that point. Yeah, I went from on pace to be retired at my age. to driving a 97 blazer that was given to me living with my parents. Right. After I had just built and sold a $400,000 home. Yeah.

I mean, talk about, yeah. Yeah, and not a real fast decline. It was kind of slowly taking. I just kept reaching new bottoms, you know, like, I guess it's the bottom, but now I'll keep digging. All right. I see that this guy, maybe there's something else down there, well, better. So you're written paracels?

Paracels. Paracels. Yeah. So I'm the guy on the beach. You come to me. I sign you up, radio to the boat, walk you to the boat, and they do their thing out there. You come back. Tell me a great time you had, how wonderful I was, and you tip us.

The people on the boat don't know what's going in the jar and land. so I always made sure that they'd ever knew how much was in the jar until one customer told the people on the boat, I put a 20 in the jar. And they kind of had an idea, I think. So they were, there's no 20 in this jar. Well, I don't know. Well, we had a guy who got on the boat who said he put a 20 in the jar for everybody. Is there a 20 in your pocket?

that was my last day right so yeah so that was the parasail place I left there I waited tables

for a few weeks months I waited about a few months I waited waited tables down there on Fort Myers Beach meanwhile the addiction

is ramping back up and now I'm willing to do anything pretty much doesn't have to be opiates it could be whatever. I just, I just want to feel different. I feel like a loser. I am a loser. I lost everything.

I feel shitty. So, I mean, it's a pretty well place. It's a pretty well place to be. What year is this? This is now 2016 now, and I go over to see my son and ex-wife. At this point, our divorce was not completely finalized, so I was paying her and not set up through the courts for child support. And we got in a big argument. She asked me to leave. I of course said, no, I'm not done talking. She said, leave. I'm going to call the police. I said, no. She picked up the phone. I said, she's going to call the police. I better leave. So I leave. And she called the police. I wasn't a quarter mile out of her complex. They pulled me over. D.U.I. I had been drinking that day, so it was pretty evident that I was drunk.

They brought me in. I got out on recognance, put on probation. Again, I'm not changing anything. I'm still sneaking around, but I don't have the finances. So I'm hustling. But what I did leave out, it's too late to go back to now, What my safe haven was when I escaped Massachusetts was I figured if I robbed all my drug dealers, then I would burn a bridge.

And if I ever did come back, I wouldn't know how to get any, right? So in 2014, I robbed all four of my drug dealers within two days of each other and got about three grand. Robbed them in what way? Like with a gun? Broke in their house. No, I finessed them. I would say they sold pills. would say,

Susie just got her script and she's looking to get rid of them. And at the time they're selling for 30 bucks a piece. I'm like, she's willing to sell 30 of them for 10 bucks a piece or 60 of them for 20 bucks a piece, whatever the number was, whatever the drug was. I say, and I had this building, same building. I used this building 10 years prior for a robbery where it had a front door entrance and a rear door down the end of the hall that went out the back.

And what I would do to the people, I'd say, drive me there. I don't want to take your money. I don't want you to take your money and you think, you know, so you just drive me there. I was like, she's like crazy about meeting new people. She's paranoid. I was like, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to leave my phone and you're a couple of them. All you do is run up there and run right back down.

I'll be right back down. He said two phones, a burner. Right. And my good phone. So I put the burner in a cup holder. He gives me this one, the biggest score was $1,600. He gives me $1,600. I get out of the car, walk around the building, go in the front door, run down the hall

out the back door. I'm not even out the back door and I'm dialing taxi cab numbers. Pick me up at the YMCA, you know? And don't, this is a typical walk. After I had robbed all my drug dealers, I like two days before I could go to Florida and $3,000 cash and couldn't get a pill anywhere. So I'm like, I tortured myself, really. You know, so that, but that was before the 2014.

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The iPorter to learn more. I don't know why I forgot that part, but that was my plan was if I robbed them all, then, because I always had plans on coming back to Mass. I'd be like, and then I can't just easily call them and go get them, right? Well, that doesn't work. So, yeah, sorry to veer off there. No, sorry.

You get the DUI, get out on ROR. meantime I have this open case in Naples for the golf clubs and I just picked up this new charge and so the lawyer in Naples ends up getting it probation adjudicated withheld all I just stay out of trouble well I go get a DUI a couple months later so the DUI they give me ROR and

you got to do classes. I refuse the breathalizers. I lost my license for a year. So you're going to go through all that garbage. That cost, that was over $10,000 for one DUI in Florida. And then I get my license back and Massachusetts finds out about it. And they spend my license in Massachusetts. So I actually lost my license for two years over it. And it shouldn't have happened. It was like a bureaucracy thing. And I don't know how it didn't get straightened out. But anyways, long story short. I, we had a family trip up to Massachusetts. We go up to Massachusetts, things are good, see family. I hadn't seen in a while, old friends. I get a phone call from the neighbor in Florida, and she says, hey, there was a Lee County sheriff car just pulled up to your mom's house. So I walked next door, and they left the note on the door, and it says, they want you to come down and say them.

Thought about a warrant. I'm like, what? A warrant. Like, I had paid my fines, and I'm due in the driving school. I like and I had no idea in Florida and Massachusetts like if you're if you're on like probation like that and you violate you can go in and out the same day like they'll they might violate you and then make you bond back out well Florida they have this thing called the Whitman Act I'd never heard of it so I'm in Massachusetts I called my lawyer and I said hey I said

I got just found out I have a warrant I said and I'm going to come back to Florida in a week I'm vacation. I said, and I'm going to, like, take care of it. I said, I just want to let you know, so I don't have to, like, sit in jail for very long. He's like, oh, man, like, nothing I can do for. He's a state of Florida of Whitman Act. He says, 14 days before you get to see the judge. He says, it's mandatory. Doesn't matter what it is, violation, technical, or whatever. Any kind of violation, it's the Whitman Act. All right, all right, so I go into jail in Fort Myers. I get, get high, call on it. Uber, 1 o'clock in the morning, got to jail. So I tried to get there about three, so that

if you get there and they book you in by 5 a.m., that counts as one day. You ever try to, it's a little trick. If you ever got to turn yourself in, do it like after 2 in the morning. You get credit for that whole day. So I turn myself in, go through the withdrawals in jail because I'm taking anything. I'm taking pills. and create, whatever, right? So eventually it's got to come off. It's all the same. It's an opiate type receptor.

So when it leaves the receptors, it's going to make you feel shitty. Right. So I kicked for 10 days in jail. I mean, you sleep on them, you know, them little mats. I mean, when your first night or two of detoxin, I would be waking up in my jail jumpsuit would be sopping wet. And I'd have a puddle in my mat of sweat.

You know what I? It was just awful. terrible, terrible, and it's cold in there, and the food sucks, and, you know, county jail is the worst. I have nothing to compare it to because I never made it where the big boys go, but I, from what I hear, I think I had more, it was more, I did more torturous time in and out of my many stays in county jail, and I like two and a half years in county. I'd rather do two years, two years of federal prison than a year, but it's in a year,

you know, it's, I only have a year in one shot, the rest of it's, Four months, three months, six months. So anyways, turn myself in. I had done everything they asked except 30 hours of community service. So I'm in there. Now, every been to jail. Everyone's a jail time. Everybody's a jail lawyer.

They all want to know what you're in there for. I'm like, dude, I'm in here because I didn't do community service. And they violated my probation. They're like, oh, they'll reinstate. They might add 30 more hours and $500 fine. You're going home and you're going home as soon as you see the judge, dude. You're good. You're going home.

You've got a lawyer or two? You're definitely going home. I'm like, oh, sweet. All right. Great. Because I can't stand this place. Right. You know, but I got through the withdrawals.

And that was part of being that first time in jail and being going through the withdrawals, they put me in the infirmary. So I'm in the infirmary in Fort Myers' jail. and I'm in there with the one of these murderers in the Severs trial. It wasn't Mark. It was the guy that actually did the killing, the one that ratted, the one that ended up selling out his best friend. For some reason, his name's drawing a blank. It might pop back into my head.

So I literally was playing cards with this guy watching his dateline. And he's like, that's false. It's like, that's not true. Yeah, it was wild Like I'm in there for community service Playing Spades with a guy Who killed a woman with a hammer Right

And this is a culture shock for me, you know So I did that They put you on so many days For the drug thing And then they release you into regular population So I ended up in regular population The two weeks goes by I get my court date

All excited mom's there. I'm going home. You bring me in, shackled. You know, she's looking at me like, tear. Like, she's a, never seen you know. Never seen you like. Hannibal Lecter, you know.

They got you chained their ankles, your waist, your hands, you can't scratch your nose. Judges, like, they read everything off. Yes, Your Honor. He did this. He did that, that, that, that, that, that, that, this, yep. He's just got 30 hours left to community service to complete. I'm like, okay, I'm just like looking around waiting.

He goes, 75 days in the league, honey, no, he goes, 95 days in the leak county house at corrections. I'm like, 90 days? Are you freaking kidding me? Like another five days would be fine. Like, I got the point. Yeah. You know, give me 200 community service hours.

I will start tomorrow. Don't give me another. I'll take care of those just like I did that first 30. Right. Yeah. So 90s is 75 days, right? Right. So I, did I go to the, no, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I did my 75 days and I came home and it sucked.

The stipulation was when I get out, rehab number three, not religious rehab, regular rehab. So I'm going back over to East Coast. This time it's like Deerfield Beach, I think. is Deerfield Is Deerfield south of Del Rey? It's not Lantana. Lakefield. Lakefield, Lakewood, Lakefield. It's on the coast.

It's a rehab. Yeah. It's, uh, anyway, it's just north of the, uh, just north of Boiton Beach. It's like the next town from Boit. So I go to their rehab. And, um, I'm on, probation because I get I get out but I'm still on probation for the golf club incident I don't say anything to that probation officer I just go over to Ria on the east coast we're supposed to like tell

them where you live and this and then you're going to check in and so it gets to be like two days before I'm supposed to check in and I know I'm going to fail like I knew I would have failed the drug test had I stuck around, and my parents wanted me to go to this rehab. So I go to the rehab, and I didn't tell probation. Long story short, didn't tell probation. So I call probation, thinking when I tell him this, he'll be happy for you. Right. I'm in rehab.

Okay, Mr. Smith, where are you? I'm in Boyton Beach. Where? Boiton Beach. It's the only one I could get in. He goes, you're on the other coast? I go, yeah. He goes, I want you in my office.

but if you're not in my office before 4 p.m. tomorrow he goes, I'll put a warn off your arrest and you'll be going back to jail. I click and he hangs up. Now I live in a, I'm going to this place and we're staying in a house with four guys. No one has a car.

One guy has a scooter. That goes, it's a 50cc scooter. I wake up that morning. This is the dumb and dumber. Have you seen dumb and dumber? That night, we're there. Now, now he like cherishes this thing, right? Right.

So I'm like, hey, you think I could take your scooter tomorrow to go job hunting? I won't go far. I just got to, like, you know, I'm just going to hit like Atlantic Ave. Maybe I can find a serving job. He's like, yeah, I'm playing golf in the morning. You can use it for like an hour. I'm like, all right, cool. So I get up at 8 o'clock in the morning.

First thing, ride in my sister's house. I'm like, sorry, I need 20 bucks. I have no gas for this freaking scooter. And I get on Route 80, Palm Beach Boulevard, head in east. Palm Beach Boulevard turns into Route 80, Intuck, Belgrade. How fast does this thing go? Oh, about 28, 30 miles an hour. It took me four and a half hours each way.

It took me, oh, nine hours. When I got back, I looked like a cherry red tomato with the windburn and the sunburn. My arm was so tired from holding this thing right open. Tractor trailer trucks are flying by me. This is the scooter. just going like this and barely keep it on the road. It was, but I made it. Right.

I got there and I got back and it took a long time. But it was so bad at one time on the way home, I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and I'm riding the scooter drinking Dunkin' Donuts because I was so bored. It was, you know, 30 miles an hour. That's about 150 mile ride. In a car, it's two hours, you know? But I didn't go Alligator Alley.

I went 80 up through around below Okachobi Lake Okachobi So it's kind of a two-lane highway It's still dangerous Every time them tractor trailer trucks Been by And the scooters took like that

You know So yeah So I made it I got home He saw on the miles He flipped out I I still denied it

But I was like Yeah You know What do you think I did? driving across the state? Yeah. What are you stupid? It ended up coming out.

Someone thought it was funny. And I remember a couple days later, someone was repeating the story. And he's like, that's where you win! Sorry, man. So, yeah, so that was the first time in Lee County Jail. And then I, what did I do there? I didn't, I never finished a single rehab. I was kicked out of every single one of them.

But now I end up, finish that little rehab because they were doing me a favor for a brother thing to peas my parents. So they kind of rushed me through two and a half weeks and then they just put me in a halfway house and I was taking steroids, taking testosterone. I just be a little bigger. Okay. It's a workout. Okay.

Yeah, I don't anymore. I'm like 160 pounds, but at the time I was about 190 and I was a muscle. I've lived in the gym all my friends worked out. So they kicked me out for finding a bottle of testosterone and two syringes. We can't have that a halfway house. That's just stupid. Right. Yeah.

Okay. But when you get in these halfway houses, I don't know if the ones you were in where you get a, like a guy who's been there the longest and he gets a sense of power trip, right? It's his house. He's been there the longest, you know, it's not the most easy guy to get a long. with if I don't want to be. You know, I challenge people. If you say something that I think is bullshit, I will call you right out on that in front of people, and especially if I can back it up, you know.

So I wasn't really a likable guy there, and I was miserable. I, again, I was still miserable. So it was around Christmas time, and we were going for Christmas at my parents. So my sister and Justin picked me up, drove me over to my parents' house for Christmas, and I somehow convinced them that I will do everything right on this coast. I just won't go back. This is going to be different. Right.

I don't know how. It's going to be different. And this is when it gets about the worst it gets because first it happened with some cash in checks for somebody. Trying to make a couple bucks. Somebody stole someone's checkbook. I kind of knew what was, thought, what it was, but I was desperate for the money, and I did it. And I did it, and they caught me, and it's uttering a forged instrument.

And they put a warrant out for me, and they got me on the warrant. And I can, oh, they got me on the warrant, and I got arrested, and my bond was $10,000. And this is how loving of a mother I have. She had no business, and she should have never done it. She should have just told me, sorry, suck it up. Kid, you did this to yourself, but she bonded me out. And she put $1,000 out, and I get out. I got out 24 hours later.

I was out, and you're familiar with what myers? Yeah, a little bit. I've been downtown. I've been to houses. You probably never heard of Pine Manor. No, not really. It's like a three months. square slum of trap houses, poor houses, place fencing operations, and then a few lower class

working immigrant families. Right. I mean, it's every other, every third door is a drug dealer. You know what I mean? Constantly full of CIs, full of cops. You don't even want to drive through there because it's just, you know, but when all else, when you have no other options you end up in a place like that right so i end up here and things start going bad and i start wanting to get high and i didn't know where to get high but

i knew pine manor was a shit hole so i went over there and didn't take long and i got a connection and i was getting high and my parents were back up in massachusetts at the time but they're their house here in Florida was empty, but I wasn't allowed to stay in it. So I sometimes would park in the driveway and just sleep in the car. But for this particular night, I don't know why I didn't. I was literally, I could have hit a golf ball to their house and where I parked my van. I parked it in my old apartment complex parking lot. But not in a parking spot, I just pulled through the entrance and kind of like looped around. And then I remember, I opened my driver's door, and I was doing something, and I passed up.

And I woke up to Lee County Sheriff's. And I had a little bag of cocaine and a little bag of cocaine. And the hand was in the cup holder, and the little bag of cocaine was in my hand. So when I get out of the car, I'm like, okay, I get out of the car. As soon as they both turked their eyes off me, I put the bag in my mouth, swallowed that. And the other guy kept looking through the passenger window, and I'm like, he's seen it, you know. So they're like, why are you asleep? Where are you headed?

And I was so caught off guard. I didn't know I'd deal what time it was. I'm like, going to work. They're like, yeah, 2 o'clock in the morning? I'm like, I don't know, I just fell asleep. I don't have anywhere to go. So they tried to give me another DUI. I don't know, miraculously somehow passed the field sobriety test.

He goes, I can't give you an operating under the influence. you passed the field's sobriety test, he goes, but my partner found this in the cup holder. And so they took me in on a possession. And I did 30 days on that. And my lawyer. 30 days on heroin, but you missed the 30 days of community hours and you did, okay. I did the 30 days to get to the court date. Oh, okay.

Then my lawyer bunched everything up into a two-year, probation deal with that charge, right? So I'm finishing the other probation. He gets me two-year probation, 30 days and two years' probation for the drug deal. So I'm finishing out one probation. You're never going to pass. You're never going to do two years' paper.

Never, right? So, no. You can't function off the paper. All right. I mean. But you'll say whatever you can to get out of jail, right? I mean, let's face it. You want to sit here for a year, sir,

or we'll let you out today to two years paper. Two years paper. Now knowing that, and this hence the last time, why I just wrapped it up. Right. Because I burned after all these stints in and out. So I go in, I do the 30. I get out.

I'm on probation for two and a half years. My mom and dad are, my mom comes down. She's like, what are you going to do? Your life's a mess. Like, you have a son. you're going to die like didn't you learn from your sister and I'm like yeah like I don't this isn't what I want to do you know and like I don't fix it if I could if I could go like that and fix it I would you know so she goes well you're not staying here and I have to go back to

Massachusetts so let's find somewhere for you to go so we find a halfway house and she drops me off at this halfway house gives me a big hug like she she I remember her hugging me like she might never see me again. Right. Like, this is it? Like the mom, you know?

And I'm like, mom, don't worry about it. You know, like, I had never overdose. I was always, even when I did go down that road,

I always respect, not saying it couldn't have happened to me, but I was always a little fearful. I never dove right in. Right. I would always kind of sample it or whatever else sample it. And then I, you know,

I'm not saying that's a safer way, but I did have a little bit of fear after what I saw with my roommate down there right in 2012 so she drops me up this halfway house i make it two days i end up meeting up with the kid in the house who has a car and he's like he's like a beta he's like a soy boy he's like one of them kids that you can tell whatever you can you can control right my dude I'm like dude let's you get a car let's get out of here dude until from the day we left he never drove his car again. I drove that thing.

He had a job, too. So what I would do is, mind you, I'm still in probation. I would drop him off at work. We would sleep in this car. This only went on for maybe a month with his car. We would, I would drop him off at work. The only deal was I would have to get him high in the morning

and make sure I could get him high when he got out of work. And he would give me his car for the day. Now, I would go back to Pine Man. and I would round up the Goon Squad, the Goof Troop, the crash dummies. And I would take two or three of them to a Walmart, a Target, or Walgreens, or whatever. And they'd go in there and fill a shopping cart and come run it out with it and throw it all in the trunk. And I would drive right back to Pine Manor. We'd pull up in front of the hood, pop the trunk, and we're selling Tidepods for $5.

they can't get enough a deodorant type personal hygiene products it's like I don't know what it is but you take that stuff to the ghetto and they want toothbrushes crap but

it's an easy lick you know and I'm getting half of whatever they're getting because I get the car I'm the main dude you know you're the risk in everything but I'm the main dude and the tag is the car

tag's Tyler's yeah fuck Tyler What was he thinking? Tyler, I don't even know if Tyler, I saved his life three times. Tyler didn't think much. Right. Tyler wasn't much of a thinker.

Right. And I'm not joking. I saved his life three times. We copped drugs and I was the driver. So he got his little shit together fast and as I'm backing out, he's doing it and he shoots it and he goes, that stuff was pretty good. And I get to the stop sign at the end and then you take a left and there's two stop signs and you're at the main road.

I take the left. I go, you're doing all right? He's doing one of these. I get to the very first stop sign. He's not responding. I get to the second stop sign, banging him in the chest. Now I park the car. I jump out.

I go around the driver's door. I yank him out of the ground. I'm doing the sternum rub, the whole nine yards. I mean, I am punching. I am slapping. You're dying on my watch, bro. Like, I've got enough problems. I don't even explain a bad idea.

anybody. So he come to and the second, that was two times I beat him to come to. One time I had to call 911 and they took him. Narcan. What is it? Narcan. Yeah. So for a month, that was my regular routine was bring Tyler back to life and make sure he got to work so I could utilize his car to support my hustle, which was pick up whatever lackeys needed to earn a fix. Right. And these knuckleheads would go to anywhere from Dick Sporting Goods, Dillards. They go to Dillards and they'd come out with $2,000 worth of handbags, go to the ghetto and get 50 bucks a piece for a $600 handbag. You know what I mean? It's like, God, why didn't I have the thousand bucks in my pocket? You know, if we could have reworn history, boy, and I knew these people had a

come up. But no, we was just literally broke at the end of the day. And every day it was the same thing was get up, do the same thing. Get up, do the same thing. How long that last? A month or so. It lasts about a month because what happened was we were getting our drugs from the same guy and the guy that we were getting him from, he was an old dude, old school dope dealer. He's doing, I'm pretty sure he's doing life. They finally got him again for his third time. But we were going to him every time and he knew the hustle. So he tried to cut me out. So he caught Tyler one day when I wasn't around. And he was like, yo, bro, why don't you let me rock the car? I'll give you a gram of dope every day just for your car. So I'm out. And I got a call

and Tyler is saying, I want my car back. I'm like, I got business to do, bro. I got a couple appointments to make. Dollar General hasn't been hit yet. So I avoided him for like two or three days until he now this guy black it was the nickname was pretty feared because he was he had a gun and he would pop it off outside and he was not working with a full deck and he sniffed powder so he was like a whack job so anyways he convinces tyler that be a better deal for him as if he had the car right and you know so after they threatened that they were going to do the police thing i up the car. I just brought it there one night, left it, and took off. And now I'm without a car. And I'm like, black. Motherfucker, he's not going to take my game. I go back over there.

Pop both tires and Tyler's car. I'm like, now you got a car you can't drive. Have fun, boys. And as I pop the second one, I hear, hey. Bro, I ran so fast. You ever run so fast, you ever run so fast you fall? Your legs can't keep up with yourself. I'm running so fast. My feet weren't even... Because I don't know if this guy's going to pop a shot off or if he's six feet behind me with a little baseball bat. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I did like tumble roll 360 back up onto my feet. I kept running. But I would be damned if Black gets that card. I don't. Morals and principles. So, in the meantime, a few days of foot. in it, and I would cut through, like, apartment complexes, you know, because I'm walking,

so in whatever way is the quickest. And I'm walking, and I see a set of keys, like a fob. And I'm like... Where? On the ground? On the ground. Okay. Yeah, just in a condo complex. So I'm like, Wilson White Splash. It's like a 20, 25 Nissan, Nissan Pathfinder. I'm like, okay, cool. Leave.

Don't do nothing. I leave. Another couple days go by. We did some little scam. We ripped somebody off or something. We ended up getting a hotel. Somebody might have helped us out and got us a hotel for the night. So me and this foot dweller, bridge dweller, foot dragger,

crackhead, whatever you want to call her. Like, yeah, I slept in the chair of the hotel because she was in the bed and I didn't even want to be in the bed, but I just needed, like, a place of safety because I had been sleeping on porch swing at the trap house, at the drug dealer's house. You know what I mean? And that wasn't safe. So for at least one night of safety, you were in this hotel, right? The troglodyte.

Yeah. So, yeah, so I, like, she, you know, she's like lamping, you know, she's in this best western, living her best life. And I'm over here sitting in the little office chair in the corner thinking, like, you know, Like, am I going to get through tomorrow? You know, and then it dawned on me. I had that key. So I called the cab, and I had them take me to the condo complex, and I went right for that

Pathfinder, and I got in it. And I said to the cab driver, I said, if you don't see me back in five minutes, I said, you can head out of here. I said, because I didn't know if it was going to be there, right? Right. It could have not have been there, right? And so I go, there it is. I get in.

I drive out at the gate. There's the cab driver. Thumbs up to the cabby, and I head back to the hotel. And when the trogodite woke up, she was like, oh, my God, we got a car. Amazing. So, yeah, off and running again. Now we're in a stolen car. And we're doing the same thing we were doing in Tyler's car.

We're just, see, the troglodyte was connected to the underworld people that I hope I never have to associate with again. and so she would round up this crew of boosters or whatever they want to they like to I guess that's what they call themselves because that's sounds cool or they're not thief but yeah and they were good at it I mean they would go and they would get us whatever we needed to get through the day and so that that goes on and the meantime the drug dealer who he's he's also when it would get late at night he wouldn't want to go meet his customers and I was hanging around so he would be like hey go outside and give this to so-and-so and I'll give you this and I would do it because it was giving me free drugs right little did I

know that I could they were watching him this a whole time you're now selling you're now a drug dealer right for for no gain right so yeah so we did we the Joe boys got this idea he's like he wants to buy this car because he wants to go commit some crimes but like bang bang crimes. Yeah. And that's why when I was finally at the end when they arrested me and they're like, do you want to wear a wire or we'll pay you? I was like, no. He wanted to buy the car for reasons, you know, different reasons. Right. And so that was my plan. That was like my, you know, I was going to get a little score. You know, I was going to sell him for a thousand bucks. Right. And in two or three days that we agreed on this, he also said, here's a little of this,

little of that and a little of this, I'm going to put you up at this little motel down by the beach and just serve my few customers for me for the weekend. Me and my girl are going out of town, blah, blah, blah. I'll break you off. I'll take care. And he did. This is one guy, I will say, scumpt skull and bag, drug dealer, but he was good to me. Right. You know, I did bring a lot of money and probably why it was good to me, but he did look out for me. Like even when I was down and out, he would always be like, here, man, take this, flip it, go make some. of some money, you got some something. I feel like that's not looking out for you, but I hear what I mean?

It's not. But when you're living that way, it is. At least he's following through what he says it'll follow through. Right. So, so we go, we do it. Now, we get to the motel, I back the Pathfinder in, and I had that, if we were, like they were stealing everything at Walgreens and dollar stores, we always had the antipacterial wipes.

Right. So I wiped this. whole thing down, door handles everything, right, the inside of the car. I don't want my fingerprints anywhere in this car. I'm just about to get rid of it. Right to a killer. So I don't want my fingerprints in this car. So I wipe this whole thing down. I have no shoes on, shorts, no, and a tank top. I'm smoking a cigarette. I'm standing by the driver's side between a dumpster and the car. And in pulls a Lee County sheriff. And she's just, it's just like, it's like a 200 yards from the road and the car is parked in the back of the parking spot and she's just driving in

right at it and I just take off running and behind me is it's not the intercoastal over there but we have waterways similar to that so I'm running behind all these buildings barefoot over rocks jumping fences again here we go again running through a boat yard I hid in a sailboat I had the keys to the actual vehicle, so I hit them in a flower planter in case I could get back to it. I took off the tank top. I threw that away.

So now I'm no shirted. Maybe I don't stand out as much. I had a big beard at the time, thicker beard than this. So after about an hour in the sailboat, like a sauna, I'm soaking wet. I get out.

I make my way back to the hotel, which I only probably ran about a mile. um i get back with no trouble no i don't even see a cop right i'm like wow this is bizarre i make it back into the hotel room i'm in the hotel room and i swear to god not even 10 full minutes for the county sheriff car just swarm the vehicle the whole it'd be like the window is right there and the vehicle's parked on the other side of that black wall all right so i'm like peeking up the blind and i'm like watching them and they're writing stuff down they're in and they're going around this whole car, right? I'm just waiting for them to knock on the door because they're

going to go to the hotel desk, see whose car belong to, what room, knock on, right? Next thing I know, a flatbed comes, they pick it up on a flat bed, and off it goes. So I'm like, okay, I'll haul the cops leave. So I'm like, sweet. Okay, cool. I guess I dodged a bullet there. So little did I know that they had me on camera at one of these runs smoking a cigarette leaning against the passenger side door

of this said stolen vehicle. So when they were investigating the petty theft, they were looking at the vehicle that the theft thieves got in, they saw it was that, but that plate stolen with you. next to it. So now bringing you to just about the end is, and now I'm without vehicle. So I'm back

in Pine Manor because that's like my little ecosystem, right? That's the only place I can operate. Everything I need is there. The 7-Eleven at the end of the block and everything that you need in that lifestyle is right there. So about two days, three days after they could take in the truck on the flatbed. We're walking. We go, I'm walking with this other black kid that I knew, and I still had some leftovers from what

cricket is his name. That's his street name. He had given me. And I used to keep it tucked back here. And we're walking, and we're walking to 7-Eleven, and there's a cop sitting at 7-Eleven. So I get it like 100 feet away, and I go, not right now. I turn around, and I, so

I'm walking away from the 7-Eleven, because I'm like, I don't even want to have any interaction with the cops. Right. So we're now walking away from that, and we're walking, it's about 100, we're about 100, 200 yards away, and we're approaching a four-way intersection. We're still 50 yards from the four-way. Out comes the cruiser, and he's, we're walking this way, he's coming this way. He kind of glances over at me, but I have no idea this is a warrant out for me,

and I thought I dodged the whole thing with the car thing, right? So as he gets to the four-way intersection, I notice he swings wide. And I'm already starting to think. And I see he goes like this. And as he goes like this, he hits, Lee County Sheriff, get on the ground. So before he even fully turns his vehicle in a full sprint, gone.

I don't even know how, now I'm going behind houses. I don't even know. I got the most jacked, super, cop on the forest, apparently that day. Right. The guy was like 22 years old. Now, I had a good 100-yard jump, and I'm zigging and zagging. And we come around the side of a house, and he's right there.

Right. I don't know if he just guessed and cut some distance off, and he hits me like Ray Lewis, and boom, knocks me luckily, luckily he didn't wrap me up. he hits me and I bounce a good 10 feet away from him and there was a car in the driveway so now I'm on one side of the car he's on the other side of the car he's got his tays route he's like get on the ground and we're doing the dance he's going one way I'm going the other way every time he goes one way

I'm going the other way I got drugs on me right so I get myself to the driver's side back wheel and as just I mean he's calling back up he's on his radio you know I go okay okay okay and I grab it and as I go under the car I stuffed it in the spring it was like a little purse like a woman's purse

right zipper purse will I go change purse and I stuffed it in the spring and I scrambled about five feet away like a roll and I just laid there and he came out and dropped the knee on me you know and cuffed me and picked me up by the cops

made fun of me I told me I smelled and that's that because I probably did right on the street for the last week and um so yes they never found it they i sat in the cop car at the scene for three hours they brought a dog there's over a dozen cops because they knew i ran to throw something yeah right that was they never found it never found it nothing so i go i go to jail i do i'm in there for about three months my second day in jail i'm starving mind you right so it's chow time lunch

comes down, everybody gets their tray, goes to their table, eats their slop, right? So I'm like, this, I grabbed two trays, walk over, boom, start. I just happened to catch Deputy Dewey with a hair across his butt. He comes over, makes a big scene, interrupting count, theft. He hit me with four DRs and sent me to the hole for 75 days. my four-month prison, my four-month jail sentence there for that time, I spent 75 of those days in the hole. How my lawyer did it, I don't know. He gets me the four months and released on the account that I go to Naples and I do a one-year program,

this Christian cult work camp. Okay? Yeah. Again, I'm not good with these places. We know this. It's not my thing. Not my cup of tea. So I do the first 30 days, no phone calls to the outside world. You're a slave. We're going to pray all your problems away. The whole deal. It's like a power trip thing. It's all just a weird dynamic. So it gets to the 30th day where they move you from one location to the other location where You spend five months, and it's like you get more privileges, you get visits, you get, it gets better, right? And now you've made friends with this 30, 20 guys in your group that are all going to the next phase, and they go, this is the morning where my bags are packed.

We're all getting on the bus at 6.30 in the morning. Everyone's getting the bus. Smith, you come in the office? I go in the office. yeah we're not we're not going to send you out to phase two we we think you have an ego problem we think you have too much your pride is your biggest problem you you don't heed to this that and the third now mind you my the judge said if i don't complete this program i'm going to jail and i'm possibly going to prison and right so i'm like no i don't please give me like like i can do it i can do this you know like because they're like saying i don't think this is for you maybe your lawyer can get you in another program and i'm like no no no you tried everything this is

the only program he could get me and sure us me i didn't want to come here and so they go okay um we'll do you're going to do another 30 days in this bullshit right of like scrub and bathrooms like just rules you would give your 13-year-old. You know what I mean? I get it. They're trying. They're trying. But come on, Matt.

Listen, I know. It's tough. It's tough being me sometimes. So I convince them. They give me another 30 days. Now, when I got picked up, I got picked up by a guy in the program from jail to take, because I had to go from jail to this program. and he's been in the program for like seven months.

First thing he does, bro, you want a cigarette? Yeah. We're smoking butts the whole way back to Naples. He's like, yeah, he's like, when I started, you could smoke, but now they got this rule. They took nicotine away, so your first 30 days, they wean you off it, and then it's no nicotine for the last 11 months. I'm like, really?

That friggin sucks. But meanwhile, during the day, it's coordinated, with like a homeless shelter. So during the day, you go to the homeless shelter and you serve the homeless and you do volunteer crap. Right. They all smoke and they'd be like giving us.

They know that we, you know, we're in the programs. They're giving us cigarettes and it's no big deals. I'm going to get caught. You're not going to be fine, right? Day 30 second time, they nicotine test me. Right. And I fail. And they go, get in the van.

We're bringing you your probation off. First, they try to slick when they didn't even tell me. They go, I come out here, get in the van with Dustin. I get in the van with Dustin, what's up? He was, hey, I don't know how to tell you this, Nate. Because he was nice and he liked me. And he was genuinely a good guy. Not all there, so he kind of drank the Kool-Aid.

But he's like, yeah, you failed the nicotine test, man. They're kicking you out. They want me to take you to a probation officer right now. Who's going to take me right to jail? I go, dude, I will jump out of this van at the next. next stop sign if that's where you're really taking me. I go, you take me back to the office and I'm calling my lawyer before I do anything. It takes me back at the office, call the lawyer. Lawyer's like nothing I really can do for you. He says, tell your probation officer's over what's

going on. Yeah, yeah, long story short. I go get a job. I'm doing really good. Great people, great company. It's waiting tables. It's nothing special, but it's a job. And they like me. and they're really good, good people. So he writes a great letter for me. Now, I've been out four months since I got kicked out of the program, and I'm still showing up to probation. I'm paying my fines. Right.

It just hadn't got back to the judge yet. Right. My probation officer is like, hey, as long as you're paying your fines, and this is fine with me, because you're in a halfway house. I was in a halfway house. So she goes, yeah, you're good. Then next month, I'll see you next month. so next month came and I woke up that morning and I had like $600 and I used to hide it

because I didn't need that money to everywhere I went but for some reason that morning I said take it with me and I went down to probation just like a normal day and she's like hey Mr. Smith seen a few minutes I'm like okay just fill out your paper filled on my paper and then she come down the hall and got me Mr. Smith come on and we go walking back to her office and as soon as we around the corner, there's two big burly Naples police officers with their badges on their neck and the warrant have been put out for terminating, violating probation by getting kicked out of the program for nicotine, for a cigarette. Right. Right. So off I go to, now, I had problems in Charlotte County with the check and I had problems in Lee County with the automobile. So I have

cases in two counties. So I spent a week in Naples while they're deciding who gets me first, and they send me up to Charlotte County. And I do six and a half months. I do from May to September in Charlotte County. And meanwhile, my lawyer's working behind the scenes, all this. And I'm just telling them, I'll sit here until it's done. I don't want paper. Don't let me back out on paper. I'll sit here until it's done and he's like I'll try to get you the best deal I can he goes but you score out you're like two points above what

you could send you to prison right so but he ended up somehow finago in the whole thing where I ended up doing a year and getting it wrapped up so what I did was I did like five with Charlotte and then I did like five and a half six

it ended up being like three hundred and fifteen days total just over ten months of time in Charlotte and Lee County just wrapping it up, getting it done, walked out of there on February. I was supposed to get out on February. I ended up getting in trouble

and buying myself. They took away some good time. So I ended up getting out the day after Valentine's of 2020 and never looked back. I got out and I had all that clean time because even when I got kicked out of the program for the nicotine, I never went back to using. So this time when I went to jail, I was sober. So I just kept running with it, right?

And just got out. I didn't have anything when I did get out. My aunt gave me a $100 bill. And I used that to get my first week's rent at the halfway house down in Naples, a little cockroach-infested dump. But I did that because the job said they would hold it for me. Imagine that, the restaurant, they liked me so much in those three months that they said, Nate, just get through this.

We will have a job for you when you get out. Regardless of us, if we have enough servers or not, we will give you your job back when you get out. And they put money on my books while I was in jail. My last paycheck came while I was in jail. They put it on my books. They sent me a care package. When I get out of jail, I was working within a week back at that restaurant, and I stayed at that halfway house. The pandemic kicked in. I lost the job at the restaurants that shut down. And in Florida,

you have to have like five months continuous work in order to collect unemployment. Right. I was like two months. Right. So I couldn't collect unemployment. So I got two goose eggs. The entire, well, everybody else was getting these big fat unemployment checks. I got nothing. Nata. It's amazing that I didn't revert back to bad ways then because I was, is like really scraping to get by. But I was able to get into a one-bedroom studio apartment from that roach-infested motel halfway house thing. And then I met Jill.

And then from during the pandemic, we bought a motorhome and traveled around the whole entire United States, 35, what, how many miles? 30,000 miles? Something like that in three and a half months. and we went from Naples to Oregon to L.A. to Vegas, back to Oregon. I mean, Michigan, Cincinnati, three and a half months. Saved up money with that.

We came back and we bought a house and the rest of this history. She was working remote at the time, so she was able to work while we traveled. And then she got back. Yeah. Yeah, we thought we had a game plan to live on her salary and make this trip, but we quickly found out that gas was going to be way too expensive. We were never going to be able to make it out west. So I went online and I found U-Ship and Shipley,

like these websites where people, you want to send this mic's tripod to Kobe in Kentucky, and UPS wants $600 because of the shape and the weight of it. You go on this site and you put it up, it's like an auction. Right. And guys bid. I'll do it for $200. Right.

That way anyway. So I based our whole trip. off of that. So every night we would park, I'd go on and I would find something going in the vicinity that we're going. So I just kept piggybacking that off that. And then I'm making 10 grand doing those deliveries on that trip on top of her salary. So we're able to, you know, enjoy the trip and come back with a little bit of money and buy a house. And yeah, and the rest is history. I mean, you don't have to go live that life if you don't want. it's a decision, you know, you know, but it wasn't, like all those crazy times where you kept

saying, like, you're laughing and it is funny because I was looking at it like, I don't belong here, but I did belong there, you know? Your attitude is the most funny. Right. Can you believe they kicked me out? Well, you didn't follow any of the rules. So, yeah, no, it's totally my personality, you know, and probably how I ended up there in the first place, you know? So it's all just about being conscious of your character defects and not letting them control you and dictate who you are. Right. You know, I never went through the 12 steps. I never got a sponsor.

I never did it the way my sister did it. And it goes up her butt a mile that, you know, she's old school, hey, hey, you got to give back and you got to have a sponsor, then be a sponsor. It's the only way you can get clean and sober is if you get through these 12 steps. and yes, it's a very good way to get sober and clear your mind and fix relationships, but it's not what everybody needs. It's a decision. It was jail for me. I got sick and tired of jail.

I was like, if this is the alternative, that really doesn't make me feel that good. When ultimately it leaves me here eating something I can't even make out off a plastic tray that has dried food from the last meal on it. I mean, you know, it's, but that's my story and it's not over yet. I'm only 44, so it could just be part one. Oh, God, I hope not. Well, listen, I, how do you feel okay? Is there anything else you want to be good?

No, yeah, I hope it was good. No, no, so it's definitely entertaining. Yeah, I left out some stuff because I got jumbled in my timeline, but nothing. I hit all the high points. Right. Like the taser tag with the cop and the valet story down in.

Did you have any social media or anything? I don't, but I, Jill, if you could give me Justin's number, I would love just to just give Justin's number for anybody out there that is struggling. You call this number and this man answers the phone $24 a day. Want his number?

Does he want his number? No, he does. He does? They are truly devoted in health. helping people, and they are the only people that I would ever recommend. I would never say, go to the Christian place down in Naples. All right. We'll play.

We'll play. We're good. We're good. Yeah, yeah. Hold on. All right. All right. Hey, thank you guys for watching.

Do me a favor. If you like the video, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get a video is just like this. Share the video. Leave me a comment. Also, Nate's brother-in-law. Justin. He runs several rehabs. Maybe there's one near you. Maybe you need it. We're going to leave his phone number, assuming he's okay with the phone number being placed, or an email or whatever.

We'll leave the link in the description box so you can click on that if you need help. Also, please consider joining my Patreon. It's $10 a month. We put Patreon exclusive content. It's only $10. I really appreciate it. Helps Colby and I make these videos. Thank you very much. See you.