Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside Outlaw Biker Gangs | ATF Agent Shares Insane Stories

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

ATF agent Ignacio J. Esteban investigated and made cases against international drug cartels and outlaw biker clubs. Now he's an author and writes books about gangs and organized crime.Ignacios Books https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ignacio-J.-Esteban/author/B09NCKP6F8?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=trueFollow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [e-mail] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69

I didn't, wasn't thinking he's cartel, you know. He's like, I'm not thinking that. I'm nobody. He said, it wasn't until pounds just kept coming and coming and coming. And I kept thinking, I'm on the hook for this. Like, now I'm realizing this guy didn't give me 2,000 pounds on my word. He knows where I live. He knows where my parents live.

These guys are involved in stealing oil from the pipelines. They're involved in cargo shipping. They're involving extortion. They're involved in, I mean, these guys aren't everything. and they buy everybody and they don't buy you, they kill you. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Ignacio Esteban, and we are going to be talking about biker clubs and the biker wars. So what is the history of bikers?

I actually kind of know the history a little bit. But, yeah, Florida's a big state, a lot of rich history there in Florida. I did some cases out there, and very interesting. It's currently, it was when I was there, an outlaw state. You're out there in Paso County and Wesley Chapel. But before it was an open state, before Taco Bowman, you know, who became the head of the outlaw. So I'm going to give it, I want to backtrack a little history. People say, what's a one percenter?

You know, maybe some of the audience don't know what a one percenter is and the history of the biker world. And one percenter was the term given by the AMA, the American Motorcycle Association, for those who are 99 percent of those who ride their bikes are law-abiding citizens. They're good people, right? It's at one percent because, you know, always amelies and brawls and everything else. And these outlaws pretty much took it to heart and put the patch on it that says 1% or they like to be outsiders. They like to be outlaws. They like to be hellraisers.

It's the 1% that make the 99% look bad. Exactly. Bad apples. They love being the bad apple in a bunch. They really enjoy doing that. And the big five and the big six, if you don't know, which are like that's to say the major leagues, right? And then there's a lot of minor league clubs out there. Eventually they recruit and they become the big leagues.

You have Hell's Angels, right? You have the outlaws, you have the banditos, you have the vagals, you have the Mongols, right, and the pagans. Those are considered the big six because they really divide the country and regions, and they fight within themselves to take over. And why they're fighting for? It's all about local drug areas, drug territories, where they can sell, make money. And, you know, the bikers really is an American phenomenon that started in this country, after Second World War, where you have War II veterans, we're looking in a way to express in, because, you know,

You're in combat against the Nazis or Japanese, right? You come back to the U.S. and you says, you can't just go back to a normal life when you did that for five, four years or what have you, right? You want to have some excitement. So it starts that way, and then it builds out and gets bigger than the Vietnam War veterans. And it charges to something else with the 1% of groups. They involve a lot of violence, a lot of drug trafficking, armed drug trafficking, extortion, murder, and other killings are within or against rivals. and I'll talk about some of that there and I can talk about the Hells Angels

but there in Florida you have the outlaws there who wasn't outlaw state they have the Lower Walker and this is Florida right because the lower rocker says that's my area so if a rival biker says they have their lower walker in the back and says

that state that's a problem that's going to be a big fight that's going to go on there because you see that in California with the Hells Angels and the Mongols both of them claim California for their state and that's where they're always fighting and they're going at each other and it's really nasty, nasty battles. And I'll talk about a little about that, the history there. So let me start with the most popular, and probably

the face of the Hells Angels, if not of the biker world, Sunny Barger, right? And a lot of people say, you know, what's, Sunny Barre? He just passed away last summer, by the way. He was a big name that passed away. He had cancer. And so did Mambochet, Mambochet, who was the face of the Hells Engine from Canada. Both of those guys really have atrocious criminal history. of these guys. And a lot of people, they have the facade also. You know, this is me in law enforcement, ATF. We've done the big cases. They're deemed criminal enterprise by Department of Justice, right? Because they tie to toys for tops. They try to do these other things that'll make them look good. But on the back end, they're involved in major drug trafficking. They're

involved firearms trafficking. They're involved murders and other things that leads them to that where they're at in that culture. So Sunny Barger's an interesting guy. He was born, A little background on him. He was born in the 30s in Modesto, California, from a broken home. His mother left him when he was like a few months old, right? His dad was an alcoholic. He had an older sister, had issues in school. He dropped out like in 10th grade.

And he joined the army underage. He lied about his age. It wasn't 18. I think it was like 15 or 16 when he joined the army. He was there for a year and a half until they discovered he was underage and he was destroyed from the military. He got involved. he loved bikes. He was like a mechanic. He worked on bikes.

And then in the late 50s, he starts the Hells Angels, but the Oakland chapter, right? But there was already Hells Angels before in California that started the 40s by auto friendly, who was himself a veteran from the Second World War. So there were some issues in California. And so he tried to set up on bylaws because there's a lot infighting say, who's going to run the Hells Angels? Well, at the time, ends up being the chapter out of headquarters out of San Bernardino. Aude Friendly gets arrested and he gets 10 years and Sunday Barger takes over and he moves

a chapter, the headquarters to Oakland, never looks back. And then he becomes the face of the Hells Angels and runs them for years and years and years. I don't know if your audience have seen, he pretty much became the face of the counterculture movement in the 60s and 70s. When you think of the counterculture movie, you think of Sunny Barger, the Hells Angels, they were popular in movies. They became, they were celebrities.

They were big at that time. they were really big. If you haven't seen this video, I encourage everybody to take a look at it. In 1969, this was like the Woodstock of the time in Northern California, Monty Springs, California. You had the Walling Stones

who were getting a lot of slack at the time for doing a lot of expensive concerts. They decided to throw a free concert and all the big names where there Jefferson Airplane was there, Grateful Dead was there. Everybody, this was as big as Woodstock was. But unfortunately, their manager, security, had the Hells Angel do the security for the concert.

Right. They weren't they hurting people or fighting? You haven't seen these videos. I mean, you got to look at that. This starts, this puts the Hells Angels. People see it firsthand. And Rolling Stone Magazine dubbed it the concert. It said, let it be.

Let it bleed. Things get so out of control out there with the melee fighting. Allegedly, they said that their concert going. People were getting, you know, LSD was popular. Everybody's smoking weed. The Kosagoras were all day out there, partying, partying, drinking. And a lot of the Hells Angel guys were getting paid with kegs of beer. So they had lots of kegs of beer in the back for their security team, right?

They're drinking heavily. Kosagoras are drinking heavily and on whatever drugs they can. You can see the pictures. You can tell these guys are on something. It's really bad. And they accused of Kosagorers are pushing, breaking their bikes, right? And all of a sudden, fights being out, they're going at it. Even the singer for Justin Davis at Jefferson Airplane gets knocked out by one of the Hells Angel.

You look at the picture, he gets knocked out. Boom, he's knocked out there. Allegedly, Keith Richardson allegedly said there, Saddie Barger puts a gun to his side and says, you're going to keep on playing. So it's really getting out of control. And there's one black guy, he's in a green suit. You can't miss it there. One of the Hells Angel guys take a knife to him because he's pushing back and he gets stabbed.

You can see the video, him being stabbed by the Hells Angels. angel guy. So take a look at that. And he gets charged with murder for that. And that's really starts putting the reputation of the Hells Angels. And then people see for what they really are. These watch of Thugs and Goons at this concert. So you haven't seen that Alcomante, a speedaway concert. Take a look at that video. It's unbelievable. So that starts it out. Studing Barger then in the 70s, he gets tried for murder, right? In California. Allegedly, there's a drug courier that he shoots in cold blood that stole $80,000. That's a lot of money back then.

80,000 men, it's probably equivalent to a few million today, right? $80,000. A lot. Yeah. He's a drug career that came from Texas. But you don't justify murder, right? You don't kill somebody. You know, you have to try to work things out.

Right. So allegedly, he shoots him while he's sleeping in the house. They find out where he's in. They shoot him in the head, cold blood. There's a witness that says, testified his trial. The sending barger shot this guy in cold blood, you know, and kills him right there. And then they try to burn down the house.

What saves him, in my husband. opinion. This is my opinion, right? What I've researched and everything else is that there's a Oakland Police Department sergeant that says that, well, Sonny Barger on their defense, says that he's been working for us for years. Pretty much saying he's a cooperator. Right. I guess the Black Panthers and I guess the underground weather, leftist organizations, pretty much domestic terrorist organizations giving us weapons and explosives, information, or they're at what they're doing in exchange for a lesser time for guys that hell's dangers have been arrested.

Okay. So that was a big thing. So Sunny Barger cooperates for a long for years. That comes out during the trial. They're already cooperation. They're a party cooperation, maybe for himself. I don't know. Because for a year, people couldn't figure out why Sonny Barger hadn't been arrested.

He would become, he gets acquitted, by the way, for this murder trial. He was looking at the death penalty to have five at the time had the death penalty. Then it would change. It would not. again. He gets acquitted and he would be dubbed, in my opinion, he would become the Teflon for the Biker World because he escapes a death penalty case, which people thought was a slam dunk. Right. And I think that kind of helped him there. He later gets popped for some other things for drug charges later. He does a little bit of time in California. And then the Fed's bringing

in this massive racketeering case. Right. In the early 80s in San Francisco, spends millions of dollars and he walks and he walks on that lot of his guys walked on that one so so later it would change racketeering case would get better and stronger but this was a testing ground and he walks on that one there so what happens in the in the late 80s one of his guys gets murdered and by the outlaws in Louisville who was the chapter president out of Anchorage they were in a bar fight and the outlaws kill one of his guys right I think there's a video of the far fight, isn't there? Is that the one? There's like a massive biker fight? No, that's a different one. These guys are involved in so many. It's, it's unbelievable. But this one here, he gets murdered,

and unfortunately, he doesn't realize that the sergeant of ours from Anchorage is working with the feds. Okay. And he comes down there because they're meeting how to get back, how to plot, how to kill these guys, right, out of Kentucky. So they get charged with conspiracy to cross state lines, with explosives to kill these bikers, these outlaws who kill one of theirs. He gets them off four years. So that's that's the most time he gets. Some of the other guys, Taco Bowman got two life senses, right? Should I'm not bouncing.

Something's a little better when I have a little bit. Yeah. Taco Bowman gets two life senses, right, for his cases out of Tampa. Okay. And that's not far from here. I need the prosecutor in that case, and one of the prosecutors, and they hammered him. Sending Barger dies a free man. A lot of these guys don't die free men.

They die incarcerated for life, long, wild stints out there. So he gets hit with that. He comes out, he's changed a little bit. He changes a lot, and he ends up getting involved with his show, Sons of Anarchy. He writes a lot of books. He's a show consultant. He's even in the show. His character is Lenny the Pimp, if he haven't seen,

an FX, ever see Sys Sons of Anarchy? I've seen bits and pieces of it, but I don't remember any of the band. I haven't seen watching that. Very popular show and it changes his persona. Obviously, he has cancer issues. He suffers from that. He gets involved back into drinking. He did have a cocaine addiction back in the 60s and 70s, extremely

bad addiction. He has to fight with a lot issues he had. And then he gets involved in other things. And then he gets throat cancer. He can't speak anymore. He has speak with a voice box. So he goes to a lot of issues Eventually dies from cancer and that

And he's also involved in a lot of domestic His third wife accuses him a serious domestic abuse And his stepdaughter says it And that she feared for her life every day He thought he was going to kill So that's that's the life You know, Sunday Barger I mean they spread all over the U.S.

And all the world, right? Hells Angels. Right. I was going to say they've got organizations All over the place And they're a major problem in some countries Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially in Europe.

They're enormous. Europe, the Biker Wars, the Nordic Biker Wars, I've talked about some of the Biker Wars, but if you want to talk about a massive melee, if you want to see the video, you talk about the one in the video, go to a Lafam Nevada, right, and Harris Casino and look at 2002. I think that's the one I'm thinking of because there were so, there was video cameras, angles and everything. Yeah, that was intense. And I kind of, I know we've talked about, I think, and I don't know your show or other shows,

about poor police response to mass shootings and attacks and good ones. Right. I think this was a bad one because the police officers stayed outside on this one and you have the patrons in there cowering,

fearing, fear for their lives while you have the Hells Angels, the Mon, you get to the video, they're just charging it right each other like this. Boom, and it's on. It's on. A few guys get killed from both sides, stabbing and shootings and everything else.

Right. And look at that. That's part of the rivalry between the Hells Angels and the Mongles. That's extremely, extremely intense there. So the book I have there on Sunny Barger, and I've written quite a few books.

I've read one on Sunny Barger, full throttle, riding with the Hells Angels, a life of Sunny Barger. I have one on Taco Bowman with the Outlaws. I have also one on Daakovossus, Mongol Nation, I'm going to talk a little about him, about his life, and also have biker wars,

and also have one on the one percenters. And then I have one that all together that talks about all these two, one percent of bikers, so, violent bikers. Do you know who Jim, or Big Jim Nolan is? I've heard the name. Yeah.

I think for a while he was headed up at the outlaws in Florida. Yeah, his name was big there. And of course, Taco Bowman was with a big face, big name, who kind of had more ambitious. I mean, and he's a different guy. I mean, Sunday Barger, you kind of maybe understand. He came from a broken home. He had a situation. He dropped out of school.

He got involved in this culture and the cocaine, the fame. He just grew. and he had ambitions, right? He had ambitions for the Hells Angels. I mean, these guys make a lot of money with, obviously, he saw the drug traffic angle, 80,000 drug, though, he was doing pretty good for his time with the drugs, right? And he had other angles and stuff,

and then he got involved with the cocaine and the drugs and incarceration and murder, and he becomes an eagle thing, right? And these guys get cut up. Doc Cobassels, Ruben Doc Cobassels, he was, he became the head of the Mongol. This one, I understand fully, more than Taco Bowman.

Taco Bowman, he was a product of Catholic school education. right up up in Detroit and he eventually he gets involved with the outlaws and then he becomes a brutal brutal leader ruthless and killer that he ends up being convicted out of Tampa like I said and gets

two life sentences he dies a few years ago incarcerate that's how it ends from most of these guys you know right the life of the culture like anything else you've seen it you might have seen some of these guys in where you were at some of the yeah I can say big Jim Nolan was locked up for I don't know what he got 30 years or something he was locked up

been in the medium with me. Right. He was huge. He was like, he was an old, he was old, too. He was probably in his 60s. I imagine, I'd call him big gym for a reason, right? Yeah, he was like six foot six. He was huge.

He's a big guy. And I this guy also used to juice a lot. They juice up a lot because that's part of the reputation, right? Right. This guy was just big. Naturally, it could be, oh, just tall, tall guy. Just tall, just big. Yeah, it was just a big, yeah, it was just a big, tall guy.

But he was just massive. Niceest guy, I talked to him. him a few times. Nice guy. It was like, he was like, you know, he's been there. He'd beat multiple murder cases in the state of Florida. Eventually the feds got him on like a right. It was racketeering. It was a racketeering? Was it just a continuing criminal enterprise? I forget, but it was a huge case. And sometimes just good old drug conspiracy cases will get you a lot of time too. Right. Yeah, they'll beat like murder charges and stuff and then get, and then they're like,

oh, okay, well, I got convicted of drugs. And they'll get 30 years for drugs. Yeah, no, no, no, you get hammered. Federally, you get hammered. And that's what these guys are involved in some of those heinous crimes. And it just continuously, that's what ends for these guys. It's going to end up just like him, just like Taco Bowman. Sunny Barger with the exception. Sunny Barger was the exception.

He was the exception. He was the exception that he only ended up doing very little time. And he died at home. He died at home with his family, which a lot of these guys don't get that. I think he learned after doing four years, that's a stint. where he realized he was infiltrated. We had it in a form from within. I think even though he cooperated years earlier, right, with the authorities,

I think he realized that that's what he changed, I think. And it seems like he was more what I was reading. He took a back, you know, step and let other people run the day-day operations. And he was more a figurehead where he just go out there, do these movies or do these shows. He did a lot. He became very popular in Hollywood and doing all this stuff in book writing. So maybe he learned his lesson. Right.

So Doc Kavasa's interesting character. Always I'm talking about the Mongols, I'm going to give a little history here about them, and then go back to them, was that the Mongols and the Pagan's a scene, what I'm reading, have some sort of alliance to try to take over Florida against the outlaws. And that's what's been talked about there because, you know, currently it's an outlaw state. Right. You're doing that in other places where the outlaws are popular in the Midwest also. So there's a big push to push them out.

So, you know, who were, and I was taking, I mean, the Mongols have taken a beating. So this guy, Ruben Daqavas, this is an interesting story there, and this is about Mongol nation. The fall of Daqabasis, the rise and fall of Daqabasis in my book. And he, he, he, he was raised East L.A. as a Surrengu. He grew up in a street gang, Martin Street Gang, that Meximafi ties, Thursday, everything. So this kind of makes sense. Someone who comes in from this background, you can see them. going and doing this right the other guys it was kind of strange i was reading about but that's her

back when it happens people change people may be going to catholic school they may be doing this and they become these monsters it happens unfortunately it happens listen Stalin was supposed to be a monk yeah yeah yeah and yeah some of the guys come out and they do the insane you know maybe Putin back in this day was a good guy but my goodness i don't i don't see it now anymore. There were little angels, their family growing up, but they ended up becoming these monsters, and it's interesting how that happens. So these got a 3-13 guy. He ends up getting recruited by the Mongols, right? He moves up the rank. He has a good personality. Why they call Doc? He was a radiologist, so they called Doc. That was his nickname. They gave him,

Roman Doc Cavazos. But he didn't respect what he saw. He saw that a bunch of drunken old man. He grew up with Sorrena. Remember, Sorinians are badasses. They're tied with Maximum Mafia. Sir 13th letter of the alphabet is M. Their allegiance is with the Mexican Mafia, right? This is going to bite him later. So I'm just putting this out there, and I wrote a book about this, about the history of the Mexican Mafia, the history of this guy here. And anything you see M is 13, Manasal Atrucha, they have allegiance also with these guys. So anytime you see a 13, you know they are allegiance to the Mexican Mafia. So I'm just putting that there because I'm going to come back to in a second. Why is important in this history? If you bite the hand that feeds you, there's going to be problems right there. He sees himself as a leader of this international organization. He moved up the food chain. He's the leader. He doesn't respect what he sees here.

He sees a bunch of drunken old man. He wants more shrewd angels in there. So he starts bringing his guys in. All the guys he grew up with and everything else, he moved. But these guys don't even own bikes, right? They didn't even know how to ride a bike. They didn't even know what a Harley is. This is a biker group, right?

Right. This isn't a street guy. This is a bike. This is becomes comical almost. I'll tell you why. Yeah, and so his problem is he just brings in people fast and furious into the organization. Well, guess what happens? Operation Black Rain, ATF Operation Black Rain that brings them down.

Not only the ATF agent, not one agent infiltrate because of his lack of faculty, they do no background checks, but he was just bringing people in. Not one, not two agent, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven. eight agents infiltrated the organization during this operation eight okay well true how many how many I mean how large is the

the biker gang it's it's a good size in Los Angeles I mean the Mongols yeah they're international like when you bring up people in I'm wondering was it is it is it 5,000 strong

is it a thousand strong I think the numbers of the book you took 5 to 800 okay and eight of them are agents eight or ages. Okay. In the mother chapter, right?

You're going to read about Operation Black Rain, if you ever read about that one. Through your investigation, it ends up leading to over 60-some indicted, over 100 search warrants, right? In 2008, it ends up being, so they're having issues with Cabasso's already with an organization. They suspect different things. They think he's stealing from the organization. They boot him out before he's arrested. So they get rid of him. They ban him from their organization.

and then, of course, these guys are taken down. Normally, the head of the organization is the last to cooperate. He's the first on board. Right. He knows better. He's the first one on board. Right. And normally these guys get life.

He got 14 years. Listen, being first is best. First you get on, he cooperate, and everything else. And he even supported their case. He even supported their case to, to, to, uh, to, uh, to seize the patch, where they couldn't even wear their own patch. Right. That's a big thing going on now to try to take the symbols from these bikers

because to most people, it's something that they represent that brings fear to the public, terrorize them. People see Hells Angels walk into a room or outlaws or Mongols. They think criminals, fear, right, intimidation. Here we come. We're going to mess with you, right? So the federal government is trying to seize this so you can't ward us again. and if you see it, they can take it from you immediately.

The case where the judge it had, they didn't like it. He had a bad judge, in my opinion, who had it. This is back in 2012, 13. You can look this up. Said that the government's picking and choosing what symbols they want to seize and don't want to seize. And he didn't like that. So even though the jury supported it, the judge at the end didn't sign a final approval forfeiture to do it. So the government then redid it again, and now it's in court again to try to seize the Mongol symbols.

symbols are their patches that they wear their jacket watch out for that if they succeed this time hells angels are next outlaws they're going to keep on going and start taking their symbols so they can't wear their colors anymore

that's a big deal that's going on right now okay yeah so they just switch to another symbol well they can but they keep on going after that right if you're going to keep on doing stuff they're going to keep on after you that's the thing so you know sure how they can do that

I don't, you know, I'm saying that doesn't really make sense, but it's like reading of expression. But it's, it would have been if they don't involve these criminal activities, right? Right. If they'd involve these shootings and these murders and they wear their colors while they're doing it. It's a here I come. It's not like the mafia who try to be covert or something, right? These guys aren't covert. They're showing their colors all the time.

They're doing their things. Yeah, so it's kind of crazy. Very, very crazy what they're doing. So that's kind of the Mongols. I know you've had your talking there and you have the pagans and some of the interesting biker wars are coming in. So yeah, you saw that one there.

I talked about Laughlin, Nevada. That's a famous one right there. Twin Peaks, if you haven't seen the video of that one, that's, Twin Peaks is in Waco, Texas, right? Massive shootout, probably the worst biker shootout where it ends up, the police responds and they, it's really like an active shooting and they end up killing, I have a number of my book,

I think, 8 or 10, involved in the shooting between the banditos, And the Cusacks. The Cusacks are a lower tier, viker group, right? But they wore the lower rocker of Texas. And the bad one, you know, the lower rocker. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. On the back, that's right.

So they're wearing, that's a big problem. Like I said, man, if you start worrying that, this is bi-state, right? You can't be wearing the lower rocker. That doesn't sit well with these guys, right? So those are issues they're having with that. They're also having, and then they want to, then they want to tax them. then they want to tax these guys. On top of that, then they want to tax them.

So that's a problem. So they are in a parking lot. Words are exchanged. They were supposed to have a meeting to try to work things out. It doesn't work out of all. So if you haven't seen that video, I don't know if you've heard about it or seen it. That was a big thing out of Waco. That was probably one of the biggest shootouts since what happened we talked about on my show with David Koresh and the Bradge Divideans.

Back in 92, well, back in, I have the exact date of my book, I think 2016, 2015, this is a big deal. What's happening. Have you ever seen that video, check that out. So. Okay. Where are we now? What's happening now? Yeah, no, no.

So going back to about Florida, so where are the bikers now? Where are we thinking? I don't see them, this is my opinion. Again, based on what I've done and what I've seen, what I've researched, is there nothing where they used to be? Right. The bikers now, where are the bikers now? that they're about to collapse.

Just like the Italian mafia. The Italian mafia is nothing what they used to be. And I wrote the Bible. The fall of mafia, the rise of the cartels, right? That's the big one, the gangs, the cartels and the gangs are the strongest ever that I've ever seen in all. Orca and just getting bigger and bigger and stronger because of the corruption in Mexico. And this is feeding, you know, like I said, the mafia at his prime, the Gambino family, maybe with making $500 million in the 80s, these guys are making $15, $16.

billion a year. That's per cartel group. So the Senate law is making 50 at least. Some of the numbers think it was even higher because they're involved not just in drug trafficking. These guys are involved in stealing oil from the pipelines. They're involved in cargo shipping. They're involved in extortion. They're involved in. I mean, these guys aren't everything and they buy everybody and they don't buy you. They kill you. Right. We get all the guns from the United States. Right. Gold or lead? Yes. Blumenheim. Yeah. So they like one of their, in that one of the Yeah, yeah. Their ultimatum is, look, it's gold or lead.

The carrot or the stick technique, right? Yeah. I'll give you the carrot or here comes the stick. Right. And it's not going to just be for you. It's going to be for your whole family. I'm going to do it in front of you, which they're famous for. Bring the whole family in front of you, execute them, and they don't kill them with a bullet.

You know, the mafia, you know, they just want to shoot, shoot, and be done with you and bury you, whatever. No, they're more sadistic than that. Yeah. These guys start dismembering, cutting you off. up and do a really bad things to you. Did you see the movie The Counselor? Counselor, oh, tell me about it. That's horrific.

It's a guy who's basically, he's a lawyer, and he knows that his clients are, you know, cartel. They're involved in, you know, drugs, drug smuggling. You know, and, and, but he sees the kind of money they're making, and so at one point he gets into a, a drug deal where he puts up the money, you know, for the whole drug, you know, for the whole drug deal, and it goes bad. Well, you know, the cartel, they come after him. Like, they grab his girlfriend, they torture her to death.

They, I mean, it's just everything that happens. Like, they kill one of the, they kill, I think, a couple of the guys, people that were involved. Like, all these people that he's involved with. Yeah. First transaction decides, hey, I'm going to get involved. I'm going to get myself a few million dollars and get out. I've seen these guys do it off and on for years. Nobody will really know that I'm involved.

First transaction goes bad. Next thing, you know, people are getting whacked, left and right, kidnapped. And they're torturing him to death. Like, they get his girlfriend, and he knows what happens. Like, they track her down, they grab her, and, you know, he's calling up begging. Like, let me turn myself in. Let me swap. And they're like, oh, it's, it's too late.

And then they send him, like, a DVD, a video of what they did do her. Yeah. I mean, it's just horrific. Like, what does she do? She's dating a lawyer. That's all she knows. And they know that. They know she has nothing to do with it.

She's nobody. We're just going to grab this. Or, you know, if you don't have kids, or if you have kids, they'll grab your kids or. They do. That's a well documented. These assassins are horrible.

And they start at a young age. These Sicario's start at a young age. You know, like some of these serial killers, psychopaths, they're taught to be desensitized early and you kill. That's what Guzman, when, I think we said on one of the shows, when Chopo Guzman's interview, by Champagne and Kate Gassio in the mountains after you escaped the second time. He said he himself had killed over 2,000 people to climb up the food chain, right?

As you get respect, that's not count all the ones he gave the orders to kill, right? Because life is no value, no value at all. You know, it's funny. I wrote a story about a guy named Carrie Woolsey, and he has a buddy named Danny Sweet. Anyway, when they first met their, like, their cartel contact, you know, They're just selling pot, right? They're like, you know, no big deal. We're just selling pot.

And it's funny because he, he buys like, you know, he buys like half a pound or something. And then the guy that is selling him the weed ends up connecting him with the guy he buys it from, which is a Mexican guy. He said, so one day he shows up, he gives me like five pounds and he were something like that. I don't know what it was exactly, but it was a lot. He was like, wow, there's a lot of weed. He said, I sell it right away. He said, then the guy says, hey, I'm going to come and I'm going to drop off like 50 pounds. Or was it like, whatever, 10 pounds or 20 pounds.

He shows up in an RV and he said, you know, we go in the RV and the back of the RV. He said, he like hit something on the dash and its little panel comes up in the middle of the floor. And he reaches under there and they start pulling out one pound. He said, they're just, they're tied together. he said he just keeps pulling them and pulling them and pulling them got to i forget how many if it was like a thousand pounds or something like that of of uh marijuana yeah we and he just like he's like i we were freaking out but what was funny and i was like he just gave you the weed like that like on consignment yeah and he said well

he said i didn't realize it at the time but when i first met him he said he could give it to me on consignment. And he said, but, you know, I want to get to know you. Like, do you have good credit? What's your credit like? And he was like, this Mexican guy, he could barely speak English. And he was like, my credit. I have perfect credit. I have like 700 credit scores. I'm perfect. I'm, you know, my car is finance. He's like, he's like, he's like, like, I thought it was funny. He said, and then he was like, so would you live around here? He's like, yeah, live actually a couple miles away. He's like, let's go out of your house. I don't think I'm asking. I've been doing a lot of drug deals. I don't think I'm asking me for a credit score. what he drives by he drives by his family's house yeah he's like I'm thinking he's talking about my credit he wants to go by my house like I'm thinking we're being friendly we're friends you not realizing if I don't pay him now he knows where my mom and dad live now he know but if you knew Kerry he's such a it's just pop Tim it's like it's just pot la la well then when he thinks he's

buying like whatever or he's getting fronted 20 pounds instead the guy shows up with like 2,000 pounds yeah and he realizes how much trouble he's in now like if I get lost and now you gotta sell right you gotta work so it was you know when he

explained it he's like like I the guy was so nice he's like I'm not realizing I don't he said I didn't wasn't thinking he's cartel you know he's like I'm not thinking that I'm nobody he said it wasn't until they pull the pounds just kept coming and coming and coming and I kept thinking I'm on the hook for this

like now I'm realizing this guy didn't give me 2,000 pounds on my word he knows where I live he knows where my parents live he knows I mean he's like we spent the day together but he just clueless now that guy's dangerous and he's clueless like that also what was that TV show which it kind of reminds me of where the guy was a chemistry teacher and then he gets involved. Breaking bad. Yes. And any else that gets involved in that culture. I watch a few episodes here and there. A good actor is in there. I can remember his name right now. Norton? I forget his name. He's great though. He's been around forever. He did Malcolm in the middle, which was a funny one too. And he's not so many good movies and shows and everything else. But

he shaved his head and I'm like, oh my God. He got really into the role and he had tense. And He was like, he brought his chemistry background to cooking good math. He said, this is not hard to do. What? I was to say, I have a buddy named, his name is Pierre Ricini. Anyway, Pete, we call him Pete. So Pete actually, it's so funny because we're talking way before that, way before Breaking Bad. Pete was in Los Angeles and actually started making, he was making.

ecstasy before it was illegal. So they were selling it at clubs as like an 18, 19 year old kid and he was Pete's super smart. So one of his buddies who's probably five or six years older than him said, look, and these are all rich kids. Well, not Pete, but all of his buddies were rich kids. Sure, that's a good client. His buddy's 25 years old and he's driving like a Ferrari. So he ends up finding a retired chemistry professor from

like UCLA, and convinces him to train Pete on how to make ecstasy. So they, they, Pete, they figured out, they go back and forth, they reverse engineer the, the entire process, he figures it out. Well, that eventually, you know, then the, it became illegal. Then the precursor materials became like illegal. Illegal too, yeah. So then, you know, he's like, but the problem is you can continue to, it just, gets harder and harder to make it, but you can continue to break it down through other things.

Where there was some kind of an oil or something that they needed to extrapolate this certain chemical. And it turns out that the Hells Angels had like two 50-gallon drums of it. And they said, look, we need that. We'll pay you this much as they said, no, no, no, no. We'll give it to you. We need you to manufacture this into methane, into ice. I see. So Pete's like, well, that shouldn't be too hard.

So he goes to the library and they figure out how to manufacture methamphetamine. So now we're manufacturing methamphetamine for the hell's angels. And this is back in the mid to late 80s. Oh, yeah. They're big in the meth. Anyway, what happens is he, this is continuing to happen, right? He's doing this for years. Maybe they're doing it larger.

I don't know. But anyway, they end up doing it in, like, like pin houses and there's like some famous buildings he was doing it out of like the penthouse and what so here's what happens is you know they're having trouble of course getting the precursor the materials right and at some point they find out like they get Sudafed or something from Mexico through the cartel well the cartel after he gets it and then they're trading with the cartel they're trading the product through the cartel the cartel comes to Pete and says look come to Mexico. We'll set you up with a lab. We'll set you up. And, you know, he's like,

they're trying to convince me to do this. He is, and all I kept thinking is, no, they'll get me down there. They'll kill you. And I'll, I'll be a hostage. Like, I'll train their guys. And they'll just, they're not going to let me go. So he was terrified to deal with, with, he's like, because, you know, they, they are ruthless. He said, there's so much money. No, it's And even Even if you have El Chapo now He's in prison

Right? He's looking at life And that's I mean I don't have to talk about He didn't you already get life Yeah He's got life

But I mean He should have been Mexico should have handled their problem Right They tried They let us Not once Not twice

But three times You can't keep the guy in And the last one Was in a Supermax Where he builds If you have to see this video. Folks, look at this video in here where they have the underground tunnel with his little moped. They even put him there. And he even says, he's even yelling. They've

been documented reports. They said, you guys are too damn loud. Everybody's going to hear you, right? Everybody can't, but he keep on everybody. I think over 70 people arrested over the second time. It was a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. And when he seemed being interviewed by Sean Penn and Kid de Castillo in the mountains of Sinaloa, yeah. What the heck? They almost caught him because they tracked her phone. Yeah. They came this close to catch him. But he is also known as

El Rapido, the fast one. So he is the master of tunnels. That guy has tunnels everywhere. And he was able to escape and again, get out away. Eventually they caught him again. And enough. Third time, he comes over here.

And he's in the Supermax. If you haven't seen those pictures, man, he's a tight little cell. He's looking up it up there and he's unhappy. And now, allegedly he's fed up with it and he wants to cooperate. It's what's being documented. He finally had enough of that.

The thing is, with him and cooperation, these guys have such a short lifespan, like how much information can he give you? He can maybe tell you, I bribed this politician, I did this, but most of this stuff is what, 10 years old, 20 years old? Yeah, he's out of the game for a while. He could just tell him who's run, well, I mean, I don't know, because does he know who's running the hierarchy instead of law?

His sons, his family's involved. His wife has been arrested. His son has recently been arrested. Right. Who's next? His nephew, his cousin is, I mean, he has a huge family. Did they ever catch Mayo Zimbada, the father? Has he ever been caught?

I don't think so. I think he's dead. He has health issues. That guy has a major, major. He's old. He's up in there. There's been a day in prison. I don't think he's, some of these guys never do them.

Like I said, there's guys that do, right? And the guys that don't. They get away with it. Like I said, or they get killed from within or he died from health issues, what have you. But El Metsro Cervantes now is the big dog. You know, he's out there in a holistic region. in Guadalajara, right? Yeah.

But he, but he, I don't know if I talked about this show or not. But he's very different than Escobar, and he's very different than, uh, this guy, Guzman. This guy's loved to live a large life, right? Everybody knew Escobar was in his big palace, right? Mm-hmm. You know, where the art of mind him. Medellin, very corrupt in Medi-Iing, right?

What he did out there, he bought everybody. Everybody knew that, uh, this guy was a Ceyloa. They knew exactly his big ranch, right? He had these famous parties. I mean, that was a sick guy. I don't know, I wrote about it in my book out there about life. If you like when I'm talking about Guzman, go read a while right about him. But he had the sick parties.

Well, he liked to bring underage girls, 14, drug them. And he said, this was his vitamins. It gave him life to be able to take advantage of these young girls. Right. That's kind of the sickness that some of these guys get involved in. Amundas, he's in Guadalajara, and he's had, and we can talk another show about this, but I'll give you a little background. About him, a foreign police officer from Halisco, right?

He was in the United States illegally. D.A. popped them heroin trafficking. He gets deported. He comes in there, joins the police department in Halisco, turns dirty, becomes assassin for the cartels in policing, right? And then it starts working for the Millennium, which does protection work for Sinolawa. He was an ally at one point, and now he's one of the biggest rivals

because he starts his own C.J&G, right? Alisco New Generation. So former law enforcement, he keeps a small circle, he jumps around different houses, he does not live, does not act, he has a small security team around him. Anything unusual, they're always moving different locations, keeps a tight circle around him. And allegedly, he himself, he don't know his background, just like this guy, dropped out of school, when his fourth, fifth grade, semi-illiterate, right? He grew up selling avocados in the streets from poverty. allegedly that the government says he's worth over 50 billion billion dollars in assets 50 billion in assets elementary yeah the problem is i mean you i get you're saying it's an embarrassment but

it is with the exception of simply going and scooping up every single one of these guys and executing them you can't what what do you do how do you fix it you can't they can't afford to house them they can't afford to they can't keep them right so well i mean even the low level guys there's thousands and thousands and thousands hell 90% of your police forces is is being you know is probably on the take yes so what do you do how do you fix you don't have the money to combat that you don't have the ability to house these people so it's basically it would have to be just mass executions and you're living in a 100 percent police state, that would be devastating.

It's a failed, it's a failed drug state. It's pretty much a failed state that's become a narco state, right? That's what makes it become a narco state. So we don't have a fair partner in the war in drugs at all. Right. So how do you fix it? Yeah. Well, it has, it's, it has to be from within, right?

It has to, I know I've said it before, another show to, I get criticized. If you're, if you're, if you're a non-corrupt politician in Mexico, I agree with it. No, no, it gets fixed here in the United States. People start using the products. Then there's nothing, no one's going to buy it. The game's over. If we didn't consume it, they don't have the issues there, right? So America stopped consuming it, European stop consuming it, Canadian stuff consuming it, other countries that become popular, stop consuming it, they'll warn. Now, they're going to do other things, but I was like to say they're not going to do that. That's not going to happen. So you either make it 100% legal and make it so that the,

The, what, the cartel can't compete and tax the shit out of it. And then the cartel can't compete. Marijuana, I see that happening now, right? I think many states are legalizing for recreational use. It's just not medical use anymore. Many states now, I think like over 25 plus and counting every year, a new state adds up to lists where I live. They just passed it for recreational use, right?

So that's a start with marijuana, right? I think people are okay with that now. I guess you have to learn from history. And I read a lot about Prohibition, right? With how Al Capone and the outfit and all these guys became so rich, right? Right. But it took it out of them once he legalized it, right? 1933, all changed, right, for them.

So how much can you legalize? Where can you do? There's certain things you can do and have to do. But obviously, this path that we're going, it's not working. It's a disaster in Mexico. It's a disaster in our country, federal. We have federal crisis in this country, right? with addictions, destroying family, right?

All this stuff coming in, things have to be working. Do I have the answers? The only thing I can say is, I can tell what that, this ain't working. I wish people wouldn't use it, right? That's a solution. Stop using it. Just say no, right? Nancy Reagan?

Not going to happen. Now, just say no. It's not going to happen. People have just said no, this goes away, right? This goes away. So we have to really look at ourselves. We have to look at the crisis in Mexico. I think part of it could also be martial law, right?

You have to imply martial law in Mexico. You have to have the United States involved. You have to have us with drones. Maybe they're controlling it, going in there and annihilating these guys. But like anything else with an ant colony, you drop a bomb, you drop something on one, he just keeps on spreading, spreading and spreading. That's what happens. You keep on fracturing these cartel groups, which I see in history.

they just spread and spread and spread and they don't go away they splendor groups after splendor group after splinter group and they just keep on splintering I mean the Zeth is a perfect example I mean they were hit hard but they kept on splintering and splintering golf cartels getting hit hard out they're splintering

these guys are splintering because CJNG was partisan low with millennium they all splinter and they grow and they get stronger so instead of having five six big ones you may have 50 or 100 little ones same problems harder to deal with, corruption. So I know we got off topic a little bit

with the cartels, but all these guys end up working one way or the other, either with the, used to be the Italians. They're not all they used to be. They're almost done, gone. Racketeering cases destroyed them. The bikers going back with them. All the big faces, all the big names are pretty much, pretty much

done. New generation, no one wants to do 30 years, right? They got all cooperating. You got RICO charges? You, I, people, cooperate with recal charges, recall cases. So that's the end of these groups, as we're going to know it. Then why do the cartels can do that?

Because they're in Mexico. It's hard to grab them. If they were in the U.S., I think that would be different. Now, the only thing I can say is my experience in doing a lot of cases of street gangs. It seems we have a problem with these cycle of violence that continues with these kids, that we have to get them out of the street gang culture. You can't continue to have, you know, the grandfather was in the gang. the father's in the gang is that we have to remove them from that culture because it seems like and

I'm seeing it all the father was ahead of this group now juniors have ahead of his group now this kids it's just you've got to get that generational cycle out I mean I look at LA I worked in LA for almost a year and it was generational these guys were generational and and they love so we have to that's a problem we have in our country that we have to deal with is the violence street gangs and we have to remove and give them hope because we saw with the Mexican mafia, I'm sorry, with the Italian mafia, is that the guys the mafia didn't want their kids involved, right? They went to school. Some of them became doctors and lawyers. Right. They didn't want their kids involved in this culture. They knew this is no end. This is a

zero, right? But you don't have that mentality with the street gangs. They take a lot of pride. Like, you know, they have that bullock. I think education is also a big part. You have to help get education to these people where they realize, you know, this is no future for you. It's going to end up, you say, you know, one or two ways, death or imprisonment, right? So I think there's a lot of things that we looked at. We have a lot of problems. I've studied it for almost 30 years, 26 years, right, in this country. Some things are getting worse.

Some things are getting better. I've written a lot about them. I think you see 70-some books about it, mostly true crime, my own personal experiences, and you can see what they're all about. But I definitely don't see the mafia and the one-percenters as big as problem as I do with the cartel. and the street gangs. That is the biggest problem for a country right now. Okay. What do you think? I mean, I think legal, I think a partial, you know, between, you know, look, what I think

the quickest thing is basically just, you know, it would practically have to be genocide to go and just wipe them out. But they're not going to do that. That's what I'm saying. They're not going to do that. But I'm saying that, that's the quickest. That's the quickest one is for the military to go down there and just track down anybody that's even, you even think is related to the cartel. Right. But I understand. I'm just telling you that that would be the quickest and cheapest. But so I think the other alternative is a combination of legalization, of education and of offering, you know, drug rehabs, right?

like you want a drug rehab you can go that sort of thing and I think and I think that would you would you could pull a lot of that from you could pull a lot of that from you know like the without giving out these outrageous sentences I mean at this point you realize that you can basically monitor people on ankle monitors like a lot of these guys that are locked up for for 30 years for drug charges you've been giving people 20 30 years for drug charges it didn't do anything so why not? give them five years, let them out, put them on an ankle monitor, and cut back on these massive prison sentences and have them pay for their own housing. You see what I mean? Like that's that alleviates the problem. Yeah. And, and look, let's face it, with artificial intelligence and every other tracking device that's out there, you can track these guys pretty good. And they'll be working, paying for their own food, paying for their own, you know, um, you can put them at halfway houses. It's what really, you could just let them stay in society and put on an ankle monitor and let them get a job.

You know, so. There's a lot of options out there that we have to start exploring. No doubt about that. What's happening now is not working. Some people say just build more prisons. Nah, come on, man. That's been a failed model for 30 years. Shoot, for 40 years, that's been a failed model.

Put them away. I think that you have to do that with repeat violent offenders who don't want to change. We have to protect society. those who are nonviolent want to be rehabilitated want to improve their lives I think we have to have different options but there's hardcore people you know

and I've been arrested and I've dealt with they won't change no they won't change so we have to protect society from these animals right yeah prison is just a part of their life like going to prison doing a bid

coming out that's just part of my life and the nice thing is it's not hard to figure out who those guys are no you know You know, come across quickly. Yeah.

You realize right away, like, oh, this is prison's part of your life. Okay, well, then you get 40 years and you'll never get out. So let's go ahead and stop this cycle now. But, you know, those are few and far between the most part. And a lot of these guys, a lot of these low-level drug guys that also go in and out, in and out. They have drug problems. They have no education. They have no choice.

They have nothing else they can do. That's why I go back to. You have to educate them. You have to give them the future. You have to give them hope. And the ones who do take advantage of their choices, I think don't go back in the system. The ones who don't do anything, they're only thinking about the next score or the next lick or the next whatever they're going to do, that's a problem. Because they're just looking to do another score.

They just can't wait. What they're doing is some of them is they're trying to become better at being criminals and talk to other people, how to be a better criminal. That's not the, that's, we need to keep those separate from each other. I love the guys, these guys literally, well, next time I'm going to do it right. Yeah. There's a right way? If you think there's a right way, you haven't learned your lesson, and now you're going to get more time, and it's going to be worse for you. And those are the kind of guys we have to incarcerate.

You want the guys that want to say, man, I really messed up. And I've been doing a lot of shows. If you like this show, please watch the ones we've done. I've done a lot of shows out there on YouTube, and guys who have learned, like yourselves, right? Right. You don't want to go back again, right? No, I'm very happy You're very happy out here

How long did you do? 13 years I know you did that long Third I listen Three you get they give me five years I had probably learned my lesson I'm pretty sure I would have been like Yeah I'm good

I'm good What would have been the amount you said I can do it again Oh if it had been under five years Because when I think Most people think Oh, five years. When I hear five years, I know that's three years. I know the drug program. I know time off. I know I'm going to do three years. I might even get six months halfway out. So it's really probably two, two and a half years. So I'd say if you, if they had given me 10 years, which is really what I thought I deserved. I would have never done it again. Five years and under, I probably would have done it again. Five years and under. Because fraud is, my fraud is difficult to. detect and it's extremely lucrative and I felt it was very safe. So if you said, hey, you're going to prison and I did 18 months and got back out, that wouldn't have been much

of a deterrent. Yeah. But if I'd done like mentally, like, I mean, not mentally, physically done five or six years in jail, that might have been it for you. I'd have been like, yeah, man, I'm not doing that again. Like I knew right away, I'm, you know, you lower your expectations of life and you realize, you know, okay, honestly, I'm happy sleeping in someone's spare room and just being able to watch YouTube and having a regular job. Like, life is too good out here. You missed your late 30s and 40s in prison, right? All my 40s. All your 40s and late 30s, right? I was 50 when I got out. Oh, so late 30s too. So you missed your late 30s and 40s in prison. Yes. Coleman. You were in Coleman the whole time. I was in Coleman. I've been there a few

time doing interviews and stuff like that but I was on the run for three years too so now that 16 years of that my life is just gone that's rough yeah a lot of people so at least you learn your lesson and he was a white collar I've seen guys who do you know violent crime because they have no education yeah they didn't study they're illiterate right they can barely do anything this is all they know so yeah we have to in my opinion this and I've written about this in my book prison gang killers and I've written about another in other books you have to go get them outside, they distribute them on the street gangs. You can't extract them from that, you know, Mexican mafia culture or MS-13 culture or Latin king culture, bloods, or crypts,

you can't get them away from that. Guess what happens when they go back to the street again? Yeah, that's all they know. They go back to that again. So I can tell you something. I think I might have told you this before. I was actually on the run when this happened. I was building houses, right? Like I was, I owned a development company and we were bought a bunch of vacant lots we're building new new construction which sounds funny to be on the run doing that but it's like i have nothing to do i have a bunch of money and nothing to do and would you have like a fake id fake identification no it was real i went to the dmv i've bro i've had 27 driver's licenses in seven different state i've had two dozen passports and issued by the state department and different

names different names so i was living in nashville and i had i started to develop a company to have something to do and I remember one time I went to Home Depot you know you go in they they order your um you go into Home Depot you give them your your like a knockdown list of what you need and they they take the plans and they they come up with a list of all the lumber everything you need and they drop it on different pallets at on the sites okay so I'm all but I'm it's never quite enough you're always missing something you know there's always something so I'm always in and out of Home Depot so I went in one day and I forget what I'm all right I was buying. But there was this kid that was there. And I'd say he was 20, 21, well, probably 22, 23 years old, something like that. And they called him New Orleans. And this was probably a year after Katrina. And I remember I'd seen him over and over again. And he was a hustler. Thin black kid all over the place. They would say, you know, New Orleans, you know, hey, can you get me a price check on this? Or hey, have you seen this? And you'll, yeah, yeah, yeah. I,

I think we got it into such and such. Hold on, man. And he'd literally like almost run down the aisles. He was just. So one time, you know, I saw him and I was like, you know, hey, New Orleans, you know, where's the such and such? And because I was in there so much. And he was like, hey, it's here, here. And he walked me over there.

And I said, but why did they call you New Orleans? I said, I was actually in New Orleans. Yeah. Like two, three month before Katrina. That was there after Katrina. Oh, yeah. Well, so anyway, he sat and he sat there. He said, yeah.

He said, I was there during Katrina. And I started laughing. I said, really? I said, wow, what happened? He said, bro, he said, I said, man, that's devastating. He is, oh, he is Katrina saved my life. And I went, what do you mean? He said, during Katrina, or after Katrina, he said, they came in.

He said, he was living in that dome, the, that big, Superdome. Superdome. He said, I was in the Superdome. He said, and they started putting us on airplanes and flying us around the country. He said, Home Depot flew me and a bunch of people to Nashville. He said, gave me a place to live, gave me a full-time job. He said, trained me on how to do it. He said, I've worked here for a year now.

And I went, wow. And he said, changed my life. He said, before this, he said, I was selling drugs on the street. Both my brothers had been in and out of prison. My mom is in and out of prison. My dad's doing life in prison. He said, my cousins have been shot. in prisons. Everybody's in a gang. He said, I was in a gang. He said, I came here. I got a fresh

start. He said, I'm never going back. And I mean, he was just like, wow. That's great. I said, what happened to your, what happened to your family? And he said, yeah, I have no idea. I said, have you tracked him down? He said, I haven't even tried. He said, I'll be honest with you, man. He said, I don't want to know. He said, I'm done. He said, he goes, I got a fresh start. He said, changed my life. I'm not looking back. But I mean, that's almost what you have to do. Yeah. Oh, those kind of people, yeah, for sure. You're in the gang culture, that kind of street culture. You have to almost start again, which is a great story. But I'm talking about Katrina. I responded with ATF after, you know, after the fact. And

they had a task force set up in Baton Rouge. A lot of the problems in New Orleans went to Baton Rouge, right? And we have to deal with that. You know, ATF, when we respond there, you know, we're there to help take care of, you know, the worst of violent criminals and put those people away into cases and gun cases and all that. But we also took a day or two and went to see how New Orleans was looking. It was a ghost tale. I've seen Norland's before.

And I've seen years later, it was a major city was a ghost tale. They had a few bars open, empty, it was being martial law in effect. It was unbelievable what I was seeing in New Orleans. And it happens anywhere. But that kind of story, I think it feels good,

but you would wish them to do. hope his other family members, right? Try to get them out of that same situation, right? He said, he never, he said, it wasn't until Katrina that he even thought getting out or his life not being that. He said, I never even considered another life. He said, that was, this is it. That was it. He said, I never considered it. He said, and, you know, he said, honestly, he said, there was just such a bad environment. He said, I just don't want, I don't want anything to do with any of it at all. So, I mean, I don't know what his deal with. I only talked once or twice, so who knows what the thing with the brothers is.

And as soon as you were arrested after that, was it, how did you get caught? Yeah, I got caught in Nashville. I got arrested. Dateline was coming out. They were doing a one hour special on me. So I was planning on going to Australia. And we were pulling cash out of the bank, my girlfriend and I. And, you know, just over the course of several weeks, we're just pulling out as much as we could

so that we could take off. And my girlfriend confided at another girl, a friend of ours, who I was. Loose lips, sink ships. Yeah, she called the Secret Service and negotiated like a ridiculous, like, $10,000 reward or something. That was nothing. So she got $10,000 reward for turning you over. For turning me in. Yeah.

And they just staked out my house for a few days, and one day I drove home. That's a thing story. Yeah. And I'm not sure your whole story we got. I've not seen bits and pieces. How did you do a Dateline story? I wasn't familiar with that. You know, I was on the run, and Dateline was doing a story about this guy who was on the run committing all these scams, these real estate scams.

Wow. That's not good. When you're on the run, you don't want Dateline to be doing a story. No, you don't. You sure don't. What the heck? So here's the thing. Like, there had already been, whatever, 30 or 40 newspaper articles, but those are just newspaper articles, right?

Like, that's not a big deal because it's there in Tampa. They're in local. Right. But I'm in Nashville. And then I've been in Bloomberg Business Week, had done two articles on me. And then Fortune Magazine did an article. But I still was okay. Like, I was like, eh, it's not that.

It's not, you know what I'm saying? Like, who do I know that reads Fortune? Like, I'm dealing with construction workers all day. Like, I don't know anybody in this town. And, but it's fine. Dayline. Dateline average Joe watches that. Right. And this is, keep in mind, this is back in 2000, late 2006. Yeah, people watch.

That wasn't a TV. People saw watching TV. No, back then. Dateline was huge back then. Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. I don't remember all the big names, so they had some big names back there on Dateline, and they were household names. My name's escaping right now, but I remember watching Dayline. There were some good show. And then, of course, the world changes whenever it goes on the Internet,

and they go in the All Little World Now. Now, everybody goes into their own YouTube. by the class world and that's people this appear to now which is which is fascinating i think i told you maybe at the first show i told someone else that people you would say you know what are you doing with with the internet 95 when windows came out and i went on and and you're going on there and dial up it's dial up what the hell is this emails what the hell are you doing what is all this stuff mad yeah and i said mom this is going to be the future no way i's going to be the future now that Now we have all the stuff on our phones, right?

We do everything in power, hey, we can't live without it. How did we have without it? How do we function without it? It's just fascinating how the world changes this stuff, and that's intriguing. But I want to tell one quick, so I know you liked the True Crime Channel, and I had just finished writing a book on Miami's History with the Mafia. So we're talking about organized crime. Okay.

If I don't realize how much entrenched organized crime was, you know, Al Capung died in Miami. he had a I don't know if you say this pictures if you haven't seen this picture type in 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island is part is a little island manmade island part of the city of Miami Beach beautiful island expensive homes

expensive homes you can see Al Capone's old house there has been bought and sold numerous times since he died in the late 40s right and he died there from syphilis he had symptoms from syphilis and he died I think he at the end of his death he had the capacity about 12 year old that that's that's how bad things were for him because

And it was treatable for him, but unfortunately he didn't give him in Alcatraz. He didn't get the right treatment he needed and it was too late for him by the time he died. But at the time, he invested over $100,000 in 1920s, which today, I think, easily, a few or three, you know, two or three million dollars. He built the largest residential pool in the country at the time. Look at how long. You look at the pool. Look at the pictures. It's insane, insane.

And it ends up dying there. And he bought it from all things, irony, a found member of Anne Howell. He did what from a he bought it from Manhattan what he bought for a family member Anheiser Bush he badly walked oh wait I don't understand he he he bought the pool for Anheuser book the property the house little the property okay so remember he was kind of blackballed the Chicago outfit in Chicago they pushed him out he went cross-country trying to find a new home and he end up finding it in South Florida because he has contacts and they buy it under someone else's name and so that's iron because I thought it was

funny, especially with prohibition and then legalization and we made his money and now he's buying from somebody used to own it from there. And it's a 14-room building, 14-room, two or three stories immensely. Now I think it's a company that uses it for model shoots and stuff like that owns it. So they're really, they're really a nice job with it. It looks really, really good. But quick story here. So this is a book I wrote, Miami's History with the Mafia. A lot of people don't know this story. And I think it's a cool storyteller. A lot of cool stories in there with that the almost assassination of FDR happened in Miami. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, right?

We're working in 1933, February 33, FDR just beats Hoover. Hoover was a very unpopular president. I'm also history, guys. So you don't know, I do history, politics, and I love this. So this is a combination of true crime and history. It's in my area of expertise, which I love. Middle of the Depression. The Depression is horrible.

You have, of course, the rise of the Al Capone is going. on there. So you have 1933. FDR wins the last slide because Hoover, they thought, is very cruel. He doesn't, you know, we had COVID where we had all the money pumping in for people who couldn't have jobs. They lost everything else. Overd, he wasn't doing that, right? He wasn't supporting the veterans. He wasn't supporting those unemployment. Even Al Coppola, which is unbelievable, see his pictures. He even paid for soup kitchens. And he was helping. That's what people thought he was a man of the people. Al Koppel was kind of popular with the people because he helped, you know, Eskaboard did, building soccer fields. Right. And schools.

type thing, right? Aka Apology was the same thing in Chicago with stuff like that. Well, Hoover was kind of stingy with the money, very, very Republican, and they thought he wasn't helping the people like it should be taking care of the elite and ultra-rich. FDR was going to change it.

A little background, if you like that stuff, if not, you know, you don't have to listen to it. So, you have this little Italian guy named Giuseppe Zangara. He's Italian immigrant. Have you heard this story before or no? Sounds familiar so far. You heard it?

I don't know. Let me hear. Okay. This is now, we're talking February 33, 1933, right? FDR. It's not presently yet. Things were a little different then. He didn't get sworn in in June.

I mean, in January, he would be sworn in in March. Things will change later with airplanes and stuff like that where it would be changed. The president be sworn now in January. But back then it was March. It was still March because then it was a time where people would take longer to get to different locations, but planes and technology would change that. There's a little history there, and that will be changing why. So he would go to Bimini on a short fishing trip.

He came back and he was going to do a one, two-minute speech to a crowd in Miami at Bayfront Park. Those who know what Bayfront Park is, that's near downtown. It's in Miami, very popular areas. Changed a lot. But remember, people don't learn their lessons. We've already had three presidents assassinated. Three, right? Now the secret sure, after McKinley assassination, Secret Service came on board, right?

But they don't learn their lesson with FDR because Kennedy will be assassinated the same exact way years later, convertibles. Big problem, right? They are a big problem because the president is not protected. He was in a convertible. He was up. The mayor of Chicago, anti-Sermak, who has become very popular, people thinking he could be maybe down a road, a running mate with him, was there, talk to him about things that were going on in Chicago and give him some some looking what's going on there. A little positive, but it's interesting story here. This guy, Zangara, is a little crazy, obviously. Short-telling guy. He gets on a fold, a chair, a rocking chair like this, and he gets this a 32 caliber ivory Johnson

and he starts shooting over a lady on top of her head at the president, President-elect, FDR, boom, bump, bump like that and people start grabbing his arm and his hands start moving all over. FDR is spared right there in Bayfront but Sir Mac gets hit, the mayor of Chicago and he ends up dying a few days later

and allegedly it's in this plaque his last words with Mr. President I'm glad it was me and not you. Alleged that's one of his last words that were said. I don't know. Right. That's what out there.

So that happened there. FDR came very close. Of course, Kennedy was killed by Oswald. Same situation, right? Convertible. Going down. People are learned their lessons in life. History tends to repeat itself. And they didn't learn the lesson with Hinkley either.

Reagan almost just killed. The crowd got too close, right? He didn't have the protection he needed. So they learned their lessons of that. My problem with this with the mafia, This is theorists out there. I just, you know, people talk about it, was Zangara. Zangara was actually hired by the mafia from the outfit because Frank Nitty,

at the time was running the outfit, you had Aquapult and Alcatraz, right? He's out of the picture. Niddy is running operations out there. The mayor is trying to clean up the city. He has his guys to a search warrant in his office and try to kill him and shoot him, saying he was armed and they shot him. He doesn't die and he's showing. that he was unarmed. The officers have shot and said he was trying to kill him are arrested

and they are fired from the job for allegedly lying in the reports and stuff like that. Allegedly, this was out there. Niddy wants payback for the mayor trying to have him killed through his officers, right? Guess this guy, and he wasn't, the FDR wasn't a real target. It was the mayor that was a target. Little history of Miami. Miami's history with the mafia. So what did, what did, uh, so Zangara and just the lower, The Italian guy say, what did he say? He gets the quickest execution in Florida history.

His trial was less than a month. He was on death row in Rayford for less than 10 days. And it's executed, quickest execution in Florida history in Old Sparky. I'm not sure if that's one of the early ones from Old Sparky. Old Sparky's had some good ones, Bundy, right? Zangara, right? And some other massive serial killers have been executed by Old Sparky. Now it's the only old Sparky now.

Now it's not a lethal injection. but they had old sparky and allegedly his last words word's word Viva Italia just like that I'll copy his

anti-tagia I dare you do it push the button push that button they did all right so little my

his history with the mafia all right that's a good story man so look it up if you like those stories history I love that You put history with true crime, that's my thing. You know what's funny?

Do you have Apple? Apple apps? Yeah, the TV, whatever Apple, what are they? No, I don't like streaming that much. They have a whole series called something for all of mankind. And it's funny because it's about the space program. Oh, okay. and so it's following it like almost identical only the Russians land on the moon first

so everything like all the characters are the same and everything's off slightly so it's like what if it's like a what if it's like a what if something like that the Russians had landed first what would we have done so then um now we're like we're going to we're going to the moon and so we do go to the moon you know we almost crash but they do make it and so then they're planning on doing a then they find out the Russians are going to put a base on the moon so now we want a base, Nixon wants a base on the moon

and then you find out then the Russians land another you know another mission on the moon only it's a woman so now we've got a woman who has to be an astronaut like it's like we're struggling to keep up but what happens

is it's what if we had just continually dumped money into the exploration of space. So that's really, so I know that ultimately it ends up like we go to Mars. Like there's all of these things. So now it's spinning off into an area where you're like, I don't know what's going to happen now. Because initially I'm watching, I'm like, oh, this is the one where the, you know, this happens. And this, you know what I'm saying? There's little things that you're like, oh, but then, but now it's at the point where it's like, I have no idea what's happening. Like von

Brom, they just kicked von Brom out of NASA. You know, they, they get them in front of Congress and they pull up, you find out that he was actually a member of the Nazi, of the SS. I mean, you knew he's a Nazi party member, but they actually, in Congress, they come up with. Oh, yeah. And Chappaquitti, what's his name?

Ted Kennedy. Yeah. Ted Kennedy. Because of the moon landing, for some reason, he doesn't go to Chappaquittic. Right. So the woman never die. So now you know he's going to run for president.

No, he does. There's all these. We're going to have RFK Jr. Become president now. Yeah, I don't know that's, I don't know what's going to have. I think he can be Biden. I think he can be Biden. I think anybody, I think any warm body could be Biden.

Yes, I agree with that. Can they beat Trump? Or Trump and now, I'd be third, died it for a third time, it looks like. Not one, not two. Three. You know, unfortunately, having multiple felonies, you know, that really only just kind of, he just went up in my, in my, might look so if if he wins can he pardon himself yes no because you know somebody was saying that the other oh he'll just pardon himself he can't pardon himself can you imagine that he creates

that that precedent that he can pardon yourself Nixon couldn't pardon himself didn't Ford pardon Nixon yeah I don't know that the question would would DeSantis pardon him if he wins desantis his whole campaigns fall on a party he's not gonna I listen So when I found out DeSantis was running, I was like, what are you doing? You can't, like, it's now, it's not the time. You're still young. Wait, wait, look. But he's, he's in the game.

He's in the game. We'll see what happens. I like R.F.K. Jr.'s chance. I find him appealing. He's a moderate, and I think Biden is in trouble. You don't want Kamala Harris, man, with her horrible cackle, the word, Miss Ward Salad herself. Yeah.

She couldn't be by the worst vice president in, uh, in U.S. history. And Biden's just across the board, his ratings, you know, the whole administration's ratings are just in the tank. Like, it's, I don't know. But the worst part is to Trump is very likely to, you know, self-sabotage himself. You know, the likelihood that he will self-sabotting himself is. That's his likely. He does it all the time. Yeah.

He control himself. And keep it from Twitter or whatever we're going to use. Stop using that stuff. Don't let you read the teleprompter. Yeah, we can't. Let's read the teleprompter. No, he's like Biden. When he gets off script,

Ooh, he doesn't want to go to. I do also a lot of political books, and I predict the last year, Joe Biden won and done. One term, he's not going to win again. I don't care if Trump or DeSantis or, I don't know, Chris Christie, I don't know, he's kind of going out there.

He's interesting character, Nicky Haley, I don't know, there's a lot of potential out there. There's a lot of people on the field. Trump has a name recognition. People feel sorry. They don't like that he's been indicted. I think two out of the three, my opinion, are bogus cases. I think paying off the porn star after seven years ago, that's, you know, Daniel's Storm.

Yeah, that's too. Former Daniel. Ridiculous. The one with Georgia interfering with the elections, I'm not sure how strong the case. But I think the one he should be worried about. This is my opinion. This is Bill Barr and other people saying the same thing is why do they have classified documents in Merrillago after the FBI said, bring it back, turn them over. we need the back, including invasion plans of Iran.

He had operational plans how to invade Iran because they're getting fed up with all their tactics, what they were doing to us, and because of the threat of having them nuclear, we can't have a round with a nuclear weapon. Obviously, there'll be a threat to Israel and to us. So a lot of things are going on that shouldn't be out there.

And I think that is, he's probably looking at over 30 years. It's not ever going to happen. How can he run the White House? Can he run the country in America? I guess House arrest, Marilago? Ankle model. They used to say AI.

Will they give him an ankle monitor, maybe? Maybe. How funny would that be? This is the whole system has just fallen apart. It's almost comical at this point. It is comical. And people say if I wrote that and I said fiction, non-fiction stranger than fiction, right?

Yeah. Absolutely. I wrote that in a book. People say, this is garbage. It's just silliness. He's just being silly. We are going to leave all of, well, I think there's one description for all of Ignacio's books in the description. Also, if you want to donate $10 a month to Patreon to help support the channel, that would be much appreciated.

Leave me a comment in the comment section. Thank you very much. And I really do appreciate you guys watching. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Michael Martine Hudson. and I wrote a story about Mike called Devils of Contraband and which he never really liked the title of. But it's about basically he's essentially a part of the genre that is what's known as Cocaine Cowboys.

He was active in, well, he was a part of the dirty dozen and then he ends up moving into the, in the smuggling operations in Miami back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and we'll get into that. And so it's going to be a really interesting story. So check it out. You know, I want to, like I typically start, most stories, I obviously start, you know,

with something interesting. And then I jump back to the origins of like where the person was raised, that sort of thing. So, and you were raised in, in Arizona. But your mom, but the way it happened was your mom was basically, just a maniac teenager, right? She got married young, had two boys,

you and your brother, and she ended up getting caught smuggling marijuana from Mexico into the United States. Correct. Right? And that's kind of like, to me,

that's where the story kind of begins because it immediately starts off with smuggling, it ends with smuggling, it starts with your mom, it ends with your mom. Because, you know, out of all the cocaine

Cowboy stories that are out there, there's just not many, there's almost no stories where there's basically a woman is running the entire operation. And that's your mom. But so can we can we start with, you know, like you and your brother were born in Arizona and that's the question. Prescott, Arizona. Right. Uh, 1954. I was born in 54. My kid brother, uh, um, 57 and we're about 18 months apart right and what happened with your dad was he around or mother uh my mother left him right and took me and my kid brother and essentially uh my grandmother was very wealthy she married a wealthy minor she left my real grandfather married a wealthy minor in uh Arizona he died and and grandma got to mine so mom uh pretty much um she wasn't so much of a maniac it was just the uh the the

a product of, you know, of, 60s, 70s, the 50s, because they, you know, they weren't hippies then. It was essentially beatniks. That was that era started and she took me and my kid brother with her girlfriend, Terry, and her Corvette, and drove to Big Sur. And we lived there for a while. I have memories of that when I was really young, and I've been really young, like three, four. And then she came back to Arizona, and we ended up getting. taken care of by my Aunt Carol Jean, Grandma Dickie. We called her Grandma Dickie because Ernie Dickie, Ernest I. Dickie was the CEO of the Cypress, Bruce Copper Mine.

Grandma married him, left my real grandfather, as I previously said. And, you know, she left Grandpa, took my mom and my Aunt Carol Jean with her and, you know. Well, your mom started smuggling, like. It was years later. Right. But the first, she tried to run a couple of keys across the border in Nogales. That was a few years later. But she, you know, the pills, whatever, you know, and the marijuana back then in the 50s and the 60s.

So probably the late early 60s. And then she got busted coming through Nogales. And my grandma had to go down there with Barry Goldwater. he had some connections and he very goldwater was a very close friend of ernie's right he built the house uh and del webb del webb built the flamingo for bugsy seagull he was the contractor to build sun city in phoenix he built the house in bagdad uh up there in the northwestern arizona where grandma dicky um lived with my mom and my aunt carroll jean right after ernie died so you know she was she was uh my mother was they were pretty uh

And more so, my mom was pretty rebellious, you know, and, uh, just so she got a, but she got arrested. She got arrested. They got her back in the United States. And, uh, my grandmother said, I'm taking Mike and Doug away from you. And, uh, here's the rest of your inheritance and go where you're going to go when you get there. Give me a call.

Right. And that was it. Mom went to Miami. Right. And, and what, what's you doing in Miami? I mean, she, she, just she moved, Miami was really the, it was really the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, that's compared to big sir and that,

those places in California, she came to Miami. It was, you know, it was, uh, popular. And, uh, and there's a lot going on down there and, uh, mom moved down there and with her, her and her girlfriend, Terry came down there for for, for, and that, this is by this time, it's what, the 60s? Yeah. And, uh, you know, mid 60s. late 60s and my grandmother put us in military school in the early 60s and and then we did a year in San Diego at the Southern California Military Academy and my kid brother then we came back to Phoenix and she farms she I was in a wreck with her when I was three years old and she was your grandmother my grandmother she was crippled for life she owned most of the town of Baghdad

and a portion of, she had a farmer's market, you know, more or less in Prescott. And on the way there that evening, she had a load of strawberries and she hit a cow at 120 miles an hour. And it crippled her for life and it threw me through the windshield. So she, after that, after she recovered, she didn't expect her to live. After she recovered, she essentially sold off most of her interests in the mine and moved down to Phoenix and bought a palatial home down there and a large, piece of property and we went to military school from there my mom was leaving us all over the united states with different friends and we wound up uh um being farmed out to the mormon church the

bishop of the mormon church lived next door they got close to grandma got her to build of the wing on their 16th ward in north phoenix um at the uh the church of the latter day saints and uh the bishop um coerced my grandmother into having us adopted through the Mormon church to a family there and we lived with them for nine years until mom by this time mom had lived in Miami all this time and she decided to come back she was a little more fluent by this time and she decided to come back and look for her sons well I mean at this point your mom went to Miami but like that's all the drugs were coming in at this like there's no DEA at that point it was no there was that Miami wasn't really prevalent for the drugs then the drugs were coming

out of the marijuana was coming out of Mexico the drugs were weren't coming out of Columbia until the early in early middle late 70s the uh Carrillo I believe the the Lord of the Skies they were running the marijuana out of Mexico and flying it in okay see and it was all different then then then then then the then the Neanderthal um format that the Mexicans use now with the tunnels digging the tunnels. See, and all that jazz, they were actually flying it in. So the marijuana didn't, the Colombian marijuana was a much higher grade than the Mexican marijuana.

Most of them, you had good Mexican pot, but mom didn't get into that until the mid-70s. She flew us back to Miami. I mean, she had a sugar daddy, if you want to call it, you know, essentially a guy that took care of her who was vice president, a lawboy, lawmore corporation. So she, by this time, she's pretty affluent. She came back in 73 and got me and Doug and flew us into Miami because she came back, went to the stepparent's house and says, I'm looking for my sons. And the stepmother goes, oh, well, they're living down there by their old high school. They've got a, and they're, they're running amok. But we were doing burglaries and trade and everything for the burglaries.

for heroin and then you know and then uh slinging the heroin on the street just same just like how you grow up right um yeah um the detectives were looking for is hard though in fact the night that mom and aunt carol jean came and and found us well actually was my uncle jimmy he came and found us and uh said your mom's out here from miami she's staying out at our ranch my aunt carroll jean took her part of the inheritance and built a a 30 acre ranch way out in the middle of nowhere off of Beardsley Avenue in in a way it's all developed now those areas were essentially pristine when we grew up in to grow up in Arizona in the 50s and 60s was idyllic right so the stepparents and we had four uncles we I essentially hunted and fished every square inch of Arizona uh hundreds of

times growing up with them learned the use of weapons was a boy scout and had uh that was a marksman with the Boy Scout with all the medals, you know, for the sharpshooting and all that jazz. And we hunted winter and summer and fished winter and summer. So all that, that kind of a lifestyle was a Boy Scout. Like I said, my stepdad was the, he was the scoutmaster. So that's how we learned, you know, weapons. Basically, you grow up with that and he became really adept with firearms. So, all right.

So your mom shows up. she takes you back to Miami, right? And you go back to Miami and, I mean, what, what, what, what happened? She put you back in high school. No, you guys are going to be accountants and lawyers. No, school was out of the picture. We were already, I was already a dropout. Right.

Long hair. My kid brother, long hair. And we are already into drugs pretty much. And mom introduced us to an underworld that we had never, it could have possibly envisioned. These were, uh, mom knew some of the most famous, uh, Like the Dixie Mafia, right? Rick Cabrero and his crew. And these are the guys.

Ricky and all friends are close friends of hers. We had next door neighbors that were very dear to me. And there, I'm not going to mention any names, but they were, a lot of us fell into the marijuana smuggling, flying it in from Columbia. But mom didn't get into that until me and Doug kind of, I was more or less turned off by Miami because I really wanted to ride a Harley.

I was still young. I was 17 years old, so I went back to Phoenix, and my kid brother went first, and we fell off into the same thing, the same lifestyle that we were, that we had, were, you know, involved in when mom and my aunt came and grabbed us and, you know, and mom took us back to Miami, burglaries. But this time, my kid brother fell for a burglary. I fell for one, and my kid brother flew back to Miami, and I stayed in Phoenix. So, mom didn't really get into the smuggling. until around 74, 75. Somewhere around in their mom, you know, negotiated in Bogota with an individual. And she was able to mortgage out the house and get a boat and then, you know,

and then bring in her first few loads. So, but I was, by this time, I was already in the state of penitentiary in Arizona. Right. I bought my first Harley with the, you know, smuggling heroin out of Mexico. What were you in the, and what did you go to the state? for. Burglaries. Okay.

Yeah. How much times you do? Did a couple of years. Had a couple of five years sentences run concurrent. Did a couple of years. And, you know, the, got, ran prospect for the high wall jammers. My kid brother was a captain in the Aryan Brotherhood. So?

When he was, he said everybody knew who the high wall jammers were. And we had a race war with the, with the, with the, the blacks. Right. And the Mexican mafia had our backs. And we essentially took over to compound at the time. and they put us that were involved in that riot in 1975, put us on death road because it had nowhere else to keep us. And that's where we were on orders from the president of the,

they were sanctioned by the area of brotherhood out of California. The high wall jammers became AB. But we were still high wall jammers during that time in 75, underground lockdown. and I was I had to electrocute an individual set one on fire we blew one up with the bomb three different individuals and I and I was the youngest high wall jammer so they split us up and I got a half because I only had five years so I did two years on the sentence and I was essentially done right they grabbed me first and then they shot me to a halfway house in Phoenix and my kid brother rode his Harley with a friend of his up to New York and then he rode all the way out um from the uh sent me a letter from the waldof Astoria on waldof Astoria station area and and then he wrote out to meet me in the hat when i got to got to the halfway house in phoenix he convinced you to go back to miami no no no no i uh i stayed in phoenix i uh he was by this time him and mom were bringing in a few loads they were making a lot more money than

they had you know then then you know initially they had been made well she did a million on those first few lows but she turned around and uh and her and doug were already bringing and then she had bought a shrimper a couple of shrimpers and they were running them down into cardahan and barren kia and Doug's uh Doug's captain in the boat and then taking the boat down there and back and uh I stayed in Arizona and rode my question is that you know you're in Arizona and um your mom brings in the first load and she arranges it with some guys from Atlanta right how does that first transaction go well um her friend had set up the uh the indict the uh um stop start over start up the deal yeah a good friend of hers who met these guys

while he was in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta right and uh so she he hooks mom up with these rednecks out of Atlanta and out of Georgia and they come down to buy the load and she they were in there in one motel room at the old days in on Collins

down in South Miami so she she she they get a sample her friend gives them a sample of the of the pot right yeah of the the Colombian gold back then and then

um she gets a she gets a call from her friend and he and he tells mom um and i'm relating the story that she told me yeah and and parts of it my kid brother told me so he says uh yeah they want another sample of it so they moved to another motel room so you know they're ready to you know conduct business and so what do you want to do she says okay so she loads it up in two bands a couple thousand each van and goes down a couple thousand pounds each van and drives down there and they and they leave she leaves my kid brother down in the parking lot if i'm not back back here in a certain

amount of time you'll hear you know who to call in columbia and then uh she goes upstairs and walks up you know walks up there all by herself and uh they had moved to another to another suite so she's a little apprehensive and she's getting you know she's being as smart as she was just the the alarm bells are going off and she walks in the guy answers the door and you know rat you know kind of raggedy looking rednecks from you know I imagine they were moving quite a bit of pot up there but bottom line is they answer the door and she she goes in and there's four or five of them around a table I think and uh the the the guy that was running everything he's sitting there and she tosses him she got her she she

He's got her, uh, she always carried a purse that slung over her shoulder about waist height. So she hands him the sample and he starts smoking and then he guys telling stories and, you know, one thing leaves another and she's there all by herself and they're kind of ogling her because she's, you know, she's extremely beautiful, you know, and so they're, you know, they're talking and kind of, you know, drinking beer and everything. And then he says it's not like the last sample that he had gotten. And he's having a hard time getting high. And she's been leaning against the kitchen counter for a better part of half an hour.

You know, that's it. So she, he says, I think I'm, I know, it's not like the other stuff. I'm not really feeling like I, you know, like I did on the other sample you brought. I'm not really getting that, getting high. and just kind of thinking that they can just you know kind of handle her because she's a woman right but it's the only shit she has it's the same stuff it's the same stuff so she just unzips the purse pulls out her her hammerless uh police snub nose uh 38 special and two quick steps and leans across the table and sticks the pistol in his ear and and you know you know you know you know

what it says and like in devils uh you better start getting high you motherless cock sucker or i'm going to splatter your brains all over your ugly redneck partner's lap right you know so and that's it and uh he starts he freaks out and uh you know you could hurt a pin drop and he he starts screaming pay her pay her and uh there you go she walked out of there with the cash and and uh How much? Do you remember how much? Two million or whatever, four thousand pounds, something like that, I guess. And that's it.

She paid off the mortgage on that she'd taken out in the house for the boat, the loan shark and all that kind of stuff and walked out and, you know. Nice look. And yeah, he grabbed my kid brother and they were gone and told him the out of the keys. They're down the keys are under the front seat and it's in the parking lot and the days in down there.

But my kid brother had walked, you know, he had gotten a little worry, he's down, he's young, he's, he's all, he's all by himself. So, you know, you're doing something like this, you don't know. Right. Maybe they're waiting for you to pull in, figure, you know, and then they're going to go, oh, it must be, they might rob him. Right. So he's so. Holly volatile situation in back in them days, and that kind of, they kind of stuff, you know, like walking into a hotel room and, you know, doing a deal for a few keys. and you don't know if they're cops

or if it's a rip-off and everybody's strapped. So I stayed in Arizona and rode, built a show winning Harley. I had a cousin that owned a bike shop, well-known custom bike shop called

Cosmic Joppers, Keith Warlock and we built my second Harley, another Panhead and we won a big show out there. And I rode that for like a year and a year and a half, and then we built another one. I wrecked that and got the insurance money,

and we built another one. Actually, I bought it from the mechanic, a shovelhead, and I rode that. And then that's the bike, and we won another show on that bike, the, you know, a big show out there in Phoenix at the Veterans from Oracle Coliseum, and then the dirty dozen by that time knew who I,

the dirty dozen by that time knew who I was, and they approached me and wanted me to run a prospect for the club. And I eventually, on that, on that, on that, a shovelhead I rode prospect for the dirty dozen for the Phoenix chapter and got my patch about 1970 1974 right or excuse me in 1977 77 76 late 76 early set got my patch for the Phoenix chapter well I mean so writing prospect for the dirty dozen isn't exactly a W2 job what were you doing for a limit it's not it's not I knew a hell's angel that never rode prospect for the dirty dozen that never made it right out of the

But I'm saying, what were you doing for a living, though? Because I know I was number one Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Thief for for almost five, six years in Phoenix. Chased by two top detectives for almost six and a half, seven years. Right. What were their names? Because I never, I know. There was John Gerdano and Jack Hackworth. They were the heads of the motorcycle theft division of the Grand Theft Auto, SID.

special investigation department or SID or SIS special investigations for they got me one time and they let me go they wanted me to do to cooperate so I said yeah sure you know and I got out and I never and they said we want to hear from you by Monday well I think it was a Friday evening and I went and stole three Harleys up I 10 there and Phoenix and they never saw me again they put out a warrant for my arrest because they floated the the they couldn't get the individual who was motorcycle a high allegedly stolen to come back from he was a guy from Alaska they couldn't get him to come back and testify so they had to drop the trip well I the judge gave me a probationary term for a few months and erasini in the 1990s was a 20-something year old Los Angeles based drug trafficker of ecstasy and ice he and his associates drove luxury European supercars lived in Beverly Hills penthouses and dated Playboy models multiple dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture.

Dirty agents willing to fix cases and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Rossini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement or murdered, everyone pointed to Rossini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Rassini at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Rossini knew something that no one else knew. The truth.

And Robert Miller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day. Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Tell me the story about, I mean, I know there's a bunch of stories, but tell me the story about stealing the guys Harley twice. I had a friend who was a junkie named Pat Grafe. Pat essentially told me one day, I would give him 50 bucks on any Harley I would grab that he would bind. So Pat says, man, there's a guy out there in Paradise Valley that's got a bike and he leaves it out in his backyard in front of his tool shed, but he's got a Great Dane.

And the Great Dane sleeps in the tool shed. and he just parks it right there on a concrete slab in front of the tool shed I said okay so we drove out there and looked at it and it was a real nice shovel kind of customized so I went back there in the and this is the wintertime in Phoenix it gets down to freezing I went out there and took the he took the the Great Dane in the house and it was so cold and I went in the backyard and I took the bike it took me a while I kind of got stuck trying to bring the bike between the shed and the fence that ran adjacent to the street there it was about a four foot a three and a half four feet width and I I miscalculated and once I got between the shed and the chain link fence I realized that I'd had enough room to get it out of there I had it took me at least 45 minutes to back the truck out or excuse me we'll have to the back to the I'm thinking in terms of trucking to get the get the the the motorcycle between the shed and the chaneling fence to get it into his backyard and roll it out to the alley and then down the street and into another alley and hotwire it.

The bike wouldn't start. I had to kick it over. Most of those motorcycles that I was stealing back then, a lot of them were electric start, but this one was a kick. And I couldn't get to start. But to back up, when Pat and I came out and looked at the bike, he says, by the way, I saw the bike where it was parked, it was daytime. He goes, this guy is about six foot freaking 11. Six foot 10, he carries a 44 magnum. And I just kind of, and Pat's, Pat was a skinny little guy.

You know, he had a Harley, too, and he says, he says, I don't know. He says, I've never, I can't imagine how you're going to get that bike. He keeps the dog in the shed. Well, he took the dog in that night. You know, you walk by there about three in the morning, and when they're in their rims sleep. Toss a pebble at the shed, no dog comes out, you turn around, you wait a little bit, And you go back and you, you know, you hold your nuts and you walk up in there and you try to get the motorcycle without getting blown away. So I got that bike, took it to a buddy of mine.

So you did get it started, though. Oh, yeah, I had to hot wire. I had to go to pop the hood on a guy's, a car that was parked over there at another house along the side. I had to pop the hood. You could tell the car wasn't running like an old Chevy and take it. the wire from the solenoid going to the battery and about four feet long and run that from the battery to the solenoid on the motorcycle and uh and she finally started i had overloaded the the carburet i flooded it but when it ran it ran like a raped ape and i took off and took it up to

a buddy of mine named dave who was fencing on most of the motorcycles for me unbeknownst to me dave was under surveillance by the phoenix police department the same two detectives who were already looking for you they were looking for now they hadn't had no idea who i was they were looking for dave they found dave and i went back to get paid for the bike i called him and he from my cousin's bike shop you just come by tomorrow morning i'll have your money as i roll i had an old polaris night 64 of a dodge polaro and i rolled through there coming by dave's house and looked and i saw about six or seven um phoenix police cruisers a couple of Mark Detective

cruisers and a couple of tow trucks about 20 bikes out in the front yard and Dave and his girlfriend were cuffed. So I lost the bike. I kept going. So my buddy, I tell my buddy, Patty thinks I'm lying to him. I says, no, man, my guy got busted.

So about four or five days later I get a call my cousin's bike shop. My cousin Keith, he had a pay phone inside the bike shop. He says you got that guy, Pat, is on the phone. I walked, right? I said, yeah, he goes, this guy got another motorcycle. I said, what guy? He's the guy that he stole the one from last week. He's got a brand new 80-inch

lowrider, a black one. I said, you got the insurance money. So I rolled up there. We took Pat's little Nova and drove over there, and the motorcycles are, we pull up to a dairy queen right across the street. And I looked the guy lived on a corner. And I looked over there in the residential neighborhood. I looked over there and I saw two more. motorcycles and the driveway, or actually on the front lawn. And me and Pat were sitting there. And I got a chilly dog, I'll never forget, and a tasty freeze. It was a tasty freeze or I think it was a tasty freeze.

And I'm sitting there watching it. We smoked a joint. Pat's looking over there and these guys came outside and walking around. The guys knew his biker buddy. His biker buddy was almost as tall as he was. You know, so I'm watching them. And Pat's looking over at me and going, man. He says, you'll never, never get a brand new 80-inch low rider.

They had just come out. So it's broad daylight. They went back in the house. Then the one individual, his buddy came out. They stood there and talked. He fired up his bike and left. The individual that owned the, you know, that owned the motorcycle that I had taken one previously about four days before he went back in the house.

Front doors open. I looked over at Pat and I go, watch this action. Pat's jaw dropped. And I walked across the street up to the. up to the corner and just walked right up on the grass to the motorcycle. I can see the guy's feet up in the ottoman watching Beverly Hillbillies or it's a big valley or something like that. I walked up to the bike and very carefully and quietly picked up the kickstand because they

make a noise. If you don't know how to pull it, it's spring loaded. Pulled it up a lot, you know, put it in neutral and froze because he got up one second that changed the channel to Gilligan's Island, a little buddy, and then flip it back. over to whatever he was watching and I backed it out and rolled it down the street and then cranked it up on about two streets down in an alley and I rode and went down that alley and realized that I had hit a dead end because that street I rolled out on I may went to make a left and it says dead end so I had to make a U-turn and the only way to get

out of there was to ride right past his front door so I come down the street cranked coming out of second gear into third about 60 70 miles an hour the guy was standing out on his porch. He had a 40, he had his 44, but his jaw was down on his belt buckle. And as I ripped past him, the only thing in my mind is I'm thinking, all he has to do is step out in the street. If he's a good shot like

I was, he could put one right between my shoulder blades. Right. But it's, you know, and as I went past, I looked at, to my right, looked over at him standing with his jaw hanging out over there in front of his door. I looked to my left and I looked at, and Pat's jaw is

hanging on his belt buckle. As he watches me i look over a pat and i ripped by about 70 miles an hour and pat's jaw you know he's like he couldn't believe it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was crazy uh pat had looked like he was having a heart attack as i looked over a pat and i finally got to the next street and made a right and rode to pat's mom's house the guy didn't fire the gun no and uh so i got over to pat's mom said he was following me and i got there my pat's mother had come home for work and she opened the door by the the gate by the pool and she looked over me and she says oh hi michael They go, hey, Mrs. Grave, how you doing?

And she goes, but you have a different motorcycle every week. She goes, that's a beautiful bike. I said, thank you. And it's a friend. I'm just working on it. I'm working on it for a friend. So I parked it by the pool and then Pat pulled up. And he walks up to, he was white as a sheet.

He looked at me and he goes, he says, man, he says, I cannot believe that I just saw what I just saw. He says, you had the biggest set of balls to anybody I ever met in my entire life. So I just said, look, you know, because I was. was still building that chopper that we were I was still building that bike that me and Keith had uh essentially I had bought that motorcycle and Keith talked me to stripping it down they're gonna completely rebuild it for the show that was coming up in about five or six months so right there you go so I was still I was doing everything I could burglaries motorcycles dealing drugs in order to pay for the bike and uh yeah your cousin didn't you say your cousin said it was only

it costs a few thousand dollars and it just kept every time you walk in it says oh it costs about $12,000 and at that time in the early in the mids middle 70s that was a lot of money now it's living my stepbrothers so but it kept getting I can't believe I yeah and higher and higher oh it got it yeah it got it into the mid 30s before we finally finished the motorcycle and entered it into that show with the veterans Memorial Coliseum and I won first place got a big check got a big trophy Keith put it in the showroom at Cosby Choppers And I had to sign the check over to him Because I was into him by that time

For about 15 to 17,000 I always had a huge balance there So whatever What happened with Keith? He passed away Keith died Yeah Yeah when I got my patch of the dirty dozen I've been with a dozen for about a year and went over there

Dup was his partner The painter Right And I went over there and he told me that Keith had died So You know It was a rough time it was a rough time that we were very very keith and i were extremely close i loved them like a

you know like a like an older brother like why i love my older brother who's a vietnam veteran greg still lives in phoenix the stepbrother right from the you know so so um when you met uh you you you you got married well i didn't get married and for a it was a couple of years later after i got my we remember that that i had a wreck on that on that panhead, we got the insurance money. And Big Tim, the mechanic from my cousin, he had that shovelhead. And he had it up on the workbench. When I came in there one day, I looked at it, and it was out of this world.

I go, what do you want for that? He goes, I'll take $6,000 in cash. And I said, I'll give you $5,000. I'll give you $4,500 in cash in my motorcycle. And he said, deal, because he wanted around $15 for it. That was a lot of money then for a chopper. You know, you might pay $7, $8,000 for a real nice motorcycle. A stock, Harley-Davidson, out of the dealership, was $2,300.

Sportsster was my $1,800. You might pay as much as $3,000 for, you know, a limited edition bike, like maybe a low rider of $2,800, somewhere out in there. So we put that in the show again, and it won. First place, big trophy, you know. So I rode that for, I had a really close friend named Lumpy, whose brother had rode with the dirty dozen Bob, Bob Hennessy.

Leo Hennessy, we called him Lumpy. Yeah. And he was, he was 11, 12 years old and had his Harley. When we were, he, he went to a Catholic school next door to where I went to, went to grade school in Desert View in North Phoenix. We used to see him riding by on his, on his chopper. And he was a pretty, you know, he was a pretty well-known individual. We became very, very close.

live together so so what was happening with your mom like at this point your mom was was actually was sending up um was shipping up um marijuana right for the for these guys to sell mom and doug were going to columbia by this time on shrimpers they were they were they had a they had a couple of other other individuals that they were working with but they were they were either flying it in or But most of the time it was coming in on boats. And Doug was bringing in loads from Cartagena, from Bar and Kia. And I'm still out west on the bike.

Right. So I didn't get, I didn't ride prospect on that third Harley for the dirty dozen until around in 1977 and got my patch in the Phoenix chapter. So I didn't, I started going to this popular college bar. called the squeeze box and that's where I met I walked in there one night with a member of the club that had gotten busted down to prospect named Turtle

and he said one night I took him away from you know when you're a prospect they'll keep you up for days and it's brutal I gotta tell you it's brutal a boot camp ain't nothing compared to being a prospect for the Dirty Dozen back in the 70s as I said I knew a Hells Angel that never made it

met him years later and a dirty dozen minimum prospect is 60 days if you don't have your patch in 70 or 80 days something's wrong they're either going to beat your ass and take your motorcycle or just run you out of town and this hell's angel obviously uh um uh who i forget his name he he essentially realized he wasn't going to get his patch and he took off and hell's angels prospect period is a year and so he ran he ran prospect for the for the hells angels i forget if it was the burdue chapter or the daily city boys or up there in oakland but i meant the hells angels used to come to arizona and we were real tight with them and i knew quite a few of them so we me and my president

years later and one of the warlords and our vice president we used to fly over and stay with the h a in their you know and party at their their clubhouse in oakland so so i have a had At this point, like, by the time you meet your wife, had you already gone to federal prison? Because you already went to state. We talked about state. I did the state time. No, I hadn't gone. I didn't go to the federal prison until 81 and 82.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, okay. So. I met, I met her. And that's for stealing, like, like, massive, like, tractors and, right? Well, it was a couple of million interstate transportation. We would take a, a. like I drive now with a flatbed or we called a low boy you'd go to a job site find a brand

new case grader or a or a backhoe put it on the the flatbed and run it across the state line before the contractor and owned the the equipment would come to work and realize that someone had a broken into his yard and stolen you know what it is usually we would take his prize Kenworth or Peterbilt and use that to go grab sometimes since the contractor had I had had the equipment on the back of his trucks at the, at the yard where he owned his business. So I had to cut the locks. And this is after she and I had split up. Right.

So I'm, well, let's jump back to. So you meet you, you meet, what's your name? Chris. Chris. You meet Chris. She was engaged to someone else. Right. And, you know, I was pretty much.

Was it like a pilot or something? Yeah, he was going to an air college at business. and she was dancing down there at that club and the mother had married a wealthy guy who had a million dollars it was called Sun Baliani I think as I recall and you know so but she was wasn't having anything to do with me

right but I was I was essentially smitten you know so but at the time I was living with a I had like a lot of the brothers in the club had prostitutes if you will or massage parlor employees that that uh that that you know that that that were bringing in money right you know that's that's that's that's it's almost like the italian mob he got prostitution drugs right you know when sunny barger bonded out in a million dollars that's when the rico statute came out and they knew they wait a minute they have a million dollars cash and the sunny barger got bonded out and uh you know

they they put um the italian mob first under that rico statute and they and they all and they've And the feds put in outlaw motorcycle gangs that's the second highest priority for investigation. So when they realize these just aren't regular, just outlawed greasy bikers, they posted a million dollars cash bail. Yeah, it's obviously it's an enterprise. Yeah, by the time I was gone, I was in Miami.

Sunny Barger had throat cancer. He moved to Cave Creek because of the dry climate. And then they allowed the dirty dozen, my old brother in the Mesa chapter, Chico, Robert Moore, he died. But by this time, I was in Miami. So, Chris, back to Chris. So you meet Chris, you get married.

She leaves the fiancé. Right. We meet the mother. We meet the mother-in-law. You know, Chris has me go over to their expensive townhome where they're living for dinner. And by this time, I had a go fast jet bike. I'd stripped down the shovelhead to put an S&S kid in it. it, you know, essentially borne, stroke it.

And I turned around, and I'm driving it riding a jet bike. Right. And I remember Hell's Angel looking at that thing. We were building rice rockets and putting them into rigid frames like a chopper. But it was a, it was 1,100 Kalasaki, you know. And he told me, he says, man, you're, Harley's going to get back at you for this. And a guy turned left in front of me a few months later. And it was a bad wreck.

And this time I didn't get any insurance money like I always did. when I wrecked when I dropped one of my one of my motorcycles so anyway uh yeah we got married and then moved into a house and she kept dancing and i got in that wreck and then we flew back to my my mother i called mom and she started sending me quite a bit of money through western union every week to by this time mom moms and she she had told me you know we learned basic seamanship when we had lived there in miami for a year you and dug yeah right right best of my brother, so we knew basic seamanship.

She wanted me to come home. She wanted me to see. Me and Chris got married, 79, 80. We flew to Miami for a honeymoon. And that's when, you know, flew into Miami. And I was pretty,

I needed an operation. I was pretty messed up from the wreck. And she and I got married and flew into Miami. And then mom had a home on the ocean. And, you know, we had lived in another, essentially another property

that her sugar daddy years before when we first, what came to Miami in 73 in Miami Shores. And this was still Miami Shores, but it was right there on the intercoastal. So then I kind of realized when I came in the house, there were 80-pound bales of, you know, four-car garage, three-four-car garage,

80-pound bales stacked up along the walls. And I had told my wife it was fertilizer for her botanical, you know, garden that she had out back and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, a few days that, yeah, we partied for a better part of two weeks. And, you know, a lot of coat. Right.

Back in the old days, Pobble stuff, Griselda's stuff, you know, and back in the day when it was 93% in, you know, ether, the good stuff. So we were, and I had been in Arizona for so long since I had come back in 73. By this time it's 79. And my mom had pulled me aside and she says, your brother. listen the heroin you know Doug had by that time was it was a multi-millionaire when he was 18 right so you know they 19 so the she says you got to come home I need you got to you got to come home she's afraid he was going to kill himself right

like he was going to end up over overdose and so and they bring in the lows and some and some Italians were coming down from New York or wherever they would take the load you know they would mom would flip the load to them and uh the Colombians were They were front on the load. They were front the mom to load. And then, you know, she would, they'd come down. She'd flip it for a percentage for a nice profit and a few million, two, three million, whatever, five. And then the, she would pay the Colombians and she was getting pretty cheap, of course, you know. And then that's, that's, that's the way it was running. So, but I told, you know, so, but Chris wanted to go back to work in, uh, Phoenix. So she flew back before me. And then I stayed in Miami. And we, uh, me and my

my kid brother and some real close friends, we took a little, Doug says, let's go out in the boat and go to the Nassau. So we went to Nassau and gambled, you know, and those days were pretty decadent. Had about, had a pound of Coke on the boat. It was the friend's father's sport fish, Hatteras, or excuse me, a Bertram, a 53-foot Bertram. And we took that to the Bahamas for about a week and a half. Two weeks were on the, you know, at sea.

So it was a nice vacation for me. Right. To get away. But Chris. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious con men in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years.

Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's Most Wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while dates. Nightline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his Stranger Than Fiction Story, available now on Amazon and Audible. I went back to Phoenix, so I didn't follow her for a couple of weeks, and then

a few things went down and I had a little bit of cash and I flew back in to Phoenix and you know by that time I had quit the club and because the motorcycle the injury from that wreck I've been down about 50 or 20 times and during my tenure riding all those years but I had three major wrecks and the third was a charm like they say in Vietnam three in a match

the third one was the worst and it was pretty debilitating and I needed an operation so mom volunteered to pay for it but you got to come home to Miami I want you to and I told her mom Chris doesn't like Miami and my mom's essentially

my mother's exact words dumped that flaky bitch and mom mothers know and get your ass back home and get on the boat so she basically wanted you you and your brother to captain the boats to go pick up marijuana.

So mom could live her, her, her, uh, her, um, luxurious lifestyle. Exactly. Hey, listen, she was the brains. Mom, the feds were never, ever, the DEA, the FBI, they were never able to outsmart her. Never. So that's the bottom line while she was alive. You know, we had a lot of heat.

Right. Years later, they had a lot of heat. And, uh, you know, They were, I would sit there at the house at night, you know, high, you know, high on, on, on, on, on, on, on, and sit there and watch a car go. She had a boyfriend that, that she met a younger kid, and his father was a, a boss in the Gambino family. Right. Joe Paterno. So they, you'd see a cargo by a couple of Joe's button guys would drive by.

Then you'd see another car go by about an hour later with a undercover vehicle with the shortwave aerials. and you see another one like that one go by at about an hour late. I just sit there at night and watch four or five cars go by in a five or six hour period. So, you know, we were under heavy surveillance but mom just said, no, we're going to take them. We're not going to offload over here at the warehouse

where we're usually bringing it up here into the inner coastal here in Miami. We're going to bring it down to the keys, you dumb asses. We're going to offload it there and bring it up in trucks, right under their noses. And we got another warehouse. And so, you know, we were never, never busted for any, load ever by the you know although they tried to get mom they did they did come in the house

uh which uh i believe when we were in coleman you pull you you you got that the indictment mom was indicted uh for uh cocaine in 1975 in in in in Miami she got it quashed or she brought her the way the Supreme Court yeah and there was a corrupt judge named Ellen Morphonius Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she tried to extort mom for $10,000. And then mom was a little, said some derogatory things about Morphonius. And the phone was tapped.

Yeah. On the phone. Yes. So on the phone, she says, she's mouth, she's, they had a, uh, well, it was a bail bondsman, right? The bail bondsman came and said that Marphonius wants, detectives. Oh, okay, they want, they want, they gave the tape.

They wanted 10,000. and then mom was pretty upset about that and then she said a few derogatory things

about more phonious and that kid said it on the phone like she knew the phone was tapped and she still called up what she was talking to one of her

gangster friends right and she's yeah some wise guy and it came back and the detectives came back over and played

the tape for and says now Morphonius wants a hundred thousand dollars my my kid brother's in it out in California at this time Doug had Dougie had to help raise the hundred Gs to give to Marphonies because Morphornees said it's a hundred thousand now remember this is the 70s yeah yeah that's a lot of money in the mid 70s that's a lot of money now yeah you can imagine back then that's like a million dollars so uh they raised the money and gave it to uh um that corrupt piece of right so

work and uh you know invective vernacular anyway so make a long story short um or before the detections initially told mom it's a hundred grand or you're going to prison so she she quashed the case but mom took it to the Supreme Court and that's what

you pulled up when we were in Coleman right and you know Marlene Hudson aka the lady the lady yeah so versus the state of Florida. So I was what at this point So when is that well this is that that's 75 but we were up to about 79 When did Doug get grabbed?

Because he got grabbed twice. Doug got grabbed in the Bahamas on a load And uh Got grabbed the first time And the Bahamians took Doug into the Fox Hill Right And they I was still in Arizona then

but I didn't you know so uh Fox Hill was like an an infamous prison right in the Bahamas like horrible yeah it was yeah yeah probably just as bad if not worse the as Colmionado deleste where Doug wound up in prison in Cuba in 83 right when I had already came home from that federal prison camp right so for the two million in interstate transportation so what happened with so he's he's in the Bahamas mom calls the Colombians and says Doug's in the in in in in Fox Hill the columbians go to the bomb the essentially the story that was given the that that Dougie gave me and mom they the Colombians went to the jailer I got to a jailer in the Bahamas and say we'll give you a 50 Gs 25 now 25 uh you know when you when the kid

comes when the kid comes home we'll have a cigarette sitting down there in the in the in the marina so sit there so they put a cigarette boat the Colombians put a cigarette boat in the marina and the prison guards let him out like they let him escape they leave a door open apparently one individual that they were able to get to right and uh but this individual decided he was going to keep the money and his job and gave gave up Doug and when Doug got in that in those days you had to open you had to run the blowers you had to open up the the blowers on the boat to get all the gas fumes out of it otherwise you could go up like a like a like a moment candle. So Doug's in, Doug got down to the marina, got in the boat. And, uh, here comes a,

uh, could have been a hatteras or a bertram that they had confiscated, converted, whether 30 caliber or a 50 up on deck with a, with a 5,000 counterpower searchlight. And, you know, so Doug just took off. He didn't even know, and he took off, didn't even run the blowers for a minimum three minutes and took off. And, uh, they opened up on him. And there was quite a few holes in the vote. Doug made it to Fort Lauderdale. And, you know, that was it. And to my knowledge, the Colombians found out that the jailer had double crossed him and he never had a chance to spend that money. All right. So, you know. So then, so basically you come, so what happens with you? You come back, you come back to Miami. What happened with Chris? Well, Chris, I came back home and we were together

for about a year. And it got to the point where mom told me finally, listen, you're coming home. I need, you need to come home and get on the boat because Doug is going to kill himself. He's going to OD. So his heroin problem had gotten a little out of hand, but listen, I had had the same, I had done the same thing,

but I had essentially kicked it back in 73, you know, when I bought that first Harley. So he, you know, was really giving him mom fits. And the whole operation could, you know, because they would get 100, thousand dollars up front as a captain's fee before he ever got in the boat the you know the people the italians that were buying the marijuana were given Doug a captain's fee and that would essentially cover any expenses that may they might incur in case he got interdicted you know the

the coast guard boarded him or he wound up in a foreign prison somewhere right so they could get him like he did winding up when Castro got him so um my then I told mom Chris hates Miami she doesn't want to go back there and then you know she said get rid of her so but i wasn't i was i loved her i didn't want to leave right now and uh so mom essentially had been sending me quite a bit of money and i still needed to get that operation so she kind of cut me off right so we wound up just living together and she was still dancing at that club and i was doing a few things i was still stealing harleys here and there and doing a burglary here or there and uh i put together a score um her mother her, the mother-in-law was a, uh, quite the, quite the hater. And the fact, when Chris came

home from her honeymoon, they'd never got a lawn together. And Chris had told me one time that they had gotten a fight and put each other in the same hospital room in separate beds across from each other. And I was like, you know, Chris was a beautiful, beautiful woman, but she was tough. It's about five, nine, you know, fine. So, um, she was a, definitely a, a, a 10. So, Anyway, we would fight on occasion, and I put together a score that my good friend Lumpy had run across. He was a carpenter at excellent. I used to hammer and nail with him and frame houses years before when we were younger. And he said, yeah, he did a room edition for this real wealthy Jewish guy that owns a jewelry store,

and he's building a bigger jewelry store. So all this inventory is in an alarmed. part of the property, you know, about 5,000 square feet. And Lumpy essentially gave me a layout of the, and we went over there, and I sold a little bit of gold to the guy, and I got a, you know, and I did a little recon, you know, and I saw it was heavily alarmed, proximity, you know, LEDs on the doors, tape on the windows, and as we're driving away on Lumpy's porch, he says to me, and that we're smoking a joint, I'm just staring out the window, and Lumpy looks over me, knows what I'm thinking,

He goes, no, there's no way. There's no way you're going to be able. Don't even think about it. I go, you know, there's, he says, I says to him, I says, you know, there's got to be about 17 or 18 pounds of gold. Gold was at $550 an ounce then. It was the highest it had ever been. And hanging on the walls, just in chains and diamond pendants and, you know, displays. You know, and, you know, Cardier, Rolex, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the diamond rings.

so Lumpie goes, forget about it. You're not going to, and you'll never get. He says you could try going up in the attic and crawling across the home into the guest house where everything was being kept under, you know, the whole property was heavily alarmed and you could jump through the drywall. And I thought about that for a minute and then I tried that one night. You know, I would scope the residence and the individual was gone. You know, there were two cars of driveway, a new Mercedes,

Diesel and El Dorado. So I knew he had a wife and a couple of kids, and I went back there and tried that. Tried to move the attic enclosure up about two inches, and the alarm went off. So I told Lumpy, oh, listen, you idiot, this is proximity. So what I did was eventually get a schematic of the alarm system, and I went back there. The guy went on vacation. I just happened to get lucky. So I went in.

And it took eight hours. It was one of the hottest nights in Arizona history. It was 108 degrees at 8 or 9 o'clock at night. It was like 101 or 102. I had a young kid whose girlfriend worked at the squeeze bog with Chris. And I went in there and it took about eight hours. I cut the alarms. I essentially, you know, disengaged the external system, the audible system,

the striker and had special tools and then cut the glass. uh like like jack murphy did with an india star sapphire uh the long ruby and uh back of the day but mine were a little my my entry was a little more professional and i tied off the alarm system this is the tape and i got in and uh i told this kid listen it was a cul-de-sac so you had an alley and then you had to run around the side of the home had a pool had a uh it was about 5,000 square feet had a big swimming pool i says tap on that side window If you see any police coming down, there's only one way to get in. Right.

Coming down the street. It was at the end of that street at a cul-de-sac off of Glendale Avenue and 12th Street. So, as I stepped up to the room where all the inventory was, I could actually feel it was glowing red and feel almost a hum, an audible hum from all the service that was being running there. and I had a ski mask on and you can see the LEDs across the doorway on the two feet up, a foot up and then from, you know, so that the light-emitting diode would trip the alarm so you had to dive between them.

So I threw the duffel bag in there, dove between them, stood up, and as soon as I stood up, they had a backup system that wasn't on the schematic and the damn thing would, the alarm system was sold out, it woke the dead. Right. So it had to have woken up at least five square blocks.

But you're already in. The kid left me. It scared him to death. But I was in and I wasn't leaving. And in Arizona then, burglaries were prosecuted for, you had had a window of maybe five to eight minutes before they were, they were the Phoenix Police Department. Burglaries were heavily prosecuted. And I went away on. And you've already been.

Yes. So a second offense carried a men man of 15. Yeah. And I had been doing them all along when I built the motorcycles, you know. So, you know, I had the, I had the butterflies the whole time I was doing burglar. I did some high-end burglaries when I was building the first, the second panhead, you know, and that Keith conned me into building. So the alarm went off and I stayed in there.

I looked at my watch I was in there for nine minutes I got every last bit of inventory and got out got stuck coming out the window because there was just this tiny pain that I had cut to open these windows cranked open but I tied off the alarm

you know with the alligator clips and all that kind of jazz and it didn't matter because all that time I took you know it was immaterial because I set off a backup system right so by this time you can hear voices of the neighbors.

In fact, the neighbors did come outside one time when I was on a two-story ladder that the individual that owned that property, I used his two-story to go up and disengaged the audible system with the bell and the striker. I took that all apart, but there was another one inside the attic. Anyway, I got out of there and made it back to the, we had parked across a main thoroughfare,

Fair, Glendale Avenue and an apartment complex parking lot right there. And I went and walked back through and got in this kid was sitting in his Jeep. And I had about 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 40 pounds, gold, diamonds, you know, and watches, you name it. And I threw it in the back of his Jeep. He never knew I had it. And I got in there. My little brother wanted to kill him when he found out because my little brother, they

had essentially helped me with how to tie out the system because I was not a cat burglar per se. I did burglaries, but I was more of the Jimmy the door with a crowbar, vice grips, you know, get in, get out. But this one was a little different. So we waited and about 20 cars come up with the lights flashing and the helicopter is already over the property with the search light. But it was, but the, I watched the helicopter go across this property was West Abyss and I noticed it went across 12th Street which we were sitting on facing north and glendale ran east-west and we were

right there on the south eastern corner of 12th street right on the street and i'm watching and the cops were making the left as they went up there was a canal that runs around Phoenix and they had made a left and i'm looking over with this kid and i says uh i says they went the wrong way so we just sat there for a while and uh and waited then they finally came back across 12 street and went the right direction and I says let's get out of here so that was it you know I went back home woke up Chris you know she and then and this kid you know I was a little upset that he left me there and I says where's all the tools they had all my prints on them right snap on you know a roll out the lease you know belcro that I that I used to you know the glass cutter

everything had my pre-girls I threw it in the alley I had to go back there the early the next morning and find the toolkit that had all my prints on it and get that so you know we fenced off the stones just the stones alone i went and i hitchhight down 12th street and uh went to to a culture cadillac and bought a bought a brand new seville cash and roll back up you know this is 1970 yeah yeah 1979 80 and then you know and then we moved the gold it took a while but chris had come home on our honeymoon a year and a half before

and had told her mother everything because one morning in Miami she woke me up he says I wouldn't help your mom do the laundry and oh we smoked some of that fertilizer so and I said oh my

I says oh shit I says look we better we better have a talk so I told him his mom's a smuggler I says what do you mean I says she brings in you know, large amounts of marijuana on boats from Columbia.

So Chris went back and she never got along with her mother and they essentially hated each other and she liked to really just get under her mom's skin so she told her everything. Oh, Michael, you think you're wealthy? Her mom, she says, Michael's mom cleans house and a nine-carat marquee

diamond. So you think we're wealthy? So her mother is threatened to go to the police. And I had to call my mom and tell her who left the call back and left the message on our answer machine when Chris and I came back from the club one night because she'd go dance and I just go in the club and you know drink play foosball right galaga you know and uh sit there and watch her dance and then we would go across the street to uh to like a denny's was called a carols have breakfast

and go home and uh she says uh my mom says Michael it's your mother She says, tell your wife that if her mother goes to the police, I'll have her killed. And that pretty much put the kibosh on her mom going to the cops. Right. So, and it kind of, our marriage was a little, it was just, look, you know, the mother-in-law, she was right in the middle of it. She just, she couldn't help, but just try to just disrupt the whole thing. We loved each other, you know, but I feel this way. did the right thing because she when we did when I did that score it got us on our feet you know

she turned around and she went and told her mom and she says the cops are going to come in that condo that you two live in and when they're going to take you to jail along with him but she and I started arguing about something and then she eventually uh you know she eventually uh took off right so by that time I had uh I you know I ended up meeting Johnny Patterson and we started to steal the heavy equipment. And I moved out of there real quick to try to cover my tracks into a luxurious condo, bought an El Dorado to match my silver Seville brand new, and that's what I was doing. Right.

And I dropped, you know, by this time I went underground, you know, and started doing the, the, the disco thing. So, you know, we're doing the disco deal and that's, that's, that's essentially what how my lifestyle then. it was discos in phoenix and uh cocaine and discos you know and and flipping a pound of coke here and you know uh a couple of pounds of pot there was your mom still moving oh yes just marijuana or had she switched to coke no they didn't start they didn't go to the cocaine until i came home you know yeah because the there was a lot of heat with the federal government on the marijuana when they when they uh you essentially think of the terms think of the movie scarface when Tony's telling uh um uh you know um Alex he's telling hey you know the this is not a that's not a

cake walk anymore with the news you know spy in the sky uh technology the the feds had the floor the four looking infrared radar the look down shoot down radar which is which is essentially the same technology he had in the F-14s in the Tomcats then That looked down, shoot down, you know, the infrared signature of a boat, the wake signature would give it away. It's running hot. They could see it. It's bright red. They knew it wasn't, you know, that it was low in the water.

And they would contact a Coast Guard cutter and say, you might want to check this boat out. Here's the coordinates. See? So you had to really know where the ghost guard was at. Mom knew. They had the grid system. They knew where they're pretty much where they ran and what times of the year, you know. Remember, you got a window.

You got a window to go to Columbia. You got hurricane season. Any kind of storm out there. We had a friend named Doyle that got lost out there when a kid that Doug grew up with in Arizona. They went to grade school together. They were best friends. He brought him out to Miami, put him on the boat. And Hurricane David caught him.

Right. And they were never seen again. So. And this was running a load for your mom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I was still in Arizona then. I was still, me and Chris were living together,

and I was still in the dozen. And I had to go convince the kid's mom not to go to the feds or go to the, I said, mom's trying to find out where if they got interdicted and they're in a foreign prison someplace. Right. So, you know. But you think it was a hurricane? We knew it was a hurricane.

Right. Yeah. But that was the story we had to give the kid's mom. Right. You know, she knew nothing about the boats. unless he had told her. But she never did deported. She was a junkie herself.

The kid was a junkie. Right. But Doug got him out to Arizona, got him out to Florida to dry him out and took him from Arizona to Miami. And I guess, you know, like the impact of Doug pretty, pretty tough because the kid wound up.

That's, that's a, you know, that's not a good way to die. Right. Going down in a hurricane. You know, think of the movie,

uh, what is the name of that movie? It's a great movie. It's a great movie. yeah oh man the perfect storm the perfect storm think about that yeah going down like that you're you're fighting for what a day

it might take a day it might take eight hours no tell how long it takes for that boat to go down to Davy Jones so that's it so I I'm sorry for me the references are I can see the boat going up you know

and I immediately as soon as you said Davy Jones I immediately see fire of the Caribbean with Davy Jones where he's got the the squid sorry there you go so um you know so me and johnny patterson started stealing the heavy equipment two brothers that i had known when i was an outlaw biker i got in a lot of fights in north phoenix and they were bouncers at a club called the foggy bottom and i beat a guy up in there pretty bad so i had 50 or 60 hand-to-hand combats in uh when i was a dirty dozen and uh you know i got in a lot of fights before that because essentially the dirty dozen i started hanging out with them they would call you a leaner you know and uh the ones that

weren't weren't in a club because the dozen owned arizona and they or they had they had ran 15 or more outlaw motorcycle gangs out of arizona killing them and shootouts uh you know you name it um when i was still in grade school the dirty dozen took over and and owned Arizona, like the H.A. owned California. Right. So, you know, um, you were boosting trucks or the, uh, yeah, we were, we were, uh, these two brothers were bouncers at this club and they introduced me to John at a party one night.

They lived in a nice, pretty much a nice home pretty much like, you know, like, like you, you ran here. Right. I came in there and I said, and that one's driving a new Corvette and I was got a new four-wheel drive truck and I'm thinking, they're not doing too badly. right and it was a high-end neighborhood they're not doing too badly for being bouncers because i'll still ride my bike right and uh we went to a to a party and uh a kegger and there was this guy in there another guy the and his brother were terrorizing all these

two or three hundred kids there one guy the the the taller of the brother was a of the two brothers was about six foot 10 six nine if he was an inch and the other one was about six four six five and uh went outside with some dudes got in their in their a van to do a you know to do a bump and we were in there and we heard a bunch of noise and they were going around pitching all the girls and he asked and they were across the street and under a street light and had these three or four guys out there backed up you know across the street and then this guy was says hey man that's them two guys that are you know walking around the party so i went outside and i said hey man calm down everybody be cool and i'm just starting to come on to this blow and anyway the uh the one

of them come i just kind of touched him on his elbow and he kind of swung back at me and he had these were sidewalk commandos these are the guys that are wearing harley uh uh jackets but they don't have any motorcycles my bike was parked right on the on the front lawn of that that kegger and i was wearing my patch right and uh um i just you know i lean back you know and i was trained by a by golden gloat's champion in the state prison in arizona named bobby golden out of oregon So I was pretty really, really good with my hands. And I leaned back a little bit, but the tip of his zipper caught me in my lip as he's backhanded at me. Get your hands off me, man.

So I ran him down and knocked him out. Had to run him down. He tried some karate stuff and all that jazz. And I just, you know, blocked the kick. Blocked all of his kicks and I ran up on him and knocked him out with a hook. Well, the brother run up on me. I heard him running up. He left these other four guys and ran up.

on me and I hit him on an overhand and he went right down and I thought you know I heard a little noise like you're pouring a beer out right slope and by that time we could hear the sirens coming and the Higgins brothers ones that years about a year and a half later rad and me and Johnny out well see they got busted for for for coat twice and they had been stealing the heavy equipment with John that's how they're able to for that house they've been stealing the heavy equipment they got busted and they and they're both snitches Right. So I had thought about coming back to Arizona and killing them both.

Years later, but Mom said, put a stop to that. No, no, we don't need that kind of heat. But it would have been simple because we were, you know, we were highly trained in that kind of thing because, you know, all the guys, all the gangsters that mom knew and all this kind of crap. We knew how to get rid of somebody. They were never seen again. So, um, so I turned around and we ran to their house and the cops came and not to get off

on a tangent, but about that two years later, I had a buddy named, I'm not going to mention his name, but he was coming out to Miami, getting a couple of pounds of coke and taking it back to Phoenix. We went out there. By this time, Chris had left, and I was living, you know, over there in a luxury condo. He bought a new Jeep. We went out to the river, went four-wheel, so these guys, we saw some guys doing four-wheel, and they had another one of those kind of vans, and hey, you want to come in and have a drink, and hey, nice Jeep, blah, blah, we went in there. So we're sitting there. And there's about four or five us in there.

And my buddy was very, very clandestine. He was very close-lipped and very professional. He was rather well to do with the operation. He was running between Miami and, you know, and Phoenix. And one of these guys pipes up and says, hey, you were at that party with the Higgins brothers. You knocked those two brothers out. Because everybody came out in the front lawn when it happened and started clapping.

Right. So then we hear the cops coming and the Higgins brothers because we'd better get out here as we went to their house and hid, even though the cops knew where they were at, we saw them driving by all night. So we essentially sat in there

and did coke all night and just peeked to the curtains and watched the cops coming back and forth in front of the house. He goes, I said, no, no, no, you got me missed because my hair was cut and, you know, and the beard, you know, the food man chew, it was all gone and clean shave and he goes,

no, no, it's you. I go, no, man, it's not me Scott's looking over at me going, hey, man, whoa, hey. And I said, listen, no, you got me messed up with somebody else. The guy goes, no, man, it's you. So finally I go, okay, okay. I says, yeah, it was me. He goes, man, you were in the dirty dozen. I says, nah, that was a while back, not anymore.

So I says, by the way, I said, Scott goes, I think we should leave, you know, because he was really close-lipped and he didn't want any kind of notoriety at all. I go, look. I said, so what happened with that guy? He says, you cut an artery in his chest. cheek. He almost bled to death. He lost like three quarts through his cheek, but before they got him to the emergency room in the ambulance. So I was, I was just like, you know, but. That's a bullet. Yeah. So that's the kind of, you know, that's the kind of, that's how it was in the club. It wasn't a week

didn't go by. It seems, I couldn't avoid it. So that's what was going on when I, when I, when I, when I, I spotted Chris at that club. And I kind of started getting away from, from, from, by the president of my chapter got really upset. I was his protege. He was grooming to become a warlord. But I didn't, after a couple of years of that, Matt, two years, three years of it, I really didn't want to do that anymore. I really wanted something different. When I saw her and got to know her, I had this wild, I had this hooker that was bringing me $500 a night.

She worked at a massage parlor, a girl, a lady named Paul, a little older than me, a couple of kids. But we lived together and me and Rabbit, the president of the Tucson chapter. he had a girl that worked with her and we were me and rabbit were really really really tight and we had a little safe house in Phoenix nobody knew about so that's where we were in sconsed and that's where we lived and but at the same time you know I really didn't that that dozen lifestyle is started to get I there was only a matter of time before you wound up going back to state prison right for something that I had a roommate named big George and another one named hillbilly they got in a fight at a bar and it happened to turn it was under surveillance and they and an undercover cop got in the middle of it and big george he was about six foot 10 and uh he he broke the guy's job big george and hill they wound up doing five years in the state prison in arizona at that time that's when i started wanting to distance myself from the club so so you got so you started you started um stealing like the tractors and stuff like that how did you get caught for that well The Higgins brothers got busted for cocaine twice in one month. That was the story I got later on, but they came out in the discovery. And they flipped Johnny to an FBI agent named Hank Webb. Out of El Paso, FBI Special Investigations, El Paso had the equipment thefts.

the head of the whole investigation, Hank Webb, an FBI agent. And they introduced Johnny to Hank Webb under the guys. He went under the, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, alias cowboy, the Rolex, the cowboy hat, the boots, the gold, the bling. And we started meeting this guy at a, uh, at a famous restaurant in, in Phoenix, um, uh, called the Green Gables. So one, now, by this time, we're making, we're making a lot of money. They're flipping, giving us 30, 40,000 a pop for each piece of equipment that we're running across the state line.

We'd go to Gallup, we'd run, run from Phoenix to Gallup. We'd steal one in New Mexico and run it to Las Vegas. We steal one in Las Vegas, bringing down to Phoenix. So it's like a triangle. Right. So me and Mike, and we had a kid named Mikey Liner that was hot wiring the vehicles for us, the equipment. So we had to make sure we got out of Arizona.

By the time the sun came up, we wanted to make sure we were across the state line. before the identifying the plate number and the serial numbers on those on that and the on the heavy equipment and whatever it is else we had taken you know came up on the NCIC yeah that's all they had back then so you know um the higgins brothers gave up johnny to the feds in order not to go to jail for these are pretty these kids are half-ass tough but either i could have whooped either one of them all right you know and in fact the guy that i'd beat you up one night and I came back a week later when the dozen had gone in there because of all those Ohio bikers. We'd see about 50, 60 bikes from Ohio with Ohio plates. So one night at a meeting of the dozen, my president, Fat Al says, we're going to go in there. Don't anybody wear any dirty dozen paraphernalia go in there undercover, no bikes. We're going to find out what's going on with these Ohio guys. So we went in there and I got in a fight with some guy, some big biker that And I was really young, too.

I was still 22, 23, clean-shaven, looked awful young with the, you know, didn't realize I was what the dirty does. He knew a couple of them, but he got mouthy. You know, one thing led to another, and I lit him up in there, knocked all the teeth out of his mouth, put the boot to him once he, once I kicked him under the bar. But when I went back a week later, the owner of the bar goes, that's that guy that was here a week ago and told the Higgins brothers throw him out.

And they go, you throw him out. Now, then we met. We went outside, we talked, and that's when we started. We got pretty friendly, and they invited me to their house. You know, I started going in the club. I told the owner, listen, man, I'm alone that what happened last week, it was just a flute thing. Listen, the guy tried me, and look, that's what happened. So he goes, okay, I says, I'm not coming in here with any brothers.

We're not coming in here in force. So that was it. And then when the Higgins brothers got busted about a year later for the Coke, they, you know, they turned around a year and a half later because remember that during that interim, I married Chris, went back and forth, went to Miami. And so that was it. They gave up Johnny Patterson to the feds. We sold a bunch of heavy equipment to the feds.

And you? No, it didn't give me up. They wanted to get me away from it. They gave up Johnny only. Johnny kind of wanted to be the spokesman. How did you go to prison for the heavy equipment? John would meet our buddy, our Hank Webb, the FBI agent. Cowboy at the Green Gables restaurant once a month.

We would go there in a limo or we would meet together. John and drive his Corbett, I would go over there. We're going to meet Cowboy at 5 or 6. And you go in this place on a Friday or Saturday night. You got people stand. It's a gazillion degrees outside. You go in there. And when I would notice that we would be sitting at a table like this and there would be people all around us.

But four or five of the tables in the morning. One of the, you know, you had to have a reservation. They're not occupied. There's, and then you had some upraised diets where there were tables and booths, pictures on the walls. It was done in a, and a Green Gables done in an English tutor type of style. Right. They had a guy sitting outside on a horse and wearing a stuit of armor in Phoenix.

I used to walk by the guy and look up. I goes, man, you got to be cooking. I says, man, are you alive? And you'd hear him mumbling obscenity under his suit of armor. I said, man, this guy's got. to be, I don't know what they were painted to sit on that horse wearing that suit of armor.

But anyway, we would sit down there and cowboy, Hank Webb would walk in and we would talk and John did all the talking. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We can bring in and we're going to bring up a dump truck next week. We'll meet you in Vegas.

We'll go to Vegas. We'll meet you in Gallup. We're going to bring a greater on a, we're going to steal a low boy and a Peterbilt or a Kenworth and bring it to Gallup. He would tell him essentially what we were going to grab

and where to meet us. I never said a word. Four or five clandestine meetings with this guy. And the last meeting we had, the Fed looks over at me and he goes, you know, Mike, I got up to leave. I was pretty roided out by then. I was cutting those big railroad launch

with a set of special boat cutters, bowl cutters, excuse me, to get, you know, Mikey Laird would cut a hole. We would cut a hole in the fence. He would go in there, try to get the Dobermans out, hotwire a couple of trucks,

move them out of the way to get to the guy's prized tractor. And then we would, he would call me on the radio and Patterson, being the chicken shit that he was, he would sit down the road about a block where he could kind of keep an eyeball on us. You know, eyeball the whole deal. I would tell him, I tell Lider you got to get the air pressure up to 100 pounds. Once the air pressure was up to 100 pounds, he would let me know. And I would cut the lock, roll the gates back, and he would come through.

I would shut the gates and then put another lock that matched the one that I cut to when the contractor, his key wouldn't work on the lock. it would be just a... Give you another hour or so. Yeah, give me another, yeah, a little more of a window to get across the state line. So in that last meeting, I get up and I shake, I tell John, I'll see you at the club later,

and I would, you know, and I looked over at the Fed, cowboy, and I said, well, nice seeing me again. And he goes, you know, Mike? He tried that little cowboy, that hicc-frikin accent. He was actually from El Paso. He goes, you never say nothing, do you? I go, well, whatever. I says, no, I got nothing to say.

I says, Patterson here, let, let John do all, I let him do all the talking. I left. Well, he goes, I'll pick you up in the limo. He yells over at me as I'm leaving. He goes, I'll pick you up in the limo tonight, as usual. And we were going to a bar, a club called the store. The biggest country Western bar in the United States at the time was Gilles in Texas. Right.

And, in Houston, Dallas, I forget. get but the second largest was the store in phoenix and that's where we would go and the you know millions of girls blah blah blah and we he picks me up in the limo urban cowboy was shot in gillies there you go yeah you know you know urban cowboy is no no travolta it might be before colby's time but anyway it was massive yes it was so um and i i would i would go through all that but i didn't i would essentially get up and i would go after that that that uh that that that uh that that that thing at the store, John, it was a deal with him. He, you know, all the girls were all over him, the blonde hair, the buck teeth,

the skinny body, the Jor-Dash jeans. So we would, I would go there and hang out with him for an hour or two drink and I'd say, I got to go. Right? So I'd had the limo to take me back to order to my, to my condo and I jumped my car and I wanted to go to the disco. Right. And a lot of close friends that were in there.

So, you know, I was flipping a lot of coke in there. Anyway, John getting the, that last meeting, he says to me, he says, man, you really embarrassed me in front of that cop. I mean, excuse me, you really embarrassed me in front of cowboy. You know, he really embarrassed me. And I says, let me tell you something, man. I said, you dumb ass, don't you think it's weird? Every time we go in there on a weekend or a Friday or a Saturday that there's nobody sitting around us,

what are you saying? I said, I don't know. I said, I'm just saying I got a bad feeling about it. You know, he goes, no, man, everything's good. They've given us $300,000 already for the old. the stuff we are we all they have equipment long you know long story short um they waited for us in gallop we went to las vegas took the uh hit tab construction the largest non-union construction company in las vegas in nevada and took his prize pewter built and went to a job site took a grader and took

it into gallop and they were tailless the whole time they they i would be me and liner would have the chase truck a big dully with a snap on toolkit we could change a tire on a tractor that's how much equipment we had air compressors and everything we would go to a motel and wait john to get paid and we'd come back and grab him and then you know and so we went back to about an hour or two went by and i saw and i said usually he was back in like 30 minutes and i told the kid liner he goes i said something's not right i says we're going back to phoenix when we drove back over there the feds had grabbed john when he pulled in there when we dropped off the you know the heavy equipment the the tractor the low boy and the greater and uh they'd grab

patterson from jump street the web came they swooped so they wouldn't know they didn't know where we're at but we came back through again and i decided to uh stop on the interstate at a somewhere just i said i got to get something to eat so i went to a burger king to get two you know, the two double woppers, and then we're going to, I said, we're jumping, we got enough fuel to make it to Phoenix, and Liner was dumbfounded. He was just the kid, the hot-wired

equipment, and he, Patterson would only flip him 5,000 to pop, you know, so, being, I knew Patterson was probably skimming off the top on me, you know, but we were, you know, by that, at that time, that was, that was the lifestyle, and you know,

so when we finally, they, they, they caught us, they had tailed us and they grabbed us at the Burger King. We ended up in the jail in Gallup. We were taken to Albuquerque a week later, federal court arraignment. We had this

flim flam attorney named Frank Lally that wore the same jacket with the same suede elbows on his jacket. Same jacket every day that had us signed $50,000 promissory notes. So we turned around and I looked at Patterson and I said

And Patterson goes, just sign the promissory note. I says, I'm not giving this guy. I says, I don't, do you see that he's wearing the same, same clothes every time he comes? He's a paid for attorney and this guy's a bum. And it's a small town Gallup and they're all telling him, you got some big shots now. You're going to make some money off these guys. Right. So we went to Albuquerque for arraignment and they had a highway patrolman that was essentially, you know, driving us back and forth.

toughest up and take us to Albuquerque, me and John made bond. Mom came in, mom came to Albuquerque, sent her bondsman in from Miami, and we got bond. They bonded me out. John put his house up and everything, and that was it. And then it came out on the discovery. When we would go to that restaurant, there were telephoto lenses, and there were shotgun mics in the pictures, in the booths that were unoccupied in the restaurant. And I told Patterson, so when it came out in court, the judge, Enrique Campos, a federal judge, they had nothing on me.

I never said a word. Patterson did all the talking. The judge gave him five years. He wanted to play the essentially the ringleader, but we were partners, right? But the judge loved me. And he says, Mr. Hudson, I'm going to give you two jeers in anywhere you want to go. I said, he goes, I go, he goes, now you know you're pleading to misprision of a felony.

Do you understand what that means? I says, Your Honor, it means that I had knowledge of a crime being committed. There was a lesser included offense from the interstate transportation. I said, I said, yes, Your Honor, that means that I had knowledge of a crime being committed, but I didn't report it. He goes, exactly, I go, but Your Honor. I said, if that was the case, I'd be on the phone all day long. So the whole courtroom starts laughing. blah, blah, blah.

The judge starts laughing and goes, hey, I really enjoy our conversations, Mr. Michael. He says, I'm going to give you two years. And I says, I want to go to Stafford Federal Prison Camp. Okay, two years, you got a 90 days to clean up your affairs. You self-surrender. I said, okay. So my Aunt Carol Jean brought me up in my Cadillac, one of my cars.

Right. Patterson got five. Right. He cried in front of the judge. He literally cried. so why should I get and the judge hated him and the judge hated John Patterson just hated him he said yeah five years for you

you just went to prison you get out I self surrendered you self surrendered you're there for what a year or two years I did 14 months total so I wasn't 17 months you did on two years okay so I did 14 months there and they and got a halfway house in Miami

mom flew me in chartered me from from the federal prison camp to Tucson and I took American Airlines with a two-hour layover in Houston and flew into Miami to the halfway house mom and Doug and Aunt Carol Jean picked me up mom took my took my took my we sold the Seville and she brought that that brand new elder Oliver and parked it in the garage at the house in the shores okay then she heard they they drove down pick me up from the airport we went back to the house, and I had to report in by 10 o'clock. And that was it. I drove myself to the halfway house.

Okay. With Arizona, my Arizona drivers lives with Arizona tags on the car. So I went to the halfway house in Miami and pulled in there at 10 o'clock at night or a little earlier, and the guy goes, where are you from? Who are you? I'm Hudson. He goes, well, you're the only American Caucasian American in here. The rest of Cubans and Colombians.

And you're upstairs in rooms such and such, you know, on bed number. Right. And that was it. I drove myself in there. And the halfway house then in 83 was essentially almost, we were under the old law. See? So like the federal prison camp in Safford had no walls or no fence. You know, if you wanted to walk off that camp, you walked.

There was a Mexican that was in there that got indicted and he found out. out ahead of time and he just walked all the way to Mexico. Yeah, yeah. He walked right past us. I worked in the boiler room then. I remember him grabbing one of our rakes and walking out in the middle of going out towards the desert. I go, hey, man, you can't pick that rake up.

He just kind of smiled at me and grinned. And where are you going with a rake? And then he just threw that rake over his shoulder to make it look like he was a worker, you know, working with us. But that, there was only, I was, you know, there was only 90, 100 men in there at any one time. How many guards, one or two? Well, maybe a dozen, maybe more, but still, maybe 150 guys total, somewhere in there, but there wasn't very many.

It had to be a million-dollar crime or more white collar to get into Safford Federal Prison Camp then. The only other inmates we had in there that were not in there for a white-collar crime were the Indians because they're under federal jurisdiction. Right. So we had a couple of Indians in there. Apaches, the one killed his neighbors because he thought they put a curse on it with a hatchet. And, uh, yeah, he used to. God.

Yeah. So, um, so, um, so you went back to Miami, like, how long were you in Miami? You started what, captain a boat for your mom? No, we got back to my, I'm still in the halfway house. Right. I mean, when you left the halfway house. Yeah. I went, I moved out to Miami Lakes. and I lived with a pretty famous smugglers in the estates around the corner from Don Shula.

I moved into his house. He had separated from his wife. So his son, Wayne, I moved in there with Bobby Casal's kid and his ex-wife, Audrey, and their daughter lived there, the palatial home in the estates. And that's where I lived for a while before, you know, Dougie got, before we put, put together a load and duggy gone on a boat to go to jamaica and that's what he was interdicted by the cubans oh okay by castro right right and so he wound up in prison there and bobby the um informant on my federal indictment in 2006 he was already there he was already there

since 79 with a kid who was the son of our next door neighbor he was the younger brother of of the individual that had gotten um that got overran by hurricane david so bobby was doing or was uh he was he got arrested doing a a load or bringing in a load for your mom right so he was already there once he was already there with those guys or with the other crew members and just one just one yeah and then dug got caught with what two guys two guys two Cubans. Yeah, two Cubans, an old man and a younger kid. Okay.

And the kid was a naturalized American citizen. He was Cuban. But the old man had to escape from Cuba. Under Batista? Yeah, under Batista. And they grabbed him. When they grabbed Doug, they knew they interrogated everybody. And they put a gun, my kid brother told me, yeah, they put a gun to the old man's head in front of the kid.

So we're going to blow his brains out. Unless he tells us what the Gringo Capitan was, what's going on here because they found weapons on the boat. Right. Found an AK and, you know, alley sweeper and, you know, some handguns and that was it. They essentially put a gun to the old man's head and told

the kid you're going to tell us what's going on or we're going to kill him. And he said that we were going to Jamaica to pick up a load. So they believe it or not, they hit Doug with a conspiracy charge, which is essentially under a communist regime that's kind of hard to believe that they need a charge like that right that they even need that law yeah exactly so you know the doug wound up in there and then

he walked in years later and there's there's uh there's young and and that kid dana in there they kid dana tried to kill himself uh three times because that's how bad that prison was they had a 15 year sentence they didn't think bobby had a shootout with the cubans when they they got high and passed out on the boat and drifted into Cuban territorial waters and they got interdicted by the Cuban Marines and Bobby went on deck with an M16 and they yeah they shot him up

and then you know he was they were there for four years before Doug wound up almost four years before Doug showed up so and Jesse Jackson ran for president a few years later he got him out wait a minute so he was there your mom was going in every month or so bringing food i did a score in miami right and uh because i was essentially left alone at the time and so when dougie never came back with that load we were with this me and mom and my aunt carol jean and uh of course she had her boyfriend the uh you know the uh the italian kid joey right

paterno and uh you know so that basically we and so i i uh we only had one more boat and we didn't you know and we had one boat we needed straps who was up on straps in other words it was in dry dock we we had no way to get it in the water so make a long story short that's i went on the street right so for for about two years there i was on the street hustling you know and doing crazy stuff on the street and a couple of scores and i gave mom like one score for the for uh quite a bit of cocaine um i turned around at the king cole over there in normandy i island and I gave my mother the uh the drugs and she she she uh you know she got rid of them and this is the grisel de blanco one right uh i'm not sure yeah they were they were zips

that that were we call the sicilians yeah yeah yeah but but the but the old man was the one that the joe paterno one of his soldiers named tommy they're the ones that that turned me on to these guys and he just wanted he just wanted to he just wanted to piece the action so that's what i did i went in there and you know and uh went in there with a mini 14 and a high power 9 millimeter browning and but of course it was what I would I do essentially I any kind of this anything like that I try to set it up so there's I really there's a 90% chance hopefully that I won't have to right discharge my weapon right so I went in you know and I got and I got lucky I got it you know walked out with with with

enough cocaine to give to mom that she could continue to pay her $25,000 a month nut that she had to come up with every month on the properties and on and everything that we owned and she could fly and then she could fly to cuba every month and feed those guys right 50 pounds of freeze-dried food that she could have have only 50 pounds because basically these guys would starve to death yeah in that cuban prison yeah it was it was uh yeah it was uh yeah it was pretty rough Doug was uh and they um apparently they used Doug and and i i guess uh some other white guys that were in there as kind of as like jailhouse guards to watch over the other Americans that were in there kind of kind of like a cool hand loop thing right remember cool hand luke they

had essentially they had inmates in the movie and uh they're also acting as like prison guards right so but doug was in there for a while you know i guess he used a baseball bat or whatever with the what you know but whatever they kept them in line and uh and then jesse jackson ran for and you know the rest is history that he brought them all out right so you know who Jesse Jackson is right sounds like president to me no so wow so Jesse Jackson is a Jesse Jackson was a preacher he he had actually studied under or was under Martin Luther King right like in all the marches and stuff he was in that whole organization well at some point in the is this the 70s or 80s early 80s

uh let's see 60s because when was martin luther king assassinated no no i'm talking about when he ran for when he ran for president oh uh 7 84 84 so he ran for president and one of the big problems with with he got an american down pilot out of uh he got an american down pilot out of russia uh yeah i think so i one of the one of the problems with him is that a lot of the candidates were saying he has no like international experience like this is a civil rights leader like how's he going to run for president so he goes on this mission and he like gets like a downed pilot like out of russia then he goes and negotiates to get is it 22 or 23 22 americans 22 americans gets castro to release 22 americans that are being held in in a cuban prison two of those one of them

was Doug Doug Hudson Mike's brother and the other one was Bobby What's Bobby's last name? Bobby Young

which is the guy that ends up is the guy on his case that worked for his mother so they actually so he flies in there on his private plane gets convinced his casher

let these guys go They load them all up and fly them into Washington? Where did they fly in? Flew them into Dulls International in Washington, D.C. Right. And we find out about it. Joey was the one that come to me. Because my mom and my Aunt Carol Jean had a...

RV, the RV? Largest RV at the time. Fleetwood Pace Arrow, she took that... She took that with a diesel. She took that motor home, and she drove it to Mexico with my Aunt Carol Jean, and they loaded it up with Pot to the Gills and drove it to Boston. And another friend of hers, a famous, pretty famous gangster named Walter Abraham Metz III, aka Howe. Right.

Hal was, he was kind of like a father figure to me for a while there, you know, because when we were all, when Dougie was still locked up, you know, Hal and I did quite a, did some things. with Hal. So, Hal was in Boston, the mom and Aunt Carol Jean took the pot up there. And then Joey came and woke me up one morning because we were living in the house and just me and Joey in the house and the shores and says, hey, the Jesse Jackson's in Cuba. And he's negotiating for the release of the, however many Americans are there and your brother's coming home. So I called mom and or she called and I let her know. So Joey and I remember they were flying in

when they finally, the news media finally let us know when they were coming in. I called Channel 7 News and I said, it was at night. And I said, this is a brother of one of the Americans that Castro released to Jesse Jackson. And, you know, I like to know when he's going to, you know, some of the details

and the lady there says, This is a night crew. There's nobody here. But the day crew, the reporters and blah, blah, blah, they'll be here. I said, okay, she goes, I never gave her my name, period, anything. They must have gotten the phone number. But she turned around. She says, what's your brother's name?

Is it Douglas, Alan Hudson? The next morning, I'm in the shower. They knock on the door with a camera crew and Joey let them in, which really didn't go over too good with Joey's dad. right and uh the lady they sent over there was there was a cecilia fernandez their crime investigative reporter and joey led them in the house and once they walked into my mother's home you know jaws dropped and i kind of steered them into the family room and sat them down and you know because my mother it was rather deconate the furnishings and he's my mom yeah so the a lot of the crystal and all the uh the giant brass figurines the shrimps and you know

eight feet eight foot long brass shrimp and the vestibule in front of the you know the windows facing the street the circular driveway all kinds of but you know these they were literally uh kind of blown away by the you know by the uh they kind of got a gist of what you know they had to know drug dealers they knew something they already knew she was the crime investigative reporter and so I did an interview for just to kind of well by that time joie let them in so you know I did an interview for which the tape which I got years later from a reporter there named Sally Fitz they all used to frequent a club in North Bay Village which was called the runaway Bay Club and I saw the her Sally Fitz was a was a reporter for

Channel 7 and I got her to get the tape They had taken that tape and they gave it to CNN. So I guess it was on CNN for a couple weeks or whatever after they came in. So who, so did your mom and your aunt, Carol Jean, went and went and picked him up in the RV? They went, they left Boston and went to Dulles International and picked up Doug. And then brought him home to Miami. And Bobby was held because he was on. No, Bobby was what, Bobby was on federal.

he had a federal warrant he had a federal warrant um or was on uh or was under indictment when they when he when he was on the boat and uh so they grabbed they they kept bobby but naturally uh the rat you know he somehow he worked out a deal with the feds and probably told him uh you know all kinds of crap and and uh they they said yeah because you were locked up down there they were they were pretty uh lenient with him because he'd spend that time in prison cuban and so eventually he shows up at our door uh a few months later but um okay so so this is a second time your brother's escaped uh a prison sentence that probably should have killed him yeah um so at i mean so now but at this point

like you guys are are he comes back you guys start bringing in uh you know larger and larger loads right now like now you kind of go full tilt into um into bringing in loads from what from jamaica and and uh columbia the kid the kid my dougie brought in was uh another load um from from uh his release it was well it was a little while i was a little while i After his release, a load came in. We brought in a load, and then, you know, he, we purchased a condominium over there on the ocean. And then, you know, and then, yeah, there was a, and there was more, you know, some more, um, uh, mischief? What?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once Bobby, once Bobby came down and him and. Dougie, we put together a few deals here and there, you know, and, uh, and then wound up with a problem with a guy. And then, right. All right. So, you know, so we, you know, to fast forward, right, past all the smuggling, the, the guy would turn out to be a problem. Right. And it's,

it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, public knowledge. So this guy winds up dead right and uh but this guy was also talking about uh possibly like you guys figure out that he's talking he's he's been he's been targeting he was targeting known drug dealers well this that individual you're referring to uh that's not come you got it did not come come come into the uh equation until years later when i ended up in a state prison in florin Florida. See? Okay. This is after me and Bobby and Dougie ran for a while and were indicted by the, in the Miami,

uh, city of Miami homicide cops were starting to try to sweat us on a, on a homicide. Right. And we, uh, yes. Is this the guy, okay, is this the guy that shoots at the car, like you guys get to an argument, he shoots at the car? I set up a, I set up a deal for a couple of keys in the, in the, in the, in the, in the lakes. And Doug and Bobby essentially blew the whole thing. They wanted to go themselves instead of me going.

And the guy, they brought this guy with him, but they didn't take. And he essentially blew the whole deal. And almost got my brother shot. Right. Yeah. And by the individual that they were going to do the deal with. And then when they got rid of this guy, the guy that they brought in, that they should have never because mom said stay away from him he's you know he's he's uh he's no

good so you know uh i don't trust him the guy turned around and uh when they dropped him off at his rental car he took a shot because he had a flat tire and they wouldn't help him uh you know fix it and he took a shot at my kid brother so that's they were driving away right so he took and that was it so they they uh he got but he went to jail and that's it he got out they they they got he got out of jail and they got him to the they got him over into a a certain location in miami and the guy wound up they found him an alligator alley right so that's what that's what that's what that's what that's what the city of miami homicide uh investigation right the two detectives nelson andrew and john spear john spear was ahead of city of Miami homicide city of

Miami relegated that entire investigation to them and them only. Nelson Andrew was the the city of Miami cop that was the head of the investigation when Grisel de Blancel killed all those killed those guys down in the in at the day

land mall at Crown Liquors. That was Nelson Andrew was Cuban. He was the one that investigated that. Isn't he, is he the detective on on the documentary cocaine cowboys? The same doc. The same detective. Those guys are.

rats. So I don't know about Nelson was, Nelson was on a documentary about Griselda. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, not the cocaine cowboys. Yeah, yeah, so I remember Fabio Cho coming to me a few times after, I guess it was Men's Illustrated, an article came out about that

about that cocaine cowboy movie and all that. He goes, who is this guy, Mike, calling me Fabito? I says, I don't, my knowledge, nobody calls you Fabito. Right. He goes, well, I don't know who is this guy. I said he's a snitch. This John Roberts guy, he's a rat. So, you know, and the other guy that was, you know, so I says, yeah, whatever.

I says, you know, and he, because he had read the, he had read the article. And he didn't know, he didn't know who this guy is. This guy is telling him, you know, they're telling this, this wild bullshit story about Fabio. You don't know Fabio, Cho. You don't, yeah, so, you know, you're not, uh, yeah, but I was, and I read it and he had asked me about it when, when we're in, in the pen in Georgia. right so i have a quote what do you remember when your brother doesn't your brother get doesn't your brother get left in the mountains somewhere is it oh that was years before when

i was still in arizona when i was in the federal prison camp what happened they flew up this time they decided to take a dc3 and fly it down there with uh down where columbia okay and where else? And the house that I, when I moved into the estates, when I got out of the federal prison camp, that was Bobby Casal. He was a pretty famous smuggler in Miami in his own right. They flew up, they took a plane down to Columbia. And apparently from my kid, bro, told me that they had a partner,

a guy that lived in Arizona named Chris. Right. And he was. partners with Doug and mom and Bobby on that load that they're going to fly in from Columbia well the federalies didn't get their protection money and when they landed the plane

apparently Doug went out in the jungle and uh... Doug had to take a piss so as soon as the plane landed he goes off into the fucking jungle to take a piss and they run up on the on the and and do a you know

Doug heard shots being fired and everything and he stayed in that jungle and uh uh you know according to my kid brother the the pilot and the co-pile were both killed yeah the federalies pull up so they pull up these guys landed on a on a on a strip in the mountains on an air strip up there right to load to basically load up cocaine or is it marijuana marijuana yeah marijuana and it's like they didn't pay and so they pull the pilot and the co-pilot out you know the plane they're standing there they're like okay you guys didn't pay and they execute them well Doug

was just happened to be taking a piss in the jungle so he then takes so he takes off and wait you said that the people the guys load in the plane took off too you said the indians those wohitos took him up in the mountains in columbia and he stayed up there for three weeks for three or four weeks and mom's freak mom doesn't know what happened to him my mother was pretty uh stoic even when he when dug wound up in prison in cuba we never knew where he was at for 30 days right 40 days I'm like, I'm, I'm a little worried, but mom was like stone-faced. You know, she was just, and eventually he would get a letter from, from Colby Nado del Fista in Cuba. So anyway, Doug gives one of those Indians, a runner, a note, and he runs, they, you know, it's like, like the Pony Express.

Right. He does five miles, and then another, it gives that note to another Colombian Indian, and he runs five. and he runs five miles and they get it down to Rahul in Bogota who gets the calls my mother and says Doug's up here in the mountains close by where the airstrip was you know and we she got a plane in there to get him out so he's up there he loses 10 pounds he's having a ball though he's chewing coca leaves and uh you know like the indians you know

and he's he's up there but he's he's got two 45s one under each armpit you know my kid brother's up there you know just waiting it out and uh like i said that's how they that's how they got him out mom flew a plane down there and got him out where the zips got where i robbed the zips yeah well that was uh that was while doug was incarcerated in cuba yeah yeah yeah yeah that's okay we you kind of touched on yeah you kind of touched on it yeah so um bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical pathological liar Marcus Shrinker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis,

is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorn. wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. The $11.1 million in life insurance. The missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants

you to think he's innocent. The problem is Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Khan's Shrinker. into revealing his deceptions, his stranger than fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. Bailout. The Life and Lies of Marcus Shrinker.

Available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Okay. In the state prison in North Florida. And they robbed the banks and the cops come to see you? Yeah. But what I was thinking is,

what got you? You ended up doing a, a state. in the state of Florida and was that for the fight? No. I'm sorry. When we're on the run from the homicide cops

the city of Miami the homicide cops put the Miami Beach narcotics on me and they went through an undercover form and tried to step in there for five keys. Right. And mom knew it stunk. He didn't like the way it's...

And she says we got plenty of money there's no need for you. But I like to walk around. with a big you know uh you know you know back then it was just so i wanted a little extra cash because they had to go to mom and right you know throw me 50 20 30 whatever and she turns around and says no it stinks and i go in there anyway and they were cops so right but you didn't but it wasn't even you weren't even going to sell them coke was it you were it was yeah because in the in the old days a lot of times what duggy and bob you used to do a lot of what we did was we would we would

we'd call it we would gaff you get a couple pounds of sugar and gaff it and and uh you might throw an eight ball in there and then you know right where it's at so you throw it you know you you you scoop out the the eight ball and if they want to test it they can test it yeah make sure they're not yeah this way this way we're 99% of it's sugar but you've got you know the spot where the ape where the where the coke is so they they scoop it up and you gaff it so this way it's anything anything crazy goes down you'll know they're not cops you might Then you might say, hold on, don't freak out, but just wanted to make sure you guys were, you know, who you say you are.

Naturally, the cops come in there and hold themselves out to be drug dealers. Right. And they're not. So you did that to this guy? When he pulled out a syringe to test it, that's when I, the alarm bell went off. So I just put my pistol right up under his jaw. And he had a heart attack. They thought it was going to be a slam dunk, but I scared him to death.

So that was it. And then I pretty much robbed them for the cash. Right. So and but, you know, they. But it didn't work out. Well, of course. Yeah, you want, so I wound up and, uh, undicted for possession of cocaine. They, they, they threw it out there as a kilo because we're going to do a kilo up front first.

But what I wanted, you know, I wanted to count all the money for the five keys, but they were hedging on that. They didn't have. They couldn't get City of Miami Beach to give them that much money to bring to me to count. So we came in, we said, well, I said, well, we'll do two then. See, so let's, you know, and then they, then they, they essentially got me down to, to the kilo, and I said, okay, you know, so that was it. They brought the cash for a keek, and it was, you know, almost 30 G's. So that was it.

So I, you know, Janet Reno, prosecuted me on that case personally so how much time she yet well we were already on the homicide investigation the city of miami homicide came into that that house were uh that individual essentially we got was uh we we killed him what they did was they came in looking for forensic pathology blood brain matter blah blah blah and they found a large cache of weapons some real exotic stuff and it took, you know, my kid brother and me years to collect. Mostly my kid brother, so they got

my prints on a sawd off shotgun. Right. And that was it. They were able to get a warrant out for my arrest for the two sawdaws. They found me in Tampa in a safe house. While Doug and Bobby had jumped Florida and had gone to Tennessee to another safe

house while we're being investigated and followed all over South Florida by these two homicide cops and their crew. So make a long story short, they got me in Tampa, here at Tampa, and I went to the Hillsboro. They found me in the safe house, the Hillsboro County Jail. Mom bonded me out, and I met a young hooker up here. I took her back to the condo we had on the ocean in Miami, and then, you know, hung out there for a while.

And just kind of, she said, cool your heels for God's sake. And I had an attorney, Mark Krasno, that represented me in that case. and then they tried to set me up for the for the narcotics and then you know of course and then they saw those two charges they lumped them together

and ran a concurrent it was attempted murder a police officer possession of a kilo trafficking and trafficking in cocaine possession of you know

you know how it is yeah a little shotgun see I hope one of the pellets will stick see so make a long story short we uh that's about the time that, you know, I started going, my attorney was Jewish. And that's when I, you know, started down, and I couldn't get a, I was on bond on the shotgun. I made bond in Hillsborough County jail. So I was on bond when I flew back to Miami with the, with that, with that girl. And then

kind of, you know, kind of laying low. But, you know, and everything, you know, with Doug and Bobby being out of state now, where there's a lot of heat. You see? Plus, We're with, she, my mom still with Joey, the, the Gambino captain's freaking kid. So, you know, so we got a lot of heat. So calm down, trying to take it easy. Don't do anything crazy. But, you know, I was a little unbalanced at the time. You know, so I went, went for the, for the street drug by and there were cops.

Right. So they ran them concurrent, the shotguns with the other charges. They ran them concurrent. and about that time I started going down to the chapel and started, you know, going down there with a guy named Willie who was a Cuban, and he got busted for two kilos. So he took me down the chapel and went down there

and I heard the gospel and I got saved. Simple. And then wound up, then my attorney's run, Janorino's trying to give me 40 years. And every month, they come with a little bit lesser of an offer. 40, 35, 20, and I'm flipping out

and they're thinking you know and my attorney's going to attempt a murder on a police officer the cops gonna test it by you uh you know you put a loaded pistol up under

his neck put in his belly or whatever you know so their little slam dunk investigation didn't quite go the way they had planned it so they had a little vendetta and these guys look they try to steal my Rolex when they had me cuffed

and all this kind of stuff to make a long story short the attorney comes to me and he goes we're Jewish we don't believe in Jesus but something's going on here she kept coming down you know because he

initiated an entrapment defense and back then here you got these cops holding themselves out to be drug dealers or undercover narcotics agents and so what he did was he raised that entrapment defense and Reno

still trying to step to us with an offer that was just for me it was just you know 20 years they got down to around 20 she takes a vacation tells her subordinate sally weintraub offer them uh don't offer them less than 12 they'll think they've got no they'll think we've got no case what weintraub did was she came to me with five and a half years right now i'd already got a year in a county jail. They, they, they, and they dropped some of the charges, and I had to plead to the men, man for the pistol. So I had, I told my attorney, I got a year in a county jail.

I do two more years for the, for the men, man for the pistol. After that, the back of the sentence, I says, they're telling me, they're giving everybody in the state of Florida 120 to 150 days consecutive gain time every month because of the overcrowding in that, and that judge that had signed that. that, you know, that order to start releasing inmates. Right. So I said, he goes, no, we got this case beat. Five and a half years, they don't have a case.

I said, no. You never know. I said, no, that's not, that's not what God's telling me, man. I said, I tell you right now, that's not what I'm hearing from the Lord. I'm telling you right now, I'm taking the deal. I told your mom that you're going to be home in two weeks. We're going to trial. Well, a famous gangster from Canada, also another friend of Joe Paternals named Willie O'Brien, also known as the Meat Packer.

He was a Jewish mobster and a heavyweight. He loved me. And we were all locked up in there together at that time. Joe got arrested on a murder indictment. Then they got Obie, O'Bron, Willie. They got Obie, and they got a couple of Joe's soldiers. So we're all locked up in there together. And then Obie went to the Jewish attorney and says,

give Marlene back most of that money you gave her. Mike's going to plead out. So the most of that money she gave you, you give it back to her. But he initially told this is a Jewish attorney from Jump Street months before. Make sure you do a good job with Michael or otherwise I'll. Right. So he's coming to me. When he comes to visit me in the Dade County Jail,

he's all hyped up and really just a real gun shy and skittish. And I asked my mom, what's going on? And that's when she came to visit me. She says, Will Obie told him if he doesn't do a good job, he's going to kill him. So I said, what are you doing that for? You know, because at the time, I didn't really realize, you know, the way things would end up and the way things would pan out. So I took the deal and I did the two, I did two more years on the pistol, and then I was, I was out in another, when I, when I started, you can't, you couldn't get the game time while you're doing the men, man, right? Right.

Right. After that, the two and a half years in the back of the sentence, it was gone. So, and when I, and when I, when I pled, the judge, Ralph Persons was apparently, and you and I both know that this is a real rarity. he was a preacher as well as a as a day county judge so he is always ragging those homicide cops don't come in here and disparage that defendant and tell them about how many tell me about tell this court about how many people they killed and stick to the issues you know and uh or oh i'll charge you with the contempt and then uh you know once i took the deal reno she came back from vacation found out what wine trough had done but i had signed the deal

right it was over with and she could hear her screaming in his chambers they had a sidebar and they went into judge's chamber she was screaming at wine trip do you realize what you've done you know we can't get the mother but you know we we had this guy we had the son but i was home in 89 i was back home in 89 four years well when you so when you were locked up though some detect or was it FBI FBI came to see you right because Dougie and when I was when I was when I was when I was when I I was locked up in Baker Correctional, Doug and Bobby had split up when they're in Tennessee. So they got me first. Right.

Right. Then Doug was still on the lamb. He hooked up with this one of the individuals that was also an informant and in the federal indictment for the for the cocaine. The jumper. The smuggling. Yeah. That was his, this individual, there were two brothers.

Yeah. This was the older brother. They killed him in a federal prison in Midwest somewhere. apparently he was I don't know claker claker yeah they found they hung him

in his cell he was a rat so like the kid brother they're you know their informants so they make a long story short Dougie hooked up with the older brother whatever his nickname the jumper

because he'd escaped from a few jails and they robbed a few banks in Jacksonville right well I thought it was because he was jumping over the he would run and jump over the I guess because I never knew the guy right I have I read the articles like i remember yeah yeah yeah i never knew the guy i just i was already i was already locked up by then sentenced and up in baker correctional so uh they took dug and put him in prison

and and on that shootout in new orleans right so so so got shot up in new orleans over that when they were on the run right so they he and he and claker decided to start robbing banks they start robbing banks then they end up it gets hot and the banks are being watched and they're concerned so they they they drive to In $1,000 in cash, and they go to New Orleans. New Orleans, right. And then Doug was told to get to fly to Jamaica to stay with a big grower that we knew there. Right.

A Jamaican had his own, you know, he was a boss. And Doug, we were real close with him, and Doug was going to fly there. Cheney, Chinpo. And, you know, Chinese. Yeah. Anyway, that very night, they went out and got drunk and called a cab, and Claker got into an argument with the cab driver. and the cab driver took off

and Klaker cranked off around at him like an idiot and there were two undercover New Orleans detectives across the street having a drink and they got in a shootout Klaker laid right down he's no killer right you know see

and Dougie had 2.45s and they exchanged gunfire and then they hit Doug and then Doug took off down an alley and they hit him a few more times and then, you know, that was it. This is a shootout on Bourbon Street. On Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

He gets into a shootout with two fucking two cops and they track him down in an alley. They shot him a bunch of times, right? Six or seven rounds. My kid brothers got in and out. But he had a few operations. He had two or three. And then when I called home one ninth from the day kind of jail, my mom goes, you better sit down. I got some bad news.

Your brother got in a shootout in New Orleans. And I'm screaming, why in the hell did he? you go to New Orleans like I told him or why didn't you fly out of New Orleans to Jamaica but you could think that you could think that that screwball that he was with say see so Doug would have, Doug would have might have blown over see because that's what happened on that on that homicide. It's it's common public knowledge the pans of vacuum murder that's what happened. It blew over they were never able to indict right they never they never indicted any yeah they had the city of Miami cops went nowhere with that investigation

well the FBI showed up to talk to you about years later under the end 2006 and seven and fdc in Miami about the bands of beckia murder and some other murders no no I meant I meant you were locked up and they came and showed you the pictures of the bank robberies right right right so they called me off the compound and I went in there

and there's two FBI agents and they sit sit me down and go what's this about they go your brother here they show me glossy black and white photographs of Doug standing there with an oozy. I said, we're drug smugglers, man. We don't, you know, we're not, we don't rob banks. And he slides the whole photo over to me and it's Doug. And I went, and he goes, well, I said, what do you want me to tell you? I got nothing to tell you.

Well, we want to know about this. And they started going off on tangents about some murders and some other stuff and, you know, and Bobby. And I said, I can't tell you nothing. All right. So during my tenure in 89, well, I was, just before 87, just before I got out, that's when the whole Miami Herald, the whole one section in the Miami Herald was about Don Erino being killed. Right.

And that's when I remember reading that article, because we'd get a Miami Herald like at night before it would, you know, they would fly a Herald up there, so we would get it the exact day that the paper came out. and I'm reading it and a small still voice in my ear because it says Don Aarono pulled over by a late model Lincoln dark blue black Lincoln Continental or a town car

shots ring out the car makes you turn around Don Aarono and his Mercedes and it takes off Well who is Don Arenov's first Most people don't know Well he was the he was the innovator of the go fast boat industry Essentially So basically

the DEA had been formed because there were so many so much drugs coming into Miami at this time and they're bringing in they're using boats that they that they fucking they can't catch they couldn't catch the midnight expresses right and some of the cigarettes which were modified

they couldn't catch them so they went to Don Erano that's when Papa Bush had come down there and Don Erino built those tunnel holes those those cats for the federal government called the Blue Thunders right when you say Papa Bush you mean the dad right right so so bush bush who was the head of the CIA CIA at the time they were all in every they were in the middle of everything I mean listen we all know we know everything

about him so look he came down there nice little nice little PR stunt Don Aaron knows going to build boats to interdict the the go fast cigarettes coming out of the the Bahamas right that was Willie fell Willie and Sal at that time they were they were running they were starting to run they were running hard. So, you know, these and I was, I was locked up with Willie's brother, Gus. So, the Falcone. So, and

Sal Magluda. But anyway, make a long story short, yeah, the Aren O built Aren O. no one knew at the time that Aren O had been, either had been flipped, but essentially when he was killed

when I was up there in Baker, we thought it was, you know, we found Well, they got Bobby. I had gotten out in 89. They didn't grab Bobby until 90, 90, I think. And then they grabbed Bobby for bragging to some. He was under an alias in a prison in the Upper Midwest in Oklahoma and telling everybody that he was a smuggler and a hitman from Miami running his running his

mouth and ended up one of the jailhouse informants went to the sheriff there and says hey there's a guy in here that says he's some kind of famous hitman and and the sheriff says boy there ain't nobody like that up here going back to your cell well they kept coming back to the sheriff telling him the same story so they sent the prince down to Miami and the city of Miami homicide says do you know who you got there that's Robert Samuel Young and they went up he knows too much about this murder they went up and grabbed him and once they grabbed him he gave it all up well let's go back first second so so don eranos is building these boats but why was he killed like i know you just ran through it real quick for me but anybody watching this doesn't know half of what you see we did every we and even

at that time um when when i was already i was living with mom and another property that we owned and he called from the county jail she goes it's bobby so i got on the phone with him and And this is, whoa, whoa, man, long time, bro. He goes, he goes, yeah, they got me down here in the Dade County Jail. They come up and grab me. I was under an alias up in Oklahoma. They indicted me on the Don Aronone murder. I go, you mean the one back in 87?

Or, you know, I think it was 1987. And I go, I said, I said, don't talk on the phone. You know, it's okay, it's good. I got a, he had some kind of a back then they could use, they could make a call. It wasn't like a cell phone. It was like a transponder that would do the numbers. Okay. Yeah, something like the beeps on the, he had some way to get out on the phone and then go to,

we had us go two way with his, with his attorney, Don Grant, up in Fort Rotterdale. And Freddie Haddad was also his attorney. So Bobby starts telling me about the, they brought Benny down, they brought Ben down from Leavenworth. And, you know, I'm going to take it to the, they're going to try. charge me with the hit because when you back up when I read that article years before a still small voice had almost like whisper to my ear the holy ghost whisper to my ear Bobby did it as I'm telling you right now and when I read the article you know I'm reading

the article and I'm thinking just just for some reason I get this thought late model Lincoln Continental or whatever, you know, pulled up next to Don Erno, flagged him down his Mercedes, and got it right, got real close to him. I mean, as close as you and I are. See, that's how Bobby worked. You know, he was, he was not a, a pistilero like me and my kid brother. My mom could skip a tin can in mid-air with a 38. She, we're all rednecks raised out, out in Arizona, Texas. So anyway, I just had that thing, that thought, you know, just that this all of a sudden, came into my head, Bobby. Why? I just never, never really thought about it after that much until years later, I'm home and, and, you know, mom says, Bobby's on the phone. Then he starts telling me

they indicted him on the murder. And then it all, I flashed, flashback, and I thought, holy smoke. And I just started, you know, I thought about that, that thought that I'd had years before. So he's telling me they're going to take him, they're going to give him the chair, they're going to do this, through that little did I know that the state of Florida flipped him and he flipped on Ben Kramer whom they brought down okay but the bottom line

is Ben Kramer contrary to public knowledge Ben Kramer never was not a killer he had nothing to do with the Don Aaron O murder right but Ben Kramer was a huge importer or smuggler of marijuana and he was looking he had already gotten like what

like a life sentence? Yeah life sentence right yeah so Bobby blamed the said that that uh that ben kramer had hired him to to uh to kill aeranos but that's not the case it's not the case right and uh i had i had discovery and under the federal indictment um that you know that bobby uh essentially had told he told he he he hoodwinked the state of florida and he also hoodwink the feds and the feds ran with it And it was all bullshit. See, he ran with that narrative that Ben Kramer had hired Bobby to kill him.

But why did Bobby kill him? An individual whom I won't name was approached by the Colombians who's extremely, extremely close to me, whom I loved very much, had finally let me know a while back, listen, this is what really went down. They came to me. And they says, your friend tried to rip us off for a couple hundred keys. Right. We found out he was lying to us.

Now, we're going to kill him. You mean Aaronos? Bobby Young. Bobby Young. Okay. We're going to kill him. Here's the deal. Some of our boats are getting interdicted on the high seas coming in, coming in from the Bahamas.

This guy that we want him to kill has been, he's the bow builder, and he's glassing in transponders into the boats. and so the coast guard can grab them yes so um there you there you have it uh they said here's the deal we're going to wash the 200 keys we're going to give him a quarter of a million not the 60,000 that allegedly Benny had given Bobby to kill erano we're going to give him a quarter million we're going to wash the 200 keys and he's going to kill erano otherwise we're going to kill your friend and my and this individual that I'm that I'm referring to was was incarcerated at the time so he had to reach out and uh to Bobby and say this is what you got to do right otherwise you're dead and uh you know and then Bobby waited on Aaronos and killed him he killed

Arano yeah otherwise the Colombians were going to kill him so well and this is this is public knowledge the thing that you know like you and i both know that thing that irks me is that the state of florida and the feds ran with that with that bologna and put it out there as uh as uh you know as gospel and like it was etched in stone well and there's that the book uh speed kills and then they turned that into a movie with uh john travolta yeah right which was all uh they they brought in some actor and and and and erano had nothing to do with mire lanski any of that any of that

that that that that that that that that that that's that they were kind of run by the general public that's Hollywood yeah so uh fake ass so anyway uh bottom line

there you go and that's that's that's that's that's the that's the arino murder and you know and and uh bobby was never hired by then well Bobby goes to Bobby goes to prison

and at this point your your your mom's not doing rail right like your mom passes away she's uh yeah in 84 she died uh the emphysema so how old was she 56 56 um man that's young to die yeah you know we are we were very close with sam the plumber to cavalcante that's the that's the he's the mafioso he had his own crew that they modeled the sopranos after and sam and i were having dinner just alone one night and i says uh how was it you got you He was in his 70s. You're smoking.

He was sitting there at a steakhouse. We were off this cane Boulevard. And we, he says, come on, come on, Mikey. Let's go have dinner. So I'm over there. We're talking. I says, how is it? You're smoking.

And mom, you know, I said, and you got emphysema. He goes, your mother's got the worst kind. He says, she's got the, you know, she's got the real bad emphysema. And I'm mine, you know, I can still, I still smoke and stuff like that. So there were several different types. with emphysema that mom just had my grandfather died of it he was like he was a copper miner in arizona he died of it so the male clinic had told mom she spent a lot of money too with the male clinic right going back and forth up there they had told her that it was hereditary

so well so she so she passes away and bobby gets out of prison but by but you're not doing anything at this point you're you're you've completely when i got out in 89 i was I got a job you know when I came home mom goes it's not like the old days you gotta get

you're gonna have to get a job right and I looked out and I said what you're like working she goes pretty much so I go okay so

I got a little a little apartment on the ocean and turned around and for the time being I got a job bouncing at a nightclub pretty famous nightclub

and North Miami Beach called facade right and uh i went to work you know a tuxedo but it was it was pretty crazy you know working there okay okay so as a bouncer right well okay when i when we're locked up and i don't know where it is in the in the story but i want to mention this one story um i almost really want to mention it for colby's benefit um so you so i'm writing this story i'm gonna tell you i'm writing this story right and I'm sure I'm sure I'll fuck it up but I'm writing this story

and Mike's telling me about how he's being trained by who was the boxer that was training you well I came home in 83 in the federal prison camp you know we were I still had a lot of the the steroids the residual uh

steroids in my system so I went in there and there's a guy you know I had to sell surrender so for the 90 days that judge compels gave me to clean up my fares before my aunt dropped me off in the uh the in safford arizona you know i pretty much partied for 90 days i just stopped going to my my the individual that owned gold's gym no no this was in miami i'm talking about the time you're parking your your jaguar and these guys drive by who was that who was yeah sorry that was there was some you were training with some boxer or something what was it

Let's back up. I came home in 83 from the federal prison camp. Right. Dougie got on the boat. Castro grabs him. And I am introduced to Tony Aiello, who was a lightweight champion, or a golden gloves, undefeated. And he lived in North Bay Village, and we became through another individual that was a hairdresser. Anthony was a hairdresser.

Right. He also fought. He was Italian from New Jersey. And we became very close. And I met a lot of great fighters to him. I mean, National and Golden Gloves champions. And we are all a little tight-knit group that lived, you know, we eventually, my mom, I wasn't living at home too much anymore. Me and Anthony were training every week.

Every day sometimes. We were running five miles and 30 minutes. So Anthony takes me under his wing and he starts to train me. Right. So I already knew how to fight. But he really honed my skills. So Mike's parking his, his Jaguar one day. And this fucking, like a four by four with like three guys in it drive by.

There was a dump truck. It was a dump truck? I thought it was a pickup truck. This Kane Boulevard at a mall right there across the Keystone Point Marina. And it was called, there was a Kenny Rogers had come out with a rotisserie chicken. He was the first one called, called cluckers. They were good, though. Yeah, yeah.

I got the worst food poisoning in my entire life twice from Kenny Rogers. Really? They were, I thought they were great. I thought they were great. Yeah, yeah. So, I would like to grab Katie Rogers by his beard and shake him a little bit. But anyway, I almost died when the second about a food poisoning got from that chicken. So there was another one that came out called cluckers.

and it was there and I had a good close friend of mine named Ross that had gotten busted cold and bossed with 80 keys when I was he was a valet parker when I got out of the federal prison the prison camp in 83 and he used to watch

me and mom and Doug pull up to the valet at the place for steak and he really got close to us because after hours we would go to a lot there were a lot of gyp joints up and down that up and down that he called it Gangster Row on 79th Street right there going from Biscayne Boulevard over two bridges and into Normandy Island.

That little area right there on the Kennedy Causeway had a bunch of real fancy nightclubs and restaurants and Ricky Carverro and a lot of those guys, they all frequent in that whole area for years. So, you know, that's where I met Ross. So Ross, when I got locked up, Ross went to... But I got, you know, became partners with some Colombians, and they owned a restaurant in Normandy Island, and Ross got a bused for 80 keys. So fast forward, Ross calls me up and says, let's have lunch.

After I got out in 89, let's say, when I was still a bouncer at Facade, I got out in 89, he goes, meet me over here at, at, it was the Piccadilly. Right. It was, and, but next door to Cluckers. So I said, okay. So I drove over there, and I'm back in the jagging because it was a European 12-cylinder, and it was really, you know, the air dam was so low. You couldn't get a pack of cigarettes under the air dams.

So I always backed it in. These guys came whipping around the corner in a dump truck and, you know, got a little close to me going too fast in that parking area. And I kind of put my hand out, and one of them flipped me, gave me the gesture with his middle fingers. So Ross was come walking up. I backed a car, and they parked down, you know, six or six or six. seven cars down or further where they could get that dump truck and they came walking up three of them and uh i've been partying the night before a little hung over and i and i stepped to him say hey man what's up with the uh you know who you flipping a bird at right and the guy goes hey listen man

blah blah blah one thing led to another and they kind of surrounded me and words were exchanged ross came up ross is no father but he was about six foot six right and he's standing in there practically an albino and then one thing led to another and i figured they were all going to try you got three of them and there's just one of me so i knocked out shorthy on my right and then the other two tried to jump me and i banged them up one pulled a knife i took it away from him banged him up a little bit and ross in the meantime just running around you know he's just yeasting up the whole situation and the one i knocked out another individual and then the third one he ran the piccadilly and i chased him in there I just, you know, by this time, I'm a little incensed.

Right. And then by that time, I ran in there, I caught him in there, and I knocked him out in front of about, I knocked one of his teeth into a bowl of lentil soup where there was a, there was six or seven Jewish yentils sitting at a table, and they're screaming, oh, they, and the general manager of the restaurants, you know, they watched the whole, the place was packed, but there's an undercover North Miami detective there. but he didn't do a thing he just came out

he didn't get involved at all so I walked Ross ran in and says Mike I heard sirens so I headed back out towards the car and I said I'm out of here and Ross says I'm on a million dollar bond please Mike I'll talk to the cops and they

Ross taught me into $220,000 bonds so when they they took me to jail two counts of aggravated battery and when I got down there I called mom she came and got the car and then she says the bonds coming down there give him the watch so I so I flipped him the president the role I flipped

in the Rolex and then he just bonded me out and that's all right so he tells me this story right that was a longer version but exactly the story that I you know that the part that got me was three guys come up to you on the fucking street on the sidewalk in the park lot you smash three guys chase one of them into the Piccadilly that's when he pulled the nine knife on you, took the knife away from him. Outside of the parking lot, he pulled the knife. Oh, okay. I think in the book I wrote that he had pulled the knife inside. But anyway, he takes the knife

away from him, smashes him in the face, right? The cops arrest him, take him away. And I remember when I heard the story, not that this is the most ridiculous story. Like, out of all of them, there's tons of stories that are just like, that's just insane. That couldn't have happened. But I read this, I mean, like, I'm sitting

there, I'm like, did he just say he beat up three guys on the fucking that came up to him? And I thought, Man, that's, that's, you know, this is, it's, come on, stop it, bro. Like, this is a, it's like a Clint Eastwood movie, an old, not the old, not old man Clint East when he was young, when he was in his 30s doing these things. Like, and I thought that, there's no way. But I ordered the Freedom of Information Act.

And as soon as I had written that, and I was right, still writing the story, within a week, I get the Freedom of Information Act. And there's the report on the three guys that approach him that he gets into a fight with. And there's a. attached to it is a transcript of a hearing where it's your lawyer is deposing one of the guys. Well, he did depositions and all of them. Okay. Well, I remember reading the one where the guy, the guy, because I remember what the guy says.

My attorney says to him, he says, Billy Thomas. In fact, you know who gave me Billy Thomas, Bobby, when Bobby was still in day county jail under the Aerono indictment. Okay. He says, get with this guy here. This Billy Thomas. I said, okay. And then, not to get off on a tangent. So Billy close me his fee.

And I think it's like 5Gs. And he already knew. He had an idea. So it wasn't more. My good brother for 20 years and one of my, my brother, my best friend, Nick Katrown, who was the son of Vic Katron, from the Katron crime family in a Montreal and his uncle Frank took over to business and you see a lot of this on a lot of these documentaries the uh the sicilians that came in the katron the katroni crime family and me and nicky

nicky was introduced to me when i came home from the federal prison camp in 83 nicky takes me to see jeff weiner who was a big drug attorney and jeff wanted 20 gs and says okay and you know so i went back to billy thomas and told him yeah you i want to see that nicky took me just to get a opinion in 20 g so billy thomas jacked up his fee but to make a long story short so billy had taken depositions from all these guys and they go they thought they had somehow misconstrued that ross six foot six albino was me or they said the guy so their their their descriptions of the of the defendant were erroneous number two um he had admits to my attorney he admits to billy but billy goes you pull the knife of my client and uh he goes

yeah he clocked me he he clocked the one kid first and then he goes there's three of you and one of him and you pull it and so he says yeah he he he snatched my knife right out of my hand then he then he knocked my teeth out yeah that's that's how so i read the whole transcript and it is there's three of them they approach him there's a fight he hits the one guy one guy runs away. Another guy runs away. Mike chases him into the piccadilly. And then I'm reading the whole thing. And I remember reading the whole thing. I'm like, okay, so that did happen. Like this is, obviously this happened. And in the very end, I'm like, it doesn't say anything about him. His teeth getting knocked out. And then at the very last thing is his lawyer says, do you regret approaching Mr.

Hudson? And he goes, he says, of course I do. I'd still have my two front teeth if I hadn't approached him. And I was like, oh my God. His front teeth did get knocked out. But it was like the last intense. One of them landed in a bowl. It was kind of when I hit him with the last shot and knocked him out. Oh, the one guy that was still, there was two knocked out in a park lot.

One of them got up, the bigger one. And he ran in and jumped on my back when I was, when I had already stepped to the other guy, the guy that ran in. And I pulled him over my back like a little superhuman. It's adrenaline. I drug him over my back and knocked him out again. And then the other guy was hanging. hanging on there's a there's a there's a chrome rail that runs through there you go through a turn

style it's a it's a it's like a smorgas board you get a ticket right and but it's high end you know Piccadilly and I remember hitting him with that last shot and something in my peripheral vision you know and in an elliptical path and I kind of in my peripheral vision it's like a plop noise plop and it's his tooth it went right into a Jewish leg she had her hair up up high in a in a high pyramid with a bunch of gold pins in it and she screams oy they and the rest of them scream right or rest of the jewish ladies scream oi they and so about that time i hear the ross runs in ross is standing behind me he would yeast he was yeasting the whole thing up and then uh but ross couldn't fight a lick so he goes

i hear the sirens and i know when i was an outlaw biker that was the many fights i got to my got to my harley and got to my hog my chopper and cranked it over no lights and took off every time. Well, guess what? This time I'm heading, you know, I'm heading towards the JAG and Ross is behind me crying about his million-dollar bond I'll talk to the cops. And I actually got cut with that knife.

So I'm showing the cop, the knife, or the cops got the knife, and I'm going, with the right hands, that can just, that can sever your juggler. You're carotid. I says, what are you talking about? He goes, yeah, but they're pretty messed up bad. Because I'm sorry,

Yeah, but I'm going to have to charge you with aggravated battery. So, there you go. Then the cop, I saw him when I became a roofing contractor. I saw him years later. Did a lot of North Miami police officers. A few of them, the roofs. He's telling me, I'd see him at a bar. I feel real bad about arresting you.

Oh, it's a little late now. So. So you come back. You've got, your mom says you got to get a job. You end up becoming a roofing contractor, right? Well, in order. the state of Florida tried to give me seven years

for the aggravated battery. Okay. Mom's going, you're going to prison. Now, this time she's pretty sick. We sold the house in the ocean. Now we're over here at another property. You're going to prison for seven years for a fight.

I go, mom, they're looking up my prior, my prior, you know, and I've only been out. So that's essentially what they're the state of Florida is trying to run. The prosecutor's name was Garcia. And Billy kept putting it off. He kept getting a continuous, getting the continuance.

And in the meantime, I'm, you know, pretty much just on the street. I'm on bond. So, you know, I'm waiting for, you know, things to pan out. We're going to see what's going to happen. And Bobby's calling all the time. What's going on with the aggregate battery, blah. So I'm saying, we're just got to wait and see how, how, Bobby or how Billy Thomas handles it.

So Billy Thomas had on the depositions had said, you know, you pulled a knife of my client and the guy goes, yeah, man, he clocked me and he took my, he knocked my teeth out or whatever. Every time I would go to court, they were, all three of them were there. And one of them raised his hand in the, in court and asked the judge, Your Honor, can I, can we, can part of the plea agreement, can we make sure that he can't work out with weights and prison and I'm looking over at this guy and I'm kind of smirking at him and so finally judge Catherine Pooler 1992 we go to court and Bobby's sitting in there and I had I knew a when we initially got indicted on the the the the um when when Janet Reno prosecuted me in

84 and I wound up I met Cuban at a Colombian and the Colombian Richard Carrero he killed a few guys on a drug shootout and then Tito had killed

a kid and his girlfriend over two keys. He was Cuban. But they all got saved at the same time. All of us. So we wound up together in Baker Correctional.

And Tito and Richard introduced me to a lady named Judy who's with the vineyard ministry. So she started giving me some certain scriptures and like a psalm that I would memorize so I remember reading the sitting there reading I had a little Christian life new test I'm just reading it and I started going to a church called Trinity down the street from the other property

mama so I'm sitting there Billy Thomas walks up to me and this courtroom's crowd he leans over he goes oh hold on a second I'm going to pull a sidebar so he goes up there and I see him go up with that Cuban prosecutor Garcia and there's top And I hear them, then I say, I hear the, they're getting a little louder with each other. And finally my attorney, you can hear them. And then finally my attorney goes, Your Honor, it got three guys against my client. He admits it a deposition to pull a knife on my client. There's three of them and one of him.

He looks at Garcia and he goes, I got a, he says, number one, there's three of them. number two, he admits to pull a knife in the deposition. Number three, I got a classic self-defense case here. I'm going to trial. And I get the butterflies. Oh, you know, because trials we want to try to avoid.

Right. Because if I get convicted, the seven-year plea offer is out the window. As you well know. Yeah. I'm thinking, oh, man, how much time aggravated battery in the state of Florida carries a life top? It can carry 15 to life. Or,

more. I think it's a lifetop where it carries 15 to some ungodly top like 40 or 50 years. So I turn around and I'm sitting there and then immediately, excuse my French, but Garcia bitched up

quick. He looks at the judge pooler. She's looking at him like this and she's kind of smirking at him going, well, counselor and he looks over at Billy and he goes and he looks at Billy and like rapid staccato all. almost like, at first it was like Spanish, I thought.

And then he goes, will your client do 365 days in the county jail work release? And Billy walks back to me and he says, I go, what do he say? He goes, will you do 364 days on county jail work release? Right. That way you don't get any good time, right? Well, no. That way you don't go to the state penitentiary. You do work release in North Miami at a little work release.

thing they've got there for a whole year do you get good time you don't you don't get good time you've got a year okay okay so that's what i pled to i pled to i pled to the two counts of aggravated battery i walked up there judge pooler goes you report back here for sentencing in 90 days whatever the date was she says mr hudson if you don't show up i'm going to reinstate the plea the seven years plus more for contempt if you don't show up here for the set she goes you you're pleading to the two counts of aggravated battery the sentence was is known in the state of florida as a mitigated sentence the sentence was mitigated from the seven year original offer by the state of florida to 364 days in county jail day county jail work release so i got a job i had to get a job

be on work release right so that's when mom called me You know, I went back, I'm living with mom again. I went, we're at home. She says, I got a call from Tony Spurdy. Tony Spurdy was a famous Gambino soldier. He killed Tommy Altamure and the place for steak 25, almost 30 years before. He's a soldier in the Gambino family. He comes to, he's working for Bob Shepherd at Robert Truffing in Opelaca.

He met Bob at the Pompano Beach Halfway House when they got out of state prison. Tony Spurdy did 25 years. He's the mechanic at all the machine. the blowers and all this stuff, the motors that run the hot tar, the kettles and everything, and the machine, you know, the outboard motors that pump the hot to the roof.

He calls mom and tells her, yeah, tell a Mike to come down here on Monday, and Bob Shepard will give him a job. So I go down there, and I got hired by Robert Shoeffing. So that's what I, and so six months later, almost eight months later, Hurricane Andrew hit.

So everybody in that halfway house that I was at, pretty nice place. You know, you're on a lake, you got a color TV, air condition, Hurricane Andrew hit while I was in there. We went outside on State Road 9, it's right there. We cleaned up all those trees that fell down across State Road 9, chopped them up with saws. And then one day they called us in there and they said, hey, you guys are getting, your sentences are commuted for helping out after Andrew. Andrew was such a bad debacle in Miami.

You're getting your sentences commuted. Whatever you got, that's it. So I did six months. Okay. And I walked and I walked. And then you started roofing. I kept working for Roberts. And Matthew, I worked for another seven years for at least 25 or maybe 30 roofing companies

all over Broward and Day County before at mom died in 94 and I had to finalize the estate from the uh the essentially from the um the the scrub that she allowed to become the the uh executive of the estate fought her for for for at least three years but I only got the house and everything me and Doug divided up the property and then I I mortgaged out the house and became a subcontractor for a big contractor down in South Miami in Kendall named Terry Allen, his super. And then I went and applied the state of Florida

for, you know, to take the exam. But I had to go to a construction college. So that's what I did. I went to a construction college in Naples and took the exam about four or five months later and passed the test, which is extremely, extremely difficult. difficult. The state certified contractor was all calculations and formulas and negative pressures and aerodynamic multipliers. And so anyway, how long did you do that?

From 99, late 98, 99, I got the license until 06 when the feds picked me up in my, at the, that $2 million, five acre of state at least with an option in Southwest ranches. with Bobby when but I got into debt so bad right that's why I got back in the boat with Bobby because the creditors were coming after me for half a million so Bobby was released from Florida State Prison for the

Aronaut murder and the first person he comes to look up as you from the feds from the feds sorry he was in Coleman where we were oh yeah he was he was he was when they let Doug go from Louisiana the Doug did got 20 year sentence

in Louisiana he did 10 of that For the bank robberies And the shootout Yeah, no He got He did the Louisiana prison time For the shootout See

Then they indicted the feds Took him up to Baker County Where I was at And they indicted him for the bank robberies Okay So Doug pled to the bank robberies And they ran them consecutive He did 10 years for the

Doug did 10 years In Hunts correctional in Louisiana Then the feds came And picked him up So he could do his feds time for the bank robberies and they sent Doug to Coleman and Bobby was in Coleman and that's where they put together the you know the um Aaron has murder well Aaron was all no no Aaron oh that was years before I I'm sorry they put together the uh Bobby getting out smuggling operate is yeah that

get Mike but we yeah Mike but get Mike we got to have you know so Bobby gets out he comes to you because out of federal prison it comes to you 89 89 says listen i'm going to buy a boat i'm going to i want to start bringing in coke from the columbians are going to buy the boat we're going to have to go down there and check out the boat find the right one he took the younger brother of the jumper with him okay and they checked out the checked out the uh a 60 foot sailboat um and a few boats but they they picked that one. The trimaran, and that's, and they went, you know, went down there and the

Columbia's, paid for everything. And, you know, the first load, the Columbia's would take a percentage of what we, of what we owed on the boat from the back end of the, when they paid us for the, you know, so that's it. And so you'd bring in the load and then whatever, you know, whatever, whatever they paid us, they would take a percentage out of that. so ended up Bobby, you know, had married that stripper from pure platinum. Right.

But that's how the, you know, the ex-hooker girlfriend found out about that that had probably thrown him quite a bit of money while he was locked up. And then he dumped her and married the stripper. And so she got jealous. And according to my attorney, in the federal indictment, she had found out where he lived and gave him up. Let him know. let the feds know where he was living.

This is when he jumped parole in Albuquerque. Right. Yeah, because when Bobby got released, he had hepatitis so bad. They thought he was going to die of it. So they left him alone. He got paroled to Albuquerque. And, you know, that's when he realized he thought he had hoodwinked the parole system. He flew straight to Fort Laudan and came to my front door and said he needed to borrow $50,000.

I said, I don't have it. It's all wrapped up in the house of the property. you know i had i had another house another property at my mom own had a pool you know and he came pulled up and i'm out there by this time i got i got a state roofing certification he's looking at all the all the jag was in the driveway he's looking at the uh you know the brand new dodge four-wheel drives and you know and all this kind of stuff and you know with the roofing company on the logo on the side of the truck and what's going on here i said i got a state license and he needed 50 gs he says i'm flying to cal he's he's i'm flying to cal he

in a couple of days me and Sarah I go who's Sarah he goes that's a girl I met I don't know he did the stripper yeah

and uh anyway so that was it they flew down to Cali and put it together and then you guys start they got financed by the Colombians

and you guys start you start bringing in the boats right uh capping the um the loads that are coming coming in and out

how long is that go on We're going down to the Caribbean. It went, you know, like probably a better part of a year, a year and a half. And then that's it. They, you know, Bobby, during the interim, Bobby, you know, when you make that kind of money, Bob, I threw some at my roofing guy, I moved out of there, moving to her, you know, so I had five properties. So I sold, you know, then we went into a, in 01,

they grabbed Bobby. Bobby got wind that the apparently the ex-hooker girlfriend, whatever she was, this Kathleen Kunzig as she had informed, she had found out

she had informed the Albuquerque federal probation office, United States federal court there, that Bobby was not you know as sick as he

made out and that he was now in Fort Lauderdale or somehow they got wind that according to my attorney that Bobby was now in Miami and then of course Bobby had rented a million dollar home up in Fort Lauderdale well on a on a canal where we could bring the boats in and dock them right there so so we you know that house was rented and she found out the load she She was trying to, little did he know, that the feds were now, his probation officer wanted him to come in. And he didn't. And they put a warrant out for his arrest. And while I'm, and I took up with a Cuban girl, the beautiful girl that was a hairdresser.

And we were in Tampa. In fact, we came to a Tampa on a big hairdresser thing for three days in the convention center up here or something like that. and it was a they would show you back and forth to the airport and I call Bobby say what's going on everything okay and not really uh what do you mean he was doing so much coke right and bringing in four or five strippers every other night and dropping 20,000 a week on on the hookers that uh yeah and um he's uh he's he's getting a little paranoid and a couple of times. He's getting so high in the Coke. He's running around the house with a couple of nine millimeters. Well, this happened on two or three different occasions. And one of the occasions, I'm at a

club by the old Fort Apache Marina one night, and I get a call from the stripper wife. She says, you got to come up here. There's two or three girls in the downstairs of a bedroom that are locked themselves in. He scared him to death. He's running around the house naked with two, nine millimeters you got to come up there so i came up there and went upstairs to the loft bedroom and disarmed him god he says is that you i go it's me bro give me the gun 380 and then uh they had a balcony so apparently he's he's having a paranoid delusion that it's like uh like scarface they're throwing a grappling hook up on the balcony rail and they're coming up so i crank a couple of rounds through the curtain alongside the the sliding door and he goes did you get him i said i got him

I said, I said, stay here. We're going to be and Sarah will get rid of the bodies. So we make a long story short, about 35, 40 minutes, he's in there so high at Coke. And I come back,

it's close and clear. He goes, what did you do with the buys? I put him in my truck. I says, come on out. And I went to Sarah. I said, get every Class A narc you've got in here.

Everything you've got. Every Xanax, you know, Roofie, whatever you've got. And we, I pumped him with 10 of them and put him down. Well, you see, and bottom line is she called me the next day.

He goes, can you believe he got up the next morning? I said, he should have been to sleep for two days, at least passed out for two days. So this goes on and on. So when I'm up there with Anna at the hair thing, in the convention center, I call him from the shuttle, and he goes, I got everything okay, no, not really.

I thought somebody was outside last night, so I ran outside and, you know some things happened and uh come to find out the things that happened he ran out there butt naked with two nines and cranked him off in that neighborhood as you got further down the street the homes were going for three or four million apiece on that canal that house he was only a million two million dollar home he banged he goes to a dentist's door bangs on the door butt naked the dentist he says who's out there he says uh it's it's he helped me help me i live down the the street, opens the door, and he's already cranked off both clips, and the dentist calls the cops.

The cops come, and the stripper wife goes out and says, we own a charter business down to Caribbean, and we go down there, and we're gone for 35 or 40 or two months, how many, every many days we're down there, and we think somebody's been trying to break in, and the cops go, okay, they took the pistols and let Bobby go. and that weekend him and Sarah moved out of the whole house he moved into the embassy suites

and Sarah went back to her moms the cops printed the pistols and got the prints and found out who he was Robert Samuel Young jumped parole in Albuquerque, New Mexico so now he's got a warrant

so and we continued to bring you know we continued to do what we're doing yeah yeah and that's it and so they so he moved so we went we went to guatemala with a almost two million on the boat to put into a bank into the bank of de guatemala and he had a tax attorney set it up and paid him $40,000 and it was all it was all bullshit they took the we went down there took the boat down there hired an hired another captain out of the Caribbean out of the virgin islands to take the boat

down there went down there and wait can I stop for a second when he says he paid so Bobby paid he paid somebody an accountant a tax attorney a tax attorney he paid him 40 grand to set it up so that he could take cash into a bank in Guatemala and deposit it like hey you know we're going to bring it but don't worry I got a guy give me 40 grand I've set it all up for you you can go down there with the cash

but it's bullshit he just took the 40 grand he never called he didn't know anybody in the bank so then Bobby tries to go in with the money sorry or we flew down there and the captain the the the uh we hired a charter boat captain out of the virgin ions flew him in he took the boat down to guatemala bobby and i flew down on american airlines what year is this uh 2000 uh 2001 yeah 9-11 yeah so about two weeks before 9-11 three weeks something like two weeks before it we got down there and the The boat was at a marina on the Pacific side of Guatemala, so we had to take, we had to, we were at the, we were at the intercontinental hotel in suites. Each of us had a private, Bobby and Sarah, and then I had a suite, my own suite, went upstairs and went to the roof.

And, you know, the helicopter came in, picked us up and flew us over to the boat. We took about 400,000 cash off the boat and brought it back. So I put maybe 250,000 in my safe in my suite, excuse me. And then he says, oh, we're going to go to Banco to Guatemala tomorrow. With the tax attorney, set it up, we're going to go down there, and we're going to deposit the money. And so we sat down there in a little cafeteria having a cafe connecheon, and I had a, I'll never forget, I had Rancho, Wavels, Rancheros, right?

And Bobby's sitting there eating and picking it something that he ordered. I'm eating breakfast because I'm hitting the gym pretty hard. and she goes up there with the 400,000 and then walks in there and the vice president of the Banco de Guatemala tells Sarah, Signora, you cannot bring these kind of money into these country.

You have to wait here. I have to go get the Presidente and the security. So we had her own cell phones in Guatemala City. We had her own cell phones when we got down there. Plus we had a sat phone. So she called him

and he's screaming her at the top of zons get your ass out of there and get down here right now called a cab she barely made it out she came down it looked like almost like a courthouse that's what their banks look like like a courthouse right crannulated steps going up to the uh portico with columns and banko de guatemala she came down there we jumped in the cab and we went to another hotel immediately and uh that was it flew the money back and put it on the boat and sent the boat back across the Caribbean all the way to the island of St. Vincent. And we were bumped by, then 9-11 hit because I remember being, we were going, we're going out and partying at night and, you know, drinking a little bit, but eating real good, don't drink to water.

We both got real sick there twice. Yeah. Diss and Terry. And they had a, the concierge at the hotel, you'd call them, up now. They'd send up the doctor and she'd give me a shot. Whatever it was, she gave me, I was good in four hours, five hours. So, uh, American Airlines bumped us. Then I'm laying there one morning out on mute. I'm watching the two towers. I watch the one tower's burning. I

watching the plane flying to the second one. And I'm looking at this. And I'm thinking, you know, and I turn up the volume and, you know, New York City. this is the second plane second tower is just a plane is flown to the second side I ran down the hallway and banged down his door and woke him up and said you better turn on CNN so we got bumped by American Airlines

for what six it was six weeks we were down there yeah because of the curfew so we had so he Bobby goes you got to get us we got to get out of here so we turned around and I contacted hoppage jet in Fort Lauda when they lifted the curtain and I said you got three Americans

down here in Guatemala City, can you come get us? He goes, we got one small leer left. The rest of them are out. He goes, you got the same problem, some other people that we, you know, that we're going to pick up have. He goes, where are you, Guatemala City? He goes, I'll be there at 745 tomorrow. How much?

10,000. So I came down there and gave him 10 grand. They picked us up the next morning, 745, and flew us into Fort Lauderdale. and that was October they see 9-11 or not 9-11 but yeah 9-11 right September 11th we got in there in the early second week of October they had Bobby on the end of October right after Halloween they grabbed Bobby or before Halloween they grabbed him they came in the house that that I leased up there in Fort Lauderdale up there in a lighthouse point

a pump lighthouse a pomp at least the property for for bobby how did you find out that he got caught I was going out with a girl named Michelle by then who had met at a roofing company the second roofing company I'd worked for and what a beauty she was

but anyway Michelle a little crazy but and I called she you know I was roofing pretty hard and I was getting some pains in my, you know, running down the back of my tricep and, you know, thumbs and forefingers and the thumbs were getting a little numb. So it was like a pinched nerve in my neck. So she sent me to a neurologist.

And I went to this on Sterling Road in Fort Lauderdale. And while I'm sitting there in his office, he leads, and I get a call. And it's the stripper, the wife. She says the FBI, the DEA, the United States Marshals, ATF, they came in every window of the house. This is a $4 million home right there on the edge of the canal, right there on the water with about 350 feet of docks base. Okay. And we had a grab them, right? Grabbed him, grabbed Sarah.

And the rest is history. He started giving it up immediately. He started, yeah, he started snitching right there from Jump Street. and I figured when I walked out to the park and I said, why are you calling me myself? That's the first thing I asked her. So I called Michelle and said, go to the, call the Hyatt Regency.

Here's my credit card number. Call the Hyatt Regency and Dave who were going to the Hilton. I says, we're going to get a room into Hilton for three or four days. Why, Michael? I said, just do it. So she took the credit card number, reserved me a room. I went back to the house, got the German Shepherds, took him to Knowles Animal Clinic, grabbed all the cash out of the safe, grabbed the gun safe, took all the weapons and all my,

the heavy weapons, especially, and took him to a buddy's house, and we put him in his attic, and I took everything else to the safety deposit box in the bank in North Miami. And then grabbed Michelle, or she met me up there, and then we stayed up at the Hilton for five days. And I waited and I called my neighbor. When I go out in the boat, my neighbor was a Cuban named George. And he would come over and feed the cat. He had a key to the house. And I always had a key.

I said, go over and get the mail. He goes, oh, Mike, you would think I was roofing out of state or something. And George would, you know, I would call him up and say, anything going on. See, he goes, no, why? I go, well, look. I see, if you see any cars or anything, call me in my cell. You see any cars pull up in the driveway. Because I moved both trucks.

I moved everything, the jag, everything moved. I moved it that afternoon. And I took them to the church and parted the church part. So then I turned around with big, you know, right there on the big church, Trinity. So I turned around and then I moved them later. But, you know, I went to the Hilton and stayed with Michelle and waited. And where they grab you? they uh they they didn't i waited three four or five days and then the other next door neighbor

on the right side she was the mother of the kid that was with bobby when they were in prison in cuba okay and the oldest son was the one that got lost in hurricane david okay so i they had another son who was a crackhead he'd been a big smuggler too but he lost everything and he got on crack. So, you know, I called, I called over there and asked him, hey, see anything weird going on? And he goes, what do you mean, man? What, what, like? He, he snapped to it immediately. I said, see any, uh, anything looks like any unmarked cars or anything like that? He says, no, nothing. So we waited three or four days. I finally went back home. When I went back to the house and I had my, the foreman of my two crews, they were running the roofs and everything. I went back to the

house and had the call identifier back then and hit it. And the first message I got, and the first message I got, It said right there. It was so long, it couldn't even fill up the identifier. It said, Federal Bureau of. And I went, holy mackerel. What? And then I tried to call the number back. This number cannot be called back.

You cannot call this number. And that was it. And I realized he had called me from the Federal Bureau of the FBI office. He called me from there. So that was it. Dougie had gotten in touch with me, and I let him know, Bobby got busted, you know. So that was it. Doug, Doug said, don't answer any of his mail.

I said, I don't intend to. He says, if you writes you a letter, something's not right. And he started writing me a bunch of letters. Want me to go down to the Caribbean, you want him to go grab, go over here. He had close to 20 million, 15 million maybe, I don't know, it was scattered around. but I don't know and wanted me to go down to the Caribbean to a certain island and grab one of the boats move that boat do this do that and he's writing me all these letters and I know that they're reading his mail and I know that the phones are tapped right so from there I froze on him you know and

Hurricane Wilma hit two years later and I and I and I did millions I did millions when Wilma hit And then Bobby, Bobby was locked up and he found out about it. He started sniffing around because Sarah's, the stripper's parents called me. So they wanted to, they called me on several different occasions. And I'm thinking something's not right. They're fishing for him. He's wanting to know once he found out that, you know, what he did was, essentially he turned around and just gave everybody up on the house just out of spite.

Because he was locked up and nobody else was. that's what that's the word that I got right you know from the attorney well when did you get arrested well I got arrested before the statute of limitations ran out what was it five years five years November 7th election day 2006 South by this time I was in I was in Southwest ranches you know what was the what was the what was the amount of the indictment was the the dollar amount was like it was outrageous it was well yeah they mean they you know what they do they add them all up they they they uh they cut it 50 times the feds and then they they multiply it times the amount of grams and a kilo ghost dope right ghost dope yeah so it's some ungodly amount

it's like 45 million or something or oh more that was just the amount that was the amount of money that they never recovered in u.s funds that they thought indictments 45 says like 45 million or something it's out it's a fucking ridiculous yeah but they they were talking uh You know, when I'm reading, when the younger clacker, I'm getting the discovery from the attorney. When I'm reading that, it's, I'm looking at it. It's got to be a typo, 22,000 kilos. So I'm reading the indictment. And I ended up pleading to the last boatload.

So, you know, it was a total of the 2,270 keys. But there was no immaterial of, you know, how many. Loads were brought in the feds are usually they're they're all an individual account they will have you plead guilty to one count right is that that was part of their deal so it was 45.5 million dollars of cocaine imported of a controlled substance into the United States damn um so you know uh yeah what they didn't have a gram of right they never had a grant they listen they didn't have have anything but an informant right that's all they had uh based on uncorroborated hearsay testimony with no evidence this is what this is our this is our our american taxpayer dollars hard at work well so they grab you you don't go to you can't go to trial because of course not you've got you're going to have bobby's going to testify and then they then my attorney was was uh an With the first one, I cut him a check for five figures, Eddie O'Donnell.

He was the attorney that got famous under the 1980 Miami riot, the McDuffie case. He represented the cop that killed McDuffie, they killed the black guy on the motorcycle. I tried to run the police officer over. The police officer hip shot, one in a million shot, a head shot. And then that's when they rioted. When he got, when he, when Eddie represented him, Eddie O'Donnell. represented him and got him off and that's when they rioted in 1980 in Miami that was he was that was that was that's what catapulted him into the limelette Eddie O'Donnell so he represented me

initially before I wound up with another attorney for the plea so you took a plea for what I pled to a one count the one count I mean how much time oh I 17 years but they arm careered me right see they arm careered me on the guns and they careered me under the career offender act on the on the on the on the uh drugs with with uh that they didn't have a gram of see so they ran it the judge ran a concurrent he hated my case he looked at that uh at that bum pal the the the prosecutor he says you know this this defendant shouldn't even be in front of me i know all about your star witness see they use bobby to set up a high season interdictment and he tipped them off he got immunity he got immunity on seven or eight homicides going back to the late

70s or early 80s they gave him immunity on everything see there you see and i think about that benny kramer all all bullshit right right and now bobby thinks he's going to hoodwink the government again so he's going to set up a uh a boat to come in with what i don't know however many thousands of kilos on the boat, he's going to set that boat up, and then they're going to let him walk. Now, he's got the Hep C. He's not really showing any real signs or symptoms of like a relapse, but that's what killed him. See, the Hep C, because he never got out. So he turns around and has the stripper wife tip him off, according to my attorney. But the last attorney that I, you know, that I retained.

Charles Craig's Stella. So this is Stella. This bum turns around and tells me he knew all about the stripper wife tipping off the feds. And then he, or the hooker wife tipping off the feds, excuse me. And then that Bobby had had tipped off the Colombians that the federalities were waiting on them. So they never grabbed them. So their big newspaper, their front, their faces on the front of the newspaper. Never happened.

never happened so j robert accosta the united states attorney for the eleventh circuit that got deposed they got that had to step down because of the case with the child molester that had the island oh yeah yeah um epstein epstein he was the attorney that allowed him to walk from Jump Street years before and I forget what who appointed him. Did Obama appoint him? I don't know. Anyway, J. Robert Acosta was a United States attorney for the 11th Circuit

and he was the attorney at the time when this indictment came down and he went to Roger Powell and he goes, hey, what happened to the big indictment? I mean, the big high-season interdiction, we don't know. They went back in the phone taps, found out Sarah, instead of just going to a pay phone with $50 in quarter, she turns around and goes and calls him from the landline, which is tapped and says,

Daddy says, turn around. It's a setup, federalis. So they found out that she had, and so they jerked his immunity. So what did he get? He got a 5K1 and a Rule 35 that Freddie Hiddod worked out for him when he started crying about it,

because I got all the discovery from my attorney, and all the letters that he wrote the judge I did a good thing and all the about being a rap I did a good thing and and now I'm suffering for it and the government jerked my immunity your honor and

and wha wah wah and oh boohoo you know and so Freddie your dad got him and worked out to deal with the government will you give him a 5K1 or rule 35 and he gives up his wife and all of his friends there you go nobody was in yeah but he started i got the discovery he started snitching from jump street that

very day how much time did you do total 14 17 years i did 14 and a half 14 and a half went to the halfway house got out six years in georgia in the pen and uh you know got got moved from the low giero rocha and then uh um who knew bobby right you got moved from the low for went from the media went from the Georgia pen to Coleman. Yeah, from the pen to Coleman. Then you were at the low with me. Then I wrote this story. Then you got charged with inciting a riot.

With me and the Puerto Ricans. And this, yeah, this, this, this, this counselor, um, the day that that senator got shot, Scalia. And, uh, and I remember going, I worked at, uh, remember I had the job, um, A facility. Facilities. And we had fogs. We got sent back.

Fog count. I fell asleep. And... Fog count. Oh, my God. Then also I hear everybody talking about a shooting or something like Trump got shot. They shot Trump. They shot Trump.

And I wake up, you know, to go to the bathroom. When I look up, they go, yeah, Trump got shot. It was the senator at that ballgame. So I come back. I fall asleep. And then all of a sudden now they're making everybody go, all the Latinos go to the computers and then all of us American and the blacks and the whites, we go into the TV room and this counselor walks in with a big warden her chin and walks up and wakes

up and wakes me up. I don't even know her. She's on the other side of a seedorm upstairs and she wakes me up and says, you got to go into the TV room. So I'm walking down the, you know, I grabbed my chair and I'm walking down there. There was a young kid that was about three or four cubes down. And he goes, Mike, these feds, they're, what's going on? They are, he says they're, they're killing all the feds. So, yeah, I make a comment back to him. She turns around and runs to the war, I go in the TV room, she runs to the warden and says, you know, because when I woke up, I heard, there was a lot of lockers banging and stuff like this when I was still asleep.

And I woke up, what's going on? It sounds like the Puerto Ricans are rioting in here or something. I hear a lot of, you know, she turns around, makes a bunch of lies like the, like, the, you know, the lily-livered little chicken shit fed that she is, right, and goes and tells the captain that, that, uh, I decided to riot with the Puerto Ricans, a ball face lie. They threw it all out in DHO court. Right. And then says, oh, uh, when the kid goes, oh, they're killing all the feds that I go, oh, I says, I don't know. I says, uh, it sounds like the, you know, it's about time they got around to it. I'm thinking that it was, uh, you know, um, um,

maybe a terrorist act of some kind. I wasn't really sure what was going on. So she turns around and flips that and then tells the captain, yeah, he, you know, so they come in the TV room and grab me. And they put me in and put me in there with, you know, they throw it out in DHS court. They put me in there with Spinelli. And then, you know, so.

Okay. Mike Spinelli, he was a Likaze soldier. So we knew each other pretty well. And then, you know, eventually they, they throw it out. And I end up, they said, now we're going to ship you anyway. So they said, so I got shipped to Yazoo. So. Well, I mean, you got out and you went to truck driving school.

And now you're driving a truck. I ran a rupee company in the summer 21. And yeah, and then I, you know, I got a good day. That contractor who knew me from the old days. Right. He did a little prison time. So he hired me, you know, the church. Cherry brothers and he hired me and I just he paid for the class B to get reinstated

because I had a class B for almost 15 years and then turned around and I decided to get the A so I got the A and then we drive a we drive a semi across the U.S. and get caught in snowstorms and all right listen I'm gonna wrap it I'm gonna let me wrap this up real quick delete that yeah there's some stuff we'll delete some of the all right all right um well one i appreciate you coming by so this is good thank you brother all right um all right hey if you like the video do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this uh share the video leave a comment in the comment section and i will try and respond and if you want to get in touch with me to be a guest you have an

interesting story uh please send me an email my email is in the description box really appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much. See you.