Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside the Underground Markets For Your Stolen Credit Cards | Trulane Brown

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

Inside the Underground Markets For Your Stolen Credit Cards | Trulane Brown

In my mind, I always thought having a million dollars would make me quit the game. It never would. What I end up doing was brokering information to other people who decided they wanted to go do that kind of fraud. Use Bitcoin instead of cash. You can transfer it anywhere. It's untraceable. I jumped on a plane under an assumed identity that I had been holding on to in case of an emergency. And I went to Miami.

Now, I had the connect that changed my life. Some say for the worst, some say for the better. I mean, I'm going to say it just changed my life. because okay so I was born in Oakland California um born at a time when Oakland was transitioning it was kind of like coming away from the Black Panther movement to black people just really being independent owning property a lot of the white people and upper class people were moving out to the valley but here it is in Oakland we had we were middle class my mom worked at a bank my dad he got into law enforcement

mind you, they came from Mississippi together with about $200 between them, and they were able to, like, build something before they started a family. So what happened was I came along, and then a couple years later, I had two smaller brothers. My dad, he always wanted more. I'm sorry, how old were your parents when you were born? My parents was like 23, 24 when I was born. Mind you, like my dad got a job for the city, but basically it was a government job. So that was a great job to have back in the day, because,

he knew he had some type of security and then my mom worked at a bank until an accident happened at a bank where someone threw some keys across the bank and a hit her in a head so from there she went out on leave for about four months and she was having like blackouts and things of that nature so she ended up having to retire early with the settlement I think it could have been like about 15 or 20k but we're talking about 1982 yeah about 15 20k is a bunch of money and this is when they bought their house they bought a house so I never lived in an apartment before We always lived in the house. We always had money.

I mean, not rich, but we had money middle class. But the thing about that is she didn't work no more. So she became an entrepreneur right then and there. She opened a child care center. She opened up a janitorial service. My dad still made more money I want to say, but we made it all the way through. But we went to public school with the rest of the kids that didn't have a lot. Right.

The kids in my school were on fixed things. comes single parent homes just a mom welfare or food stamps and I didn't even understand why my my major question was like why are these kids disadvantaged and we're not one of my friends at school told me that they didn't have any food at their house and that bothered me I was like what do you mean you don't have any food at your house but I kind of overlooked it thought he was joking because when he came over our house he got to make food ate good even took some food home with him but after a couple times I thought this kid is telling the truth he doesn't have any food But a light bulb went off in my head, too, when I went to school and I couldn't get free lunch.

My lunch was $1.25, but all my friends got free lunch. So I ran home that day and like, Mom, why do I have to pay $1.25 for the same food that they get for free? And she said, well, we both have income. Their parents don't. They live in the projects. They're renting about $40 a month. If they even have both parents. If they even have both parents.

Yeah. So we have a mortgage here. And it's a difference between rent and mortgage. But I don't like it. I want to eat with them because. They're looking at me some kind of way because I pay for lunch. But she's like, look, get over it. You know what I mean?

If they want to come over after school, eat with us, they can. But, you know, just get over. This is the way life goes. It's called societal norms, and this is where we are. However, we probably won't be here forever. So I'm hanging with guys. We ride bikes. We ride skateboards.

We're all around the community doing what kids doing. This guy, actually a white guy, he came into the neighborhood, and he asked us, did we want to make extra money? The white guy is like... How old are you? I'm about like nine or ten at this time about nine or ten he's like you guys want to make some extra money I got some things that you guys can do you can come with me and we can sell candy and I'm like now I don't want to sell candy because the school always made us sell candy and we got nothing out of it but a teddy bear or maybe a note pad so I don't want to sell candy it's not interesting for me he like no you're going to make 40 bucks in a day mind you this is 1985 84 40 bucks for a kid like nah he's lying so myself and a bunch of my friends we got in a van with him

He took us to the banks. That already sounds bad. We got in the van with him and he takes us to affluent areas like 20, 30 minutes away. And we got this candy from price clubs like thin mince and wafers and all this stuff. It was like a dollar each. And we wouldn't sell it. We would just go ask for donations. And I'm like, wow, this works.

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a piece. I'm like, wow, that was kind of cool, man. So my friends that don't have food can go to the grocery store, buy food like IGA or whatever those corner markets are. And now they have food to bring home and their mom is happy. But my mother told me to not do it again. Don't do that again. Don't get in that van with him. I don't trust him. How come he didn't come meet me? How come he didn't talk to your parents? He's a crook. He's a slickster. That whole thing's bad. Yeah, he's in a van. You mean you got in a van with a stranger? I'm I'll beat you if you do it again, and she meant it, so I couldn't go anymore. But my friends kept going, but my younger brother told me something.

He's like, how about we go to Price Club, we buy our own candy, get on the bus, and we go to the opposite side where he is that day, and we sell our own candy. First time we did it, we made $200 in one day, $200. My mom didn't like that either. You're lying to people. You're not taking donations for any support group or you're not helping anybody out. You're doing this to keep money for yourself. So I don't want you doing that either So she stopped us from doing that

But my friends that I went to school with They kept doing it And it was cool because now they have an extra money We go to school after school They take me to the store Everybody buys each other stuff We all have a bunch of snacks And a bunch of treats

So now Remember I said my parents They worked They had money We weren't low income But I had family members All around the city That were going through the same thing

That a lot of the city was going through single parent homes living in a not so good area and the crack came in the drugs actually came in heavy actually Oakland is one of the first places where they say that drug landed in the first place where it was turned from one thing to another when it is that is that where the I want to say snowfall snowfall actually was based on that and it was what god what what what's his name right Franklin no no I'm saying the the drug dealer that went to prison and got out. Oh, Freeway Rick.

Freeway Rick. Yeah, yeah, Rick Ross, which became a kingpin, a major kingpin at a young age. But he was like so, and we heard of him when we were kids too, but it was like unbelievable that a black man doing these type of things made that kind of money. But obviously, and I've tried to verify this because I met people that say they were around when people first started processing it. And I think actually probably was in Berkeley. These hippies found a way to do it.

And it was a special thing. It was meant for rich people. It wasn't meant for low-income people. Well, it started off as a free base, right? Free base, exactly, exactly. I mean, it was very dangerous to process that because it caused explosives. Explosions. It caused explosions.

But some of those early adopters of that, if you were in the right place, you made millions at a young age and really fast. But here it is. That stuff came in heavy. You were either a participant or a victim. And even if you didn't directly participate or become victimized, somebody broke in your house, they broke in your car, they stole your VCR, a family. You're still a victim. You're still a victim. Your family member had to go to rehab.

Now they're out of their mind. They can't function properly in society. That thing was terrible in that city. So I'm like, maybe it did start here. So here it is. We're seeing guys not much older than us having a lot of money. They're buying custom cars, Cadillacs, and Mercedes Benzes. This is around 1986.

So I'm wondering, like, how the hell are they getting this money? Because I was never exposed to that. But once I started traveling throughout the city on my bike and going around people who were doing it it became very clear like okay this is a lane right here so um i start hanging around at a car wash where these guys with these new cars these flashy cars kind of hung out at and um my friends and i they got over the candy business because they were getting ran off of uh those locations which we used to go to banks and stuff like that so now we hang in a car wash trying to make an extra 15 20 bucks a day helping people wash rims but it was a few guys there

that'll give you 40 bucks and i'm like wait you you you You gave me 40 bucks for cleaning the tires. What do you do? And they had big bank rolls, right? Like big old grips of money. How old are you? At this point, I'm 10. I'm about 10 or 11.

But I had a curfew. Be in before the street lights come on. Don't go to the liquor store. Don't go to the laundromat or don't go near the check cash in place. That was a rule by my parents they were very strict on. Right. They knew what was going on there. Do not even go to that car watch, which is like four blocks around, four blocks away from our house.

Mind you, we lived in the house. Three blocks away is projects and housing authorities. And most of those people are low income. But here we are median income, not even five blocks away from where they are. So I'm like, hey, bro, I asked one on a pond and a slim. I'm like, Slim, what's up? Can we get in with these guys? He's like, no, because they want us to go to school.

They don't want us doing that because it's dangerous. You know what goes on, right? And I'm like, nah, not really. He's that we're going to go to the liquor store tonight. Just stay out an extra hour. We're going to go to the liquor store tonight. I was like nah my mama kill me my mama kill me and then if my dad finds out he comes from work he'll bust my head open wide open so what's your dad doing at this point at this time my dad's working a bunch of overtime he's on the force but in a whole different city so nobody knew my dad works about five cities over as a police officer but my friends don't even necessarily know they just know both of your parents work and you guys have money and fool you get things for Christmas you guys have bikes and you guys get new shoes like every other month or every month or whatever because I have two brothers right so here it is he knows nothing about it

my mom's basically since she runs a business of her own she's there most of the time but again financially we're not rich but we're far from broke so uh I went to this liquor store and I saw that activity these guys are making hundreds of dollars within 10 or 15 minutes and it blew my mind I wanted to know more I wanted to know more I'm like oh no this is it now my friends that don't have money they had to do it or else but for me i'm like well if i start too i'll be able to make extra money and take stress off my parents and buy my own clothes buy my own shoes and everything will be fine but literally i know it's just so much more dangerous than whatever i anticipated everything to do with that is just danger pain hurt it's just everything that you should know but you may not if you

want to make extra money yeah i was just say but you're a little kid you know you're not you're not thinking past you know an hour or two of your life you know you're not thinking even a week in advance no i can't see that far but one of my friends like 11 years old had made enough money hustling to buy a moped now a moped cost like 400 bucks i'm like wow you bought a moped he like yeah and i still have money left so then i made up my mind that i would find out exactly what to do and how to do it but it wasn't going to be easy. Mind you, at this time, we're hearing stories on the news of a 17-year-old millionaire that's running part of the city selling drugs. He's 17 years old. He's a millionaire already. He has about 40 workers. He has a bunch of properties that he deals drugs out of. And I saw

him. I'm in person. So I knew he existed. And I'm like, wow, this guy's only 17 years old. He's still in high school. But what he had did was found a plug. Went to directly to the source and from there he was able to advance in the game real fast he was able to advance and just go go past all other dudes whoever was doing it on his level and even the older guys so um of course i couldn't hang out but one of the older guys asked me one time to go to the mall for him he was like hey go to the mall for me here's 250 bucks go buy me a pair of jeans a pair of nikes and a white t-shirt and you keep the change so i rolled my bike to the mall like oh i'm getting an opportunity right now roll my bike to the mall I go get the jeans. I knew the size, the white shoes, and the white t-shirt, and I bring it back to him. He's like, thank you. The change I kept was 40, about 40 bucks again. I'm like, that was the easiest 40 I ever made.

I'm going to hang around these dudes now. So I started just hanging there every day. Now I can hang since I did one little thing for him. He's like, hey, youngster, go iron them pans for me and, you know, bring them back to me because I got some girl I'm going to see later on, man, but I'm not trying to leave over here where I'm met. So you go do that. I did it. And one of my friends, like, you're stupid.

I never would go iron this pants for this guy. Why would you do that? And I'm like, I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. So I did it. I ironed them. I put those creases in them, had them really, really nice for him. And I came back to the car wash.

He was in a brand new Cadillac. He had gold rims on this car. He had white interior in there with a sunroof. This was like a $20,000 car at the time. That's a lot of money. Yeah. And he had a gold nugget watch on. So I brought it back to him.

Oh, the gold nugget. The gold nugget watch. Yeah. The necklace is in the watch. He didn't even know. Remember they had the watches. You could get like a little pendant. Oh, man.

Some guys had a whole change. Whole change. Yeah, so I knew we had money. But he started trusting me. He's like, okay, you did that. You did that, yonster. And I just kept hanging there. And eventually I asked him.

I was like, hey, can you put me in the game? He's like, nah, man, because you're up. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with a TD small business. account manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit td.com slash small business match to learn more.

Conditions apply. Current's work, man. You don't have to be out here, man. You just, this is not for you. This is not for you, boy. And he wouldn't do it. So I was disappointed, man, that everybody else was getting an opportunity to jump in it except me and I'm like why I'm like come on man I can do it I'm trustworthy finally one day he had somewhere to go and he said hey hold this for me I'll be back in a couple hours and he gave me like a 200 count 200 worth I only had to see about six people while he was gone and I was finished long before he came back actually yeah I finished long before he came back and when I came back I gave him the 200 and he's like oh you finished all of that and he

gave me 50 bucks man and that was my entry into the game like now i can do it i i started doing it like twice a week three times a week these guys just pulling up they're just pulling their car up saying hey i need something and you're just giving it to them and then either they pull up or they kind of walk up because mind you this area where i had to go from home to go over there where they were doing this at it was like called uh it was near mac arthur so it's prostitutes it's uh it's a lot of uh everything going on there hustle You got people doing running numbers. You got people gambling shacks.

You got a bunch of stuff. So now this drug was expensive. It was $20 to $50 per use, right? It was 20 or 50. It was nothing small at that time. So you couldn't be a broke person smoking that drug. You couldn't be broke using that. So they were coming up, walking up, driving up.

A lot of times people came that weren't from that neighborhood to come get it. So he gave me the money for it. I was like, wow. And then we did it again, and we did it over and over to the point where I had a couple hundred of my own money. I was like, oh, yeah, I love this. I love this. Now, can I spend my money? He's like, nah, nah, because you'll stop going to school.

You're going to, you know, get caught up and get wrapped up in this. And we just don't want that. And plus, I don't want your mom to find out, man. Once your parents find out, man, they're going to kill you. They're going to bust you up. Just go home. Just go home. So I started talking to other people that was doing it that saw I was a young, trustworthy kid.

I'm 11, 12. I'm about 11 at this point. And I've already did my first transactions. So from here, I'm thinking of ways to make more money. But my friends that are doing it, they're doing it again. A lot of their money have to go towards their household. Groceries, food, for their mother even, or their father, whoever was there, their clothes, they didn't have nothing.

So with me, all my money was my money. My parents could not find out that I was doing this. So I was like having $4,500 at a very young age, until I start spending. once I start spending it of course I go back down to about a hundred bucks and have to work it back up But the bad part about it is my mom started noticing I was hanging out too much and she started coming after me She told my father like oh he's hanging at the liquor store and then I was What they they got on me they was like hey you get caught at that liquor store again man You're in trouble we're gonna do whatever we have to do to keep you away from those those scoundrels or vandals

Whatever she called them scoundrels or something to that effect but okay so I couldn't go and I used all my money now my family that lives on a different part of town I'm going over there standing at their house I got ran out of the game by my mom I'm scared of my parents still at this point so I'm not going to go against them are you going to school I'm still going to school I'm going to school I mean we're in elementary school at this time we're in elementary school six graders six graders right about yeah 11 12 fifth and six graders so what happens is um I go over to some of my family members I was coming to find out they're ahead of me they're been doing it. They're already buying their own cars. They're teenagers buying their own cars. They have money. They're running rampant. So I started telling my mom, I want to go there on weekends because I knew I couldn't do what I wanted to do at home because once my dad finds out, he's a no-nonsense kind of guy. So now I'm going over my auntie's house and my cousin's house and I'm sneaking and doing this anyway. Because now once you, what do they say? It's better

never give a bear honey than give a bear of honey and tell him he can't have no more. So now I made some money I don't want to not make any money I know this stuff is dangerous I know I'm not supposed to be doing it but my cousins are doing it now and now I'm over my aunt's house my mom can't tell me I can't go over there we go outside we go hang out things are happening so I'm back you know getting a little motion getting a little rotation and then here it is one of my friends go to jail and I'm like oh wow he gets called he gets stopped by a cop they take they check his pockets he has like four or five pieces on them they take him in he's in juvenile Hall and I'm like all scared because I was with them but they didn't check me I was with

them and I had stuff too but they just didn't check me so I was like wow man I was too close I don't want to do this I don't want to go to jail because a person that never been to jail is scared to jail yeah but a person that been to jail is not as scared of jail because they know what jail is like oh I've been to jail before I can handle it I don't know somebody there I can make it but I was one of those guys that just did not want to go to jail especially my 12 year old friend with the jail but he came out three four days later and told me how how much fun he had and how great it was and he grabbed another sack he didn't even think about quitting he was actually saying he was going to quit school he's like i'm quitting school

and going full time i was like no no no dray you can't you can't he's like i'm not listening to you you got both parents at your house actually i don't even know if i want to hang with you no more because you don't even have to do this you're a turnout that was the word of you you're a turnout you don't have to do this or we don't eat right and i was like damn he right i don't have to do this but I want to and I want to be accepted by my friend. So I'm going. So he kind of disses itself from me, but I said, so what? I kind of knew the concept.

I didn't necessarily need him. The older guys embraced me. The only rule was go to school and make curfew. When your parents tell you to go inside, you go inside because they're going to come after us or they might call the cops on us. Now everything is transitioning. The drugs got cheaper. Everybody can afford it.

They're selling $10 worth, $5 worth on up. so now it allow more people to get in the game once that happens the crime started they're still in vCRs they're still in cars they're robbed doing burglaries for a hit of this everybody's affected like i said you're a victim or you're a participant in one way or the other this in our city where they're saying this drug started at you were going to be affected by this drug so now the police they're looking for people that's doing it they're posting up they're sneaking up and all kind of bad stuff is happening so I'm back home and I'm starting to do it closer to home now because I'm tired of traveling across town to my aunt's house on the bus, riding bikes, traveling somewhere else just to make a couple dollars and it's so much of this going on five blocks from my house. So what I start doing is thinking of ways that I could pass up the competition. So I was like, okay, if I buy more and sell it for cheaper, then I'll flip it faster and I'll be able to make more money.

So I tried that a few times and next thing you know it worked. now I'm making two and three hundred dollars profit every single day at about by 12 years old I'm making about $300 a day minimum because I made us I formed a system I had a system that we're going to buy this we're going to cut process it get some clientele that will call me on my pager only come to me and then I'll be able to advance past these guys that's on my same level really quick so my younger brother he's playing baseball at the time and he's like yo I need some cleats and I'm like well how much are they and he's like um they're like $46 and I'm like well won't you go ask mom and then for us he's like well she said

they'll do it next weekend but I need them because we got a big game we're gonna travel and I was like here took the money damn the money for the cleats he went and bought him he was happy he's like wait wait wait are you he's like you you um got and I was like yeah I got it what's up he's like well I want in I'm like nah you playing baseball you can't get in he's like well I need to make extra money so I don't have to be asking you for money so therefore he was like what's up so i was like um all right i got you i give him like 20 worth told him he can make 40 of it he made the 40 and he immediately wanted to buy 40 worth to make 80 within three days he had 300 of his own money right just from starting that but the problem with that is that he didn't

want to play baseball no more right he said i'm done with that baseball man i'm gonna make some money man you guys held this from me all of this time and i could have been out here with you so um what what I didn't like was he was pretty good at baseball and the coach came over to the washhouse we were hanging in front of at the time and got out of the car and begged him to come back to practice and come back to play I see something in you man don't hang with these guys and your brother over there and he called me a name your stupid brother over there that gave you that shit because one of the other players on the team told the coach that his brother gave him some and now they're right they're doing it right so he's like your stupid brother

I'm tempted to go knock on your door and tell your parents I was scared to death I was like oh shit if he goes and tell my parents I'm done my father kill me himself or he just might arrest me and just book me and take me in that didn't happen he just steadily pleaded with my brother to come and get away from hustling and getting away from doing that illicit activity but bro didn't listen

he was already in too deep and it was kind of like my fault I felt like it was my fault but once he caught on and got the hang of it he blew past me pretty quick because he had a better structured program. My younger brother blew past me. He's only two years younger to me, by the way, but he blew past me in the game because all he did was that. No hanging, no talking, go there, make my money, go in the house, hide the money somewhere

else so my parents will never find it if they search his room and he was more disciplined. So he was like, yeah, bro, I got like $1,200 already. He wasn't even in the whole game a month. I'm looking for a car to buy. At junior high school, seventh grade, he was looking for a car. Like, I'm like, wait a minute, what am I doing wrong? But it was some of these guys who I were hanging with. They didn't want anything but to do it for survival.

All they wanted to do was to hustle to take care of themselves and not to make it into a business. Right. You know what I mean? But again, things drastically change in this industry because it's so dark. It's just, it's dark, man. It's just bullshit, man, because what I didn't know was the guys who had went to prison some years before were coming out of prison. And they had a chip on their shoulder. What did all these youngsters doing out here?

Why y'all got these kids out here? Give me everything you got and get up out of here. So we're hearing stories and we're knowing people that are being taken advantage of by the OGs. Like, I don't want these kids out here, man. No kids. You know you got to be at least 18 to do this. The least you can be a 16 to do this. Like it was structure.

It was some structure involved because these dudes, they didn't want the cops to say, okay they're running through kids now we can go shake them up because of that we can shake them up because they have kids doing this thing so some of the guys my age were getting robbed they were getting robbed by older guys taking all of their shit and they're all having to start over from scratch and it's just a bad situation so one of my 16 year old friends he was like bro yo you want this to be you or do you want a 38 special and I'm like well how much is a 38 special he's like I can get you on for a hundred bucks. And all you got to do is when one of them guys come around you demanding your shit,

just whip out on him and tell them to back the fuck up. They're fresh out of prison. They don't have money yet. That's what they're taking our shit. So they can get on their feet and come up and then push us out the way. But we're better than them. So I had my first weapon, my first gun at about 12 years old. That was all mines.

I had to hide it outside of my house. I couldn't bring it in the house. I couldn't let my parents find out any of this. So now I have a pager. I'm dealing drugs I have my own gun and I'm just like I stopped going to church

I stopped doing all of the things that I was doing Are you going to school still? I'm still going to school at this point Because it's junior high But the bad thing that came up Next would be my first time Going to Juvenile Hall

One of my friends One of my friends Man he'd get into it with a girl At the bus stop after school We're in the seventh grade So he's like arguing with a girl they're going back and forth and he does

some stupid like push her her boyfriend standing like 20 feet away comes over there and punches them in the face and he like bust the whole side of his face mind you we're 12 11 about 12 and then this guy is about 14 or 15 he fires on my friend punches him the face in front of everybody they're laughing and everything

he runs off didn't get on that bus he found another way home so he comes to my house and he's like man that guy did that to me man and I don't appreciate it let me borrow your gun so next day at the next day when I catch him again at the bus stop

I'm gonna shoot him I'm like nah you're not gonna shoot him bro I don't want no parts of that bro he's like yeah yeah man come on bro you see what he did to my face man am I your boy or what I'm like yeah you my boy man

and I don't know him he's like well let me get your gun let me shoot him I was like all right it's fine here take it now mind you this is the inner city where these things are these things should be unheard of these things should be unheard of

I give him a 38 he brings it to school about three days later So I don't think nothing of it. This all happened at my house. Did you think it was just talk? It's just... Well, I thought it was just talk, but my boy, I at least want him to whip it out,

pull out your gun, scare him, let him know that you're not a punk, and you will take care of him if he ever put your hands on you again. Just let him know. That's a huge assumption that he's going to take off. Right, yeah, right, but my thing was, how bad could it be? People get shot in Oakland every day. Mind you, in Oakland where I'm at at the time, this is one of the things that

desensitized me. You know people that got killed and you know the killer. The person you know is dead, but the killer is still roaming the streets. The cops don't look hard enough for the killers. So here it is, I'm knowing that these killers are amongst us and they can get any of us at any

time, but we can't tell, we can't cooperate. None of the neighbors are willing to cooperate. So I'm like, they forgot about us. We're lost out here. We have, like, San Leandro, Hayward, they don't have killers roaming the streets in Danville, Blackhawk. None of these other areas have killer, like we do.

So I don't trust the cops. I don't trust nobody. I don't even care what they say. So he takes this weapon to school. I'm going about my way. We don't even hang together that day. It's fourth period. Are you thinking about it at all?

I really didn't because I had a girl that I liked and I just wanted to eat some chili fries with her or some nacho chips with her. I just figure after school everything would transpire because that's where everyone meets after school and that guy that punched him in the face would be there so i will sit back and watch from the sidelines whether he shoots him whether he scares him whether he hits him in the head with the gun i will just watch from the sidelines right before lunch no no no fifth period right after lunch to campus security come to my classroom there's like hey uh true it's like pointed to me like come here and i was like what the i'm looking they don't want me i don't talk to you guys or whatever

mind you i don't have any drugs on me at this time though i'm just like it's no need for me to bring it to school and they bring me in the office and he's sitting there and the gun is on the desk he said he gave it to me he said he gave it to me i went to his house three days ago he knew what was happening because cuffed me up called my dad my dad had to leave work come he couldn't even believe it when they told my dad that i gave another student a gun to shoot another student he didn't even believe it he thought that it was a joke until he got there and saw it i'm arrested in juvenile hall now fighting a case for giving a minor a gun to cause body be harm to another. But you're a minor too.

Yeah, I'm a minor too, but they held me there for about five days. I didn't know what to do. I'm all mad. I'm stressing. I'm confused. I'm like, damn, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Ultimately.

Was it as much fun as your buddy said? It was a real. It was a bunch of fun. It was a whole bunch of fun because all the kids that I hadn't been seeing from the different neighborhoods and the different schools, that's where they were. Like, we used to see each other at basketball games and baseball. baseball games football games now I hadn't saw them for a while but they're in juvenile hall for stealing doing things like that just petty crimes and then their parents were

unfit so they wouldn't send you back home if you had an unfit household you had to stay in juvenile hall until they found a foster home for you so it was pretty fun but it was only a few days but how did I get off of that I got expelled from school and I ended up I got out by I got expelled from school and um probation formal probation start reporting truancy officers comes to the house every day but I'm going to continuation school now and it's a junior high school my dad didn't like that so he paid to put me in a private school

for the rest of that school year and yeah for the rest of that school year he paid to put me in a private school when he was so mad he had to do that because you had to pay but other students other kids in my neighborhood were like how can you afford that your father you're oh you come from a working household why are you going to

private school we can't afford food but you paying three four hundred bucks a month to go to a school and you don't even want to go there so now I knew what the inside of jail was now I decided I couldn't be playing around with these same guys they didn't want what I want we didn't have the same plans I need to find a way to go past them real quick so I found my own supplier once I found my own supplier and my own supplier he would be somebody that bought um enough to supply one neighborhood meaning he would buy like um two or three units he would buy like two or three and he had enough where he was making a good living having like one couple hundred thousand dollars he would be

worth about a couple hundred thousand and he would sell to lower level dealers and i once i got a line with him he told me he don't want anybody that plays games i will have to get serious and then it was a minimum that i would have to buy which would be probably spending about a thousand at a time so once i got with him it was all the way up from there it was all the way up i just took advantage of building a little brand for myself what about school at this point i still have still had to go to school because at this point now I'm in the ninth so junior high it was overweight went to the private school the very next year we petitioned to get me back into public school and I went back to a public high school that wasn't a good idea because now the school I went to was

Castlemont high school all of those guys were hustling already at the ninth grade 10th grade 11 grade they had cars they had jury they had all of the fly stuff that I would want and I'm like wow so this is right where I need to be so I did go for about another year and a half of But by 15, I was done with school. By 15, I was done with school because what I started doing was, instead of going to class, I was shooting dice, we was gambling behind the building, got suspended for that. We were gambling. We were cutting class.

We were messing with girls. We're sneaking girls back to our house while my parents were at work. All I had to do was rush home and erase the answering machine before my parents got there and they would never get the call from the truancy officer. And then one day they came to the house and knocked at the door telling my parents that I hadn't been in school in the last two weeks. and they never returned the cost so i was in trouble for that you're on punishment you're grounded you can't go outside you're gonna have to get out of here we're gonna we're on the verge of putting you out i'm like no no you won't you won't put me out however they probably they this is what

led up to me now starting to advance in the game and now i'm making real money and i don't want to say real money but as a kid like ten thousand dollars at like 13 14 years old that's a lot of money but that's a ton of money but that's a ton of money but that's a ton of money and I'm not even ready for that mentally. I don't think at the time, like, having a direct connect is so much better than using the middle, man. And that's what anything, because now I was able to get my own shit. I was able to flip it and sell it for lower than the other dealers, and I was able to grow

my little small, little business. I treated it like a business at that young age because I knew better. I knew how I wanted to, I knew how I wanted to live. I didn't want to have to do it forever, so I thought. But things only just went from bad to way. worst though it just wasn't a good feeling it wasn't a good thing because one day a couple guys were asking me to hook them up hey hook me up hook me up man i'm trying to get on with you because our your stuff is better than our so i start hooking a couple guys up that were in the neighborhood on my

that on my same level and then from there they start getting a little jealous because they was like um nah man um i don't think i should be buying from you you should be buying for me i'm like well but you don't have enough good product man i don't want to buy anything from you man just just just keep it like this or we don't have to do business at all so they start hating on me a little bit trying to find out where i hid my shit at going to go steal it after i leave just just little cutthroat stuff that's in this industry mind you uh nobody's coming to save you at this point the police officers they'll take you to jail but then they also were mad that they had to chase little black kids around that were selling these drugs in their community and i want to say

everybody i know has had at least one fight with a police officer and what i mean mean by that is if you get caught by police officer and nobody's looking, they'll fight you literally, literally, and you can try to defend yourself all you want, but more than likely with these sticks and patons they had, they probably would get the best of you. But I've had several fights with Oakland police officers over the year. And then police brutality wasn't a big thing at the time because they're like, they're nothing but drug dealers anyway, so who cares? No phones at the time. No phones at the time. Nobody saw it. If you reported, they just be like, No, I wasn't even over there at that time.

It was just not enough in place for the cops to get monitored like it became over the year. So at that point, what I'm saying is I had to watch my friends. I didn't want to have to watch my friends, but mind you, I had a weapon and everybody else had one too. So it was more so we watching each other and we're trying to almost compete with each other for who's going to be better at hustling. Who's going to be better? Who's going to make the most money instead of becoming a team? I didn't understand team building really at that age. I was just still just trying to get my stuff off the ground

because I saw how much money I can really make. And what ended up happened was I come home one night and my dad was sitting in my bedroom waiting for me. It was kind of dark. I turned on the light and he was like, what's up? What's you doing? Were you supposed to sneak out or you just came home? No, it was like I'm supposed to be in at 9.

9.30, but I probably was coming in at about 10 and he's home at the time because I saw his car in the driveway And I'm like, okay, he's here. Okay, well, let me just go in my room. Everything is going to be cool. So what he did was he said, so look, this is how this is going to go. You're going to give me all your money. You're going to give me your cell phone.

No, you're going to give me your pager. You're going to give me all your money. You're going to start making care of you every day. That's it. No more hanging at the liquor store. No more doing this bullshit that you're doing. You're out the game now. And I'm like, how the hell did he know?

He said, I've been hearing people from church. you haven't been to school the people from the church and the neighbors see you hanging at the wash house and they see you hanging at the liquor store it's only one or two things going there you using it or you selling it and i want all your money mind you at this time i'm about like 15k i know i had about 15 000 i had a pay he said you're not a doctor you're not important give me the pager or you getting the fuck out tonight and i'm like i don't have nowhere to go he's like give it up all of it everything or go so i looked around my mom comes into the room she hears the yelling she hears a commotion she's begging for him to allow me

to stay he tells her no shut up get out of here i run this house i will not let this kid run my household it's no way in the world he's getting out so i looked around almost had some tears in my eyes and i left i'm not giving up everything that i made to live what i was living as like a normal like a normal kid i'm not big mistake that night i had to go stay at the prostitute motel 20 a month where there's nothing but prostitutes, nothing but drug dealers, nothing but other people that are in the game, nothing but people that are hustling, they're grinding actually at the time. And you're what? You're 15. I'm about 14 at this time. I'm about 14 at this time. About 14, because now I'm not going to school no more. School is over with. I'm hustling all day. No one even

can tell me what to do. So I go stay at that hotel for that night. And I was like, no, I don't want to do this. I asked one of my friends, he only lived there with his mom. I was like, hey, well, your mom let me stay over here at your house for a while and he he asked her and she's like yeah but he has to give me 200 bucks a month and i was like 200 a month okay that's fine i'll make that in a couple days whatever maybe even one day so i want to stay there everything went downhill i'm hustling all night stop caring about people i'm getting into altercations with dealers and the users i'm getting into altercations all the time i start drinking uh you know beer and whatever to whatever to E&J, the lightweight stuff

or what I called it. But it's still bad for a 14 year old kid, but I'm so stressed out that I just didn't know what to do, man. I'm stressed out. So I'm hustling every day. I got a gun on me every single day as a kid. But mind you, everybody in that community does. So you're looking at people who are dangerous

and you have to be dangerous as them or getting taken out the game. So what I ended up doing, I'm standing over there with him. We still hustling. I had to hide my money with my little brother. I'm like, well, look, I need you to keep. this money safe I can't bring it over here I can't keep no more than about a thousand bucks on me

at a time because I'm sleeping at somebody else's house and I don't have my own space so he's keeping the money for me and he's like um hiding it over uh what he had a secret hiding place that I probably couldn't even get to but in case of emergency he knew how to get to it so uh that was going cool I bought a car stopped going to school but I would show up at school maybe to meet a girl or something something like that every now and then but I'm really really learning the game now how are you 14 years old and you bought a car well back then you got to think you didn't need license you didn't need insurance it's just finding somebody that had a car like like like um thousand dollar car you look in a classified flea market paper i'll never forget you go get this classified flea market paper

and then you get an 18 year old to just go sign the papers i mean i never didn't i didn't even have an id right i didn't my brother had this first car at 12 i waited it took me to a 14 to get my first car he had one at 12 and he had to sit on phone books and pillows he even got pulled over by campus security in the seventh grade driving the car and she took the keys and said well have your parents come get the keys from me tomorrow i'll be in my office on the campus and but what he did was he went and found a mechanic that happened to use drugs took the mechanic to where they left the car at popped the ignition out switched the new ignition in costs all but 80 bucks and he was back driving the same day but he didn't drive the car close to the school where the campus security could get it. get him again so he knew better he was intuitive enough to know that he didn't want to get his car taken twice right yeah so what i did was um i was doing that but it just wasn't working out man i was sleeping some nights outside i was sleeping in cars i was like miserable not showering every day because at this house where i was living at paying 200 bucks a month still had to catch the door unlocked i didn't get a key if i catch the door lock i can come in but if not i might have to sleep outside which

would be in the neighborhood where they're dealing drugs and so it was nights when i woke up and all of my bundle was gone all of my shit was gone one night i woke up i had i know i fell asleep but at least 200 bucks and about another 200 worth of product woke up everything was gone because somebody caught me slipping but it was it was a lesson that you don't fall asleep out here on the block because we could have just killed you like these are murderers mind you murderers are roaming around this community regularly like it's no mystery is no surprise so i mean me me but being out there is just dangerous enough and then um after about eight months i ran into my dad one day he was going to work and he's like come here and he's like uh how you like it out here in these

streets because you chose the streets over having a house you know your brothers are doing good your mom's doing good and you don't even really come by but uh i think you must have came there and showered a few times but you knew to hurry up and come and leave he said but um i'm gonna offer you to come back but you can't be doing the shit you was doing you have to come back under my terms my rules my regulations and uh i considered it because it's like damn i'm living in the streets man i do have money i'm doing pretty cool for a kid my age i want to go home man so he offered me that i went and got my clothes from over here at this house i was living at and went back home but at this point my bedroom is the whole bottom of the house which is like a studio so i get like a studio since

i'm the oldest where i have my own entryway the rest of the family's upstairs only time they had to walk through my studios to go to the washroom. I mean, we were doing pretty good for a middle-class family living in the urban community, ghetto, whatever you want to call it. We was doing cool. How old were you then? Now I'm about 15. Right.

So at 15, he lets me come back home. So I didn't hustle as hard because I didn't want to get caught. I mean, I dabbled and dabbled at this point, but I told one of my friends that I made it up to nine ounces. Most of these guys were getting about one or a half. of one and I told one of my friends kind of like he's like you got money I was like yeah I got money close to 20k and I'm buying about nine ounces now and it costs like $4,000 nine else's cost you 4k at that time about 30 3800 so he's like what I was like yeah

man I made it man so I don't have to go out every day because I can get a couple workers to work my stuff and I can go home at curfew and I don't have to be in a way well he didn't like that yeah he didn't like it at all he went and told three other people my father he had let me come back stay at the house conditionally on under the condition is no drugs in the house be at the house at a certain time don't disrespect your mom i'll be watching you so one night i'm coming home and um as i'm coming back up mind you i've got to go about four blocks away from where we hustle at to go home and this is all houses no apartments on our block everybody's pretty much a homeowner nobody's renting over here everything is everything's

pretty cool and it was a guy kind of standing across the street acting as if he was looking for address. He asked me, do I know where a certain address is like 2718? I was like, nah, bro, I don't really know where that address is. But I'm trying to hurry up and get inside of my house in my gate, because once I get in my gate, I can lock the gate and go into my house. By the time I get in the gate, it's a dude in the bushes. He runs out the bushes, slaps me in the head, and walks me into the house. Now I'm in the middle of a home invasion at 15 years old. My mom's in the house and my little brothers are in the house. They come in there immediately, where's the nine ounces and the $10,000 that we want it all?

So I knew the person I repeated it to had to say something, even though he didn't have the numbers exactly right, but the fact that he asked for nine ounces, it just told me that this dude went repeated what I told him to these, to these suckers. They were suckers to me. So we're going through it. They're running through the house, ravaging it. My mom heard the commotion, ran and locked herself in the room, called my dad and called the police but this is like the worst three minutes of my life though they hit me in the head i still

have a split under my head on top of my head right now from getting hit in the head with a gun at 15 years old so i'm like wow just please don't let them go after my mom i mean i'm giving them what i have close which is nothing but about five or six hundred bucks they're like no we want the big shit we want the big shit which is not even really big but they wanted that they're trying to take me outside to a stash spot in the back of a neighbor's house house to find the drugs i opened the door the police were standing there freeze it's the police they grabbed me the two assailants run jumped through a pitcher window run now it's a manhunter helicopters come everything is so many police in the neighborhood my father comes home from work he's

coming in breaking through the police line panicking worried about my mom first right what the hell happened he found out the story it was over that was the last straw i never lived with my parents again put us in danger you put us in jeopardy they put the house up for sale this is 1993 the house were for sale within a week we're leaving this we're done these dudes invaded our home they came in here with guns they found the weapons found the guys everything at this point whatever she said on that phone they're in my house two assailants with guns ski mask on my kids are downstairs they we were opening the door for them to take me to go get the big sack of. Yeah, yeah, I understand. I'm just saying

that they did, they did chase him down, they caught them. They caught them. They caught those guys, man. And then they asked me to identify them. Of course, I didn't see the faces they had on ski masks and all of that. But my dad was done, man. He's like, you know, you put my family in danger. This will be the last time you do that. You can understand that. I'm done with you,

man. You're not welcome. You're not welcome. You're not welcome. What did you think of that? What did you, at the time? At that time, remember, I'm desensitized to a lot of shit, but my those words of a father like to kill me for dangering his wife and his kids. I was scared. I was scared.

I was terrified of my father because I know he will do it. He's from Mississippi. What I'm saying is you understand why he said that. Oh, I understood. Oh, okay. I didn't even argue with him. I understood. I didn't know if you were like, it's not my fault. You know, you're a little kid. You know, you don't fucking know.

You know, I didn't know if you realized like, yeah, I fucked up. I fucked up royally. My mom looked at me differently. It was in the newspaper. a short segment on the news so not only am I embarrassed my whole family's embarrassed oh they raised another drug dealer look those good upstanding people I told you I knew it and because whenever whenever something bad happens everyone says I knew it or I told you so so that means people look for the most negative outcome because what did you know and how and who did you tell that I will fail who did you tell that I was a fuck up because that

means you never were rude for me or that that I think that people in general when other people are doing well, almost root for them to fail. Does it make sense? If you're doing well, you're doing everything right, you deserve to do well, but when you, and I'm not doing well, you know, probably because of my, just because I'm not doing the right thing, you know, and then you fail, then a lot of people are glad about that. Yeah, it's almost gratifying. I knew it.

See, I told you they weren't all that. See, they're such a drug dealer too. See, they raise a fucking drug dealer. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So my mom, I mean, people looked at her a little differently, but then they said, wait a minute, those kids have their own brain. Those kids did whatever they wanted to do on their own.

She tried to raise them right. But see, here it is. How are you going to, your mom's, how is she going to fucking, you know, keep all, your dad's at work all the time. How can your mom raise three teenagers? Like you guys are, you know, it's almost impossible to keep control. It's impossible, three of them? Three, boys.

It's almost impossible to keep control of one. In the ghetto. Right. In the ghetto. Three blocks away, you might get shot. knowing that these people around you all have guns everybody has guns so i have my own 38 special like i said i didn't mind using it even though i didn't have to but i didn't mind using it so he was done with me they were moving the worst thing happened after this so they're packing up the house

they're getting ready to move i'm back in the streets living in twenty dollar night motels sleeping at any friend's house that i could sleep at but i'm full-fledged in the street so at this point i found a house they call them trap houses now but we called them rock houses it was a house where everything was going, prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, three-card molly, uh, people were manufacturing, whatever you could think of was going on. So it wasn't a rock house because people sold rocks there. It was rocking and rolling. Anything you think of can go on in this house. You want to get a girl. You found a girl on the street. You want to bring her here. Go in the back room. It's 10 bucks. You want to cook up. Okay. Kitchen is 10 bucks an hour

and you leave something for the house. So it was one of those things where I'm living in that house now coming from a two parent household clean nice food now everything just goes downhill so here it is one day a neighbor saw me hiding my staff one of our neighbors sold their house and it was on the moved out of their house and they were selling it and it was on the market so i decided to use it as a place to stash my drugs at so one of my neighbors saw me running back and forth behind that house all day and he went and told my dad he's like hey i know you threw your son out because he's dealing drugs right But I keep seeing him run back and forth behind the house over there that Aetna sold. And I think he's stashing drugs back there.

I already called the cops and told them about it. So just to let you know, I called the cops and he's probably going to get caught, right? My dad didn't even tell me that this had happened. I went back there to pick up my drugs and the cops were back there waiting on me. I was 15 years old. Got arrested. This time it was enough drugs to hold me. They held me down.

They told me we sent you to youth authority because you're no one. you doing you this is not a possession maybe you was trying to make an extra couple dollars now you you knew what you were doing this is enough for us to charge you you're going to youth 30 call one of my friends who happened and he passed away now but i was like bro they're saying youth authority man three to five years man i can't do that i need a lawyer no problem i got one for you do you got the money he's gonna want the money i said yes i got the money how much he said starting off 2500 and whatever else he tells you from there you're a juvenile talk to him he's gonna come see you i pay for my own lawyer fought the case for about a year and ended up getting a boys home for one year so i was gone

less than two years on a case that should have sent me to youth authority right so okay so when they arrested you did you bond out or did you do the all this while you're as a juvenile is no bond out and my parents was not messing with me so who gives them who gives the lawyer the money me i was hustling i'm a kid hustling you were in jail oh no my brother i can you make a call you make a call and you get free causes of juvenile because you're a kid and everything but my parents made it clear we're not coming to get him no we left him out as a matter of fact he chose to

leave right he's a delinquent and then oh you're delinquent right you're delinquent you left you left home and you're under your own rules they lock me up they have no mercy from me matter of fact that lawyer he came to see me he's like where's the cash I told him who to call

my brother took him to cash he said now we're talking I'm talking to the DA this is when I knew if you have a few dollars You get a little bit more privileged than those that don't. He said, well, you're not going to youth authority, but you're going to do some time. You're going to a boy's home. They're thinking about giving you two years. You can probably do about eight months and get out.

But the thing is, your parents are not supporting you. They want nothing to do with you. They won't come pick you up. And the judge knows this already. So you have any family members, aunts, uncles, anybody that will speak on your behalf so we can solidify this deal. So I talked to one of my aunts. I begged her and I told her, please just trust me, I swear to you, I will. not do this again when I get out just give me a chance I learned my lesson and I know better

said all right and she said all right and she talked to the judge and they signed the deal no youth authority youth authority is just a miniature prison you it's very few people who come out of there normal they set you up for psych meds in there they kind of already give up on you when you go there I'm sure you may have heard of it so I did a little eight months in the boys home and came right back I was so happy to be out everything was the same. A lot of things happening. People that weren't in the game when I left are in the game now. How old are you now? 17. I'm about, uh, it's going on, going on 17. Going on 17 when I get out of that. Came out. Hmm, this really wasn't working for me. I told him I wouldn't do it

no more. I'm not going to do it no more. But the marijuana industry was wide open. So I went straight into that. Found out how to do that. Excel in that pretty fast too. Came up from like started with a small amount of money, built that up to a miniature empire, had about two, three workers working with me, never for me. They worked with me on side of me. So we were able to give three, four, even five pounds. But this time, instead of selling it retail, we just sold wholesale to the public. We're able to make three, five, seven hundred profit a day every single day.

And I was happy. So again, back in the game, just not doing the hard shit. I'm thinking, well, it's only weed. They can't really bother me for weed. What are they going to do? Blasted, it worked. Everybody was happy. We were making money.

I started buying cars. Oh, I had to go back to school for the last year of school, though. That was a stipulation when I came out of the boys' home since I was going to school there. I had all of my credits. You just go back to school. You'll finish school. Everything's going to be cool. Going to school every day, I bought me a car, had enough money to buy a Grand National, which was a big deal at the time.

I bought a 1987 Burek Grand National. All the older guys. I wanted to say I paid about like $15,000. for it they couldn't believe it but everybody wasn't happy for me again i was going to say those were the ones they were kind of kind of boxy but they had like a ton of horsepower right like didn't they have like 300 horsepower 300 yeah something like a lot of horsepower buick grand national they were beating like the uh the Mustang 5 point oh they were beating Mustang 5.0 and it didn't look like it didn't look like it looked like a little boxy moni carlo some little two door coop but i bought one of those

i bought me an old school Chevy but at this time i'm having like 50 60 30 30 at that age 16 going on 17 I was close to 100k and everybody wasn't happy for me again because they start competing with me um calling the cops on me but this time like I said it got really vicious because the police didn't like it either you guys are making all of this money we have to make 60,000 a year or less to chase you criminals around so they start playing dirty like I said everyone I know has had a fight with an Oakland police officer that was around my age group so what they would do is again they would watch from a distance watch you hide your bundle watch your workers and if they catch you on those backyards or they catch you in one those alleys it's on so one day

i run in the backyard i'm going to go get some stuff to hand off to one of the one of the guys i work with and it's a cop standing right there and i ran right into his arms so he grabs me but i'm like who the and i'm not really seeing as fully as an officer yet we're wrestling we fall on the ground and i hear his keys and his badge fall i'm like oh shit it's a cop we're literally fighting in the back of this house it's a grown man i'm a kid i'm probably 120 pounds this dude's 180 to 200 pounds strong working out everything we're fighting we're wrestling he's trying to beat me i'm trying to get him i kind of like elbowed him on the side of his head that's when he let me go i try to run away grab my leg i know what you're doing i already got

your shit already got your shit i'm like i start yelling help help he got me he got me he got me so people in the front are like what do you mean it's who it's a certain cop that came around that beat named Mexican that was known to beat guys up

Maxon he was known for beating ass he was known he don't care he's not gonna report it right he will not report

he fought you so he's like help help help this dude hears me in the front he's like oh shit where's his car

where's his car so they drive her on a block they find his car and they break his window out of his car with a big brick

so one of the neighbors come like hey somebody just broke a police car window he said you motherfucker he curses me you motherfucker he takes the weed takes all the money out of my pocket kick me right in my

ass as hard as he could and he left never turned anything in right i see him three days later he said fuck you i hope i catch you in the backyard again now i knew it was a vendetta between me and him because i elbowed him on the side of his head it kind of put a scar on him but this was normal all of the guys either it was him and three more rogue cops they would they don't mind fighting you they don't mind going around or two with you because this is what it is they didn't get paid enough or they just pull up on you do you want to go to jail today how much money do you got in your pocket six hundred dollars drop it in my car and walk away real talk i'm like no drop the money in my car are you going to jail today motherfucker you'll be there at least three days do you want

to go to jail or not all right man all right man but i got tired of that shit man we all did man so we got to a point where anytime they came just run get away from them don't let them contact you don't have any contact with these fuck-ass cops because they will take your shit They'll take you down, and then they don't mind fighting. Again, and this is a true story. The playing clothes one with just the jeans and the T-shirts on, they like they came to fight. It's almost like the schoolyard thing.

It seemed like they just came for that. Did you ever see, not that we were talking about shorts and B-roll. Did you ever see the movie with Morgan, is it Morgan Fishburn? Lawrence, I knew it. It didn't sound right. Lawrence, did you ever see it was called Undercover? Deep cover. One of my favorite movies, man.

I love that movie. Man. I used to have that movie when it was VHS. VHS, yeah. One of my favorite movies, yeah. But in that movie, he also said, where you from? They asked him where he was from. Oakland.

He said, no, you ain't from Oakland. I know Oakland. Yeah, yeah. Well, when you were talking and he punt, remember he punches him and he says, do you want to file a police report? And he's like, no, no, that's all right. When you were talking about that, I pictured that scene where he runs up

and he calls him Judas and he punches him and they were in the thing yelling and you were talking about the bad cop even though he was a good cop that was a good cop yeah but the fact of the matter is they were doing that and it wasn't getting reported well it's like the Rodney King thing everybody always said when Rodney King was happening

everybody was saying well that was an isolated event and now you look back and you go it was isolated it was an isolated event that they had a camera there They had a camera here because you're smart, though. That happened so many times in Oakland. I'm talking about so many times, but it wasn't on camera. Right.

My brother, quick little story. My brother, we were driving around in my Grand National. We smoking, we're driving around. We're kicking it. We're hanging. These two cops get behind us. I'm like, oh, shit, man. These cops are behind us, man.

Damn, man. I don't really want to stop. I got my gun on me, man. I got some shit on me, man. Just keep going. So they get behind us. We high speed. We leave them by blocks and block.

But he was able to see the. face of myself and my brother so he knew to come back to the neighborhood later that night so we get away we leave them by distance and we're outside now hanging we're drinking some hennessee we was just talking shit so they pull up they say you think that was so smart earlier huh wait till i catch you it was like a little micro threat these cops waited down the street for hours my brother pulled off about 10 o'clock at night in a whole different car going to see his girlfriend and they pulled him over four blocks later he's like get out the car brown get out the car so he gets out the car full Fledged fight full-fledged with two against one they beat them they wrestled them they drug them on the

ground how much money you got on you took the money six 700 bucks and drove off and like all right We'll see you later we know you we know we'll see you again never reported no one said anything and this is in the 90s where it seemed like nobody care So why do we care about cops they don't even care about us they're taking our money they're fighting with us kicking our asses and every now and then we might get one of them nobody cares about nothing nobody cares about even like I've been to jail already I'm like well jail ain't the worst place to go if I had to go but I never actually did any time everything was in and out so from here things went kind of good and they just start growing fast because the weed business was growing I was able to start selling weight I made it into a business where buy more get it cheaper sell it for hire I'm able to supply enough guys to keep me kind of out the

way off the front line and I made a good living so now I'm kind of rolling in money and everything is going smooth like I said everything is going smooth but not without incident again you get a few losses here a few losses there but nothing to never take you out the game so how long does that go that goes until that goes for a couple years that goes for a couple years while I uh I ran into a little case where I got caught with a pirated cell phone like uh you remember those phones they used to put these chips in where you don't have to get the bill one of these cops caught me one of these cops caught me with that mind you're going to jail for that but get right out it's no big deal it's nothing major you just bail at this point 17 you can just bail out of jail well okay cool

i just bailed out got right out but uh i was able to just really really get rolling but things started to change again i ended up uh meeting a girl that i liked a lot so i didn't hustle as hard I was just working my process because I had enough money where I'm beyond the survival level. I'm hustling to make things kind of like, I'm like, well, once I get 100K, I'm out the game. And I'm like, wait a minute, I got 100K already. So what's next? Okay, I'll get 200k. I'll get out the game.

Once I get about $200,000, okay, I can go do anything I want then, go work or go get something else going, buy me a house. What, houses were like 70K then in Oakland? You get a good house for 60 or 70K at that time. So I was thinking on those terms I met a girl She wasn't the one for me and she showed me that because all she wanted was money Right I mean she knew I had money She knew that things were going good for me

So all she did was kept her hand out and she kept asking for money So I had to get away from her man get away from her Meeting other women now but not getting too serious with them And then I finally met one that I ended up having a baby with But that scared the hell out of me You know going into fatherhood Now I'm like I said 18 19 years old my daughter's 26 now

and I'm thinking like what am I going to do I need to make more money because I'm about to have a baby so my cousin older guy he's the one that helped put me in the game gave me a bunch of resources where I didn't have the trip he said look you're doing it all wrong

man you're trying to sell wholesale what we need to do is sell retail to the public with the shit that we used to that we used to before and I'm like nah I don't really want to go back to that man this weed is easier and it's less time if something goes wrong he said you mean to tell me you're in this game trying to get rich and you're thinking about what's going to go wrong you'll never be

successful are you in or not so i'm in so what we did is in our neighborhood we ended up setting up operation we brought everybody from the neighborhood together mind you this is not my operation he brought me into this operation so when people think i'm going to start selling drugs i'm going to become a kingpin you're probably not only one percent of people get up to high level in drug dealing same thing with fraud and scamming most people are not successful in scamming because they're doing it for survival or as soon as they make some money they go buy something start over from square one and they have to start doing it all over again so it's only a few people that will make it to high levels even becoming a millionaire from hustling or selling drugs so rare that you the people who are

saying they did it probably didn't do it most rappers never did it most people just just won't do it, which is not even something to even brag about anyway, because it's so hard to do. so we put this plan together that we would have watchouts on each corner one person collect the money one person hands over the drugs we were going to set up a complete organized operation unlike the city has ever seen and we're going to do it just like this but it's going to be 15 people 12 to 15 people on the on the team they're all going to get paid they're all going to be happy so we will survive and we won't take no losses first I was like, nah, it won't work. He's like, but we're going to do it in a neighborhood that's an underperforming neighborhood and they need to help. So we're going to move across town a little bit. We're going to try this, see how it goes, and it worked.

Start off making about 1,000 a day, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 a day. I'm like, wow, you were on to something. He's like, yeah, I told you. Just all you have to do is listen to me and you follow the blueprint. But now you have the blueprint and you can implement this on your own. I wouldn't give this exact blueprint to nobody, but I'm giving it to you because you was here with me from day one. And it's like, wow, what did we call it? He said, we just call it the machine. We just call it the machine. So if anybody says the machine, we know what they're talking about. We know what they want. It's going to work. It's going to work. Man, this thing went so it. It started generating so much money, man. It was unbelievable. Everybody was making $3 to $500 a day on the lower end. So they were pretty happy making $10K a month in the 90s. It was right. Well, what is it? What is it? Would you bring it into a house?

Was it? What do you? So you get an apartment building, you get full access to the apartment building, you put a gate around there. You pay for the gate around the apartment building, and then you put your crew behind the gate. So the person that's Dylan stays behind the gate. Nobody can never access him.

He's only going to be able to serve through the gate. It's another. New Jack City. Kind of sort, but outdoor. Outdoor. Oh, New Jack City was outdoor. You just had to get into the Carter complex. You had to get into the complex.

Yeah, well, no. they were selling everything in the complex in the complex yeah you could get it it was it was similar to new jack city except like out open air i guess you could say and then you have a lookout in the front you got a person collecting the money somebody handed out handing out the drugs and you have a lookout to a walkie-talkies on each corner and this ends up being a big thing also because when the police finally came for it they couldn't bust it for years but when they finally came they had all the insight about the whole operation so what we ended up doing was uh making sure those guys on three different posts to make sure if they even see a cop you you call into the person

that's actually dealing so he can disappear when they come everybody's gone so this worked for years this worked for two three four years to the point where the guy who uh put it together when he felt a little heat at all he had a meeting he's like listen i'm out what wait everybody what we i'm out you guys do it you can handle it all i would all i would ask you guys to do is to be generous if you find it in your hearts to be generous so what he was just basically saying kick something back for me you know on the back end but it was so much money involved that was easy that was no problem to do so we outside every day in me no lie I didn't even have to go there but I found a thrill and going there every day just watching this operation that I was a part of

and I'm like wow look at this money that we make it man who would ever thought some kids coming from where we come from could set this up and everybody can be making this kind of money and again the officers didn't like it they could never find nothing so what they did a few times is how they got inside of our operation they would come so heavy 12 or 14 deep even with the lookouts being on their post and they'll run everybody off and then they would set up the operation exactly how we had it set up one guy behind the gate one in the front one on the corner so all the Customers that came to buy shit, they would arrest the customers to get the whole operational blueprint. Once that happened, they were able to come make arrest.

Right. But that's not, that's around the time the feds start watching because they did not like a person having that kind of operation in a neighborhood where it was almost unpenetraitable. But in a way, they just didn't like it. They didn't like it because a few things. happen like people get shot a neighbor getting affected by like uh i can't even come into my house i feel like a prisoner in my own home because these guys are set up all around the whole perimeter and they have lookouts and you can't see their face they have these masks on and they're talking to somebody looks like on phones or walkie talkies and i just don't like this anymore so they had a couple

city hall meetings and they crack down on this hard they really really did crack down on this heart but at this time when i'm climbing up the rank as a i guess i don't want to say a boss but as a person that's significant in the game, my name starts ringing. So I can't come around as much now because one of the guys, he was like a lower level worker. He said,

I got to talk about the cops the other day and they asked me who you were. Who's the guy that drove off in a white car? And I mean, he said, I'm just letting you know, man, that they did ask me about you. So I don't know what their surveillance is, but just kind of be aware.

Come to find out they had been watching me and label me as a supplier. So all my, my whole job now was to not get caught with anything just don't get caught all you have to do is don't get caught like because i mean they can think whatever they want but if they can't catch me with anything or in the same place with the drugs i can do this for five more years and then i can come to you guys and tell you guys that i'm off the game whatever amount of money that i have but it's just not that easy it never

works that easy i mean once you hustling once you're dealing drugs it's almost like in too deep that's another movie that they made about being deep in a dope game and it was kind of like what took for it is like when you get in the game it's so hard to turn away it's like what's going to happen if you turn away man people might get mad at you for leaving the game right people might get mad at you because they depended on you and now you're out of it they can who knows what can happen so um from there i backed off but didn't quit and that's when um the best connect that i ever had came to me through a good family friend he he uh he he uh met up with me one day we was at the park nobody's around no cell phones no

pagers and he was like yo uh yo bro what's up i was like nothing he said bro you've been getting getting a lot of money lately i know you have and i'm like no not really it's all right i downplayed it at this time i'm like close to about five or six hundred thousand four to five hundred thousand dollars at a young age i'm not i'm like like 19 years old about in between 18 and 19, I'm all the way up to about 45,500K, not even knowing that that's what it was. But the thing about that was, he was like, you know, every time you call me, I make about $3,000 to $5,000 off your order. And I was like, what?

He was like, yeah, man, I make like 3, 5 Gs every time you call me, man. But this is the thing. I'm thinking about moving, man. And you're going to need the guy who I go to, but the only way to get to him is through me. And I was like, okay, well, introduce me to him. He's like, nah, don't work like that. He's like, I want that Rolex off your wrist.

And I want 15,000. thousand dollars and i was like what this the first rolex i bought i'll just buy you one don't worry about it he's like no no i want that one off your wrist and if not then you're gonna have to find somebody else and i was like wait how it sound like you giving me an ultimatum you know i don't fuck with that i don't deal with no ultimatums bro i don't even need you right i don't know why i told him that because i did need him right he had the best plug that i ever had in my life so i start scratching my he said well think about i see you tomorrow a matter of fact next time you want do this just let me know but that's what I want so I called him back I was like bro just let me buy

you a watch and give you 10k he was like nope already told you the terms let's do it and I'm like oh shit all shit so I knew I couldn't switch the watch off he knew the watch I had it I paid a lot of money for it I probably paid 17000 for the watch back then in 97 97 98 I paid 17000 for and then he wants extra money but he just told me he makes three to five thousand every every time I call him so I it didn't take me long to think about it the next time I call him I took it off my wrist and I gave it to him and I handed him the money he made a call we went together to the connect now I had the connect that changed my life some say for the worse some say for the better I mean I'm gonna say it just changed my life forever it

changed my life forever because I was able to go straight to the source it was stipulations with that too who are you where you from take me where your family live What about your aunts your uncles? I need to know everybody. I want to know everybody and this is how we're going to do it no other way You don't make the rules. It was kind of strict and firm, but the guy ended up being the coolest Duel in the world He just didn't want me to give him up or run off on him with his shit or have somebody backdoor him and rob him or some shit like that So basically this is cartel. This guy's cartel. He's cartel for sure because the amounts he was able to get in some of the stuff I saw with him he was a level of like um yeah he was cartel level for sure like scary type of shit bring me into the uh to the house we walked to a house with a secret basement and it's full with cocaine

i'm talking about stack 10 to 12 high all around the whole room i'm like that's like three to four hundred of them he's like yeah but you don't have to worry about that but you do have to stay here tonight while we get your order i'm like no i have somewhere to go i got something to do he said no don't worry about it man you have to stay here tonight while we load your car up and all of that shit is rules to this shit did not tell you that so it was no in and out nobody could never knew when i was coming or going because he never told me when i was coming or going so that way he said you can't tell nobody you're going to meet me because you don't know when you're coming to meet me and you couldn't leave to say hey they're loading the car right now couldn't leave about time i left

everything was gone everybody was cleared out so it just took a lot of my time but what that made me do also never run out now i won't run out and i won't run low because this is going to be inconvenient I never know how this is going to go. I don't know which house we're going to go to because some of those houses we would meet at three weeks later, those houses would be completely empty on the market for sale. Like, they never kept

them more than a year, never. So that's when I knew I was dealing with some people who were like way beyond my level and I was like, oh shit, so never bring the money with you, never. Somebody else is going to pick the money up from you. Random person, random car. We won't even tell you,

to they get there so just kind of be ready so it was always a kind of a balance i wouldn't say he was giving me to work on consignment but it was a balance like um like um you got 200k okay somebody's coming to get that you give them that okay but i still got this left it was it was a thing where you're not going to get me busted right mind you this guy was so serious that he he was from mexico and didn't deal with a lot of his own people because he said they want my position they don't think I should be here doing it on this level they believe they should so if they knew this they would take me out

okay never got caught never he never came on the forefront so he just had it where he dealt with me and then no one else couldn't bring nobody couldn't refer nobody he didn't want to do none of that he had enough people so from there I mean I just have to say

from there the money I was able to make from there is the shit that got me in so much trouble because now my level went up they called me a supplier you're a supplier you're a high level supplier you're supplying half of this area and we want you right how long did that take for them to come and grab you or that's so so from about night i was and again only about three years i lasted doing that about three years but i was able to make about a significant i make a significant enough amount of money to kind of position myself if i had to go to jail i i kind of was almost ready for it so what

happened was um was over i was over at an apartment that i didn't think anybody knew about and i was in there uh kind of processing the drugs kind of processing it but let me let me rewind what happened was i started buying cars i started buying i bought another rolex i bought a brand new uh denali chevi i mean yukon denali fixed it up put the 22 inch rims on there all this music and all of this stuff and i used to keep storage lockers so i didn't drive this truck to my suburban home where school and in clerks and people lived in this suburban neighborhood this car didn't match that neighborhood so i kept it in the storage locker so one night i was in a rush and i went to my storage locker and i hurry i'm like oh i'm running late this thing is going to this gate is

going to lock in about 20 minutes so i hurry up and went the storage locker i drove my truck in there and i grabbed a duffel bag out of a truck backed my other car out which was a white late model sedan through the bag in there and hurry up and drove out well was an off-duty police officer just happened to see me do that move and she went and reported that she saw a guy do would look like a suspicious move right they took my license plate and start investigating me from there followed up on the license plate start finding out who i am asked the people at the front desk of the storage who i was like who's this guy he has a a storage locker over there man and and we just saw him do something suspicious he's like he told me that he's like some people ask some questions about

you man and they seem like they're cops man so whatever you're doing man i hope you're not doing any illegal activity out of this place because you know that'll avoid out your contract but i just didn't like the way they came in asking me about you and they gave me your unit number but needless to say they were already on me so i'm inside this apartment and i'm processing cooking up doing my stuff and um a lady knocks at the door and then she knocks at the door i look out the peephole and i'm like i'm like wait a minute what is she doing here and i'm like okay i'm not i mean they're not they got the wrong And she keeps knocking. So I go back to the door again.

I opened the door. She was like, what's going? She was like, yeah, is this the unit for rent? I'm looking to rent this condo right here. And I was like, no, this is not the unit. Why would you come here? Go to the office. I think get away from.

I was like, no. And I closed the door on her face. Three minutes later, they were through the door, 20 deep, right in the mix. They caught me in the mix. In the act, I was right there in the house. me and one other person and it was bad right then and there and this is the big case where this is a big enough case where I had to go to prison but again I had money they found that time I want to say about 250 cash about 100k worth of drugs they found a couple guns but it's another person in the

house and my name is not on the lease and I did not have the keys on me my lawyer made the case he don't live there he was there visiting right who's your informant we need need to know we got all the way to preliminary hearing this is on the state level got all the preliminary hearing they were offering me 10 year state got all the way to preliminary hearing and he said well look this is what we'll do you guys know you fucked up on this case you had bad information wasn't his house wasn't his shit he happened to be there I end up pleading for three years would have you do 12 months off of that okay so again here it is I got off by the hair my chin did you were you out on bond during this or were you in nah I stayed in because I was on

probation from like a minor infraction of just getting caught in the car with like $10,000 in some weed. I took informal probation. No, no, I took formal probation, which is three year felony probation. But they was like, okay. So you're on probation. You just get caught in a house with drugs. With drugs, which is my main thing that I wanted to never wanted to do. But they like, okay, forfeit the money. Like I said, it was almost like $2.30 in cash, all cash. The drugs equal. close to 100, a couple guns in there. So it's me and another guy. The guy's like, well, you know, I mean, it may be worth it for me, though, you know.

I mean, I can handle some of this, man. I got a strong back. I can handle some of this pressure. So needless to say, he got a little bit more time to me. But he knew once he came out of jail, he would be straight. He knew. Don't have to worry about nothing. Once you touch down, everybody's going to know this noble act that you did,

and they're going to look at you a certain way. You won't have to worry about anything. Right. so you went to prison you did state prison san quentin are you serious san quentin state prison mine this is in 2000 is that a pen or is that a that's a medium that's a pen that's that's a prison that's a prison that's a prison that's a prison that's a prison on the island like uh they closed alcatraz and open sound san quentin i know but i'm saying is it a pen is it like a medium oh that's a that's a that's like it's death row that's death row maximum and then they have a camp in a you like the federal prisons

a camp and a low to support the high levels but I went to the higher level since it was like a higher end crime but again once I got there and I got processed and the amount of time I got left I didn't have to stay long again the money I had saved me again but I was able to see what it was and get a CDC number that's why I'm bringing it up I had a CDC number and I'm in the system and I did plead guilty to a drug charge I fucked up by pleading guilty to a drug charge because it feels like if we get him on a drug charge, if we ever catch him, we can charge him with a prior. If we ever catch him again,

we'll give him a prison prior since we actually sending him to prison even if it's just a turnaround. So that messed me up. But again, when you give a young person money that doesn't understand the money, then it's almost a disservice

because I'm now running around. I'm running while I get right back out. I don't waste no time and I jump back right in the case. game and within 12 months I was a millionaire this is about 21 to 22 years old I got right back out I had no consideration for the law I hated police even more I hated the system I'm like you guys brought this shit to us y'all allowed us to sell it but then you get mad and try to take us all the jail I kind of like made up a reason in my head to justify my actions even though

I knew this shit wasn't true it's just like it's easier to make up a reason to do some bullshit so I got out and I just went full-fledged. I went full-fledged now. Another guy that I was really close with, he's the one that starts saying, bro, every since you got out, you've been going harder than ever. You stay away from the shit. You're never around it. And then this is the guy that told me, he was like, um, once you come over here and, um,

let me give a millionaire a hug or something to that effect, like, uh, because it was a song out at the time called, uh, like, uh, hot boys. And they had a song like that. And it's like the people who were high level, they would give each other hugs when they greet each other and shake him. hands and embrace and show love and I'm like what do you mean give a millionaire a hug he like bro I know how much money I've been making and um that means you have to have at least one point two you I know you're over a million I'm like nah nah I'm getting there though I'm getting there though I hadn't

even counted up my money before never counted up all my money before I'm a young kid I don't have a clue of what's going on all I'm doing is hustling working messing with girls hustling hustling working some more and working I mean going in a lab nobody can know what these labs are at private once you're there three to four months if the neighbors start noticing you you have to get out of there and already have another one to transition into because that's the way you won't let that one get busted and then you just I just like I don't want to be in another house with drugs in it I just can't be in the same place with these drugs and as long as I'm doing that I don't even think I understood conspiracy back then all I thought was don't get caught with drugs right

So when he told me that, I went and counted up all the money, and he was right, 300 here, 200 there, 350 here, another 140 there, 170 here. So once I counted up this money and I realized it was about what he said and how he knew was intriguing to me because I'm like, God damn, I'm not even paying attention to how much money I'm really making, but I'm out here in these streets every day. I'm slipping. I'm thinking in my mind, I'm slipping. I'm not applying myself. How old are you? At this point, I'm about 21. I'm going on 22.

My first daughter is born. This is when I really decided that I was going hard, full-fledged, no plan, just like I'm hustling. My whole life was grinding, waking up in the morning, a joint before I brushed my teeth, a shot of gray goose or whatever we were drinking at the time, maybe some Cristile. Maybe we was drinking Mowet and Cristile all the time because we just knew that we were winning, but I didn't know I was winning at that magnitude. But the bad part about that is once he told me that I start acting like I was what he told me I was spending money so fast. Another Rolex, a different car, another car that rims music, just old school cars, just like go buy a Chevy, put 10 G's in music just like this money start dwindling so fast.

And I slacked off my grind. The same guy, which is a drug dealing. mentor if that makes sense. I know a lot of people didn't ever hear of a drug dealing mentor, but you need mentors in whatever you do because he's the one that pulled me by the collar snatch me up and like, bro, tighten the fuck up. Get back on top

of your game. All you doing is spending money, you're drinking. Someone told me you was in a club drunk, disrespecting people. Get over yourself and get back in the game but I had already blew about a quarter of the money. So I went down and I was like oh shit, he's right, he's right, let me snap out of it. And I jump back

into my bag, which means got back on my grind and start going hard all over again. I reset. I did a reset. From there, like, I was not having to go on the streets anymore because I made a crew where we can just wholesale to the other dealers that was buying at least a kilo. This is when I'm like, okay, if this guy want a unit and that guy want a unit, we can just serve them and then we can make the profit because we're getting them so low. I mean, I never have to get up to 100 units, if I can get the best price on 30 to 50 and make more profit because I have a better connect than them, then I don't necessarily need to go all the way up to the highest level in this, which most people would never reach the high level.

So from there, I mean, I just rolled around doing it over and over, getting, you know, 20s, 30s, sometime 50. That was like my biggest order, getting like 50 of them at a time, which was a heavy responsibility. I had to hide them at two or three places just so if we took a loss at one place, we knew we didn't lose the whole load. But again, people were assuming, but they just didn't know the exact level I was at. They knew I was having money.

They knew I was making waves and my name was kind of ringing, but they definitely didn't know exactly the magnitude of it. So when I got the big state sentence, what happened was this. I got into it a guy over him wanting a lower price. he's questioning me about my connect and he's demanding a lower price for me which is about a thousand to fifteen hundred lower than the going price and i was like no i'm not doing that man i'd rather not deal with you at all than cut my price down so to make you happy and you're not even buying enough and he's like well i'll buy three at a time or five and i'm like no he mentioned

my name to an investigator he worked directly with but he's not considering an informant because he didn't snitch on me he mentioned my name i'm not sure how that works. Well, the investigator would give him shit sometimes. Like, oh, I took some shit from over here, bro. Here, you take it and give me a certain amount. Like, all right, cool. Or he'll say something like, man, them dudes around there, man, they're kicking up a lot of noise with that violence, man. Go tell them to stop all that violence and keep them gun, that gun play out of the mix and I would, and I'm going to back off of them. So he says it's a relationship with the cop. The cop end up getting caught fired and going to jail too. So that's

while he don't think it was snitching. He don't think it was telling which it is, though. So him mentioning my name to this investigator, that investigator had a personal vendetta against me. He starts following me around every day for two years, every day. He said, I know your girlfriends. I know where you live. I know who you sleep.

I know everything about you. And how he got on to me is he had my PO call me for a meeting at the parole office because I'm on state parole. I go there in the middle of the day, switch my clothes, put on a work outfit. and I go there as if nothing's going on. And this dude follows me. He gets a fucking trail on me and he's able to keep up with me. Like, I didn't even know this until I get arrested for months and months and months.

He's keeping up with me, like I said, almost two years. And then finally, one day again, a house is filled with money and it's filled with drugs. I leave out. I'm about to go over to another place that we just got. We barely got this place within a week. and I get pulled over by a plane closed officer. So I'm like, I tell the guy I'm like that I'm on the phone when I'm like, hey, bro, I'm getting pulled over by a plane clothes officer. This shit never works out good.

They got guns on their legs and there's another car in front of me now that won't move so I can't drive off. It's all bad. So he spread the word that I was getting arrested and it was just what I said. They picked me up, threw me in a car, took the keys out of my pocket and took me right back to the house that I had just. left and now they go in there another 200k in the closet not as much drugs though but i have a prior prison prior from before and this is when they give me the big amount of time and that's when i was a house in your name house wasn't in my name but having keys to that house gave me control over it and this investigator testified that he saw me entering that residence over and over doing drug

dealer activity right so i'm like wow this is this is this is not good this is not good so we're fighting we're fighting again i'm in i can't bell out but they ended up um what didn't them happening oh i had a co-defendant he was there him and his girl was there there was another guy his girlfriend was there so they uh get arrested too and all they're trying to do is get them to say that everything was mine but they wouldn't do it they wouldn't say everything was mine we all were there except it was a room that was locked up and then one of my keys opened that room and they found a majority of the shit in that room so definitely I was like I was a possession what they say you had access to it so you possessed it right so that time I got a lawyer but they

weren't giving up they was like now you going down they offered me 14 years they offered me 14 I ended up getting that 12 with half times because it was no violence involved and then you can get additional good time for good behavior like fire camp community service and all of that stuff so they asked me that I want to go home on bond I said no I want to get this time out the way I'm telling them I rather sit here so I end up sitting there off of that I did about 40% of that sentence because I went to the fire camp we go to fire camp you know you have to go through San Quentin now San Quentin is only a reception center you only go through this You go through there before they find you your regular placement.

And since I was considered a low-level offender, only a drug dealer, they allowed me to go to fire camp. Once I signed up a fire camp, it took another year for me to get there. I'll get into the firefighter program. I'm like, oh, wow, I'm going to get a good gap of time off of this sentence. So I should be out. This is 2005. This is no, 2004, and I ended up getting out like around 08. I ended up getting around, in the end of 08 going into 09.

So I did a substantial amount of time on this. I did some time. About four years? Yeah, I did a third of that. I did about a little over a third of it. So, but that was a big sentence. And the reason why I'm saying there was a long sentence is because I never got sentenced that long.

I was ready to start trial. But this officer was going to come in there lying and telling them. It was your drugs, though. It was my drugs. But the way that he got to me was he said he watched me go in and out of this house, which he couldn't watch me. going in and out of his house because the way that the door is positioned, but he just told I was a known drug, I was a known drug dealer. He had information to know that I, uh, was doing all of

this stuff and he was going to testify that, but I mean, you were a known drug dealer. I was a known drug dealer, but he used, he used some slick methods to get me. I hate it when they're underhanded. Well, he underhanded me, but I mean, I was like, you know what? I can't fight him. I mean, what's the best deal possible? I dreaded having to go do this time in prison. At this time, I never did more than a year. never did more than a year but here it is it sounds fun it sounds hey it wasn't the worst it wasn't the worst but i mean in the woods it changed my perspective man we're going to the woods we're fighting we actually working with direct firefighters man we're climbing mountains

we're hiking actually kind of like um don't those guys get killed everyone's while everyone everyone people die up there on those mountains the fire burns over some us we're inmates but the thing about the the firefighters who actually work for the department of forestry they don't treat you like a inmate. If you're on the side of them fighting the fire, your civil duty is to protect this dude's life. That's how you made it there. You said you would protect somebody's life

and they will protect yours. So if you see something coming, some flames, a wild animal, a rock falling off of a hill, you should protect these people. But my perspective changed after that, though. It was kind of almost like, this shit ain't worth it for me, man. I'm doing pretty good.

I'm having money. Everything is cool. but this is right here the time when I knew I couldn't do it because remember I said I was on my way to a brand new place that no one knew I had so since nobody knew I had this place except for the person that helped me get this apartment what I was able to do was hide a bunch of shit there so I called home from the county jail and I was like hey um you know I didn't feed my animals man I got like three or four puppies that I had just got and they're over here at this new place so the person on the other line they knew exactly what I made. So once you go over there and pick them up and make sure they're all right So by the time he gets there he like oh they're gone already And I'm like what do you mean like somebody let him out somebody let him out There's no it's no dogs. There's no puppies. It's nothing there and I'm like what he's like yes nothing there The person that helped me get the apartment broke into the apartment and took everything right

This was about about another 200 K close to 250k worth of product inside of an apartment that nobody he knew about so um so when you got out so you knew that before you went in that what you knew all that stuff was missing before you went in no no no he took it the day i got arrested yeah that's what i'm saying before so you got arrested he took all the stuff then you do your time then you go to get out and what happens then you get out you thought she had this stuff no i didn't think i had the stuff i knew he had got it i know i'm saying you thought you you knew you that stuff was gone so you're getting out to nothing and you know this guy ripped you off i know he ripped me off he did it maliciously he never had any intent to help me out he just used it for himself but he

never came up off of it and then he went told everybody that i would come after him for accused i was accusing him of doing it and i would come after him for did did you accuse you of him well i didn't even accuse him of it but he figured i got word i never asked him about it i never even told anybody that i thought it was him he kind of put his foot in his mouth because like within three to four months of me being arrested he uh he starts all of a sudden having shit he starts having more things than he should have had and he wasn't on a certain level that he should be having brand new cars going on trips and doing this type of stuff he was doing so he used the money that he didn't work for to do his own thing like which is what people do i'm not really mad at that

but the fact that you didn't give the fuck about me man you just counted me out because you really thought that I would get to 15, 20 years, even though it still would have been with halftime, you still thought I would get that 20 years at the newspaper and all of these articles said that I would get. So you thought that you had a one up on me. But when I came out, I didn't even think about him. I didn't even show him any consideration. I didn't even pay attention to him. Well, you know, here's the thing. Like, I mean, obviously that happens to everybody across the board. People just immediately start cannibalizing you. But I mean, I knew a guy who lived in over a million dollar house was friends with his neighbors they went to barbecues they hung out they

he got arrested it was in the newspaper he wasn't getting bond um and then he ended up and he didn't get bond his brother went to his head said look go to my house lock it up do this do he goes to the house and literally his brother shows up and catches one of the next door neighbors stealing his like he had like a ten thousand dollar grill in the back backyard and so you're you're living like a multi-million dollar house your live your neighbors live in a multi-million dollar house they're like like you know they're successful business owners they know you're they think oh he's not coming back he's not getting bond hey he's got a really nice grill let's go over there and steal it like what are you doing what do you do he and I remember

him telling me that being like what scumbags and I was just like bro like that happens all the time to right people that are in the game you know what I'm saying like guys all your buddies immediately go into your place and take your TV or this or that and you're like what the hell's going on yeah where's on but but but these people are worth millions people are just scumbags in general what I've learned from just reading the comment section is people are just scumbags they really are people are they are yeah listen my wife and I were talking about that the things that people say in the comment section really let you know who they are and what I've decided is that the bulk of people are just scumbags they say scumbags they say scumbes

things they have scumback opinions it's people people are horrible it's a horrible species well well I think that um automatically are some sometimes a lot of people's first thought is the negative like what can I do to uh to show this guy he's not this or he's not that some of their opinions are jealousy because I ran into it and I couldn't even believe it I'm like bro I'm like why would you play me bro I'm the I'm the I'm the person that you can trust enough i'm the person that will help you make something of yourself if you really want to do it i'm not the person that wants to hold everything for myself like i mean i know it's not nothing nothing to really uh glorify but anybody that worked with me made money right there's no way

you were working with me and then i'm the only one in a group making money no what you need you want a car you're trying to buy a jury you want to help your parents out okay let's do it do it like this okay i'm gonna cut you in you don't even work for me you actually are a partner whenever you tell somebody they work for you in that industry that breeds jealousy right there so i knew better i don't have no workers man we just accrue we're a team we all work on the same team so let's get this money man oh no that's yours that's not mine that's yours you have a vested interest in that like i'm not getting nothing off of your stuff man i already got mines anyway so you're right so what i do is um i just don't listen to people who i don't want to be like i stop doing that because

a lot of people they judge me for being a person who i am but then when i say something to them it's kind of like they're better well okay all you did is listen to other people your whole life you worked for other people your whole life and you still live in payday to payday borrowing money taking cash advances from your check but then you want me to listen to you only because i've been to prison so if i'm a horrible person for going to prison you're a horrible person for never taking risks never believing you've been out this whole time yeah you've been out this whole time and this is all you've accomplished is needing to borrow a hundred dollars of you're 35 years old right you should be feeling very bad about yourself because you're going

to blame me and fault me i mean i paid my debt to society right why did they create the prison system because if you get caught up you have to pay your debt to society what the congress and the government decided was acceptable right would they like okay if you do this you get a year but if you do this you get 10 years i fell into that going against the state was one thing but i never felt a certain way until i went against the government i knew my ass was out when i went against the government the state prison i was always almost ready to buy myself out of it you you get what i'm saying right like if you have a few dollars in the state man a good lawyer that knows a u.s attorney i mean that knows a judge and a district attorney they can get you out of these things man it's like come

i probably should have had no lie man i should have had about 25 years for all of those infractions in the state now mind you i didn't kill anybody so i would have only got about half of that because it was only drug offenses let me's like look for instance one time we had a staff House. It's like in a good neighborhood in Oakland that I knew I shouldn't have been in. I knew fucking well that all of these people in this neighborhood do not like my kind of people. So people act like racism doesn't exist. Well, change the word because it exists. So I'm in this neighborhood and I'm kind of in and out. I don't work. I got a brand new car. I look good and I wear a nice jewelry. So one night I'm leaving, one of the neighbors reported me that it was illicit activity

going on out of my unit. He reported me. a cop came around there looking at me watching me he came around there he looking he watched me he followed me he got off of me but he had my license plate number and he kind of said okay he comes here once or twice a day but he i really don't see nothing one night i'm leaving there and um i get in the car i'm getting on the freeway i got like about a unit with me one unit and i got about like 14 about 14 000 bucks two cell phones i'm leaving this i'm leaving this apartment like i said it's a good neighborhood. I get on the freeway. It's an all black vice car behind me. So again, I get on the phone and I call the guy that I'm going to meet. I call the guy that I'm going to meet and I'm like,

bro, he's something at the same place we always meet at. So he's not saying the exact location, neither am I. I said, bro, it's a vice car following me, man. I got off the freeway and I got right back on it. He did the same thing. He like, you sure? I said, bro, this is a vice car. The front windshield is tinted. It's all black. Now, it's about 8 o'clock at night. So he's like, all right, Just get to the safety zone. That means our neighborhood. Get to the safety zone, no matter what. Get to the safety zone.

And I got you. So I said, let me do this again. I'm going to get off on our exit. And then I'm going to see what he does. I get off on this exit and he flips the light. I hit the gas. I'm in the Chevy Trailblazer, the SS versions of it. It's a fast SUV.

I hit the gas. We're going. He behind me. He called him for backup. I'm doing about 70 miles an hour through residential neighborhoods. We're high speed chasing. He owned me. I'm like, I knew he was on me.

I'm going down for this is all bad. I get a one block jump on him and I hit the corner doing about 50 and I crash. Hit my head on the steering wheel, all of that. I'm kind of dazed. But mind you, I got a block on him. I snap out of it, jump out the car and I start running. I'm unable to grab anything out of the damn car because I just need to get away. So I run.

He's chasing me down the street. He's on me. He's chasing me on foot. I'm talking about he's pretty quick, but he got all of this weight on him and I don't, but I'm kind of dizzy. I jump into a yard. It's a dog back there. Jump right out of that yard to the next yard, the next yard, and I run across the freeway. That's the only reason why I get away. I run across the whole entire freeway, barely escape death and get to our safety zone. The guy who I was just on the phone with, circling the block, and I see him driving slow, and I'm able to dive in the back of his car. He picks me up and we drive out the area. This motherfucker said, where's the shit at? I said, fool, I left it. What do you mean? Where's just? shit i barely got away i'm sweating i'm pant i mean my face is white like i saw a ghost everything goes down i had the person who the car registered in go find the car go find out what's going on see what's going on get a police report nothing reported found in the car hmm two ounces

a dope you got lost two two ounces a dope no money in two cell phones it's all that's on a police report maybe did you have the window open maybe maybe maybe maybe the window was open And come to find out it's one of those rogue cops. You're very negative. It's one of those rogue cops. No, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you. Come to find out. Come to find out, when the feds get me, the same cops showed up eight years later.

Eight years later, he showed. He said, I bet you won't be running across any freeways today. I guarantee you, you won't they finally. So this motherfucker let me know that he was the officer, which we thought he was, that got my car, that nothing was in. they really couldn't charge me because I didn't get caught at the scene so I got away from that but by the hair of my chin but here it is like that's a mistake that I overlooked just trying to be better but going somewhere that I absolutely was not welcome and they was not welcoming no person will know these people here work and you don't work you're home all day and they're like

you're in and out it's like you're doing some trafficking buddy and they called the cops and they really literally start watching me literally and it you know it was a big deal to me because it was a loss but not a significant enough loss to put a den in my program. You know what I mean? So what happened when you got out of prison with the guy that ripped you off? What happened then? Did you track him down? I didn't want to track him down. You know what? After doing that much time in prison. I know you didn't track him. I just say I know. The thing about that is I looked at him and where he was in life and I looked at me come to find out those guys. So while I was in prison in a state prison this happened to me then and it happened to me when i was in federal prison i get a

random letter with an address on there of one of those old houses that we used back in like oh 304 that they have been moved out of and i remembered the address so i get a letter with a random name on it and it just says we really appreciate you we love you your family is fine everybody's doing well we don't work at the factory anymore but just let us know when you get out that's it That was a letter from my connect that had since stop messing around with that shit because shit was getting too hot. Shit was getting too close for comfort. And he definitely knew that I stayed solid because they could have came after him on that time when they asked me, hey, let us go after him. We know you don't have all of this stuff on your own.

You have a connection. We'll take them down. But it's a state level. So it's not so intense. They just asked me to cooperate. What do you want to do? Do you want to get out of this trouble? Help us out.

We need bigger bus. Well, they didn't even offer to let me out of jail. They just like, help us out. Give us bigger bus. We'll take them instead of you. Absolutely not, man. I don't know that. But the guys that I dealt with knew that.

And they knew nothing came their way. Nobody came to their door. But once I got out, I was done with that shit. I said, I'm done with that shit. I don't want to get involved anymore. I didn't go after my cousin. He ended up moving out of state. We fell out completely.

We still haven't spoke. We probably won't ever speak. You betrayed me. You didn't care about me. my family my children so therefore we have nothing to say to each other but i decided while i was in fire camp from talking to miscellaneous people when you make it to that low level you end up being in there with some people that know a bunch of stuff you don't know and that's how i met this guy and i met a lot of people but one guy in particular named evan he was like um walking laps with me we talked a lot

with you know telling stories and stuff like that i knew we had money but he didn't brag about having money you can just tell he never missed commissary but he used to like to smoke that bugler and at this time that bugler which is those cigarettes that you roll up yourself um people that smoke that kind of have bad nerves because you're sneaking around to smoke cigarettes in jail and these cigarettes or illegal they're illegal contraband contraband yeah that's what it is contraband so if you get caught with it you'll lose good time but i don't smoke i have never smoked the most i smoked with some weed but uh he asked me when i was getting out he asked me would i be able to uh meet up his with his sister and give her a few cans of bugler and i mean we talked

about linking up when he get out but I didn't realize he was getting deported so once he got out he was going to get deported I don't think he knew either because had he known they wouldn't took him to a fire camp because he could have did a walk away right so what I did was I um he was like you sure you're going to do it man I don't think you're going to do it because I asked four or five guys that go home to just in the buglers was $17 a can it's 17 bucks a can in 2009 right 2009 about 17 no 2008 what yeah 8 08 or 9 so I was like I'll do it I'll go give him um i'll give him um the bugle he's like no you're not you're not going to do you're not going to do it so i got out first week i was out i had his sister i was like hello hey you going

to see him okay well he wants some bugler she's like i know i don't know why he likes that stuff i was like i can meet you or your other sister and i'll give it to so i gave him that a couple lighters and all this stuff so i did it i actually delivered from there he said thank you so much you kept your word now call these people and they got your back and i'm like well what do you mean by that Like I said, while we were in prison, we were fighting fires together, we were eating together sometimes. I mean, kind of like learning each other's lifestyles. He was a different nationality from a whole other country, so therefore, you know, I didn't know if he was serious or not, but when he gave me the contact information to the people who gave it to me for, it was amazing

because all they had was money plays up that didn't consist of anything drug-related. Like I said, first things they said, they were. like we have uh we have some loads for you and i'm like some loads and he's like yeah this one's first one's going to be in between three and five thousand but you could double or triple that i'm like well what's in it he's like uh we don't know we don't know but evan says you're cool he says you're one of his guys and we can work with you so the first time i did it mind you i got out i tried to get a job i tried to take a trade i tried to do something other than what i had been doing all my life which was dealing drugs i've been dealing drugs since i was at this point 11 years old and i decided

that I didn't want to do that no more. And if this was another way to make some money that nobody was getting hurt and I didn't have to deal directly, I was ready to do it. So I got the first one. I was like, okay, cool, cool. What's in it? I found out and I looked at the retail price of everything. And then I knew some store owners and business owners that wouldn't mind buying it for a cool

little upsell. So I was like, damn, that was that was easy. What was in it? So this one was just only computers. The first time it was only laptops, a bunch of laptops and that was it. So how are they getting the laptops? Do you know at that time? I didn't ask at the time.

At the time I didn't ask. But you gotta know. I kind of know. That's what I was going to say on the next one. When they're asking for more money for another box, it was like, we got another box. And it's really just a crate. It's just a big old crate with a bunch of shit in there.

So they have to have somewhere to deliver it to. So come to find out, they were doing the dumps and the fools. They order stuff and they get this stuff delivered. But they got a bunch of people sitting on the computer all day long, just ordering stuff. And then back then it was so easy to order stuff on the internet with other people's information. So this is fake credit card information. Credit cards. You can give check by phone.

They had it figured out. At some point he asked me, did I want to get into that part of it? And I can have my own stuff. And I didn't have to pay them for what they got because you got, I think they spent a thousand to two thousand on information. And they can get 20 or 30,000 worth of stuff. I don't have to go in a store. I don't have to send anybody. I don't have to see anybody but them.

So if they only spent $2,000 or $1,000 on the dark web for this information, they got somebody like me to come give them 12 to 15, but I can still go make the rest of the difference. Then here it is, I'm winning. So I took advantage of that. I did that for a year. Well, how do you make the rest of the difference? You're selling it directly to wholesalers or I'm sorry, to retailers or are you selling it to like on eBay or something?

No, I sell it to people who did import, export. I sold it to people who had flea market in small shops. I sold it to people who had just someone else that will pay them more for. Like this is a quick little story. One time I had 300 iPhones at one time, 300. There was iPhone fours or threes or four, fours, whatever it was, 300 of them. But this was back when they were available. They were available.

Yeah, they were like 600 each, 500 each, which was a lot of money. It was a lot of money. I paid 220 or 180 to 220 per. and then I was able to go sell them for 530 to 550 per because so I asked the guy why would you pay me this amount and they're only going for 650, 700 he said well my people aren't like your people we're in value if I make 30 bucks per you're not if I make 30 pucks per phone times 100 I make good money today and I got 300 and you're not my only person so I make way more money than you because I know all you guys right so he messed me up with that

like I know all he just put me in the you guys category and let me know he was much bigger of a boss than me he says so me with 30 bucks per unit is way better than what you're trying to do because you're taking more risk because I guess he thought I was going in the stores and getting this stuff myself and actually doing the footwork which I wasn't so he said I sell in value which made a lot of sense 50 bucks per times 300 you get another 100 from somewhere else and you're importing them or whatever it is that you're doing with him he was making good money he was right So the guy offered me No, no, it was his time

To start getting out of prison He didn't know he was getting deported But instead of him going home They took him straight to INS And he ended up getting shift out the country I thought we were going to link up and become partners Because I spoke to him the whole time But he never made it back to the United States

So he ran a business internationally And then for a minute He started having me send him Western Union, right? But I sent so much money yet Western Union It was only so many times that I could switch names and use these other people's identity and pay people to go to the rest of unions

to try to send a big bulk of money. So that's when I found out about the digital currency, which was Liberty Reserve at the time. And then the other one called Perfect Money where you can just buy into it at, you use exchangers and you give them the cash and then they upload your digital account. And at the time, like I said,

it was a small percentage of a broker's fee. And I was able to pay him, pay them, because he never said it was him. I paid them. which I'm sure it probably was him right and he uh from there I mean shit it just went up man it just went up man because I was able to still run up another high six figures off just doing this and that's when he offered me do I want to get in the game with the dumps and the fools and the you know dealing with people's personal information which I said no he had a bunch

of profile information information that he knew that if I got a hold to it I could probably resell it and make extra money because again he trusted me enough to talk to me himself as many as people as he sent to meet me to pick up money drop off money mind you we're trading um digital currency they didn't call the cryptocurrency yet because i hadn't even bought my first bitcoin yet so what i did was um made sure he got his money always made my money and i said well you know what i will try to be a broker of information i'm like i it's worth a try well if i make extra money so from there I was able to get the information. It would be on a hard drive or he would send it to me through an encrypted email file, like a drop file.

And I would get it. And I'm like, damn, this just looks like a bunch of numbers. To me, I mean, it just doesn't really look like much. But after I told three people, I realized that people paid up to $150 for one person's information, but they could turn around and make $1,000 off of it. So I start scratching my head thinking like, so these kids, these crowsy, crates in these containers and have containers that I'm buying sometime for up to $40,000 like a $40,000 one would make me back close to 100 and I didn't have to do anything but get

it. Tell three people about it. See which one wanted that container or crate like a big old crate a cargo crate and I just handed to them always get my cash and then I start taking digital currency too. A couple things happened after that. Liberty reserved. Liberty reserves got seized by the feds. They had a message. on their site one day that if you have any money with this company traded bought or bartered any business with these people contact the u.s. department of justice right now needless to say i left about like 21,000 in there i didn't contact them the owner that ended up getting like 40 years they said you were running an international money laundering scheme and they like a lot of people

i know lost money but we just didn't want to chase it because we have made so much money in there And a lot of people will know about it, but then some won't. The early, early adapters would know about it. And then from there, you had to use perfect money. And I'm only saying to say that this is how I exchanged money because Western Union wasn't feasible. And it's an all-cash business if they're close to you. But now I'm dealing with people on an international level. So with that being said, I start using this one called perfect money.

So with perfect money, with them, you can almost be an investor in there. So if you got 5, 10K, you can make it with 10K, 85. 500 you make three to 400 a day because it's people in third word countries that take a four dollar loan and pay you back four dollars and 50 cent a 40 dollar loan to pay you back four dollars and 50 cent pretty much off of 40 dollars and it don't seem like a lot but they're leveraging all of your money that you have in there and then you'll get your deposits and you can withdraw your deposits whenever you want to so i didn't believe it was possible and then one day i woke up and they said you live in the united states you can no longer use this website whatever

money you have here is here you can't deposit or take more money out of it and i'm scratching my head like an idiot until i realize all i need is a vp in and some socks to change my location to spain and i took my money out of that real quick before i losing it all i might have left a thousand bucks in there at this time but from that alone i was making four hundred five four to five hundred bucks a day just from digital currency then bitcoin came around changed my life like uh i was able to accumulate bitcoins when i again they were like $87 to about $15 but a lot of people well the three people who i dealt with were dealing with bitcoin instead of cash you can transfer it anywhere it's untraceable the silk roll used it in every fraud forum used

bitcoin now at this point mind you this is 2009 2010 no 2009 2009 10 no 10 11 this 2010 this 2010 and 11 so it wasn't a big deal to me because I'm like why does the price fluctuate of this thing so much man the other ones were more stable and he's like don't worry about that because whatever it's at the moment is what it goes for nobody's judging you off of if it drops or if it raises just um you know let's just do it like this because we can remain anonymous and nobody's going to find us out so I did that I'm broken information but I'm taking cash for these people's information that I'm trading I'm actually trading it and And sometime I still would get a whole crate of shit because it's just too good to be true.

$24,000 crate. I turn around and sell it for 37. And then a person who gets it can still make their money off of it. If I didn't give it to my one particular Asian guy, which sold in volume, he told me for sure. But another guy, he told me that he would break it down and sell it. He can make almost double his money. So I knew it was a deal. I knew I was on the right lane.

And I thought I wasn't taking a lot of risk because I'm not dealing drugs. I'm like um I'm tired of that drug shit I don't want to go back into it it's not for me I took a substantial amount of money out of that where I came back and I wasn't struggling I'm able to help my family I mean again a lot of people think all I have to do is one scam and I'm gonna get rich but that's a lie you will not get rich off of one scam what it does is it draws you into it and you become a fraudster so don't think like um I can do that too like um even what you did is it's it's about like seven 17 more people in the United States that can do that on the level that you did. I don't believe that a person who had a mental capacity to even be disciplined enough to go through all of the chains and the links that you went to to make your situation what it was because it was millions and millions of dollars created when one person might lie on the application just to get $4,000. You lied on the application trying to get a micro loan that the bank still caught on to because you're just not putting enough energy into what you want to do. So I put the energy into some shit to get the best return. turn. That's what I'm pretty much just trying to say. So I realized putting energy into drug shit and elicit activity, it just always still only ends like with partial satisfaction, like only some

fulfillment. So here we are. We trade in Bitcoin. I'm exchanging it with him for any type of merchandise or information. Sometimes he's like, hey, can you fly in New York? And I was like, I don't really want to fly it in New York, man. He's like, somebody needs $25,000 in New York. I swear I'll make it worth it. I'm like, I don't want to fly across the country. We know 25,000. You tell them to come to me, and then we end up resolving it and settling it,

and they'll end up probably coming to meet me or we could just like, and that would be for them to convert it into Bitcoin without having to go through all these other channels of exchangers that require all your personal information because when the government, when people got hip to it, they start wanting to know. if you had an ID to upload and stuff like that so now I'm hustling I'm doing that and it's actually going good I made good money from that I was able to save money you know get a house get everything that I needed but still not happy about it wanted more wanted want it more wanted more one and more so I put my own crew together my own crew together and instead of selling

the information I told them you guys take this information do what you got to do with it but I want 50% of everything you get which was still a lot lot more than the information was worth. So we did this for about a year, but I didn't really have to go chasing the money myself. I didn't have to because about four people would do it for me. Well, with me, they didn't do it for me. They did it with me because if we ever had ran into a situation, well, we're equal partners. You don't work for me. I'm not your boss. You don't have to report to me. Even if you decide to quit today, you can walk away and I will not even be mad at you for one minute so um it was going cool but i still realized i had to do something else like this

wasn't going to be enough so we start doing concert promoting promoting parties doing stuff like that that was kind of a cash business was doing getting little venues and stuff i um linked up with a promoter that was experienced and he had resources to a lot of big artists and well more mid-level artists because i didn't want to go too big we want to see how the events went first and we did that made a little bit of money and I was able to maintain a bank account and maintain, you know, some legitimate money coming in, but it was never enough to just move the needle. So I did always like my gray area, red area stuff. I always liked that until this one guy came into my life. He came back into my life. Like I said, I knew him for a long time. And he just kept asking me

for work. He's asking me for work. He's like, yo, I need some work. I was like, no, we're not on that right now. You don't have to worry about that. And he just asked me over and over. to a point where I was even getting irritated like bro we're making good money doing this we don't need that no more so he's asking me about some product and he's telling me uh he had some guys from another state that's willing to even pay more for it and how much we can make on it but I just didn't want to get involved with it because I'm like man this is the type of stuff that brings people down man and whenever I was doing that shit I always was having mishaps and missteps this right here is indirect and why aren't you is this like is this uh coke or crack Is this? No, this is just Coke. The crack to me, we were past that. It was just like, get him some good powder coke. Let them get it. And then we move him right on and we still focused on this. So I don't want to do it. I'm steadily telling him no. I'm not getting involved, but he's not taking no for an answer. And so I started testing him. Well, how much did you make last week? He said, I made about 10 or 12 grand. I'm like, but you still want to do a play for some dudes from me. He's like, yeah, but it be my cousin and I know them and it can lead to something else. But I just was not showing any interest in it. And then finally one day he asked me about 2011, 2011, he was like, hey, man, look, man, they're coming out here, man. My guy is here, bro. He'll fly dude, man. He's cool.

I know him good. DEA. I was like, well, I'm not doing it. I don't want nothing else to do with it, but I'll make a call. Making the call was the worst thing I ever did, man. That right there put me right in the middle of a federal indictment. And I didn't even know. So I'm running around.

I'm partying. I'm traveling. Mind you, I'm having a good. month a good year my last few years i i became a millionaire again so i became a millionaire for the first time in my life at about 21 21 22 i was having almost 1.5 million including money that i used to cop with lost 70% of that over the time i lost about 70% of that before i turned 30 so when i came out of state prison right around 30 i started something completely different and was able to do the same thing again starting from where i was at all of the losses all the mishaps

all of the thieves all of the vultures i was able to run it up again making 30 50 70k in a month so a lot of people think you're going to become a millionaire by making 500 000 in one year 300 that's not how it really goes you first have to start making 20k a month 50k a month 70k a month and then you can accumulate it like that if you're disciplined because you've got to think and i'm sure you notice too. You can give a full any amount of money they think they're supposed to have, they'll blow it all. And when Jim Rohn said, you can put the money in the hands of everybody who thinks they're supposed to have it and they'll give it right back to the people who are really supposed to have it. Yeah, if you took the 95% of the wealth that is accumulated in the

upper 5% of society and you redistributed it equally within three years, the 5% of the society will have, we'll have all that, 95% of that money again. Yes, and it's a true story. How I know that's true, because all of the hustlers that I knew, if they were selling crack on the corner or if they make it up to selling weight, 95% of them only do it for survival or image because I go check them, how much money you hold, man, I need 50, I need 70, I have a big playup for it for 70, and they can't come up with 70 grand. Wait a minute, you mean you hustle every day and you can't come up with 70 grand.

I'm going to put in 130. put in 70 we're going to make 354 but I'll split it with you evenly and then they won't have it. The same thing with the scamming and the fraud most fraudsters are only doing it until they get the next play they're doing it like um all that

they're getting to pay their rent and then they goof off they goof off and then they suddenly um freak out and and and they're scattering around trying to get together their rent again. Yep that's exactly how it goes exactly so they're doing it for survival and then the PPP

the edd all of that government surplus money showed you that that all of these people that got an extra 50 70 hundred k they wasn't supposed to have it they're back borrowing payday loans they're back trying to find a job at walmart or do whatever they can to make some extra money so what happened was um i decided to give him a phone number for someone who can get him that cocaine this is not my original plug because my original plug got out of the game mind you when i got out of the prison from the state he made sure i was straight he bought me a car and he gave me a small bag of money. It wasn't nothing serious, close to like 15K, but in a car. I think it was a 2008 GTO, 6.0 leader, about a year old, year and a half old. He gave that to me, didn't say nothing about it. Actually, I had somebody bring it to me. I was really happy about that. And it was just like, thank you for not giving me up.

Like, thank you. Oh, my God. Like, because, I mean, I'm sure he probably thought I would want to get out of a 20-year sentence, but I didn't get the 20 years. But he heard about it and he kept up with it that I'm facing 20 years. most people roll over so i gave him the number for the cocaine deal didn't hear nothing else about it he did it he took it to his guy it's over with we back to the fraud we're really like um hey i got somebody need 100 i got somebody need 200 like i'm talking about like profiles or whatever

their information is required to do like people would go apply for instant credits they would go download and do take a card in there that only punches into the system it was so a multitude of things you can do with this information but I'm getting the information from somebody in another country I don't mind selling it for a handsome profit I mean whatever five or six months later here he comes again asking me again this time I'm like no so it's not negotiable this time I'm like nah man I'm just not doing it I'm not focused on it I'm not taking out of my time to make $3,000 to hook this guy up tell him to go somewhere else bro you know a lot of other people unbeknownst to me he's already working for the federal government he's on their

team for sure. I didn't even know this. It's no way I could have known this, but he got in trouble and he took the deal that let him right back out, but they wanted something a lot more serious than whatever he was able to provide them, which was me. So he, we having these conversations and he's coming up. He's like, bro, how much does that Bentley cost? How much do you pay for that Bentley? Man, you bought this Bentley. It's a 2000. That's a late model. Man, you got that when it was less than a year old and I'm like well come on bro you already know the story about that I didn't buy that shit I told him you know um I told him the story thinking it's just me and him I said jay lost some money on a road and he needed the money he needed 80k I gave him 80k and I paid

off the balance basically so he can get back in the game you knew that already why are you asking me this again he's like no no man because I'm just saying but you're the only one with this car man the only other person with this car in our city he's a rapper and you you you living like him bro you must be making a lot more money now you sure you ain't doing that selling that coke on the side because this shit we're doing boosting you up making you look bigger and making me and you know what male ego are doing like making you look like it definitely letting these guys know this guy's in the game he knows other people he fronts people money he mm-hmm so I'm like yeah you know what I did for that car and and that's how I got it but

cares about that you got a new Mercedes Ben's like yeah but it ain't like yours and you got your girl arranged bro bro bro you rolling man how much money you've been holding I'm like come on man you tripping man we ain't on that for anyway let's focus on what we doing right here so he's he wants more coke though he's like hey can you get um anything heavy and i'm like no so about another three months later here he comes again my boy is coming out here and they want five birds and i'm like five he's like yeah they want five and they got the money they bring the cash i'm on wiretap caught saying well if they have the cash they're going to have to bring you the cash first me and you are going to count it

I'm going to take it to the connect he's going to count it and then somebody else has double back down a few hours later and drop the shit somewhere else and then we walk away I don't want to be in the same place with the dope and I'm not getting involved with this

he said but we can make it happen right and I said yes on a fucking wiretap it was over for me right then and there everything's going cool everything going smooth I'm thinking my life is on top of the world I got access to money

I'm traveling. I mean, back and forth to Miami. Man, my life is amazing as far as I'm concerned. I'm like, wow, man, I mean, being a millionaire is not that bad, but I still want more. Like, it's no number. In my mind, I always thought having a million dollars would make me quit the game. It never would. When I was 16 years old, my whole goal was to get a kilo.

When I was 18 years old, all I wanted was 100,000 in cash. Neither one of those things, once I accomplished them, were a, thing to make me fall back it only made me go harder so i know a lot of people that don't have money they'll tell themselves like all i have to do is get my first 30k and it's going to change my life forever no it won't all you're going to do is find something to spend it on what's going to make you go harder and it'll lock you into whatever it is you're doing whether you're working whether you're hustling whether you scam whatever it is it's only going to put you in a position to have to keep going because it's not the end-all be-all right so here these guys come

allegedly he's calling me trying to line up this deal and I'm I'm leery because at the time some light bulb went off in my head because my girl at the time said that um baby you know what man I didn't like how your friend popped up at the restaurant

we were eating at that night coincidentally and you didn't even tell him we was coming there he popped up there and it just didn't feel right I don't know I mean sometimes I feel like he competes with you and I feel like he's a little jealous of you I told her shut the fuck up don't question my friends

where were you at when I was in prison I met you when I got out and I don't want to hear your mouth almost brought her to tears but she was right this motherfucker was a paid informant not just an informant a paid informant even worse to me you getting money from the government

you asshole my lawyer my lawyer showed me in the paperwork this mother just like a police officer this motherfucker told the DEA ages I'm tired of chasing this dude around calling him over and over he seems like he want to do it give me more money for a rental and i need an extra thousand dollars d a agent says no you're not getting that we'll give you four or five hundred and we'll pay for your rental car

throughout the whole investigation i i almost cried bro because this dude making a deal with the government to line me up man i fed you off my plate when you got out of federal prison motherfucker i fed you i made sure you had money you asked me what i was having going on i put you into my mix i came at you with whatever you wanted you didn't need no clothes when you came out i he's like i heard you been out here winning yeah now you win in too that was my attitude if i'm winning you're winning we know where each other live man i know your whole family i know your grandmother man we're all winning together not just me you know how i do it it's not me it's us so uh he's working for the DEA and um man i'm about to do the deal but my way bring the money first i'm over at a

A bar, a nice bar, I think it was a new bar. Grand Open, a lot of women there. We're having a good time and I get the call. The call was a person who I trust dearly, and he was telling me, hey, that deal that you're going tomorrow, he says, that deal that you're going to do tomorrow, don't do it. You're already indicted. They have enough information already that they're going to arrest you, but that deal tomorrow will be the one that sinks the ship. I said, what deal? He said, you know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Don't do it. It's all bad. The cake is already baked, man, and you're done. And he hung up. I walked back in the bar. I think I took down my shot that I was drinking, but my skin was noticeably flush. People were asking me what's going on. I was kind of lightheaded, kind of flaming and burning sensation through my body.

I said, I got to get out of here. And he's like, why? Why is I got to get out of here? I just got some bad news. Did you think, was it so, was the call so vague that you thought maybe? the guy's full of shit or did you 100% know this guy knows something's

happening he's absolutely on point I know that he knows I know you or were you like no I knew that he knew because the person who said this to me was a person that told me when I got out of state prison stop selling drugs bro you're smarter and you're better than that

this is not a lane for you to be in so I never told them that I was even back dibbling dabbling mind you this is the only deal I made no one up people stop asking so I was in East Oakland in the ghetto in the hood I'm known as a coke dealer right you ask anybody about me that knows me they'd be like oh that do sell all kind of coke that dude he's one of them ones I backed all the way away from it completely so it's no deals being done so for somebody anybody to call me and ask me about a coke deal that's

about to go down told me right there I only talked to this motherfucker about that deal because I don't want nobody to know about it man because if I do that more people will start asking me and it will draw me back in and now that's a full-time job the phone does stop bringing that that drug if you get in certain circles you got people that want to buy a half a kilo

for a party they want to buy they really got money man and these people won't meet you but they'll send somebody in like who are these people that want to pay $7,500 because they're having a party all weekend and they want all of their guests to be happy but you got people like that that won't stop coming and here it is they

why do um what was the joke I heard on Halloween. He says, why do black people always go to white neighborhoods to trick or treat? Because they had a best, no, the same reason why white people go to black neighborhoods and buy their drugs because they have the best stuff. So these people will come and get the cocaine from us knowing that they can take it back and be stars with the people whoever they like go back to. Like celebrity suppliers are wealthy. They're not just rich. If you supply celebrities, you're probably wealthy because they don't. It's a minimum they have to spend, right?

So I just didn't want to go back into that. I said no, and no meant no. So this call was telling because nobody else knew this. So once I left there, I was like, let me get rid of the phone. Let me not do it. But I'm like, well, if he says already bad, let me just see what this dude says when he calls tomorrow. So he called and he was like, yeah, I'm ready. Let's put it together.

Man, my people were here. We're all waiting for you. I was like, all right, cool. I just threw the phone out after that. I never showed up, never answered for him. That was the last time I talked to him. I knew it was true. I had some people in position.

I said, go by the house. Go by the house on Mountain Boulevard. Go by the house in Hayward. Just drive by. Just drive by and see what you see. They drove by the two little spots that I used. And he said, yeah, surveillance team's there. It's true.

The surveillance team's there. Just don't go back. So at this time, knowing people involved in fraud, I was able to get multiple fake identities. I jumped on a plane under an assumed identity that I had been holding on to in case of an emergency. And I went to Miami. I got a hotel room. I stayed there for about two weeks. I stayed there for two weeks.

And I'm like, wait a minute. They already got me. The dude already told me. They already got me. Once I met up with him and he told me where the information came from and how he got it, And this girl, she wanted to be compensated for this information, I was already, it was a done deal. I mean, they pretty much saved me because that deal for 5,000 grams would get me 180 months to 240, 180 to 240. That is no way around it.

The guidelines, the point system, it's just no way. If you do over a certain amount of grams of that product, that cocaine, they don't even want to hear. man you're a high level dealer so the fact that i didn't do it it helped me out it might have saved the day for me but i was already indicted it was true but they didn't come for me right away so i come back home and i start back living a normal life just had my girlfriend move i move somebody else moved all my stuff out of that place and i just roamed around freely and stayed away from police contact for almost two years a year and a half about a year and a half without coming in contact with them at all but i still had to make money try to get all my affairs organized but in a

meantime that's expensive take care of the family can't move completely freely but i'm able to move enough where people know that he's not doing bad but i don't know if he's going to the magnitude that that he was going at before and this is around the same time where my entire neighborhood where i came from where i used to deal drugs in everybody in that neighborhood got indicted at the same time like 31 people and they have my name all throughout the indictment as being a part of them but never any deals mind you i backed away from the drugs but they had me on a couple wiretaps telling people that i can get them information uh uh that they can go that they can go hit with like i had the best list the best bin list i had the best um personal

information like starting at two thousand dollars start the order started two they had me on a wiretaps saying that but the government didn't care they knew they had me on a separate indictment already and and that they would get me eventually. So I didn't get caught up in a big indictment that all of my friends got caught up on because I wasn't hustling. And their drug case is a slam dunk. Their drug case, they got me on a slam dunk. But that case was a gang slash drug case that I was affiliated with those guys.

But I didn't participate directly with any of those guys with these crimes that they were committing. They were still outside hustling dealing these drugs. I didn't participate in none of that. So to see my name in that, I'm like, Well, maybe I'm in the clear. I started having a little more optimistic outlook, but it was just a matter of time before they would run up on me and, you know,

and actually take me down. So here it is. I'm driving around. This lady that I know, man, she was helping me out a lot. She was going in stores and she was like making accounts, opening an instant account. She was doing a bunch of stuff where we kind of like,

we did cool. I mean, three to five K a week, but she goes to jail inside Bloomingdale's for having, fraudulent ID and fraudulent profile. She had the whole profile in her purse. She goes to jail. So she's in jail. Call me from jail and I'm like I'm like, okay, I'll be there. Don't worry about I bail you out in the morning.

Don't worry. I leave my house condo at the time. Like a townhouse condo in a good area, a new townhouse that I felt like they never knew I had and never knew how to find me there. How they found me is the lady that I was dating they had surveillance on her too. So her moving never changed anything. They just found out where she lived and knew that I would come. It wouldn't take long for me to come there.

So at four in the morning, he said he slept there all night, and I got up that morning at like 7.30 to go to the bail bonds place, and this plane car followed me the whole time. He's behind me again. I'm like, this car must be following me. So I'm going to get off the freeway. I got off the freeway. I got gas.

The car was gone. So I'm like, okay, I'm in the clear. I thought I was tripping. Maybe he wasn't following me. Get on the freeway. whole other cars behind me but I don't trip on there I'm like oh they don't know maybe they're doing something else I ain't doing shit anyway I'm not hustling they what the fuck do they want with me I pull up in the front of the bail bonds place in an Oakland police officer pulls me over

mind you I know this cop I jump out the car and I'm like what the fuck you won't man what are you pulling me over for I got to go in here and bail somebody out man he's like get back in the car man it's not it's not good this time it's not good I get back in the car the SUV in the same car come block me in it's the u.s. marshal they said hey what's up mr brown we got you huh i said no you got the wrong person don't talk to me like that you don't know me he said we know everything about you man we spent the night at your girlfriend's house today last night and that's how we knew you would you know we knew where you were uh looked at him and he had to look in the eyes like don't try anything just get back in the car so they searched

the car he said you got a gun on you i'm like nah i don't have a gun on me they search the car anyway take this car to x-ray put me in the car but before they could remember i said earlier in the story about an officer that I high speed chased with and I ran over the freeway to get away from him and I left. He pulls up to the scene. He said, I bet you won't be running across no freeways today. They told me everything you did and you probably get about

15 years, 12 to 15 on this one with your criminal history. And he just told me, fuck you, gave me a middle finger, slammed the door and walked away. Now I'm in trouble but I'm like, damn, what is this for? What is this for? And they take me into an interrogation room and explained it all to me.

A year and a half ago, man, you sold some cocaine in somebody right i'm like no no no i didn't i didn't they show me everything played a little bit of the tape and asked me so what you want to do do you want to do what your friend is doing and work with us or are you going to be a hard ass i said man you got the wrong person i don't know what you're talking about man it's no way i can walk out of here right now you're talking about you're talking about some drug thing and he asks me who told you that we were coming for you i said i don't know what the fuck you're talking about you got the wrong person man take me to my cell so they take me to my cell now once i read the charges it pops up in my head it's him

nobody's going to believe me i have to let people know it's him it's no it's no way in the world that this guy he knows everybody that i know he's in the game they need like people need to know to not deal with this guy if this is what kind of hype he's on people need to know to not deal with this fool so um they get me in there they book me they read me discharges myself against the government and i panic man i just was like man i'm probably not coming out soon i told my girl that she can go told my kids i wouldn't be seeing them for a long time they tell me that the mandatory minimum is 120 months man in 85 percent which which i'm like oh my god i'm gonna be so old when i get out of here man but with the enhancements in the criminal

history he told me that man you probably won't be getting out for a long while man so i mean be be prepared and you don't want to work with us so i mean there it is but of course you never supposed to listen to the agents and the cops you have to talk to lawyers right you know what i'm saying they don't know anything the cops can't help you out man all they want to do is get somebody like we know you have a person that can get this much weight we want him just get out you can make it you can do what you do for another couple years i mean if you get any time it'll be under five years man and we'll make sure you straight we just want you to come over here and help us out it's an absolute no for me

it's no thinking about it we don't have anything else to talk about just let's get this ball rolling so what I did was I prepared myself mentally for knowing I'm going to do a lot of time so you know like paid attorneys don't necessarily matter in the federal judicial system because

it's kind of like the guidelines are the guidelines and if you're not cooperating they pretty much hardly give downward departures what I think is if you were Let's say you was questionable if you were innocent and you could go to trial, then a paid lawyer probably does help. But in your situation, you're going to plead guilty.

So, no, I don't see that a paid lawyer is going to make much of it. Like, if you're already going to say, what's the best deal I can get because you can't go to trial, then yeah, there's no reason to pay a lawyer. He's not going to help you any. Like, you know, what I'm going to give you 50 grand, I'm still going to get. You're still getting the minimum mandatory no matter what. That's the best you can do. And with your criminal history, you're probably already over the minimum mandatory. And I was, and I was pretty much.

And I don't see that a paid lawyer can help you. So we reached out to a couple of them and just be straight up with me. Anybody with me, if I like it or not, be straight up with me. Don't coddle me. Don't bullshit me or pull my leg. So he comes to visit me. I tell him everything. He looks at the case, listen to the tape, sees the evidence, is giving me.

He said, you don't need me. I charge $75,000. But what they have here, you own. Only want the best deal possible, man. Your guy knows you very well. Oh, he describes you so good, man. The little retainer that you gave us, I can give it back to your family. You're probably going to need it, man.

You're going to prison for a while. I'm like, Mama, I'll call my mom. He said, I'm going to prison for a while, man. He read the paperwork, man. He said he won't even take my money. She said, well, you know, at least he was honest because there's a bunch of them out there that would have took your money, had you sign up for that $75,000, knowing they were still, get you the exact same amount of time. So the mandatory minimum was 10. I didn't do the big

drug transaction they wanted me to. How I ended up with the 84 months was the judge saw something that the U.S. attorney overlooked and my attorney overlooked. And she said, wait a minute, one of these prior convictions that you guys are charging him with was when he was 18 years old. And that's past 15 years. We can't use that. That dropped my guideline points level down enough where instead the 120 I pled to 84 months and I'm because of your criminal history still because of my criminal history because without that it could have been 60 months because the deal that I actually did was was was was was for like a half you know isn't there a minimum mandatory or wouldn't so yeah is there a minimum mandatory a mandatory minimum after the 120 is it like five which we'll put it up to

180 right okay well that'd be 60 months but that plus your criminal history points is what got you to the 84 to the 84 yeah that's what got me to the 84 months no downwhip or departures no it's just she calculated it and you're like oh yeah wow he did that was when he was around 18 years old yeah you're right it was over 15 years ago yeah it's it's no way we can use that it's no way we can use that so your lawyer should have caught that he should have but again this is now i'm on a uh what you call it a a a court appointed but it's a real real law firm but it's like they got so many of these cases and this is right around the time when shrimp boy this crime boss along with the city council members they all got indicted around the same

time so my case became small compared with the corrupt government you're talking about shrimp boy yeah man he was there he came in there right while i was there the chinese chinese my boss all those yeah big story about him man he made international nationwide news so they wanted to get my case out the way I pled guilty, send me up the road, I'll be back, but this is why that's changed my life because federal prison is completely different. I get in there, I go to the medium, immediately SIS come sees me, they're like, look, you're going out there on the yard, man, if your paperwork's not good, tell us now, we'll put you in a shoe, we'll let those, these guys will never see you, and we can ship you somewhere to a

whole other state because as soon as you get there, as soon as you go out there, they're going don't want to know what's up with you man he says uh asked me a couple names of the guys that was running the yard that had the keys and i'm like i know them he's like you know them he's like all right well they're they're back there and they're still going to want to do the check so i get there told them that um pretty much my paperwork was going to um be here shortly and everything you know everything was coming and they said man we already knew you was coming we had got pretty word pretty much got word that you was coming and we know your case already because it's a thing that people don't know where people can just put you in a pacer system

them and pay the money and they can order all your public transcripts because it's i mean it might cost a hundred bucks but if you really want to know something about a person you can get that easily being that uh asking a person to see their paperwork they can just leave some pages off or they can even make it up themselves and have somebody type it up themselves and just give you whatever they want want you know whatever you want them to see whatever they want you to see like judgment commitments i saw all of those being altered while i was down so um i got in there hooked up with my guys got with the crew they kind of was telling me how things um was going but they had some key questions like you plan on hitting here because the way we do it is the way we do it if

you plan on hitting then let us know that means bringing in any contraband having some videos are you going to get any visits i said yeah i plan to get some visits he's like well uh let us know before you do so we can let you know how i kind of kind of go because we already running our program here you know the rules man stay away from the woods the south siders don't be intermingling gambling gambling mixing messing with no homosexuals you i said man Come on, man, I know that, man. I know the script. Like, we just got to tell you that way, if we ever catch you doing that,

it's no passes here. We get this medium. It's, I'm in Hurlone, California, man. A newer medium in the middle of nowhere. So they was running a pretty tight ship there, like, kind of like no cross mingling. But I knew I didn't want nothing to do with that. I didn't plan on hitting. I didn't want no parts of that, man.

At this point, I'm almost kind of feeling defeated. Like, everything I've done only led to this, meaning I'm not a great decision maker like I thought I was. I'm really questioning myself looking around at that yard with these guards and they tripping and a riot might happen any given day, man. But here it is. I'm here already, so I might as well program. It's hard to get a job, find a job in a wreck, see the most terrible shit on that wreck yard, man. People unburying weapons, knives, just whatever comes with that, man, at this medium, man.

But, I mean, I guess you get used to it. Like I said, I was desensitized at a young age to people getting harmed. hurt even killed like it didn't really matter that much but still you don't choose to see that but you know um mainly there was people dealing with their own kind like if you slip through the cracks and they find out you did some crazy stuff then they'll kind of get with you themselves and i didn't have to worry about that because i chose different like i'm like i'm gonna do something different i'm not gonna hang with dudes that's planning to do better crimes i'm not going to go around people who are you know carrying on these same conversations and want me to tell these

prison war stories i'm just not into that right now so i did everything that people didn't want to do start hanging around people i can learn from so i only got around people that i can learn from and um i guess that was a way to kill time for me but not without incident because here it is when a riot comes or if it's mandatory you have to show up so with several occasions where i was like okay here it go i'm about to blow all my time here it is we got to go at it with the southsiders it's about to go up right now because the rule is over there is that the South Siders don't have one-on-one fights with the blacks or with nobody. They're only supposed to discipline their own people.

So it's an altercation between a black and a South Sider. Now the whole yard is going up. And we're all about to have to jump because this one little incident. So what I did was, it was a few occasions when I almost, you know, a riot or a jump off happened. And then it's like if you end it, you in it. It's no turning back. They expect you to go hard with that. But what I did is kind of like, I was just kind of, I was just kind of,

I didn't run from it, but... You said I have to go to the bathroom, you guys. I'll be back in a minute. No, I didn't run to no bathroom either. It's just kind of like being there alone, don't make you guilty. And then sometimes if you do have a visit, you had a couple of dudes that tell you, man, we're going to pop off at a yard time, stay in a building. But what I could do is kind of like, be ready, but stay back.

Like, the one time, I was like, okay, I'm going to stay back. But if somebody, you know what I'm saying, like the incident is all the way across the yard and shit like that. By the time I run over there, you got the guards with the big fire. extinguisher, pepper spray, spraying a whole group of people. They're screaming, get on the ground. Get on the ground, get on the ground.

So it's like not much I could do to avoid it, but I didn't duck it. I never ducked it, per se. However, I just didn't run to it. Like some dudes will tell you they ran to every riot and every incident. Well, you should be dead because those people are stabbing and killing and cutting necks off

if you ran to every single incident, but I didn't necessarily do that. But the thing that- Did you ever hear, Zach, my buddy Zach's story about being in where he was a member of the Florida car

and he, do you remember something? They called them all these guys. There's like fucking ten of them in a room and somebody's cell like the shot caller they call them in there and he's like, brings them all in there and he's like, listen man, these motherfuckers that disrespected us. You ever heard this? I never heard this one.

So Zach's like, you know, you've seen Zach. I've seen Zach, yeah. So you know, they call Zach in Coleman they were you know the black guys would call them

Oreo and so he's he's in there and he's like he's like I'm concerned you know these guys like

they're I'm like look you guys I don't I don't have a shank I don't we can get you one we're gonna get you one he's like

oh man he's like I'm concerned he said like and the guy the guy the shot caller like listen man

tomorrow we're gonna go out there we're gonna face these motherfuckas we're gonna this they ain't disrespecting us we're a Florida car and they go

He's going, he's like, they're all, we're going to war. And they're all like, yeah, man, yeah, yeah. And Zach, out of nowhere, it just goes, um, excuse me. And they're like, yeah, yeah, what's up, man? He goes, well, why are we going to war? And the guy goes, man, the motherfuckers, they, they disrespected my boy. He's who, who's, who's your boy? You know, my boy.

And he goes, you, you mean the, the punk? Yeah. You used to be. with you're old sally and you he's kind of like you used to be yeah man they disrespected him somebody tried him he's like he's like we're gonna want to show these motherfuckers they can't just can't just talk to us like nothing nobody and he goes yeah listen man I don't want to I don't want to go to war over homosexual oh wow and he said literally all the other guys immediately were like yeah bro I don't um no I'm not we're not we're not

we're not with that we're not and he's like so when the guy got like guy upset and he kind of you know, I wonder, it broke up. And he said when they broke up, like, guys were like, man, thank God you. I didn't even think to ask why. Like, thank God you. Just ready to go for no reason. Yeah, yeah, not even looking into it or asking. Of course, you know, you're not really supposed to ask.

You're just like supposed to be a soldier. But. That's hilarious. When Zach tells that story, bro. I don't think I caught it, but, uh, but I'll send you the short. It may, it makes sense because they will take you down for anything because, I mean, a pan of fish is what we almost went to war over in a medium. A pan of fish who was supposed to get the fish.

It was mine's not yours. They sailed for three stamps a piece, and you took my fish, man. And they came to the dorm and told all of us report to the kitchen ASAP. I was like, it's Fish Day. I never go to dinner on Fish Day. Well, get your ass up out there right now. They're waiting for you. So everybody black has to go.

We get up. We put on our jackets. Everybody's, you know, kind of in combat mode. We get in the kitchen. And right before everything kicks off, the CO that probably was one of the coolest ones on the yard came in and just like, man, don't do this look y'all this is going to go completely bad let's try something different it has to be a better way man and then he just calls for backup every everything every resource come to the kitchen right now come to the kitchen right now they all run in there take us all down and we all

get like because it's still inciting the riot it's still a um an issue so they come raid our cell come to find out my celly was seen on camera with weapons they came in my cell they raided my cell cuffed us both up Find them They found two of them Two bangers in our cell My cellie said That's not his

It's mine's I had them both And one of them Lieutenant said I didn't go to the shoe He said that And he said I seen him on camera with it

He ain't in line He said I never even saw this guy before I'm talking about me I never even saw him before This dude saying right here in front of us That they're his not his cellies Book him He booked him took him away

I never saw him again I mean they shipped him of course but he could have not said nothing and we both would have been booked but on cameras it's cameras everywhere at the medium they clearly saw him with it because he takes it out at the time

and he's like ready for anybody that runs our way to just start dancing with it and I mean you know I was like damn I was kind of close but ultimately right after that though I end up getting transferred to the low I get transferred to a low which is much different than going

to a medium at the low it's kind of like almost becoming a college college like a rough high school a rough high school a rough high school man because you run into so many

different characters from so many walks of life I get there they're telling me well if you don't like Cho-mo's and if you don't like informants man we can put you right back

on the bus to the medium man because we're not going to have any of that bullshit that happens at the medium here we run this thing our way and either you get with it or you don't so I was at Lompoc low but when I get there

it's like I know everybody there and I'm like wow wait this is what's going on here man it's just free no unlocks and we can move back and forth all throughout the day so I appreciated that but that's when I really start going into um these ace classes and learning from people that knew things that I didn't know so what I did was you got better you got a better quality of inmate at the low too definitely sharper some sharp guys at the medium but nothing like the low yeah I think I heard something on your platform one time that most of the hardened criminals are at those mediums the ones that have

killed that will kill you don't make it to the low when you super hardcore because you're never going to comply with any rules and regulations and before they send you to the low you're going to catch another shot you have to behave you have to behave you keep catching shots you'll never make it to the low which a lot of guys do because they like i like myself i'm not going to do dorm living and i don't want to be around certain individuals that we know we can't check paperwork we know we can't regulate like we do here but at least at the at the low like you've got you got sharp guys you got guys that have, you know, owned banks. They've owned financial institutions.

They've owned their lawyers. They're doctors. We had like two or three guys that had worked at NASA. See? You know, we had sharp, sharp guys. I'm going to tell you what the NASA guys' charges were for. But regardless, they were still smart guys. You know, like, I mean, you had people that you're like, like, you can, you definitely,

this is a knowledgeable person that can teach you something. You don't get a lot of those at the media. You don't get a lot of those at the medium. classes are way or much really just really watered down and teaching basic stuff like at the medium I found myself helping guys prepare for the GED test I found my guys like a lot of grown men in prison have basic reading skills like third grade level which I didn't know for sure because even if you never go to school you can pick up a book and teach yourself how to read but I found myself helping people with that but once I get to the low it was time for me to shut up and

listen like these guys have so much knowledge on real estate they have knowledge on building businesses. It was a guy there that actually helped Unicorn launch their coffee. He worked at Unicorn. He helped them launch their Unicorn coffee brand, source it, bag it, price it, kept the invoice. He like literally was such a great businessman from starting companies that became worth over 100 million that he was. And he was exactly who he said he was. His family would come visit him in Rolls Royces and brand new Mercedes-Bentlies, everything. And that's just to say that he didn't lose everything when he went down but he lost his time freedom like he only made it to the low because he his time dropped his time dropped he was like a 20 year guy he stole millions or allegedly allegedly

because i didn't check his paperwork he was a white guy but for him to help them build a coffee business over there at that prison where instead of keefe or what Maxwell house what we used to buy now they put the unicorn bags at 2.35% becomes the bestseller on the commissary and they used him paid him what 200 bucks a month while they're making but I mean honestly that was probably like that to that probably past his time I got to you know what I'm saying like some people like why would you do that but

he probably had a blast doing it like you get to build something it doesn't matter about the money because the money doesn't mean anything no I didn't mean nothing to it's it's building this whole thing and they realized that he knew what the hell was going on because he looking at how much they're buying the coffee from from the vendors and what they're making what they're selling it for and he's like

wait why aren't we well we don't know how and he's again and start sourcing it, bringing it, bagging it, packaging at the facility, and now it's on the commissary on all the West Coast. I mean, I don't know what happened on the East Coast, but in the West Coast, they were all selling Unicorn coffee now instead of that. Keefe. Keefe, right?

So meeting guys like that can show me how to actually run a business. When only thing business was for me was a way to cover up my illegal money that I was making. So we did start doing business, legal business, but to me it never moved the needle. I always resorted back to what I was doing that was making the most money. But now going into low meeting some of these guys, like I said, I would never be able to speak to some of these guys on the streets because they're super high level. Like I met guys that had $100 million corporations and guys that had $10 million corporations that when they decide to give up information, you better be listening because

they don't like repeating themselves. And here it is, like they'll even ask you like, have you ever met anybody like me before? and I'm like no he's like exactly and I'm giving up information that I would normally charge about $5,000 an hour to consultate to console somebody for so basically this is the only thing most people will get this information and they'll never use it so if you can use any of this information to make your make your life better and not have to resort to those things that you did before use it don't just store information because it's it's almost it's worse than never knowing this information so i took heed to that and i just start really really learning how to set up

business entities legally without any illegal or illicit activity going on whatsoever so once i learned that i was able to go tell people who wouldn't participate in eights ace classes and couldn't come around those guys because you know those kind of guys don't speak to everybody they have their own private circle they have their own table they have people to help them cook their food they're they're kind of private they're really private actually i mean i became a high level individual that made a mistake that got sent to um prison but you're not going to downplay me i'm still who i am and um from there me going to help other people with some information i learned they wanted to listen to me so they're like wow you know that and then we can write it out we can put it all all into paper and

and i felt a little sense of um no i felt a sense of like um gratification that i was able to okay you're getting out soon go there and make you a LLC go get an E I in go register fictitious business name now you got guys from the inner city that never heard someone tell them that in their life well where do I go to do that the county clerk's office like it's so simple so we think until you meet a person that don't even know anything about it they don't know anything about it so hearing it from me to me they will want to know what else did you learn today or what else do you know so what else I would do is order books on a subject

that I really wanted to go deeper into and I would learn from a book and then learn it from somebody that actually did it. So now here, I'm at this low. At least you have a base knowledge of the subject first. I have a base knowledge because I don't want to just be talking out of my head just because Joe Blow told me some shit. And then

now I'm just telling it as this if it's 100% accurate. So now I got that information, but my time was coming for me to go to RDAP. So they didn't have it at the low. So They tell me, oh, we're going to send you to a camp. Your points dropped.

We're going to send you to a camp so you can do your RDAP program. The camp happened to be Sheridan in Oregon. Now, my visits and everything that I had gone, and I really started liking Lompaglo. Based off my program, I started running. They're shipping me off again to another whole, another place. But again, I ran into even more high-level individuals at Sheridan Camp because they all were camp-level points qualified for RDAP. so I go on RDAP this time around

RDAP is a program some people hate it some people love it I had mixed feelings about it I went in there with an open mind like these are concepts that I never really heard before and put myself under complete evaluation from a DTS which is some sort of

therapist are right therapists or not drug treatment specialist right so I probably got some kind of little certificate or something but yeah I put myself under evaluation by doing that and um i'm not the best speaker or the worst speaker but most people are can hardly articulate themselves at all so since they forced me to talk in our depth and you you have to share your story i told my story on the mic inside group settings and even in front of the whole community

and a few of those guys who i had to catch up with at lompoc low only if they were given the eighth class or only if they were doing some type of groove training a few of them guys came to me after programming was like hey um brown um you told a story and is that stuff true about what happens in east oakland like is our guys really over there cutthroat like dude are they really against each other like that and i'm like yeah that's how it is though he's just don't seem like the type that come from that man i see your friends man they look like they probably participated in that but i don't know if that's you man you sure you were there man like okay well come over here with us we're having a meeting in um one of the classroom

A's man. It's only going to be about four people over there. I think we want to share some information with you. So instead of me having to ask to go, they invited me. And now I'm getting information. One guy had a private jet charter company grossed over 200 million, but he started playing with the books. They came for him. He ended up getting about eight years and stuff like that and a heavy restitution. Another guy, a partner in a major casino corporation, just like a minority partner, but he's telling me the money he made. A lot of people, lawyers just just people who I couldn't imagine able to be around without going to prison so I absorbed all of the information I can and I made a decision that this information is useful I would rather help

people than hurt people I'm going to use this to my advantage and I'm going to do something with it because one of the guys told me if you don't do nothing with it is worse than never knowing the information at all so once I I want to say once I got out of I've completed our app got my year off so off my 84 months I still did 66 64 but halfway house halfway house how much for four months it was too crowded because I think I heard you said Trump let all those people out at the same time yeah and it was overcrowded it did it was so I didn't get my six guys that should have gone the year or six months and I ended up getting like four and a half but I got the year off yeah yeah you know what I'm

saying but one of the things that rang with me was when I was getting out my my case manager She's like, well, you end up getting all that time in state prison and you got seven years in the federal prison so you know that you qualify for SSI being that you're a disadvantaged minority. And I was like, what? She's like, yeah, you're a disadvantaged minority and you can get like 800 a month in Social Security and you don't even have to worry about anything. I said, what? 800 a month? You must be crazy. I wish I would take $800 a month to not do anything.

She's like, well, I only offered it to you because a lot of guys take advantage of it and you don't have to work and you can just. just go do that and live off of $800 a month in California I'm like she lived in Oregon I said in California that won't do anything for me that absolutely nothing so I got out I went to the halfway house I did that um after treatment after care stuff went and worked uh one of my partners he have a he started a car business whereas uh work sell we sell cars also we work on cars sell cars sell cars all about cars it's like really called all about cars so it was everything car related so i started doing that with him but a lot of the people who came in there had subpar credit and didn't know

anything about building their credit so i was able to build a small business from people with subprime credit helping them out to repair their credit disputes things get a higher credit score so they can qualify for a better car than even what we were selling we were selling like the um low end four to $10,000 cars, but will you fix a person's credit up? They qualify for 20, 30. So I was able to do that for a small fee, like 500 bucks. People paid me. They got a result.

They were able to, you know, go get something done. So here it is. I'm coming out of prison thinking people won't trust me, but people trusting me enough to go, fix their credit, fix their credit, get a new car, and then actually become a credible individual. Some people even went on to buy houses. I heard a lot of people say they did well with it.

So what ended up happening is I realized that if something I like to do, I found out by helping a family member get a small business loan one time. I just went all over the internet and went to found a bunch of resources and got some referral to some companies where I was able to help people get personal and business loans. So now this is how I became a loan broker slash business funding specialists because I don't want to say a loan broker, which is like a regulated industry where you really need. need to be certified and licensed to become a loan broker, but I do help people out with getting personal loans, business loans, as well as building credit and starting their

own entities, which, you know, I feel like most people need. More people than not need this service and everything like that. So these days, that's exactly what I'm doing. And I just feel better being able to help people leaving all gray area illicit activity out of my life because here it is that no matter what when I tried it it could be one thing or another it's just so short lived it's just so short lived I mean the money is good but the concept of being a one percenter

in fraud a one percenter in drug dealing you have to stay there or else you just won't make it you know what I mean they'll come for you you'll lose everything or the people you work would have come after you so either way you'll end up losing everything and it's just

like it's just so many factors that pushed me away from that but it took me into my 40s to really realize and decide that that shit is absolutely not for me at all how long you've been uh doing the the loan thing so i got out of prison in 2018 i was doing a credit repair and helping people establish themselves in a private entity since about 2018 but the um loan loan specialist business loan specialist i started that in 2019 so do you still do the other you still do the credit well i stop doing the credit repair so much because it's better for me to refer that out it's a lot of dealing with credit repair it's a lot of work and it's time consuming to a point where i can give them to

somebody that has automated resources and and you know just get a referral so i i moved away from the credit repair but what i do is i'll take clients and then help them do it themselves i'd rather help you do it yourself and if if you have the money refer you to a expert that's going to get you three to six months to a better credit score. So right now, I mean, we're still at a point where about 45% of America have bad credit. So it's never a lack of people that need their credit repair, but also most people have not established their own entity that they can do business under and separate themselves from their business. I mean, even a common person that does landscaping, he's just doing it under his name. He just established himself, okay, I'm going to do

landscape and go get a business license and it's just me the landscaper opposed to starting the business building up business credit with that entity and then becoming credible enough to grow it without using your own money or bootstrapping the whole thing so i mean i mean the industry i want to say is it's a little it's a little um it's a little complex because the money the people that we deal with they mainly come from um people that that the bank turned down unless you establish yourself in the beginning so that you'll be credible to the bank so most of the time people didn't so you go into the bank and say my business makes $30,000 a month and here is how but you got $28,000 going out the bank is going to say no

so here it is if you establish yourself the correct way you will be able to go into the bank and get money but if you if you can't private investors still have money for you probably a little higher interest rate but they have money for you right so these days that's what i'm into moving completely away from that kind of deal like hustling doing any amount of fraud participating in illicit activities based off of the fact that it's just like we kind of know what that is already i've seen enough of that to know that it's just not even i mean i wouldn't recommend it to anybody put it like that yeah i'd rather i'd rather look at macdonald i mean or just just start something start something if you fail a bunch of times you will end up

making it but just don't quit man because i mean no wasn't the statistic 90% of uh 90% of the of millionaires have claimed bankruptcy at least once at least once exactly so they always talk about the number of 1,700 new millionaires being created a day but they don't talk about 3,700 fall off the list every day maybe about 4,000 it was 3,700 in 2021 fall off the list of being millionaire so a lot of people want to tell you it's so easy to become a millionaire but it's really not it's easy to go make 20 easier to go make 20k a month and do that consistently until you build up something that'll be able to double triple etc but if if you if you only won you don't know what it is to lose right if all you ever did is win i mean look at you you were able to overcome

whatever you've done and create something from scratch so i mean i look at it like um you're a model to me because I could possibly create a platform that will grow over time. It's not a push button to success, but working on something organically, it will eventually grow. Yeah. I mean, it's just consistency and sticking with it long enough. It'll happen. And that goes for almost anything. So, I mean, I'm here, man. And I mean, I definitely appreciate being able to come here and talk to you about this true crime story. But the part of it that I would say would be the most impactful to me, though is just like my uncle told me before he died like you always go truce the hardest path and take that path it's just so many things you could have done different yeah you ran up some money

he said you see your mom in him yeah they made their millions over 30 years they're not ducking nothing they're not running from nobody you had to bump your head three four five times to make the million but you gave it all back then you did it again and then you gave it all back and here it is now you're on the path of success but you didn't even have to take such a hard path and he died a couple years ago man and I actually told that story at his homegoing service that he told me before he died

that you see that mountain instead of you finding a quick path to the top you will run around it two times and then decide to go up but you're going to already be tired so your hike up is going to be much harder than mine because I'm going to just walk straight up it knocked some bushes along the way and I'll be sitting up there way

for you and I took I took that to heart because it is about what I used to do most of my life is just create some shit I created a complex situation for myself that I probably didn't have to trusting people trying shit that probably didn't lead to a good outcome so therefore I'm just like um most scammers won't get rich most trappers won't get rich I mean if I had to say anything I just want people to know that man you'd be better off just working your way to the top being consistent finding a path something that you probably like to do don't just pick something that everybody else is doing

just because it makes a lot of money because that won't even be it you won't even you'll hate it you make a bunch of money but you'll hate it because here it is I had money but I was never at one point you see I never said I was happy and no at no point through all this stuff that I went through could I say I was so happy and so glad and grateful because I had money because that wasn't gonna ever do it for me just having the money alone was never going to bring

me to a place of happiness so i mean right now i feel good man i met a lot of people that i still have good relationships with to this day and now i just feel like you know as long as i'm making some sort of impact i will feel better than i ever have in the past like but it took like i said to all the gray hairs it took to all these gray hairs start coming for me to actually realize that and then my dad who now we have a much better relationship he looks at me and be like well i figured you would get it at some point and him as a senior citizen sitting there and joined his latter years said you know just didn't think it would take you this long in your life to actually realize what you actually what was actually in store for you that can make you

into a better person okay well look I I I'm glad you came out I appreciate you you coming do you have a you want us leave links in the description box or do you have any social media links a website anything I normally communicate people with people through Instagram. I got an Instagram page. It's Trulane's way. I mean, I answer all of my DMs myself, man. I'm looking to work with people who definitely want to change their situation, but it does take work. I mean, nothing easy is worth having. So I have a simple process to help people, but most people won't follow the process. But if they do, they're guaranteed to probably get a better result than what they're having right now. So yeah, my Instagram is mainly the way to reach out

to me. I mean, I don't promote heavily online, but I believe that if people reach out to me and they're serious about changing their situation, I can definitely help them out. Well, we'll put it the, um, we'll put it in the description box. And I, I appreciate you, uh, I appreciate you coming. I mean, I appreciate you, man. I mean, like I said, I watch the content all the time, man, and it's a lot to learn. It's a lot to learn watching this kind of content, man, because it's easy to assume we know what other people go through or what they were thinking when they did something.

But here it is, you may want to hear from the person exactly what it was before you just guesstimate what it is, is the reason. and why they made their decisions and why they did what they did. But thank you, man. I appreciate you, man. All right. Hey, if you guys like the video,

do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Please leave me a comment. Check the description box for all the links that we talked about. And I appreciate it.

See you.