Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - International Scammer Embezzles Millions | Germano Tomassetti

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The reason why I never got caught for anything that I did is because I didn't have a digital trace. I'm on my way out. I'm a couple of months away from being completely clean. I'm not doing identity theft anymore. I'm not doing any collections. I have a little bit more money coming in from the embezzlement. I didn't make too many big mistakes, right? This is the time I did. You know when you're desperate, that's when you make the most foolish decisions. So my name is Germano Tomasetti. I was born in Winnipeg, Canada. My childhood was relatively, normal. I grew up in a household. Up until I was about 10 years old, I grew up with two sisters, my mom and my dad. And it was relatively normal. I dealt with a lot of bullying when I was in elementary
Starting point is 00:00:43 school, partially because of me just being a little bit different, being one of the ADD kids. And then also because my sister was kind of popular in junior high and the younger siblings of the people that didn't like her would pick on me and all that kind of stuff. So I didn't have a great time in school. I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't interested. I excelled in certain areas, like math I was really good at, which would, you know, come in handy later on. And I was also good with English, language arts, that kind of stuff. But if you put like science in front of me or physics or anything like that, like I would just be, you know, turn into the class clown and, and just ignore work. Because of the bullying, eventually I started, you know, fighting back quite literally. I got into a lot of
Starting point is 00:01:27 fights when I was in elementary school, junior high, even going into high school. But the big change for me is when I got into junior high, I started hanging around with you could say the bad kids. At that time, the bad kids weren't that bad, but they're smoking weed. They're skipping school. They're getting in trouble in class all the time. I start hanging out with these guys because I had spent so much time on my own. I had friends, but I was bullied a lot, like I said, and now I'm hanging out with guys that don't get bullied, if anything, some of them do the bullying. You know, I didn't partake in that, but I was friends with these guys because they accepted me. They didn't care that other people didn't like me, and they basically took me under their wing.
Starting point is 00:02:07 And through that, I start to get introduced to crime. And obviously, at that age, it's nothing really serious. We're stealing janitor's keys and breaking into schools at night. I think the biggest thing that we did when I was in my teenage years was probably, and I'm talking, in 13, 14 years old, we broke into a school one night and they were doing fundraising for, I don't know, it was like Girl Scouts or whatever it was, and we stole an envelope and it had a lot of money in it. I can't remember exactly, but thousands of dollars. And at that time to be that age and to see that kind of money, it was a big deal for us. So other than that, nothing was really going on. Once I get into high school, I'm dealing with the same thing.
Starting point is 00:02:49 Now it's on a larger scale. Now I'm getting in a fight every two weeks and I'm getting expelled constantly and I was just I was just a problem at the end of the day I had a lot of anger built up because as I told you I grew up in the household that I did but around 10 years old my dad left he was in and out of jail constantly and my mother just I guess she had enough and they got divorced and I didn't really see him much after that and in jail what I mean bites or drinking or no so his his his thing was armed robbery So from about, yeah, it was serious stuff. So when he was 17 years old, he robbed a chain out here called Safeway with a couple of his friends.
Starting point is 00:03:33 They got away with like $60,000, which is a lot of money back then. We're talking about 45, 50 years ago. And he was so successful at it that he started doing it consistently. So between, I'm told between 17 and 19 years old, he did about five or six really big armed robberies, including like a McDonald's for like eight grand or ten grand or whatever and a couple of other places but he took off to Montreal for whatever reason I don't know if he was dealing the heat or whatever it was but the police or the RCMP ended up catching up with him in Montreal when he was 19 years old or 20 years old and they arrested him and he ended up doing six years this first
Starting point is 00:04:16 stint so like I said from a young age he was into that it's unfortunate too because he was also very, he was a very hard worker within the construction world. He was a great singer. I was told when he was like 16 years old that he was offered a million dollar contract in Nashville to sing because he could sing like Elvis Presley. So he had a bunch of things going for him. And apparently he always blamed, this is what I'm told. He blamed his mom for not giving him the opportunity because she was the one at the end of the day that said, no, you're not going. She didn't want her son to go to the U.S. and get into trouble and whatever else, right? So, but yeah, he basically moved on from armed robberies in his, you know, later teens and early 20s to doing that time
Starting point is 00:05:01 in jail. He gets out. And as far as I know, up until he was about 30, he was always against drugs. So he didn't, he didn't even smoke weed or anything like that. He was very anti-drugs. And then at one point, I guess, his cousin introduces him into cocaine. He starts parting and stuff like that. And somehow, I don't know how it connects here, but he gets into heroin eventually. And once he got into heroin, that was it. That was like it was no longer about money, like when it comes down to the robberies or whatever. It was not maybe he liked it for the thrill of it before.
Starting point is 00:05:36 But now he's an addict. So now he's doing crazy stuff. You know, we have in, I don't know about your city, but here in our taxis, We have like this, like, plastic shield that goes around the driver so you can't stab him. And people told me that in my city, my dad, along with his crew, were part of the reason why they put that in there because he was doing so many taxi robberies at that point. And it sucks because, like I said, he was a very talented guy, very hardworking, anti-drugs for a lot of time. Then his cousin gets him into some stuff. And, you know, the rest is history.
Starting point is 00:06:08 He ends up, you know, I'll jump ahead here just about him. And then we'll go back into the other dynamics. but he ended up passing away a couple of years ago during COVID, and as far as I know, it was an overdose. So he had been doing heroin probably from his 30s up until almost 60 years old, which you can imagine takes a toll on the body, right? Because any of those guys that get heavy into it, their body just gets completely depleted.
Starting point is 00:06:33 He used to be like, he's like me, he's about 5758, but he was always a jacked guy. He always, you know, he had that jailhouse build, right? All upper body, nothing below. and but then you know with the heroin he just looked like a twig I saw him once in those like 16 or 17 years sorry twice one was at my mother's funeral and then another time was right before I got into all the crime that I was doing we tried to reconnect and he was just gone like having a conversation with him it was sad because I could tell that he it was almost like he had an intellectual
Starting point is 00:07:04 disability his brain was so fried from the drugs and his body looks so weak he's probably 50 or 50 something at the time but he looked like he was 80 you know what I mean so that's the history with him your mom so you were get if we go back to the where we were to begin with you your mom had basically said yeah I'm done with them and and you too moved out or she throw him out like well no I think he went to jail and then like during that time in jail she probably divorced him or whatever it was like he was constantly in and out for shorter terms later on like a year or two or whatever for little robberies and probably, you know, going against this probation or whatever it was, right? And then the only reason why I brought that up is because as I was
Starting point is 00:07:48 getting to the teenage years and to the younger adult years, I was very angry. So a part of it was because my dad had left. And then at one point, I just was so, I always had authority issues. I couldn't listen to anybody. Anybody that was trying to tell me anything, I didn't want to listen to them, including my mom. So eventually she got fed up with me a little bit. And I ended up spending about a year doing like group homes. I was in like housing and stuff like that with other teens. And that was a terrible experience in itself because, you know, I come from a place called Transcona in Winnipeg. And it's like it's kind of like small town mentality. There's no, there's not a lot of foreigners. It's like white pick a fence, that kind of stuff, you know.
Starting point is 00:08:30 It's not rich by any means, but it's kind of closed off from the rest of the city. And it's a city by itself so when i go into these group homes all of a sudden i'm going to the north end or elmwood and these are the places that are a little bit harder right more poverty stricken and full of gangs and drug dealing and stuff like that so i mean in a way it did good things for me because it toughened me up but it didn't do anything good other than that and it made me more upset with my mom because i'm like you left me in the shithole to fend for myself and now i'm fighting these kids that are like you know hardened you know what i mean because right get getting in a fight at school with like just the kid that gets in a fight once a year is
Starting point is 00:09:09 is nothing but the kid that fights like every day in his hood like that that guy's going to be tough you know what I mean so yeah I was I was not happy with it and when I did go back home and going into those early teenage years I was just more upset with her and I just wouldn't listen to anything by by probably grade 10 halfway in I dropped out because I was getting expelled all the time. And a lot of the fights that I was getting into at that point were for other people. I always stuck up for other people. You know what I mean? And when I was in high school, I was the guy that was friends with everybody. So I'd be friends with jocks. I'd be friends with metalheads, like anime geeks, all kinds of stuff. So some of these guys were
Starting point is 00:09:51 regularly picked on by the cool kids or whatever and I'd end up fighting for them. So I got tired of being blamed all the time and the teachers looking at me like I was the problem. And in a way I was sometimes in the classroom not concentrating and stuff but when it came to those fights like I really I wasn't looking for them I just felt like it was my responsibility to stick up for you know weaker people so I drop out around that time and then I basically spend a year or so working just that you know regular jobs I think I probably worked at McDonald's and you know whatever crap jobs you work when you're 16 years old right and then I eventually get into there was an underage party it was called feel the heat in Winnipeg it was a really popular thing so like 3,000 4,000 kids would show up once a month for these underage parties obviously no alcohol or anything like that but that is where I got introduced to the street life so keep in mind I'm coming from Transcona white pick a fence whatever else like you know what I mean like there's fights and stuff but
Starting point is 00:10:57 it's not a dangerous place so now I'm starting to go downtown and I'm going to going to these parties, and I'm being friends with people that are friends with other people and, you know, et cetera. And I get introduced to this kid that's basically locally famous for rapping. He was actually really good. If he stuck to it, he would have, he would have been successful. He would have made money. He would have been a star. I think so. But he was too involved in the street stuff. So at this time, I'm like 17 years old, 18 years old, and he's probably a year or two younger than me but he was deep into the game like he was selling probably i don't know over the weekend he'd sell like four ounces you know what i mean like because that's what it started with and then
Starting point is 00:11:41 eventually just because it was more money and it was more prevalent in the streets but keep in mind this is like a 16 17 year old kid making thousands or tens of thousands of dollars while trying to maintain this this kind of this rap career as well and he just he was the one i always credit him for showing me the street life everything from drugs to guns to you know we'd go to host parties and we'd we'd have a problem with people because of him all the time so here's the thing a lot of the gangs didn't like him because he had a big mouth and he and he was very popular with woman so he's a mulatto guy who was good looking and he was young and he was stealing everybody's girlfriends including some gangsters so we would we had a crew ourselves but we always got into it
Starting point is 00:12:28 with these much bigger groups and gangs because of him. You know what I mean? It was just like, we were so loyal to him and he was such a, just a, I don't know, just a character that he just constantly had problems. So, anyways, he shows me a little bit about this world. And eventually, after a couple of years of hanging out, I kind of get tired of it. I dabbled in drug dealing when I was younger around that age.
Starting point is 00:12:55 wasn't good at it first of all second of all didn't like it i was too empathetic i remember that one time one story that sticks with me in particular is we went to he asked me to come with him to collect an amount from someone that owed like 4k or 5k or whatever this was a in one of the you know one of the hoods and we go to collect off this guy and he's got no money and uh you know he's got nothing really that he can give up because he's already done this he's already gone to the pawn shop and sold everything that he has so he you know if he didn't come up with something we were you know something bad was going to happen to him i don't think we would to kill him but he was going to get a beating so he ends up handing over this piece of paper and it's it's basically like
Starting point is 00:13:39 the slip to his daughter's car so his daughter had just turned 16 years old and he bought her like a used car or whatever for her birthday and he was about to give it to her the following week and he basically like rode over the car right then and there just to take care of his dead and for me like i said growing up up empathetic and poor mind you because my mom raised us after my dad being in jail all the time was very empathetic to people going through that situation especially with drugs so that day in particular i said i'm never doing this again like i don't like the way it makes me feel you guys do your thing i'll still hang out with you be friends and stuff but i'm i'm not hanging out i'm not doing the late hours i'm not
Starting point is 00:14:20 work in a phone. I'm not doing any of that stuff anymore because I'm just too emotional for it. So a couple of years ago by, we're hanging out and then we don't. I just kind of get tired of all of it. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. and it's good for your eyes too, because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.caver's to book your next eye exam, eye exams provided by independent optometrists. I'm tired of going out to the events. I get tired of being around the hood, the paranoia,
Starting point is 00:15:09 the beef with gangs, all the shit that comes with the street life. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of night or all of the above. That's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, ghost bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patented technology that adjusts to your body's temperature, every ghost bed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plusher mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firm option with exceptional support, your ghost bed will
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Starting point is 00:16:31 podcasts as well. Like, I was not a thug when I was a kid. I did a little bit of this. I admit that, you know, I was selling drugs a little bit and stuff. But I was not, I was not a gangster or a game member or anything like that. I hung around with a lot of them. But I wasn't, I wasn't like one of those guys. So, and that's not to say like, I'm not. guilty it's just to let people know i'm not trying to you know i don't want you to perceive me as that i'm not that yeah you're not pretend to be a thug no i'm not you know and like sometimes i might look like it because i've i got hand tattoos and all this other stuff but like if you hear the way i talk you understand how i carried myself throughout most of my life um so yeah eventually i
Starting point is 00:17:10 leave that social circle and then i become friends with another drug dealer and he's more of he's a white boy he grew up in a nice area and he was the other type of drug dealer so there's the type that are in the streets that are on the hula gang thing that's what we call it and then there's the guys that are the businessmen and the ones that are quiet and dress nicely and don't hang out at clubs and just keep to their business so i met this guy around let's say 20 years old he ended up living like a block or two away from me and in the middle of us was this place called the circle And that's where Osborne, Osborne meets with a river. And they call it the circle because that's the spot.
Starting point is 00:17:54 That's where everybody kind of hangs out. That's where you go to get drugs. That's where the homeless would hang out, the skaters, everything. So he used to sell at the circle. And I live two blocks away downriver. And he lives two blocks away on Osborne. So we just naturally, you know, clicked up and became friends. And I saw the other side of drug dealing.
Starting point is 00:18:17 right i saw that quiet side he lives in a penthouse two two blocks away he's very quiet he doesn't have any beef with anybody and i was like you know that was the only time i thought about getting into it because he's doing well for himself too he's probably doing around that time probably like 10k a month and he's living well and he's also two years younger than me he's like 18 years old and he's living like this i'm like damn man i'm making like maybe 1500 a month from my full-time job right now and i've seen you make 10 grand like it's not nothing, you know what I mean? And the addicts were different too. That's important to quickly quickly talk about, right? So when you got in the hood and then you got like rich white folks
Starting point is 00:18:57 with, you know, buying money, you're dealing with a different clientele that headache is not as intense. And you know, your phone can be running at three o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, three p.m., whatever. And it was more of like a nighttime thing. People do it at the clubs whatever so i hang out with him and this brings me into the next stage of my life so i'm hanging out with him one night we're out there late we're at the circle late we're there till like it's probably one o'clock in the morning and this homeless traveler chick that we had befriended and she was just a cool little punk from somewhere in the states um she comes around and she says hey what are you guys are what are you guys doing do you want to come to a party and we're looking at
Starting point is 00:19:38 the time we're like it's one o'clock all the clubs closing winnipeg at two o'clock so we're like where are you going at one o'clock there's no point it's like no no we're going to go to this place called a.m. after hours and I was like what the hell is that and they're like I guess he knew about it too and he's like oh it's like like a rave kind of it's every weekend Friday Saturday midnight till 6 a.m. or later what and I was like what year is this okay so I want to say this is probably timeline wise maybe 2009 2010 yeah Yeah. Um, so yeah, we, they, they tell me about this party. He convinces me to go. I go and, you know, I show up to this warehouse looking place and looks sketchy as hell. You know, there's, and everybody's there. There's goss there. There's gangsters. There's prepees. There's everybody's there. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is crazy. Like, how are these guys all together? Because my last memory of seeing all these people together was high school. And they all. hated each other and there was fights all the time and then I go into this you know the rave scene
Starting point is 00:20:46 and it's like everyone's on equal ground like nobody's like you know what I mean like they're hanging out together so I'm like man this is crazy we go inside and like needless to say I had a great time I didn't do any drugs in my first night I didn't get drunk or anything I just danced man I had a good time and I met a lot of great people and I eventually fell in love with that scene which got me into promotions I started doing my own event It was called the Friday Night Project where once a month we would, I was basically trying to get the club and the rave scene to, to come together. Because at that time, it was separate. There was club nights and then there was like the rave nights.
Starting point is 00:21:24 And I wanted to bring it together inside the club, like the ravers into the club because they didn't like to go to clubs. It was like too, I don't know, too bougie or it was too, you know, we're underground. We're not going to go to that stuff, that kind of thing. So I did that. That was 2010, February 5th, 2010. I threw my first event, filled the place up. Hit capacity, it was like 300 people at the time. Not a lot, but in Winnipeg, that's a lot to bring out.
Starting point is 00:21:50 And then I did that for about a year or so. And that was probably even up until now, the funnest and most peaceful, less, like, stressful time of my life was in the rave scene for like those two years. Great people, made some money, had a lot of fun, didn't have any problems. And then eventually I stopped doing it. let's say 2000, I want to say I probably got out around 2013, 2014, a few years later. And I basically went from from there to homeless. So.
Starting point is 00:22:26 They're to, yeah. Yeah. So. What happened there? So I exit the scene and I'm working at a good company. It's a call center, but they pay good wages at that time. And I really like the job. I could never hold a job, by the way, this.
Starting point is 00:22:41 whole time, like all my early teenage years into early adult years, or sorry, late teenage into early adult, because, again, just the authority thing and not wanting to be told what to do and losing interest, whatever it was. So I'm working at this. Sounds like, sounds like you. Yeah, exactly. That's like this guy. Sounds like John Vosiac. So what ends up happening is basically like, I'm working at this good job. I love it there. And then, I get involved with someone that's married and it started like it never really progressed into anything, but it just became an uncomfortable situation for me. She started showing up where I was. She wanted to be around my scene because I was still hanging out with some of the guys and stuff.
Starting point is 00:23:26 And she had never seen that. She had never been to like clubs or in the hood or house parties or anything like that. So every once in a while I go out and I was bringing her out as a friend. But she was going through marriage troubles at the time. And I thought, nothing of it i thought we were friends she was a really good looking woman like six foot two blue eyes blonde hair like swedish you know like really beautiful woman so in my mind i thought i don't have a chance with this woman so i it was always in the back of my head we're just friends we're hanging out she likes the scene whatever but i guess she she was the type of woman that was dependent on a man so when she knew that she was leaving the marriage like i didn't come to
Starting point is 00:24:09 realize this to later, but I think when she knew that she was leaving the marriage, she needed somewhere to go and she needed someone to take care of her. She sees me. I treated her well. I was nice. She has a good time around me. And she knew how I was with woman as well, because she had seen me date other girls and, you know, whatever. So she thinks I'm a safe bet. But I had no interest in that. And it ended up getting like, like I said, really weird. I wanted to stop hanging out with her completely and unfortunately we work together in the same area she's like right next to me so every day that i'm not answering the phone or not answering the texts or or ignoring her at the club i got to hear about it the next day so i asked to be moved around i asked my supervisor and
Starting point is 00:24:54 he just kind of laughs at me you know what i mean he's like you know it's not that serious and i'm like look man and i showed him i even showed him messages like like 13 missed calls and stuff like that She's like isn't she married? I'm like yeah exactly so move me like get me out of here He wouldn't move me so I told him you know I literally told him to go himself and I quit And that was kind of my attitude throughout the most of my life because we didn't get into this But there were plenty times where like the system failed me where I was trying to do the right thing And I ended up getting consequences because of it you know what I mean like I I I could have easily You know when and gotten in trouble or call the police or whatever whatever I had to
Starting point is 00:25:34 to do. But I was like, no, I'm going to take it to him. He'll do the right thing. It didn't happen. Happened with me in my childhood too. I was abused at one of my elementary schools. And I went forward to the principal and I made a big thing about it. And my parents were never alerted, were never told. And they never called the police. Like stuff like that would happen throughout my whole life. And this was the time I just gave up. So I walked away from that job and I literally decided within about a week or so that I was going to be homeless and it was like it's very strange when I explain this to people because I was not your typical homeless so what I mean by that is like I could have stayed with other people I could have stayed with friends family
Starting point is 00:26:21 whoever I was not on drugs I had no alcohol problems no gambling issues none of that stuff not to say that everyone there is going through that but the majority are so I end up deciding I break. I don't want to work right now. I don't want to take orders from people. I'm tired. And, you know, I lost my mom a couple of years earlier. My dad's not around. We kind of jump past that. But 2010, February, when I threw that first event, nine months later, I lost my mom. So that same year, I lost my mom. My dad's not around. So I was just tired, man. I felt like I'm done with this. I just want to break. So my goal was to go to this shelter. And literally just for like a week or two, just like sleep, go to bed at a regular hour, eat three meals a day, take care of myself properly, and just kind of like decompress from everything that's happened to my life.
Starting point is 00:27:16 What ends up happening while I'm there, a couple of big major key events. So one is obviously I get healthier. I get happier. I get focused on what I want to do later when I leave. And then I also meet someone that changes my life completely. and with him I enter the criminal world more of the underworld though so he was an Italian guy from Quebec that was hiding out now I didn't know this when I first met him we just kind of sparked the conversation because he saw me wearing an Italia jersey or something like that one
Starting point is 00:27:50 day and he started talking to me in his language and I didn't understand it because my Italian's terrible but he speaks Sicilian which is a different dialect and I can't understand any of that but regardless just that kinship he's like oh you're Italian i'm italian whatever so he was an older guy he's probably about 60 years old and i just made it a point to check in with him every day we would eat together we would talk as much as we could with his you know his french sicilian italian words that he'd throw in with the english um and we just became good friends and he was a little bit unhealthy he you know he's had a terrible cough to sound like he was going to drop half the time he had you know full set of dentures he would even talk to himself a
Starting point is 00:28:33 few times too. So I was, I kind of thought maybe he's not well. Maybe he's a little crazy. He's definitely unhealthy. But whatever. It helped me past the time having that responsibility of taking care of someone again, which is what I was used to doing. So I remember some of his stories weren't adding up when I asked him why he was there. You know, one time he's there to collect money from an author that owes him money for a book that he wrote. And then another time, it's like a completely different fabricated story. So I'm, I'm constantly, he's homeless. He's, he's in the shelter.
Starting point is 00:29:06 He's shelter, yeah. But keep in mind, he's from Quebec. He's from like basically Montreal, but he's in my city, Winnipeg, like a smaller city homeless. So it's like, why are you here? And he even, one thing he did admit to is he came here from Quebec and he went straight
Starting point is 00:29:22 to the shelter. So at the time, though, there was a huge bust on organized crime in Ontario and Quebec. I forget exactly what the, what it was called, but you can look it up in, I think it's 2015 from right about the timeline. There's a huge bust where I think it's called Scope Operation Scopar or something like that. And yeah, they did a bunch of arrests in Italy, Quebec and Ontario. And this was right around the time that guy shows up.
Starting point is 00:29:51 So I kind of thought maybe that was it because this, again, his stories didn't make sense. And but I didn't, I never brought it up. One day, however, we're sitting at the table, and this story is probably the most unbelievable part of everything I'm going to vote to tell you, to be honest. I think a lot of people have a tough time realizing that this happened. This is my opinion of what it was. So I told you he had dentures. One day I see him eating, and I would help him with his dentures sometimes. They'd just, like, fall out and I'd go clean them for him or whatever, right?
Starting point is 00:30:23 It was just that kind of relationship. So I came back for the dentures on the table. he's eating and then I start looking at his his fingers his hands and I noticed like something's wrong with them like the way that the way that your fingertips are on your finger it's pretty like easy to see a pattern and everything like that and it's like his was missing it was almost like it was just like bone like on all of his fingertips and it looked like a burn mark or something like that so I in my mind I thought that he had them dipped so there's guys that I don't know if you've ever heard of this in all of your stories but like with other guests but
Starting point is 00:30:57 some people to avoid being verified or caught will get dentures, obviously plastic surgery, everyone knows that, but then also burning the fingertips with like acetone or whatever it's called because it helps with the fingerprints. So my mind went to that. I don't know where I saw it. I don't know if I saw it in a movie or something when I was younger or what it was or if I heard it in a true crime story, whatever it was. But I remember, we got this weird story.
Starting point is 00:31:27 It's like he's on the run. It feels like he's on the run. And then the dentures and the fingertips, so whatever. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he did end up being somebody. So I never confirmed whether that was the case or not with the fingertips and the dentures. But I still think that's what it was. So five months goes by, five or six months. I'm not really doing anything at this point.
Starting point is 00:31:51 I think I was looking for work. I was hanging out. I was just, you know, relaxing. And I'd spend my time at the shelter hanging out with people like him. And one day I bump into him while he's walking down the street and he tells me he's going home. And I said, you know, is everything okay? Like, did you, did you get what you needed?
Starting point is 00:32:14 And he's like, everything is good. Thank you. He just said thank you for taking care of me. Thanks for putting up with me. It's kind of joking. Thanks for not making fun of me every time. my dentures fell out and and just listening to this old no-no. He calls himself a no-no, right?
Starting point is 00:32:31 Like grandpa, ramble about, you know, everything. He's like, I'll never forget what you did for me. So we exchange information and he says, you know, you're a loyal, loyal guy. You've got a good heart and you're a bravo ragazzo, which means you're a good boy. He's like, I'm going to have work for you in the future. Somebody's going to reach out to you, somebody from back home for me, so Kweb. back and it's up to you whether you want to go forward with it but it'll change your life you'll make a lot of money and you'll be a part of something bigger than yourself i said okay
Starting point is 00:33:08 and keep in mind i'm still homeless at this time this is probably around september 20 yeah 2014 or 2015 one of those two years and i eventually get out of homelessness i think i got a job and I got an apartment set up for myself and then a month or two later in November, around my birthday, I get a phone call and it's from someone with a Quebec accent with a French accent, French Canadian accent.
Starting point is 00:33:37 He tells me that he's a friend of the old man that he knows it's around my birthday, happy birthday, and that he's going to be at Winnipeg Airport you know, three hours from now. He was at the airport in Montreal. He's heading to Winnipeg.
Starting point is 00:33:51 It's about a three hour flight. He's like, meet me at this place and he says this place that's probably two or three blocks away from the airport so I immediately knew this guy knows my city because where he said specifically only the locals know to go to this place so he's obviously spent time there now I end up going and I meet him I take a taxi over there get out the taxi pay the taxi driver let him go the guy shows up and he introduces himself as a friend of the old man hands me two different envelopes he says this is for this is for your birthday and this is for everything that you did for
Starting point is 00:34:26 the old man just a little gift okay no problem hands me the other one he says this is this is like your get what he said exactly it was like your employment letter or something like that right i was like okay so he's like take that think about it get back to me i'll be here for a couple days let me know what you what you decide say okay i get into the i call another taxi get into the taxi walk up a block, get into it. And then I look inside the envelopes. I look inside the gift envelope. It's a few thousand dollars. I think around 3,800 bucks. I always to this day say there was probably five grand and the guy took 1,200 for himself, because that's what typically happens when people hand out gifts like that. And then in the other envelope, there was just,
Starting point is 00:35:12 it was almost like scribble. And it was like a list of names, phone numbers, addresses, and amounts, dollar amounts. So some of them were as small as like, thousand bucks and some of them were like 10 15,000 and I kind of already knew what it was but I when I met this guy this this was the first time that I met like at the time I didn't know this but he's like a real mafioso I mean we have we have we have wise guys in my city but this was like someone from Quebec or from Ontario they're a little bit different Winnipeg is a small city it's quiet you don't have loud guys like that you know and just his presence was something else well why was he in a homeless facility if he had
Starting point is 00:35:58 this kind of money like why wouldn't he have gone to a hotel or rented someplace or why is he there yeah so keep in mind the the guy that i met later on like at the airport or near the airport that's his friend that's not him personally no no i i understand yeah i'm saying the old man why was he in that sorry i thought i thought i said that yeah yeah why was the old man like if the old man can give you provide you like obviously old man gave him money gave him all that like if he's in that position to have a guy fly in and give you cash why was the old man in the almost facility because he was on the run so i found out later probably five years later six years later through contacts that i made later on that he wanted to make it appear to the authorities
Starting point is 00:36:44 that he left from the east coast on a boat okay so they basically set it up because when they did that sweep he was one of the people that they were after but they never caught him so he made it appear as if he went back to italy or something like he leaves from like halifax nova scotia or whatever and he and he's on uh they they had a ticket with his name on it and everything like that made it look like he he left so they they don't think of him anymore so then he goes i don't know why he didn't go to ontario probably because that there was heat there too winnipeg i also learned this later on was a place that a lot of Canadian gangsters were hiding out. Not specifically Winnipeg, but my province, like my state of Manitoba, it's actually got a long history of people hiding out there from other parts of Canada. And I guess because it's central and because it's quiet and it's kind of away from the coast and the real strong arm of the RCMP and everybody else. So that's the reason why. And keep in mind, like a lot of these old school guys i'm talking about the 60 year old 65 year old italians and stuff they're like really
Starting point is 00:37:56 when it comes to like hiding and stuff like that some of these guys like hide out in caves and and like underground bunkers and like they'll live in the mountains with like with nothing you know what i mean so i don't think this was a big deal for him to stay at the shelter and add on to the fact that probably a lot of people saw him talking to himself in cecilian and stuff like that they probably he thought he was a nut too you know what i mean so at the shelter it's like he was covered there okay anyways this this this guy i end up contacting him back and i basically say like you know once i made my mind up i call him from a pay phone and i say is this what i think it is he's like yeah he's like can you handle that can you take care of it i said sure and what is it's a list
Starting point is 00:38:43 of people that owe money that's yeah so i didn't know what it was for in the beginning specifically what the debts were but I guess some of these guys had some business in my city so they might have dropping off a couple packs it was different some guy would owe for a loan that he you know he borrows 20 grand and he's paying two points every
Starting point is 00:39:04 every week or whatever it is and then you have people that are like obviously Quebec is like a hub when it comes to cocaine right so a lot of the good stuff comes from the East Coast so there'd be guys that would buy you know a couple kilos in my city or whatever else i wasn't i was never told exactly what it was it's not like this guy owes for this but i you know i would ask them sometimes so i got into it and it's nothing
Starting point is 00:39:30 like the movies it's very you know it's it's not exaggerated like that i never beat people up i never had a gun with me i was most of the time i wasn't even knocking on doors um i would give someone a phone call say you know you owe 15 15 gs you have paid for two months i need something right now like i need to go tell these guys that you're trying at least sometimes i would collect all the money sometimes i'd get you know a little bit most the time i collected something though there's only a couple of times where we had to call somebody else and these guys were always dealing with bikers right so they were the muscle most of the time the italians that i was dealing with at least unless it was a personal beef or a vendetta or something
Starting point is 00:40:16 like that they're going to outsource to either a street gang or the bikers typically especially in canada bikers are always been known to be more of the enforcers especially for other groups right so i don't know if it's like that in the states but they're they're the guys that they're like more of the facilitators and the distributors out here i don't know how it is over there but yeah i didn't spend a lot of time in the states but anyways so i get into these debt collections I'm doing it a couple of times a month. I'm not doing it. It's not a full-time gig.
Starting point is 00:40:48 It's whenever they accumulate a list, they give it to me. And at that time, I'm taking 10% of everything I collect, right? So if I collect 100K over the month or whatever, I'm making 10 grand. I do that for about, I want to say about a year. And then I start feeling... I don't know what's called maybe paranoia because I get a lot of people telling me that like I'm doing a good job and that, you know, I'm going to start moving up soon and and maybe they're going to start asking me to do other things.
Starting point is 00:41:27 And at the same time, some of their guys that were collecting in Quebec were getting robbed by like Haitian drug dealers and stuff like that. So they told me that they wanted me to carry a piece, which I had never done the whole time. I wasn't comfortable with that and I wasn't making nearly enough money I was making good money like at least between $5,000 and $15,000 every month just doing a couple hours of work basically
Starting point is 00:41:54 but I wasn't going to go to jail or somebody for that low of an amount of money I mean technically I'm still extorting and I can still go to jail for stuff like that but in my mind I don't know these things yet I'm not that well versed in in law and stuff like that at that time so I'm thinking like man the minute I carry a gun this becomes a different thing so I wasn't
Starting point is 00:42:16 interested so before they came to me I was also told that they were going to ask me one of my friends told me that they're probably going to ask you to start moving weight they were going to probably start getting you to put you know flood the streets with the stuff that they have over there which I've told you I did not like I was not interested in being a drug dealer at all I didn't like the violence I didn't like stress the cops everything else that comes with it So before they came to me, I decided to get out. So I basically told the guy that I connected with originally from Quebec. I said, listen, man, like, I've been doing this for about a year or so.
Starting point is 00:42:53 I've never been anywhere before. I've never traveled. I've, you know, I'm 20, at that time, probably 26 years old, 27 years old. And I've never really left the country. Like, I want to go travel and just basically, you know, have a good time. So I get the permission. More or less, I decide to start traveling. And in those travels, the following year, every once in a while I get hit up,
Starting point is 00:43:22 hey, man, do you want to, you know, I got a big one for you. It's like a quarter mill. You want to go make a quick $25 grand. Okay, so every once in a while I would do it, maybe once every couple of months. I had saved a little bit of money because that year that I was doing it, I made about $150K, which is more money than I'd ever seen in my whole life. right so i saved a little bit of it and then i would do these little odd jobs every once in a while and i was also doing these little stupid scams man like you coming from what you come from
Starting point is 00:43:52 and what you did you're going to find this so stupid but the way we started was with blank envelopes cashing blank envelopes so we'd pay like homeless guys to go this was really stupid and really petty but it's how it started so we'd take a blank envelope get someone to go cash it on their The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more.
Starting point is 00:44:41 bank account and then at that time you type in like whatever's supposed to be on the check thousand bucks 1300 bucks or whatever they'd pull it whatever it was we'd give them like a hundred bucks 200 bucks more than happy to take that 200 dollars we take the rest we're doing like little stupid things like that throughout the year every once in a while just get a couple bucks but i decide at the end of that year i went to a couple places i was in mexico Puerto Rico, Chile, and New York. But nothing's really happening out there. I'm not doing any crimes.
Starting point is 00:45:14 I'm not meeting any real serious people or anything like that. Not during that year. Keep in mind, this is 2016 now, just for the timeline. 2017, January, I decided to go to Italy. That's where I get introduced to a whole completely different world. So in that trip, I tell the guy, we'll call him Luigi. I tell Luigi, I'm going to Italy. and you know where should i go what should i check out who should i connect with you know i'm very
Starting point is 00:45:43 excited for this because i have an italian background i've never been to italy this is the whole you know roots trip so i call him and he's like listen when you get there go to milan and contact this guy make sure that you get a phone already knew about burner phones and stuff like that out there he told me where to go get one blah blah blah i call this guy after a few days with him and that was probably the most even going forward up until now most intense meeting of anybody that I've ever had in my life so I end up meeting with this guy again I don't know this at the time I think this guy is just like a friend of a friend he's going to show me what nice restaurants to go to whatever else I meet up with him collaborating guy stocky it's probably
Starting point is 00:46:33 about in his 40s leather jacket nice cologne gold rings like just you know this guy smelled like money and and danger you know what i mean so i'm sitting there and he's like he just starts drilling me like a drill sergeant you know he's like where are you from like who are you with how do you know him what are you doing for him what do you know about me what are you doing here in milan all this shit man and it was intense and you know luckily i i just i told myself As soon as he started asking questions, I said, just answer truthfully. Like, I'm talking to myself, tell him everything truthfully because you don't want problems with this dude.
Starting point is 00:47:12 So after him grilling me for God knows how long, half an hour, 45 minutes, I guess he liked me. And he started opening up and he's like, you know, me and my family, we have this nice little pocket in this neighborhood. You're a friend of Luigi. You're welcome here. If you have any problems, let me know, go check out this place. Da-da-da-da-da.
Starting point is 00:47:33 we end up meeting that same year probably five or six different times mostly in Italy through meeting with him and getting closer with this family I start learning about everything else okay so keep in mind this time I've left that collections I'm doing these stupid little scams I've got a little bit of money I'm traveling but I got nothing really going on now what I end up doing is having conversations with one of his friends who's a Lebanese guy from Panama. He's got real estate. He's got restaurants. He's rich. Keep in mind this family that I'm now friends with in Milan, these guys are loaded. So I find out later on they were one of the biggest distributors in Milan. And they also obviously have roots
Starting point is 00:48:22 in Calabria. The Calabrians are known for being the biggest importers in Europe. And you know, they have businesses and they do money laundering and everything else. I slowly get to learn some of that. I don't get to learn specifics obviously because I'm a nobody, but I get the gist of it. So I end up becoming friends with this Lebanese guy. He starts talking to me about Panama. I've never been to Panama. I've never been to Central America. At that time, I told you I would went to Chile and I'd went to like Puerto Rico and stuff, but I never really explored Latin America. So throughout that year, I'm going back and forth to Europe, maybe four times, spending about a month. or two there each time. I'm visiting probably that year, probably about 10 different countries,
Starting point is 00:49:06 but most of my time is spent in Italy or London. I end up getting into, towards the end of the year, towards the end of 2017, I get into identity theft. And the only, I was a broker. That was it. I wasn't stealing people's information. I was selling it. And that's not to make light of it, but I don't know a lot of the technical aspects about this. This job was basically given to me by some Chinese gangsters out here in Canada that were already making way too much money and this was too small for them. So I'm friends with one of these guys. He basically gets lists of credit card information,
Starting point is 00:49:46 just like you can buy on the dark web. The difference is this information is coming from an actual bank teller. So this is somebody that's inside the bank that has information in regards to credit card information banking account information all this kind of stuff so it's solid it's a hundred percent solid it's not hit or miss it's it's all hit exactly and a lot of people questioned that when i first brought it up they're like why wouldn't they just buy it off the dark web like well not every time that you buy something off the dark web it's good you know what i mean and if you buy a list of names a credit card information off the dark web not all the credit cards are going to work either right
Starting point is 00:50:27 so you wasted your money a little bit. So I found out that this Chinese guy had connections in London with Albanians and Nigerians, these gangs that were out there, really heavy guys. And these guys had like basically factories inside of apartments where they were making and printing credit cards and they were doing stuff with, you know, Bitcoin and, you know, how the whole thing works.
Starting point is 00:50:50 Now, I basically would do this maybe, well, that year I did it four times because I went back to Europe four times, but I would sell these USB sticks for around 15,000, like 10 to 15,000 pounds, okay, but it would have a thousand names on it. And it could be from, it wasn't just one bank that we were dealing with either. We had connections in other banks, but we went through, we sold the first one. I think, yeah, I got 8,000 pounds, because that's all I could take with me at the time. It's just like U.S. or Kemp, You're not allowed to have 10,000 cash on you, right? More than 10,000 cash.
Starting point is 00:51:30 Right. Between countries. Exactly. So, and I was going back home with cash. But the good thing was I would always stop in London before I went everywhere else. So this is why, this is part of my strategy, okay? I didn't realize it in the beginning. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't smart or anything, but it did become a strategy later on where
Starting point is 00:51:51 the first place I would go to as I went into Europe was always London. And the reason why is so that I could drop off this USB stick, I could get my cash, and now I've got that cash for the trip. So if I'm staying out in Europe or London or wherever else, UK, for a month, I've now got like, you know, 8,000, 10,000, 15,000 pounds on me. I'm good for the month. I'm good for two months. I can pay all my stuff with cash, which is what I preferred to do. one thing I don't want to get too far ahead with this but one thing the reason why I never got caught for anything that I did I believe is because I didn't have a digital trace so any money that I made overseas whether it was in Panama London or other stuff that we'll talk about later on I never had a single dirty dollar from another country touch my bank account here in Canada and I was I really liked to deal with cash exactly how I'm telling you right now it was just it made things so much easier. So he tells me, this Lebanese guy tells me about Panama and then I do this year of going
Starting point is 00:52:58 to Europe and I'm doing these little things with the USB and I'm not really making serious money. Tens of thousands of dollars, okay, but not hundreds of thousands yet. I hadn't gotten to that point. But towards the end of the year, I get control of a CFO. So basically I was sold some information about someone inside my country in a different part of the country. There was a CFO and a company that was completely corrupt and just being used for everything you could imagine. So what had happened is the owners of this company fell
Starting point is 00:53:28 into debt with the mob, millions of dollars. This degenerate brother just ended up, I guess, racking up some crazy debt that he could never pay back. And the organization started taking money from it. So they would set up payable accounts. They would make fake sales, bill of sales. they would do all kinds of stuff. For me, the reason why I wanted access to this is because it was a way for me to get clean money, basically. Because it's embezzling and it's whatever else, but it was from a clean company and a clean source in Canada, right?
Starting point is 00:54:04 So I could have the money pulled out in cash or I could send it to another bank account and have it pulled, whatever. So I pay for this information to get to the CFO. And what this information is, I haven't really talked about this before in detail, but the CFO also used to work in a prison and was smuggling drugs into the prison. The prison caught them doing this.
Starting point is 00:54:26 It was a group of them. And instead of, you know, giving them any time or, you know, any kind of criminal charges or anything, they just got fired, which is mind-blowing. So four or five of them get fired. And this woman, it was a woman, the CFO, had information a ton of different information on on other things that were going on inside the jail not really going to talk about it but it was like it was not drug related or anything like that it was like
Starting point is 00:54:54 some scandals some sexual stuff and with the COs and stuff like that so we had all this information and we had emails from her to somebody else and blah blah blah ended up extorting okay we extort her i get an account set up for my account that is disguised as an insurance account through this account, I start regularly getting deposits of anywhere between $5,000 and $13,000 a week. So by the end of that first month, I'm doing like around $40,000 just from the embezzlement from this place. Okay. And that's where my life jumped ahead because even on a good month with the debt collections, I could make like $15,000, but now all of a sudden I'm up to $40. and you know like it might not sound like a lot to some people but jumping from 15 to 40
Starting point is 00:55:46 yeah it changes your lifestyle completely you know so then i start traveling even more obviously because i have the money that was my thing i didn't buy houses i didn't buy jewelry i didn't buy designer clothing none of that shit i traveled like absolutely crazy all year all the time so remember i'm i'm introduced this idea of panama so going into 2019 I'm now, I'm in, you know, full force with the embezzlement. I've got a couple of other little things going on. I'm regularly making $30,000 to $50,000 a month. April 2019, I go to Panama.
Starting point is 00:56:26 Okay. When I get to Panama, the first thing I do is go get a safety deposit box. So there was a woman that was working inside one of the banks that was a friend of ours. And she would get you a deposit box. and you never had to go into the bank. It was all locking key. You held on to the key. She had an extra and you could deposit whenever you wanted.
Starting point is 00:56:50 My situation was a little bit different from other people's where her nephew happened to work in the hotel I stayed at every time I went to Panama City. So what I would do is I would call three days ahead. Hey, I'm coming out to Panama. I need to deposit five grand, eight grand, ten grand, whatever. Have your nephew come up and see me on this. day so the son or sorry the nephew is working in a restaurant in a hotel that i stay at so i order
Starting point is 00:57:21 room service i ask for blank whatever his name is he comes up and i either take money that i'm pulling out which i never did i always deposited uh or i deposit so through this i start saving some money you know just five grand here 10 grand here when i I'm in Panama which ends up being a lot like Europe I'm there four times a year so I'm dropping off that amount of money and this is just I don't know like a nest egg like savings like just in case something happens if I'm in Colombia or wherever else and like you know I'm in a I'm in a tight jam I have 20 grand or 30 grand 50 grand I can go grab right so now onto the next part the next stage of the life I meet a girl there
Starting point is 00:58:09 There's always a girl. You know we were going to get there. She's Nicaraguan. She's Nicaragua. She's from Nicaragua. She lives in Panama. I meet her almost immediately going into Panama. I fell in love with her right away. She was just this fun, short, cute girl. And we had a good time. And we end up deciding to stay together and to move to Nicaragua, which I do. About a month or two later, I moved down to Nicaragua. Keep in mind, this is 2019. And had my whole time out there now in between that i'm still doing everything that i'm doing i'm still embezzling i have the deposit box and then i've also now met the lebanese guy which i mentioned earlier who's doing money laundering in panama and he tells me about the sweet system that they have set up and this is probably going to be the most interesting part for you i think of the whole story so pay attention to this one you can you can tell right away whether this is bullshit or whether this is real you'll know he tells you tells me they have a real estate company that they're using
Starting point is 00:59:11 out there. They've set up this project. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes
Starting point is 00:59:27 flavored iced coffee and delivery. Jack, which is basically glass house condos. So they've bought in the land. They've gotten all the permits and everything. Everything is good to go. They start building the foundation, but really this whole thing is a scam from the beginning. It's never going to go up.
Starting point is 00:59:47 They lay the foundation. They start putting cement in. They get all the paperwork done, but it's never actually going to be built. And everyone is in on this. People from city officials to some cartel members in Colombia to Italians from Toronto. There's a bunch of people that are involved in this, okay? And basically, this is what the setup is. is there's a company that in ontario that has a good relationship with the bank in panama the global
Starting point is 01:00:16 bank and a couple of other ones and a couple of canadian banks that are operating inside of panama so there's an account that's basically used to clean the money the easiest way i'm going to say this the most simple way someone in canada someone in toronto a drug dealer whatever's got a quarter million dollars he wants sent over either wants it cleaned so he can take out in cash or he just wants to buy some real estate overseas and and have it go through a couple shell companies. He goes to this guy in Ontario, a real businessman, takes the cash to him, gets dinged on it, 25% of whatever he's bringing in. It was usually 25%, whatever it was, $1 million, $5 million, $250,000, always 25%.
Starting point is 01:01:01 Now, what ends up happening is he'll send it over and it'll become, It'll get turned into a purchase order for one of these glasshouse condos for $125,000, $180,000, whatever it is. Again, bill of sale is made. Everything looks legit on the Panamanian bank side, on the Ontario side. And throughout the process, the guy in Ontario's already got his money, his dirty cash put away, and he's doing whatever with it. I don't ask. I imagine they have casinos out there, VLT machines, whatever it is. I don't ask about that.
Starting point is 01:01:37 but he introduces me to this idea he's like you know anyone in canada that wants to clean money you can make money off this it'll be just like the debt collections you can get 10 percent of whatever you pull in now 10 percent of 25 grand is $2,500 10 percent of 250,000 and you know you know the math yeah five thousand dollars but now we're we're not doing anything for less than half a million or a million so if I do this three or four times a year I'm getting 50 grand here boom hundred grand here boom I've already got the insurance company set up. I've got the Canadian company that we're using also to send out, you know, fake work orders and everything else. So I've got everything set up for myself.
Starting point is 01:02:20 2019, I'm in Nicaragua. I'm living there. We rented a house. Everything is on autopilot. I don't even have to do anything at this point. Now, the relationship is short-lived. So maybe nine months, 10 months. It was beautiful, though. I loved living in a dictatorship country. It was very interesting. you can imagine just seeing like military police in the streets all the time and but at the same time I don't know how much you've traveled in those parts of the world these places are beautiful they're affordable and that people are actually extremely kind so like I had a great time while I was there even though it was you know short lived now we'll get up going from Nicaragua we go into let's say November December we break up I go back to Panama I'm kind of fucked up because I'm like
Starting point is 01:03:02 I just spent the last nine months investing in this woman investing in the you know getting a house all the shit and it just all fell apart i felt like shit i went to panama i do what most men do turned into a slut went and fucked a bunch of girls in in panama and i was drinking and i had friends come in from canada and other places to come see me and i'm just living in a hotel at this point for about a month january 2020 i go back home i'm again everything is pretty much on autopilot nothing's really going on round march april covid hits and man it was miserable because Keep in mind, I had just come from this breakup and I still kind of felt a little shitty. And now I'm trapped inside by myself all the time and I can't go anywhere.
Starting point is 01:03:44 I can't travel anywhere. And I really tried to hold off on the vaccines. I'm not going to lie. For like five or six months, I tried to stay away from getting vaccinated. And then I was like, man, I need to get to go to the city. I need to go somewhere. So I start traveling again. I won't tell you about the whole year because I can already tell.
Starting point is 01:04:03 I'm going to put you to sleep right away. No, first of all one, did you get, did you get vaccinated? So you did get vaccinated? I did. Yeah, I had to. And then you got a little, did they give you the little card like they gave it here in the U.S.? Exactly, yeah. And you know what?
Starting point is 01:04:20 I probably in hindsight, I probably could have avoided it because I had friends that were making fake ones and they were getting away with it. Right. So at first they didn't have the cards. They just had a piece of paper. And we had like, we had counterfeit guys that could do anything. So, you know, they were making those sheets and people were traveling with them, right? So fast forward, maybe halfway into the year, I start traveling.
Starting point is 01:04:42 Mexico opens up first, I believe. So I go to Mexico for a little bit. See my brother out there who had, you know, moved there a couple years early and basically settled down. Spend some time with him. I go to Costa Rica. And then I go to Ecuador. And I'm getting through all this because there's certain places that are just a little bit more important than others. Ecuador was important because it introduces me to the idea of Colombia.
Starting point is 01:05:07 Colombia is probably the most important part of this whole story for me. Anyways, 2020, towards the end of the year, December, I'm in Ecuador, I'm in keto. I get a phone call from one of my buddies in Canada. And this is one guy that was really struggling with the pandemic. Like, this is the guy that's sending me articles every single day about COVID in the pandemic. You know what I mean? like he's just watching the news constantly and just going crazy you know he's sending me the shit sending me he's like bro i need to get the out of here do you want to go to columbia he's like where are you right now
Starting point is 01:05:38 i'm like i'm in ecuador and i'd never been to columbia and i heard amazing things about it so i said yeah why not so we had a friend in winnipeg that was a columbian national and she basically says hey look i know you guys are going to bogota but why don't you come meet me in cartagena And if you know anything about Cartagena in Bogota, Bogota is just in the capital city, in the middle of the country, kind of cold, lots of shopping, lots of food and clubs and stuff, but like, not the best weather. So she's like, come to the coast, come to Cartagena. It's like Cancun on steroids, like this little town in Colombia. So I said, why not? So January 2021, I go down there.
Starting point is 01:06:23 I arrived by myself first in Colombia. I spent a couple of days in Bogota. I go to Medellin, not doing anything, just hanging out, shopping, eating, chilling, getting to know the country. Then I go to Cartagena. I'm there for a day or two. Then my friends start arriving in.
Starting point is 01:06:40 So the friend that called me, he arrives first about two days in. Then I got some other friends from Calgary, a different part of Canada that come in and meet us. And then the Columbia National shows up all over these days. but the second night that I was there or third night that I was there when my Cuban friend arrives
Starting point is 01:06:57 this is the guy that was going crazy we go out because I'm like let's go check out some spots let's see where we're going to take everybody so we went to this little bar slash hookal lounge we had a great time we got drunk we're dancing we're meeting people at the Columbia National
Starting point is 01:07:12 her brother shows up we have a good time we start connecting with these people from Cali from Bogota just just by parting you know nothing serious regular people now the club or the the the lounge whatever you want to call it it closes at midnight because it's covid right so even though places are open everything shuts down the whole town shuts down at midnight so at midnight we go to leave we're all drunk we're all having a good time nobody wants to go home there's some guy sitting standing outside and he's like hey you guys
Starting point is 01:07:45 looking for somewhere to go it's like obviously we are you know sketchy as hell and no Normally I would be like, no, but these guys were like, you know what, let's, let's keep it going. I said, fine, you know, I don't want to ruin your vacation. So we get in a taxi. We head to this place that looks like, you know, absolutely nothing, like almost like a storefront from outside. We walk in and we didn't know this at the time, but those taxis were owned by the club. So we go inside, we go inside, there's a, there's a madam there. she's probably about 60 years old 55 years old she greets us we pay whatever the entrance fee is or
Starting point is 01:08:26 whatever then two big guys come and pat us down and i could already tell this this is an intense place you know what i mean just by the guys that patted us down i'm like hey this is a brothel yeah you jumped ahead there but yeah yeah it's a brothel so but we didn't know that man we literally thought we're going to a club because that's what he told us like oh we're going on after hours okay let's go so we walk in we go through a couple of curtains and down some stairs and through this maze you know and then at the end there's another curtain we open it and then all of a sudden it's like this outdoor nightclub like there's no roof to the place and it's got like a swimming pool in the middle with a catwalk that goes over it and a stripper pool going up the middle
Starting point is 01:09:07 all along the pool side there's these beautiful leather couches and there's sweets upstairs there's a DJ area. There's a restaurant area. It's intense. You could not tell from the outside that any of this was in here. And I guess that's the point, right? But yeah, we get in and it's dead. There's nobody there. So I talked to the guy that brought us there. I guess he's like the promoter for the place. Like, bro, like what's going on here? Man? Like this is kind of stale. You know, there's a cool spot, but like no one here. Bro, we don't even open for another 30 minutes. You know, we're just getting started. He's like, check this out. And he goes over to the wall and he hits what looks like, you know, like a fire alarm or something and it goes off like the siren and then all of a sudden
Starting point is 01:09:47 like 20 girls walk out. And they're all just like the best looking women you've ever seen in your life from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, everywhere. And we're just like, holy crap, you know, because I'd never seen nothing like this. I had traveled and I'd been to bars and strip clubs and whatever else. But this was like, whoa, I'm in Colombia now, you know? So we're having a good time. We're talking to some of the girls. The place to starts filling up quickly like within an hour it's completely full there's probably 150 people there like within an hour popular spot so you know we're being sent girls right you know come and talk us up and you know go in with them or whatever but the one thing I liked about this place is
Starting point is 01:10:31 they give you as soon as you sit down in this area like kind of VIP area they give you two security guards those guys stand in front of you all night now if if there's if you have problems with another group, they'll take care of it. If the girls come to talk to you, those security guards are going to ask you first, can this girl come here and talk to you? I love that right away because it's like, otherwise, they're coming up to you every second and it gets annoying. You can't have fun. So at one point, there's these two girls that me and, you know, a couple of my friends thought were cool, you know, one was really hot. Like I call it fake hot, you know, fake tits, fake ass hair down to the ankles you know typical Colombian prostitute and then the other one was
Starting point is 01:11:12 like kind of quiet shy timid just sweet girl they said you know let them in we start hanging out with them but the girl the fake one got sent to me because by this time I've ordered a bunch of bottles I'm tipping like crazy I'm being friends with the DJ meeting the owner of the place so I'm I'm a target basically for these girls so they send this girl over to me and I'm not interested you know it's not my type but my buddy's into it so i say hey bro switch with me real quick i'm gonna sit with the other one the other one is like i described quiet shy wasn't impressed with anything that we were doing you know like a lot of these girls when they see money they're like oh okay jackpot this girl's like yeah i don't give a fuck you know what i mean i like that i was
Starting point is 01:11:55 like okay this girl like she's not she's not about that fake shit so we start to talking and you know i just kind of ask like what are you doing in this place like you don't fit in here at all you know what i mean she's like i could say the same thing about you i'm like what do you mean it's like i've been watching you like you're not interested in the girls or anything what are you doing in a brothel i was like i didn't know i was coming to a brothel uh i didn't know until i got here but you're absolutely right this is not my scene at all i'm just staying for for my friends you get to talking she's like look i'm from venezuela before i left i was making five dollars a month minimum wage i got two girls to feed milk cost 20 dollars because of inflation
Starting point is 01:12:35 and you know I got she got groomed into going there she wasn't told it was a brothel she was told it was a nightclub and that you know they a lot of tourist dollars and she'll make a thousand dollars a week and by the time she gets there bro after going through the jungle on her feet and then by feet and then going in a little shitty boat to get to columbia she's defeated right so first couple of days she's serving literally serving drinks and then after that you know the girl says hey look if you want to make money you got to go into the room with this guy you know what i mean and i honestly believe because of how sweet she was i believe the story because it was like you could i could see you being manipulated like you're too you're too nice
Starting point is 01:13:16 out here you know what i mean right so anyways prostitute makes for mast it dramatically more money than a server oh 100% man so just to break down because i i know people like numbers at the time so this is in 2021 at the beginning of 2021 when you go in with a girl you're paying 300,000 Colombian pesos for 30 minutes that's basically the equivalent of 8090 USD 100 Canadian 110 Canadian and the girl this is what surprised me about the place so most of the time when girls are being pimped the pimp is keeping everything in this place they take like 60 or 70,000 pesos and then the girl gets like 230 or 250 plus tips so this was actually one of the nicer places where first of all the girls aren't forced to stay there and second of all they keep i'd say like
Starting point is 01:14:13 75 to 80 percent of everything that they make which is unheard of you know so keep in mind a girl goes in three or four guys a night just making like 400 500 dollars a night coming from making five dollars a month ridiculous so From there, we hang out, we have a good time. I start to like her a little bit. We get friendly and I go back there for the next couple of days. Keep in mind, my friends are still arriving over the next few days. And every night we go back there.
Starting point is 01:14:47 And I just loved being around her, man. I thought like, man, this girl is amazing. I don't know why it took me until I was 32, 33 years old to meet someone like this, in a place like this in a country like this but i i started to grow feelings so um a couple days in i literally just told her i'm going to get you out of here i can tell that you're unhappy i know that you're only here for money so what i'm going to do is i'm going to set you up with some money and get you back in venezuela we'll get a company set up for you like a little market street market or whatever that you have some money coming in for your girls and she didn't
Starting point is 01:15:23 believe me at all she thought i was just like talking shit or whatever but I was dead serious. So by the end of the week, I'd gotten an email. I thought I had way more time than I did, bro. I got an email telling me that they were shutting down flights between Latin America and Canada and the U.S. as well. So we basically had COVID for COVID, yeah.
Starting point is 01:15:44 Yeah, because the numbers were spiking again or whatever. So we basically had three days to get out of there. And I'm thinking, at that point of time, I'm like, I'm going to stay here for another month. You know what I mean? Like before I found out,
Starting point is 01:15:56 I was like, I'm going to stay here for another month and get to know this girl and see where this goes. I didn't have that kind of time. So a couple days later, you know, we went on. I'd say that the day after that I told her that taking her out of there, I went on a boat cruise with the promoter guy, the guy that brought me there in the first place and a couple of the security guards. They were also Venezuelan. So I made friends with them and I basically asked them, listen, man, I want to take this girl out of here. You think it's going to be an issue for me. And they said, you know, honestly, we don't know.
Starting point is 01:16:24 there's different situations for different girls but you can talk to the boss and we'll see what happens so fast forward a couple days passed by I have to leave the following day so 3 o'clock in the morning the guy comes up to me
Starting point is 01:16:38 he's like you want to talk to the boss I'm drunk I'm making out with this girl I'm not ready for this right now but I was like okay you know what this is the only time I can do it so I end up going talking to the guy I find out that the place is owned
Starting point is 01:16:52 by one of the cartels right and one of the, probably the biggest one at the time that was out there in Columbia. And I was, you know, I was worried what I was walking into, right? But by the end of the conversation, the guy realized that I was a good guy, that I had good intentions with her, and that she wasn't making any money for him because she didn't want to fuck anybody and she didn't want to talk to guys, she would sit in a corner and just not want to be bothered. So he gave me the blessing.
Starting point is 01:17:21 I go back to Canada. I quarantined for about two and a half weeks. In that time, I sent her to Bogota where I have some friends that will take care of her. She stays up at a hotel. She's good to go. She also meets up with her brother who's living in Bogota that she hasn't seen for like five years. It was a great little reunion for them. I do my quarantine in Canada.
Starting point is 01:17:42 I spend a couple days with my friends. I go back to Columbia. I meet her in Bogota. And the same night that I was with her, the first night that I was with her, I ended up proposing to her. on a balcony outside of a hotel in Bogota. So this is like three and a half weeks after meeting. It was crazy how quickly it happened. But we had obviously talked while I was in quarantine.
Starting point is 01:18:06 We talked every single day. And I basically said, look, I really like you. I think that there's something special about you that I've been looking for in a woman for a long time. She had minus the place that we met, her morals and her values and the way she carried herself were, old worldly you know what i mean something that's missing from the the woman of today and you only typically find that in a lot of you know foreign countries it doesn't really exist here in
Starting point is 01:18:32 north america anymore bro that's the way i feel about it anyways so i basically told her like look i really like you and like i want us to be together but you don't own me anything like we can we can get you on a flight back to venezuela i'll get you set up i'll put money in your bank account you'll be good for the next year or two you know what I mean and she tells me like I'm not going anywhere I'm in love with you I want to see this through you're an amazing guy all the things that you'd want to hear from a woman that you like that you're falling in love with so that night at the hotel the first night that I seen her after the trip you know I was worried I'm like hey is this real or is this fake I'm gonna know right away so right when
Starting point is 01:19:16 we met I knew right away you know what I mean I opened the door She comes, she jumps on me, she's crying, she told me how much she missed me and how long these two weeks fell and whatever else. And end of the night I propose. Later on, we go to Bahamas, about three months later, we go to Bahamas because I'm trying to find somewhere for us to get married quickly, so that we can live together. Well, okay. I mean, are you expecting to bring her back to Canada?
Starting point is 01:19:42 Like, how does that work? Yeah. So my plan for that was, I didn't know where we were going to live yet, but I knew we had to get married. I was not planning on going to Canada because I didn't want that microscope on me. You know what I mean? I didn't want to apply for her to come and do all this shit with immigration and have to answer questions and have to, you know what I mean? Finances looked at and everything like that. Like I covered my shit, but you never know. So it's like if I can avoid them looking at my life and just being in the shadows, I'm going to do that. Obviously, we're not
Starting point is 01:20:18 going to go to Venezuela because it's, you know, at the time it's a shithole. There's a dictatorship. She's trying to leave there because it's so bad. So I don't know where we're going to live yet. I just know we need to get married. So a couple of months later after bouncing around a little bit, Columbia is seeing some of her family and whatever else. We go to Bahamas. We end up getting married. It was a beautiful, it was just me and her. We just eloped. It was a beautiful time out there. And then immediately, like the day after we got married, I get into like, where are we going to live mode, you know? So I have a couple things set up for us over the next couple of months.
Starting point is 01:20:52 So this is, we get married June, June 12th, I believe, of 2001, yep. And 21. Yeah, 2012. Sorry, I say 2001. Yeah. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, so 2021, we get married in June. And then we start bouncing around a little bit.
Starting point is 01:21:12 We go see my brother in Mexico again. We go to Costa Rica as like a little honeymoon or whatever. And then throughout this whole time, I'm still doing everything I was doing before. It's still on autopilot. Every once in a while, I would have to go to Panama just to meet with somebody or to get money or to put money away. But other than that, I was basically just with her or I was back in Canada, like just waiting to go see her again, whatever it was. So I finally discover, though, Paraguay. So Paraguay ends up being the place that we decide to move to.
Starting point is 01:21:47 Here's why. I'm going to break down why, because a lot of people are like, why Paraguay? I'm going to say this in the shortest form. It only takes 70 days to get your permanent residency in Paraguay, which is incredible. It's one of the fastest in the world. It's good for 10 years, which is also incredible because most places are three years, four years, maybe five. This is good for 10. It gives you, it's part of an agreement called the Mercosur, which is with Brazil and Argentina,
Starting point is 01:22:16 which means if you have PR in Paraguay, you also have it in Brazil and Argentina and can move through those countries the same way. So what's PR? Permanent residents. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So you're not a citizen. You got the the residence or whatever. Okay. So it's yeah, it's one of the greatest and fastest and cheapest in the world to go there. And I like that it gave you access to Brazil and Argentina because you can buy real estate, you can go to school, you can work there, whatever you want. And a personal favorite, no taxes on foreign income, zero. That's also something that is almost unheard of. You're only taxed in Paraguay if you make more than $30,000 in Paraguay. But anything that you make in Canada, Italy, U.S., wherever is zero tax, right?
Starting point is 01:23:07 So any money you bring in is perfectly legal. I mean, no tax rate, right. so for me it was paradise but the next thing that we needed to do is we needed to go see how it actually is great idea but like how does it look how are we going to feel out there so november 2021 we or maybe end of october uh we head out there to paraguay the first day after arriving in the capital city which is asuncione we fell in love with it and i was i already knew that i was going to like it because i'd spent three months you know investigating and looking at pictures and all this other shit but I didn't know if she was going to like it you know because she's she's got to leave her country she got to leave Venezuela she's going to bring her kids here eventually so I'm really
Starting point is 01:23:51 riding on this to be what she wants and she loved it and she's like this feels like home and I was like thank God like maybe eight months after our meeting her actually know probably like 10 months after meeting her we finally find where we're going to live we can stop bouncing country to country living in hotels, all this other bullshit, and I can walk away from the game. This is an important part that I didn't bring up. The minute I met her. How? I'll say how.
Starting point is 01:24:20 How do you make money without committing crime? Doing what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. So I like, how do you afford a wife with two kids on a, you know, what else are you capable of doing at this point? You know what I mean? Well, okay.
Starting point is 01:24:36 So, firstly, I, I, I just want to say right when I met her, I kind of basically knew that I was going to have to stop doing what I was doing eventually. And not just for her, but her kids. You got to keep in mind my whole life, my parents have passed away. I'm kind of on my own. I've got friends. I've got a little bit of family, but like I'm really on my own. But the minute that I meet her, now I'm responsible for her and her kids. So I don't want them to go through that. I don't want us to move to a foreign country. I'm still laundering money or doing identity theft. or doing collections or whatever, get arrested,
Starting point is 01:25:12 and then they're on their own in a foreign country. Right. So I already decided that this was going to happen. Now, what was I going to do? I had a couple of plans. So I had contacts with AT&T inside of Panama. There was basically, I'll give you the short version of it, somebody that was from New York,
Starting point is 01:25:31 these Jewish guys that I met in Panama from New York, they had a bunch of call centers over Central America all over the place. and the way they broke it down to me was for like a short, you know, investment, maybe depending where I was going, but in Paraguay, I had it down to $50,000 in investment. I had to basically get some Dell desktops, get some office space, and they would get us a contract for a year with AT&T, where basically AT&T was paying you like 750 USD to 850 USD per employee per month, and you're paying the employees the minimum wage are a little bit better, which is, like 450 USD. So you're getting like almost half of that wage off of, off of all of them.
Starting point is 01:26:15 Right. The way that we had it planned out for was for 40 employees, 40 workers. So you can see what kind of money that is. It's in the tens of thousands a month. Right. And that's a legitimate business. That's not, there's nothing dirty about that. So that was one of my plans. I also, this one's a little bit more in, you know, it's more intricate, but they don't, really have any English schools out there, not any really good ones. So I was thinking to do an English school. I wanted to get funding from the Catholic Church. It's a big long, that one was like the dream. I was like, if I do this, I'm set for my life. So that probably wouldn't happen, but I was going to work on making it happen. And then I was going to open up a little hookah lounge as
Starting point is 01:26:57 well. I had an American guy that I met out there that was going to sell me his hookah lounge, his business for around like 3540K. It was bringing in a couple grand every month. So I already had things set up. so we're in paraguay we spent about a month there my birthday passes there one of the best birthdays ever she sets up this whole thing for me and you know like happy birthday and one of the regular spots that we used to hang up with they decorated and all the stuff and she surprised me and it's kind of nice you know because just coming from everything that we went from you still you never know like if this is real if this is true if i'm being used if it's you know whatever so And a lot of that just stems from abandonment issues when I was a kid and whatever else, right?
Starting point is 01:27:41 And insecurities and all that shit. So it was nice to see. So we decide on Paraguay and then we start putting it into play. What ends up happening, though, is over the next fall, you know, a few months, we get into little tiffs, little fights. Usually when she's back in Venezuela and I'm in Canada, I'm going out too much or, you know, I'm not responding as quickly as I should like stupid shit, you know, jealous, whatever stuff. Now, we, we end up getting into a huge fight towards the end of the year because I find out that my ex-girlfriend from Nicaragua had message her and started just harassing her, you know, and telling her terrible things about me, including some of the businesses that I had not quite yet opened up to about with my wife at the time. So, like, she comes from that world. So she, it wasn't very shocking, but to find it out from an ex-girl.
Starting point is 01:28:35 friend. It caused a lot of problems for us. So going into 2022, we're broken up. I'm still moving to Paraguay, regardless, and I have faith in the relationship working itself out. So I'm still focused on that. But I just kind of go off because we're not talking anymore. Months had passed, actually, where maybe one day I'd message her or she'd message me and we'd ignore each other, whatever. So I just go on a rant. I go back to Europe, which I hadn't been for a couple of years because I was spending all my time in Latin America. And oddly enough, I always had intuition throughout my whole life, that whole law of attraction, believing thing. Like, it's not for everybody, but for me it was very real. I envisioned everything that happened
Starting point is 01:29:19 in my life, including getting married to a foreigner, being in Italy four times a year, all this stuff I imagined when I was like a teenager. And I guess I projected it so much that a lot of it happened. Something told me that year that I need to go to the rest of the Central American countries that I had yet to visit because this was going to be my last year of traveling. Nothing happened other than the breakup, business-wise, money-wise, not a single thing happened in like six years. Like, I never had a real problem, never really lost money, but something told me this is it for you. This is your last year, so enjoy it. Maybe subconsciously I was thinking K because I'm moving to Paraguay, I'm going to stop, but something told me something's
Starting point is 01:30:02 going to happen. Sure enough, it does. So that year, like I said, I go off. I start traveling in Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, a couple other places. I'm going to Europe. Everything's still on autopilot, still not talking with my wife. Eventually halfway into the year, we reconnect and we realize we've been stupid about this. Like, we've wasted so much time. We still love each other. We want to be together. We want to go to Paraguay. So let's just stop this shit and get back together. So months after breaking up, we get back together. I meet her in Colombia. I decided to take her to Cartagena to give her new experiences.
Starting point is 01:30:41 Basically, you know, we met in this shitty place in a shitty way, but I'm going to give you some new memories so that you can remember it in a better light. Spend some time in Colombia, we start working on it. She goes back to Venezuela. I go back to Canada just to collect the last of our documents. So for instance, like for her girl, she needed permission from the father to take them out the country. birth certificate, a little shit for the permanent residence application. Something else happens, again, we get into a little fight, don't talk for a month.
Starting point is 01:31:13 This is, again, about stuff that we were just not communicating about. It was egos at the end of the day. You know what I mean? She had a very traumatic life, and in many ways, so did I. And we had our issues, and I think we took it out on each other, which really sucks. Because we were the people that were supposed to save each other, you know? you never had to work at a broth yeah i know i didn't
Starting point is 01:31:35 i couldn't resonate you had a bad life but no i did not have to do that that's right yeah no i think it was just like more of not having family around and stuff like that you know what i mean i didn't know how to be responsible like i was in little ways for friends and stuff like i told you in the bullying earlier on but like i never had a real family structure right and i didn't know how to deal with it and i'm a criminal at the time too too. That complicates it even more. But yeah, never had to work at a brothel. Thank God.
Starting point is 01:32:06 Hopefully I don't have to. We'll see what happens though. Still young. But, okay, so yeah, another little tip. And then we get over it and we make what is our last trip to go to Paraguay. So this shit is like a movie. I'm on my way out. I'm a couple of months away from being completely clean.
Starting point is 01:32:28 I'm about to go into this business that I told you about with AT&T. I've walked away from, I'm not doing identity theft anymore. I'm not doing any collections. I have a little bit more money coming in from the embezzlement. I got about 100K in Panama in that safety deposit box. So in my mind, I got a quarter million dollars a little bit more than that coming to me over the next three to five months and that money is getting pumped into Paraguay. And a quarter million dollars is not shit in the U.S. and Canada these.
Starting point is 01:32:58 days but in paraguay i mean a condo costs 40 000 dollars the business is costing me 50 000 to set up right so you know what i mean it's not like i'll have an okay life i'll have it set up for myself and this is where it all goes bad so we get to she gets to columbia first she's in kukuta which is the city at the venezuelan border and i get to bogota first so i go from Winnipeg to Toronto, Toronto to Bogota. When I get to Bogota, my guy in Panama calls me, this is the guy that takes care of things from me when I'm not there. And he lets me know, he basically says, your money's fucked. And I said, what do you mean? My money's fucked. And he says, the woman that was managing the bank for the last couple years, like, I'm not going to say her name,
Starting point is 01:33:46 but she got, she got arrested. I was like, what do you know about it? And he's like, well, there was a whole thing. What country is this in again? This is Panama, where I had the safety deposit box and that's where a lot of the money laundering was going through panama as well now this woman gets arrested and she basically to buy herself out of the situation points at all the safety deposit boxes that she's been keeping for these guys for several years including myself now other people had other things in those safety deposit boxes diamonds fake passports whatever I can only imagine a lot of them were like cartel guys from Columbia that just wanted to stash some stuff in Panama City because a lot of the Colombians would come down to Panama City and set up shop because it was it's very profitable city you know to have a strongholds so these guys were selling women down there they were selling you know drugs they were doing money laundering whatever else you know so I asked him I was like you know do you think that I got anything to worry about you know and he's like no because she doesn't know my real name.
Starting point is 01:34:54 I had a fake residency card made for me out there. So I went by a different alias out there. I had a completely different name and everything. So she knew me by that. Go ahead. How much was in the box? 100,000. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:35:08 About like 80,000 USD. Sorry? Is that all the money you got? Like cash savings? Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't that smart. You know, like I was.
Starting point is 01:35:18 And my lifestyle, if I'm making like 300, 400, 400 grand a year, my life was costing me $250,000 a year. Right. I'm living in hotels. I'm traveling constantly. I'm spending money on my friends, family, everything else. It was a lot, you know. So I was lucky that I saved anything, to be honest.
Starting point is 01:35:36 But yeah, so I ask him, you know, like, do you have anything to worry about? He's like, no, you probably just bailed herself out. You just, you know, they probably said, you're going to go to jail or you can point at all these deposit boxes. Now, I found out the reason why she even got caught. was because she was doing something that none of us knew about at least the guys that i was around didn't know about this so what she was doing was originally she was setting up safety deposit boxes for people where you could just meet up with her give her whatever you wanted to put in the box she would put a fake name down and use a fake idea or whatever and you'd have that there
Starting point is 01:36:12 and only she could access it and one other person that was in the bank and you have your own key as well if you wanted you didn't even have to go into the bank ever I never went into the bank one time but I always had my money stashed there now what she was doing unbeknownst to us was she was setting up actual bank accounts for some of these cartel guys and they were using fake passports so this stuff all goes through the global bank and it goes through you know whatever other avenues of you know to check for money laundering and whatever else and obviously she got flagged So a few times.
Starting point is 01:36:49 And that ended up for all of us. She never got caught for the safety deposit boxes. She got to tap on her phone because of the, I guess they sent someone in to set up a bank account with a fake passport saying that they're friends with this guy and she does it. They tap her phone and then they hear about the deposit boxes. So I don't even know if they knew about the deposit boxes after and if they thought it was just bank accounts that she was setting up.
Starting point is 01:37:17 But anyways, it went to shit that day I lost a hundred grand so I get this phone call while I'm in Bogota at an airport right Uh sorry at a hotel right by the airport and I get this bad news so the next day I'm going to kukuta to meet my wife It was literally just a layover for a night So I lose a hundred grand and I'm like shit man like it's not that it's that much money. It's it's it's not nothing though either Especially with what I've had saved right or what I have coming to me. If I've got a quarter million dollars, you just took away 100,000,
Starting point is 01:37:51 it has a huge impact on me. So I get there and I get to Kukuta the next day. And, you know, I spend the next couple of weeks. I don't tell my wife, spend the next couple of weeks just chilling. My birthday's coming up again. And we spend my birthday together.
Starting point is 01:38:10 We just kind of chill out. The plan is still there. We're still going. unfortunately a day before my birthday I got I had a I told you this already I had a couple burner phones I get a text message from someone in Canada with the company CFO tells me
Starting point is 01:38:28 I'm sorry I can't do anything that's all I get I'm sorry I can't do anything and exactly the most cryptic text ever and by the way I hear nothing else for a month after that but what it happened
Starting point is 01:38:45 is those two previous weeks that I was in Kukuta with my wife, those deposits that come into that account that I told you about when we were embezzling and I was doing five to 13 grand every week through this insurance account. All of a sudden, there's no deposits coming through. Okay. And I'm thinking to myself, nothing of it because I'm like, okay, you know what, maybe payrolls late or whatever. It's just a week or two, whatever. But then after like two weeks, I send a message out and I'm like, hey, what the fuck's going on? Where's my money? Because now we're talking about like 20 grand, 15 grand.
Starting point is 01:39:18 And I need this money right now because I'm in Cuckoootow over here panicking about the 100 grand that I just lost. So I get this message and I panic because that's like another 150 to 180K that I have coming from this account. I've got maybe 20 grand on me. I've got some cash. I've got legitimate money in my Canadian bank account and some pesos and shit. maybe 20 grand worth I got enough to survive but I'm like then what so another beautiful thing
Starting point is 01:39:52 happens though during this time another confirmation of how much my wife actually loved me and and really wanted this to work no matter what a day before my birthday I find this out I get the the message and she she knew that something was wrong with me I was quiet all day and she's like what's what's going on it's your birthday tomorrow why are you so depressed like you're not you're not talking you're not smiling like what's wrong i know something's wrong and you know finally i gave in and i'm like we need to go talk because her daughter was with us and like we need to go talk alone so we went down to the lobby and probably one of the only times in my adult life i started to cry you know and i wasn't like pouring but i was you know i was i was i was letting it out and she's like what the
Starting point is 01:40:34 happened and i was like listen like i failed that's all i could muster to say you know i was like i failed It's like, what do you mean you failed? I'm like, I don't think I can do this. I don't know if I can give you what I promised you anymore, you know? That's the only thing I was thinking about this whole time. I was like, I'm going to fuck up her life and her daughter's life that I promised to change it a year and a half ago or whatever it was. Okay. So the beautiful thing that happens is I think she's going to respond with like, okay, well, I'm going home or whatever, you know, like, or this is over, whatever.
Starting point is 01:41:08 Because I'm stupid like that. I'm thinking that. And she tells me like, I don't care if we go to Paraguay and I have to work three jobs while you're at home like we're going and we're going to make this work. You know, I was never with you for money and I never asked you for a thing. So you should know that whether you're poor or whether you're rich, I'm going to stay with you regardless. And the truth is, bro, in that year and a half, she never asked me for a penny. Like obviously I was taking care of her well and she didn't really have to. But like she never asked me to buy or anything. She never in a year and a half, bro. So, you know, I should have known, but still my stupid head. So yeah, she, she hugs me and she tells me we're going to get through this. I'm so sorry that this happened, but like, just be smart with what we have left. Let's take that money to Paraguay. Let's get set up. We start planning, you know.
Starting point is 01:41:59 And the next day, it's my birthday. We have a nice dinner on top of the hotel. I have this little rooftop. She sets up another surprise thing for me, which was really great at that time. and yeah we decide to to play it out see what happens so over the next week or two i get no contact from canada panama's fucked you know everything is just falling apart and we get into another stupid fight now what this was about it was just me being oversensitive at the wrong time basically i told her i thought it was better for her to go back to venezuela i was
Starting point is 01:42:36 going to give her half the money that I had, which was about 10 grand or a little bit less by then. And I was going to go back to Winnipeg and set something up so that I could start making money again because I started thinking like strategically, this is stupid. Like I'm going to go over there with 10 grand. It's going to be gone in like a month or two after I buy, you know, after I pay for the immigration process, after I buy a bed and couch and groceries and whatever else, I'm going to be broke right away. This is not smart to do, but she took it the wrong way. So I think that she thought that I was going to go to Canada and leave the relationship and leave the marriage and because she thought like that too sometimes, you know, and she was always worried about me
Starting point is 01:43:12 going back to my ex or whatever else, another woman in Canada. So we get into another stupid fight, but because of the timing of it, I was probably more upset than I should have been. You know, I should have just brushed it off and said whatever, but I'm like, how the fuck could you do this? When I just lost everything, I don't know what we're going to do with our lives and I don't know if we're going to end up doing what we're supposed to do with in Paraguay. So I got mad at her and I went off on her and we broke up for good. She goes back to Venezuela. I give her a little bit of money and then I go back to Bogota. I can't go back to Canada bro. I'm like at the time I was like I just lost everything. I'm I've now left the marriage.
Starting point is 01:43:53 I lost all the money. I'm not moving to Paraguay anymore or I can't at least not right now. So I go back to Bogota, the capital, and I spend two weeks there and I start realizing we had other options that I didn't think that we had for us. So for instance, she had a family in Ecuador that was already situated out there. We could have stayed in Colombia, gotten refugee status for her. And then because I'm married to her, I'd be able to stay with her because I'm her spouse. So I started realizing we had other opportunities. and then this one thing that was a part of moving to Paraguay was you had to make a deposit for solvency
Starting point is 01:44:34 it was like roughly like $7,000 and I was worried about that because I'm like hey if I've got 15K and I got to put $7,000 in the bank for solvency that I can't touch for six months or whatever however how long solvency is what to prove you're not broke that you're not entering the country broke? Yeah yeah exactly
Starting point is 01:44:55 yeah so it's just like you can either you have a couple different options for solvency like you could uh show like a bachelor's degree or you could show like savings like a certain amount of savings or just pay this solvency amount at the bank uh which was like like i said 7 000 but i was worried about that because i didn't have a lot of money left and i needed that money right now but then i found out while i was in boga and my mind is spinning they recently changed the law so it used to be you just get your PR right away now they're doing temporary residence for two years and then you can either do another two years
Starting point is 01:45:30 of temporary residence or do the PR right and with the temporary residency you don't need solvency you don't need proof of funds with the temporary residency okay so I find this out so I'm like oh shit this is good news
Starting point is 01:45:47 I go back to Canada two weeks later and I do something very stupid in so no listen i know i did a lot of stupid things in the relationship but when it comes to the crime stuff i i didn't make too many big mistakes right okay this is the time i did and it was because i was desperate and you know when you're desperate and you know what i mean like you're holding on to whatever you can that's when you make the most foolish decisions so i go back to canada
Starting point is 01:46:17 i go to vancouver because that's where i have one of the companies set up that we're embezzling This is where I got about 150, 180K, somewhere in between there, locked in one of these accounts. And this CFO is not getting back to me, remember? So I say, I'm going to go see what's happening. So I go over here to Vancouver, which is where I am now, and I send a biker to the office and basically say that I'm in the city, that I want my money and that they have like, you know, a certain amount of time to get it to me, right? CFO has a mental breakdown lawyers up gets one of like Canada's top criminal lawyers or whatever and starts looking at options for themselves I guess and then I get this email that basically tells me from the lawyer it's like a seasoned desist basically right and it's telling me I know what
Starting point is 01:47:14 you've been up to I know you've been taking money out of this count for years if you don't stop we're going to charge you with extortion, gangsterism, money laundering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I knew what it was, though. I knew that the CFO is at the most of the guilt here from the beginning. Because keep in mind, this stuff existed before we came into the company. They were already doing corrupt stuff with it. So I knew that the CFO didn't want this to come to light, right? But I also knew that in that moment, they were terrified.
Starting point is 01:47:45 So they were willing to go all the way, lawyer, police, whatever. So there, while I was in Vancouver, this is like December 2022, just like a year and a half ago, I decide I'm completely out, you know? I decide that is your last straw. That is your last chance. You've just look at everything that's happened in the last three weeks. You lose the marriage is gone. The money is gone. You lose the savings.
Starting point is 01:48:13 That's a sign, right? The fact that the police didn't show up to where I was staying. that I'm lucky for that so I had a choice either pursue this money and see where it goes or take a loss and move on with my life and that's what I decided to do so December 22 I'm in Vancouver I stay here two weeks then I go back to Winnipeg and I'm completely out of everything that I've done like that I don't do a single thing between then and now I have I've done nothing illegitimate like I've done I I did my taxes properly I did you know like I've done everything to a T because in my mind I was given a second chance that a lot of people don't get I recently found you know
Starting point is 01:49:02 I had my come to Jesus moment recently and I feel lucky that I had it not being in jail because there's a lot of guys that find religion or faith in jail I I didn't have to go through that. I also feel lucky that I got out the game without being caught because most people need to get caught to get out. So in my mind, in my mind, I've won. You know what I mean? I've taken losses, but I've won for now.
Starting point is 01:49:28 Where's the wife? Today the wife is in Ecuador. So she did end up going to Ecuador. I told you she had some family out there, some options. We've reconnected over the last two months. We're talking now. and we're like just on a completely platonic and friendly level but it feels good that like we don't we had a lot of hate and hurt towards each other
Starting point is 01:49:49 especially those first couple of months obviously right but um yeah she's in ecuador she's working full time she's trying to get her life situated there unfortunately though when she moved there she's about a year ago now that's when all that shit started going off in Ecuador right with it with the gangs and the stuff in the street and the cartels and everything i would think that'd be a good thing didn't they lock them all up well yes yes yes yes and no yes so it's still ecuador has now turned into the new transportation hub right for a lot of the drugs that are going into spain and europe and like this is a completely different podcast you know a different interview well i was going to say is it ecuador where they made that
Starting point is 01:50:32 massive prison and just went swooped and swooped up everybody that's el salvador oh i'm sorry that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But because of what happened in El Salvador, the president, yeah, the president. All the activity into Ecuador. Well, yeah, it's a political thing.
Starting point is 01:50:53 Look, there's two big cartels running things in Mexico right now. You know of them. I'm not going to say them, but the younger one will say they have concentrated all of their efforts into Ecuador because the older one was already in Colombia and kind of had that whole route locked down into Central America and into the States. So this new group, this new group realizes that they've got some really great ports in Ecuador and that Spain is there for the taking because nowadays cocaine, which is the most profitable
Starting point is 01:51:30 of all the drugs and it always will be, the new markets are Brazil. and England, London, specifically. Those are the two major hubs right now, bigger than the U.S. It used to be the U.S. 10, 20 years ago, but now the biggest chokehold is with England and Brazil. So those guys are also making relationships with people from Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, that younger group, and they're also moving to Spain. So a lot of the older generation are still worried about the states,
Starting point is 01:52:10 still worried about Canada, still worried about Central America, the Caribbean, but this new group, they're focusing on Europe and they're focusing on further down south and South America. So they decided Ecuador's the spot we're going to do this. And in Ecuador at the time,
Starting point is 01:52:28 there was no cartels. There was gangs really, big street gangs that ran a lot of the streets and prison, but they did not have the funding resources, nothing like that in Ecuador. So this new group went in there, decided to help them out. And unfortunately, at the peak of it, my wife, ex-wife, decides to move there because she has family there. So it's gotten a little bit better recently over the last couple of months.
Starting point is 01:52:55 But when she first moved there, like the city was locked down. You couldn't leave your house because they were trying to round up all these guys. and send them to jail right right so i have a question so what do you think about zumbata getting grabbed okay okay so it's really funny that you ask because two days ago in my mind this is what i think's happening the new group that we're talking about right now right i think that they're completely behind that being politically backed so a guess that you've had recently was kind of going into this and there's the old group and the new group and the new group has a better relationship what i'm what i'm told with the new president okay now the old generation which is who
Starting point is 01:53:53 who just got arrested who just got arrested you mean you mean what name did you just say oh uh zimbada it what's his oldest name is anyway with sinola cartel it's the and his son yeah yeah well it's choppo's son but it's yeah who was who was the leader right yeah alleged a leader so it's very interesting that you know there's this new president in town super conservative and really chinese friendly and not a fan of the old guard and then all of a sudden these guys get locked up right away like this could have happened for several years why did this just happen now to me in my mind this is the winds of change this is the new group showing their their power and both groups
Starting point is 01:54:48 politically and in the cartel world showing their power and everything is about to change i believe that the landscape is changing now keep in mind that old group The Sinaloans, they're still going to control everything that they have, right? They're out here in Canada. They're in the U.S., obviously in Mexico, Central America, down to South America. And they even have people in other parts of the world as well. But their focus is more in the Western Hemisphere. Now, these guys, this new group, they're really focused on Europe, man.
Starting point is 01:55:21 They're really focused on getting into Asia. This is all, you know, hearsay, stuff that I hear from friends that are involved in certain things. but it really sounds like it's it's the new wave it's the new cartel world you know what I mean yeah well so what else is going on right now what's happening okay so I'll just tell you about last year because that's and bring you up to where I am today so January I'm in Winnipeg last year I work a job for the first time in nine years I went and worked at a club I was doing okay with money, but nothing like what I had had before. I get completely out of everything, not talking to the X or anything.
Starting point is 01:56:04 I'm staying with a friend when I first get back to the city. I was going to stay in a hotel and he's like, don't waste your money. Come stay with me. I got a free place to stay. Why not? So while I'm getting on my feet, this idea comes to mind of writing a book because there's a ton of other stuff that's happened, you know, throughout my life that we obviously didn't have time to get into.
Starting point is 01:56:24 And I just felt like I had an interesting story. you know what I mean and I always wanted to to tell my story because sometimes you don't get the chance to sometimes you just get locked up and and people forget about you you know so I wanted to write a story so July of last year I start writing my book took a couple months to write it I decided independently just to sell copies within my city and to friends abroad first so I printed and published sorry printed and sold about 600 copies of my book just Word of mouth, I'd even go stand on a street corner with a little ghetto sign and sell the book like that. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:57:02 Like the way they used to sell tapes and CDs out the trunk of a car. So I did it like that, which I love that I got to do that. That experience was cool. Unfortunately, it was November and it's freezing in Winnipeg in November. Shortly after, I went to New York, I had an advertising Times Square on a couple of different of the screens. And then Johnny reached out to me and I went to do my first podcast. which was again the first time i publicly spoke about anything people in my city knew because i'm advertising and i got a billboard in my city and i'm selling the book but like the rest of the
Starting point is 01:57:36 world had no idea who i was they don't know my story i'm not in the news nothing like that so that was the first time i really got exposure was going on that platform and speaking about my story from there just by luck a director from spain from barcelona saw me and basically like my story he's like listen man i i think that what yours is is is it's a love it's a life story it's a human story and it has criminal elements and there's and there's a love a love story in there and you know i like it so we should do something together i can't make you any i can't promise you any money or anything like that we're going to do this thing from the ground up but here look at my resume this guy had worked with shakira he's done music videos for shakira he's produced or co-produced like
Starting point is 01:58:25 20, 30 different movies, including stuff that's been on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, all kinds of stuff. And yeah, he basically lets me know, like, come down here, man, like, we'll make it happen, you know, a dollar in a dream type shit. So going into the new year, which is this year, I'm just focusing on promoting my book, the Instagram. Because last year in July, when I dropped, when I started writing the book, I got Instagram for the first time in my life. I wasn't on social media at all for obvious reasons. And so I'm just promoting the book. and i'm getting ready to go to spain and then in march of this year so a couple months ago i go down there i meet with the director i spend some time out there i meet some interesting folks some bikers
Starting point is 01:59:06 outside outside there he used to be a part of an organization out there long ago when he was like in his 20s now he's just a director and a you know a legitimate guy but he has a checkered history as as well which which i liked about him you know what i mean it makes you more comfortable talking with people that have been through that kind of life, right? So he took really good care of me, put me up in a spot in this place called St. Paul de Mar. You can Google it after we get off here, a beautiful place. Little town on the coast of Barcelona. I stay there for about a month. We filmed some interview segments and some beautiful locations, and we start to structure the documentary. So as of right now, the documentary is being worked on. There's other pieces that need to be done.
Starting point is 01:59:50 So I have, my ex-wife is going to be a part of it. There will be a phone call with her where she talks about our meeting and stuff like that. One of my best friends that was with me through a lot of the stuff that I did. And on these travels with me, he's going to speak on there. My older sister for that family character profile. And then we also got a guy coming in from Interpol that was a psychological and criminal profiler. That's basically going to break down the whole story. And basically say whether I'm full of shit or whether it's real.
Starting point is 02:00:19 and based on his experiences with some of the people that I've worked with that he actually knows yeah just what's what that's not gonna be out for like a year I was hoping to get it done in like five, six months this guy's like you're crazy like that's not the way it works man
Starting point is 02:00:35 like you'll see this maybe next year so for now just working on all that a month and a half ago after I came back from Spain I went to Winnipeg my home city stayed there about a month and a half reconnected with my sister who I hadn't seen in years
Starting point is 02:00:49 and then came out here to Vancouver. This year going forward, my plan is a year from now next summer to move to Paraguay, which has always been the plan. Between now and then, I'm obviously, I'm working on a new book. So my first book is called The Winnipeg Story. You can look that up on Amazon, just type it into Google, a Winnipeg Story. You'll see it come up. The other book that I'm working on is called Year of the Dragon.
Starting point is 02:01:15 If you know anything about the Chinese Zodiac, this year is the Year of the Dragon. I was born in the Year of the Dragon, and this is basically a year where I set up the next five to ten years of my life. So I came to Vancouver because the money is better out here. I have no distractions. I don't really know anybody out here. I don't have family or friends or anything. So I completely honed down and focused on my book, writing the new one, promoting the older
Starting point is 02:01:40 one that dropped earlier this year in January, working on the Instagram, the documentary, and then just saving up some money, getting some i'm doing some other little things like i'm getting a tesel certificate which is like teaching english as a second language just like some minor little things on the side but the end goal a year from now is to move to south america and set up shop there hey i appreciate you guys watching do me a favor if you like the video hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this also we're going to leave germanos links for his book in the description box and we'll leave a link to his Instagram and any of those social medias that he wants. So please click on those
Starting point is 02:02:22 and follow and join and buy the book and do all the stuff you're supposed to do. And leave me a comment, share the video. Please consider joining my Patreon. It really does help Colby and I make videos like this. Also, we have Patreon exclusive content, $10 a month. And I do appreciate it. Thank you. See you.

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