Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - International Smuggler Turns $500 Into $240 Million | Brian O'Dea

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

International Smuggler Turns $500 Into $240 Million | Brian O'Dea

I got on a plane the day I got out, a friend of mine picked me up. I had 500 bucks and a return ticket to Bogota, Columbia. And that's where the magic started. And he put his newspaper down on a bureau there, and it went clunk. And the butt end of a gun was sticking out of it. He couldn't speak English. I couldn't speak Spanish. In about 10 minutes, he made it clear to me not to go,

anywhere to stay where I am, he will be back. You can get 10 grand for what I'm going to give you for your $500. You go do that and then come back and talk to me. He took me back there and it was a suitcase factory. It looked like American tourist or luggage, but it all had false bottoms. As far as we know, no one else was doing that process in those days. We were the only ones. and then we went back down to Columbia and we picked up the load and you know we crashed it on landing we lost an engine we took off with three engines we lost another engine we put it in the ocean 16,000 pounds crashing the ocean in the nighttime and no life care so there were 110 of us in our group the load came over the 50 tons is now up in Alaska hidden in a fjord with our three boats and they're all hidden up there repackaging it, doing a

quality control on it, barcoding everything, getting it ready to sell, right? They know. You know they know, but they don't know that you know they know. So you can orchestrate something for them to look at while you do what you need to do

and that's exactly what we did. I'm in the midst of this and I get a phone call from an old nemesis, an old bad guy that I grew up with but he's no fucking good and the moment I got his call I knew my gut told me hang the phone up

and I did not Hey this is Matt Cox I'm going to be interviewing Brian O'Day He is a former marijuana smuggler and a current filmmaker. And we're going to be, I'm going to be interviewing him and we're going to get into a story.

And I appreciate you guys watching. Check out the video. Let's start at the beginning. Like, where were you born? I was born in St. John's Newfoundland in Canada, which is where I am right now. Newfoundland, many people don't know it. So I will tell you, it's the furthest point east in North America.

It's an island 105 miles. off the coast of Nova Scotia. And it was where a lot of people during 9-11, their planes got diverted to Newfoundland. When 9-11 happened, there were, I don't know how many flights were diverted to Gander, but all of a sudden this small town of six, seven thousand people had more than doubled its population.

And a Broadway play was written, call come from away uh that's still playing in broadway as far as i know so it uh it's a great place it's an interesting place and when i was a kid i couldn't get away fast enough i've uh i've interviewed several uh canadian um on the show so uh it's it's always amazes me at the the prison sentences are so in comparison they're actually probably reasonable prison sentences but in comparison to the US prison sentences they're you know they seem light but when I kind of you know if you step back and look at it and say wait a second like this guy is selling pot he got 15 years and it's like are you like that's insane you know where in Canada it wouldn't

be anything near that you know be a probably wouldn't go to jail right um or I like a lot of times I was locked up in the federal system with a bunch of guys from Canada. And they'd been locked up in Canada before. And they're like, yeah, I got five years. And I'm like, oh, wow. So how much time do you spend in jail? Oh, I didn't spend any time in jail. Like, well, how were you locked? Oh, no, no, they put you on an ankle monitor and you're at home. Like, that's not locked up. That's a probation. They're like, no, no, that's incarceration. I couldn't leave my living room. In 1972, I got 19 months, however, for possession of hash that I never saw until I went to court.

That's another story, but the prison that I went to was in St. John's Newfoundland. It was built in the late 1700s, and there were no toilets or running water in the cells. You had buckets for your toilet, and you had metal, like aluminum bowls for a basin and a pitcher with water, which you would get the water once a day, and once a day you would get in a line with 120 other guys to empty your bucket in what was called a hopper and uh you know being in a cell with four guys each one with their own bucket that is a pretty interesting time of my life i must say horrible uh yeah so you you you grew up i mean you our state system you're uh two parents how old brothers sisters i had two brothers i have two brothers and two sisters

my parents were awesome and my dad owned a brewery and my mom was a nurse and they were great people they were awesome people and thankfully and because of them we have a really incredible family today I'm lucky you know I I was a guy that went off and did something a little different than the rest of my family and they nonetheless always welcome me. me and we're always glad to see me and never asked any questions um how did that how did were you ever in trouble in in high school and junior you know in a middle school anything or is this wasn't in trouble um you know yeah so when i was a kid i was abused by uh a christian brother an irish christian brother. I went to St. Ponds, an Irish Christian brother's school. In Newfoundland, when I was

growing up, all the schools were run by the various religious denominations. They were the public schools. So if you were a Catholic, you went to a Catholic school. If you were Church of England, you went to a Church of England school. United Church, United Church had their own schools. That changed in the past few years, but when I was growing up, it was if you were a Catholic boy, you went to a Catholic boy school. And the first day there, I went from a private school to that school when I was 11 years old. And my first day there, I was abused sexually by the principal of the school. And that went on for about a year. And, you know, that really messed me up.

I was a Catholic, trained a Catholic, you know, who believed in heaven and hell. Fortunately, I don't have that burden anymore. But at that time, I did. And I knew after this began, the very first time it happened, I began a negotiation with this God thing, not to kill me. because I just knew God was thinking about killing me at any moment and sending me to hell forever. And so, you know, when that happens to you at 11 years old, and nothing is done about it, you don't tell anybody, then when you discover things that get you out of your mind, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, you go for it. You know what I mean?

Because the mind is a fucking mind field. It's a terrible place to be. And that's, I, you know, I can only, in retrospect, tell you that I think that's what happened. And, you know, when I, like, I drank at an early age, I never really had a drinking problem. But I was always drinking. There was booze in my house all the time. Dad on the brewery, it was a room that had beer and booze. And I would steal it all the time.

we'd go drink them with the boys and never considered myself an alcoholic, interestingly. And then when I discovered marijuana university, well, that was it for me. I found a business, found something that I loved, and I found a business in the midst of it. So, you know, getting out of my mind was a constant thing. Eventually, I shook the God thing. I shook the guilt thing. I shook the Catholic thing. I shook all of that nonsense.

But I, you know, getting out of my mind kind of stuck. And this was in college, university. University and then after, you know, I smoked my way out of university. And real quick, did anything ever happen with your abuser? Did it ever catch up with him later on? No. Now? No. I did bump into him at my father's funeral, my mother's funeral. And that was interesting. I didn't bump into him. He showed up at the wake. We're Irish. We have wakes, open coffins. People come. You know, my dad, when my mom died, dad was sitting in a chair next to her body. She was in an open coffin in there. And, you know, a couple hundred people show up and pass regards. and my brothers and sisters and I, five of us,

at the door greeting people as they come. And I'll tell you, just very briefly, two men and a woman are coming, shaking their hands, welcoming, and looked into the next person. They shook this guy's hand. I'm looking to the next person. I swear to God, I recognize the hand.

I recognized, I didn't recognize the guy, but I recognized the hand. When he shook his hand, and I'm looking at the next guy, I went, what the fuck? And they looked. And I realized who it was by the fucking hand. Imagine that was, you know, I was 11 years old.

I'm 75. Now, that was 10, 12 years ago. You're 75? I am. You're great. You look great. You look, you know, you sound good. You seem very clear-headed.

I am. 53, and I'm already feel like I'm. losing it you know and focusing on i'm losing focus and stumbling over my words half the time and but i've found a purpose in my life at this late stage and that's ukraine and you know that keeps me young believe me there's a lot to be done there and and i got a lot to do and that's what i'm doing well so you're you're in the university you start selling and you start selling like just small amounts of marijuana, did it very, who introduced you to it? Like, what's the progression there? So I used to see these hippies. We used to go to this coffee shop in a hotel. And I went away to

university. I went to Nova Scotia. I went to Catholic Boys University for crying out loud. Can't get enough of those Catholic men schools, St. Mary's. And we used to go to Murray's restaurant in the Lord Nelson Hotel, and it was amazing to look at these long-haired hippies who were probably on acid, and they had an interesting smell. They smelled of pechule oil. I mean, this was the beginning of the movement, okay? And it began in Nova Scotia. It hadn't hit Newfoundland, where I came from. And one day I met these two guys, and I was never going to smoke marijuana. Are you kidding me?

And one of them said, we got some pot, you want to try it? So I was with two other guys who I lived with in this high-rise apartment building and we were all at St. Mary's together. And I asked them, you want to go try that, smoke that stuff? So we all went up and we were sitting in a closet.

We had a walk-in closet in our apartment we were sitting in the closet smoking and everybody was getting messed up but i i wasn't and so they rolled another one and pass it around and they're laughing and giggling and i'm not nothing's happening excuse me so i said okay nothing's happening i got up and when i stood up it all hit me like a ton of birds and i started laughing of course and then i got hungry and and then i went to the fridge and then i got peanut butter and i knew choked to death on the peanut butter because it seemed to take so long to swallow it, but I had found my state of mind. And so I went from that to 75 tons. It took a while to get there,

but that was the path that I took. Okay, so that's how it started. And I liked it so much. I thought, I got to bring this back to Newfoundland, because I got friends back there. We'd love this shit. People need to know. They need to know. So I grabbed a bunch of it and brought it back to Newfoundland and the cops found out. Well, how did you grab a bunch of it? It's not like you went into a store. I bought it from the guys who... And they were able to get... Absolutely. Okay. There was business going on. It just I didn't know anything about it at that point. This was 1960. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with a TD

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hey, the cops are here looking for you. And I went, what the fuck? So I beat it back to my house and grabbed my stash that I had, and I buried it out in the yard. And it was a huge yard You know, we had like 100 acres And so I went back to the university And as they pulled in there, the cops surrounded me And took me off

And brought me out to the house to search it And they got nothing But they knew I had it They knew I was up to no good And you know, that was the beast for the next few years I was always ducking him going to Ontario, buying shit. And then I started managing these bands.

And one band, a couple of guys came from England to be in the band. And they had been in substantial groups in England. So I managed them. You know, my instrument was the telephone. I was born to play it. And I could manage well. But I couldn't sing or dance or play guitar. And one of the guys in the band said to me,

man, you're paying so much for this hash. I can get it for you really cheap in England if you want to go see my mates over there. Fuck, man. In two days, I was on a plane head in England. And I came back with 10 pounds of hash strapped to me that smelled like or shit. And I just don't know how I managed on that plane

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So I get into Gander Airport where I'd arrived with all this stuff strapped to me. And I'm going through customs. And the guy looks at my passport and he says, oh, are you John's son? My dad owns the brewery. Everybody, small place knows my dad. And I said, oh, were you comfortable? Did you have a good time? come on

and that was it so I got through so that was how my you know we go up to Ontario I don't know if you know but in Newfoundland in Canada it used to be this way it's not so much anymore but it used to be the Newfy joke you know we they told jokes

in Canada about Newfoundlanders how stupid they are the jokes all oriented around our stupidity and it was called a newfy joke they treated us improperly in the mainland of Canada. The way we spoke was different. The words we used were different. It still is. I don't sound like a Newfoundlander, but if you Google, what does a Newfoundlander sound like? You'll find out. And the accents were broad. They were varied from one part of the

province to the other. TV is kind of neutralized all that now. But anyway, where was I gone? You had just gotten back with a bunch of marijuana trapped you. You came in. Oh, yes. And so I got in. I was able to distribute it to get it out there. And I went back again. And this was, so prior to this, as I was saying, I would go to Ontario to get it.

And Ontario, they'd say, here come to Newfys. And they'd stick it to us. They charge us way more. Well, I went to England and was buying it for a quarter of what I would have to pay for it with these guys. And now I could bring it back and I could sell it to them. And so that changed my world. And that's where it began. Very soon after doing that, I had some sent to the house next door to a non-existent person.

Now, I knew the house next door, there was no one living in this place. my landlord owned it I knew this and so I knew something got mailed there I could get my hands on it right so I had two packages sent there filled with hash one package got through two months later still nothing on the other one so I figure it's gone

I got a shower one day and I hear my doorbell and I jump out of the shower and I look down and I see the post guy in his truck pulling away is cheap. I went, damn it, I wonder what that was. So I immediately got dressed, ran down, got in the car, took off, found the post guy, and said, hey, was you just trying to drop something off at the house? He said, no. And he looked worried. And I went, that wasn't the plan. The plan was for you to be at the door. Man was for me to be there. So I said, hmm, okay. So I went to work at the university. I was the head of that. advertising for the newspaper, the TV, the radio at the university. And I was in my office and my next door neighbor called me and said, hey, you got a dozen

cops in your house just turning it upside down. And I went, dang. Because a friend of mine had just arrived from Texas the night before and he had 20 pounds of pot in the suitcase on my living room floor. It was trouble. Believe it or not, the hash, I got convicted of. The pot on my living room floor with Stan, I beat. And I never saw the hash in my life. I bought the hash. It gave people the money.

When they got it, they mailed it to me. So the first time I saw it was in court. How I got convicted was they said they found a piece of paper in my apartment that had a number on it that matched the registration number on the box with the hash in it. Well, they didn't find that piece of paper in my apartment. but that convicted me and I got 19 months they planted the yeah the paper yeah

they've been trying to get me time and again showing up and you know I'd always get word somehow small place you know and yeah so they would never stumble across anything and my gut instinct a few times saved me thinking that hmm somebody just saw something that I don't think it's the right person knows it so i'm moving this and gee sure enough an hour later the cops are there looking where that person that saw where something was that shouldn't have seen it

and my gut was right and you know i followed my gut a lot and that kept me out of prison most of my life stayed out of my head so you got 19 months at that time yeah and you go to prison on that yeah I went to prison I did just over 12 months on 19 I didn't get paroled I did get parole but my wife came my wife left me I got married before I went in it was you know crazy and she left me the day before I was to get out on parole so they decided they weren't going to let me out on parole they didn't feel good about letting me out with you know me going to fix her mind and so I had to do another another six and a half months, which was a bit of a pain in my ass. But then when I got out, buddy, I got on a plane. The day I got out, a friend of mine picked me up, dropped my shit off at the house. I had 500 bucks and a return ticket to Bogota, Columbia. And that's where the magic started, 500 bucks.

How did you get a contact in Bogota? Before I went to prison, I met a guy. in Montreal, who was from Columbia, Benny. He was a sweet guy, and he said, hey, you gotta come to Columbia, man, we can do things together. Here's, I'm gonna give you the name of a restaurant and a guy to talk to, and he always knows where I am. So he wrote down the address of this restaurant,

the name of a restaurant in Bogota. and that's where I went, flew in, couldn't speak a word of Spanish. I could speak French and I figured it sounds like French. I could probably figure it out. You know, I went and asked for a beer when I got there in the hotel. So I went down to the bar and I said, can I get a beer? And the guy didn't speak English. And I went, well, that's interesting.

No English. Beer, beer. And I pointed out of beer and he said, ah, Cervesa. And when he did, I knew that doesn't sound like any language I knew. So I knew I was in trouble. I can't speak. You know, interestingly enough, I went out that night, and I met some people on the street, a guy and a girl. And they took me back to their place, and we had what they called cheese sandwiches,

which were joints with coke, pot, and tobacco, all in a single joint. and we had cheese sandwiches all night when people say never go out in the street in Columbia you get yourself killed. But somehow I was lucky, you know. Anyway, the next day I went to that restaurant. It was 10 miles across town in the north end of town. And I took a taxi and I got there

and it was all gated and what have you in a big yard gated in front and it was all boarded up. Out of business, boarded up. I went, what the fuck? In the back, there was a kind of a smaller shed-looking building and it had smoke coming out of the chimney back there.

So I just started shaking on those gates and shouting. And eventually, this little old guy must have been 120 comes hustling up to the gate and go see, Signor, and I had the card with Benny, the guy, who gave me the card. I said, do you know Benny? And I'm not going to say his last name. And I pointed to the card and the guy behind the gate goes, No, say not, you know, I don't know anything. And I said, okay, if you see Benny don't give, and I wrote my hotel and my room number on the card and gave it to him.

I mean, of course, you know, there's no chance of me ever. connecting. So I go back to the hotel. Later that night, I'm watching Bonanza in Spanish, trying to figure out what they're saying on TV. And a knock comes on the door. Opened up the door, and there's a guy who's about 5'5 standing there, older guy, slick black hair, pencil thin mustache, crumpled up newspaper under his arm like this, holding my card that I gave to the guy and he says you you and i said yeah me that's me and he looked in the room he looked like that and he motioned me to move in so i backed in the room and he came in and he put his newspaper down on the on a on a on a bureau there and it went clunk and the butt end of a gun was sticking out of

it he couldn't speak english i couldn't speak spanish in about 10 minutes he made it clear to me not to go anywhere to stay where I am he will be back and he left the next day next morning he shows up with a guy who lived in Miami a Colombian who was you know in the game and they wanted to know what I wanted and I said well I met Benny in Montreal he gave me the card he said if I ever wanted to get anything going to come down here and he'd introduce me to some people and the guy said, I'm the people that he would introduce you to.

Benny's not available. And he said, so what did you have in mind? I said, well, I wanted to get some Coke and bring it back to Canada and get this thing going. And he said, that's negotio. We can certainly do that. What were you thinking?

How much money do you have? And I told him 500 bucks. I had to pick those guys up off the floor. Okay? they thought that was the craziest thing they ever heard that I would show up in Columbia to try and do a Coke deal with $500 in my pocket they just cracked up and the guy said man you got a lot of fucking balls and I said hey I just got out of prison I got nothing this is what I got right I'm willing to do this and so the guy said okay

here's what I'm going to do for you I'm going to give you 50 grams of Coke $10 a gram. You can bring that back. You can cut it. Cut it in half. And you can get $100 a gram. So you can get $10,000 for what I'm going to give you for your $500. You go do that and then come back and talk to me where I put something together.

So I fucking went, yep, took that stuff. And I went and got a pack of cigarettes and I used a hot pin to take off the cellophane on the packet cigarettes, slid it out so they didn't break the stamp when you take it right and slid the pack out took it out took the cigarettes out put the coke fit 50 grams of coke fit in the back of cigarettes like it was made for it okay put the cellophane back in sealed it up called the cab going to the airport I happened to do a little bit of that coke when I was doing that and I started thinking that's the worst thing ever can happen to a guy so then I thought I can't make this work I got to go get a carton.

So I ran downstairs, called the cigarette. Guys are all over the streets there. And I bought a carton of cigarettes. Brought it upstairs, opened it with a hot pin, took out a pack in the middle, threw this pack in there, sealed it all up like it was never opened, and going to the airport. On the way to the airport, I start freaking out about it in there. So I ripped the carton open and I take the pack out and they put it in my pocket.

with the pack that I'm smoking from. So I got two packs in my jacket pocket, and I'm going through customs, and two guys, you've got to go through immigration to leave the country. And I'm going through immigration. They go this way. And I think, wow, what a country to show me where the plane is.

So I follow, the next thing you know, we're going into a room up on top of it, the designation says Das, police adjudicial, which is like the FBI, right? Right. And they know this one guy's behind me. One guy's in front of me, and I go, jeez. So the guy breaks out a card, and he reads from it in English,

and it's English and Spanish and American flag, Colombian flag. And I've been picked out as being someone who fits a description of a smuggler, so they're going to take my luggage off the plane, and they're going to strip me and search me, and I go fucking nuts. and I pulled the macho I'm a man you're two men and you want me to get naked in front of you

you gotta be fucking kidding me but they insisted and so as I was taken off my clothes I took the cigarettes with the coke in it and I took the cigarettes

I was smoking and put it on top of the cigarettes with the coke in it and this was when you smoked on planes okay you could smoke anywhere I opened the cigarette pack and I took and put a cigarette and I offered each of them a cigarette and they each took one

and I lit everybody's cigarettes and I'm complaining all the time and they're going so sorry sir and I'm holding the fucking coke in my hand with the cigarettes and we're all smoking and I got no clothes on still holding it the moment I get something back that I can put that that has a pocket bam it goes right in there and so that was the first 50 grams that I left Columbia with I went back and did what I said I was going to do and came back. And he said, okay, I'm going to show you what was in that shed out behind a restaurant. And he took me back there, and it was a suitcase factory. It looked like American tourist or luggage.

But it all had false bottoms, and all of the luggage had cocaine in it. And this was how he moved in those days. This was just at the beginning of the whole world. just before any of the gangs and the Escobars and all of those characters. This was just when we were just, you know, barely out of diapers and figuring this thing out. And I, it seemed like fun. It seemed like fun. Okay, the first time you went through, you got searched.

I did. So the second time. Wasn't it burned? No. I figured, fuck it. And then this time when I went back and he showed me the suitcase, I figured they're not getting this. And they're not even going to, it's not going to be an issue. So this was even crazier.

I got to the airport. Same thing happened downstairs. Get all my shit off the plane. And they're, you know, get all my clothes off. My hand, might carry on, which I had. So the Coke was in a carry on. Okay. I had a kilo in each side of it.

Well, that was a heavy. carry on. So I had to open the carry on and I'm throwing stuff out of it, complaining, bitter, and then he's taking it and shake it. They said, okay, you happy? Take all the stuff, put it back in there, get on the plane and leave. I am sitting next to a guy who's being deported from Columbia, and he's got a bottle of a Guardiente with him. That's a national drink of Colombia. It tastes like liquorish, and it gets you very messed up. So we proceeded to drink the whole bottle. I came to in Miami airport in a wheelchair, moving with that suitcase on my lap.

And I look and I see a holster and a gun right there. And I look up and it's a cop and he's wheeling me. And I said, what's going on? He said, I think it's about time you all got up and walked by yourself, sir. And I said, yes, sir. I got out of that wheelchair, buddy. I don't know how I did it with my little suitcase and just beat it out of that airport. I lost my luggage, my other luggage in the plane, carry on.

I never got that back. But that guy, they put me in a wheelchair, got me off the plane, and that guy wheeled me through immigration. I happened to have my passport in my hand when I passed out and my carry-on right under me there. So that's what they saw. I had a suit thing hanging up that the attendant had hung up, but I never got that back. But anyway, so, yeah, that's how it began. I only did the Coke business to get a stake to get in the pot game. You know, I didn't want to be in the Coke business,

but it was an easy business to get a small amount. of a product and turn it into a large amount of money the same amount of money in pot took up a whole lot more room right it's different of course it's much harder to move too you know the ship yeah the pump yeah yeah yeah it's like you can't walk through customers you need equipment you need equipment not just your body right so when how did that that evolved you went did you go back to Columbia? Was this marijuana you were buying in Colombia? Well, I was in a Coke for another while. I, you know, I perfected a method of dissolving cocaine in methanol and then pouring it into fabric into what were called ruanas or ponchos, wool ponchos made in Colombia. So I have a small

amount of methanol. You could dissolve a kilo of cocaine, a very small amount of methanol, and then just pour that into the ponchos the methanol evaporates off at room temperature and all the coke now is embedded in the ponchos and so that's how i would bring it back then when i bring it into i had a lab in l.a where i would get extract the coke from the ponchos and you know we were famous our we made the diamond coke the diamond looked like crystals was an extraordinary coke right if there's any such thing. I know it's poison, by the way. And one day, I'm in the lab in my garage in Chatsworth, California, and one of my chemist guys shows up in the door with High Times Magazine, and he rips it open, and it's the whole thing we're doing written up in High Times. Now, it's not pictures

with me is not but it's the whole process that we've just done so i just fucking freaked immediately broke the lab down and moved down to julian in southern california and set a lab up down there until i got through that particular load so what were you concerned with uh that customs was now or that they were not now going to know how you were moving it the cops were on to us yeah we were the only ones we that were doing that as far as we knew so it wasn't the process it was you guys specifically it was us specifically doing that process as far as we know no one else was doing that process in those days we were the only ones and i didn't know anyone in columbia doing it and i knew people down there and i didn't know anyone in the u.s that was doing it

either and the product we were turning out in the u.s nobody else was doing it it was the diamond it's called diamond cope and um you know let me just say that Those were the days when we would go to the clubs down in the valley and dance our hearts out and have a lot of fun. It went from that for everybody to pushing everybody who kept doing it into a closet and who hid out doing it from that point on. You know, there was no more socializing, social having fun doing coke. It just became the fucking enemy that we could not shake. and I ended up having a heart attack from an overdose after the last big pot deal I did. I figured, you know, when I did Coke, I'd go buy an eighth, stuff like that.

But I figured I'll just get a kilo. Fuck it. I don't want to keep going back looking for more. Eight days later, my heart popped because I couldn't stop. Is that why you moved to weed? at that point? Was that part of it? No, I moved to weed long before that. I moved to weed like Colombia.

Once I met some guys, so I moved from Colombia, I moved up to Jamaica. And I lived in Jamaica with a bunch of guys on the run from Newfoundland, where I'm from, who lost a load. And they didn't get caught. They all took off and they got away. And they were hiding in Jamaica. everyone had different ID, different names in those days. There was no computers, none of that stuff, right? And so it was easy to be a different person. So I went down there and lived

with them for a while. They were moving pot and Jamaican hash up into Toronto, using people who worked for Air Jamaica to smuggle it up for them. And it was, you know, kind of, it was a struggle to survive doing that kind of work. I showed up with the Coke connection, with the ability to get kilos of Coke fronted and changed the game. That's what we started doing. But then I had a problem with those guys. I wasn't getting enough, I felt. So I left, went on my own. And I met a couple of guys from the u.s and you know we started getting ships and planes and doing that kind of game and running pot up out of columbia or attempting to do so okay um how long did that go on was there uh well i got a boat and it was a hundred-foot baltic trader built in eighteen ninety nine in denmark

some gorgeous boat and we sailed it down there for almost a year and we got stiffed a bunch of times by Colombians while we were waiting for them that the pot never showed up at the where we were supposed to meet in the ocean in the Caribbean right and like four times this happened so we said you know what we're not fucking doing that anymore I was out there for a year so we got a plane and we went to a plane graveyard we bought an old troop transporter D.C. four-engine big heavy old plane and we got a pilot he'd never flown a four-engine before but he had two thousand hours in flying a twin and he read the book on the four and he said he could do it but he needed someone to do it to go with them to help him I

who only flew the seat of my pants said I'll go so here we went two of us on just fucking monster. Anyway, you know, that we had a couple of issues with that. We had to come back halfway down. We had a problem. We had to come back and find the runway in the dark in Georgia. I mean, it was incredible. This pilot saved our lives so often.

And then we went back down to Columbia and we picked up the load. And, you know, we crashed it on landing. We lost an engine. We took off with three engines. We lost another engine. We put it in the ocean, 16,000 pounds, crashing the ocean in the nighttime, and no life care. These Indian fishermen saw us, saved our lives.

We dropped the name. Our connection in Rio Hacha was the head of the Wahara Indians, the chief, he called himself. And we used his name that we were working with him. And they hit us under fish and took us in. And that, that was, you know, I kind of moved on after that, went up to the U.S. And started running Coke again up into California. Can I ask a question?

Had you paid for the marijuana that was lost? No. So you still owe them money for the marijuana? No. The deal was we'd show up with the plane, the pilot. and we would split it when we get back. We'll bring it, we had our own airport in Maltry, Georgia. I mean, we had a situation.

It was real. Right. And we owned that airport. No one was allowed at that airport, but us. Our front there was, it was a repair facility for government airplanes. So, you know, they were glad to have us there in that part of Georgia where nothing was happening. They thought we were going to bring boom business to them. But, you know, that wasn't quite what we had in mind.

Anyway, it was we, after that, I left those guys that I was working with after the collapse of that deal. And I went to California. And I started working with guys there who were bringing stuff up from Mexico and in from Belize. And then I met some guys who were bringing stuff from South East. East Asia. And that's where I jumped on. You know, when I first got there, this lawyer who helped me get to California, he said to introduce you to someone might be helpful and he introduced me to this guy. We were on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon in L.A. And the guy said, come on, I want to show you something. And he took me just up the road. We walked into this house,

massive house and you had to walk sideways in that house it was filled with boxes that were filled with pot or money it was the most extraordinary thing I'd ever seen and I thought man this is it

this is where I want to be and you know I I struggled to get out of my own way frequently because of my own self-abuse and my own cocaine abuse. I stopped selling it, but I didn't stop doing it. And then, you know, I'll jump right to the last deal I did.

It was all Southeast Asia. I had gathered, how it happened was, I had gathered 30 tons of dinosaur bone in from the Colorado formation the Morrison formation of the Colorado Plateau where a lot of 115, 120 million-year-old dinosaurs bit the dust and there's dinosaur bone, it's ubiquitous, it's everywhere. So I came up with this idea with National Geographic

to embed a small piece of dinosaur bone in Lexan And every subscriber when they renewed a subscription or bought a subscription would get this pyramid Lexan structure with a piece of dinosaur bone in it. And the numbers I had figured out for that whole thing, and this was in 1985, 84, 85, was like I'd make about $25 million on the deal when it was all done, which was really pretty good. but I needed money to pull it off I had the bone but I needed help to put the whole thing together so I was dealing with these friends of mine who were pot importers from Southeast Asia

who had a lot of money and these guys always had Thai pot they brought in ubiquitous quantities of it I'm in the midst of this and I get a phone call from an old nemesis an old bad guy that I grew up with but he's no fucking good and the moment I got his call

I knew my gut told me hang the phone up and I did not I knew it at that moment to hang it up and I didn't so he presented me with this unbelievable opportunity he had the best offload in the history

of offloads for pot from Southeast Asia and he said he's never seen anything like it and he's just trying to sell me on this thing and he wants me to come and take a look at it because he knows I have the Southeast Asian connections I can fill up a boat in what is called Thailand and it never was Thailand it was always Vietnam but it was called Thai pot and And so I know, no, no, and I'm backing them off, man. He kept bugging me. And I made the mistake of saying, I'm talking to the boys, but I'm working on another deal with them. I'm trying to get out of that world.

So I got, anyway, it just got the best of me, knowing I was going against my gut. And I'll tell you a story about how my gut has informed me in my life after this. Anyway, I had a meeting with the guys, the two brothers, about the dinosaur bone deal and them funding it up at a ranch that belonged to a friend of mine. And it was super impressive place. These guys came up and we were talking and so they were going to fund this deal. And as they were leaving, I recalled that I told the bad guy that I was going to talk to them. just at least mention it to them. So I said, listen, I ran down the driveway and stopped as they were leaving.

And I said to him, okay, look, here's a guy I don't like, okay? But he's been in the business. He's, I know he's, and his brother-in-laws have done big deals in Florida. And he says he has got the best offload situation he's ever seen in his life up in Washington. You want to take a look at it? they said get in the fucking car let's go get a plane and go up there and that's what we did just like that the dinosaur bone went right out the fucking window got in the plane

went up there he picked us up we drove up and here we are in anacortus washington there's a dry dock facility owned by the family of the people whose boats we can get our hands on totally private we can use this and it was he wasn't wrong it was extraordinary a Croatian family a fishing business that's been in business since the Second World War up there known on the coast up and down the coast everybody knows them the family so I show up with a bunch of money and go buy a big boat they had a 58 foot long line boat so I showed

up and bought a hundred foot tender vessel, a vessel that would pick up herring up in Alaska and bring it to factories for processing it to go vacuum it off of herring fishery, herring boats out in the Bering Sea in Alaska. So we fill that thing up with pot buddy and brought it down and killed it. But we had a deal.

nobody was to do coke if you did coke you were out so there were 110 of us in our group on our ultimately right we had three boats big ships they're not boats and we had people all over the world and all of us agreed no coke so i brought my i had a guy who i had known for quite a while who used to build race cars in the race car world in LA and I brought him out to be the chief engineer on our boats we had 160 foot boat a hundred foot boat and a 58 foot boat and these needed real serious engineering people so I brought frank out I trusted frank completely and he was my eyes and ears on the boats he lived with our captain our main captain on Mercer Island in Washington very expensive neighborhood as did the bad guy

who introduced me to all of this okay so no one's supposed to do coke this guy shows up at the house in Mercer Island three in the morning limo hookers coke everything that you just go you you explode inside

when you see this shit and you'd had this conversation with him he knew this was a deal buddy this is a deal breaker twice we didn't do anything about it we had to talk you know you can't do that you know we are and we did all that uh the third time it happened frank called me said brian i'm leaving i'm not doing this anymore i'm not i'm out i said frank state i'm coming so i got in a plane i brought a couple of guys with me and we went up and we met with this guy and we told him you are out you're out we'll pay you the only way you're going to get paid is we do not see you again until this thing is done if we see you again it's over so here's

what you need to do you need to go down to florida with your brother-in-law and just fucking stay there someone will be in touch with you if you come around it's over period that was it and he was gone. So we split, it was 75 tons. We split it into two loads. We got the first load in. It was fucking amazing. You know, it was all fucking, yeah.

You know, trucked it across the country, up and down, had five tractor trailers going everywhere. I mean, it was just like, and money was going to chik-c-chin-ca-ching, did not lose anything. He gets word. from one of the kids working on our boats from the town where we got all of our crew from, he gets word that we pulled off the load. So he shows up looking for him money.

So we're still in the midst of this deal. We still have 50 tons of pot in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, that we had to bring over. We're refitting another boat, 160-footer we bought, the Stormbird. We got that in a port where we're refitting it, building a shelter deck, doing the whole thing. And we don't want him knowing any of this. We don't want him knowing anything. So he showed up looking for money knowing we got it. We get word.

So we had to decide what to do, what we're going to give him. And we know we got to give him something. So I figured let's give him a quarter of a million bucks just to fucking, it's not too much. But it's, you know, substantial, six figures. We had a democracy, and they said we're giving them 50 grand. That's all he's fucking getting. We don't trust him with any more than that. And I said, boys, do not trust him with 50 grand.

And sure enough, gave him 50 grand. He took that. It was in a supermarket paper bag. He went right to the DEA's office and put it on the fucking desk and said, I can tell you where there's a lot more like that. And he told him our story. So they watched us, and I only learned this when I was in court and saw all the photographs. They were filming us, building the boat, building the shelter deck,

filming everybody, and they got all the photographs circled. But they weren't. Anyway, so we didn't know any of this. we had no idea we all had scanners but we couldn't find any federal frequencies we could only get all the local cops and but we couldn't get the DEA the FBI the ATF we couldn't get any feds on there so real quick you feel that the 50,000 he was insulted and pissed he was bitter because it was the only 50 grand you feel like if you gave him the 250 he would have been like okay that's that's a good amount he would have it would have held them for more okay he figured they're

only giving me 50 grand i'm getting fucking yeah here's 50 go away yeah but if you gave him 250 you think he would have said okay well they're gonna this is going to continue yeah okay okay so um he uh he went told the DEA everything we as we couldn't hear any of the feds on the radio the load came over the 50 tons is now up in alaska hidden in a fjord with our three boats and they're all hidden up there repackaging it doing a quality control on it barcoding everything getting it ready to sell right using forgeries and bogus identities matthew b cox one of the most ingenious con men in history built america's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal

authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service, on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greene. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his stranger-than-fiction story.

Available now on Amazon and Audible. We had a friend who was on his way to prison, actually, from San Diego. He was getting 10 or 15 years for something. But he had a spectrum analyzer, and he told us he would come up to Washington before he went away, and he would program all of our scanners with federal frequencies that he could get with this spectrum analyzer. Sure enough, he came up and all of our scanners, all got reprogrammed.

So now we need to bring down two of the captains from our three boats to talk to them about plans for the offload, okay, for how we're going to handle it when they get down. And now we got, as I just said, all of our scanners have been reprogrammed. So we flew the guys down from Alaska, Tony and

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after all you're in your small space era it's time to own it shop now at IKEA.ca Bobby both of whom are dead now imagine that I'm still a lot. We brought those guys down. I picked them up at the airport.

The airport is like 85, 90 miles from Anacortis, which is where our offloads going to be. So we're going to drive up there for a meeting. I got a suburban. And my suburban's got fucking antennas all over it. It's got a bunch of radios in it. It looks like the fucking. Secret service or something, yeah.

So we're booting it out of the airport coming up the road, and my scanner lights up, and they're talking about following me. That is a terrible feeling, okay? So bad. So we look at each other, and I go fucking fasten your seatbelt, boys, bam, and take off.

and I just go and they drove for six fucking hours everywhere car coming this way I got on side roads country roads dirt roads any car was a cop as far as I was concerned coming following

this way they were all cops and I just kept going ended up over in Spokane and so we all we had a safe house and everybody had boxes of quarters, $500 box of quarters. Because those were

the days when the phones, you could phone a pay phone and it would ring. That doesn't happen anymore. But in those days it did. We ended that, by the way. They couldn't believe how much money they were clearing out of the pay phones up in that part of the world. And they wondered

what was going on. That's all they needed to do was track quarters and pay phones in those days. And they could tell where a deal was happening. Anyway, we spoke in so i called our safe house and she said you're the fourth followed the day call back in two hours we're arranging a meeting i call back in two hours and a meeting of the of the organizers of the deal there were like eight of us uh had a meeting set of a meeting at this place where we all arrived and we had to decide what what we were going to do

So we, we just, everybody just fucking stay put. We're going to go get a detective and find out what, what's going on. So we called a guy named Howard Weitzman, who was a great lawyer, our lawyer. It was Michael Jackson's lawyer. He organized all the defense for O.J. Simpson. Howard was the man. So called Howard, told him what was going on, said we need someone to help find out what's on what they know what they don't know so he said I got just a guy used to be a DEA

agent's got a fucking private detective agency now to get him on Steve Swanson so we got Steve on and basically what we learned from Steve was it culminated in this okay you know that they know but they don't know that you know they know all right right there is the key to you being able to pull that off that's what he was telling us okay they know you know they know but they don't know that you know they know so you can orchestrate something for them to look at while you do what you need to do and that's exactly what we did and when we finally orchestrated for them to hit our boats there was fresh coffee and fresh donuts right out of the fucking grease that's what you could smell when you walked on our boats was fresh coffee and donuts and they knew

they were had ah it was a moment i wasn't there for it however i was with the pot down in california so you you guys just allowed them to fall so you set it up so that they could seize boats thinking that they had that they were loaded up with with the pot but they weren't so once we knew that they were onto us they were flying up and down the inside passage looking for our boats they knew our boats they knew what we were in they knew they had the stormbird they had all kinds of photographs of it uh the kathy b the big tender vessel and the st peter the 58 footer they knew all of these boats they were hidden in alaskin so what were we going to do called a friend in La Conner

who had a giant boat that he used to bring small boats on the deck up to Alaska to fish the herring industry then all of those small boats would get loaded on his boat and brought back down to Washington to La Conner so give you 300 grand for loan of your boat 300 grand got the boat fucking took off up there took all the pot

put it on there, came down. Now we can't go down to our offload because they're waiting for us there. They know our offload. And it's the best offload in the world. So what are we going to do? They've got cops looking for us out there. We've got cops waiting for us down there.

So we pulled into Bellingham, which is a university town, on a Saturday morning at 6 o'clock, and between 6 and 11, Saturday morning, offloaded 50 tons of pot into five tractor trailers that went off to California. And while they are all out there looking at this and that. And the moment it got safely tucked away in California, we pulled the boats out into the open, and hey, the radio's lit up. We're on them.

And they don't touch them, wait until they get crossed the inside patches. They cross the Canadian border into U.S. waters. So that's what he did. The moment we crossed, we were coming down and Vancouver Island and now we're down into the San Juan Islands, Washington. Boom. Seaplane, helicopters,

Coast Guard, ATF. I mean, there were 100 of them. And there was donuts for everybody. So they got very upset. But, you know, and I'm sure a lot of guys lost their jobs or whatever over the deal but they gave us a few years to go have some fun

sell all that shit and spend some money and get crazy which you know I did so we pull that deal off and you know not having done coke for almost a couple of years basically maybe once or twice I thought I'd just go get a kilo and you know

just have dip at it. Eight days later, no sleep, hiding out at a friend's guest house at that same ranch where I put the deal together. I had a heart attack from a coke overdose. He found me there. And I ended up in hospital. I was there for a month. And when I got out of that hospital, I became a volunteer there because I had to stay close. I just knew if I meandered anywhere, I was gone and I started going to AA meetings and I would go to four AA meetings at fucking day. That's how bad I wanted this thing, right? And when I wasn't doing that, I was working at the hospital helping people who were struggling. I eventually became the head

of volunteers at that hospital, cottage hospital in Santa Barbara. And I then started doing groups and I did a group on Tuesday night called Real Presence. And it was, my life was amazing man i was having a great time i was just over 40 um and you know i was sober for the first time in fuck a long time and it felt really good i knew there was a hammer waiting to fall somewhere i just knew it there's no way you throw that much egg on the face of those guys and walk from it you know i knew somewhere somehow someday there was going to be a knock on the door sure enough I'm lying in bed one morning thinking about going to the hospital to work I was thinking about a guy who came in the night before a heroin addict

fortunately that's something I never had to deal with but he was a mess I was thinking about him when a knock bam bam bam on the door and I rolled over in bed and I could just see the door there was a glass with kind of Venetian blinds on it that were just tilted enough for me to see a gun in someone's hand and I went I know who that is and it's you know

not the bad guys it's the good guys coming to have a word with me I opened up the door and two guys were standing there they both had guns in their hand and and one guy was holding his D-E-A-I-D

and he said so is your name Brian O'Day and I said, man, I wish it wasn't, but it is. And he said, may we come in? And I said, well, you got the gun. So they came in and sat me down and one guy was a bad guy, one guy was a good guy.

And the bad guy said to me, look, O'Day, we know what you do. You work with drunks and dopes. This ain't about change of rehabilitation. This is about crushing your life, motherfucker. Now, do the right thing. And I said, the right thing? Oh, I'd like to call my lawyer. And they said, we wouldn't call your lawyer because we're going to see him next.

Sure enough, they went and fucking hammered my lawyer. And they said, you're going to need a new lawyer. Anyway, they didn't. Did you get indicted? What? Did the lawyer get indicted also? He was going to get indicted. What he ended up doing with him, his house was not. on the market. He lived on the beach in Malibu. And he, half of the value of the sale was equity.

So they went to him and they said this, it was millions of dollars. They said, we'll take half the equity. You pay 100% of the capital gain and we'll let you go. And that's what they did. Deal. That's the deal. Right. Now, they never could get the goods on them the way they wanted the goods. So they offered me to be able to get out of what I was dealing with if I would give them him and two guys who distributed half of the load. And I didn't. I couldn't. 53 of 55 guys talked. Two guys. I was going to say they're all going to talk. Two didn't. I didn't. And my chief engineer, the guy I brought out there who was going to quit he didn't he said are you talking i said i got nothing to say frank he said

i got nothing to say either i said frank you can talk buddy there's nothing you know that they didn't already hear from someone else he said on a matter of principle i said when i came into this deal that if anything happened i keep my mouth shut and i'm fucking keeping my mouth shut so he did and so did everybody else i got the most oh how much 10 nothing nothing i got listen i thought oh my god 10 years 10 years when i got to prison i was so relieved yeah 20 30 35 50 everywhere you looked guys were doing thrilling time yeah and i got 10 and i got sentenced under all law, which was amazing. They could have sentenced me under new law.

New law, you do 85% of your time. Yeah. Old law, the max they make you do is 66, and you can get out after a third. But they cut out parole, so there was no more getting out after a third. But, however, I got transferred to Canada. And now, keep in mind, I'm one of two guys that did not talk. The DA fucking loved me for keeping my mouth shut. and he sent me to Canada knowing I'd get out.

And sure enough, you know, I did two years inside. Then the next two years I did a halfway house in Newfoundland, which was, you know, worse than being in the joint, really. It has a faux look of freedom, but it ain't. Yeah. And so I did two in, two in the halfway house, and I did six on parole and then four on probation. and that's it yeah i always said that like it

when i went to the halfway house i would have if i didn't need the money like i was coming out with no money if i didn't need to go to a halfway house and work to put some money together i would have preferred to have done the seven months in prison yeah much worse oh i i was in there for two years okay halfway house this people would come for like 30 days 60 days and be gone i would see i saw, I don't know, two or three guys come and go three times while I was in there. You know what I mean? Yeah. Petty

criminals. Going out, coming back. Going out, coming back. And I was there two years without an incident other than I called my parole officer a chicken shit asshole one day. And that was it. But other than that, I didn't have any problems. Yeah, I was

funny, I was locked up for 13 years. And I would see guys get out, get a new charge, come back, do the time, get out, and come back again. Where were you here? Where were you? I was in a Coleman, the federal

correctional complex in Coleman, Florida. It's about an hour north of Tampa. Yeah. Yeah. I was in Terminal Island. Oh, Los Angeles. No good. It was built for 400 and there were 1,300 of us in there.

Yeah, Coleman was built for, it was definitely overcapacity by about 40, 50%. I worked in the staff training center. So Terminal Island was a training facility for the Western District for prison guards for the feds. So I and a former CIA agent named Ron Rewald, if you ever getting your hands on his book called Disavow, it is a fucking extraordinary book. And they've tried to bury that book and bury his story.

His story is extremely interesting. R-E-W-A-L-D, Ron R-W-A-L-D, Ron Rewald. So Ron and I worked in the Staff Training Center. The only reason I worked in there was because that was during Desert Storm. And Desert Storm's surplus goods, primarily what we were aiming for, was this room in there that was filled with five pound tins of mixed nuts that came from Desert Storm. So my job was to make sure that every fucking one of those tins ended up on the yard. They were meant for us, but the guards took them for themselves. Right.

So, and that's what I did. I emptied that room over time into the, so right next to where I work was the wreck shack. And all of the pot guys worked for the rec department. So every day I'd be hustling out there. the jack tins of five-pound tins of nuts and hustling them in there boxes of fruit all kinds of so we uh it was you know i had a good time yeah even i didn't want to be there once a smuggler always a smuggler that's right we were all we all had everybody had something happening there you know that you know that that's how you make them in there everybody's got to hustle yeah well you know it's funny i i remember guys

there was this guy who was locked up for smuggling he would get in line and slow he'd stand in line with everybody else he'd be loaded down but he would back up as everybody else is going forward in the chow hall he's taking one step back one step back and he would do this it'd take him 30 minutes go through the whole line to work his way out of the chow hall and then turn around and walk away he was just and he was brilliant he was brilliant at it um crazy you know just time just a little time and pressure and yeah so uh you got out what are you doing now what's happening now i'm in the midst of a film that i i went to ukraine when the war started last year for a couple of months and i put three thousand miles on the car um i drove all around ukraine

spent a few weeks at the front brought a truckload of medicine and supplies to the front to soldiers out there um most extraordinary thing i've ever done in my life and uh i saw 40 hours of footage which i'm working on right now and trying to pull it together in a film but i realize i'm missing some key ingredients that will help carry the film So I'm going to head back to Ukraine here in a minute and I'll probably be there for another six weeks or so and then come back and hopefully the film will be ready my plan is to launch it at Cannes in the spring

of next year 24. But this isn't your first film though. No, well, it's my first is it my first film? Not really, I suppose. I've done a bunch of television I did a series called Creepy Canada which was sold around the world as creepy

basically a travel ob for X-Files fans and then I did a a show with Kevin O'Leary the Sharp Tank guy I wrote and produced a show called Redemption Inc that starred Kevin O'Leary I was the co-host and a producer on it

and it was like the apprentice for ex-cons. We had 10 ex-cons come together and at the end of the day one of them won Kevin O'Leary as their business partner. And it was an awesome show. I had a great time doing that. Did How to Make Money Selling Drugs,

which is a great doc. If you have not seen that, you've got to see it. Okay. And right now I'm working on the working title of this film is the letter i how is that significant the letter i what there is no i in the russian language and so it's a rebellion against russia okay all right do you have anything else you're anything else you want to talk about about it. You know, I will say that I had a lot of fun doing what I did when I did it.

Right. It's not anything that I did. There's nothing you could do today. You could not do it today. The world has changed dramatically. Well, you could do it. You just get caught immediately. Instantly. And it's the vibration in the whole world is so different. Like we were We were hippies, having fun. No one was looking to hurt anybody. No one had any guns.

Listen, we did $240 million in pot sales, and nobody had a gun. Nobody had a gun. And nobody took anything from anyone that wasn't theirs. So that's kind of an interesting thing to be able to pull off in that world. And it was, you know, we just had a good time. We had a good time doing it. Yeah, I have a friend named Rusini that I was locked up with. And I remember, he was doing big time deals.

And he was saying, he was like, this was 20 some odd, 30 years ago. And he was like, you know, in the upper echelon of drug smuggling, he's like, nobody brings a gun. He said, you're not dealing with people. You don't trust. He's if they don't trust them, then you don't go. You don't not trust them and bring a gun. You just don't know. And so he was explaining that.

And he's like, you know, now he's like every low level guy's got a gun and they don't trust each other. And it's just a horrible situation. I'm going to tell you a story. I tell you I tell you a story about gut instinct. Okay. So a friend of mine said to me one day, prior to getting popped, she said, how is it you never get busted? And I'd been running in and out with Coke from South America for years. and pod and shit

and I said oh that's easy I don't think and she said what I said I do not think about it I'm confronted with something and I make a decision on the spot I know my gut knows whether to go or not go

with it so I said I don't think about it I go with my gut and you know 90% of the neurons in our body are not here they're in our gut it's just up here they get interfered with by the thinker the thinker so i said i don't think i just follow my gut instinct on her counter kitchen counter was the complete works of shakespeare which i just flipped open at this very moment this is what i read you can look it up yourself

pericles act one scene one it goes something like this that it is known is well enough. What grows more known grows worse to smother it. You get it? Yeah. My gut knows. The moment I try and more know it in my head, I smothered than I don't no longer know. You're overthinking it. I'm thinking, not any thinking is overthinking. It is the gut knows. It's funny. I've gotten that. So my crime was a bank fraud. And, you know, and I've been, caught in banks handcuffed brought to the police station been questioned been questioned by banks and always managed for the longest time you know up until i was eventually caught um i'd been caught over and over again and just continually got away with with different things and

uh and people would say you know how like how aren't you aren't you aren't you that you know how do you know how do you and i was like well you know i don't really know i do my research but i said basically it's intuition i always say it's intuition not you know like you're saying your gut instant but my i said you'd be shocked how many times your intuition is telling you something and you just ignore it you know and it's the same thing with bank and bank i've been grabbed by banks by bank staff by bank uh fraud uh uh personnel and that sort of thing and they knew they couldn't put their finger on it but they knew something was wrong and i was like their instinct or their intuition was telling them this is a fraud, something's wrong, but they just couldn't put it together and

they had to let me walk out with the money. But they knew. And there was nothing that said if just in their mind, they could, in their gut, like you're saying, in their gut told them something's wrong here. I can't put my finger on it, but something's wrong. But because I had all the forms, I had all the documents, they were like, they let me walk out with the check or they let me walk out with the cash. So yeah, so I have absolutely a big believer in that because let's face it, what else? There's, you know, there's too many, you know, it's the coincidences are so overwhelming sometimes. It's like there's a connection. Something's connected. There are no coincidences. There's synchronicities that point to something. It all points to

something else. You know, Jimmy Stewart, the actor Jimmy Stewart. Yes. years ago yeah jimmy stewart kept a book his entire life and in that book he wrote every coincidence that ever happened to him i would love to see that book i would love to see that book i'm going to tell you one more book story and that's this when i got sober in 1988 my wife had had enough i had two kids. They were and my wife and kids were down in in the valley in San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. I was up in Santa Barbara in the hospital, 65, 70 miles away. She'd had enough of me. I tried to get sober four years earlier, six months after that. I was back in the bag and I was kind of stayed in the bag for the ensuing four years. She sent the kids.

up to see me and they came in brought me an envelope and in the envelope there was a key and an address and she had rented a place for me told me she didn't want me to come home this was my new place there it was good luck go get it and oh we used to go back and forth on the phone all the time you know and you don't understand and hang up and so one day I was visiting his psychiatrist friend of mine George Buffano and I was telling him, George, she doesn't fucking get it. She's just, she's

so wrong. And he said, Brian, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm right all the time, but I try and keep it a secret and I suggest you do the same too. And by the way,

so is she. She's always right. You know how when you're disagreeing with her? And you're saying, no, no, no, that you don't understand. What you're saying to her is this. Drop your life experience. Assume my life experience immediately and see this my way. What's wrong with you? He said, hold your rightness gently. Always be prepared to change with new information. And it's just nonsense. You don't need to be right for anyone else. Yeah. I left his office. I stopped at a book.

store and I bought a book called 10,000 Proverbs and quotations and went back to the house, got on the phone with her, of course, we're at it again, and we hang up on each other. And I flipped the book open. And this is what I read the moment I flipped that book open. This is the grave of Mike O'Day, who died maintaining his right of way. His right was clear, his will was strong, but he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong. Buddy, it's like, bam, Lightning hit the page. I could not believe that I read that at that moment. But I was confronted with myself in a way that actually made a difference to me.

And it's made a difference to me ever since that day. That was bibliomancy right there, buddy. The book spoke to me. The book spoke to me. So there are two book stories. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I just can't imagine the, uh,

Yeah. Like, what are the chances? There's just, there's just no chance. You know, there's no chance that you flip it open. It's actually got your name and that the actual proverb or, you know, is a direct reflection of what's happening in your life at that moment. Yeah, exactly. There's something, something connected. It's the energy of life somehow got in touch with me. Well, I don't want to take any more of your time. I appreciate it. I'd also like to say that, you know, one of the problems I have, like doing these podcasts is a lot of times you get somebody and they don't really know, one, they don't really know their story.

And two, they certainly, a lot of times they just don't really know how to tell the story. But, you know, you did great. I'm definitely glad Wade told me to contact you. He was like, you got to contact this guy. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Do you have anything?

Do you want me to put the links to the movies? Anything specific I can put in the description box? Did I send you a clip from the film I'm making in Ukraine? No. Okay. So I'm going to send you that clip. It's not the film. It is elements from the film.

Okay. So, and let me just say this about that, as John Kennedy would have said. what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine is eliminate the Ukrainian the Ukrainian culture, period. That is what they're doing. So the struggle is about culture surviving. The struggle is about the Ukrainian culture standing up and saying, here we are, we're not going anywhere.

So while I've got 40 hours of horrendous footage, as you will see some of it, I'm going to make the center of the film, the Ukrainian culture, which is yet to be properly incorporated. You will see some of it in there. These people will be part of this central focus of that. And I'm working on what that's going to look like right now, putting together another 100 grand to go finish it over there and finish editing it here. As soon as I get that money raised in the next kind of 30 days, I'll go back to you. crane for another six weeks or so um how long is this clip this tip of six minutes do you want me to

put it on the back like right now we're ending the podcast i can put it i can have um totally i can have it in there okay put it on there i'll send you a link is this on is this on youtube no it's not it's uh i'll send you a link where you can go grab it perfect it's on my google photos got it i'll have Yeah, I'll have Colby Wold embed it on the back of the video. And I'll send you a link to another video that you can look at just for fun. Masterminds, a smuggler Supreme. Or you can Google Masterminds, a Smuggler Supreme. It's on YouTube.

It's 22 minutes of the last deal I did. Listen. So you were on the TV show, Masterminds. I not only was on that show, that show was my idea. And the producers who did that show did my story first, although I don't think it's the first story that shows up in the series. But those guys, they were my friends. And I said, listen, you guys, I said to Tim, the producer, Tim O'Brien, I said, you should be doing a show about guys who pulled off deals that didn't get caught. and why well most of those guys got caught ultimately they did but they had a lot of play

without getting got as did i so let me tell you i'll tell you a story okay i was on the run for three years at one point i was number one on the secret services most wanted list i was still conducting running scams and i was actually with a girl that was you know with me they called us like the Bonnie and Clyde of a bank fraud. So, you know, there's all these TV. There's TV shows. There's articles and stuff. I remember I used to love, and this was in, this would have been in 2004, maybe,

yeah, 2004 or 2005. We were in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I used to watch that show all the time. And I remember watching one of those episodes. And at one point, I remember turning to her and saying, listen, they're going to make a show about me. I'm going to be on one of these shows. of these episodes one day and she looked at me and she said you realize these guys all got caught yeah yeah but i'm not going to get caught and you know it was just that arrogance that but it's so

funny because you know a lot of times i'll i'll mention that show to people and they're like yeah i don't remember or sometimes they people remember that was a great show oh it was a great show it was a great premise uh and you know they never gave me any credit they just took that idea from me the next thing you know we talked about it one day and the next thing you know i got a call from tim and cameron saying hey we're going to do that show and we wondered if you i said oh thanks for fucking cutting me in yeah but yeah i did it of course i couldn't help myself listen i i can't you know i'm constantly having stuff you know i know you don't uh know anything about about you know really my background or anything but uh i wrote a bunch of true crime stories while i was locked up i've got like

seven or eight books I put out in true crimes or like over basically about two dozen synopsies of true crime stories I'm working with several producers right now in a couple documentaries but yeah I can't tell you how many like Hollywood's the worst I'd rather deal with criminals they're the worst buddy yeah I I I was working in the film business with a friend of mine and you know done a bunch of TV shows he he's very successful and And one day he walked in and I had everything packed up on top of my desk in a box. And he said, what are you doing? I said, buddy, I can't do this anymore.

I cannot hear one more fucking no for a good idea that we have from someone who knows a whole lot less than us. So I'm just going to go find something else to do. And that was it. I got out of the business. The only reason I'm doing this film right now is because when the war started, something struck me. And I have a friend who filmed on the front line. He documented the war crimes in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Rwanda for the International Criminal Court. So he's seen bodies strewn on streets with machetes chopping them up in Rwanda.

That was unbelievable. So I called Frank, and in 30 years, he's been in every front in the world. And I just wanted, the war got a grip on me. And I wanted to have a chat with someone who understood war. And fucking 15 minutes, we decided that we probably should go. What the fuck am I going to a war front for? And I called a friend of mine who wants a television network, and he gave me 30 grand right away. He said, you're 30 grand.

So then I called a film development corporation in Newfoundland, and they gave me 40. So all of a sudden, I had 70 grand to go to Ukraine, which I did. And I spent six weeks over there, put 3,000 miles on the car, ducking bullets and bombs. And it was the best thing I've ever done in my life. And I cannot wait to go back. Crazy, huh? Mm-hmm. well i hope i hope the documentary i hope it works out

we'll definitely put the clip i appreciate it i'll send it to you in five minutes all right let me sign off real quick hold on hey you guys i appreciate you watching do me favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this leave me a comment and watch the clip uh colby is going to embed it right now at the end of the video so check it out Tumann dolinae, and a Cossack, a woman, A Tumman, Dolin'o, a Cossack, d'Ivian,

Ozark, a girl. Ozark, Ozark, Ozark, ozac, Chilohy Thank you. Thank you.

I'm not scared. I'm not scared. Oh, I'm glad I'm from here. I'm from here. Oh, I'm bludely. We've got to do dobochka, I've got to dobochka, Every bludy's to dobochko

Ono'o'o'o'o'o'o'o'ek'a. Ukrainian has their own front in this war. It's a war there winning together. Here we had the opportunity to help volunteers load a truck with supplies for the front. Group leader Serhi has done this ride behind the front lines a dozen times. And this trip with us will be his 13th. I arrived in the UK as a refugee. I started my life from scratch there.

So when the Ukrainian war started, when I started seeing the images of the people leaving their houses, and I start seeing images that reminded me of what I went through. And while many people who went through war went through, I decided immediately that this is where I want to be. On March 16th in 2022, Serhi was one of 1,300 Ukrainians hiding from the constant Russian shelling in the drama theater in Marupol. Serhi went in with his wife, his daughter, and his mother-in-law. Sirhi came out, wounded, and alone. People arrive every day, they are looking for help.

And every day we just try to cover over 500 personal and group requests for food, for medicine and for hygiene products. So if there is any possibility to help us with this, it would be really great and it will really help. My son, this time, he was all the same, he said, he was gurgned, it, and then I came to the house, he's just, I'm going to, I'm going to, and I'm going to,

oh, it's a, it's just a war, but still, but still, still, still. Despite the intense despite the despite the intense and

inhumane bombing of these Ukrainian homes Ukrainian homes, the blown out windows and the walls, these eggs survive intact. They remind me so much of these resilient Ukrainians who, despite an enemy's relentless attempt at destruction and devastation of their culture, the Ukrainians persist, whole and united. Oh, yeah, Oh, yeah, Oh, Lysu, Lysu, Lysu, Chomne zealoney, Oh, yesu, lice, lice,

Chomnezzolone. Oh, yeah, velour, oh, yeah, veldo, what I'm nzellon, oh, I've, Bejee, me, in the green Bouti, my aloeia,

in the in the Oh, you'll be Ptochees. Thank you.