Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Kingpin Escapes With Help From a Corrupt Cop & Vanishes

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Brian Suder, a former Baltimore drug lord breaks down how he built his empire by mixing street fights, mafia mentors, and even the Ten Commandments as his personal code—until breaking one rule changed everything. From fake IDs to mafia alliances and corrupt cops, this insane story shows how one misstep could cost your freedom…or your life.⁣ ⁣ Brian's links⁣ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC61gfBVEJa_RxY_bTT-VjrA?view_as=subscriber⁣ https://www.instagram.com/briandavidsuder/⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Me as a drug lord of Baltimore, any misstep could cost my life. So I implemented codes that had to do with the Ten Commandments. When you start thinking you're untouchable is when you get hit. So eventually, I break one of my codes. I was rebellious. It means you have a lot of energy. Yeah. I was also kind of like somebody that liked to do things my own way.

You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I think as a kid, I was always a critical thinker. So I always kind of looked at things from a different lens. I think I learned differently than most kids. Most kids are taught to memorize. I was more of a kind of a strategic thinker. I was the type of kid that always wanted to work. Why am I here at school learning?

I want to be out there shoving snow or selling raffle tickets or canvassing, anything like that. That's what made me different. I like to go out. I had a lot of energy. Problematic in terms of as we grew, I liked my humble upbringing. In fact, I liked that a lot more than when my parents started gaining money. Because when that happened, there was less attention upon me. It was more neglected.

and I kind of took a liking to African American studies. You know, I really liked, you know, I just kind of drawn to the black communities next to my white community I lived in. And I felt a lot of the private school kids that I went to school with were kind of boring. And I would just go into other neighborhoods that were more dangerous and bring them back to my house. Sometimes we get in trouble. I guess that's just short of it. How long did that go on? I mean, we're all throughout my middle school, all throughout high school.

Ultimately, my parents were trying to do everything they can to get me to go to Ivy League, Ivy League college. I was not liking school. And I actually went on strike at this all boys private school. And I said, I'm going to get straight Fs until we go back to the negotiating table to go to a co-ed public school. And it worked. We ended up going to the negotiation table. They tried to keep me in that school as loyal high school. And again, on weekends, I'm starting to get in trouble.

I'll tell you about that later, fights. But ultimately, we agreed upon a co-ed Catholic school that was half white, half black. I liked going to, you know, multicultural type schools. That's why I wanted to go to private public school my entire time. And we ended up going to great school with, you know, great legends like Olympian Needin' all to Tim Conley, who, you know, manages a lot of the NBA teams to Carmelo Anthony went to our school as well. Were you, I mean, were drugs involved in, like, in this getting in trouble? No.

I actually was pretty much anti-drugs. What was good about public or the private school sector is they really taught you. And you had a good look of really what drugs brought you, especially during the 80s and early 90s. You saw how drugs devastated the city of Baltimore. So believe or not, it was actually anti-drugs. throughout high school. Okay. So you, I mean, what happens? Do you end up, you end up graduating high school and going to college or you get in trouble? Well, so I mean, one thing that I was good at was avoiding trouble and my mom ultimately later became a judge. So trouble with my family, yes. I never really got in

trouble with the law, but I was definitely involved in, I guess the best way to say it is throughout high school, most people in high school are in the sports. Me being the critical thinker, I'll be watching somebody playing football and would look at that and say, it's not really good for you. Why would I partake in that, hitting my head against another man's head with a helmet? Not going to do that. But I was more into martial arts. So as I got into martial arts, I started winning tournaments and my family started making more money. But as they became more making more money, they became, they neglected me more. We moved eventually into like this big mansion and they would hire handlers, I would call them, to watch me, even move them into the home. And literally was completely

not raised by my family, by other people. So, and some of them were very abusive and I would get into that much later conversation. But just under kind of tormented, my mother, even though she was a judge, she was also narcissistic, sociopathic, probably a psychopathic, probably a psychopath. So didn't have any loving attributes. My dad was very distant. And then ultimately, I just started winning all these tournaments, but then saying, hey, how effective are my point sparring in a real physical fight? So as I got bigger in the high school, I started really starting street fights. And we actually just led into what we call organized three fights, bare knuckle fights in high school. Most people my age really weren't into fighting, but those groups of

kids that were into it, mostly older, a little bit bigger. So I just really got it big into fighting, brawling. And the city was pretty much prone to fighting and violence anyway. So it's just kind of part of the culture of Baltimore at that point. Sounds like the first 20 minutes of fight club, right? It's similar. But it's got a brawling culture. Baltimore does. Where was fight club? Yeah, yeah, because it seems very, very dark, wherever the city that was. Delaware. Delaware? Well, it's next door. Okay. There you go.

All right. I don't know what I'm just going to say. Did you ever read Fight Club? Anyway, okay, so how, I mean, you're getting into fights. You're getting into, well, semi getting in trouble. Your parents aren't happy with you. Do you graduate high school? I did.

I graduate from Towsy Catholic. My senior year of school, my sister ended up getting a rare type of cancer called neuroblastoma. That kind of further aggregated. aggravated me as a teenager because you didn't know when she was going to die. They gave her a month to live. And my parents, thank God, they had enough money to try different experimental treatments, holistic treatments as well. And we live right there by Johns Hopkins. So she was a lot of times posted up in John Hopkins in Baltimore. I elected to go to a local college so I could be a

part-time caretaker. She was on so many different therapeutic different drugs and pills that she had to have somebody with her at all times to feed her those pills. And it was every, every 30 minutes, more and more pills. How long? I mean, did she survive or ultimately she? Just kind of parlays into what, what led to where I got into. So after first year of college, went to a college right next to where my family lived. And so I live home. And with the college, I had to go to school part time because I was a part taker or caretaker. So I would go to school there. We thought maybe the first year she would die, second year, probably third or fourth year she passed. And it kind of started this whole cycle of she died. My dad left the house.

My mom had a psychic, like a psychotic episode. She already had some mental illness. She's super intelligent just so, you know, super, you know, capable. You know, she self-made millionaires as a female. You know, so you can't take that away from her. And I had already aged 19. It's backtrack a little bit. I was a very social kid. Being ADHD, like to go out a lot. It was a way for me to kind of blow off smoke during my sister's death and meet kids both. And being a local, I had my friends that lived in the community of Baltimore and then I had my college friends. So I was going out every night of the week with my different social groups. By age 19, I wanted to get a fake ID. And there was a group that came into Baltimore.

Apparently, there was a Gambino faction that was in Baltimore for many years. As the 90s came about the 1990s, the only last family that was really in there was the Magliano family. We could go into this history of Mafia, if you want to at one point. But ultimately, they started dying off. A lot of the members of the Gambino faction of Baltimore were dying off. And as they were doing that, a younger group came in from the declares. Calvicante family from North Jersey and Staten Island they brought some younger guys to bring in, you know, where there was a void.

There was absolute some opportunity in Baltimore as this faction was dying off. So they got drug sales, loan sharking, mostly gambling, you know, like bookmaking. Yeah, I always get that wrong. But there was a big heavy one. And these guys infiltrated, not just Baltimore, but all the local universities, including going as far as Georgetown and D.C., and University of Maryland. So I met them when I was 19, and I noticed that they were really muscular.

What year is this, by the way? I was 19. So we're talking like mid-1990s. Yeah, okay. So there's no internet gambling. No. This is these guys have the market. This is one used to actually call Costa Rica.

Yeah, yeah. You know those days? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know because I mean. If I had pagers, I had a buddy who would page this guy and they would send different codes. Yeah. So, like, for me, I saw them.

was still fighting on the streets of Baltimore and was winning. I was getting stronger. I was in the gym two hours a day. And I go, what are you guys so big? And they go and they took me in the back room and they showed me what was called the steroid Bible. And I took that book. They said, listen, you got to pick up your fake ID in two weeks. You know, we just took your picture. Memorize this book. Come back to me. Come back to me. We'll talk. So I memorized the book. Memorize what Echopolis can do to you, what Dekyllis can do with you, windstrel, you name it. And I started taking it myself. I got three gym memberships and I just started, you know, selling steroids. And it was extra money and I was really doing it for fitness. I started gaining weight and

getting muscle, buying growth hormone from them. And this is during the same period of time that your sister is sick. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, that was another way for me to blow off speed. It was steam. I love to train two hours a day at the gym. And I was getting bigger and bigger. People are noticing it. And people are like, whoa, how did you get so big? And every Friday, I just come back and come back with a stack of cash. And really is not a lot of money to be made in steroids. If you know the drug game. For a 19 year old.

For a 19 year old, it's okay. It's good extra cash. It helps me, you know, pay for my bar tab, you know, going out the dinners, etc. And also helped me build a relationship with these two factions of the mafia. And it allowed me also to really watch their enterprise because one of them, his name is Fred Caruso. He would have like a master class of criminality in his living. living room and I would sit back and just watch him and watch for, you know, better part of

two, three years to see how he operated. And, you know, it was, it was very intriguing to me. But I was very much happy. I was eating a clean diet, maybe going out the bars during a few drinks and taking those PEDs, you know, the better my strength and size. Okay. And so you're saying, how does this kind of work in with your sister? So when my, so by the time I'm 21, my sister dies. Okay. Like I said, my dad leaves. My mom has a psychotic episode.

She ends up inviting. She's from Tampa. Okay? She grew up, born and raised in St. Petersburg. She went to high school with a member of the Trappaconte family. Okay. And she brought up with Joseph Trappacotti. Okay.

So, like one of the sons, his name is Keith Alder Nettie. So she brought him and his team into the house with their bodyguards. and bodyguards were approaching me asking why are the doors unlocked? I go, this whole community knows who I am. Anybody knows not to walk into this house just because of my reputation. And I was very bold with them. And my mom goes, well, this is Keith. He was the man that I would have married if your father and I didn't get married.

So, okay, can I, real quick, I have a little questions. Please. You said like five things. One, was your parents already? have a rocky relationship or was it just because very seldomly does a marriage survive the death of a of a child?

You know what I'm saying? It's just too stressful and you can't help but look at your spouse and think they're just a constant reminder of, you know what I'm saying? Of the child that just died. You're 100% correct. So I can see how that would have ended, but you're saying they were already kind of on the rocks. My mom's very difficult to live with

and deal with. a narcissist, she's constantly out, what can you do for me? She's hard to be around. I got enough information from one of the handlers that was living at the house. Remember, they constantly hired people in their mansion that my dad was already planning on divorcing my mom. Once I kind of left, my sister died. It was already in the works in my minds, my dad's heads. So the other thing is, what kind of a judge, was she a judge at this time? Your mom. So what kind of judge was she? She was an unethical one. Yeah. I, I'm saying was she was she a criminal civil or or was it traffic court?

No, so she wasn't like a criminal like you would think of like she just no criminal I mean I don't let me explain. So let me explain how she was oh what she was. So she was a high profile attorney constantly in the news. She even did a beta test TV show with Oprah. Oprah was originally from Baltimore. I lived there for a period of time. She always became the criminal or she became the expert her cases. I'll go into the judgeship in a second. had to do with the archdiocese, sexual allegation, medical malpractice, medical or sexual allegations against doctors.

But all her best friends were judges, and they were pushing her to be a judge. And she was a star and local public defender before that. She opened up her own practice. Before she knows, she's a self-made millionaire. My dad was very good at running the operations. My mom was the face and the litigation. She didn't want to be a judge. Her best friends were all judges.

I was raised by these judges. I know them in and out. To this day, I still communicate with a lot of them. But she said, no, but they offered him what was called a master of the court. So she had bought a building, my dad and my mom, across the street from the courthouses in Baltimore. So I was, as a child, always working in that law firm. As a 12-year-old, I'll be pulled out of my bed. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be.

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she built two conference rooms that were served as chambers for her. And she was across the street from the courthouses. She became what's called a master of the court, allowed her to be a judge for uncontested divorce cases. So she literally just had two people come in, she hit the gable, get some money,

call it, and that was, it. So it was a form of judge that allowed her to continue her practice because her civil practice was generating millions. She wasn't about to let that go. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. I mean, that, that's, that, that's all I had. Going back to this. But I'm so, but I'm so, but, but, but she invites this guy in. Yes. Clearly tied in with organized crime. Um, that, do you know, do you see what I'm saying? Like, that to me is problematic. Like, like, like, you're a judge. You, you know, they're typically they're they're like they don't want to be associated they want to be in the same room with any type of criminal element you would think that in many ways that's true but her her close

fan like who she is individually like her best friends are some of the top criminal defense attorneys in the country right um but let me tell you kind of the the change the turning point in my life sister died dad left he took off he already bought properties in the eastern shore in Maryland already planned it out, opened up a cigar, sort of completely had his exit strategy already in place, not caring one bit about me. So I'm already tormented by those points. Travacante family's there. Mom's there. At the same time, the Decal Vacante family and the Gambino, they worked together, they were calling me up left and right, asking me to help unload a new new drug called E. X, okay? I was anti-drugs. I'm now faced.

my mom I got the Traficonte family in front of me my mom looks at me she was just so you know we're kicking you out of the house you got to leave and I go remember she's a she's a narcissistic sociopath okay she's also going through a complete psychotic meltdown and called the only person she knew to make her feel better Keith Alder Nettie I had nowhere to go I had 200 hours in my name I got these two calling me that help unload the drug drug down anti against and with 200 dollars on my name and nowhere to go and still had school the finish. I go, mom, you know I've been going part-time as a caretaker for my sister. She's like, that's your fault. If you want to graduate, it's on you. So I was stuck in the tight spot. And my mom gave me at least the ability to

move in the basement of one of her friends' homes. And then within two weeks of me trying to figure this out, my phone's blowing up by this name is Fred Caruso, the DeCalvicante family, and Greg Crawford, who's half Irish, half Italian. That's why he's got the Irish last name, Crawford. I said no for two weeks. Ultimately, I decided to sit down with them at a diner, mostly like a restaurant, and take a couple hundred pills. I went to meet with them.

They gave me 2000, my first sit down. I was like, what am I supposed to do with this? I sell, I sell PDs, like, you know, steroids. I don't sell drugs. I'm anti-drugs. what do you want me to do with this? They're yours. Well, I call the one friend that I know.

They're fronting them to you. Yes. Everything was always fronted to me. For what? For how much of hell? Oh, God. We ended up having the lowest price in the entire city of Baltimore. It was like eight, nine bucks.

Okay. They're easily selling for 10, 11, 12 bucks per thousand in Baltimore at that point. Baltimore at that point, is small to more. It's very much removed from modern day society, especially with no internet. They stay in their own realm. It's just the possibility of having a constant. contact in New York is a big deal there. I made one phone call to a friend of mine. I met many years before in high or in middle school who's from from Chile. His name is Cisco. He got rid of it within

two hours. I returned the money. Within another week, I'm getting rid of up up to $5,000 a week. Before I know it, I'm up to $10,000. And before I know it, the number one drug lord, his name is Tom Dixon at the point. They based the, the character Tommy Egan, um, and power based on Tom Dixon, who was a white drug lord in all black city of Baltimore is their number one top kingpin. He put a hit out on me and happened to have met with the DeKalbacante family and the Gambino contact Fred and Greg

and they got wind that there was a hit out for me. For me, I'm lost. I'm like, I'm just trying to get by, pay my college with this money, and I just got into this. I didn't even want to be in it. Still living in the basement of your mom's friends? temporarily. Okay. But I'm banking money.

Right. Getting prepared to move. Okay. So they do an emergency meeting with Tom Dixon. There was really two drug lords of Baltimore. That was Binnie Magliano and Tom Dixon. Vinnie Magliano was a local, was one of the last remaining Gambino from Baltimore. Uh,

for people that was representing the Gambino family from Baltimore. Boy, these names are something else. I was raised in Tampa. There's a lot of Smiths and Browns and John. So Vinny is very well to do on to murder today. So they did an emergency meeting with me and Tom Dixon. And I'm pretty bold. You know, I'm already a street fighter.

I pretty much takes a lot to frazzle me. So as soon as I meet with Tom, I just was like sitting there like, like that didn't even phase me. And Fred and Greg just came up with a solution and say, hey, listen. Tom's been untouched as a drug lord in Baltimore for a better part of 15 years. Okay? You just got into it. We used to propose, you're our only contact that Tom is. We propose we put you under Tom.

And I'm a very practical, high IQ, you know, critical thinker. I'm like, that makes perfect sense. You know, I heard you are out the, you know, the kill me, Tom likes to meet you. Okay. I can learn a lot from you. And then that started, you know, a process. that we could get into and go down that rabbit hole. Okay.

So what happened then? You guys come up with a solution where he gets a piece of everything that you're selling. Yeah. And he kept me at my same price. Right. And he just got a piece of it. Most of the time they're now at this point. Those two guys only wanted to work with me and Tommy and they wouldn't communicate with

anybody else in the city of Baltimore. Where are you getting rid of these? And do you have people underneath you or you're just, if you're not one guy going from club to club? No. So I would refuse to sell. clubs. I would always steal during the daytime. I would only, at the beginning, I was selling maybe hundreds. Francisco, believe or not, was my main guy for the longest period of time. As you grow in

that realm, you start finding the right people, certain mentors find you, start guiding you, certain members of the local Gambino family. One of them was Eric DeCastro. One of my best mentors really showed me the ins and outs of the industry. And he really kind of made me into like a perfect selling machine. He went overboard in terms of the rules I would have to abide by. I was kind of a square in certain ways. And I was actually kind of like the thought of actually having rules and codes implemented to better, you know, my game and craft. I ultimately looked at it from a couple different levels of perspective. A, I knew where I was right before I got this opportunity. So I was fully grateful for what I was given, okay? Even though I didn't want the position, that was that.

I also had an issue in terms of my mom being a judge, being a lawyer, and having issues with integrity. And I saw as an opportunity to add integrity into this level of criminality. So I implemented codes that had to do with the Ten Commandments. You know, thou shall not lie. Thou shall not steal. I'm not playing games here. Thou shall not kill. You know, I always thought killing was bad for business.

It really wasn't my thing. But what I also did is I held on to the thought. that any misstep now going forward was could cost me my life. If not that, it could cost me all my money. If not that, it's going to cost me my freedom. And I held on to that the entire way through. So, and this is, and you're saying this is in the early, early 90s. Now we're getting into like 97, 98.

Okay, because I was going to say, initially. So remember, I spent two years just selling steroids. Right. So, but initially when, you know, when X came out, it was, it wasn't even illegal for several years. You're 100% correct. So at this, but by this point, it is definitely illegal. No, let me explain. The beginning of it, before you had the internet, you had LexisNexis and you get a disc and they'll give you what the updated of Lexus Nexus is and you get an updated every six months.

That's ridiculous. So I would dig into Lexis Nexus on my parents' law firm. and I look up the case law for X. And there were no, there was no case law at that point. That also further justified it. Also, we have to remember, if you're old enough to remember,

we went through a phase of X where all the clubs were turning in the clubs, they were throwing bars in the clubs, they were playing dance music. It was a scene. It was a movement, a music movement. And even then, even when it became illegal,

it was, it wasn't like, it wasn't like they were, it wasn't like, you know, Grock, or, you know what I'm saying?

Which opens up the next thing on me list. Okay. You're right there with it. No, you're, you're in sync. I'm not saying it's not illegal,

but I'm saying they're not, there's not task force. So what I would call is one of the good things, one of the good things about my family having a law firm is they had a building across from the courthouses. So they had a parking lot. So all the cops would ask the park there while they're going to court.

So I got to know all the cops. And I'll go to the law firm and I'll go up to a cop. I go, What's your priority list? I go, what do you mean? I go, what's the number one thing that you guys are focused on? They go, murder.

What about X? We have no priority list for X. Now we're on our radar. In fact, he goes, I just saw this kid the other day. He had access to see outside this club. I didn't know what to do with it. I told him to take it, throw it on the ground, start stomping out the pills.

That's how they handled XAXA back then. You know, it's funny. Remember, we interviewed, um, gosh, Mike Dowd when Rock first came on the scene and he just had no no idea what it well like none of them did for you know for months until it did until they started realizing there were so many issues and problems with this stroke and then it came out so it took a long period of time for it to catch up and then they but even then I think because I I've actually I because I wrote a book

called a devil exposed um it was my bought my buddy uh pierre rassini who was made initially he was manufacturing X. It turned into him manufacturing ice, you know, because it was much more profitable. But it was looked at like such a, you know, mind-expanding drug that the authorities, although they were trying to make kind of the precursor materials kind of, you know, illegal, they're just not. They just weren't, it took a while before they really got on their radar and they said, oh, we need to start going ahead and focusing on this. It also helped me with, I built out a playbook and also built out which we could get into later. And I built out a system when I started bringing all my people and I like to talk about how I recruited my team under me.

But I put them on a cycle, you know, I distributed the pills on Thursday, E on Thursday, and I would collect on Sunday, latest Monday morning and I would drop off the money either to Tommy or Freddie. The reason that's important is because it's not a drug or people are feigning for on a Monday or a Tuesday. It's called a club drug because that's exactly what it was. People were getting ready for the weekend, going out Thursday, Friday or Saturday. They would love the feeling of the, you know, of the EX during the music scene. And then by a time Sunday comes around, everybody's in Monday, they're back to work. Yeah, yeah. They're not breaking into houses and stealing from their mothers.

That's correct. you know, to get money to. But it was such a big movement that it became quite profitable specifically during that era. Right. Yeah, Pete made a bunch of money. So, okay. So how long, I mean, you don't stay in the basement apartment, I'm assuming. No.

Not that I'm sure, I'm sure it was lovely. I mean, eventually I was able to move to a higher end location off campus. I was able to pay my way through college. You kept going to college? Yeah. I was a student and it was very difficult. I mean, I brought on multiple mentors that got to know who I was. I didn't brag about it. But by having my college world and my local community world, which would be whatever you would call it, the local community that had their own scene going out every night, going to, you know, going to pubs, going to clubs, etc. I had two realms, two worlds. And it allowed me to utilize me to utilize. college kids for my playbook and strategies because those two worlds never collided, hardly ever. They didn't know each other. They didn't mesh well. These guys are wearing certain level clothes, have a certain way of communicating. College kids are focused on their

peers in school. So allow me to utilize my college friends as stash houses. Let me give an example. So I always saw talking on a phone as a liability. Why would I? ever talk on the phone. It's going to be tapped. And I got a strategy I implemented was called unpredictability is your ally. And what I mean by that is if as you're growing and getting bigger, there are laws. They're starting to hit the books after two, three years. The feds are starting to follow me. And I started having to put in certain game plans after the two, two and a half year mark. And yes, I'm moving into bigger places, nicer places. But part of the, my, my, my, mentor taught me, he's like, you got to move every six months. Well, that worked in with school. So every

six months, I would move in to a new apartment, all in the name of another student's name. And boom, every six months, never, and you can never tell anybody where you live, never tell. So every six months move, if you can do it three months, even better. But every six months, you have a new, you have a new semester. So you're moving. Then I would also, you know, go up to a college kid, I go, hey, you want a phone? They go, yeah. I want a phone. Okay, okay, I'm going to pay for your phone. We're keeping it in your name. We're also going to put a phone. Give me a phone. It's still going to stay in your name. And that's it. And I would do that almost every month, sometimes every two, three weeks.

Break the phone, new one. Break the phone, no one. So I constantly wanted to make sure my phone was clean. Me and Tommy, when we would meet to go have the drop-off points, we would go to a club, speak with a wuffer to our ear. We would never speak on the phone. We would have a drop-off place. If anybody were wearing a wire, you would never be able to find it. So I just started implementing strategies. It was difficult, especially the fact I'm making a lot more than my finance professors. I'm getting a business degree. But yeah, I just stayed in school. I'm kind of going off, but I just want to give you a sense of how he evolved.

So how often are they bringing in these guys bringing in pills every week? Where are they, their pills coming? Do they have a manufacturer? Well, you know, if you know the history of XT, especially back then, guys like Louis Siskin, those guys were dropping it, you know. and is really heavily connected to the Jewish mafia, most specifically the Israeli mafia. Okay.

And I think a lot of them, a lot of Israelis have family members in Amsterdam. I think a lot of it was being made out there. The Israelis were savvy enough to take on the role of importing into the U.S. Me as a drug lord of Baltimore, which I got into later, I'll get into later, I liked an environment that I knew and a controlled environment. So I liked, I knew the city of Baltimore.

I knew it in and out. I knew the people I was working with. I was working with a lot of people I knew since I was middle school. Are people that you're dealing with getting busted? So let's talk about that. As I'm growing, I'm more or more or less isolating myself and only associating with a tighter and tighter group.

If you're using drugs or you're showing behavior that would be a liability like a Borrello type, you know that would be somebody I would not associate with okay that would be somebody that would be a liability to my my platform um you could call it a couple different things when you become you know a lot of my my I call it a spirituality of criminality I put a lot of spiritual codes into my system that kind of paid off later on because I'm operating at such a level that I'm not afraid of you finding my pills because I'm like three steps ahead I'm more worried about studying the law and getting busted for conspiracy, which is basically RICO for drug lords, as opposed to being

called with the drugs themselves. So yes, somebody would try to do what we call a control by. And it always usually 99% of the time I get the call before. Hey, what's his face? That was the good thing. And benefit of Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore, small to more, everybody knows each other. I already know if you got busted. I got contacts everywhere. I got contacts in law enforcement. As soon as you get busted, got the call. And I go, hey, what's going? I heard. heard what happened. What are you doing? I'm just studying just busy with school. And that was end the conversation right there. But that name, if they choose to bring down on a federal level, can be come after you, you know, for conspiracy at a later point. I was going to say,

because you said the feds are, you know, you're on the feds radar. Yes. So they, they didn't just, you know, it's not word of mouth. Like they had to. The money was so prevalent. And I think that's what shifted the, uh, the laws. And they always kind of bring up kids and the raves and all that. But realistically, the money was so big. In fact, we had issues, you know, me and Tommy with a bad cop that got into the game, too, that we're at war with. What was that? He just, I mean, what is that? Well, Tommy, if you jump in the game, he wants to get you.

Right. That's just how he is. And this guy was jumping, you know, Tommy, I was maybe doing $5, $10,000. Tommy's doing $30,000. I got the $30,000. Once I started taking over D.C. A week. Okay.

And once I started taking over D.C. and Virginia, later on, Indiana, we could talk about that later. But yeah, so he just saw as a local, and we were just getting, he got really bad. Does it say that? It almost got, you know, real bad with us and this cop. And it turned out later on that cop was a big liability for all of us. He ended up just saying he had a medical leave. And as he was going on medical leave, he opened up his own enterprise in Baltimore. He ended up getting in trouble later on.

Okay. All right. So where does this, do you end up graduating college? Yeah. Let's talk about before that. So while I am about the last year of school, all my codes are created for a reason. And as I'm linked up with Tommy,

I started creating my own crew. And I took a lot of intel and information from both my mentors, from my experiences, even experiences in those two years before I even sold X. I would see how the DeKalva Alacante family treated their allies, their people, their group, people that were in their mafia sect, okay? And I made it very clear that anybody I bring into my realm, I'm not going to get personal. You're not my friend. I'm going to be militant. Okay. We're not going to have

casual conversations about girlfriends. Not going to happen, okay? I was very clear watching him one specific story still stuck on my head. Now I remember he brought on this guy named Guy who was running an entire section of Georgetown, the undergrad, the bookmaking. And this guy was highly intelligent, just got a job at Merrill Lynch. And he had just created 10 fake accounts under various names, which you could get away with back then. They all lost their bets. Guy Tano was into it for Fred Cruz, so for a better part of 100, maybe $200,000, and bets that were lost.

So this guy who was his close friend was now his bitch, basically the way he treated him, the horror I saw in front of me, it made it very clear. A, you're one misstep between, one misstep in being Gaetano, okay, or going to prison or being treated like that. This guy, just the week before, Frank Cruz, he's my brother. I love this guy. I called his father. Now look where he is today. Okay. So I took the role very seriously, and I tried to devise a game plan to bring on people with similar attributes and levels of integrity, but also had a threatening look. You had to be like 6 foot 2 plus,

230 pounds plus. My favorite was guys that were just graduated from college. Maybe one of them was, I call him, Reacher. It looks just like the character Reacher. Right.

It could be his twin. Okay, 6'4, 275 pounds. Not Tom Cruise. No, the other one. Okay. Looks just like him. Okay. Me and him bounced at clubs before he wanted to,

and I didn't think he had it in him, but he was my driver for a while. he learned everything from me he became one of my best students you know i call him students and he um he ended very intimidating you look at him you're freaked out immediately that just stops half the battle when he walks into a room okay so he's great for enforcing debts getting debts immediately when you look at him you're going to pay so um and he was very charismatic very intelligent it was practicing he was preparing to go pro he there was a movie replacements at that point with count of reeves feet film he was all in that movie. So he was so I he was my first guy and then the second guy he went he graduated

away from the University of Maryland now that guy today works for the NSA and DOD most of my guys now work for the DOD just so you know none of them got busted and um today they do he uh very stern big jaw barely spoke you know he's almost like like a like a spy had that look almost like a James Bond look entirely intelligent he was one of my top guys and he had a whole neighborhood called the overly crew and he ran that and I I taught him all my all my you know codes he's stuck by it these guys are like soldiers they follow my lead so I would look for guys like that that had the intimidating characteristics intelligence integrity um and would follow my my guide and these guys weren't my friends they were my students and like I said I was very militant and those guys proved to be incredible

a credible team to work with, people you would trust, much different than a mafia group that would go into a social club, laugh, joke on each other, that's not how I roll. And Tommy Dixon, who had been unscathed for 15 years, he was a great teacher to me, a great mentor, and I learned a lot of the same attributes from Tommy Dixon as well. It's funny you mentioned that because, so I had a mortgage company, right,

and I had about 10 or 12 guys working for me. I actually mentioned this to my wife. It came up yesterday in a conversation. And I was telling her that when I first started, I was, first year or so, like, I had, like, issues with a bunch of these guys. Like, not, like, arguments, but, like, you have to be here at nine. And they're coming at 9.30, 10. They're not calling. They're leaving in the middle of the day.

They're, you know, they're, hey, they're taking days off and not. really oh yeah yeah bro i'm gonna take off tomorrow there that sort of thing um and it everything seemed like it was a discussion i remember one time i was on the my i was somewhere with my and my father was like at my dad's house or something we were having a dinner or something and i was on the phone i was kind of arguing with somebody and when i got off the phone my dad was like what's that about and i told oh this guy dominic he you know you know like the guy he shows up at this time actually i think it was Eddie La Fuente down and I think about it. You know, he this, he that. And I was complaining about him. And he's like, so this is somebody who works for you? And I was like, yeah, he's like,

oh, I thought it was like a buddy of yours. And I was like, well, we are friends. And I remember my, I was telling him that this was an issue with a lot of these guys. I'm like, you know, and my dad was a state farm manager. And he had like 30 agents that worked for him. And, you know, And I grew up, my father would have like quarterly like a party, a big party. There would be like a hundred people would come to the house. We had a big house and he would, you know, they'd go on vacations together, right? But these were, so in my mind, these were my dad's, they were employees. They worked for him.

He was a manager. They were agents. But they were all very friendly. They would call the house after hours. They would talk on the phone. But I was a kid. I don't really know what they're talking about, right? Like I see him show up.

They all had drinks. They, everybody's laughing and joking. They leave. But, you know, and, and, and so as we were talking, he said, he said, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let's, I was 30. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like him. No, he's a good guy. He just this. He's this.

And this so-and-so does this. My dad said, listen, let me, let me save you some problems. in the future. These people are not your friends. Do not hire your friends. Do not make your employees your friends. And I was like, well, I mean, you have, you know, so and so. And I would mention a couple people that, and he goes, no, no, Matt, that vacation, they want a trip. You know, these six agents or four agents want a trip to Hawaii. As their manager, I get the trip too. Right. You're allowed to bring your family. Right. We went on a little vacation together. We're not friends. It's a it's a junket that is paid for by State Farm that flies us in.

We're not friends as when we have the quarterly parties every once in because they meet something, they meet a deadline or a certain amount of sales or whatever. We have a party at this point. Sometimes we don't have the party. He's like, they drink, they eat, everything's fun, we laugh, we socialize, it's wonderful. But we're not friends. He said, there will come a time when you'll have to fire people. There will come a time when you will draw a line in the sand. And as your friend, they can test that.

They can step. Your friend can step over that line with you, right? But your employee can't. And I, and he had this, like, it was a serious conversation. And I kind of, you know, I took it to heart, sort of. And I'd say over the next probably three to six months, it really started dawning on me that if I got into a disagreement with some of these guys. They were talking to me in a way that you're not, that you're under a misconception here. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, like, there's no

recourse for me where the recourse they don't, I think that they didn't think they would ever become a conversation, a time during that conversation where I would say, all your shit will be in a box sitting outside the fucking door. When you get there on money, I want my fucking key back. You You know what I'm saying? They didn't have that fear of me. And so, and it took a long time. It took months of me having to restructure it. You have to restructure it. And it's hard to restructured. If you don't start it off right, it's hard. Because now you're not, you're, you're a dick. You're not in a, you're not in a cool. Yeah. You're now you're, and you expect your boss to have a certain, be kind of a, you know, there's that line. And once you go from friend and you try and pull back, now you're just a fucking asshole. It's almost impossible. It is. And it is. And it really, in a very, in a very, in a very, in a. very real way it was. But when you, for what you're telling me is that at least you figure that out right away, I had to go through a whole process and had to be kind of mentored by my father to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop. Don't, don't talk to them about their families. Don't, you could know

their wife's name, their kids. I was very clear that if I made a mistake, Freddie Caruso would kill me. Right. Okay. Well, see, I don't, I didn't have that like, like, uh, equity lending's not sent in In fact, in fact, in that environment, in that environment, it just put me in the action. It made me more stern, maybe add more codes. It just made me always, I always held on to the fact one misstep of being murdered or incarcerated or both. It's a different industry. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah.

So what I mean by that is I knew that I knew how the level of risk that I was taking and the consequences related to that. And I came into it with that mindset right from the start. Well, and you also had, like you said, you had a mentor from the very beginning. I had mentors. I have family members in the military. There's questions of whether or not my grandfather might have been the CIA, kind of into my mindset already. And I just, it just came to me naturally to go that way. And in fact, sometimes I act a little off to scare them.

I wanted to keep them in check. And they always, and the good part. of it is the closer you were to me because of my structure, the better you were off. And that goes for Freddie Caruso as well. Let me give you a story. Those guys eventually, we got a lot of cool stuff we could get into. I'll tell you what I mean by this specific thing. When they were close to me, my integrity, the way I structured rubbed off on them as well. They ended up having to go back to New Jersey, go back to Staten Island. They didn't want to stay in Baltimore. They allowed me and Tommy me to run operations in Baltimore. So when they did that, they went back to their mafia crew.

Their way started rubbing off on them. Now they start stealing from drug lords, which would have never happened in my presence. Now their karma is getting bad. We'll get bad for them later on. But if you stay under my structure and my codes, which is way better, I call it Omerita 2.0, is way more superior than their Omerta. And it proved that because we don't, my, my, my Mine is built so you don't get caught. Mine's built so you last. Mine's built. If you think about the people I would bring in,

they were just graduating cows that are looking for that next move. It's built to know that there's an expiration date on this industry. Every major drug lord gets bought. A lot of people go, okay, that drug lord like Ciskin, when I talk to him, he goes, you want. You know why you want?

I may have sold more product to you, and that's how they usually equate the success of a drug lawyer, a drug supplier, a trafficker, you won because you walk with your money and you never want the prison. That's how you find success in the industry. And the problem is you acquire so much power at a certain point. You got to put that power in check because that power can be more intoxicating than the money and the drugs itself that you're selling. Right. And at some point you slip up. You start thinking you're untouchable is when you get hit.

Yeah. Yeah, we get sloppy. Yep. So eventually I break one of my codes. Okay. Okay. So when you break a code, it's pretty much guaranteed that you're going to get some repercussions. One as a position that I have, I'm now formulating alliances with other drug lords.

So my best friend now is Shariar. His sister now is Shab. She's a big name music name right now. You look her up online. She's huge right now. He was running D.C. He was the Ex-Se lord of D.C. And I'm going to visit him all the time on weekends.

But the good thing about the Persian Mafia is that they have big, heavy pockets. They own a lot of restaurants and clubs throughout D.C. So he was able to flood that entire market. Most of his family friends own the clubs throughout D.C. when you formally alliances almost like a lucky luciana type role you aren't you don't see these guys as competitors their alliances they become your ally so when i have such a big demand in baltimore sometimes he can't get supplied i can be a supplier and supply dc okay sometimes the the calvic conti family are like brian we're out okay my demand doesn't stop your supply stopped my demand is

is still there. I'm getting calls. I could go to Shariyar. Hey, I need you to give me 10,000, 20,000 pills. You got me? I got you. So those alliances worked in my favor. Then I go, well, this has an expiration date. I got to build another platform. So I was dating one of the hottest girls on campus and her best friends were the hottest ones. I go, and I knew all the club owners in Baltimore. Some of them were local Gambino people. Some of them were local Jewish mob. So I put deals together and fill up their clubs. My hot girlfriends and our friends would go knocking all the doors. I get buses, bused into these clubs in Baltimore, fill them up, make a few thousand hours a night.

It's pretty good for a college kid's side gig in case this thing ever goes defunct, you know, the e-game. One night I'm there. And part of my codes, you know, emeritus don't, you know, don't have sex with another man's wife. My code is, we're in college. Find a good woman and stick with her and don't cheat on her. Okay? I found a good woman, didn't cheat on her, stuck with her the whole way through. While I'm having these clubs, girls are throwing themselves at me.

She gets drunk. She starts pity me. I'm a gentleman. I'm just sit there and take it. Eventually her girlfriend's drag her out. She leaves. Girl jumps on me. I stupidly broke two codes.

A, showed somebody where I lived. Two, cheated on my girl. Okay? next day. You brought the girl to your house. Yes. And that night. And my girlfriend's nowhere to be found.

She slept there were to be found. She slept there were girlfriends that night. Her friend offered a pick her up who was a guy who actually knew of me should not know where I live. I agree to it. He was also, he happened to be a, happened to have a warrant for his arrest. He gets busted later that night. Okay. I get a call immediately.

Billy's arrested. He's singing your name. The beds are going to come in. Okay, get prepared. So I never, what's good about me is one of my rules. You never carry drugs in your house. All my money is in different students' names, all different storage facilities. I'm encoding everything into my accounting homework on my computer. Internet is just getting there. So if you look at it, my accounting homework, you're going to see, you know, widgets in there. Okay. And my numbers are mostly embedded. You're not going to really find it. It's pretty well, you know, coded in there.

So they showed up. And when you're in the legal world, you understand search warrants. There's no way they had a real legal search warrant. And 20. Not from just a conversation. Exactly. 20 agents went through my place for 12 hours. Well, I had to sit down and stared down them for 12 hours, tearing up the place.

looking completely perplexed why a drugler like me didn't have any drugs or money in the house and no guns, no nothing. Why would they think that you're that you're a big time drug dealer? They were already trying to find me. Because this is already multiple people. It's not just this one guy.

It's multiple people. I had a list of every time you try to do it control my and I knew eventually that those names could catch up to me later on. And that's why I also knew I had an expiration day. Well, me and one of the guys could probably do the prequel for the movie We Owned the City, if you ever watched that movie,

that series. The guys, you know what that series is about or not? It's about Baltimore corrupt cops. They all went to prison for 20-some years for stealing from drug dealers in Baltimore. Okay. Written by David Simon, who wrote The Wire. He did this a few years ago.

One of the reasons I didn't come out is because of the main detective, the mentor for those cops. His name is Keith Gladstone. So me, Keith got into it, faced, face, faced. I made one other small mistake. I had a storage unit with the number he found it.

It had about $400,000 in there. He got that. I told him keep it. Okay? He's like, where did he get this? How did he come across this? It was in my wallet. I stupidly left one of them in there.

And this is during the search? During the search. Okay. He was searching everything. He was tearing everything up, going through the vents, everything. Okay. And I had that one card in there. And thank God, usually I have like six storage units.

at a time. I usually keep cash and drugs separate. I have been out of my, my, my, uh, on the, on the street at that point. So I wasn't at fully out of business, but I was a large dent in my money just got hit. He told me to then, um, go ahead and, uh, he said, listen, we're going to take off. We, um, we are going to have, he goes, you're going to have a meeting tomorrow with us. And they, they knew who my mom was. I go, call your mom. We're going to have a sit down and we're going to talk. And we had to sit down the next day. With your mom.

With my mom. Okay. With my mom. And his whole team and the federal prosecutor. And my mom and the federal prosecutor spoke. And they agreed to something. And then I sat down with Gladstone independently. And we, him and I came to a deal.

And the deal was the following. This is going to sound wild. Remind you. I have no 302. Okay, mind you, I've gotten accepted the law school after all this. There's nothing. They had nothing except my money.

My mom, right before that meeting, talked to me, she goes, let them keep the money. Right. Let them keep the money. So Gladstone provided me the following. He goes, Brian, how much more school do you have? I have a year and a half.

Okay. Okay. Here's what we're going to keep your money. Okay. But I'm going to lay it. We have almost enough to get conspiracy on you. We're on you. Okay, we've been on you for a long time.

We have our targets on Tom Dixon. We have our targets on Freddie. We have our targets on the bad cop. We have our targets on Shariar. Okay. You could go ahead and continue. I go continue. I can continue.

He said, but you can't work with those because they're going to get got. It's just a matter of time. That's a deal. That's part of the deal. So we keep the money. Here's the information that I'm providing you. Number two, when you guys your year and a half, I can hold off my team for a year and a half,

but afterwards, you're a fair game. So if you continue, I'm going to get you. Make sure you understand that. The reason I think he was able to do this, because Baltimore is small to more. Everybody knows each other. It's just my mom knows the judges. My mom knows the federal prosecutor.

The cops know my mom. It's a backdoor deal that was put together. I asked them further. This is going to sound wilder. Okay? What about the rat? I want to get them. They know, you go, Brian, we checked your place.

We know you don't kill anybody. We know you like the fight. Okay? We're like, we like your fights. We know about you. You can beat him up. I go, I could beat up the rat. Is that possible?

But yeah, it went away. And I happened to already be mentoring a Russian by the name of Mikkel, already guiding him to open up his own faction of the Russian community of Baltimore. Ultimately, I told him what's happening. He ended up being my supplier. Okay. So when you say they're going to keep the money, you're talking about the,

this is who, federal government? So it was a task force of local Baltimore police with the DEA combined into a task force specifically for XA. Okay. So this is not federal. This is a local. It's both. It's still the DEA as well.

But Gladstone is a Baltimore cop. A corrupt cop. And so is this money going to there? That's in prison today. Just saying that. Okay. I was going to say. So it is so.

Because this is not a deal I've ever heard of. It would never happen if it wasn't corrupt cops in Baltimore. I was going to say. So these are the corrupt cops that ultimately get busted. Yes. Is that money going into their pockets or is it going into the troughs? Part of the money was, well, about 100,000 of it was given to me in a DA letter. The other 300,000 was unaccount.

counted for they're just saying, hey, we have a, we seized 100,000, but you know they seized, okay. 300, yes. Okay, so, so what happens after this? You continue, so you stop dealing with these guys, but these are the mob guys. They have to reach out. If suddenly you just stop talking to them, they have to reach out and sit the fuck going on with this guy. And your place got raided, so they know you were rated.

They weren't, they weren't aware that you were raided. No, it was so far away. I moved to a very far county area that's far away from society. They never. So what are you telling them? Oh, I just can't do this anymore. I'm honing them off for a couple weeks. I'm honing them off for probably about almost a month.

And I'm getting every, and my demand's still screaming at me. And I'm already talking. There's already a guy. One thing, by mentoring people and taking people on your wing and helping people, you'd be surprised what they're willing and capable of doing for you later on. I was already built kind of mentoring this Russian guy that thought that, and I was right on point.

I go, McKell, you have a great team here. Most of them were Jewish and dissent. Some of them were Russian. Someone were from Belarus. Some of them were from the Ukraine. They had a very tight community in the Pikesville area of Baltimore. I go, you have your nice team, you know, you have a great team here. Build that.

And I could go ahead and supply to them, and it'll be another tranche of money. And it turned out to be very lucrative. And it was true. Ultimately, him being Jewish, he had already. had plugs in the e-game, he ended up getting his plugs from California and started sending packages out here so I could meet my demand. So I put that together. Tommy's acting crazy. Like, where are you calling me? I'm avoiding him like the plague. Thank God my communications mostly with Tommy at this point. And he's dealing with Frank Caruso and Greg Crawford. So my communication

was really limited with them at that point. I had to deal with Tommy. After a month, month and a half, Guess what? Gladstone gets Tommy Dixon. He was 100% right. He gets him. How he got him, he was on him. He's already told me he was going to get him. He's already been trying to get him forever. Now Tommy's busted. Going on vacation?

We're here for it. With kids who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time is a human right? Yep. We totally have vehicles to handle that because whether it's a road trip or a business trip, where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is, whatever is open?

Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise, we're here for it. Now Greg, I'm sorry, Keith Gladstone, who I paid off, is calling me up going, guess what? Tommy Dixon's trying to save, trying to set you up now. Right. So he's cooperating against you now. Yes, yes. But he doesn't really have any cooperating.

because there's no ability for him to get you because you don't want to talk to him at all anymore. No. And and I already paid class soon off. Okay. So I continue. Right. And I continue to the point of my graduating, my last test. I had to take one last summer test to graduate. I don't walk with a gown and cap. I just graduate. And I already plan my move to New York. On my move, that long. loss of 400,000 took me. You know, it's something within you when you lose a hit like that. It makes you want to steal from another one. And I wanted to get out of the game, break my principles while doing it with a bang.

So I put one last deal, which I'm not proud of with the Russians, Mikkel, a large amount, somewhere around 40, 50,000 pills. He gave me, I said the money's right down the street. I'll be right back. Usually it takes a minute I'll pay him back. He was excited about that. I took the pills, moved in New York with all the pills. Right before that, though, here's where it gets scary. Right before I'm getting ready to move to New York, 9-11 hits.

Okay. 9-11 hits. Everything's getting packed. I'm looking at the news. I got to move in two days. I have a place downtown blocks away from where a 9-11 hit. Now I got to fill up a U-Haul with 40,000 pills of B going through checkpoints. Yeah, that might be an issue.

It was. But thank God I looked like a college kid. Right. I got through all the checkpoints with 40,000 pills. Set up shop. Now the Russian mob wants to kill me. And I couldn't have been better, more safer place than right there where 9-11 was, given the hits that were out for me. Especially the Russians at this point were ready to kill me.

I set up shop there. I start bringing my guys into New York to start finishing up selling. those last bit of pills. My team was highly upset with me because I broke one of my biggest codes. You know, you shall not steal. I never did that. It was against my rules. But they knew, they got a good sense that this was my retirement. Now it's time for them to kind of take over. And my goal goal was just to move New York and become a stockbroker and go legit at that point. Okay. So is that what happened? No. So I go out one night, a club called Sound Factory.

Okay? That sounds familiar. It was a big E club back then with Jonathan Peters. It's all like big muscle guys. I was always like a big muscle guy back then working out. And I run into Greg Crawford from the Granbino crime family. I go, Greg. Hey.

He goes, Brian. I go, what? Follow me. I go, follow you. It's like something out of that movie. Let's go down this hallway. It's having a conversation. You're walking in a room with a piece covered in plastic.

It was just like that, you know? Come on. We got to go over here and talk. You know? I'm like, nah. And mind you, Greg is way bigger than me. He's like 5-11, 250 pounds of muscle and a fierce fighter. He's a, he's a scary guy to look at and deal with. Me and him just go right into it right there at the club. It's a club where they search you for guns.

So there's no weapons in there, thank God. And, you know, thank God a new jujitsu. I was able to give him some chokeholds. We got pulled apart. Everybody in the club, kind of the way I, I, I, I, I addressed myself the way I am very clear to the club. I didn't start the fight. They kicked him out somehow.

I was kind of hyperventilating from the fight and I left it as well. I was like, I saw him outside. I thought I was going to be around too. Wasn't at that point. It was very clear. Whatever information he got, he found out later he had just gotten busted.

Tommy Dixon had just set him up and set Fred Caruso up. And he thought I was part of that. Okay. So that's why he was, he didn't realize I wasn't working with Tommy. anymore. Tommy had just set those guys up. I wasn't really privy to that at that point. But now I call one of my top guys, the guy we refer to as Reacher. He's like, I'm in Hollywood doing movies right now. Come on out. And I happen to meet the Israeli mafia out here. I was like,

there's no way you did. Come on. But and and meanwhile, I didn't even get into this. He's, he's a one who, he's very charismatic, like I told you, very likable. You know, it was just very similar to the character, loves dogs. And he, and he, and he's, he's, he's very, he's very charismatic. And he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, He'd already went to Indiana. Does anybody not love dogs? I mean, I know. I love my dog. But, you know, he's like a dog, like a heavy dog guy.

And he ended up like, you know, before all this, I didn't even add this in there. He's the one who landed in Indiana for me. And he's met the, he knew I was retiring. He found his own connect in L.A. He was hooking up Indiana from Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Okay. Come on now. Move in with me.

Okay. So I flew out there. you know bringing my money out the best way I can in trances um and uh was goal my goal was just to go legit and uh I started setting up shop in L.A. Well that doesn't setting up shop in L.A. doesn't sound like going legit. I'm allowing you, allowing you to get the stand. I was going to say that doesn't. So let me explain. My goal was to go legit. Okay. And yeah, I started doing that. I started, uh, I started, you know, first thing I did is I just had a lot of money saved.

And when you want to retire, I live on such stringent rules that I just wanted to have fun finally. You know, my, even though I cheated on my girlfriend, I got back, I got back with her, okay. I flew her out and I said, listen, I don't think it's going to work. I think I should tell you face to face. I'm going to break up with you. I want to live my new life out here in L.A. She cries. She went back to Baltimore.

I saw this move to LA as a way to completely sever ties with everything. So my plan at this point was not to get back into the game. Okay. I had plenty of money. I had plenty of skill sets. I had no, no criminal record. So I started out just becoming a club promoter.

I wanted to meet different people. I wanted to get, I had plenty of money. I wanted to bought a brand new car in Beverly Hills, got a beautiful penthouse off sunset Boulevard. I wanted to finally live my life. I want to invite people back to my home, which I couldn't do.

I want to meet people. I want to enjoy my life because I was so militant for the better part of five years that I wanted to start living. So that's how I started. And it was a great life. It was a world that I didn't even knew existed coming from Baltimore.

It was incredible. I met all kinds of interesting people. One of them is here, Eden, that you met. And as I'm doing that, And now I'm watching some of my friends that moved to Orange County and watching them drive brand new Mercedes. I'm going, what do you guys doing? And I already had one of our bodyguards. We always had bodyguards.

We're in Baltimore. I didn't even give you a fraction of all the crazy stories yet. But he was in the mortgage industry. He just got a daughter and he was going more structured in his life. And I saw an opportunity to learn the mortgage game. And I jumped on, on a mortgage floor and started learning that industry. If you remember back then, we were going through the refy boom. So I started going that direction, learning the mortgage industry, becoming a loan officer, you know, and going out a lot.

And before I know, I'm making like a quarter million a year just doing loans, doing options, doing options, you know, subprime loans, doing it all. You know those loans. And then Brian introduces me, he's like, I want you to meet the head of the Israeli mob out here through their prices that are beyond low. and I was already like, dude, I'm, I'm retiring. You know, like I wanted to go legit. You know, just make, just do the meeting. I go, you know, I don't like meeting new people. That's part of my, you know, I had to go back into the zone with my codes that I start

going this direction. So I ultimately decided and had the meeting and I call one of my top guys from Baltimore. I flew them out. I go, let's just have a sit down. Let's see where it goes. And these guys are offering me pills. Five bucks, which is way lower than the market I was getting, four or five. bucks and my guys were like dude there's still a huge demand why not i go well okay then i'll just be your

supplier and you guys take over and i i had let this name is will take over the whole operation those guys and i just sent packages once every week or once every two weeks large packages and fedex and they took over baltimore and they became pretty much the new lords of baltimore and i was just a supplier for a period of time. Long story short, those guys were too separate for me. They're structured. They lost their structure. They lost the codes. They started becoming sloppy. Beds came into one of their properties. I don't need Gladstone trying to find me. I already had an agreement with him. I get out after I graduate. And they ended up raiding one of their homes. And right after that, I'm like, I'm out. I don't need any more of this. I'm already, you know,

doing mortgages right now. I'm done. So at that point, I got out. You know, ultimately, they would call me actually the baron of Baltimore at that point because now my entire crew that I trained precisely they were then the new lords of Baltimore meaning they were controlling the entire trade of XI throughout Baltimore at that point guys that were under me there's no more Tommy Dixon there was a Benny Magliano we talked about that was part of the local Gambino family that was removed from us but he was so a large dealer another example of of how the Gambino family, the mafia, Umarito tends to have holes in it

because he always find himself in prison. And for the first time, you know, now I have my team, I'm sorry, that's taking over. And I also had a good sense of when to come in, when to come out,

you know, like sure, you know, I got out and then I got back in. But I was kind of checking out the temperature of the environment. Like I said, my whole goal was to go in,

not lose your life, not lose your freedom, keep your money, and ultimately break away from that. And ideally, most people in that realm are kind of natural entrepreneurs and open up your own platform and become the person that you're supposed to be. Right. You know, like, you know, it's inevitable that you're inevitable that you're going to get caught. You're going to allow the power to take over you and you're allowed, you know, your ego and you're going to go to prison or you're going to lose your life. Right.

as I got acclimated out there, and I was working with the Israeli mafia, I try to keep my role pretty low. And I started dating this girl whose family, you know, was connected to the Sinaloa cartel. It's something about me being in the world that daughters of mob people,

I've dated one of the mob housewives. They just kind of get drawn to me. And, you know, there was communications of me possibly working with the Senegal cartel. They tried to recruit me. And there was local, when you're out, also in the night scene, there's a lot of kind of high profile people in the L.A. world that got to know who I was. And there was this girl who worked, she was a girlfriend for one of the top drug dealers in Baltimore named Karen. And the boyfriend's name, his name is Ms. Spanky. I think

you look like that from the little rascals. Right. Okay. I was very big on respect for my competition, respect my allies. And I think it worked to my advantage. So Spanky knew who I was. I know who he was. We had no business to work with each other. He was in the game before me. And that's where we left it. And a lot of times people would approach me in the clubs in Baltimore thinking that, hey, we know that you're attached to X. Can you get me pills? Well, you're never going to catch me with drugs on me. Never going to catch me on my person and my car or my home. Okay. Everything is put away purposely for a reason. So Karen would always be close to me. I go, go to my competition. She'll take care of you. Keeps it away from me. I'm not connected to that group.

I don't even work with them. So it was a great way to kind of push it off to her. She ends up in L.A. And she knew my back past story, a story I tried to bury in L.A. I didn't want anybody to know it. Well, she immediately thinks I'm being sent there by her boyfriend to get her. I'm like, and I'm retired, okay? I don't even deal with Spanky. He knows who I am and that's it. She's somebody that just naturally wants to work in the criminal enterprise, and she takes a position under a person that Lewis Ziskin mentor named Cameron Sagaul.

Okay. Cameron Sagall was a sloppy, very intelligent, Beverly Hills gangster. Very intelligent. He owned multiple commercial spots. He owned a management company as well. well appointed Karen as her right his right hand and she started spilling the beans about who I was and convinced Cameron that was coming into L.A. to take over the trade and started making me look like I was Kaiser-Sosei. And, you know, telling her the story. So this guy created a whole friction

between me and the local gang members or I guess you could say criminal enterprises of L.A. And it just, it ultimately, hold on. I'm like, do you know who Kaiser Sosei is? Okay. Sorry. I know he did. He doesn't know that. It's like a very reclusive, you know, like, like, uh, um, mobster from the, was,

what was the name of the movie? The usual suspects. But he doesn't really exist. He doesn't exist. He doesn't really exist. There's a whole belief system that he's the guy behind all of these things are happening. Yeah. Truth is, it's just a story that somebody came up with and spun.

And this Kaiser Well, Kaiser so, And the stories of me, they were spinning to make me look bigger than I really was in terms of what I was doing. Well,

you're also saying that they're saying that you're coming in and you're doing this and you're doing that and you're like, I'm not doing anything. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to retire. Right. I'm trying to retire. So it just created this.

If there is such thing as a, a, a, a, a, you wouldn't call him a mafia boss. You call him a criminal boss, a very wealthy one, Cameron Seagal was. hater, that was him. And he got to the point where I would go to clubs and he would surround me with his bodyguards. And we'd get invited to a lot of the same parties. I'd be in a mansion. I have like two guns in my head.

And I'd be like 500 people. I go, what are you doing? I'm not your enemy, you know? And what are you to shoot me in front of 500 people for a beef we don't even have? What sense does that make? I'm not somebody that gets scared easily, but I also know I have no issue with this guy.

It's just weird to me. And they all put their guns down. And I ultimately know how to break somebody down little by little. And I'd already started building my mortgage enterprise. I started becoming, I actually built one of the largest loss of mitigation companies during the mortgage meltdown, all self-financed. And I started just hiring his bodyguards and like broke them down for like five years. And they all tell me stories how he would want to hire, you know, want to, you know, to break me, you know, want to get me. And ultimately, I don't know how he shot me.

Oh, one night, he, after his bodyguards weren't there one night, I just got sick of dealing with them. I just decided to beat him up at a club one night. And then after I beat him up, he drove like a week later next to my car with one of his bodyguards. I shot up my car. I was driving the left on Alta Bista Boulevard from Sunset Boulevard. Shot out my car, boom, boom, boom. Are you in the car? I'm driving.

Okay. And got struck. And the first call person I called was Cameron Seagull. I go, I go, I'm alive, motherfucker. And he's hyperventilating. You know, and then, you know, I go to Cedar Sinai, cops show up. And what's good about having a mom who was a judge attorney, while the cops there, she's like, keep your mouth shut. You know, it's a really good direction because I'm not going to tell on Cameron Seagal.

You know, I healed entirely from the bull home. Where you get shot? Right here. hole went right through here, went out this way. Nine millimeter. I still have the bullet. Okay. That's really the only part of that story. I don't know where we should take it from there. Well, I'm saying what happened with the beef? Did he just go away? Eventually, he ended up, you know, I really believe that if you have enough bad karma in life,

you put a lot of negativity out there, it catches up to you. About six, seven years later, you know, he was driving his rolls. Royce about literally three blocks. from where he shot me. He was shot in his face permanently damaged. He's permanently messed up. He lost everything. And me and Louis Ziskin would talk about him. He took a picture of him just like maybe three months ago

of him homeless. That's where a guy that was that powerful, that allow his ego to get the best of him. You know, like I said, you allow that power to take over. You're going to create problems. You're going to make mistakes. He was a prime example of why you have to keep that power in check when you have a position like that.

And so you still talk to Zeskin? Little by little. Okay. We're not close friends. We just know who each other are. Right. We should connect Ziskin's, uh,

uh, his interview at the back of this. He actually mentioned him in his interview with your, oh, does he? Yes. Well, his interview was extremely long. I know it was.

Um, he can't seem to not get into something that gets him into trouble. Even when he's not doing it. He still gets into trouble. I agree. I've been doing anything wrong. You still get no trouble. I agree.

I know the whole story. So what, I mean, what happens? You stay in the, the, you open up the loss, the mitigation. So you're, are you refinancing these properties or you're negotiating or is that where you're negotiating with the bank to give these people a better rate and place their, kind of take their, they're behind six months, put that on the back, renegotiate. Yeah. We also had a matrix that we created where we showed why it makes better sense financially

for the bank to have a performing loan. Yeah, of course. And we just figure out what rates will work based on what their new income is. We bring all the financials. I was, you know, most people that had companies like that were getting, you know, outside funding, investors. I bankrolled my own company. And I was the youngest one of the youngest owners of the loss mitigation company.

I came from just five years before being a drug lord to now be. the owner and 100% owner and CEO one of the largest loss of mitigation companies in the country and ask in a group of us that all owned the biggest companies would meet together to try to keep the industry alive because we saw impending regulations coming in on a state and federal level. They elected me to be the face guy to go meet with members of Congress, educate them on why we should keep the industry alive, why it favors their people. their constituents. And I was their face guy for a long time to go out there and try to keep the industry alive.

What is the fee on typically on one of those? Not much. I mean, we actually had to evolve over time. It got overregulated. So it was anywhere from 2,500 to maybe 7,500. 5,000 was usually the norm. And who pays that? The client does.

And they can pay in increments that they have to, you know, monthly payments. But what's good about it is also, you know, they stop the foreclosure process when you're in those negotiations. Right, right. And later on, when we got overregulated, it just got led into, you know, doing the same thing, but then suing the banks for, for, for, for, for their missteps, you know, it could be till a violation, rest of violations. Yeah, they don't have, they don't, they don't, they don't, they can't provide the paperwork. They don't, they can't robos signing. We got that mortgage, you know, mortgage, you know, we, we did all that. Mortgage banking, uh, uh, uh, securization, you know, all that. So we would, you know,

break through the broken line and try to a chain of title it's been so long since i've done it so i had to go back you know 15 years um but yeah we ended up just in it you know just doing that protecting their home what we call foreclosure defense so while we're in litigation later on i just started running law firms for many years ran on wilshire in los angeles you know making a good living doing the same industry but doing it more in the legal world i still to this day do it by doing the credit card industry Okay. And what is that? What does that entail? Because people get over the head? Our clients all have money. They all have jobs. We have a lot of people that have security

clearances that can't go bankrupt by law. They lose their security clearance. They have like our typical clients got, you know, fixed income, $100,000 in debt. It's obvious it'll take them 20 years to pay the debt back. So they're willing to pay our law firms to represent them. And they're, you know, if you pull up all the mistakes, states they do by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You see them breaking a variety of 12 federal statutes every time. It's funny. I wrote a book about a guy who had like his series, you know, series seven, series, whatever

it is, 64, whatever the oldest series are, and I forget. He claimed bankruptcy twice. And I used to always think, how the fuck did you get and maintain your licenses having claimed bankruptcy twice? And he owned a wealth management company too. like he was taking people's money and investing it, supposedly. But, yeah, same, yeah, because I had always heard, like, you know, like bankruptcy, you know, poor credit ratings, bankruptcies, like, a lot of those financial licensing and having a security

clearance is there are major, fucking major problems. But so, yeah, I could see these, them not wanting claim bankruptcy and just kind of, let's figure out a way to get me on a payment program because I can't lose my security license. That's right. So what are you doing now? It's the same thing. You're just doing the credit card. Is that all that you're doing? Yeah. So we have four law firms I run. I run full operations for them. I own a company called USA Legal Group. And all my entire staff does everything from the marketing to the sales, the customer service, the compliance calls, to the technology, to the paralegals. So I mean, me growing up in a law firm, you know, I just learned how to streamline

and create a lot of new technology and create an efficient business for a law firm on a large scale. We bring in a lot of business. So when people come to me, they go, hey, do you want business from, I'm not going to plug anything. We got huge contracts. We're great. So we don't need anything from anybody. Right. Did you ever write a book or? I'm writing one for your past guests right now. Gunner. He's my ghostwriter. When is that? Maybe I'll hire you for the second one. Yeah. It's funny.

I have people reach out to me all the time and ask me if I'll write stuff. It's like, bro, I just, I just, it's, well, he sounds like you're writing a lot of cool stuff. It's such a project. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You're vested emotionally and fully into it. So it has to make sense for you.

And you have to resonate with you, I assume. I mean, and I think that that's, I mean, absolutely. That's part of it. And then the other problem is, is that books don't, unless it's a bestseller, like the disparity between having a bestseller and having just a book that does okay. is so massive. It's like the difference between being a a comedian and being a professional comedian.

Like you know what I'm saying? Like there's, it goes from making $50 a show and getting yourself there and, you know, maybe you get some free nachos. To Chappelle. To, yeah, just making $200,000 for showing up for an hour. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, there's just, there's no in between.

Right. And even though those books when, you know, guys are like, yeah, but you wrote all these books, I understand, but I wrote these books. I was in prison. And I've written a couple since I got out, but I already had the framework kind of done. And the problem is you can't really just sit down and have a conversation with someone and write a book. Typically, I like to order a Freedom of Information Act.

I like to get the D.FBI 302, the DA6s. I like to get, what are the names of the officers? I like to interview those people. That's why Merlino likes me, Rearming my 302. Yeah. So, you know what I'm saying? Those are the great things because I want to know the behind the scenes. I don't want to just talk to you and have your version of it.

That's a memoir that you could write. It honestly took me five writers to find the one that we clicked, I click with. And I think it has to click. It's not clicking them to do it. So yeah, I get guys that ask me that all the time. And I'm like, I'm like, look, this is what you'd have to pay me this much. I have to get this much. And everybody thinks they're, oh, it'll be a best seller.

It's going to, I'm going to sell my life rights. And it's going to be a movie. to stop. And I'm not even trying to do it for that reason. Right. And I think by having that right reason for doing it, it's a compelling story, you know, and I gave you a good portion of it, but there's a lot more involved that we'll unleash in the book. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, there's some stuff that, and then I always get the guys, too, that like, yeah, some stuff I can't talk about. I'm, okay, look, you can alter certain things. You just put a, you just put a paragraph in the front to say, listen, some things, sometimes characters, you know, it's, you know, it's,

events have been altered. Just, you know, because why? Because, well, because I prefer not to spend the rest of my life in a fucking state facility. That's right. Or a federal facility. That's right. You know, so I'm going to tell you the story. This one or two parts have been tweaked. You know, guys are like, you know, I had a disagreement with someone and they, you know, they ended up getting you know, or basically one of my guys and killed somebody. But I've never been charged, whatever. Okay, well, then what you have to say it more vaguely. We had this disagreement. He did this. He threatened me here. I threatened him. I this. And, you know, by the grace of God, you know, he ended up two weeks later. Somebody caught him at such and such. He got killed. So the whole thing was diverted. The truth is,

you set up that murder. But you can't say that. So you just say it in more of a vague way where people were reading are kind of like, I feel like you might have something to do with it, but you didn't specifically state it. So you're okay. Like I didn't say anything that everybody already doesn't kind of think anyway, but I wasn't specific enough. And I said, it turns out, this person ended up getting shot during a drive-by. And luckily, that whole beef just went away. You even said anything. That did not incriminate me at all.

Yeah. But in people, some people's mind, they're like, oh, he might have had something to do with that. He's not going to say it. Yeah. So there's one or two things that you can allude to and not incriminate yourself. I agree.

I know how to do that. And the other thing that went, like when I did my last interview, the person I was 25 years ago is so different. the person I am today. I'm 50 almost. Okay. Right. So when people look at me and smile, that Brian then didn't smile. Right. Brian was serious back then. You know, now I'm older, mature, wiser, you know. So I just want to people get a sense of that person then is way different than who I am today. Right, right. It just happens just to give people an understanding.

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