Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Lawyer Reveals How Guilty Clients Walk Free

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Mandeep Singh Chhabra, a seasoned criminal defense attorney, pulls back the curtain on how the legal system actually works, from courtroom strategy and client chaos to the moments that make the job worth it.⁣ ⁣ Mandeep's links - ⁣ Website: cclaw.group ⁣ Instagram: @cochranandchhabralawyers⁣ Facebook: facebook.com/cclawgroup⁣ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/cochran-chhabra-law-group⁣ YouTube: @cclawgroup⁣ Reviews: g.page/r/CTea7NO0esgcEBE/review⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ 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⁣ ⁣ Chapters: ⁣ 03:53 - State vs. federal defense: differences and sentencing ️️⁣ 09:58 - Ethical duty to defend and plea decision consequences⁣ 15:00 - Discussion of Pleas and Defense Strategy ‍️⁣ 16:34 - Case Example and Trial Outcome ️⁣ 30:02 - Jail vs. Prison Impact ️⁣ 50:30 - Impact of Influence, Technology, and Crime Prevention⁣ 1:00:03 - Scheme explanation⁣ 1:03:42 - Rehabilitation & speaking to inmates⁣ 1:15:04 - Planning life after release⁣ 1:24:14 - Navigating jail culture and survival strategies ️⁣ 1:30:06 - Prison advice & preparation⁣ 1:49:37 - Inmate Self-Policing & Program Structure⁣ 2:00:09 - Mug shots and courtroom humor⁣ 2:06:40 - Judge relationships, probation, and passports ️⁣ 2:17:03 - Ethical Dilemma: Client Admits Guilt ️⁣ 2:19:01 - Courtroom ID Issues & Case Stories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Better call Saul where he swaps the two guys. Yeah, these kinds of things happen. I just robbed a bank. Cops are behind me, and the ink pack just exploded on my hand. But I've got your money. But I've got your money. But don't come here. Don't come here.

At the end of high school, I was like, maybe I should start figuring out a way to get into the law. So I started working for my former partner who's now deceased. So I started doing shit in the office. And next thing you know, he's like, we got some interesting stuff. And so this is like the circus begins, you know. It's like, oh, I'm really, really getting into the whole wild, crazy chaos of the criminal law world. So we had this client. I'd been a longstanding street-level dealer client of his that had done pretty well in that world

because he kept getting off. He had the best lawyer. And he ended up getting a possession of the intent to distribute case. A couple of days before the case, my partner, Gil, calls him up and says, hey, man, you owe me a shit ton of money. Got to pay me. And the guy's like, oh, man, kill, you know, I'm not hustling anymore. It's like, it's hard for me to get the money. It's like, well, your trial's coming up.

If you want a lawyer, he used to play a really hardball with them. You want a lawyer, you're going to get me paid. And so the guy had this brilliant idea. He says, all right, I'll get you paid. Two days later, I'm not messing with you. Friday, get this phone call. Gil, I just robbed a bank. Cops are behind me, and the ink pack just exploded on my hand.

But I've got your money. But I've got your money. But I've got your money. But don't come here. Don't come here. I'm on my way. Meet me at the corner of it was. So they got him.

You know, court was on Monday. This happens on Friday. So it's just this next series of events. So you can't even make this shit up if you try to. So now he has the possession of intent case and he has a bank robbery case. So Gil says him, well, now you're going to have to pay me for two cases. What are you going to do? I want to help you.

But what are you going to do? to do. He says, well, from my hustling days, I have, I have a couple of things. One of them is a Delorian. And if you can get the Delorian, I have the title to it, you know, I'll sign it over to you, and you can sell that and you can, I can get you paid. Interesting, unique set of circumstances. Why didn't you do that to begin with and skip the bank robber? Yeah. But people don't think that, they don't want to give up their stuff, you know. You've seen that a million times. They don't want to give up what they have. They want to figure out new ways to come up with cash. So I am tasked with the idea of going down to pick up this Delorian out of some guy's driveway.

So little seek me, a 19 years old, 18 years old, jump in my Chevy S-10 and I go down there. And I'm looking under the tarp and I see, wow, this is really a Delorean. It's kind of cool, you know, back to the future car. And just fishing around, up comes this guy. that time he seemed pretty old to me. He's probably in his mid-40s. And he comes out, he's got a shotgun. What the hell are you doing?

What are you doing? I'm like, well, I work for so-and-so. They said it's okay to come pick this car. Well, that car is mine. You can't take this car. I was like, well, we have the title to the car? And the guy says, it's getting scary. So I go jump back into the car.

Like, that's going to save me from a shotgun and call out the office. And we end up having to call the client. client's mother who was very adamant that she was going to get what she wanted to get. She came down there and she got that car towed out of there. We ended up selling the car representing a guy who did his time and life goes on. You know, it's just, but that's the kind of crazy circus antics that go on in the, in the chaotic criminal world is what it. I would think it would be much more fun to be a state attorney than it would.

would be a federal attorney. A state level attorney versus... Yeah, state criminal defense attorney than a federal, because the federal seems so procedural and long and dragged out. 100%. I know the money is better, like, but it's still such a... It seems like the state criminal defense attorneys, you know, they're not getting a $75,000, you know,

because their clients are making the same kind of money. but the cases seem so much more fun and interesting. And you get to kind of really know the prosecutors and the judges and you're in and out. It seems more of a relaxed setting than it is than the federal. And it's faster. It's more make a deal as opposed to, well, here's the guidelines. Like, oh, let's get a chart out, get some pen, a pen and paper. And it seems like a pain in the ass.

It really is. So the federal system is basically stack. against the criminal defendant is what it comes down to. You have the federal government that has no budget limit. Yeah. Right? So in your case, they can spend as much money to come after you and doesn't matter as long as they get the conviction.

Right. So, and then they have all these agencies, FBI, CIA, and ATF, all of the agencies that have those acronyms. And they're coming after you with unlimited budgets to put these people away. And you have federal judges that sort of, you know, they rule. Let them do whatever they want. They do whatever they want. They do whatever.

Yeah, they rubber stamp the indictments and they keep going forward. And you have prosecutors that are playing with four races. You know, they have no benefit to working something out. Oh, you can take the top count. And if you want to do that, you know, we'll give you all those qualifications for lesser, more points or lesser points in terms of what you're going to get on the sentencing guidelines. And basically, as a federal defense attorney, you're just carrying the casket. You know, you're just helping making sure that the sentencing memorandum is done properly.

So you get all the reductions in points so that you minimize the exposure. You go do your time. You do, what, what is it, 92% of your time essentially in the federal system? No, it's 85%. But now with the First Chance Act, first step act, first step act. But now it's reduced. You can do like 55% if you, if you have the right charge. because some people, if it's any violence at all, you're not getting any.

Right. But, yeah, just by programming and getting a job, the stuff you were doing anyway, you can, you can basically get out at about 55 or 60% of your time. So they're basically switching over as a result of that, or that range, you know, from 55. So if you're getting a sentence that they call it 10 to 20, you might do 10, you do up to 20 is what it comes down to. Yeah, how you behave in prison. So the federal system has caught up a little bit. in that respect. But at the end of the day, trying to fight that

unless you have really deep pockets, and you know this, you've been through the process, unless you have really deep pockets to be able to fight all of the levels of scrutiny that you were associated with, you're going to end up going to jail

for a pretty good chunk of time. And they're not really coming after the day-to-day crimes that we see on the state level. To go back to your mention of the difference between the state and the federal system, they're really going after the crimes that, you know, are going to make the headlines and you're going to make a big difference,

you know, Luigi Mangione and such, because they're trying to use that as setting the example as the idea. So the day-to-day things that we deal with on the state level, obviously are very unique, very personality-oriented, very credibility-oriented. So as a defense attorney, I see it all happen. And in our world, it's very different from the federal world. It's not like the loudest defense attorney is going to get the best results. It's the defense attorney that has the most credibility that's going to get the best results. So you can sit here and say, oh, man, I do lunch with the judges on Fridays and play golf on Saturdays.

They all say that shit, too. It's all BS. I know. Listen, you know how many times we've had, we've talked to guys? You're like, no, bro. Like, my lawyer, you know what I was a big time lawyer. Like, he used to play golf with the judge. You have any fucking idea how many people I've talked to?

where their attorney played golf, or they were good friends with the prosecutor, or like, none of that's true. Like, stop it. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, it, I think you had a person on recently that was saying that her defense attorney was having sex with the prosecutor or had a relationship with the prosecutor.

None of that matters. At the end of the day, and you can say that, and I guess judges play a lot of golf if every defense attorney is playing golf with them. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know when these guys do anything done. But, but the bottom line is it has nothing to do at any of the,

that bullshit. It really has to do with the credibility that you gain through the system, right? So I go in there, I try a case, I try a fair case. I'm not there to bully anybody. I'm just trying to do it what's right by the law. Right. Right. And people tend to forget, you know, everybody raves, oh, constitutional this, constitutional that. The constitution was written for innocent people. It wasn't necessarily created for guilty people. Yeah. So we can wave all those red flags around saying that, oh, Fifth Amendment, First Amendment, Second Amendment, all the amendments right to counsel. But at the end of the day, it's only going to help you as if you're on the innocent side of it. So it's huge. And the problem is that people will hire us, whether it's in the

federal case or on the state case, they don't always take our advice. So, you know, you're paying a ton of money. I mean, I've got it all. I'm not complaining about anything in life. I've got everything that you can imagine. But people don't take the advice that they're paying me a shit ton of money to follow. I had a case, Choma. He was accused of having a relationship with his girlfriend's younger sister who happened to be under the age of 10. Okay. Yeah, bad case. Yeah. And somehow, I was able to negotiate something where this person would end up doing less than 18 months in jail. And I said, you know, that's a pretty good deal. You should probably take it based on the allegations here because you can only get a lot worse.

And this guy says, young guy, he was in mid-20s. And he was not documented. So either way, he was going to get sent back to his home country. He was going to be deported. But getting deported after doing 10 to 18 months is much better than getting deported after doing 30 years in the U.S. and as a chomo. So I said, you really should take this.

Now I'm going to put it in the hands of God. Oh, well, that's a mistake. We turned down the deal. I'm thinking God's not going to be okay with this. Not with somebody in that position. He came in with his Bible, turned down the deal.

I had him documented because I thought that this one was going to bite me in the ass. I said, you know, I'm going to have you say, my lawyers are telling you to do this. I'm not going to do it, and I'm going to roll the dice. Right. Well, here comes a superseding indictment. You know what a superseding indictment.

Yeah. Yeah. So he's indicted for an additional crime. Additional crimes came along. Had he taken that deal? Everything would have stopped. So the superseding indictment comes along and I said, see, you should have taken the deal. It would have been over 30 years.

We went to trial, lost. Evidence was good. There was nothing that we could make up as a motive that this young lady was lying. Her she had so much detail. Right. There was nothing you can do. I mean, a lot of times as a defense attorney, we're dealing with credibility issues of witnesses. Right.

Right. So people talk. And when they talk, sometimes you can limit their credibility or show that they're not credible, and the jury will find reasonable doubt. But it's really hard to do that when somebody's under the age of 10 and she knows things that she shouldn't know is what it comes down to. I mean, I have an 11-year-old daughter. I know how it works. Right.

greatest thing in the world from the perspective of being the father or an 11-year-old that knows that this shit goes on in the real world. They're like, good ridden's, yeah, go do your, go do your time and get deported is what it comes down to. Sorry, about your troubles. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, if you would have just taken my advice, he paid me a shit ton of money. I mean, it's a lot of money for somebody that has none. They beg, borrowed, and stole to get me paid, not a bank robbery, but. Right. And I think this is probably a good part to ask this question, how do you think about representing someone like that? Like, how are you able, like, I don't know, you know, if somebody you think, like, oh, this guy's a, you know,

piece of crap or this, like, yeah, like, yeah, this guy's guilty. Yeah, why would you represent someone like that? But I think, oh, I mean, it's your, I mean, in my opinion, the system is set up, an adversarial system that is set up where everybody deserves representation. So as an attorney, you have to put, I think you're supposed to, you're supposed to put that aside and say, I'm not thrilled with, you know, what you're accused of or what you did, but you do have a right to an attorney, right? Yeah. It is a very good question.

It's a question I get asked a lot. Unfortunately, I can't live the life of a morality police officer. People come to me, and I have to take them at their work, right? So the bottom line in this case is, what? I thought didn't really matter, he told me that he didn't do it. Right. And if he told me he didn't do it, it's very different from somebody that, their regular client.

Yeah. You know, the guy that stole from Target or the guy that drank and drove, those guys, they did it. There's no question about it. So that's just mitigating loss. But if somebody comes in and says, I didn't do this murder. I've been charged with it. My job is not to judge what's against them.

My job is to say, okay, you're telling me you didn't do it. So very similar to this client that I'm telling you about that didn't take the deal, I had to take him at his word as his lawyer that he didn't do it. He never admitted to me that he did it to this day. On the other side of the coin, I knew that the evidence was way, way, way stronger than him saying he didn't do it. And he didn't want to hear that. He didn't want to hear the fact that the evidence was going to bury him. But my job is to balance that, to say, okay, I'm not saying that you did it.

And, you know, there's ways to get around that if you choose to. So in the case where if you would have taken the plea, he would have done it as an Alford plea. Are you familiar with an Alford plea? It's a guarantee, right? Like, aren't their hands tied? No. No, that's a little bit different.

And Alford plea. You go in and you admit it. You're saying that I agree that the state or the federal government has evidence against me. Okay. So you're not admitting. You're saying, I understand you can convict me of this, but I'm not admitting that. But I'm not saying that I did it.

Okay. So that gives you a little bit of wiggle room. I think that there's enough evidence to convict me, but I'm not saying that I did do this. Okay. So it's wiggle room. So he would have done it as an al for plea. So he would have been able to, in his deep down heart and to God that he

believed that he didn't do it. And, and, but the evidence was obviously a lot more, you know, and that he could get convicted. So to come full circle to the conversation, the question that Colby asked about how I feel about it, it's, it's, I don't take this very easily. Now, if I know somebody has done it, I tell him from the beginning, hey, my job is not to get you off of this. My job is to mitigate your losses. Right. To limit your exposure so that you don't end up in jail for the rest of your life and get you the best deal possible. And that's the thing that people really take offense who criminal defense attorneys because they're just talking about, oh, we're always doing deals.

We're always working out things. We're working out things because a guilty person has come to us and said, get us the best possible deal. When we're trying cases, when we're saying the client is not guilty, we're not working deals. But it's few and far between where the client is saying that they're not guilty. It leads me to another similar situation where a client did say he was not guilty. And so murder case. Gentleman is alleged to have

strangled his wife. Roll her up into a carpet dumps her off all while their six, seven year old son is in the next bedroom in a townhouse, small, small type of house, 15-00 square foot house. Criminals aren't masterminds, as you know.

Yeah. And in these cases, a lot of times they talk. Years went by before they found the body. Her car had disappeared, and they found a car about four miles down the road on the highway, abandoned. And so it took years before they found the body, which was about 20 miles away from the home. By that time, the five, six-year-old son was older, 12, 13, old enough to understand what had happened. And he was dealing with that, that point that is. father was being charged with killing his mother while he was asleep in the next room.

He got convicted. He got convicted, even though he denied doing it, because he called his girlfriend after committing the murder and wanted her to help him dispose of the body. It's a bad idea. Yeah, well. I don't even know why you need help disposing of the body. Like, can't you just go dig a hole? And I love these guys that they just, they just, just throw the body somewhere. They'll never find it here. Like, you can't dig a hole? Like, you, no, it's,

let me call some people. Let me let other people know that I've done this heinous crime. Yeah. So we did everything we possibly could to question the credibility of the girlfriend. Because she was the person that he had talked to and she had the most evidence on it. And she's no longer the girlfriend. She was no longer the girlfriend. She had some mental health issue. We choose everything we possibly can to discredit her.

But it didn't work because it was overwhelming evidence that, uh, He had done it. And their phone calls that night. Everything was there. It wasn't as advanced as it is now because we were talking again about 25 years ago. There weren't texts going back and forth. There weren't cell phone towers pinging as easily as they are now. I mean, technology now, you leave a paper trail, electronic trail everywhere you go.

But in those days, it wasn't that severe. But the biggest problem with that case is we're sitting in the courtroom and even the judge took consideration of it is that, I get to sentence you, while your son is now 14 years old, listening to me tell him that his father killed his mother, you know, the change in the environment. But we did, there was no deals made in that case. There was nothing.

He said he didn't do it. We tried the case. The jury overwhelmingly found that he was guilty of the offense. And so a lot of, how much time did he get? He's probably out now. I think he got 30. So were the, was the prosecution, was a state? offering anything? They

did offer a plea in that case, but it wasn't good enough. It wasn't something that we would consider. If we would have got it down to manslaughter, it would have been different. But we got it off of the first-degree murder, and so I think we ended up

it was second-degree murder is what it came down to. You know, we had some stuff to work with in terms of did she get killed during rough sex? kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

Like, it could have been, it could have been an accident. It could have been an accident. I don't know why you would call your girlfriend to get rid of the body afterwards, but that's neither here nor there, you know? You know, what's funny is that there's a show on Netflix. It's in New Orleans. I don't know what it's called. It's not 48 hours.

I don't know what it's called, but it's, I have, I watched probably 10 episodes. And is it a documentary type show? Yeah, so they're following like the New Orleans Police Department. Homicide squad? Homicide squad. Homicide squad. Yeah. And listen.

Homicide. Homicide. Okay, there we go. And here's the thing is, I haven't seen them. I have not seen them solve a case yet where they didn't show up, two in the morning, walk up and go, geez that's oh and what happened so is he with okay and so he saw the okay what let me talk to him for a okay all right good okay we're gonna need the footage off of that camera right there I know that uh Bucky's over here they have two cameras uh then they walk he walked that way

okay so we got Buckees we got all right also the I mean they have six cameras they like almost every one of them if they're not directly there they can see the in the distance okay I can see this guy and this guy guy and then this guy walked here, go go get Bucky. So Bucky's, he walks right by Buckey. He's got a million pictures. Yeah, there's photos everywhere. And they'll follow him down the street to get into his car. And then when he drives through the next intersection, okay, you got the card reader. Okay, get the flock camera. Okay, where is he now? Okay, he went all the way here. Okay, so he lives in this area. Yeah, what's the next one? Okay, so the next day he left? Okay, so we know he lives

in this block. I mean, we're talking about within 45 minutes, they know the block. And they, let's take a drive out there. They drive out there and they're like, is that the car? I think that's the car. Hey, no, that's the car. Oh, yeah, get the tag number. Okay, let's pull him up. Oh, he's been arrested six times.

I know this guy. This is Todd. I mean, it's like, you're like, this is. I tell people all the time, don't do a crime if you don't want to be taped doing it because it's going to get taped doing it. It's insane. Like, and I'll bet you this guy thought I got away with it. Yeah. Why?

Why? I pulled the mask over about a block before I got it. there. Yeah, but, but the whole place is covered. The whole place, like you took it off as you walked by Bucky's. Yeah. And you walked by here and you drove your own car and you did. It's just, unless you're killing people in fields out in the middle of nowhere, it's, it's, yeah, I don't know how anybody could get away with pretty much anything at this point.

I don't, I don't think it's possible. Yeah. I mean, unless you are a mastermind, a criminal mastermind, because these things aren't usually planned out, right? The guy that's having these, the mass shootings, to a certain extent, he may plan it out, but he still gets caught from taking the train from Chicago to Washington or New York with the guns and, you know, to avoid it. Luigi Manjone. Yeah. The guys, by the way, I mean, a legitimate genius, master's degree, brilliant guy thought of every single thing.

He made one mistake. He like pulled this thing down just to say, you know. How you doing? Yeah. Just to flirt with a girl. He's so far removed from this whole situation. This is days before, like, one mistake. Like, listen, bro, it's too late.

You can't do it. You're going to have to, people are going to have to start letting things go. Yeah, but that's a problem. I'm going to have to let that go, though. I can't go around shooting CEOs. Right. That will catch it. Do you know he had a whole list?

I did not know that. Oh, you got to listen. It's my buddy Pete's writing a book about it right now. Oh, my God. it's so insane what this guy's plan was. It's crazy that somebody that had the world by the balls, educated, wealthy, good-looking, the whole nine yards. On paper, he looks perfect.

And then he has this whole manifesto underneath of it all, you know? It's wild. He's, oh, I mean, it's a Ted Kaczynski. Yeah, it's a mental illness. Like, look at Edward Snowden. Edward Snow. Yeah. It's kind of like him.

It's like, you're brilliant. You could be a multi-millionaire. No, no, I want to do this other thing. Like, what mental illness do you have that you can't just make a bunch of money, get married to a hot chick and have kids? Like, you have to, no, no, I'm going to change the world. I'm a, I forget what those people, what they're called, where they think that everybody should be able to do what they want,

and I'm going to set up a platform where everybody just buy drugs and will mail them through it. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost thinking that nothing is appropriate to, apply to them. They have this grandiosity that they're going to get away with it all. But that's the sole thing with this Luigi. He's going to do a whole reset where he's going to start killing off all the CEOs because he thinks that the health care system is unfair.

Like it is unfair. What are you doing? It's just it is what it is. You know, you're not going to be able to change it. I think they put something in today that I heard that they're going to sort of some kind of not criminally responsible motion or something. I just heard it briefly before I came I think they start, I think they're doing like Baudier in like September. They're starting to pick the jury, I think. Yeah, and that kind of a case, you know, it's going to take forever the, you know, because people still love them. Yeah.

For what he did. It's just so crazy. But going back to what you were saying about, you know, the underlying mental health issues, these day-to-day crimes, it's all. 90% of it is mental health. And the state-level courts, I would suggest to you, are just running a really inept mental health program. Yeah.

The amount of housing these people for temporarily. Right, right. So the number of people that they have underlying anxiety and depression that are self-medicating, and then as a result of self-medicating, either getting high on drugs or getting high on alcohol, and then doing all kinds of crimes, whether it's just speeding and getting pulled over for a DUI or going down the wrong way, down a highway and killing somebody, right? But the underlying issue is I have anxiety, I have depression, I don't know what else to do about it.

I don't want to be medicated because the medications make it so I can't feel this, that, and the other thing. So alcohol makes it better. So I'm going to take a depressant on top of depression, and it's going to make me feel better for a temporary effect. And next thing you know, I'm going to ruin my life for somebody else's life. What about this chick that drove her McKinsey, Shirilla? Runs your car into the brick wall.

It's a very, on a day-to-day level, if you start looking at, I think the statistics are in one county alone. It's like 15,000 alcohol-related offenses, right? It's one county in a small state. The bottom line is the system is over-pressurized with that. If the system would have the time to look at what the underlying issue is and figure it out and not try to house these people, as we say. And whether it's housing them for a day, a weekend, 30 days, six, is that going to change anything?

No. Well, I mean, it gets them all the street temporarily. But the problem, the thing is, is that you would think from a, you know, and I understand the government is not really supposed to be thinking from a business perspective. But let's talk about just dollars and cents. Dollars and cents, you could hire how many social workers or what you'd call them social people, probation officers, could you hold, could you hold? Could you? Could you hold? Could you? you pay and how many psychiatrists could you pay to say, hey, we're going to put you for five years. We're not going to send you a deal for two years. For six years, we're going to give you, put you on probation, you have to report to your probation officer, and you have to have mental health counseling, and the state will pay for it, and I'll bet you they would still save a ton of money. Absolutely. Because this person's only got to call you once a week.

That'd be a lot for a video. Call you once a week just to make sure you're. You're going to your, you're going to the counseling on Tuesdays and Thursday. To you take your meds? You're going to the, yeah, yeah, you're taking, you know, just, and also imagine what that would do for them that somebody's looking out for me, somebody's worrying about me, somebody, because that means a lot to people. Most people start to get desperate, nobody cares about them, and they start to make bad

decisions, and then they have nobody to talk to, but now you've got a, you got a counselor, and you've got a probation officer who's kind of holding you accountable. And if you send them, if every time they fucked up, they went to fucking jail for 30 days or 60 days and had to kind of reset everything, that would at least let have a, it'd be an incentive to keep themselves at least out of jail. And they'd probably, maybe after five years, they probably might get their shit corrected. They have some great local programs in our court systems, which really work. We have a veterans court system. The veterans court, if you're a former vet, you have that as an option. So you get charged with something. You go into

the veterans court system. They assign you a counselor. that you talk to every week, because these people are fucked up from being in war or being PTSD and all those things, which are legit, and they're drinking or drugging, and as a result of that, having all these other issues.

And then they have assigned a counselor, they have a therapist, and those people make sure that they follow through on their meetings and do everything. And the rates of repeat offenders go down so much as a result of that, that these programs work.

Same thing with alcohol and drug offenses, if you can get them into these programs. And there's a lot of criteria they have to meet where they live, what their age is, what they're, you know, all the demographics and how, but the people that get changed, those are the ones that get changed. Not the guy that they lock up for 30 days, 60 days. In Maryland, where I work, if you get less than 18 months, it's a local jail sentence versus going to the penitentiary.

And you know, as well as I do, if you were going to the penitentiary, you're going to come out a better criminal and more fucked up than you were if you go to a local jail is what it comes down to. Okay. In general, I think it's just, in general, it's just a bad. It's a, it's, it's not improving most of these guys going to, going to jail or prison. No, jail is still something they see the end in sight. And they usually, say you get an 18-month sentence, you're going to be out in 13 of those 18 months.

So it's just over a year. And it can be a reset. But I don't think it lowers the rates in that much because they've figured out other ways to beat the system is what it comes down to. Once they go off into the penitentiary system, the prison system, it's a whole different ballgame, right? And obviously, it's very different from when you talk to people that have been on the show that have done local state time versus have done federal time. It's a different environment for both of those systems altogether. Yeah. The problem is that I would rather be in prison than in the jails because it's like,

you're in a small city. There's so much to do. You can go walk the track. You can play handball. But that's in the federal system. Oh, yeah. I kind of assume it's similar in the state, but no, it's just sucks just as bad. Oh, it's horrible.

But see, in the state, like, it's so much more violent. Yeah. There's so much more violence. I don't commit state crimes. Smart man. Still do it. I don't think you're going to be committing any crimes anytime soon, being that you've done your time and learned your lesson.

Yeah, I'm all better now. I was going through a bad time. You know, your honor? I don't know what I'm thinking. Yeah, exactly. You're off paper now, so it doesn't really affect you, right? Yeah, no. I'm off, you know.

You're not saying this for lip service is what I'm trying to say. No, no. You actually did have an impact on you. Oh, what, going to prison? Yeah, of course. Yeah. I'm done with that. Not everybody says that, though.

Oh, no, some of these guys love it. I feel like Zach loves being in prison. He just can't stop going. He just can't do it. My buddy's, you know, we talked about him. He's, I mean, there's lots of these guys. They just, I always love that term. They're doing life in the installment plan.

Right, right, yeah. They're doing 12 months. They get out for three. They go back for 18. They get out. They cut for a year. They go back for seven years. They get out for 18 months.

They go back for, just like, what are you doing? But they don't know any better. They don't know how it is live life out and being free. It's, it's to them if they don't have those limitations. put on them, they just don't know how to handle. I had a client that had been out of the prison system since he was 16, right, whether as a juvenile or as an adult. And he would come out and say to me,

I don't know how to live outside the system, right? So he'd try to get legitimate and, you know, get these jobs or warehouses and things. You see, no education, right? Yeah. It's very limited in what you can do. He's used to slinging and making a shit ton of money. And unfortunately, he comes out, He's making $20 an hour as a delivery driver for Amazon.

He can't live on it. You know, he still wants to have the nice things. So what's you going to do? Yeah. It's just the way it works. So like you said, you'll get out for a couple years, be out for, go back in for a couple years, be out for a couple. And next thing you know, they're 65 years old and they can't do any of it anymore. We had a guy named Palmer.

I remember this was the medium. He is a bank robber. And he was, he would rob a bank, go to jail for three or four years, get out, try and get a job, couldn't make it, couldn't just couldn't do it, wasn't able to make enough money, we'd go rob a bank, we'd go back to jail for four, five, five, it keeps getting worse, you know, six years. And this time I think he had like a nine-year sentence or something. And I was, I was like, what are you going to do, Palmer? And Palmer, by the way, was not. This was a very, very mellow guy, you know. Didn't seem like that type. Yeah, I wouldn't think he could. He couldn't hurt. Like, I wouldn't be in.

If he came in and give me all the money, I'd be like, come on, stop it, bro. Like, you're not serious. Was he always in the federal system? Yes. So he and he, we were talking one time. And I was like, what do you do when you get out? He said, well, I'm going to try and get a regular job. And I was like, okay.

I said, well, what are you planning on doing? He's like, well, I don't know, whatever I can get a job doing. You had no thought. You know, and I was like, okay. And he said, I said, are you planning anything? Are you, he's like, well, man, I'm going to try and get, try and get some kind of job. He said, I'll be honest with you, man. He said, I'm probably going to rob a bank.

He said, because the truth is, I've been doing this for my whole life. He said, I've never had a job in my life that made enough money that I could pay my bills. He said, I just haven't. He said, I get jobs at fast food restaurants. I get jobs at in warehouses. I get jobs. He said, and, you know, I try. Like, usually I get out and I can stay on someone's,

couch for a couple months, but then they get tired of that. He's like, and then maybe I'll get like a room somewhere, an apartment, but, you know, I ride the bus, but eventually you, he said, riding the bus. Eventually, you, you lose your job because the buses don't go run on time or you're late or you're, and he was a fuck up, you know, he didn't set his alarm. He did, but he, you know, there's no backup. If you lose the job, now you're, now you're getting kicked out of the place you're at because your, the next check is not for $450, it's for $112. You don't have the money. And you got, it takes another week or two to get the, the new job, you know, told that he doesn't have a...

And you're violating your probation because you don't have a job and you don't have a place to stay and you don't have... So he said, I'm going to try, but he said, the truth is, he said, I'm probably going to rob a bank. And he never, I think he almost always did it with like a note because, like, the first time he got like three or four years. And then the next time, it was more because he did it again. Yeah. Next time was more, like, even the note thing, which usually is only like three years.

The time you serve on the note thing? Yeah, on a note, as long as it's not threatening. Yeah. The problem is is that that's fine. Please give me your money. Yeah, that's the first time. But the second time, it's not. Now it's five or six.

And the next time it's like nine or ten. Right. And you're like, it's still a note. It doesn't matter. Now your criminal history is getting higher and higher. Yeah, it goes back to sentencing guidelines. Right. Eventually that note will get you 30 years.

Right. And you're like, it's just a note. It doesn't matter. You're off the chart. Yeah. And he just, yeah, but he was the nicest guy. He was the nicest guy. But that's the example of the guy that doesn't know any better.

The people that redeem themselves are the most amazing stories, right? So the issue is where is a difference? That's me. That's you. I mean, you have changed the trajectory of your life based on what you learned from doing wrong, quote unquote. And now you're rebalancing it and turning it around and trying to benefit from it and make a good life for you and your family is what it comes down to. Yeah. I only have a bunch of a family left, but, yeah, I just started another family.

I had to go out and get another family. Yeah, I was saying it seems like you got about a full house now. I know. Yeah. My wife and my wife, her daughter, her, whatever, my grandson and whatever, you know, step-grandson, I guess, whatever. And her father's retiring, and he's going to live with us too. Oh, beautiful. So I know.

It's getting. And a dog. Oh, and we got a dog. So you do become a dog more than anybody in the house. You have become a sandwich generation taking care of. the father and the kids and the grandkids. Her dad is so cool, though. He, listen, he's just the most laid back.

All he wants to do is drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. And, I mean, he, my favorite is that Jess and I, when we first met, we were, you know, breaking up, getting back together. One day she goes into her dad and says, like, I just don't know what to do. Because he kept telling her, he's like, just leave that guy. Either date the guy or just leave him alone. You keep breaking up with him. You text him every day for a week. He's like, you just broke him.

got with him. Why are you texting him? He said, leave him alone. If you're not interested, and you don't want to be your friend. And so she comes to him and says, you know, it's just that, and she said for 45 minutes, I just talked about you. And at the end of it, he looked at her and he goes, relationships are hard. And he got up and walked away. That was it. That's experience talking. He's a very cool. He's pretty cool. You would never know he was in the room. If he was here right now, he would be sitting over there. You'd never know he was there. You'd never know he was He doesn't talk. He doesn't make noise. He doesn't, he's just a quiet guy. He's always had a solitary job. He's a, um, a breeder for, uh, for, um, dairy farms. And, you know, he's just, it's a solitary. They don't have,

they don't, there's not a lot of interaction. He's just a quiet guy. So it's like, you know, him moving in, you won't even know he's there. You know, sounds like the perfect in law to have. He's perfect. He's perfect. I, I, I keep saying we, we're going to have to get, we do, we got a big umbrella. So we're going to have to get something in the backyard where he can sit outside and smoke cigarettes and drink, but he'll be out there forever. Every time we go to his house, he's sitting outside smoking a cigarette or he's inside, not smoke, he smokes outside, but he'll, he's watching a TV program. He's just quiet. He's just, some people live the life of a wallflower and it works very well for them. It's just the way it is. But going back to redemption,

I mean, those people that do get better is what keeps us lawyers, kind of having hope is what it comes down. I thought you were going to say depressed. Like you need that repeat business. No, no, no. I don't have the philosophy. I tell people all the time, I don't need you coming back.

Don't do it again. You know, especially the younger ones. You know, you're going to see him again in five, 10 years, the ones that continue to do the stupid shit

that they're going to do. And I'm like, I don't want you to come back. I want you to get better and learn from your lesson the first time. Have you thought about like a, like a subscription plan where you go out and pass out,

like go to the local drug holes and pack out your things, say, listen, it's $50 a month. You got to build it up. But after a year, like now you've got, you got $600 of retainer. I'll come see you when you get, you know, if everybody pays in, then I'll represent everybody. It's an insurance policy is when it comes down to. Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, you need to, you are going to get busted.

We should be talking from business advice at some point. They don't think they're going to get, actually that's not true. The drug dealer, it's always funny about the drug dealers is that they know they're going to get busted. Oh, no. they're planned. Yeah. It's planned.

How many of them have come to me and said, can I just give you a retainer? Keep it in account. Just keep it for me. No, no, no. That's not the way it works. I don't want to manage your money and I don't want it to be commingled with drug money. And the government come to me and say, oh, you took fee from so and so. And did you know that that was the proceeds of dirty money?

I don't know. Yeah, how do you manage that? How do you like make sure that, okay. Does the government ever come and say how this guy pay? you? Absolutely. Especially, you know, we, we, anytime we get over 10 grand in cash, we deposit, we say, we got it from them. They told us from legitimate sources. I don't know. I can't say it. It's because it's in tens and 20s. It's not on me. But we're very, very careful. It goes into

a criminal trust account. It sits there until we, we earn the fee and we take the fee out. You know, people get busted with money all the time. You know, you go through the airport. You know how many times you go through the airport and people have money taped around them on a regular basis. I mean, probably once a week I get a call. I was in Chicago. I had $90,000, you know, taped to my waist and they took it from me. I like it. They take it and let them go. Yeah, they just take it and let them go. Yeah. There's a receipt. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know what? Even though if it's legitimate, so, oh, yeah, I sold my house for $250,000. I had $90,000 in cash. I was going to the casino and, you know, that was my plan with it. Why'd you

tape it to your waist? Well, it's the safest place in the world. Okay, the government has taken it. Right. Now we can try to get it back. We can get it back. If you can show where it came from, the problem is if it's proceeds from drugs or something. Right. You're not getting it back. And the fact that if it's with the government, it could take six months to a year to get it back by the time you go through the process. I've done it.

I've gotten people's money back. But the best ones are that can't show where it came legitimately. Well, I had $50,000 from my grandfather from my college kid to college tuition. And I just had it sitting in a book. and then they came and raided my house for something else and they found this and they wanted me to give it back. But how am I supposed to prove it? How my grandfather gave it to me.

Well, my grandfather was a, you know, he was a musician and he just got a lot of cash and he would give it. Are you kidding me? Oh, can you prove that it was in a will or something? Oh, no, he wrote in the back of a note on the back of a piece of paper. Okay, we're done. Your money's gone. Your money's gone.

I'm not going to bullshit you, you know? You're not going to blow money on me to try to get your money back. But the people that actually do well, I mean, countless times I can say. I represented this, it's funny, he was a grave digger. And he was an alcoholic, full-blown alcohol. Looked like one, but really nice teddy bear of a guy. And one, on the third offense, I said to him, listen, man, I'm really getting tired of this shit. Can you, can you cut it out?

What is he doing? What are the offenses? Alcohol-related driving. Oh, just DUIs. DUIs or driving a suspended license or because he had DUIs, you know, it's just stupid shit, right? So the beginning is, I got a DUI. I lost my license. I lost my license, but I still need to go to work.

So I drive the car. The car doesn't have legitimate tags on it. I get pulled over. Now I'm driving suspended, but I still don't have a license. And I said, dude, let's fix your license. Let's get you straight. And can we make sure that you're going to AA on a regular basis or some kind of 12 something to keep you.

He got on the wagon doing really good. Three, four, five years go by. And I remembered very carefully that very well that he was a grave dick. It's a different, unique kind of job. So I was going somewhere and get the top of the shoulder in the parking lot. Oh, here we go. You just never know. And a big guy, see me a hug.

He says, man, you got me sober and got me straight. My life is really good. I got a job at the Veterans Administration Cemetery. I'm driving, you know, one of those big pieces of equipment. I get paid really well. Thank you so much. You know, those redemption stories are really the ones that make a different. Isn't it funny? You probably just, just, it's just for you, it was just like just common sense,

straighten your life up. And then probably nobody ever really says that to him. Because he hangs out with a bunch of other drunks, if at all. So nobody ever says like, look, what are you doing? You know, like you think about what you're doing here. If you take the time with these people that are getting themselves into trouble and get them to realize it and then do something about it, realizing is one thing and doing it as another. Addiction runs in. my family. I have a younger brother who suffers from anxiety and depression. He medicates by drinking copious an ounce of alcohol. And vodka is the cheapest thing to get. And this kid is a kid. He's in 40s now. You know, IT jobs, six figures, the whole nine yards, but can keep a job for a couple

years until he curses out his boss and go fuck themselves and next thing you know, he's getting fired. But he suffers from it. He's had several DUIs, several issues. I've tried. He's my brother. He's in blood. And I've tried, but just can't get your shit straight. He'll have a conversation with some guy on the bus. Right. And that guy will say, that'll resonate. That'll resonate. You'll be like, what the fuck? I spent 40 years trying to get you straight. I thought you four hours every three months. I taught you for four or five hours at a time. I know what this guy said in between stops. In between stops. There's a four minute conversation. Yeah, but what's what he said. You know, it'd be like nothing. It's like, something resonates with you. It resonates with you. So you never know what's

going to work. I mean, I have a client, I love him to death. He's such a great guy. Had everything. You know, the job, the job, the country club, two kids in private school, beautiful wife, beautiful home,

the whole nine yards. One day he's coming home from the country club. I played golf. After golf, had a few drinks. He was pulling into his neighborhood, and there was construction by him. Wasn't paying attention. and it's a road worker. Road workers.

Dead. Oh, geez. That's not good. Into his own neighborhood, in this fancy, fancy, fancy neighborhood. And I get the case, and I'm like, man,

let me go see it. And this guy's got cream of the crop credentials, the best of the best, of everything. I go see him and I said, what's going on? Why would you allow this

to happen when you life on paper looks so good. I said, how often do you drink? He says, I don't drink that all. Okay. What does that mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, exactly. It's all, all a storyline.

Four or five times a day. Yeah, four times a week. You know, how much you drink when you drink? Ah, it's just a couple. How many a couple? Three or four, you know, and it's not that big. What do you drink? Uh, bourbon, you know, it's usually that's my go-to.

Shit, man. You think you have a problem? No. I don't have a problem. Look at me. That red road worker, if he could still talk. Well, but he'd say you have a problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And why don't have a problem? All right, okay, you know our problem. Do me a favor. Just go into this program. Do it for the sake of maybe making you look good when we go to for sentencing purposes. Is he out on bond? He was out on bond.

Wow. Because of the credentials. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, he does. He does. I was going to say, I thought you maybe said, let me, can I have a conversation with your wife? And the wife walks in and she's like,

like a raving alcoholic. What are you talking about? And there was a conversation. the background with the wife about that. And when I saw him, he was incarcerated, but we got him out and on bond. So he went into the program. And then he went back and he did his time and got him a local sentence again under 18 months. He ended up doing about 12, 9 to 12 with 18 months.

You ran over a fucking. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the fuck is going on in Maryland. Are you that good or is Maryland that blast? I do a lot of these cases. and the bottom line is no judge and not even the prosecutors want to ruin somebody's life by putting him in the penitentiary system in the prison system.

Right. If they don't, they shouldn't be there. Right. Yeah. Some people, listen, I've been there. Some people don't belong. I'm in there with them thinking, you never should hit the street. Right.

You're a menace. Right. And then there's others that. Yeah. Of course, you're like, what are you doing here? How did you end up here? Right. So there's the two extremes.

So in the meantime, this client, he gets how he does his time. And now it's fast forward a couple of years. He calls me and says, hey, you know, you really help me out. I appreciate what you did for me. I get it now. And if there's anybody else that can help, let me know. In the meantime, he's running meetings. He's going back to the program that I put him in to...

I'm assuming this is AA, right? A.A. is part of it, but they have, you know, when you go to an inpatient program, They have like alumni meetings and things like that. They want people to come back that are doing really well. And he's advised at least three or four of my subsequent clients on how to handle jail. Like, you know, wearing three pairs of socks and two pairs of underwear into, before you get there because your commissary may not be funded, you know, for a couple of weeks and you want to have stuff. You know, he'll tell you all the ins and out.

Get a job in the kitchen as opposed to a job cleaning bathrooms. It's a better place and you get better food. You know, the things that you learn from being in jail. And he's willing to share that knowledge. In the meantime, he's doing great. You know, he doesn't have a license yet. We're working on that. He will soon.

But his life is going on. Kids are going to go to college. Everything's going to get paid for. His work is back on track, you know, back to that white collar position. So those are the stories that, you know, you see them. You're like, wow, that's redemption. That's somebody that can really, and that's what keeps me going. It's like, you know, it's like, how do you not become cynical when I'm dealing with chomos on a daily basis?

is when you have an 11-year-old daughter. And at the end of the day, you know, people will say, I think I even mentioned it earlier. Like, if you have money, you can kind of get where you want to be, you know, if you're getting exonerated of a crime. But I learned the hard way that it doesn't matter what resources you have, that you don't have control. We as humans, we don't have control over everything that we do.

And people say money buys happiness, but it doesn't. my older daughter passed away of brain cancer, but six, seven years ago. And thank you. And I had everything, man. I had the money. My wife's a physician. My mother-in-law is a neurologist.

My father-in-law is a doctor. My brother's doctor, an oncologist. I had, you know, I had it all. I had everybody lined up. You're struggling. Yeah. I had very much so. We had the resources, but I didn't have control.

It was, you know, I'm thinking. hey, we have everything. Yeah. But brain cancer, five months after she's gone. You know, it's like you think that money can buy happiness, money can buy everything. It doesn't work that way. So basically, all we can do is try to control what we have and sort of keep the world separate as a defense attorney, as a father, as a husband, as a friend.

You know, I can say to you, Matt and Matt, I see you all the time, man, you put back a couple of beers in five minutes. And, you know, you do it regularly and it's not a good idea. And I can have those conversations to you as a friend, and it may never resonate with you. It may never get to you. And next thing you know, Matthew Cox comes to me and says, and deep you told me I was going to fuck up. And I fucked up last night. I hit the road worker.

Right? And then it's then all of a sudden, what I have to say means something. Right? It just changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. And so our lots in life, where we are, doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to always come back. We all have duties. We have a duty to, you have a duty to your listener base,

that you're going to provide good content, right? But you're not going to always be able to do that, right? Really better stuff on Netflix. But, yeah, I hear what you're saying. No, I mean, I disagree. I think that you probably, you're... Colby's like, cut that. this fucking guy.

People that, I mean, what's the follower base up to, you subscribe or base YouTube over a 1.2 and at this point? 1.3. 1.1 and climbing. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a shit ton of pun. People. And it's got, you may not say it.

Neither of you probably say it, but it affects people, right? You know, listen, I get tons of emails. I get tons of, you know, it's, I get lots of them. I get lots of, you know, the comments. What was with the other day and the birthday? So someone commented early on the video, Happy Birthday, Matt, you know, love the show. But it was one of the earliest comments, so everybody saw it,

and it was just chain reaction. It's like 80% of the comments were happy birthday, bro, you're doing so great. Like just all these words of, you know, encouragement and happy birthday. It's not my birthday. By the way, that's coming up. But it is coming up. But that guy, that guy, almost every video, comments, happy birthday, Matt. He does it all the time, all the time.

I'm assuming it's the same guy. Yeah. I don't know why. He said he's just messing with you. I don't know what he's thinking. He's been doing it for six months or eight months. Like every other, every video he says it.

And it's like, because it's got to be the same guy. I didn't check because I didn't even know that's what it was. I just know Colby sent me a text. He said, bro, this is hilarious what's going on in the comment section. He's like, I was like,

they keep watching your happy birthday. I was like, did we talk about my birthday or so? Did we like? And then I realized what he just said. I was like, oh, that guy. That guy.

But the bottom line is what I was trying to say is that you, in what you do, make a difference in people's lives. Whether it educates them, whether it entertains them. Well, very different. Similarly, every one of those players that's involved, whether it's the criminal defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge, all these people, they have a huge impact on the lives of people. I mean, you know, you can sit there and say, that motherfucker, judge, you know, if he would have listened to me and, or. paid attention to me. But in the back of their minds, they have some kind of thought process that they have a duty to you.

Right. And the people is what it comes down to. It's like we were talking about, I think, during one of our calls about your friend Zach, who's gotten screwed because the judge keeps coming back to him. And, you know, that's how he feels, by the way, that he's getting screwed. But the truth is, you keep coming back to prison. Like, I don't know. What do you think this guy's supposed to do?

He's seen you. walk away every couple of years. And you, but at least Jack knows like, oh, no, if his name is Whittimore, if Wittimore is on the thing, he's like, I'm done. He's going to give me the max, no matter what. And it's like, of course, you keep coming back. It's not like you've seen you one time.

It's four or five times. And then you went to prison. You fought your case the entire time. And you're guilty. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that a lot of people don't get the idea that I fucked up. Yeah.

You know, they're going to put it on somebody else. going to blame it on other people, but at the end of the day, they're the ones that screwed screwed up and got them in that position. Nobody else puts you here? You know how to not be here? Stop committing crime. Right. Right. It's not that hard. Like, but, and there's no perfect crime anymore like we were talking about earlier. It's tough. It's tough. You're leaving crumbs everywhere you go. Everywhere. I don't know how. The only thing that if you're getting away with it for now, It is just probably for now because they don't have the manpower to check the videos, to check the text messages, to text the – like, that's the only way – That's over.

I mean, with AI now? Oh, I was going to say – and listen, when they – when those robots start – well, it's obviously – it's AI and robot. When all that gets connected and they work out the kinks, like, did you see that guy the other day? They went like two states over and arrested him. Oh, yeah. Because it showed – it was like 86 percent they believed it. was this one guy. The guy's like,

it's fucking work. Well, during the crime, I was four states away and at work. They came and arrested him and brought him. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah, I wasn't,

there's no way. Yeah, there's no way. But it still takes how many days, two, three weeks a month to figure it out and get yourself out of jail. But it gets better and better and better every day. Right.

Oh, no, in five years from now, or 10 years from now, and all the kinks are worked out, it'll be insane. You better, you better get a job.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. What should I do? Get a job. That's what you should do. Work on compound interest. Put your money in a fucking, you know, in an S&P account and then kick back. And what? There's great stuff on Netflix. You can start watching series, but this whole crime thing, that's for the birds. Right. Right. It's going to change it. But, you know, there's always people that are going to figure out a way around it to a certain extent. Always going to be able to manipulate something or do something. Yeah. Tease it and tweet. Listen, you're going to find a way, but at some point, you know, and you're going to find a way. But at some point. You know, I was going to say, could you do what you did to get in trouble in this day and age? Yeah, I could, I could still pull, I could still do that crime.

That crime could probably still be done. My problem is the camera, like, could I go get a fake ID? Yes, but it's got my picture on it. Right. You know, could I, you know, there are things, you know, there are ways I can think that you, what I would do now is I would do this and this, because I would feel like it,

I would have everything lead to someone else and then dump everything on that person and then walk away because just the way the system is and because there are people in the system, they would just focus on that one person. So let's say it took two years for them to find that person

because that person doesn't even know he committed a crime or he didn't, obviously. But by the time they find... The homeless guy. The homeless guy. Or it could be anybody. You really found somebody who had committed fraud?

That's the best scenario. Because now you're just fucked. You've got a history of it. Or even worse, you do the whole thing where you could... I mean, the same kind of thing could be done. if you go to an investor meeting and you meet another guy, you just talk to him, he didn't have to

come in, he's just an investor. But you meet him at the meeting and you talk to him, you know, grow your beard out, wear a wig or shave your head or wear a baseball cap or whatever. All the cameras are 40 feet away anyway, you know, even if they're there. And that's, keep in mind, this is something that could go on for years, but you go to that person, you give them a story where you explain to them that you get houses. Yeah, I actually get houses from a buddy of mine who works at a bank, but I have an a problem with the IRS, listen, if you want, you build up a relationship with the guy.

Of course, yeah. But, you know, it's take case. That's the con side of it. Yeah, the con side. You take time until he thinks you're another investor. You have conversations. He knows you're in the game. He knows you're in the real estate world.

He trusts you. And you say, listen, I'm going to tell you something. Here's how I've been making money. But I can't even do it anymore. It's so fucked up because I got so behind with the IRS. But I have a buddy who actually, these houses that get foreclosed on, I can actually, he'll hand me the houses. and I can sell the houses.

I could put them up for about 40% of what they're worth. Sell them. Take the money. He gets a portion of the money. You would get a portion of the money. The problem is I can't go to the closing. I can't be a part of it. You have to be the front work.

But we'll give you enough to pay sure you pay the taxes, but I've got to get the money in cash, like literally in cash. Like I don't know how we're going to, you're going to have to buy gold, you're going to buy something because I owe the IRS $12 million and I'm telling you right now. And that guy would be like, holy shit, what a fucking find.

I get 30% of the, you know, I'm keeping 50%, let's say, because I have to pay the taxes. So you, but you're going to end up with 25% total if you pay the taxes, whatever. Great. And then you just go find some houses and Airbnb. You rent the Airbnb out for two weeks. Yeah. You satisfy the mortgage on the property. You transfer the deed into this guy's name.

He puts it up on the market. It closes with an investor five to 10 days later while you still have the Airbnb. You get the money. Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, and... So the paper trail doesn't lead back to you until the guy. Right, that guy's done because you could probably do 10 houses before eventually these Airbnb people start to figure out they got ripped off. And then when the, it then takes the FBI another two months to put it all together.

But you're six months, three to six months out. And you're long gone by then. Way gone. He's, he's blowing up my phone looking for me. And man, I, you know, matter of fact, you know what you do? You leave the phone with him. Are you going to Indonesia? I don't know.

Cambodia or someplace Like go hang out with Bose yet Yeah But you could do that Especially if you didn't do in an urban area You did in a suburb somewhere Where it takes time for it to catch on Right and and there's not so many cameras

You know Yeah but now you've refined the strategy And what you would do Because you've been educated on Of course it's been in prison so many times But even then let's face it Even if they caught the guy Even if they said that's the guy there

And they pointed in it's Colby and everything And you know There's you would get a sweetheart deal. Why? Because everything went to him. Yeah. He's saying he gave me some money. Is that what he said? I don't buy any. I do know the guy. No, no. I met him at the at the investor thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's saying your name. You said your name was so and so. I, well, I never said that. No, no, my name is John. I mean, what are you talking about? Like, it's bad. Like, for him, they're going to, you, you'd almost walk away. Because there's just nothing but his word that you did this. And like he said, what? Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? That's what he said. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, listen, I didn't even have to talk to a little. lawyer. I can't talk to you anymore. But the lawyer's going to make it seem like, listen, I don't know this guy's using this guy as a fall guy. My guy says he doesn't know anything about it. Could you do it without keeping your mouth shut for the rest of your life on that?

I got a big mouth, bro. I like it. I'm the arrogant, the narcissism. It's hard. That's what sinks most criminals, man. It does. It does. And I know, and listen, it's a problem. Yeah. It's it's the bottom line. So if they can't connect to, to the dots. They can't connect you to DNA or ID or fingerprints or eyeball prints. And even if they catch you with the guy on film somewhere, as long as you're like, I don't know who that guy is. You're like, no, no, no, that's Jimmy. What's up with him? Why are you asking about Jimmy? But what would think you is that I had to tell somebody. Yeah, yeah, but it thinks you as your girlfriend coming and saying, now he was telling me all about it. He did, he convinced this guy,

he conned this guy into taking the, then it's like, ah, fuck, we got to get rid of her. No. You know, I was just saying, you know, you were talking about like your buddy doing the, doing the meetings, the AA meeting things, kind of, listen. So on, you know, where I'm going on Friday, do you know I'm going to, I'm flying to Utah to go talk in front of a, in front of a, it's a county jail. Okay. And they have, I don't know if he said there was 40 or 50, 50 or 100 inmates. I'm not sure how many are there. of, I can't even remember.

Oh, it's a local facility. Local facility. And it was just a sheriff deputy that runs the jail. Or one of the guys, I don't even know if he runs it. One of the guys, he goes, we try and do a lot of programs, and I've been watching your stuff. And I was wondering if you'd be interested in coming and talking with these guys. And I was like, talk to them about what? And he said, because I do speaking engagements.

That's me going and telling my story. Right. And then they asked 15 or 20 minutes worth of questions, and then that's it. But this was like, I've never talked in front of a jail. And I was like, uh, about like to tell my stories like no no more about like getting out and what you had to do to get yourself back on your feet and what you would have done you know like and I was like oh I thought that that's pretty cool like I've thought about wanting to do that but then I've never pursued it

and this guy reached out and he said you know like it's a huge thing it's a huge concept because there's so many people that you know they want to set it aside you you you there's a few people out there that are in the true crime world, they're willing to talk about what happened in jail. But I know people, friends of mine that have gone to jail, you're not going to get word out of them as to what happened, how it went down, those kinds of things. No, this guy's talking about getting out and starting over. Yeah, but nobody wants to own up the fact that they went, much less telling him how to rebuild. I mean, you're a perfect example of somebody that's perfect for that because you're animated.

you have the ability to talk to people and help these people to figure it out, that it can be done. Because half the part is what we talked about earlier. It's not going to be, you've broken the cycle of going back again, right? I mean, it's not like, I mean, I did my 12 years. I'm not going back in there again. So, but most of these people, they don't know how to break that cycle because they don't know how to, quote, monetize or find a new gig or whatever.

Zach. Yeah, it's a perfect example. Yeah. But that's on. that level of, I call it white-collar crime, I mean, fraud, con men type stuff, but that really can apply to any level of somebody that's gone to jail for, whether it's murder or whether it's rape or whatever, they've become so, inmates become so programmed to being inmates. As I've heard you say many times on your podcast, how long it took you to sort of

deprogram yourself about waking up and not making your bed or or so maybe we always made the bed yeah I'm always going to make my bed and it's just part of I think that's a part of being successful or having the night nightmares about the the phone ringing and I know it's the we screwed up it's a knock at the door yeah the year and a half or year that every time somebody knocked the door you don't expect anybody and my first first thought it was to figure it out they figured out they I wasn't supposed to get released. It's the U.S. Marshals. And if I had opened the door and there were two U.S.

Marshals and said Mr. Cox turned around, I would have done it and been patient and thought to myself, well, they'll send a lawyer in a couple of days and they'll tell me what happened. Like that's literally in my mind. I'm not even going to ask a bunch of questions. I know you guys don't know anything. Kobe, what's the next April Fool's trip? I mean, you know?

I mean, I remember, I mean, this was when we filmed a podcast and someone and a knock on the door. So I was like, who is it? Oh, yeah. All of us. He's ever told me, who's like, I guess the pizza's here. What's wrong with you? Boziak jumping up and running out the back door, you know?

Like, he's like, what do you do? I remember he did that. One day he ran out. He's literally in the backyard looking in the, you know. And Jess, I was just the funniest thing. He came. She's like, where's, did Boziac? He comes back in.

He's like, what was it? We were like, it was, you know, what? It was a salesman. Like, what are you? And she just looked at him, she goes, you're not living life, right? You're not living right. She told Bozzi Act. She just looked at him.

She goes, you're not living right. Yeah, if you have to look over your shoulder all the time. If this is your behavior, she's like, mm, mm, I don't know what you're doing, but, mm, she was like, it's bad. It's bad. And I was just like, I couldn't shock this fucking guy. Oh, my gosh. It's pretty wild.

I mean, from sitting on the other side of it, you know, not. I'm not going out the door that you're going out when we leave the courthouse. You know, you're going out a different, as criminal, they're going out a different door. And I use this analogy all the time. Let's say to a client is like, you're sitting right next to me. And you're sitting right next to me. And I was like, you know, if you come back here, I'm still going out that door. You're going out that door.

And there's going to be a big difference. So let's try not to do it again. And I try to do it in front of the bench, in front of the judge. So the judge knows that I'm not just giving lip service. I'm trying to tell this guy on the record. It's being transcribed that you fuck up. again, you're not going to walk out of here with me. Because it's usually time, the first time offenders,

you're getting a slap on the wrist and, you know, it's move on. Yeah. Because the idea is to try to get them to get on the right track. And a lot of times we've come in there and done a lot of the things ahead of time to make sure that it doesn't happen again. So the way, you know, the cases that I win, I generally forget about those pretty quickly. The cases that I lose, they bother me for the longest time. but the cases that redeem themselves are the ones that always are on the top of my list

that I can tell you the stories about and keep going on. So similarly, when you have somebody that's in and out of the prison system, it plays a big role in how you shape them in your head as to what kind of person they are. When you have somebody that has gone into the system for as long as you have and been able to turn it around and into something positive. So that's why you're going to Utah to talk to these people is an idea of you are the success story. You're the redemption story. I'm not trying to, you know, brown nose here.

I'm just telling you the reality is those are the types of clients and cases that you remember the most. And that's going to resonate the most. Because you know of those, whatever, 45 to 70 guys that are in that prison system. Right. Most of those guys they know are the ones that are going in and out of the system for, you know, for years and years and decades. Oh, yeah, you see, you know, I've, listen, I was locked up. I would watch guys leave, come back, leave, come back on new, sometimes there's violation, sometimes there's a brand new charge, like you got another, and then still get out, come back on another charge. It's like, you've, you've left, come back, left, come back, left, and come back again. And I'm still doing the first fucking sentence. Right, you know, right. Like, but I've seen them and you would see these guys over and over again. Did you ever have a conversation about them with them? Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm like, what are you, bro?

What do you do? But it's hard to be sitting in prison lecturing someone, but I would always be like, what, what happened? Like, what? Yeah, I'm just curious as to what, what the, what clicks in them. Some of them, they're just more comfortable. It's, you know, and some of them, it's addiction and some, you know, and I had one guy that came back.

I remember he, when he left, he had all these big plans and he's doing this, he's going to do this, he's going to do this. And he had all these big plans. and then, you know, he, like, started working as, like, a plumber, right? Which is no big deal. You know, you're working as a plumber. And he was going to, he was going to, had to get a job when he got out anyway. Sure.

But he ended up meeting this chick in the halfway house. And she had, like, two kids. And he was doing okay working as a plumber's helper. And so then they decided they were going to make him a plumber, right? he was going to start doing more plumbing work and whatever, that journeyman or whatever it is when they... Going through the training for the training. Yeah, the training. They liked him and he had to pay the bill because I was like, what happened with the, you know, my girl and the this and this and this. And it's like, okay, before you know it, he's raising her and the two kids and he's working all the time. And so all the things that he wanted to do when he was laying in his bunk, none of that came to be. And I was like, yeah, but you could still work on, you know, an hour or night. two hours a night you could do something but yeah I know but you know brother there's such good as good stuff on TV and we we watch you know it's at the in the end I was just like okay I get it like

and and I I know that there's I I've used to meet these people like what would you do or you know what would you you know I want to invest in real estate okay I will what would you do I said if I was you I would do this and then they do that and let's say they get a rooming house and they get 10 rooms in the rooming house in some shitty area and they're collecting they're making $2,000 a month you know it's after they pay everybody after they pay they're still making a couple grand and they do that and you're like okay so you get in another one I mean because that was a year ago like and they're like yeah what you what you get another property bro making two grand a month like I got my regular job and I make two grand I'm like well I know but you can replicate this

you can you know you got to know this you know the science we just have to add had some zeros to this and I can make 20,000 a month, 30, 40. Like this is, like, you know what works now. The hardest thing is the unknown. Now you know. You told me you hate your job. Yeah. And it's like, but they don't.

Most people, they do, they get to a point where it's like, hey, I get to watch go to the movies once a week. I get to go to dinner twice a week with my wife. I get to go on vacation, you know, two weeks out of the year. I drive a nice vehicle. We pay our bills. And I get to watch, you know, I have my favorite... Unlimited Netflix.

I have my favorite sitcoms, right? I don't really have sitcoms anymore, but, you know, my favorite Netflix series. And, yeah, that's it. It's like, oh, okay. Which is great. You're middle class America. That's fine. You did say you wanted to be rich, but you got comfortable and you stopped.

And that's what happens with, you know, and hey, thank... With people in and out of the system. Huh? That's just that what happens with people in and out of system. Right. Yeah, yeah. So I think that they, They go in and they have big dreams and then they come back out and things don't go well.

And they go back to what they know. And they start committing crimes of some kind, whether it's selling drugs or whatever. They get caught and they go back. They go back, come back out. They're going to, they have big dreams. They have all these plans and they get back out. And it just, it just start. They meet a girl.

They take care of the kids. They start to get, maybe they get comfortable or maybe they need a little bit of money. They end up slinging some dope. on the side, they get busted, they go back to jail. Maybe she waits for them, maybe she doesn't. They have big dreams. They get back out. They go to the halfway house.

They meet another girl. You know, I've seen the story a million times. It's over and over. It's like, but when you were hearing you, and I remember, too, the whole time I was locked up, I was like, you know what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to get out. And I'm not going to not try and pursue the things that I want to do while I'm here. I'm sitting here thinking, this is what I want to do when I get out.

And I'm going to do those things. And I love when I met Jess, my wife in the halfway house, where I was telling her. And, you know, I think she thinks I was bragging. But I was like, so what are you going to do? You know, you're out. You're, what are your plans? And I was like, well, I'm going to get a job working for my buddy Treon. He said he's going to hire me.

And I'm going to be like cleaning toilets and mopping the cleanup the gym. I'm like, but I'm going to build a website because I know I need. Well, actually I had the website. already had set up the website before you. I had a girl while I was inside. I paid her to set up the website. I was like, so I'm going to take that website. I'm going to start putting all my books on the website.

So I start going through all the things I'm doing. She's like, what book? What do you mean books? I've written a bunch of true crime books. I've written like six of them at the time. Five or six of them. I said, but I also have like 20-something stories. So I'm going to put those stories.

And then I'm going to try and option the life rights to those stories. And I want to start a podcast because everybody's telling me. So I don't really even know. I've never been on YouTube. I don't even know. I mean, I just got a phone. And so I'm telling her all that. And she said, I'm looking at you the whole time.

And I was thinking, this guy is so full of shit. He's written a bunch of books. She's like, I don't know anybody's written a book. She's like, and this guy, he's written six books. And he's going to option. Like, I don't even know what that is. And I had to explain what that was. And I explained, you know, I've already done it a couple times when I was locked up.

So, and I'm explaining that. And she's like, is he talking? They're making movies out of people's stuff that he's written. And they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, the life rights for like what is he like it sounds she says it sounded so grandiose and so she's and you know you hear these guys they always have such big dreams and and i just remember thinking like i didn't want to get off track i wanted to stick with that and i and i thought even if i get a job working 40 hours a week i can still work a couple extra hours if i have to wake up early and do it in the morning

for two or three hours then go to my job and then i'll come back and so i would set a schedule and like okay i'm going to work on my book on this one book that i wanted to turn into a a full book. It was just a synopsis. And I'll work from, I'll wake up at four. I'll go jogging. And then at six, I'll take a shower. And then from five to seven or eight, I'll work on the book from that period of time. And it's funny, I did that for about two, three months. That book was, I turned it into like a 40,000 word book. Oh, wow. Not a ton. But do you think because of your financial background, your socioeconomic status, you didn't grow up in a, you, you didn't grow up in a, poor environment.

You were upper middle class growing up, right? It's just like that. Yeah, no, definitely. Does that change the trajectory for you as opposed to somebody that did not have the same access? So two guys go into prison at the same time. Right. One's going in and he's from the upper middle class or middle class and one's from the sticks, right? He just grew up on Section 8 and had a really tough time getting out of the environment.

You have a leg up from the beginning there. the odds are that you are not going to be going back to jail, but this guy is and why is that? Yeah, but that guy's also got a 15-year sentence. You've got 12 to 13 years to retrain himself. But there's nothing in the facilities that are going to help them retrain themselves. There's nothing in the facility to help me do any of the things that I did. You know what I'm saying? Like I know guys that were raised in the projects that start doing legal work.

They have books sent in by their... It's funny, they go to prison and they have the... best relationship with their mom and their sisters as they ever had had because those are the only people that are, because while they were out in the street, they took advantage of all those people, right? You're always, you're not good to your mom or your sisters or anybody. Then you go to prison. You need them, and so they actually have a relationship now. So mom will send you a book on how to write legal briefs and how to write, you know,

the whole, they'll do that because it's not that expensive, they'll send it in. They're thrilled that he's doing something. So you do that. You start to learn how to do, you learn how to do motions and how the court. system works and how it's set up and you'd learn all that. I didn't do any of that. But you do all that. And there are guys that I know, the best legal work I've ever gotten ever was from people that were locked up that weren't lawyers. I believe it. Pete's an amazing attorney who's not an attorney. And so there's tons of these guys that do that. And then they get out of prison and they can continue.

You know who's a perfect example of that, who is also, which is a Chad Marks. Chad Marks was running, you know, what, hard, you know, powder, whatever you want to say. You know, hard houses. These houses, they're selling drugs out of the houses. And he's got two or three of them. He's got a bunch of guys working for him. And he's selling, you know, and when he goes to jail, he starts doing legal work. And he got out.

And to this day, he does legal work for inmates. And he charges, you know, money. and you know, you help these guys. You do their 2255. You do their compassionate release motions. You do. But he's doing that on the outside. On the outside, too.

He can do the same thing on the house. Because he's doing the work and he's sending to them and they're, you know, he's. They're authoring it. Yeah. And they're reading it and they have phone calls and everything else and their families pay. And so he does that. He makes a ton of money doing that. And then, of course, then he ends up buying some houses.

And now he's renting out houses. What do they call them? They're transition houses for guys coming out of prison. Like, all of these things, well, Chad Marks was raised in the projects. Chad Marks didn't graduate high school. Chad Marks, like, he, but he went to jail and he, yeah, like, did he get life for 30 years? I think he got the, I think he had a life sentence that got it off him. He ended up doing like 20 some odd years.

He did legal work the whole time. I know guys that go there and they start writing books because they want to get out and they, they want to be an author. And they decided they want to be. The great thing about journalism is that there's tons of journalists who have, criminal records. Sure. So that's not something where it's like, I'm sorry, you went to jail for six years. Right.

We can't. We can't hire you. No, you can't. Because I've written some amazing things. They're going to look at what you've done. They're going to go, this is a great article. We'll put this in the magazine. And those magazine articles, people don't realize, they get option for the life rights.

And those options and those types of magazine are 30,000, 50,000 for writing articles. Yeah. Yeah. So there's ways to retrain yourself by yourself in prison. and these guys get in there and maybe they think, oh, well, I'm not smart enough to do that. Well, that's what I think what you're doing in Utah gives them hope that it's a possibility.

I mean, you know, you can, we talked about a no-name person, but you put you and Zach, you both taught the GED class, right? You, when you were in prison. Yeah. You both kind of were on the same thing. You've spun on this direction. You've given Zach the tools to spin in a similar direction. And he's funny a shit.

Yeah. And very entertaining without even trying. Oh, no. Colby and I did, listen, he had such a leg up on us on what we did. Colby and I were doing everything for him for nothing. You don't have to pay us at all. Colby's editing in the videos for nothing. Not a part of the channel, not just I'll do all of it for nothing. Just because we wanted to see him do well. Success. Succeed. No, just can't do it. But that's what I'm saying. That's the example that I gave me. I mean, he had the same opportunities, if you want to call him that in jail. More of an opportunity. And he had somebody

to rely upon when, but when he got out to say, hey, teach me the ropes. You know, you're, You're a year ahead of or two years ahead of me in being free and still can't get out of his own way. No. I'll tell you another thing. Let's say you said, yeah, but I don't want to do legal work, Matt, and I don't want to do write books. Okay, that's fine. I'm not smart enough to do that. Okay, fine.

You're not smart enough to do that. You think you've, whatever. You don't think you don't have that confidence. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. I'll tell you about a guy, Harold Locke, which is, no, Locke. Harold Munn's.

Sorry, that's the guy that used to do my air conditioning. Harold Munn's, Harold Munn's brother sent him in a book and said, you're going to have, you need to read this book because this is what you're going to do when you get out, because this is what I'm doing. And I'm making amazing money. These guys are making like 60, 80 bucks an hour.

You know what they are? He's a welding inspector. Oh, wow. Do you know, in California? Do you know, and they have them everywhere, by the way. Every commercial building, you have to have an inspector. An inspector. Yeah.

So you know why he. He did that because he was a welder when he was younger. That's a lie. He's never welded in his life. He either had his brother. They've never picked up a fucking torch. He read this book. I shit you not.

The book was this thick. He read it three times. About welding. He's in my, I watched him read the whole thing one time in like a month just straight through, reading it and reading it over and over. He did this. No, it's not, was it nine? Maybe a year.

He started that maybe a year, 18 months. Because he did the drug program. So maybe eight. 18 months before he got out. Because when he ended the drug program, that was nine months. And then he went basically straight home almost, maybe a month between. So probably 18 months. So for nine months, I watched him read that book over and over again and over again.

Because we have to get out. Did he knew what he was doing? Yeah, no, no, he's never done it. No, no, but did he know that that was sort of a plan of action? Yeah, so he knew his brother had this job. His brother's making amazing money. He's like, my brother's telling me like, look, you know what? You can do this.

I'm going to send you the book. they sent him the book. He read the book three times. He got out. He took the test. He was a welding inspector. He took the test. He got on with the company.

Listen, a couple months outside out of prison, this guy's making over $100,000-thousand-thousand-a-year. He's on the way there. Driving for two hours. Driving for two hours, he's making $70 an hour. Yeah. Getting there. They, like, I spend four hours looking at all the way. Sometimes they're not done, so I have to wait around.

He doesn't matter. I get paid for all of it. Coming back. I mean, just amazing how much. much money he made. This has no experience to it. You could go there and read a book on how to be a plumber and have never picked up anything. It doesn't matter. You can learn that pretty quickly. The putting together of the pipes is not nearly as important as knowing that we need a pea trap here or an air, whatever they call the vent air thing here. It's knowing what all the rules are to pass the test.

You go in and say, look, I've read the books, I've done this, I've done that. I need you to give me, let me work for you for a couple weeks for nothing as a helper. Yeah. But I know everything. Like that's it. Welders, not well, sorry, plumbers, electricians, framers. These are the guys that are making $200, $250,000 a year. These are the next, these are the guys that will be multi-millionaires in the next 10 years

when everybody else has taken all the jobs. When the robots are building cars and doing everything else. You're going to need those people regardless of time. Those will be the last jobs that they can do once they have the hand dexterity that they can replace you completely. But what I'm referring, what you're deprogramming, the de-institutionalization of the institutionalized individual. So the institutionalized individual is I'm referring to the guy that keeps going back regardless. There are more stories like yours that people realize that need to be shared so it gives hope. to those 80 people at a time at the jails,

is what it comes down to. And that's why I always come back to these clients that have the positive stories, because it's the ones that actually make a difference. It gives the people, I recently had a client who has put somebody in a wheelchair as a result of taking too much of his Adderall. That was the allegation.

He told the cops on scene, he was in psychotic episode, and he took five times amount of Adderall. He's supposed to be taking 150. And it's on body camp. He's saying it. I took too much of it. And so he had a head-on collision. The other guy is in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

And kids are a lawyer. Went to law school, worked for the government, everything going for him, you know. But had this happen. So sort of the same situation, got him through the process, and he's going to be out. But before he went in, because he was so scared. isn't it's like 32, 33 years old. I had him talk to the client who's recovered, you know, from that old. And I said, listen, talk to him.

He's in the same situation. Success, success story. You can rebuild yourself. Because my fear was that he is going to become institutionalized by being in the system. And, you know, pretty white boy from, you know, Kansas, literally, is not going to do so well in the jail system. So learn how, like anything else in the world, learn how to handle the situation. if you're going to be going to jail, talk to somebody that's been there. Yeah.

And also. I had a guy fly me into Vegas and talk to him for a couple, two, three hours because he was about to go to jail. Yeah. About to go to prison. What should I prepare for? You know, do I get hair plugs now or after? Well, yeah.

You know what's so funny is all the other guys that were there to kind of help him and talk to him and prepare him. Like he had a team. Oh, yeah. None of them had been jail. And everything they're telling him. It's all BS. I'm like, the fuck did you hear that?

Like, what are you? Like, they're telling him like, like, first of all, like, he's a soft white guy. And they're like, if anybody asks you for a paperwork, just tell him, my lawyer told me not to show my paper or not to talk about my charges. And I thought, and I'm thinking, you know, anybody who's been in jail immediately thinks he's a show. Yeah, exactly. It's the first thing you're going to say. He's not a show, though. Yeah.

He went to trial. He went to trial and it was a fraud charge. And it was, you know, it was like, what? And I was like, and I'm kind of looking around. They're all like shaking their heads. I'm like, and I'm sitting there, I kind of look at him and I'm like, listen, I don't want to I want you to know that I'm a fraudster and not a show. I don't want to step on anybody's toe, but these guys, unless you go to a camp, their first

thought is you're going to be a chobo. Yeah. And he was like, and he was like, well, what is that man? And that's going to be a problem. You do not want to show up as a chow. Well, I didn't say that. I just tell them this. I said, no, no, that's the mistake.

If he went to a camp, he's like, well, they were like, why a camp? I'm like, because shows can't go to camps. Right. So they don't even consider, they know you're not a chance that you're going to be considered at that. I said that might work there. But the truth is you want to come up with a very quick explanation of why you're there because those guys are going to look you up.

So you want to explain, work for the government, exactly what happened. Don't get into the details. You don't have to. I understand you're afraid somebody's going to jump on your case. I said that's what they're thinking. But the truth of the matter is that nobody's going to jump on your case because you just with the fucking trial and lost. They got you.

You're got. So now if you put a bunch of money aside, don't tell, on that. If you had a, if there's a murder out there that nobody knows about, don't mention that. But when they say, what did you do? You say, I worked for the government. I did this. There was this much money that they said was lost. I went to, I disagree. I went to trial. I was found guilty. I now owe $12 million and I have to do six years. Yeah. And that's going to go over much better than you hiding your. Well, I don't talk about my crime. I don't, I don't, I, I'm not going to tell you about my crime. My lawyer said not to talk to you guys about my crime.

Cho, absolutely. You might get your ass beat going to, right after chow. I mean, right after count, you may get your ass beat going to the bathroom. I think, but those are the kinds of things that people really need to know. And I know that there's all these prison consulting companies out there, but most of those guys haven't set foot in a jail one in a long time. Or they've gone to a camp for 18 months too. Like, this guy's going to a medium or a low or stuff.

Like, those are kind of real prisons. Like, you went to a camp, bro. Like, that's, yeah. I think it's really important to be able to do. So what you would be doing, when are you going to Utah next week? I go, no, Friday. I fly out Friday. It got Saturday.

A couple days, yeah. Okay. So I think what you'd be doing is going to have a lot more of an impact on individuals than you think. You know, even if you, the way I look at it is, hey, if we can save 10% of the people that we connect with and help them some way, it's always going to come back. You know, you have to be a giver in that respect. It's like, if you can help somebody. life out in the long term, it's going to make a huge impact on you personally from that

morality side of it all. You know, it may not come back into your pocket, which we cannot, as human beings, always look about what's going into our pocket. We have to try to leave the world a better place than where we started. I mean, listen, I'm a brown guy. This guy with the morality. Yeah, I know. It sucks. I'm a brown guy. Most brown people, lawyers are in the corporate board room, right? That's what they're doing, you know? They're corporate lawyers because it's just the way it goes. So my trajectory could have been that.

But the difference that I saw in how I could change some people's lives by pointing them in the right direction. And Gil, my partner, he was a drunk. He was a recovering alcoholic. He became sober in his 20s and remained sober when he passed. So he was sober for over 50 years. But he kept sober by helping people. His idea was, I'll take him to an AA meeting.

I'll go to a meeting. It's not going to hurt me. Or I'll take him to a program and it'll help me. So he kept his sobriety by saying, these people keep fucking up. And I'm going to keep sober by helping these people that keep fucking up. So I learned in a very different way of doing this. And I was like, I can make a pretty good living doing this because I have a higher, imagine if I wore a turban, but I, it's,

as a brown criminal defense lawyer, I have a higher hurdle to overcome than somebody that was not brown, basically, you know? And so it's a huge thing to choose criminal defense or litigation as a brown person. I don't know, nobody wants to believe that. It's the reality of life is what it comes down to. So I chose it because I felt that the morality that you're busting my balls about makes a big difference in how you, your legacy is what you leave behind. And then if you can make the world a better place. you by doing this Utah thing and hopefully more teaching people, the client of mine that is willing to talk to people about how you can recover from the worst thing hitting rock bottom and then some,

it makes a big change in how we see the world. And that's why I started questioning you. The interview changed over about who was the interviewee and who the interviewer was, about how people that have this different dynamic backgrounds, how they can do better. I mean, just having this conversation, gives people hope from the perspective of, hey, I went to jail, I did 12 years, I did 15 years, came back and turned my life around. I didn't even know how to use a fucking iPhone, you know.

And it gets people hope that, you know, they can get out of that institutionalization is what it comes down to, that they can change their trajectory. I mean, a guy like him who's never been in trouble before, he doesn't even get it, right? I've never been in trouble before, but I see it from the sidelines on a daily basis. So it changes what we leave behind. And in the bigger picture, we have to do that. Because it's really easy to, you can be a con man, take money, you can do whatever you need to do to survive.

But that's the easier part, is just making sure that people don't continue to do it is what it comes down to. If the criminal justice system would do more of that, we'd be leaving it in a much better place. So we had more help for people that are dealing with the crises that they're in at the acute crisis in, and that if they gave them the opportunities, to make something of their lives afterwards. That's the problem.

I mean, you did these, what's it called when you, it's not the halfway house, what's it called when you get out and after you do the treatment program, in the federal system you have to go out and do, it's like a, I did an ADAP. Ardap. That's in prison.

Oh, that's in prison. You're actually, we should show, because you're actually in a prison within the prison. Because you're actually in a unit that you basically, you're almost there all the time. So now we're trapped in this unit within the prison. You eat, and you end up eating with everybody.

You're spending all your time with just this group of 120 guys. But is there anything when you're exiting prison that helps you reaclimate? Well, they have a program called Tdap for people that went to ARDAP. I never completed RDAP. Because your time came up before you had to complete RDAB. Well, because I only took it so that I was. would not get transferred out of that prison. They wanted to send me to a camp and my mom was in a wheelchair and she would never be able to see me. So I just kept going in the program so they would put

what's called the management variable on me and I couldn't get moved. And then as I was approaching graduation, I would just drop out. And then in three months later, I go back in. So you work the system. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I always, yeah, always kind of work the system. So, but yeah, the people that pass that my wife had to go to Tdap for like three months after you have to go like twice a week or something. They had to go to this continuing training or whatever maintenance or whatever you want to call. It kind of like an AA you go there and they. But does it, I mean, your wife was in for an addictions related issue.

Drug. You weren't. No. So I lied. That's how you got into our job. I was on opiates. Yeah. But how do I'm, that's dealing with addictions.

I'm talking about just dealing with rebuilding your life. What tools do you have? I don't have any tools. But what I did was I just continually told myself to be appreciative that you're out and be humble and just not to get, not to take on too much responsibility. Don't get yourself in debt. You know, save as much as you. I made it a game to like save money. Like I wore my clothes as long as I could.

I bought things that were inexpensive. I literally think I threw a pair of pants away that I had when I, that with the pants I wore out of prison just recently. You know, I remember buying a bunch of black shirts. I bought 10 black shirts for like 2995 or something. They were like 10 of them. That became your uniform? They were made.

Yeah, everything was black. I bought you either bought black or white and blue jeans. because everything matched. I don't need blue or brown. It's too much too complicated. Everything was black and white and blue jeans. It all, like I said, it matched. But yeah, I just made a game of how can I save money,

how cheaply can I live, how, you know, I saved everything I could and don't get anything that you don't need and, you know, work as hard as you can. I can live on four or five hours of sleep. This whole, you have to get eight hours. Like, you're fucking crazy. You don't need eight hours. but yeah I just

How was that different from when you had millions? I was vastly different because I had millions of dollars and you know I slept a lot more and I ate a lot more and I and you know I bought everything I wanted to buy and you know it was vastly as vastly it was much more unhappy

You had to retrain yourself though It was much more unhappy Having the millions Having the millions I was much more unhappy than I was getting out with nothing Yeah, so that's the thing. It's like you had it in your head to be able to turn that switch on and off.

Whereas I don't think a lot of people do or everything else. No, I don't think a lot of people train themselves or a lot of people try. I mean, if you do anything for two weeks, it basically becomes like kind of muscle memory. It becomes a, it's a habit. You only need two or three weeks of a habit before you just instinctively do it. You understand that I do not, I do not leave my bedroom in the morning until I've made my bed. Well, we talked about that earlier. I agree with you.

I have an issue. If I leave my house without making my bed, it bothers me. Yeah, it does. It'll bother me all the, and that's like there's no dirty dishes. As soon as we're done, we clean our dishes, you know. And it's funny because Marischelli, which is my stepdaughter, initially when she moved in, like, that was a, well, I just get him tomorrow. Well, and it got to a point where it was like, you're practically standing next to her saying you're going to wash the dish. now you're going to wash it now because you're not going upstairs till you wash them and it was like

fine listen within a week or two it became a habit as soon as she's done she's washing the dishes as her food is cooling and she's doing like she she never leaves the dish out anymore you know it just doesn't it's just not even something she even thinks about but but i've also never had a roach and it's florida you know like people they're this big yeah but people don't under they don't you know, like you, you, you don't let your laundry pile up. You, you, you put it in the hamper, you, you, you, you, you fold it, you put it up, you don't leave your shoes out. You don't, you, you make your bit, like, it's just, it's just, that's just the smart, like, that's just, like, how could you not live like that? How can you, it is the, the limitless thing. It's the

limitless thing where the first thing he does when he takes a pill and becomes extremely smart. Yeah. Yeah. He cleans his whole house. Yeah. He spends hours cleaning his entire house. I mean, it seems funny, but, and it, you know, Jordan, Peterson says the same thing. He's like, you know, the first thing you do is clean your house. You know what else he talks about? Like, how do you, how do you learn how to think and plan? He goes, learn how to write? And everybody laughs when he says that when he said, I've heard him say to ha ha ha ha. He goes, no, no. How many people that you went to jail with are going to say, you crazy motherfucker, you're going to try to convince me that making my bed and writing is going

to make me a better person when I get out of jail? Because learning how to write helps you think. It helps you plan and think and strategize. it just, and I don't mean write like spell, because I can't spell anything. I can't spell, and if you heard me read, you'd be embarrassed for me. It's that bad. And it's never going to get better. I'm dyslexic. It's not going to get better. But I forced my way, I pushed my way through it. And learning how to write helps you, it helps you craft your thoughts. It helps you strategize. It helps you plan. It helps you, you know, organize. It helps all these things just because you can write a story. You think writing a story is like, oh, that's easy. It's not easy. No, it's hard.

Right. But at one. Once you've done it, if you wrote every day for two or three weeks, and here's what's so funny about that is like, Zach, I told, every time Zach's been in prison, I've said, write an outline for your story. Start by writing an outline. You know what he's never done? Writing an outline. I'll bet you he's played a shitload of pinnacle and chess and checkers. And I'll bet he's done everything to occupy his time, but he's never once done it. But this is one of your good friends, and he's not willing to change his ways.

I get it. And that's fine. And that's fine. Then what you have to, if you're not willing to do any of those things, that's fine. You don't have to do those things. But you have to understand you're going to spend a lot of time in prison. You're going to keep coming back to prison. Now, if you're serious, like, no, I'm serious. I ain't coming back. Okay. Well, then what are you doing to retrain yourself to not come back? Oh, I'm just not going to. Oh, you're just not going to. So now you're going to start thinking correctly. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're coming back. Well, that's the idea is that all of a sudden, it's just like the guy that had all these plans when he's sitting in prison. When he's out, he's going to do all these things and then life happens. By the way, over the course of 10 years, that's 100 guys. Right. That's 100 guys. Of out of how many? Yeah.

Out of 200? Thousands, thousands that have left. And those people that came back to prison, by the way, almost all those, half, let's say 75% of those guys came back to back at least once to come back to prison. Well, after they left, they just went to another prison. They just didn't come back to Coleman. These are the guys that I saw come back. Right. I know, you know, every time somebody would come to me and they go, hey, remember so-and-so.

I'd be like, no, who, and they, so-and-so, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy they used to, yeah, yeah, yeah, they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just, I just heard, he got, my sister knows him, and he's in the newspaper, he's just got 20 years. Well, that's what, yeah, that's why our prison systems are failures is, is what it comes down to is, and I don't think it's the people. I think people can be changed. I think the bottom line is if, if, if you don't teach them and all they have to do, and all they have to do, is whether it's watching TV, reading, or playing Peanuckle in jails, it's not going to change the way they live when they get out. I mean, I'm not saying that every but has a seat. You know, it's not everybody that doesn't have the opportunity or the mental acuity to do all of this. But there could be more is what it comes down to.

Yeah, I always thought that they should, and I've said this over and over again, that everybody should be required to pass the ARDAP program. The ARDAP program has nothing to do with drugs. It's a behavior modification program. But in order to, to pass it by Congress and get the funding, they had to say drugs, right? Sure, makes sense. You get there, and I'm tell you right now, less than 5 to 10% of the entire program you ever even talk about drugs. It's all criminal thinking.

It's all, it's, oh, shoot, I forget the name of it, but they're all, um, rational self-analysis. They're all like, how do you react to something? How do you, you know, they teach you all these things of what a normal person, what you do on a daily basis when you have an obstacle or any type of confrontation or anything in your you you have a system that you automatically go through in your head these guys don't they react they react immediately and then as they're driving away from the you know from the crime scene they realize fuck that apart that that place is in my name they like they didn't

start putting together how they're going to get caught but they react you immediately you'd be like yeah yeah you're right Yeah. I'm not going to say or do anything because I already know how badly that's going to go for me. They don't do that. They don't follow rules. They don't think things through. It's not rational behavior in any way. It's just they're doing it off the cuff and not really thinking things out. But the ARDAP program teaches you that. And even if only like there's no way. What percentage gets through it? It's what percentage gets through. Gosh, I don't know. I bet you it's 50% get through. but out of that 50% the recidivism rate drops dramatically, dramatically.

Maybe it might be higher than it. It might be 60 or 70% to get through. But what they don't, here's what they do is just great, it's super smart, is that they have different phases, and what they'll do is they'll re-phase you. So you don't like go through the program and graduate. They can keep setting you back. Right. It can take you two years to get through the program.

Why? Because phase two, you failed. You're going back to phase one, or you're going back to phase. You're doing phase two again. Or you can be on phase three and you fuck up doing something that you should have learned in phase one. Like you shouldn't be doing that anymore. No, you got to go back to phase one. You're like, that's not, I'm at, I've been here eight months and now I've got to go back to,

I got another nine months if I go through it perfectly. Yep. Because you, you shouldn't be doing that anymore. You learn that in phase one and that's something that you're still doing. Obviously, you didn't learn. You go back to phase one. Now, you can go home. I mean, you can go back to your old unit.

You don't have to go to the program. but you get a year off. So it's the incentive. It's the incentive the carrot versus the steak. Right. And it's great. Even the people that go in the program and say, and I've seen guys leave the program,

you used to come back to the unit. Oh, what's up? These guys make fun of them, right? They call them super dappers. Oh, oh, what's up? Super dapper? You're back now, huh? With us, all of us, huh?

You're done? You finish the program? And they're like, yep. And they'll walk. They go, yeah, man, I faked my way through. that. I fake my way through it. It's like a badge of honor. Yeah. They joke about faking it. Like, I faked it. I didn't, I didn't go through the program. I faked it just to get the year. There's no fucking way you went through that program without learning something. You can tell

that to all your buddies. You probably did fake your way through a lot of it, but there's no fucking way you go through that program without learning a lot about yourself and about thinking. There's just no way. So those guys that do that and they do that tough guy thing and the jackass fucking I fake my way through it, they still learn something. And they're, they're their chance of recidivizing went drown dramatically, even if they're, even if they're still douchebags and they faked it. Yeah, I think that, again, it goes back to the fact that the federal system has so much more resources and more opportunity to do things. These state level systems, they don't have these programs. And if they do, they're like, you know, minute compared to what

you're describing the RDAP program to be, you know, it's nowhere that you're going to go through these phases and get kicked back. You're going to have all these issues. Because as we know, the volume is in the state level systems of inmates. The federal system is probably a better system to be. And if you want to avoid recidivism is what it comes down to. I guess. I don't know what the numbers are. But yeah, I'd say these state programs you're just going there.

They're just getting out coming right back. Right. Oh, yeah. There's no question about it because they don't know anything else. Well, they also, I think the, you know, well, in just, general, I don't think that these state crimes, the guys committing the state crimes are not as bright as the guys that are committing the federal crime. I agree 100%. So they might have a better chance. But I mean, I've seen tons of guys get out and they start doing something. You know, I mean, guys,

we've interviewed that, like, if you go to prison and you really want to change yourself, you can. It's these guys that they just don't, they don't even, they don't want to change. Or maybe they just don't think they have a chance to change or they don't think, I don't know. But there should be something, like I said, there should be some kind of an ARDAP program that has these guys finish. They have to get through the program to get out of prison. Now, not everybody. Let's say you get more than five years. This is what you have to do. Right. In order for you, you want to get, you want to knock a year off your sentence, go through this program. And then they, they do that and they go through the program. What's great too is everybody always says this about ARDAP is that they,

they're snitching on each other, right? They're telling on each other in there. And they, of course, Ardat, they call it, you know, holding you accountable. Like, no, I'm just holding you accountable. I'm not snitching on you, but you're doing this and that's detrimental to your recovery. And so I'm holding you accountable. Like they've tried to switch it where, but these guys look at it as snitching. What's the great thing about that is that they've got them policing themselves. It's brilliant. Right.

It makes sense. It's fucking brilliant. It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. And almost nobody can get through the program without holding somebody accountable in them, like the morning meeting where you're, it's almost like an extreme version of a shot collar, right? Everybody's working.

Yeah, but nobody's getting stabbed. Nobody's getting stabbed. Yeah. But it's, it's great. Because let's face it, they don't have enough, if the inmates police themselves, they don't have to have the police do it. And there's not enough, they don't have enough manpower to have these, to have the police be there to police them. So the whole program is run with just a few, they call them DT, drug treatment specialists, DTSs. The whole thing's run by, you'll have like.

So there's no COs in that? No, no. You'll have one, you have like four DTSs and one. the doctor, which will be like somebody who's got like a PhD, right? And so that's, every program has that. And then these guys just come and they go through it. And they, they kind of police themselves. There'll be a cop, but he's never there. He'll be in the other unit. He didn't even have to come. He knows he doesn't have to come. Everybody's policing usually. They're actually, and you're on pins and needles because you know these other guys will, will police you. But after nine months of that,

after nine months of being watched constantly, it programs you a different way. but how can you not be programmed? I can't, I couldn't make it through the day without monkey my bed. Yeah. I would be sitting here talking to you, thinking to, picturing my bed being unmade. I would be, I would be like, fuck, this is crazy. Like, I can't stop thinking about this. It would just go, it'd be nuts.

Yeah, you're obsessive thought. You're obsessive about it. Yeah, it's, it's created, well, I was always, I've always been a little obsessive, compulsive. But, and look at poor Colby. Um, he's seen it over and over and over again. I'll send him videos where it'll be like, you know, it'll be like a piece of tile that's just slightly off a little bit. What keep, and it would be like, what keeps me up at night? And it'll be like, it's a student guy staring at the thing.

He's like, my future is based on this guy's success. Oh, yeah. Um, oh, God, it's so funny because Baba did their first episode. Uh-huh. And he bought this red, the red acoustical foam. and in two different places, it's not quite, there's like a slight gap. And I'm, it drives you crazy. I'm watching from the, from he's got like a whole separate room, right?

And I'm sitting there staring. I'm not watching Bubba's talking. I'm staring at this fucking thing going, how did nobody not see that? How did nobody that not? That didn't bother anybody. Did they, did they turn the cameras? Come back in here. They had to come back.

They somebody, nobody saw that. Like, they were okay with that. Somebody's okay with that. And that's all I'm thinking while they're talking. I mean, I did it for like 45 or 30 minutes. I listened to it for 35 minutes and I'm like, well, I'm just fascinated by this place because, you know, I thought I didn't know what to expect coming down here.

And then everything is like red and black, including the tripods, the wheels on the on the, on the dividers and the sound absorbers. We just got this made. We just had this to the top of it made. Oh, really? It was just a wood table. Oh, wow.

But the stain, because people are here, the stain gets worn down. It started to get worn. And I don't like that. They can't deal with it. It bothers me. And sometimes somebody would be talking and they'd put their finger hand up and they'd have little bits of black stain. Like almost like it coming off the table. From the coming off the table.

And I would, does he know that? Does he know that there's a little black stain on? I wonder, that's crazy. Oh, my God. That's insane. And then all of a sudden he'll keep going and I'll think, I don't know. know what he's talking about right now. I don't know what he's talking about. This guy's talking. You're focusing on the stain. And then they'll put their hands down and then suddenly they're like,

yeah, so I walked to the bank and I'm like, okay, we're in the bank. Okay. Because it just was white noise while I saw the things. So I said, yeah, we got to, we got to fix this. Oh my gosh. My, my psychiatrist's wife would have a time with you. You know what's so funny. is that these were two different pieces. These were two different pieces back here. Separated. Separated. Right?

You can see the will. And so we had, I bound them, see what the metal pieces. Yeah. And so in between, if you look at some of the videos, there was two pieces of wood.

And I thought that the cameras wouldn't catch that. So I didn't. But now you're hyper-focused looking for it. But every time I see the video, I can look at it and I'm like, wow, it's right behind his head. Like, mm. And it's reflective.

You can kind of see a little shine. And I'm sitting there. And I was like, so I put up with it about 10 months. And then finally I went, listen, Colby, I'm going to I'm going to pull these down, strip off all the fucking foam, redo the foam, put it back up. Because on some of the videos, you can see this would. And Colby, which, you know, it doesn't, Kobe was like, yeah, I noticed it, but. Didn't bother him. But then when I fixed it, he could see the difference.

He said, he goes, it actually a few times, I really, it did bother me. I did realize like it didn't look at it. I went, you let me go 10 months thinking I'm crazy. When it bothers, he's like, well, but what's the big? It's not that big of a day. What are you talking about? It's huge. So we did it now.

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Just go to ghostbed.com slash Cox and use promo code Cox at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash Cox, promo code Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. I don't think about it anymore. I, we went months and months. I wanted to paint the red wall in the house.

Remember, I kept telling trying to get my wife to let me pay. And she'd be like, we don't own this place. We have a deposit. I know we have a deposit. I put the patapahazet down. I'll paint it back. And I told her, I said, I'll paint it right back. Will you?

What do you? Are you, of course. Listen, we moved out and the day afterwards, I painted the wall. She left to go grocery shop and came back, walked in and went, what happened? I said, I painted the wall. And she's like, I told you not to do that. She's just like, I didn't even, I, when were you going to do that?

I said, well, I just, I had like 20 minutes. You were going to be gone. Are we have the paint? And she was just like, I told you I'd paint it. Like, I don't do, I don't typically say stuff I'm going to do that I don't do. But, and I remember the whole time that I kept saying I want to paint the wall. She's like, why? It's going to change everything.

It's going to change everything. It's going to change everything. It's just the wall. It's going to change everything. Everything. It's pretty wild. And it did. It changed everything.

Changes a lot. It changed everything. Colby, then Colby makes fun of me. He's, every month of all, somebody will say something about the Red Wall Hill,

and Colby will go, it changed everything. It really, but if you can really think about it, it really has become a recognizable. It has. Yeah. Everybody says that.

Yeah, I just, you know, it's pretty impressive, you know, and you can tell that you put a lot of time and effort into,

and putting the studio together. It's got a good, it's got a good look. It has a good, is a look. Yeah. You know, my only problem is that I felt like pulling everything off the back wall was going to give it more depth. And I don't think you get that.

I don't think when you watch it now, I don't think you even know whether the wall is here or you know that it's five feet or four feet away. I don't think you can't tell. You can't tell. That bothers me. I've actually thought about like maybe shut off one of the lights or turn the lights more. So there's more of a shadow. So you realize that there's depth there. Yeah. Instead, it's just still white. I mean, I'm sorry, it's still red, bright red. So you don't, because there's no depth or nothing to give you some kind of depth perception, like shadows or something, you just don't realize it. And so I thought about maybe we should turn the lights and off or turn them back or I don't put some thought into it. I mean, you've got a lot of room in here and you've done a really good job about, and even your quote unquote green room is pretty impressive, you know. Green room is a lot of fun. It's got all the mug.

The mug shots. The mug shots? You don't bother me about the mug shots? Now that we're asking. The mug shots, I ordered all of the, like I would get like a mug shot. And then I, you know, you can go like from Walgreens or something. You can order the mugshot. You say I want, it's a 12 by 9 the size and then you can go pick it up.

Or you have mailed to you. So I did that. And then when I, then I put them on the board, I just kind of glued them on. and then I put them up, but the problem is once you glue them, they look wavy, right? Oh, right, right. So then I pulled them back down. I ordered more, and I scraped them off and redid it, and I taped it and put it back up. And then after I did that, I realized that that waviness isn't the glue.

It's just when you put them up, I don't know if it's the, I don't know what it is, but it's reflection of some sort of maybe. Yeah, there's some kind of a waviness there, right? And so now when I see them, I see the waviness. People are fascinated by mugshots. I get questions all the time from clients. from clients that they want their mugshot. So, you know, and it's kind of a cool thing, but you don't have your own mugshot.

It can be a cool. My mugshot, I have a mugshot. It's just, I have a horrible, I don't even think that's my mugshot that, that they use. Is it my mugshot? No, that's a, you know that picture where that they put on my wanted poster? Yes. Where it's kind of like my, I kind of look crazy. That was a photo, that was a driver's license photo.

Yeah, that doesn't even look like you. No, I do the joke or the. Yeah, yeah. Was that done on purpose? It was done on purpose because I knew it was going to be a fake ID, so I went in and I made a funny face just because I thought it would be funny. I just wonder how many things in your past you did just for amusement purposes of your own. Oh, yeah, yeah.

All things that I did that then you get in front of your federal judge, and it's like... Didn't work very well, did it? No sense of humor about crime at all, none. You have to have a sense of humor. And you have to grow the soap, what is it, the chin strap out, the sole patch out? Yeah, I did. I had a, on front, I had the little... Get to do it again.

Yeah. We do these, we do a lot of things. And again, another Gillism, Gil, my partner, he used to say the courtroom's laughing that nobody's going to jail. And it's so true, right? Except for when you do it. I used to say, listen, people will forgive you for murder if you can just make them laugh. Yeah.

So I do it all the time. I do crazy stuff to just get a smile out of the judge or even the prosecutor to get things to happen. one set of a client who was charged a solicitation of a prostitute. She was an undercover cop. And I knew I was going to make it go away one way or the other. So I said, well, I have a girlfriend and she's really hot. And I was like, bring her in. Right.

So I can tell the prosecutor he would never solicitist a cop. Yeah. I just wanted the girlfriend to know that he was soliciting. He was entertaining. So I told the prosecutor that I was like, I made him make a prosecutor. girlfriend and she ended up dropping the charges because it was just like you know all right he did his penance he got me so I was like yeah it makes you look bad to your girlfriend but hey I got the charges dropped against you yeah she's gonna put him through more hell than we ever can yeah exactly so

you have to use whatever to your benefit so if you have stuff in your background it's gonna make somebody laugh like a joker picture that's ideal for you to maybe get a month or two off I don't know yeah I was just say the judge now what was it he uh yeah the he even said because I was signing the, I would sign like a satisfaction of mortgage like C. Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons. And he, he even said at one point, he goes, the Simpson thing, he goes, this is when it during sentencing, he goes, I mean, the Simpson thing, it's not the worst thing in the world, but still, it's, it shows a complete disregard for, you know, for, how funny I thought it was when I did it. Yeah. And I'm thinking, is this fucking?

guy. He's going to, he's talking about the Simpsons? Everything very seriously. Are you talking about the Simpsons right now? The transcript's got to be great though.

It's not the worst thing I've ever seen. But it was like, or the, what I named all the guys after a reservoir dogs, the movie of the characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the, the aliases?

Yeah, he just, when you see that judge make that face. from the from the you know and you're looking at what you know oh my god you know it's going south so did you this is the fun i i to this day i just remember thinking when the when they were reading off you know the the prosecutor prosecutor the u.s. attorney will he'll be they'll read off like you know he did this and he did this like just a litany of things that you did as i'm standing there waiting to be sentenced she's reading

off all the things, horrible things that Mr. Cox said, Mr. Cox once stole someone's identity and legally had his name changed. This is true. And I'm sitting there and I totally forgot about it, bro. I mean, like, I've sat there and when she did it or when she said it, I went, that's right. Like I'm like, I smile and I'm like nodding my head. Like, that's right. And I look up and the judge is staring right at me. And you know what it reminding me of? I've always thought, did you ever see Pirates of the Caribbean?

Yeah. Jack Sparrow when they're reading off, you know, stole, you know, this, you know, boat, stole this, did this, you know, drunken this, once impersonated a member of the clergy, and he goes, that's wrong.

That's right. Like, he's sitting there like not. And so as that happens, and I look at that simultaneously, I'm like, I'm, I'm, I see that image of him and I'm like, oh my God. Oh my, I look down like, and I'm like, I just sunk myself. I'm telling myself, get a hold of yourself, man. What are you doing? And I'm like, holy shit, you grinned and nodded.

And people can't help it. I see it all the time. I tell people, just keep your mouth shut. They cannot help it. They just have to have to make a reaction, you know, poker faces. big, big game and, uh, it's literally, you have to be serious and you realize the shit, the stupid shit you've done and, and, and, yeah, I don't think it changed anything. At the time, I thought it might have, but looking back after you, going through the proceedings

and watching people go and everything, you realize like, this guy knew what I was getting when I walked before I walked. We didn't have to go through the dog and pony show. It was, it was going to be a given. Yeah. And moreover, at least you gave him a story. He's telling his grandkids that story. Oh, yeah. Listen. Gumbry Burns. I put the quote on my jacket cover of my book. I put the quote that he, something he said about me.

Federal judge's quote is on the front of my book. I mean, it's those things that kind of keep it a little bit light. I mean, you paid the price for what you did, and that's what most people. Well, I know he remembers me because during my, when I was on probation, my probation officer one day came by my house because the first year was like I was on like the highest level and so she came by the house just up and one day like hey you home and I was like yeah

she's like going to have pulling in right now it's like fuck so she came I was like hey what's up she said hey she said um I don't know if you know how it works how the system works but she said when you're sentenced outside the jurisdiction she said we we have you in case you get in case of a probation violation. We have your case moved to a local judge, to a local jurisdiction. So your judge releases his ability to, you know, to continue monitoring your and being your judge, and you get a local judge. So if something happens... You were in probation in a different jurisdiction? No, I was sentenced in the Northern District of Georgia. But I was here in Tampa. So she's like, I have sent

the paperwork in twice. And she said, and they've never sent it back. She said, so yesterday I called and said, listen, I called the clerk. And I said, listen, I've sent the paperwork twice. Have you received the paperwork? Like, what's going? Why is this taking forever? It's been months and months, months. And she said, oh, this is Mr. Cox, right? And she goes, yeah. And she said, oh, okay, yeah. No, the judge is, he is not, he's not going to release Mr. Cox. And she goes, what do you mean? And she said, no, he has a, he said he has a vested interest in seeing Mr. Cox through to the end. And she goes, oh, is that it? Is there?

And she goes, no, that's what he said. He's not releasing him. And she goes, okay. She does, you understand if something happens, we have to ship him up there. She's like, no, you understand. Okay, hangs up the phone. And she goes, so she says, so I wanted to come by. She goes, what is the problem?

What is the deal with you in your judge? I have no idea. Like, I have no idea. She said, because I've never had this happen. She said, never. They always release you. She said, that's why I called. Like, I didn't know what was going on.

And she said, I said, I have no idea. She was like, okay, well, she said, he's watching you. And I was like, she said, is he still around? He is retired, but he's on, they call it, they don't call it supervision. He's on, like, they're retired. But they can sit. But they're still. active on the cases that they had to see them through because if a new judge, he can't,

he don't want to read 40 hours worth of paperwork. He wants you to at least tell me what's going on with this. Guys, so what's happening? What's going? You remember the case? Because they do remember a lot of the cases. Yeah. But yeah, he, uh, so I know. But your case is done. You could actually have a conversation with them, right? I, I would think I could have a conversation with him. Who knows? You know, I don't, it's, I've actually thought many, many times about writing a letter. I've actually talked to Pete about writing a letter to my judge. But every time I've started it, I've just never been, and it's, and I write. I wrote three paragraphs like today on a book, on a story that I was writing. Like I've started that over and over again. You know,

when it's you and it's personal to you, it's hard to write. It's like writing your memoir. Sure. It's difficult. The hardest thing I ever did was write a memoir, my memoir. It's not even because I didn't know what I was doing, but it's just in general, you don't see yourself as who other people see you as. And really, you don't see yourself as who you are. Right. You know, there, I know guys that are complete douchebag assholes. And if you ask them about themselves, they would tell you that they were a good person. Ephraim Devereoli would tell you, I'm a good guy. Like, it's like, no, you're not. You're not a good guy. You're a bad guy. You're a scumbag. Like,

but he wouldn't see himself that way. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people reach out to judges after they're done, and it's usually a pretty good response. So I would, you know, I would think so. I mean, I would think so he was, he was just, it's funny, there's a lawyer, Jay up in Atlanta, and he's, and he's, I don't know if he's been, if he's been in front of my judge, Judge Biden, a batten, sorry, Judge Batten. but he knows of him. He goes, he's just known as being a very, very tough judge. He's very tough. His sentences are tough.

He, he, you know, but I, listen, he was, he gave me a brutal sentence to begin with, but he revised it. But he gave me every single break on the way, you know, along the way, you know, every single break. So, you know. But you earned it too. It's not like you were getting in trouble. and all that. Yeah. And I, you know, and the whole, but you know how, how hard it is to be in prison and,

and see guys come in that have like. Much more serious infractions? No, I mean, like, even, even like bank fraud. Oh, how much is your bank fraud? 22, you know, I still owe 22 million. How much time did you get? Six years. Right.

Six years? Yeah. For 22 million dollars? Yeah, why? Did you get a 5-0, a 5K-1? Did you, no. It was just my sentence. It was just my sentence.

It's just where I fell on the guidelines. Like, ha, ha, ha, ha, how. You know, I got every single enhancement you could get. And even though we argued a bunch of them, he didn't, he didn't bend on one enhancement. And it's just, you know, so as I start to write that letter, there are all these things that flow through my mind. Yeah, that changes your, taints your view on what to say. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I go one way, I go the other way. I, you know, I go back and forth.

And it's not that I want to say anything mean. It's just it's hard to make – like, I also don't want to make you read a three-page letter. Right. You know? Right. Like, I want a quick, concise letter that you can read, and that's it. You know who wrote her prosecutor is Jess? Yeah, my wife wrote her U.S. attorney, and he wrote back.

Yeah. You know? He remembered – he remembered – I actually interviewed him for her story. I wrote a story on my wife. and it's a great story. She's a boat pilot now, right? Yes, she's, yes. And that's got, she actually, she's a captain.

She's got a captain's license. I mean, she's like, I got her captain's license. So, but that's got to be very hard with having her background to being able to maintain a captain's license. It's like, she got, she got, she got her. There's some special license you have to get. Like literally she walks through. It's like a, she's got special everything. Like her conviction doesn't seem to bother, have.

stopped her from doing anything. That's amazing. You know? That's amazing. But yeah, she got the license. She got the, I forget what they call it, the tip card. There's some kind of name for this extra ID she has. Yeah, she's been able to do.

She's got her passport. She's got like all these things that I'm, I'm trying to get my passport. I got to go to my federal judge to get him to write a letter allowing me. Why are they stopping me from getting your passport? Well, because you're not on paper. So, no, I was on paper. On top of that, two of my charges are passport fraud. One is false application of a passport.

One is use of a false passport. So one, you lied to get it. Two, you used it. And really it's not even one. It's like 20 of them. So, you know, and then I say, hey. So you weren't just doing it with IDs. I need a passport.

You know what I'm saying? Like I tell my lawyer, I need to leave the country to go to, you know, I need to go. And she's like, I can't let you go. See, what do you? Yeah, I need my, and I get my passport. I got a job. She's like, yeah, I can't. That's not going to happen.

And I went, well, can we ask the judge? She goes, yeah, we'd have to ask the judge. And she said, but he's not going to give you. She's like, aren't you, don't you a passport fraud? Isn't one of your charges password? She's not going to give you a. They didn't fraudulently make my own passport I had to somebody else. I still legally, I still was issued by this.

I thought like I made it. It's issue. And let's face it, I could get one. I don't need your permission. But, you know, it's like my name for a change. So, yeah. And so we put in the motion, came back. And the judge was like, yeah.

Yeah, I can give it to him. Oh, it's good. He's fine. And I went to, I went to, um, uh, Amstam for like five days during COVID. Almost nothing's open. Wanted to go see Anne Frank's house. Nothing. Couldn't go.

Couldn't go. Can go. Can go. Red light districts closed. Not that I wanted to go. What I'd like to see walk through though. Yeah, I'd like to have the experience. Yeah, just to walk through and say, oh, they are.

Look, they are in the front. Look. But no, nothing. Everything seems, it wasn't, you know, there were shops that were open. They were like food and stuff like that. But, you know, it was nice. A lot of bicycles. Apparently, there's more bicycles in the Netherlands than there are people.

Yeah, yeah. Every once in a while they dredge the canal and get the bikes out of them. And they pull up tons. People would just throw them over. I don't know what that's about, but it's a different world from outside of what we live in the U.S. And crime and jails. in criminal justice systems. Yeah, there's, yeah.

So it's interesting. Yeah, it's, yeah. It was like Venice. I was like Venice. No cars. You walk around Venice for a while and you start to realize like, something's off. Yeah. Then you realize what it is.

Yeah, then you're like, there's no cars here. What's going on? A lot of people are no cars. Yeah. What are these, there's boats everywhere. These canal things. They're not moving fast. They're slow.

And you see them, you see that they have dumped. trucks, but they're on the boats. So there's like a four foot by four foot. They'll be two or three four foot by four foot things that are filled up with dirt. So they're bringing in dirt. Yeah. You got to bring in dirt. You're buying dirt. Yeah. Yeah. And they bring them in like these fat gondolas or, or part of sinking. That's apparently. Yeah, I know. They're pumping the whole thing. They're pushing it all up. It's really amazing. It's really super, like stepping back in time. Yeah. It's a very different world. Yeah. Very Harry Potter. Let's say you have a client that admits that he is guilty after he's, you know, going to trial or finding his case saying that he isn't guilty. How does that work?

With an ethical obligation that I have to the client, if they have told me that in confidence, I can't go out there and you tell anybody that they've told me that they're guilty. Right. But I can't use their testimony because then I'm supporting perjury. Yeah, you can't put them on the stand and say, so you didn't do this, did you? No, I did. No, well, you weren't here. Yeah. And the same thing would happen with an alibi witness. If this guy says, oh, I have my girlfriend's going to say I was with her when I committed this time.

But I wasn't. I can't do that. So it ties my hands if they're telling me that they're guilty. Now, if your question is, if they tell me that they're guilty after they found, they were found not guilty after they got exonerated, I'm screwed. I can't do anything with that. It's not like, again, the moral side of me says, okay, well, it is. But the system, it's up to the system. It's not my job to let anybody know.

So it definitely ties your hands to a certain extent if the client tells you that they did it, a lot of times we don't even ask the question. We don't want to know, really. It doesn't play a role in the decision-making process. Right, but it may hinder you if they did say that. Exactly. It could hinder you. Yeah.

And it's happened. You know, clients have told me that they've done it. But most of the time, as I said, I'm just trying to mitigate the loss. And I'm not trying to, quote, unquote, get them off. Now, I have gotten not guilties knowing that the client is guilty. Don't get me wrong. That happens on a daily basis as a defense attorney where, you know, you have a trial and the state can't make its burden.

I had a case a few years ago where my client and two others are accused of statutory. These two girls alleged that they met my client and two other guys, and they had a gang situation. but it was consensual. We get to court. All three guys are up at the trial table next to their lawyers. And we had a pretrial hearing on it, and we said that the lineup was altered. The identification lineup was not correct.

In the meantime, we had clients bring in their friends and family into the courtroom, some of whom may have looked like my client. Right. So when the girls got up on the stand to testify about who they identified in the lineup, that one girl identifies somebody in the galley, not guilty. Oh, yeah, I was going to say, absolutely. So, you know, that's a perfect example. That's the better call Saul where he swaps the two guys. Yeah. So, you know, these kinds of things happen. You know, you have questionable situations. That was unexpected, totally, that the victim of this would suggest it was not the guy that was sitting at the trial table with somebody that was the one that had sex with her.

But, you know, we do it. We've done in other cases where there's a questionable identification and you say, I'm going to have your client sit in the galley, not with me at the trial table, and say, Judge, hey, I have my client here, but I think there's an identification issue. I would like the witness to identify my client within the galley. Well, if the galley is full of similar looking people, it's going to be pretty damn hard. Right. And all of a sudden, there's an issue there.

And it's happened very recently. I had a client, he was a prison gang member, been in and out of the system many, many times, got into it with somebody and may have broken into their house and things like that. And they had one witness. Guy's pretty smart, institutionalized. And you didn't want to be able to. to mess with him. You know, he had, he was, I'm trying to remember which gang he was in. He was in one of the more higher level prison gangs. Not one of the more fun, fuzzy, soft gangs. Not fun, fuzzy ones, the harder ones. And, and it was a supremacist gang, which, again,

going back to what I said about being a Brown defense lawyer, he had me as a defense, and he's a good client to me. He sends me a lot of people. And same thing. They had one witness who didn't see very well. It's like one of those, my cousin Vinnie moments. Yeah, yeah, okay. I had the guy come in, I said, and we had a tough-ass judge, and the guy could not identify my guy as being the person, and the case got thrown out. So, you know, these things happen. So both cases where there was guilt, the statutory and this situation, but not guilty

he was a verdict. I had my, uh, uh, cook. Yeah, cook when he was younger, he,

this guy I was in prison with. Is cook the person? Is, he, his name, his name is Ellis Cook. Okay. And he was 17 years old and his dealer,

or supplier had given him like half a key or something. And he then fronted it to somebody else. And that guy said when he, he didn't pay him. He goes, well, what are you going to do to make it right? He's like, nothing. You're hit. He's like, I'm 140 pounds.

I mean, he's like 5, 10, and 140 at 17. This guy's a grown man. He's like, what am I going to do? And so he went back to the dealer. He's like, I don't know what to do. He's like, look, you know, he said, I'm going to make it right, though. He said, I'm going to go get that, go get it from him or take it out of his ass. And he's like, you do that.

You don't know. He's like, you take care of it. You don't owe me nothing. He said, because you can't. let people know that you can steal from him. Right. And so he goes and throws a brick, like a cinder block through his back window when he's here at home, goes in with a shotgun, smashes out his teeth, shoots both his dogs.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Puts him on him, you know, on the ground, ties him up, searches the whole house, finds a bunch of cash, drugs, everything, and then leaves. He is thinking, you ripped me off. This is what you get. know what time it is. You know what's going to happen. You know, of course, he didn't think it was going to happen, but it did. And so this is the game. And so I'm not going to call the cops. Like,

that's what? He's not going to call him. He ripped me off. What's going to say to him? Well, of course, he calls the cops and says, this guy robbed me. I know who it is. And he robbed me for a bunch of cash. You know, that's what he's going to say. And they're going to grab you. You know, you knocked out half his teeth. So, and you shot his two dogs. So he, Cook goes to trial. And his lawyer comes to him and says, look, you know so-and-so, which is the supplier, right? The drug traffic or just distribute or whatever comes. He said he said he, because when the lawyer shows up, he's like, I mean, this is a high-powered lawyer. I'm keeping of mind, this is Ocala in Florida, which is kind of a little podunk town, like 20, 30 years ago.

So but there he was a, he was a known big-time lawyer. So he's like, he walks in. He's like, I can't hire you. He's like, oh, no, no. so-and-so hired me for you. And he's like, holy shit. Um, so when they go to trial, he's like, I'm terrified. I'm terrified. They didn't let him out on bond. They don't, he's like, I got no money. I'm like, I'm terrified. And I do it. He's, at first there, the offers were life, life. Then it got down to 30 years. Then it got to

down to 25 years. Then it got to 20 years. He was in 20 years, they were like, take 20, we're going to trial. It's like, I'm 17 years old. Yeah. He's so I go to, you know, and as an adult, these are serious crimes. So the dealer gets on the stand and the lawyer is sitting there and he said, and he said he looks over at him and he says, just don't worry. He said, I got this. He just watch this.

Gets up, starts talking to him about what happened, this and this and this. He said, the man who did this is, you see him in the courtroom? And he goes, I don't know. And he goes, and so prosecutors like, wait a minute. You know, what's going on? The whole thing. He's like, no, no, no. He's like, no, no. He's like, whoa, whoa, your honor. He's like, he's like, he's like, no, what do you mean? He's like, you at some point, you picked out my client, like my client's here because he's like, yeah,

you know, I thought I was sure before, but now that I see him in person, I don't know. I don't, I don't think that's him. And, and they freak out. He said, oh, it's a, it's a fucking 10-minute fucking shit show of screaming and talking in the back chambers and doing this and doing that, they go back, and finally they come back, and the prosecution turns around and says, listen, we're dropping all charges. And he said, and the judge said, look, you can, you can go home right now or you can go back and get all your stuff with the bailiffs.

He said, man, you fuck that. You keep that. You can keep that commissary. I'm not going back with those guys. He said, I walked out right then. And he later found out that the supplier had gone to the guy, had gone to the guy like a week or two beforehand

had basically grabbed him and his girlfriend and brought him like to a house and fixed this and said that boy goes to jail you're fucking done. Yeah, you're drawing too much energy and attention towards us. You know, these guys, this, you know,

you've seen Florida. Yeah. You could drop a body pretty much anybody. You don't even have to dig the hole. The gators will take it away. The gators will take it. Yeah. And so he just, and so that's why

when he got there. He's like, no, you're going to testify. Well, I'll take up, you know, you're testifying. Yeah. But. Yeah, the backstory that goes on is the best part. So, you know, when that statutory case, the victim's identified the wrong person, all of a sudden, everything stops. Judge says, in chambers, the whole nine yards. You know what you see on TV? Yeah. You go back to the chambers and the judge looks at the prosecutor and saying, what the fuck are you doing, you know? Why are you pursuing this? And the prosecutor's like, oh, they, I don't think that's, you know, going to be a problem for our case, blah, blah, blah. And we're looking at her like, Are you out of your freaking mind?

It's an identification issue right off the bat. You can't pursue this case. Your case is over. And, you know, going adamant, no, I'm going to still try the case. So you know what she ended up doing? She ended up dismissing one right off the bat, holding one, and the third guy pleaded for some, entered a plea for some reason. I have no idea why that attorney did it that way.

And it was just, it was cut and dry as far as I was concerned. And so mine got dismissed. And I was not messing with that. I'm not turning around on that case. But the antics that happened off the record are insane. It's just a judge is blowing them up. Prosecutors dig their heels in the sand. And frankly speaking, mine got dismissed because I had a reputation with the prosecutor.

I'm a straight up guy. You're not going to fuck with me. Right. You know, it comes down to that a lot of times. It's the reputation that you have with the other side. You always thought this was funny. It was, um, oh, shoot. was in a few good men.

Yeah. Where he's there at the bar and he's like, I'm going to file this, you're going to do this. I'm going to file this. I'm going to bury in paperwork. I'm going to file this, you're going to be doing this for the next six months. And finally,

you guys like, okay, listen, man. That is actually something that does happen. It's like, you know, it's a chess match.

I'm going to do this. You know I'm going to do that. You're going to respond this way. But we're going to be stuck back and forth on this forever. Why don't we just work this out somehow? In the end, he's getting six months. You know what I'm saying?

Let's just get him six and like it. Yeah. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, if you would like to get in touch with or follow Nick Mandeepe, we're going to leave his links in the description box. So you go in the description box.

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