Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Locked Up Abroad: American Held Hostage Inside a Dominican Prison

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Michael Wittenberg, a U.S. citizen, shares his harrowing experience of serving nearly two years in a Dominican Republic prison. ⁣ ⁣ Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code COX at https://Mandopodcast.com/COX #mandopod⁣ ⁣ Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Connect with Michael Wittenberg:⁣ Website: http://www.michaelscottwittenberg.com⁣ Phone #: [phone] ⁣ Email: [e-mail]⁣ X: @msw070981⁣ TikTok: @msw0709⁣ IG: @msw07091981⁣ Facebook: Michael Wittenberg (Facebook.com/msw0709)⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news⁣ ⁣ 🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit ⁣ 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt⁣ 🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/re⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. A Long Island man is behind bars in a Caribbean prison. Now, I had to pled guilty because I thought I was getting a deal, right? So I pled guilty. I'm approaching $200,000 with this. I don't know if they're going to give me 20 years.

I don't know. When I was about 19, I started working for this company, and they produced conventions and trade shows. And both my parents are business owners, so I came from a business household. So it was right around the time of 9-11. You know, so I worked for them for about six months or eight months, whatever it may be. 9-11 happened.

And I wasn't, like, directly affected by 9-11 because they didn't know anybody in the towers, but we wanted to go home. You know, like, it was kind of like that whole thing where you just want to be with your family, especially if you're from New York. It was a very weird time. So I leave the industry and I become a stockbroker and I do that whole thing. But I always wanted to get back into it. So I'm sitting years later.

I'm sitting one of my clients who was local. And I'm sitting at the table with him and we're talking and I'm doing really, really well. I have my own shop. And I'm making like three, four hundred thousand a year. I'm doing really well. And I'm 25 years old. You know, life is grand, you know? And I'm sitting across the table from my clients and we're talking.

And I said, I got to get out of this. So what do you mean? Where are you going? You're making close to a half a million dollars a year. Where are you going? You know, what are you doing? I said, I'm just not happy doing what I'm doing, you know? He said, well, what are you going to do?

I told him what I wanted to do doing a sex convention. So he said, I said, what do you want to do it? I said, I want to do it in New York. He said, well, I can't do it in New York. He said, I have ties, business ties. He said, what if I see somebody? I said, well, if you see somebody at the show, he's at the show. You're investing in the show.

So he wrote me a check, and he invested in the show. And I started doing sex conventions for the next eight, nine, years. What was it? How much was a check? What is it? It was like 350 grand. Really? Yeah. It's a good friend. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was the gender gambler. He loved to play. You know, he was that was the guy. So,

um, we did a bunch of shows. We did great, great. I don't know if you remember this. Do you remember when Tiger Woods and David Boreannis and, uh, and like all the big celebrities were having affairs were porn stars? Yeah. Okay. So that was in 2009-ish, right? So what I did. was I called them all up and I was like, you have to come to my show.

And I made TMZ and I made all this bullshit because all the girl, the scandal girls were there. Right. So we did sex conventions for a while and we did a tour. We did feature tours. I had porn chicks going on feature tours at strip clubs. We did it.

We got really into it. So long story short, I got out of the industry because my first ex-wife at the time wasn't really crazy about it and this, that and the other, as you can imagine. So I was in a really bad time in my life And I got like a 9 to 5 with you know cable vision Yeah

Okay so I got a 9 to 5 with cable vision Knocking on doors that you know people left cable vision to go Switch to Fio so my job was to bring them back you know So it was a greatest job in the world I worked four hours a day made 150 grand the year It was dynamite but I'm a business guy you know So now me and my ex-wife are going through it and we get divorced.

And at the time, I just started vaping. So I would hang out in my friend's shop. He had like a lounge. It wasn't really like a shop where you go in and buy juice and leave. It was like a lounge with a pool table and a bar. And we would all hang out and just chill out, you know. So I was getting really close with him. And I was going through the divorce,

so I kind of needed, you know, that time away, you know, because it was really tense at my house. So I was hanging out with him. And he calls me up one day and my ex-wife moves out of the time. So we're spending custody to kids. And he calls me up one day and he's like, I just bought this booth at this convention in Jersey. Could you help me?

I've never done a show before. Could you just help me and come? I was like, hell yeah, I really want to see it anyway. What kind of convention? It was a vape convention. It was a vape convention. Thank you, sure. Being clear.

Yeah, of course. And so I go to the vape convention. As soon as I walk in, I noticed they had no idea what they were doing. The mayor actually came in on the Saturday and stopped the convention because of indoor smoking. It was a whole big thing. And I was like, I'm going to do a vape convention. So I didn't have. Vaping?

Is that smoking? Is that considered? Indoor. They consider it. Six and one half dozen in the other. That's how they consider it, which I don't. But they do. So I said, I'm going to do a vape convention.

But the problem is I don't have a dime to my name. I don't know how I'm to pay rent. And I have my laptop and my phone. That's what I got. But I'm determined. I'm a very determined person. So I called up, I thought to myself, where could I vape in the Northeast indoors

where this would be okay? So I thought about the two casinos in Connecticut, the Indian reservations in Connecticut. They're huge casinos. So I called up one of them, Foxwoods, and I said, how much do you need to hold the hall for 30 days and go to contracts at five grand? So I beg and borrow and come up with five grand.

And it gives you 30 days to come up with the rest of the line. Right, right, right. So I started hammering the phones with a friend of mine. She was doing a favor of helping me out. And I got my first big sponsor. And it was a big distribution, consumer-facing distribution company. It was like the Amazon of Vap in the Northeast. They were called Giant Vapes.

So now that I had Giant Vapes, my company had kind of legitimacy because everybody knew them in the area. So now that I had giant vapes, everybody started latching on to the idea. And our first show goes off, and we have 17,000 people walking through the door, 18,000 people walking through the door on the weekend. It was the most successful, one of the most successful shows in the country. So we do it for seven years or so, and COVID happens. And now we're doing shows for 20, 25,000 people all over the country,

and we immediately get shut down because COVID happens. It was two weeks before my Northeast show. And now I'm stuck because I don't know what I'm going to do because if you can't do conventions, you can't do live events, you can't, you know. Yeah, you've got all the things kind of interconnected, right? So I said, what am I going to do? So I'm actually, towards the end of COVID,

I start doing, you know, those online poker clubs? I start doing that, you know, and that kind of got me through COVID, you know. I was going to say, I have a buddy who literally during COVID made a fortune doing that. Yeah, I mean, I was making a living. I was, you know, supporting my family with him. So I laugh, so I'm walking around and I'm talking to one of my buddies and I said, what if we do, what if I do a show, but not a convention, take 20 buyers, like people who own distros and smoke shops and stuff like that, and 20 vendors or so who may

manufacture goods and go to a really cool resort in the Caribbean, an all-inclusive resort, and have one-on-one meetings and party and hang out and drink and smoke and just chill out for a week and make money. That's a great idea. Now, I don't know if you know this, but towards the end of COVID or towards during COVID, the vape industry and the cannabis industry kind of came together and it became counterculture. It didn't become the vape industry or the smoke industry, just kind of became counterculture.

like Spencers. You know, like that's what it became. And it was mainstream because cannabis was getting legal and they had all these alternate cannabis products like Delta 8 and whatnot. So we did seven of them and they were huge successes. Like really... How many people are coming to these things? It was only 20 buys, 20 vendors.

We had like 60 or so rooms at the resorts. But it was all the people that counted. It was the guy who owned the distro who distributed to a thousand stores. And it was the guy who owned change. chains of 20, 30, 40, 50 stores. So, you know, my manufacturers would sell, you know, they got in front of people that really mattered. You know, that's what the point of it was.

What are people paying to come to the show? 10,000 a clip. 10,000 a vendor. The buyers were free. The vendors were 10,000 a person. Okay. And it was two representatives from each company. So not only were they going on a five-star vacation.

Right. But they were writing off. They were writing off. And you may end up having me. having an amazing connection with somebody. They all wrote a couple hundred thousand in business every time they went, you know, because it was, you were bringing business to a social environment. It was really cool, you know?

I mean, having you went on one 15-and-20-minute meeting, but at the same time, you were going to dinner and you were partying the pool and you were drinking with these people, so it all kind of mesh, mesh together. How often are you having these? Once every two, three months. We were doing a bunch of them, you know? Yeah. So our seventh one, we did DR, we did Mexico, we did Jamaica.

Our seventh one was coming around. We were going to the R again. And we were Dominican Republic. We were going to the R again. I'm sorry. Not there said Oregon. No. It was all the Caribbean.

So we were going to D.R. And we chose this resort called Margaritaville. You know Margaritaville. Yeah. So we went to Margaritaville. and I introduced my vendors to a shipping company. Now, again, you have to keep in mind, I do not, I do not manufacture anything. All I am is an event producer at the end of the day.

I could be producing, you know, gum conventions. It doesn't matter. I'm just an event producer, you know, candy convention. It doesn't matter. So I introduce, even though I'm surrounded, I've been in the vape industry for 10 years. So I introduced my vendors to the shipping company who happens to have an office in Miami and an office in DR. So I said, just deal with that, you know.

So now all the vendors were going to ship their samples, promo items, hats, t-shirts, whatever it is they're sending to give to the buyers to their office in Miami. The office was going to palletize it, put in one big palette, and then ship it over to DR, go through customs, go through the whole thing. And you've done this before? This was the first time I was introducing the shipping company for convenience, but they brought, they always brought samples and hats and stuff

and their luggage, you know, right, they just ship it, right, right, no, no problems, you know, it's not a lot of stuff,

it was just a little from everybody. So, it's 17 vendors that have stuff in this palette, right? So, they call me at the resort to go sign for it.

Now, 17 vendors aren't going to go sign for one palette, so I, as the group admin, are going to sign for the palette. Now, again,

keep in mind, I didn't ship a bar, I didn't pack a box. I know nothing about what's in them. I just told them, don't ship anything illegal to DR. Just ship, if you're in the business of Delta 8 or cannabis or whatever it is,

that's legal in the United States. Just ship packaging because the buyers aren't going to smoke or ingest anyway. Just ship the packaging because that's all you really need in promo stuff. So I go to sign for the palette and 20 Dominican DEA agents appointing machine guns at my hands. head. Okay.

Yeah. U.S. No, Dominican D.N.C.D. But, yeah. Their version of the DEA. Right. And they're pointing machine guns at my head. Now, keep in mind, this went through customs on both sides, you know.

I don't speak the language. I have no idea what's going on. Zero. I'm signing for a package, you know? Like, that's what I'm doing. And they arrest me. and they bring me to Santa Domingo, which is three hours away from Puntacano

where the resort was. Did they do the whole get on the ground, get on the ground? Yeah. Yeah, the whole thing. I had a couple buddies with me who were helping me, you know, pack the, like the... They put them on the ground? They put them on the ground, but they only took me.

Okay. Yeah. So we go to, we take a ride from Punta Kana to Santa Domingo, which is like three hours away. So they arrest me in Puntagana, they bring me to Santa Domingo. Why, I don't know. But they said it was because the pallet came into Santa Domingo.

But I was technically arrested in Punta Cana. So I should have been in Punta Canna. I shouldn't have been in Santa Domingo three hours away. Whatever. Well, that's how it works in the U.S. I don't know. The jurisdiction you have to kind of be housed in the jurisdiction you're arrested. Never been in.

But I was going to say that that's part of like the Constitution says you can't shop jurisdictions. But anyway, that may not be the way they do it there. Listen, it is what it is. So we go to Santo Domingo and I get put in this, like, holding, I guess, facility of the DNCD, which is the drug enforcement agency. So, again, I don't speak the language. So I'm trying to figure out what exactly is going on with this whole thing. So we go to the next morning, my wife at the time,

My wife at the time has family friends that are Dominican. And they are related to this lawyer in Dominican Republic. So it kind of automatically becomes he's my lawyer now. Right. So the district attorney, the prosecutor who arrested me, tells them to meet him at his office in Santo Domingo. So they put me in a car and we all go to the district. in his office in Santo Domingo.

So I'm sitting there with my wife at the time and my travel agent and my lawyer, I never met before, but he's sitting in the next desk with the prosecutor. Is he like a criminal lawyer or is he like a real estate lawyer? They told me he was a criminal lawyer, all right? So I don't know. I don't know at this point.

And he doesn't speak English either. That's good. That's a good situation. Right, exactly. So we're sitting there. We don't know what the hell is going. on. But after the meeting, we get like two minutes to kind of talk to him. We have a translator. We're trying to figure out what's going on. And they say that he asked, the prosecutor asked

my attorney for $140,000. And this all goes away. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples preferred, get free delivery, no minimums. Staples Preferred unlocks up to 3% back. Plus 10% savings on print and exclusive wireless offers. One less thing on your plate. Actually, a lot less. Visit staples.ca slash preferred.

That was easy. I didn't have $140,000 at the time, or at least liquid. I didn't have it. And my lawyer basically tells them, go fuck off. And I'll see you in court. Right. So in the Dominican Republic, I don't know if you know this, but you're supposed to see a judge two days after your arrest within two days after your arrest. So they bring me to this, I guess, Rikers Island, you know what Rikers Island is?

Yeah. So they bring me to this like Rikers Island, which is like a temporary facility until you see a judge or until something happens. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm hysterical. I don't know what's going on. Number one, I've never been in jail. Number two, I've never been arrested. So I don't know what's going on. I still don't know what I'm being charged with.

So I go to this thing, and I'm thinking I'm going to be there for a day top because I'm going to see a judge. I got arrested yesterday. I have to go see a judge by tomorrow, maybe the next day, max. So I'm going to get out. You know, I'm going to get bail or he's going to dismiss it. And I'm going to get out. And that's what it is. So we end up going, I'm in this jail.

this temporary jail, and I'm really uncomfortable. I don't have clothes. I don't have anything. And I can't communicate with anybody because nobody speaks to language. So now I go to court two days later. And the court system or my lawyer or somebody screwed up and don't have a translator for me.

So they postpone it for another week. So now I'm going to be there for nine days. And I thought that was the end of the world. I mean, that was the end of the world. You know, like I want to go home. I want to see my kids. You know, this is not where I'm supposed to be. So I saw freaking out.

And they let my lawyer come see me and they let my wife at the time come seeing me. And we go through that whole thing. nine days rolls around, and my ex-wife at the time, I ended up going back to New York, so it's just being my lawyer now. And there was this guard that he was really nice, and he was being paid by my lawyer

to be nice to me or to watch me or whatever it may be. And I haven't heard from the embassy yet. My ex-wife called him, but I haven't heard from the embassy yet, so I don't know what's going on with that. So we finally get a, my lawyer gets a translator, and we have a lawyer,

and now we have the court date, right? So we're going to court. I'm going home, right? You would think I'm going home. I'm thinking you don't. I thought I was going on. So I get to court and they say you have to stay in jail for two months, right, while we figure this whole thing out. And I am bawling my eyes out at this point.

I don't know what the fuck's going on. I want to go home to my kids. I'm in a third world country. I don't know. Again, I don't, I find out at this time that I'm. that I'm being charged with international narcotics trafficking. That's my charge. And I'm thinking in the back of my head, international,

that's big. That's like... That sounds serious. Right, right. That sounds like a problem. But my lawyer is telling me two months ago, I'm not, don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. We're good.

You can't even arrange for a translator to be here. Right, right. Like, I'm not feeling real good about anything you say at this point. Right. But now when I get to court When they sentence me to the two months I see all these cameras there And I don't know if they're for me

Or for another another defendant Or whatever it may be But later on that day I'm sitting in the jail And I see my attorney on the television in jail Talking that Blaming the prosecutor For planting XC in the pallet

I'm like holy shit I mean I first of well nobody has like half my vendors are you know are they're they're like ex-con like they all went sober you know they all went straight that's how the cannabis and vape industry kind of say the cannabis embassy like we've had several guys on that were selling and smuggling and now they have legitimate businesses like they all went legit since they were already in the industry when it was illegal once it became legal right it was easy for them to so that's what happened so I was like none of them do X you know that's not what it is so

he goes on the news and says the prosecutor plant our X in the boxes and this, that, and the other. Now, that can't be good for me. You know, that was accusing a prosecutor of planting drugs in my shipment. You know, that can't be good for me on any front. So now I'm looking at two months, you know. So my lawyer's telling me, because of Cincinnati Domingo is close of him to come visit me, and he's going to try to keep me in Santa Domingo and not bring me to a long-term facility

for as long as presumably possible. Well, wouldn't you know two weeks later, I know I'm crying every day, you know, I'm upset. You're clearly not. You're not cut out for this. Right, right. I'm more for it's called and I have a guy, you know? And so two weeks later,

my name gets called to be transferred to like a real jail, like a real prison. And I'm freaking the fuck out. I'm like, what's going to happen? They're like, don't worry, your case doesn't get postponed or anything. It's just part of the process, right? So I get, so we take this ride on this bus to like a real prison. It was called in the high O20.

And again, I don't know what's going on. So I get off the bus and they bring me, they start like an intake, kind of. Yeah. So they start an intake. take and this guy. So in there, in Dominican Republic, they're ranked by like stripes on the collar. So a regular guard is like you're just starting,

a rookie is one stripe. A regular guard is two stripes. A supervisor's three stripes. Subdirector of the prison is four stripes. And a director is five stripes. So they tell me that this four stripe guy, the sub-director is going to come handle me. Now, I was different than anybody,

so I got a little more attention than most people would. So this guy comes in... You're a high-price... You're a high-profile American who's been on the news multiple times. I'm the only one. I'm the only American.

How many people are in this prison or this facility? 800. There's 800 prisoners. Okay. It's on the smaller side of... what's there. So there's 800 prisoners in this one and this guy's coming to come see me and kind of show me what's going on

or the best to his knowledge. So not only does this guy Montaro come see me, but he brings one of the prisoners who speak English. He got deported from the U.S., but he spent, he did 14 years in the U.S., but he speaks English, so at least we'll get somewhere at this point,

right? So he tells me that before I go into this guy, I sell, I have to go into observation for two weeks. And that's just how the system works. I have to go into observation with like 30, 20, 25 people in one room. And they see how I am. And then I go into, I could go into general population.

But the observation room was kind of like in the same general area as like the whole, you know, would be considered. So that was a little rough. So he put me in this maximum security room. And there was one guy who spoke English there too. But he was a real scumbag. We'll learn to learn. Right.

We'll learn. And he was doing a bunch of years also. So I go there and now keep in mind, it's three hours away from Santa Domingo when my lawyer is. And they don't have apps where you could transfer money to my commissary. So somebody has to come to the jail to put money in my commissary so I could buy any. thing. Now, I'm not eating because, number one, I don't eat the food, and I'm too upset to eat. So I'm already starting to lose weight. I was, when I got arrested, I was 323 pounds. I don't know if you saw the thing, yeah.

I don't know, you saw the CBS thing last night. The head, my mugshot, I was significantly bigger than I am now. I was 323 pounds. Now I'm 219. You realize you were that big. Yeah. I was ginormous. So I'm starting not to eat.

And because of nerves, because of my, anxiety because of everything, I'm starting to lose a little weight, but that's okay. I could afford to lose weight at this point, you know? So I go into this thing and we gather that the only way to get me money is by somebody sending Western Union to somebody in the jail, and then somebody in the jail, my friend, somebody in the jail's family would have to come bring it to the jail to go in my commissary. Because again, there's no apps or on it.

It's third world. So I do this and my mother or my wife at the time send money, but, you know, I'm basically sending money blind to somebody I met a few times, so I don't know if I'm together. An inmate? Some inmate, some inmate says, yeah, yeah, yeah, send it to my wife and she'll take care of it. Right. That's basically how it went.

So that became a whole thing, but I learned that they have Oreos and they have chips and they have like cup noodles. So at least I get something. Yeah. Because I'm not eating anything. that they're bringing me, than their food. And I also learned that

they have like a premium meal service that you could buy at the commissary every day they have lunch. So let me try that because I'm not eating the food that they're giving me. Is the food that they provide there just garbage? Not only is it garbage,

but it's made in filth. So like there's cockroaches and roach and rats and everything like that. So it's like, so I'm never been in American prison. you have, I'm assuming, you have. So I would have to say, jail food's bad, but it's associated with your country.

But this is jail food for me when I've never been in prison, but it's not associated with my country. So even if it was a shitty burger, at least there was a burger. You know what I'm saying? This is rice and beans when I don't eat rice and beans on the outside to begin with, but this was the shitty version of rice. You know, you know?

So I'm not eating anything there. And now I'm living off of cookies. ramen and whatever there was at the commissary. So, at least I have something. And the guy ends up taking the majority of the money I send him and just stealing it, right?

Is he telling you he's going to take the money? No, he's not telling me. He's just saying, this is, you know. They sent $200. Right. Your family's saying we sent $400. Right, right. And not only that's a conversion rate, and you got to pay somebody to go get the money and bring the money to the other prison and this, that, the other. So that's where we are. So I go to Montero and I tell him, put me in general population, I need to at least get outside and have some sort of like,

I need air because I was walking, as much as they would let me walk in the first prison, I would walk because it was kind of clearing my head. I was my only time to kind of think to myself. Right. And I knew that in the main area in general population, people are getting phones. There were illegal phones,

but there were phones being snuck in by guards or whatever it may be. So I knew that at bare minimum, I would be able to buy a phone in general population. So that he said, all right. He said, go into general population.

He puts me with this guy Roy, who he's going to basically carry us out through the end of the story because he was my only, even though he was a career criminal, he was my only kind of salvation or way I would be able to communicate with everybody, he would kind of show me the ropes.

Right. You know, he was told by Montero, and he worked in the prison, so he was like, he did food, service, and he shined people's shoes, you know, like the guard's shoes. So he kind of knew the ins and end. He was there for four years at the time

or three years at the time, so he would show me the ropes. So I moved to Roy's room. Now, there are four buildings in general population, and building three was where Roy's, was, but I learned later that building three was the worst building because

it was like the building for bad kids, you know, but they had to put me there because Roy was there and Roy didn't want to move so I had to go there. So I go to, they offered to put me in maximum security which wasn't one of the buildings, but in maximum

security you can't really go outside. But I would be safe and protected, but I don't want to do that because I wanted to go outside and I wanted a phone. So I said, no, put me in Roy's room and I wanted somebody that spoke English. So I get to Roycell, and the buildings are very third world.

You know, like very third world. There's cockroaches everywhere, and it's just concrete, but it's dirty and old. Well, the story behind it is the U.S. gave the DR several hundred million dollars to reform and update this prison. So the guy who appropriated these funds stole these funds. Right. And actually was in this person also for a short amount of time.

So it was very third world. They didn't have any water. They didn't have running water for 10 minutes a day. They only have running water. They turned it on. And if you didn't shower with the Dominicans, the 40 Dominicans, on your floor, you had to preserve water. for later to take like a breadbath, like with gallons, you know.

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starter pack if you used code cox at shopmando.com. That's s-h-o-m-a-n-n-d-o.com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Once again, that's shopmando.com and use the promo code Cox. So I chose to find gallons of water, empty gallons, and I would shower later. You know, good. That's the picture with all the empty gallons of, or like milk jugs. Well, you have milk jugs. Yeah, they were like, gallons or half gallons or buckets. But I couldn't, but not only you couldn't shower, you had to preserve water to flush down the toilet

because the toilets weren't flushing. They had no running water. I mean, they put on the water for five or seven minutes at 6.30 in the morning, and then at 5.36 o'clock night, that's what you would get. So, and water wasn't every day. There was, every two weeks,

the water system would go out, so we didn't have water for days sometimes. So I knew that now I had a water, I had a shower by myself. So we would gather water and we would do that whole thing. So I figured that out. My friend Roy got me a phone. Figured that out. Roy was nice to me, so he said he was round number two of send my sister money.

I'll get it to whoever we need to get it to. So there was two economies in the prison. and there was the illegal economy, right? And there was the legal economy, which was the commissary. So I needed money in both economies because I had to buy my phone. I started smoking because they didn't have any vapes, so I started buying cigarettes. And there was the legal economy with the commissary,

and if I didn't get money deposited in the jail, I need to find out how to get tickets, because they didn't have cash, had tickets. So every Tuesday, whoever's family member would go to the prison on Sunday, visit you, put money in your commissary, and on Tuesday they would hand out the tickets. So I had to find out how to get tickets. So subsequently, the people who sold drugs and the people who sold phones and cigarettes, they had tickets because they were vendors, right? So the smart thing was to find one drug dealer, one vendor, having a relationship. with him, get him the money.

And on Tuesday, whatever money I didn't spend on cigarettes and my phone or buying drugs for doing favors for me, I would have left over so I could buy food at the commissary. Makes every sense. Everything seems simple, right? Yeah. Okay. So when I first got to general population, I don't know if you saw the picture, they had everybody carried around these big machetes. Do you saw those? I'll show you a picture.

and there were these machetes that they would break up the beds, the bunk beds, and they would file them down and make machetes, and that's what they would walk around with. And everybody's doing drugs and this, that, and the other, and buying them from,

they would have two ways of, they would have two ways of smuggling these drugs in. It was one, crooked guards, and two, they would throw these, like, wrapped bowls over a fence, like, really, really, like, down and dirty type of thing, and they would feel,

fish them with like fishing you know like like like little little string and they would fish them and bring them in the building so at least i had cigarettes on a phone i could call my kids i could call my my wife at the time and i call my mother and a few friends so i got that you know and now everybody was kind of fascinated with me because i was the american but everybody also thought I was rich. I always had a decent living and a decent, a good business. I supported my household, but by no means was I wealthy, you know? But to Dominicans, I was the gringo, the wealthy gringo.

That's what it was. So not only was everything more expensive to me, but everybody was going to try to take advantage, you know, they picked up, they picked up something from me off the floor. I had to buy them, you know, I had to buy them drugs or I had to give them something. You know, there was nothing was free, you know? And now I'm scared half to death because I don't speak the language. And the only person that I could really communicate is Roy. And Roy works most of the day.

So I have to figure out how I'm going to communicate with these people. So I have my phone now. So I have Google Translate. But the problem with Google Translate is 60% of the inmates don't read or write. So now I'm really screwed. You know? Right. They're probably not speaking proper Spanish anyway.

No, it's very slang. It's very slang Spanish. I'm trying to pick up some sort of Spanish, you know, very basics. So as I'm learning, I'm really keeping to myself and I have my phone, so I'm talking, I'm on my phone a lot. I'm just playing on my phone a lot, you know, but there were illegal phones. So now every time a cop would come in the building, one, one guard was a lot. assigned to each building every day. But every time a guard would come in the building,

the building had like they had calls. You know, they would scream out Leo. If they came in the building to put everything away or hide the drugs or, you know, put the phones away, whatever it may be. So I would have to find somebody that would take my phone because if they caught you with a phone or drugs,

you were going to the hole. Right. And I didn't want that to happen because this was already bad. I don't know what the hole was all about. And the hole is not like anything you did wrong, you went to the hole. But the guy who has a phone should be treated differently

than the guy just stab somebody. But that wasn't the case. Right. You know, so they were all in one spot. Just like when I was in the room, when I was in the cell, I was sharing a cell with two guys convicted of murder during 30 years. So there was no separation.

Right. But what you also have to understand is that 60% of the inmates are preventative. They're a pretrial. So 60% of these people haven't been convicted of anything. Haven't been convicted of anything, but they're all criminals. You know? So now I'm sitting waiting for my two months. You know, my two months to come up.

I have like a month left. I'm trying to learn what was going on. I'm losing weight like crazy because I'm not eating. I'm living off a cookies and data chips. And my lawyer comes visits me once. And at this time, my marriage is going through some trouble. Right? You think?

Right. My marriage is going through some trouble. And it seems like my wife, at the time is looking for a way to get out. Right. You know? So she even starts limiting how much we're talking. And her father, his stepfather, she was foreign, so she had an adopted family.

That's a whole not a story. Adopted family in the United States. And my father-in-law starts talking to me and basically tells me that my wife at the time really didn't want to talk to me much. And she's, like, starting to gather my assets. She's starting to take money out of my bank, my business account. She knew my, she knew all my pin numbers and stuff like that. So she's starting to hoard my money, starting to sell my, you know, stuff in my office.

And she's starting to sell furniture. And she's starting to kind of, like, transition to move out of the situation. So I got a call from my father-in-law one day, and in my ex-wife's family, it's like a hierarchy. So they say, John Busey how high. No matter, I'm 40 years old, I'm 40-somewhat years old, 42 years old at the time. And, you know, that's just how it worked. They had four or five kids, and, you know, you didn't breathe if you didn't ask that. You know, that's just how it was.

It was very strange. you know. So now my, now what you have to remember is my lawyer is their family friend. So whether or not me and my wife stay together, I have to deal with them because

they're my link to my attorney. Right. You know? And my, and my, and so now my, my, my father-in-law is telling me that my lawyer is only going to speak to me through them.

and my what yeah yeah this is my lawyer right but i don't have any i don't have any out on this because i don't have a lawyer my mother just got diagnosed with cancer the day i got arrested the day after i got arrested and i'm trying to keep you know like not involve her as much even though she's calling them i'm speaking to her every day i'm crying to her but and she's calling them but that's kind of how it was. So I sold my mother on the idea, all right, just let them handle it type of thing, you know, what are we going to do if they don't? You know?

So my father-in-law calls me up one day and he starts yelling and screaming at me. So supposedly my ex-wife hacks into my social media and sees things that she shouldn't have. Right? Okay. And now we're getting divorced.

Right. Okay. and we're not speaking anymore. Me and my wife are not speaking anymore. My father-in-law tells me this. We're not speaking anymore. And so now I'm talking to my father-in-law who hates me. Right? That's the only way I could talk to my lawyer.

Right? So my father-in-law hates me. I don't know the language. He's my only link to this, but he made a promise to my mother that he will stay involved. He was doing me a favor and staying involved to make sure I get home.

So things start getting really tense, really quick, right? My phone gets stolen or stolen and held for ransom. And every day, it's just another thing with the inmates, with my father-in-law, and I am just hyper, hyper anxious at all time. at this point. You know, I don't know what to do. My lawyer comes, visits me, and now I have Roy. So now I have Roy who speaks English and Spanish, so at least I have somebody kind of on my side that could kind of translate. So I go up to my lawyer when he comes to visit me, finally, and I say,

my father-in-law is telling me I can't speak to you, and I can't have any direct communication with you. and that makes me feel really uncomfortable because me and my soon-to-be-ex are going through a divorce. You know, so could we please figure that out? Don't worry about it. Message me directly. We're good.

Okay. So I message him directly and who do I get messages from? But my father-in-law, well, you know, Johnny called his cousin, his niece, and they were on the phone, and he said that you're messaging him directly and you can't do that.

So I got to the end of my rope. You know, I'm at the end of my rope now, and I don't know what to do, so we have to figure this all out. So I start calling out the lawyers. And the guard, remember the guard I told you about that was really nice to me in the first jail? He told me about this one lawyer,

Santana, that fixes these problems, you know? So I call, I message Santana on WhatsApp, through translating, you know, through translation. And Santana says that, now, I sent the first lawyer already at this point, I sent him $30,000. Right. My mother borrowed money. I had a little bit of money that my wife allowed me to take, you know, and sends them $30,

now, I don't know, to this day, I don't know if my father-in-law got a piece of that. I don't know how much got to the lawyer. I don't know anything. But that lawyer also was very politically motivated. I come to find out. And that's why he went on the news and that whole thing. So I'm talking to this guy, Santana, over the next week, and he's doing his due diligence. And he said, Mike, 50 grand, I'll get you out.

I'll get you out on your next court appearance. What the fuck am I getting 50 grand? You know, I thought, I have no, I have no money. My ex-father, my ex-wife isn't going to give me anything. My mother doesn't have any money. she's dealing with cancer, what am I going to do? So I have my phone,

so I start calling people to see if I could raise money. I would think the vendors that had stuff in the palette, they should contribute, right? Right, yeah, you would think they would feel bad, like, hey, I think we obviously got this guy into a jam.

Right, but they're not picking up my calls. Right. They're not answering. And these are people that I did business with for 10 years. Because they're thinking they're going to get in trouble. Not only are they thinking that they're going to get in trouble, but they're like, I have my own life. This guy's in jail.

You know, fuck him. Right. You know, but some of these people are at my wedding. You know, like this wasn't, I traveled a world with these people for 10 years. You know, this was my family, you know, my extended family, you know. Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going.

Well, irony isn't my forte. But twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little pallet cleanser for whatever's queued up, which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. We went to each other's houses and we hung out. We did the whole thing together.

So I would think that, you know, each one at bare minimum would say, here's five grand, you know, get the fuck out, you know. But they weren't picking up my calls. So my mother had to kind of beg and borrow from people that she knew. And one day, my father-in-law calls me up and starts a big argument with me. And at this point, I have Santana on deck. He's ready to go. And something just snaps in my head.

And I start fighting back. with my father-in-law because at this point, I'm just getting, I'm a punching back for him because I'm scared. But now I have a backup, so let me fight back a little bit. So I fight back, and I basically said,

look, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. Let's, whatever, it's fine. You don't want to talk to me? I don't want to talk to you. I'm good, you know? So I said, I'm getting rid of Johnny because this is not working,

Johnny's first lawyer. Yeah. So for some miracle of God, we get the 50 grand to send Santana. My mother borrows, she asks friends, and she asks all these different people. And we've raised the 50 grand for Santana. Now, getting Santana money is also a problem because I don't know if you have a wire to DR. But when you wire to DR, it's not instant like now. It's not overnight.

It's two weeks. You know? So we're sending Western unions to the sky Santana, but you can't send $50,000 in a Western Union, so you have to have 30 people send $1,000 each, you know? So my mother's trying to find different people to send wires. We're going, it's insane. What's happening?

So we finally get Santana's money. Now, my mother also made a trip to DR and, you know, the whole thing. So my court date's coming up and I'm like, this is awesome. I'm about to go home, you know, it's been two months and two months and change. I'm going home, you know. So I get to court. And now when you go to court from Ohio, you get a bus, right? but in America

that bus that transports you is told that they have to be on it's taken extra measures I'm assuming again I've never been in jail in America it's taking an extra message that you're on time and you're ready for court well it's not like that in DR you know it's whenever the butts gets there

it gets there and if you're late for court you have to postpone you know and that's just what it is oh my god yeah okay so is just a regular bus? This isn't like a transport owned by the DR? No, it's a transport, but again,

the San Diego is two hours away by bus. There's a lot of traffic, and sometimes it runs late. You know, that's what it is. Okay. So in the meantime, the embassy comes to see me while I'm waiting for this first court date. The embassy comes to see me,

and I see the embassy, and I'm so relieved to see the embassy because they speak English. And I see an American, you know, say the being, an American who works for the embassy, and they kind of bring this intermediary. And my intermediary was this guy named Jose. And he spoke English, but he was Dominican.

I think he was dual citizen. And they basically explain, I'm crying to this guy, and I'm telling him, please help me. This is the story. It's very apparent. I wasn't trafficking drugs. I was holding an event. I've done these before.

Please help me. We can't do anything. Yeah, I was going to say. We can't do a thing. They bring me this little, like, hotel soaps, and they bring me to the other, and I said, take your soap and shove it up your ass, man. I can buy my own soap.

Right. You know, I need your help, you know? So I find out that the embassy can't do anything, and now I'm waiting for this guy, Santana, to pay somebody to get me out. Right. So we get to the court. Santana's already gone.

my bus is two hours late to court and my next court date was postponed for, I want to say, I want to say right in mid-November. So now it's two months, so it's September, right, from when I got arrested. And now I'm here another three months. And I am beside myself. like I'm beside myself I'm hysterical I don't know what to do

and my lawyer's not there so I don't even know if I if somebody just stole $50,000 from me right so I call my lawyer when I get back to my my cell and he tells me I didn't want that judge anyway

so I'm happy it was we made sure it was postponed sounds good sure yeah I gotta sit in prison right I got to sit in prison right I got to Couldn't you get me to hell?

You know? Like, you know? So now I'm stuck for another two months. So my mother makes arrangements to come. Now, I'm an only child. My mother's fighting cancer, but my mother can't come to DR for an extended period of time until she finishes her chemo, right? So she starts making plans, you know, when am I going to finish chemo?

And it's not any other. So I'm waiting. And in the interim, my mother contacts my father, who I haven't spoken to in years and years and years and years until he tells him the situation. So now we're just waiting. I'm starting to talk to my father again after years, and we're waiting.

Two days before... So Santana tells me, we have the deal. Everything's set. Next court date, you're going home. I paid the money Everybody has their money The district attorney has his money The judge has her money

And you're going home Very simple Okay Right The case is going to be dismissed Two days before I go to prison I get a call

The Santana dies I fucking knew what I was going to say Was this guy died Does he get sick Does he get sick? Yeah He drops dead So

I don't know what the fuck Now, do I still have the deal? Right. Do I still have the deal and I just got to go through the motions of going to court with somebody? Or do I not have the deal? Is my 50 grand gone? I had a begging bar to get the 50 grand. What am I going to do?

So we get the, we go to court and now we have to postpone it. But you would think that you postpone it for two weeks, tops. I get another lawyer, we could go, go through the motions, and then I could go home, right? So they don't postpone it for two weeks. They postpone it for three months. Now I'm in jail for Christmas. Right.

You know, and, you know, I am, I'm literally screaming at the judge at this point. In jail, I'm screaming at the judge in court saying, I don't want to be here for Christmas. I did nothing. wrong. You know, I signed for a package that wasn't even mine and I want to go home. Could we please move it closer? Those are the dates. So now I have to go to court January 15th. So again, we don't have any idea who's going to be my next lawyer or where the money's going to come from.

But my mother starts talking to my father and he runs a successful business and he says, I'll free up 50 grand for you to get a lawyer. We start interviewing lawyers. Now, during this time, my mother got special permission from the jail to come to the jail and visit me every day. She comes, she books a trip for six weeks to spend Christmas and New Year's Thanksgiving with me, you know, just so I have something. And now we have to find another lawyer, so it's good that she's there.

So she hires, so her friends married to a Dominican who has a good. who has a cousin in D.R., in Santo Domingo, who's driving her around. She hires a translator. So she's paying money, all this money to people that she can't afford, number one, but she has to do it because she has to get me a lawyer, and she has to come, she's not going to drive in D.R., you know?

So she has a driver, and she's getting me a lawyer, and we're interviewing lawyers, and we're doing the whole thing. And while this is happening, it was like the fourth or fifth day that she was there, I go upstairs and visit her and I see these guards and they're all dressed in black

and you can see their maximum security guards and I've seen them before they did maximum security they were the people in charge of maximum security and I didn't pay any mind to it because they were always there anyway and I say hello to him and they say who what's your name? I said my name and he goes

come with us and they cuff me what the fuck what did i do i said i'm going to see my mother so they cuff me and while this is all happening my mother and i are writing letters to everybody we're trying to contact congressmen and people in politics and whoever we could contact the news whoever we could contact to shed some light on this to help me get out, we're trying to contact. So they bring me to myself and there are six of them with me and they're fully blacked out and they're, they mean business. These guys mean business. These aren't like a regular guard. You know, these guys are mean business. So they're tearing apart myself. They're tearing apart

myself and they're at, where's the phone? Where's the phone? Where's the phone? Where's the phone? So I knew that I always had to bring my phone, I had to hide my phone when I wasn't in my cell because, you know, just in case they said Leo, my phone had to be away and I had to leave it with somebody I trust. So I established a really good relationship with one of the drug dealers on the top, on the next floor up from me. So I brought it to him. Right. So my phone was in my room, so it was safe. Right. So they're tearing apart my room and they're asking me for the phone.

but they can't find the phone. I said, I don't have a phone. There's no phone here. So they don't know what to do, and they bring me to the hole, but they don't put me in the hole. They put me in observation. The room that you're supposed to go to

when you first get to the jail. Right. Because it's a little more mellow than the hole. So I find out that I'm there because one of the letters, you know, Chuck Schumer? Yeah.

I hear that one of the lines, letters I wrote, I wrote to Chuck Schumer or his office. And you would think that an American writing a letter from a prison that doesn't have a record or anything, you would think they would kind of keep that confidential. But supposedly that information got out to the prison and the prison knew I had a phone because of, because the email was sent to Chuck Schumer's office from my phone. Oh, okay. So they knew there was a phone, but they didn't know where it was. because it wasn't in my room. So now I'm in observation.

And I don't have a lawyer, and now they have one phone flirting around there, but it's like an old Nokia, you know, that was the prison phone that we could kind of share. Right. So I could make two phone calls a day. You know, that's what I got.

Or three phone calls a day. And weren't long phone calls. It wasn't my phone. So I'm calling my kids once, and I'm calling my mother and father twice, because we have to figure out what's going on, my lawyer. So we get a couple lawyers to come to the jail, and there were these two lawyers that I was boiling it down to.

One was this, like, Fifth Avenue type of lawyer who had an in-house, one of the partners spoke English, one of their clients were Pfizer. You know, they were a Fifth Avenue lawyer, very expensive, but it seemed like they knew what they were doing, right? And then there was this other lawyer who was younger. And he brought his friend who spoke English, who was an English teacher.

But he was younger, but he understood my case. Right. He understood that it wasn't even real weed, number one. You know, it was like hemp. It was legal in my country. It went through customs. It, you know, it was nothing. You know, it was nothing.

It was insignificant. So we understood that. So I liked him, but I knew he had the experience. Right. So my mother and father take it upon themselves to hire the Fifth Avenue lawyer because that's where they think I'm going to get the better defense. But I wasn't crazy about the Fifth Avenue lawyer because every time I would, every time I would message him, it kind of felt like I was bothering them, you know?

And he was like, and I was nervous. So I wanted to communicate with my lawyer, you know? So meanwhile, the other lawyer, the younger guy, he would talk to me all day. Are you okay? Could I bring you anything? You know, like that type of thing. But the other lawyer was like very reasonable in price. So I was like, let me continue to talk to him.

If he wants a little money, I'll even get it for him, you know? So now I'm going through the motions with this Fifth Avenue lawyer, but I guess, get introduced to this lady. So now I'm three lawyers in. Four lawyers, if you count the guy, the younger guy. I get introduced to this lady through an inmate that says she has the right connections. You know? And she tells me that for 10 or 12 grand, I could get out.

You know, I can get out on my next appearance. but she doesn't want to be she doesn't want to argue my case she wants to be in court so the judge sees her but she doesn't want to argue my case so I'm thinking about this too right now during this time one of the letters that we wrote

that my father wrote I actually wrote it I find an email address for the president of Dominican Republic and I write an email and I tell my father send this email so it doesn't come from me. Right. So he sends it, and I'm out of my lawyer, pull strings and gets me out of the punishment area,

gets me out of the observation. I was deaf of six days. And I wake up one Sunday morning, and somebody, they tell me that I have a visitor. My mother already went back. They tell me I have a visitor. I said, who the hell is visiting me on a Sunday? You know, it's not the embassy.

They don't come on Sunday. All right. So I go upstairs. and I see these two guys, they introduced to me, they introduce themselves to me as colonels. They're colonels that are right under the president of Dominican Republic. They have my entire file. Right.

But they don't speak English, but they have a phone, so I'm using Google Trans. So I tell them the rest of the story. and they say, we're going to see if we could help you. Thank God. You know, thank God. You know, maybe you could help me.

You know, you understand what I'm going through. And they say for $50,000. No, they just say they're going to try to see what they can do. And they leave. I am never to hear from these people again. Never. Okay. Now, I hear a couple different whispers about why that happened also,

I never hear from these people again. He's up for re-election. So I don't know if he's doing anything or not doing anything, but I'm getting nervous because I haven't heard from him. And I had my mother write an email to him, and there was no correspondence. So now this lady tells my mother for 12 grand or whatever it is, she's getting me out of prison.

So I said, we have 20,000 left in the fund because we gave the Fifth Avenue Lawyer 30, and we had 50, and now, we have an extra some money, so let's send this lady $10,000 so she can get me out, right? Right. So we send this lady $10,000 and she tells me that she meets with the people she has to meet with, and it's not $10,000. It's another $30.

and my father's frustrated, but I'm frustrated, my mother's frustrated, we don't have it on 30. That's not happening. And it's a scam anyway. And it's a fucking scam anyway. So we say,

take the 10 that you have, you already have it, and let me know what you can do with that. So she comes back and she says, well, for the 10, we'll get you a deal where you get out of jail, but you have to stay in the country

and finish out a year, and then you'll have to sign, you go back to your country and you have to come back once a month or once every two months to sign, kind of like a probation. Yeah, type of thing. So I said, if that's the way it has to be,

that's the way it has to be. I mean, you know, that's where we are. So meanwhile, the Fifth Avenue lawyer is representing me, and I have the other lawyer kind of on deck. I'm talking to them. We're friends at this point. I think I send them like a grand, you know, just so we could kind of,

counsel me almost through this whole thing so we get to court and the fifth avenue lawyer is putting together this whole fucking dog and pony show strategy and tells me that he wants to postpone in another month so he could build his case more so I'm close to a year now I mean like I'm like I'm getting up there you know and I don't like it to begin with. Right. So I helped to go fuck himself. And I hire the lawyer.

The kid. The kid. And my next date, my next court date is not only the date that the lady is supposed to get me the deal, but it's also the date where they determine whether or not I'm going to trial. Right? Okay. So it's a pretrial date. And I'm almost, I'm a year in.

I'm a year into this thing. and we go to the court and it's February and I figure I'm getting out I'm approaching I'm approaching worst case scenario is I got a year so so I'm going to get out very soon and we'll see what happens so we get to court and the kids representing me and he are and he argues but I think I have the deal on the bag because I got the lady standing right behind me. Right. And we're good. And the judge says, we're going to trial.

But doesn't set a date for trial because that's not how it works in DR. You have to wait for a date for trial. We're going to try. Look at the lady. What the fuck happened? They didn't want to do anything because you didn't give them extra money. This than the other. Okay.

Right. So now the whole scam's for it. I tell her to go fuck herself and now I got the kid. But do I want the kid representing me at trial? Because now it's getting really, really apparent to me that I'm facing 20 years in prison. That's what I'm facing. I'm charged with

narcotics trafficking for a few vape pens. But it's not classified. It's not classified as that. I'm in the same category with people who are shipping cocaine powder from Columbia to to DR. That's

how I'm classified. So now I've got to figure out what the hell's going on. But we find this translator who translated for me at this date. And we became friendly with him. He was a really nice guy. He did a lot of government work. And he said through a relationship of his,

he knew this really famous criminal attorney. But I can't afford a really famous criminal attorney because I'm over 150 into this, 180 into this. There's no more money. The well is dry, you know? And my mother, my mother's a very emotional Italian woman, you know.

My mother calls up the guy and gets on a phone call with him. And his daughter speaks English. So she's translating and cries to him and said, and he says, I'll take the case pro bono. Just give me like a grand to two grand to get all the shit. You know, like, well, everything I need to do, just give me two grand. I'll walk you through a whole case. I'll figure this out. And like you, this, if you would Google this guy's name, this guy's on TV, he's representing

very high profile. He got, he does murder case. This is his wheelhouse. You know, this is, this, what, he's the Johnny Cochran of, of, you know, that, you see this guy on TV. So I'm like, all right, cool, this guy's nice. He's going to help me get through it. He's going to even work with the young kid.

And we're going to be, we're going to be good. So he, we start talking to all this nonsense. And meanwhile, this guy. Forget how it happened, but this guy comes into the picture, his name was Jose, and he's a real used car salesman, like real used car salesman, scumbag type of guy. Right. And he starts pitching me another back doorway to get out of this whole thing. But his pitch was, it's 30 grand, you will get out, you will leave the country immediately, you will have to come back every two months, sign for four years. that's what it is

I met with the judge here's what it is the judge's he knew the judge's names he knew the prosecutor's names he had access he had more information than normal people would you know

so I said now that we got the famous lawyer yeah but that's not definite because he's he's he's straight he's a straight arrow he's gonna represent me in court the Johnny Cochran way but this guy giving me an out.

Let's come up with the 30 grand. Yeah. So at this point, while this is all happening, there's a lot of violence in the jail, my phone's getting stolen, I'm getting extorted for money on a daily basis. But the one thing that the embassy did, right, was be the embassy.

Now I'll explain that. So the embassy didn't do nothing. They didn't help me in any way. But they let off the impression to the jail and the guards and the inmates even that I was the American and I was not to be touched. Right. So I could be extorted and I could be robbed. But as far as physical violence is concerned, I'm off limits. You know, that's kind of how the whole thing was.

I can be extorted. Right. Right. Right. but don't touch the American, right. So now there's all sorts of violent. People are getting murdered on a daily, on a weekly basis here. I'll give you a story.

There was one guy, and he was in for, he was doing 20. So he was, he was doing 20, and he had, we had these fans, because the windows were open, 100 fucking degrees there, you know? Right. And the only thing you had was really a fan. And only some rooms had the fan. So he had a fan, and he had to get money from his cellmates, whatever it may be, to pay for the fan. So, and we're not talking about a million dollars.

We're talking about 2,000 pesos, which is 30 bucks, you know. So they didn't pay him or whatever it may be, and they were jerking them around. And he formulates this plan where he's going to kill him. He's going to kill one of these guys. So he takes his machete. and one night after they closed the gates at 10.30, everybody's in lockdown. They're in like another building, you know,

where they sleep, the guards. And he's one of his cellmates to death. And then because... Perfectly reasonable. Well, I mean, I would. And then the other cellmate tries to stop it, and he's poke him too. You know, they took 25 minutes to get to the cell.

to get this guy out of a cell with two bodies on his on his floor. I mean, that's kind of how it works. That's a reaction time. That's a reaction time. But if they hear that there's a phone in the room, they're running, they're there 30 seconds, you know? So that's kind of what was going on on a semi-weekly basis. And I'm scared shit. Like, I knew that I was kind of safe.

But at the same time, I mean, these people, I'm sharing rooms with these people. I was going to say these are not exactly rule followers. Right, exactly. They've been warned, but yeah. Right. Right. It didn't matter. Right.

Right. Right. So now I have, so now I have, you know, in the legal point of now, I have my straight-laced Johnny Cochran attorney, right, who's helping me. I have the kid who's kind of consoling me. And I have this guy, Jose, who just came in the picture, who was telling me for 30 grand, he got the deal. And he's showing me proof that he has, proof that he has a deal. So I contact a few of my friends and I contact this guy and he was a buyer of mine. So he didn't have anything in the palate, but he was a buyer of mine. He owns a distro.

And he was a really, really great Indian guy and really great person, you know? And I got on the phone with him and I cried to him and I told him what was the deal. and he my mother talks to him and she cried my mother's in Italian she cries about everything

and she's crying to him and he was like I'll help you so he gives me the $30,000 I'm getting out of jail we just need to yeah I know so I'm approaching $200,000 with this that's just illegal that's not the $200 that I'm going through every week in the commissary and with buying people

drugs and doing the whole thing so I'm over $200 into this plus my mother's expenses of coming and doing the whole thing so i get the 30 they tell me that they finally get me a court date for july first so now i'm over here i'm right june 22nd i get arrested july first of the next year is my court date so it's my trial i'm going to trial this is going to end now i'm scared because I'm facing 20 years

and I don't know if this guy's full of shit but there is a sense of relief I guess you call because during this whole time I'm living in limbo I don't know what's going on I'm facing 20 years you know I don't know what's going on right you know so

my court date's finally approaching and we get to trial now in the Dominican Republic there's no jury. There's three judges. So there's one guy and two women, right? And I'm thinking that I got the two women

because I'm emotional. My mother's there. She has cancer. I got the emotional aspect of this, you know? And the guy, even if it's two against one with the women, I'm good. I'm okay. I'm going to get at least something decent, right?

Right. So they call, the prosecution calls four witnesses. They call two people that arrest me. They call a handler that handled a dog, the drug-sniffing dog, and they call someone else. I forget who it was. But all four, all four, oh, they call the guy the shipping company, the guy owned the shipping company.

the all four witnesses testified to my story and basically say he didn't know what's going on right he was completely caught off guard he was hysterical when we arrested him even the dog handler said at the airport that that intercepted the palate basically said you know we found the drugs we found the we found the cannabis but it was labeled in boxes like it was being sold at a store he wasn't hiding it you know this was not this was not and Ziploc bags. This was, you know, this was, you know, obviously being used for a meeting or something like that.

So everybody testifies to me, and even the prosecutor testify, basically makes his closing statements and says, look, please the court, show mercy on him, give him whatever minimum it is, because he's not a drug trafficker. You know, like he gets it, you know? Now, did that come from the crooked lawyer, Jose?

Did that come from the president? Where did that come from? You know, nobody knew. Or was it just genuine that they had compassion for the situation? So I didn't know, you know. So they, you know, we all argue and everything's okay. And it was spread over two days because Tricor, trials there, they're not like trials here where, you know, it's actually organized.

Trials there are 20 minutes. The whole thing. Front to back, that's what it is, you know. So we return after then. We're wrapping things up and they go into chambers and they're talking. I'm sitting there with my mother and I'm sitting there with my lawyer and I'm sitting there with the translator. And the translator kind of knows the situation because he's represented me a couple times. and I'm looking at him like, what do you think?

You know? He was like, I'm pretty sure it's good, but I don't know. Now, I had to pled guilty because I thought I was getting a deal, right? So I pled guilty, right? I pled guilty. I said, yes, I did this, but unintentionally type of thing. Right. So I don't know if they're going to give me the probation deal.

I don't know if they're going to give me 20 years. I don't know. It was the longest 15 minutes of my life that they're in chambers. So they come out and the guy starts talking and he says, I wanted to let you go today, but they don't. The two women? The two women. They're right.

They don't want to let you go. So I was like, oh, fuck. You know, what, not now. So he makes this spiel. And they all basically say the same thing that we understand that you're a businessman, this is your business. And you didn't mean to do it. but you still did something really wrong.

That's what they say, right? I was like, and I even got up and said, I understand I did something wrong, but look at it even logically. I say to them, I'm in jail and I see all this. And I say, if I was in jail, I could buy an ounce of grass for 2,000 pesos,

which is about $30. In America, an ounce of grass is, $200. So I would either have to be the stupidest drug trafficker in the world or I didn't do anything malicious out of malice, you know? So they start talking, they say the same thing and they say, we're not going to give you a deal. We're not going to give you a probation deal because you're American.

So what we're going to do is we're going to give you 18 months and then you could leave the country. So now I'm already a year in. So you get good time? Is there a good time situation? I thought there was. That story's coming along. So I'm looking at it as my lawyer sitting there and telling me, we'll get you out earlier.

But, you know, worst case scenario was 18 months. I got five months. I got five and a half months left. You know, I'm not doing 20 years. You know, I'm okay. Yeah. You can survive. Survived a year.

I can survive six more months, maybe. Right. It's not the end of the world. Now, what I didn't tell you before was, I have two kids. I have a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old. Now, I'm very close to my kids. I share custody with my ex-wife, my first wife, and we're very close. Now, my 16-year-old's very strong and very anxious.

He's a very anxious kid. So when this whole thing happened, he was so anxious. They took him out of school and started doing online school because he didn't know what was going on either. And I'm feeding him telling him. him and I'm very honest for my kids and I'm telling him all I got this lawyer in the school he's putting together deals and he's at this point but he's a very intelligent kid and he's like he's like number one Santana's not dead he's full of shit he's all your buddy and and I don't know who to believe at this point so like he kind of gathered to himself that he doesn't know when

him dad's coming home you know and my my 12 year old is thinks I have a problem my passport you know so I'm stuck in Dominican Republic waiting in a resort You know, as a matter of fact, one of the things that I would always tell my kids, I need to speak to you twice a day. I need to speak to in the morning when you wake up or around when you wake up and before you go to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where ghost bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, ghost bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding.

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My, my son calls me very late in the day. I can't get through it. It calls me very late. My 12 year old calls me very late in the day. And I said, what's going on with you?

Why didn't you call me? His dad, I was a little busy and this time. I said, I said, Scotty, I get really anxious. He doesn't know him jail, but he knows I'm anxious

because I want to speak to them. He said, uh, he said, dad, I don't know why you're anxious. I'm safe. I'm with mom.

Why don't you go in the hot tub? why don't you go in the pool? You know, that'd be well. You know, I'm sitting here. So, long story short, where I get 18 months. And my friend and my lawyer's telling me, we'll get you out soon and we'll get sort of time. We'll get, you know, we'll get, even if you have to stay in the country, at least you won't be in that hellhole. So I'm thinking my max downside is I have to stay in the country to finish out the 18 months and then I could go home.

That's max downside. But upside is I get to go home right away. and even if worst, worst possible case scenario is, I have to fill the 18 months, I'm two-thirds there. You know, I'm there. You know, I'm right there. So I go back and I'm in kind of a better mood

and I told my kids that I would be home in a couple months and I told my ex-wife. And I'm kind of in a better mood because after a year, I know how to live here, or at least to survive, but I also know there's a date I'm going home, you know? So as time goes on, I'm bugging my lawyer, and it gets back to me that I became friends with this guy in the office who handles all the releases and everything like that.

He's actually going to school to be a lawyer, and he always helped me. And he tells me, Mike, you're not getting out early. by the time you get a court date for early release, you're going to be gone, because that's the way the system works. It's fucked up. So now I'm facing the reality that I'm going to be there for the next five months,

five and a half months. So time goes on and I'm there, you know, I'm there for the next five months, but I'm a lot less anxious because I know there's an end in sight. You know, I'm walking every day and I'm doing, I'm just going through emotions, you know, I'm figuring out what I have to figure out. I'm trying to make plans for afterwards.

I'm contacting people, whatever it may be. So my mother tells me, I'll come when you get out and we'll, you know, we'll go home together. The embassy comes and they said, we're not going to come back because you only have two months left. So we don't really need everything is done with your case. So our job is essentially done. You don't do shit anyway. Oh, you said, thank God for the embassy. Thank God we have these embassies.

these guys doing. Right. So we, so we, so I said, all right, whatever, it is what it is. Now, there was this guard. There was this guard and everybody would kind of make jokes. And I was kind of friendly with the guards because they knew I wasn't a criminal. You know, they weren't, they knew I wasn't that guy. And I think they were told, watch the American keep him safe. But what you have to understand is these guards make $500 a month. Right. That's what they make. So a lot of their money comes from extorting drug dealers in the prison to get them drugs and phones and all this. Right. So they have two incomes.

So now one of the guards who I wasn't really friendly with, but we had no problems, you know, one of the guards starts asking me for money. Like, and not like a hundred bucks, like a million pesos, which is like 17 grand. And I was like, number one, I have no reason to give it to you. Number two, I don't have it. Right. And if I had that kind of money, would I fucking be here? Right. Would I fucking be here?

I'd have not paid these people. Right, right. So I tell him basically to go fuck myself. And he tells me to fuck my mother. And he tells me that I'm a cheap, I'm a cheap gringo and this, that and the other. So at this point, this new director, and he's really tough. And his whole big thing is he came from anti-corruption. And his whole thing is he doesn't want violence and he doesn't want drugs.

That's his thing. But I met him and we had a couple of sit-downs and he's a really nice guy. Like I still talk to him to this day. Really nice guy. And I go to the director and I said, we got to talk. I said, this guy's intimidating me now. Because now joking around is one thing, but this guy is getting in my face and this guy is intimidating me. So I want you to know about this.

So he refers me to the subdirector and I tell him the story. But to protect myself, I call the embassy because I think the embassy has to hear about this. They have to do something about this. This is corruption.

Yeah, and this is government co-oper. This is an inmate's staffing each other. Right, this is government subsubstabstruction, right. So I tell him the embassy gets involved. I have the meeting, I go to a meeting with the guard, and I go a meeting with the sub-director, and him and my friend Roy's sitting there

and he's translating. And basically the outcome is he disappears for a week, but he was told when he comes back, don't look at me. You know, he was told, don't look at me. So that gets all worked out.

And now at this point, the embassy is so fucked up. They block my number from my phone in prison three times. Like, I can't even call the fucking embassy. They're not picking up my mother's calls. You know, it's really fucked up.

You know, really, really is. Have you heard a, about, just as a sidebar, have you heard about the three kids, the three Haitian kids? No. So there were these three Haitian kids, and they were green card holders in America. And they went to Santo Domingo on vacation one summer. And it was right during COVID.

And they rented a car, and they went to a gas station in Santa Domingo, and the gas station attendant saw something under their car called the cops. The cops came found three pounds in grass beneath the car. The father who's in Florida, now mind you, they're not citizens of the United States. The father's in Florida calls up a news organization, calls up a local congresswoman. They're out of prison in two weeks. Now this whole time I'm thinking about this, the embassy is telling me they can't do anything, but yet these three green card holders got out of prison in two weeks.

So they can do something, they just don't want to do something. Right. In my opinion. So as far as I'm concerned, the embassy's a piece of shit at this point, and I just have to wait it out. It is what it is. So at this point, I have two months, and it got to the

point where I was talking to the guards and everything like that, and it got to the point where, like, the guards were no how many days I had left. Right. So I'm about, three weeks out and my, my, um, my embassy rep calls me and he was like, too, he calls me my phone. I was like, nice to hear from you. You know, would you unblock my number for the phone call? And he tells me, do you have your passport? I said, yeah, my mother has my passport. Well, this is still valid? I said, yeah, it's good till 27. And he said, well, we're going to issue

you a new passport. So that doesn't make sense. I don't need a new passport. It's till 27. You know, I'm not, I don't have any problems. So, yeah, my mother's not here. My mother's not here. My mother's coming. She has my passport. Okay. You know, and the guy, and she left it with the guy who drives her around. So my passport's in the country. Oh, okay.

You know, so he said, we're going to issue a passport regardless. So that doesn't... Why? So make it sound like you did something? Right, right. So that doesn't sound right. So I'm researching, I'm calling people and this, that, and the other, and I can't figure out what's going on. So I'm freaking out.

Now I'm freaking out saying that, do I have a problem when I get out? So they call me back about two, and I'm two weeks away from getting out now. Right. And not, he doesn't call me back. A marshal from the embassy calls me back. And he says, you have a warrant in Georgia. And it's an outstanding warrant. And we advise that you go to Georgia before you go to wherever you're going, resolve this and then go home.

What's the warrant for? I'm getting that. So I said, what's the warrant for? And he couldn't tell me much. So I told you I produced events. So one of the events right before, literally a week before COVID came out, was I was doing a show in Georgia.

I was doing a show in Atlanta. And I had a balance when I went to the hall, and I wrote them a check, and the check balanced. And I forgot all about it because of COVID and everything like that. So that, he filed charges. How much was a balanced check?

Like 10 grand, 12 grand. It wasn't a lot of money. So I get that story, but I call up the Atlanta PD because I would think that if I have a warrant in Georgia, the Atlanta PD has to know about it. Right. They can't find it. I call up three attorneys in Georgia and they can't find it. So I said, if anybody could find this warrant, it has to be the district attorney. So I'd call the Atlanta district attorney.

And they tell me that there is an active warrant. if you fly into Georgia, you're probably going to get arrested. But if you fly into New York, odds on, you're not getting arrested. And the warrant is in the process of being dismissed because the court decided not to pursue it. They declined prosecution. So it's nothing. Right. So what are these guys trying to get you?

Oh, I suggest you fly to Georgia. Why? So I can get arrested? Kind of like that. And like, I don't trust the embassy at this point. I haven't trusted the embassy for over a year. So I'm freaking out now. I call a criminal attorney in New York.

And I explained to him the whole situation. He was like, Mike. I'm going to try to get to the bottom of it. I called up a friend of a friend who said that the warrant's being dismissed. But keep my number in case anything happens when you land in New York, and I'll get you bail in New York because that's what's going to happen. So I get out. My mother's there. We're crying.

The whole bed. Happy ending. Right. So we go to the hotel. We have a flight the next day. I'm going home for Christmas. I'm going to be home on 23rd. I'm going to see my kids for Christmas.

You know, this is awesome. So I get to the whole, I get to JFK in New York. And I'm shitting my pants on the line with customs because I don't know what's going to have. If I'm going to get pulled, if I'm going to get arrested. I don't know what's going to happen. So we get to the line where you show the border patrol, your passport. Now the day before I had to go to

the embassy and get this emergency five day passport because that, because my life's, my passport was revolt because I had this warrant. Okay. The estate department. That was the reason they were saying we're going to issue you a warrant. Right. So I

get to the thing and they pull me. So I'm like, I'm going to get an arrest and oh fuck, you know? So I get to the thing and they pull me and I go into this little room. And now, my kids are on the way to the airport to pick me up. Right. So I get to this little room and the guy, the Border Patrol agent, or the Homeland Security agent, was Dominican.

He actually worked with the NCD and he's looking and he's like, you have this Martin Georgia, but that's nothing. Don't worry about that. Just figure it out when you can. But you just got back from prison. Yeah. And he basically was grilling me, not even to put notes in the system. Did they give you any... Yeah, for curiosity.

Not only did they put notes in the system, but he was like, what happened? He knew what person I was on. He was like, get someone of the worst prisons than D.R. You know, what happened? So it's all them stories and bullshit and went him for like 15 minutes.

And he was like, all right, I'll let you go. Just take care of the Georgia thing. And I'll make notes. I said, do I have to... I said, do I get pulled... If I get pulled over in New York, like for a traffic stop or something, is they going to see this?

He was like, no. He was like, I'm Homeland Security, so I see this. Yeah. But nobody else will see it. you have a clean record in New York. So I see my kids and it was the happiest moment of my life, you know, and now I spend Christmas with my family and do all this.

I do an intro. And, you know, it's just people say. Wait, wait, wait, so this was this Christmas. This is a month ago. This is three weeks ago, yeah. Okay. Colby. Did you think this was years ago?

Well, no, when you were in the back of my ass and all this was, he said it got out with the last week. No, I said, I said everything was happening within the last year. But my court date, I was getting out, a year and a half was December 22nd of this year. Oh, yeah. I didn't realize. Oh, okay. No, you mean 2024.

24. Right, exactly. So it was last year. Right. Technically. Right. But it was three weeks ago. Yeah.

So, you know, everybody said to me, you look great for coming out of prison two weeks ago. Stun wonders for you. Right. He lost 100 plus pounds. I said, everybody said, you know, everybody said to me, you look great, you look, you look, well, you might have PTSD, and you might have, you went through a really traumatic experience. And I said, look, I said, I'll dealt with the violence.

And I dealt with the extortion. I dealt with all the bullshit. But all I really cared about was getting home to my mom and kids. And once that happened, I'll make money again. I lost my business. That's fine. But once that happened, I'm fine again. You know, I'm good, you know?

So, you know, in the interim, my ex-wife, called me up. My first ex-wife called me up and she said, look, the lease is up on my house. You can't pay me child support right now. She was very cool about it. You know, I can't afford to pay six grand without your child support. I can't afford to pay six grand for a five-bedroom house in New York. What do I do? And she knows I always want to move to Florida. I have to move to Florida I have to move to Florida in North Carolina. I said moved to Florida. So now my kids are in New York with me for Christmas, you know, but I have to go to Florida. So I have to move my entire life to Florida in three weeks. So now

after Christmas, three days ago, four days ago, I bring the kids back to Florida. I'm looking for a place. That's where we are today. Where in Florida? Just outside Sarasota called Lakewood Ranch. Oh, okay. You already know exactly where you're moving. I mean, she already has a house. And I've seen some, so, you know, within 10 minutes, 50 minutes of her house,

I want to be, you know. Right. Yeah. So that's, that's the whole, that's the cliff notes of the last 18 months of my life. Okay. You have something? I mean, my question is, are you, are you, when you travel on, you flew down here from New York? Yeah. I was going to ask you if you drove. Did you drive through Georgia? No, I'm not going near Georgia right now.

My lawyer tells me that warrant is expunged. I'm not going to your Georgia. I'm good. But, you know, I never want to leave the country again. Dude, I'll tell you that much. Yeah, I definitely. Yeah, that's not a glowing endorsement for a Dominican Republic at all, you know. No, because when you go to Dominican Republic,

when people go to Dominican Republic, they see the airport, which is beautiful. They see the shuttle bus, which is beautiful. And then they see a five-diaman resort. Basically, like, America was, you know, moved to the Dominican Republic. Right, right. But when you go out, it's a third world.

Yeah. You know, that's what it is. It's like when you go to Mexico and you go to the resort, and then you take a bus to, like, Tichin, right? Yeah. You know, the, whatever, the mind. ruins or Incan ruins, I forget which one it was, but like right now it's a highway. The first time I ever went, they didn't have the highway yet.

So it was the dirt road. And they actually stopped in a village. Yeah. And you realized you're like, this is what, and until we asked, we're like, is this what, is this a normal Mexican village? They're like, yeah, yeah. They're like, we're like, no, no, no, this can't be. Like it can't you, they don't really, they're like, no, no, no.

90% of the country lives like this. Right. And you're like, like, these are fucking huts and shit. Well, that's what I learned to understand that while I was inside, a lot of these prisoners didn't mind it because it was kind of a step up from where they actually lived. Yeah. You know, and they were used to the violence.

They were used to what was going on in that environment, you know? So it was just another, another day, you know, another day in the jungle type of thing, you know. And that's what I learned to realize. It's weird, man. It's weird, man. You know, I think the embassy, and I think a lot of our representatives are real shit. I really do. But I'm grateful to be an American.

You know, like, you know, I'm leaving this country. You've never been out of this country. You don't know what 95% of the world lives like. You have no idea. This country's horrible. Listen, if you can't get rich in America, you might have just ended up. But not even getting rich. The fact is

is that we live better than almost everywhere The poorest Americans The poorest Americans Live better than the middle class In Canada Sure We live

The poorest Americans are almost like They're rich in most countries Sure And nobody understands that No Because we're instilled the sense of reality You know We're instilled this

You know We wake up every day And we can go to Duncan And get our coffee And we can go to You know Best Buying get our Apple and products and we could do everything that we can do, but they don't understand

that in these countries, I mean, even Canada, but in third world countries, that's not reality. You know, the reality is that you have two options. You could go through schooling and maybe become successful, but you could become a criminal, and that's how you're going to feed your family. And that's the way it is, you know, so a lot of people are just groomed to be criminals, you know, and they're okay with that life, and that's fine, you know. Yeah, when, you know, when you're surrounded by it, you don't even know, it's not, it's not

abnormal at all. Yeah. You know, it's the whole fish in water. Fish doesn't realize he's in water. Right. It's his entire life. Right. It's natural to him.

He didn't even think about it. Do you think that lawyer really died? My 16 year old doesn't think so. I'm, I'm naive. So I think maybe he did, but I don't know. My 16 year old doesn't think so. Although people don't think so, but I don't know. I couldn't tell you.

I couldn't tell you a thing. Can we break for the 30 and pick up again? Would you be okay with us picking up? Is that okay? I made almost not. Is it a hard for the book? I don't think so because, but I'm someone who, really you are too.

I already know this because you're an event planner. I'm someone who sees this is the goal and every day I just have to work toward it, right? Most people don't see that. Most people are like, I got to get through this hour. Yeah, no, 100%. To get to make by $22, I got to get through this. hour. That's how most people think. So if you're somebody who can say, hey, this is my goal,

these are the things that have to be done. And every day I need to work towards that, you realize, and that's what happens is you write out an outline and every day you do a little bit, it doesn't have to be a lot. Sometimes you write two pages. Sometimes you write two sentences. Right. And then, but what happens is that in six months, you turn around and you're, the outline's done and you're like, holy shit, I've got a fucking book here. Right. That makes sense. That's what Because my whole thing was, and I'm sure you could imagine just from this, I could talk about this day. You know, I could go into stories. So you know we're recording this.

Oh, are you? Okay. So I'm sorry. All right. Yeah, so I could talk about this for days. Right. But, you know, we scratch the surface. So, you know, like I'm trying to talk about obviously the similarities between you and other interviews that I've had.

But there's also, like, I'm trying to also give different stories or different. different avenues or different ways to tell it with other people. So it's more interesting with different, you know, different interviews. So my whole thing is, do I, you know, do I just make the outline and just jot down a story or two every day or, you know, or go in order beginning, beginning, middle end? You know, like that's my whole thing. Chronologically, obviously I would start off with, with a prologue. Right.

A prologue is just some event that. It's intro. Yeah, yeah. It's an intro where the person reads it. They kind of understand that this is a guy who's in jail. He's innocent. And oh, my God. You know, something horrific is happening right now.

And oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. And then you kind of end it. And then you start back to the beginning. Hey, I was born in New Jersey or whatever. And then how you got there. I would very quickly get into the guts of the story within three or four chapters. That's what I try to do. Yeah.

And then you span the next 10 chapters of the events that took place. You just told the story. Great. So it's really taking that story. And I understand there's a lot of extra stories. Like there's lots of in my book, and I'll give you a copy of it. I would appreciate that. Yeah.

There's lots of extra stories that never make it into my book. Sure. Because I got to a point where it was like, I'm telling this story, but does it further the overall story? Or am I telling this story because it just makes me look good? Right. Or this made me look smart. Or this was a, you know, it's like you have to get to a point where you're like, look.

When's enough? It's too much. Right. You know, it's too, it's like watching, look, the first Iron Man, amazing. Phenomenal, right, yeah. I can't watch an Avengers movie. It's too much.

I get it. It's just too much. Yeah. And so it was really, same thing with Deadpool. First one, amazing. The last one is so much, bro. Right. You could have knocked 30 minutes off of that, and it would have been a great movie.

You know how they're avoiding this now with the universes. There's different universes. Like Batman has 14 different universes. You know, like that's how they're avoiding it making it interesting because there's different stories that go into different universes, you know, Batman might have been killed by Superman here, but over here is that? I mean, I get it. Yeah.

It's just, it's, they're throwing them, they're throwing Batman through four buildings. Right. You know, they're, they're, the, the villains are bigger, right, meaner, and worse. And the fight scenes, I don't need, I don't need a five minute or 10 minute fight scene. Right. I'm good with a minute and a half fight scene. Right. Some of the best fight scenes that I,

remember from Ironman, you know, one was when, like, you know, the tanks come around the corner and you, and they fire at him. He just moves out of the way. He shoots a little, right. Boom. The best fight scene in Indiana Jones and the temple, I'm sorry, Indiana Jones, the first one. Yeah. Is when the guy walks out and does all the sword tricks. Yeah. And he goes, like, fuck, I can't go. Boom. And he just suits him. Those are the great fight. Like, I don't need you to throw this guy through six buildings and have, you know, and pick up a boat and hit him with it. Well, it's the same thing like Fast and Furious, you know, the first Fast and Furious was incredible. Yeah, I never, after probably a second one.

Yeah. By the second one, I was like, yeah, by the third one, I think I might have watched five minutes of it. I watched Waltham because I was a fan of the series, but like it's, it's just throwing so much shit in that. But the problem is, I think what the problem is what Hollywood does is they're just out of fucking stories. You know, they're just out of like, what else are going to do? But, you know, it's, the problem is, is that, They're not out of stories. There are tons of stories.

The problem is that they're so, um, they're so, um, they're so, they're so ingrained in trying to do, to make these blockbusters. They overlook like,

hey, uh, we know Iron Man does good. Let's make six of them. Like, okay, what are you doing? And everyone has to be bigger.

It's like, like, like, you really don't. Like, you could probably take, you probably take a small part. You could,

why wouldn't you just go ahead and make, take that, that $300 million, budget and just take 30 million each and make 30 different films. Right. And you're probably, if 50% of those hit, they're probably going to do better than all the Iron Man ones, you know? And they just don't, they don't seem to do that.

And they overlook a ton of stories and there's a ton of material that just gets overlooked. And, you know, and it, it's a shitty business model. You would think that they would have fixed it by now, especially since it fails so often. Agreed. But now you turn around and you have an. interesting story like yours or mine and it's impossible to get a fucking movie deal. That's what I was going to say when we were talking earlier was that, you know, there are people that write stories and option those stories and that's all they do their entire career.

Never had a movie made. They've optioned 30 stories that keep getting re-optioned and they make their entire living just optioning stories. They never get made. You're making $200,000 a year or $300,000. you're based on just options that you don't even care if it gets made because. So, okay, so I'm a little unclear. What's an option?

An option on a story is like, so someone comes to you and says, look, we love your story. Let's say Sony comes to you and says, look, we want to make a movie out of your story. Sure. You go, okay, wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Or maybe even a series. Yours is probably, because it's so unique, could probably be a whole series, right? It could be multiple series because I don't think there's enough time in a movie.

No, I don't either. But let's say they say, for the sake of argument, they come to you and they say, we're going to make a movie. And you go, okay. And you say, hey, I want a million dollars for my life rights in order for you to use my story and my likeness. And, you know, because that's what making your story, what makes your story unique is it's true. Right. Because they could say, well, let's just take his basic story and change it a little bit. you know, and we'll do it.

Yeah, that's fine. But what really makes it unique is the fact that it was true. And that's what gives it, that's what gives it legs initially. Then, of course, it's character development, drama, the whole thing. That's fine. But that's season three, four, five, six. But initially it's, hey, this really happened. Right.

Which is how Orange is the New Black, right? It was a real story. But by the second season, it's over. Right. You know what I'm like? We run out. And they exactly. generated a bunch of that to begin with.

Yours is great on its own. Right. The point is that they say, hey, we want to turn yours into a series. Okay. And you say, well, they go, well, what do you want for your life rights? So we can use your likeness. You'll also do pre-you'll do promotions, you know. And you go, um, I want, let's, let's, for the sake of argument, I want a million dollars.

They go, great. We'll give, we'll give you a million dollars. Or usually they'll come in and they'll say, give you $750, yeah. Well, no, they, what they typically do is that they'll give you a, a, a, a, portion of the budget. Like in advance. You get like, no, not in advance. They'll say, we're going to view three percent of the budget.

Okay. So let's say the budget is $40 million. You're going to get, that's $1.2 million. Right. So that's literally what you typically argue for is I want a, let's say as far as a movie's concerned, you typically want a portion of the budget. And then you get so much on the back end. You'll never get that because they expense it out.

But if you don't know any better, you think it's exciting. Oh my God. And I'm going to get a, oh my God, it's going to be a blockbuster. I'm going to make so much money. You're never going to make things. Right. You'll be lucky. You might get a check for $50, $100,000.

Right. But they say, let's say $1.2 million. And you go, okay, great. So when do I get that? And they go, well, when we get the budget, you get it. But we're right. And you go, well, that may, that may, when's that going to happen? That may never happen.

And I'm not going to stop shopping my story. So they go, great, we'll option it. Okay. So we're going to give you an option. And usually options like maybe, you know, whatever, point. You know, or like 5% or whatever. So they say, we're going to give you $60,000 now for an 18-month option. Okay.

So here's 60,000. You can't shop it. You're tied up in a contract. We have 18 months to try and get an actor that's involved wants to play you, a production company that is going to partner with us and going to actually do the production, the right director. So all of these people that are going to get together so that we can turn it into an actual movie. So they start putting that together

They get a screenwriter They write it, they pitch it They start showing it to everybody They get some actor He goes, oh my God, it's amazing, I love it And then they give some director Says, I have to direct this So then by the time it's all done

Set and done, then they have scheduling Then they say, guess what? We brought it to the studio and everything It's amazing. We're going to get it done They give them the $40 million You get your money. Oh, that's cool.

So that's how it happens. The problem is it never happens in 18 months In 18 months, they typically get a one automatic renewal. Okay. So you get another $60,000, right? Now, unless it's something amazing over the top, it's been in Rolling Stone magazine,

everybody in the world's covered it, you typically don't get those types of options. The options now are $5,000, $10,000, maybe $20,000. No, let me ask you a question. Is it, are the options better when it, it starts. You understand what I'm saying? So let's say you got out of prison five years ago, four years ago, whatever it is.

So was the option hotter four years ago than it is now? Or is it just as, you know, it's just pretty stagnant? You understand what I'm saying? So I optioned, or I should say I was a part of an option. Or I wrote this guy's story, we got him in Rolling Stone magazine, and it got option. The option was 50 grand. Okay. it was optioned three times by Warner Brothers.

Well, they passed on the last option and they, or they sold it off to, I want to say AMC. Maybe it was AMC, whatever. And they didn't pay the same. They paid a little bit less. So I think they paid like $40,000 for the option. And so it all across the board got a little bit less. It's very interesting.

Yeah. So sometimes, you know, it's, called turnaround where they pass on it. Right. And they sell something. So now it's what's called it's in turnaround. I don't know where it's phrase. So these guys have it.

And what's so funny is if you watch like the movie or the series entourage, you hear all these things. I never saw it, but I'm going to. It's hilarious. I heard it was. And you really, in a way, although in an entourage, things happen much quicker than it really happened. But the chaos of what is happening on that TV show is.

true. Like, you say, we've got this actor. And then you go, oh, my gosh. And the screenwriter love, he read it and the screen, they love it and they're going. And then you get this director. And that director says, oh, I won't work with that actor. Right. But we have to have this director. Why? Because if we get this director, he, anybody, if we pitch him to Sony, they'll greenlight anything because he's already done three pictures with him. So it's a guaranteed green light. So guess what? We got to get rid of the actor. Okay. You get rid of the actor. And now the screenwriter says, oh you get rid of fucking Tommy we're done right I won't I won't work with anybody about Tom right it's literally it's like it's a shit show everything will fall can fall apart will right and it

takes forever now in entourage these things happen much quicker you know the series like within two or three two or three um episodes they're making a movie right like that's not what's happening I gotta watch the show everybody tells me about entourage I never serve it's it's super funny because it's just the actors in general they're all everybody involved in that business is a is a knucklehead You couldn't function in any other aspects in any other industry than this. But square one from this option process starts off by somebody seeing something like this or the news or something like that. Is that how it works? It can.

There was a guy on, there have been a few guys on here who have had their life rights option by being on this show. Good example is Jeff Turner. Jeff Turner had a story about a counterfeiting. Sure. And he was contacted by a producer. who I believe contacted me and said, hey, I'd like to get in touch with this guy. And then I sent him there.

And then like two weeks later, Jeff called me and said, hey, I was contacted by this producer. No shit. And he said, he is partnered with a screenwriter, and they want to option my life rights. And I said, and we, and initially they didn't want to pay him anything.

They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I send it to you? And they sent it to me. And I was like, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no. They got to pay you something. Of course. So, well, they try and get you for nothing. So that we end up.

Yeah, but they're taking you off the market. So what's your motivation to get off the market? Yeah, but they don't want to pay. Right. Obviously, if they can get away with not paying you, they don't. Of course. So that's, I get what you're doing. You know what I'm saying?

Like, you're a dick for doing that to me, for even trying me like that, but they do. And honestly, in these guys, um, defense, you know, I don't, I don't think they had a ton of money. But they end up paying him. I don't, I don't want to say what the amount was, but it was a decent chunk of change. You know, we start, I said, no, go back to him, say this. go back to him. Well, he said, then he comes back. He's like, they said that people don't buy options anymore. I go, okay, tell him now they're liars.

I just sold one for eight grand. So we go back and forth and they end up paying him. And then like, and they did. They wrote a screenplay. They pitched it. They optioned it a second time. So, you know, I have a buddy who he, I had another, a guy contacted me about who writes true crime.

He's already written a book on my buddy. They're optioning that. It's possible. But the easiest way is for you to write a book. Yeah. Because then you can say... But now does that take you, when you get an option, does that take you off the market? So my question is, are you allowed to do other interviews?

Are you allowed to do? Okay, well, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll say, okay, well, you know, you can't do any other interviews in you. If you have a book, you get to say, no, go fuck yourself. I sell my book by doing these interviews. Right. So I'll do that. That's fine. And the option needs to be $100,000.

And they go, oh, okay. No, no, no. Go do what you want. Right. Yeah, it drops right away. Yeah. So, and everybody I know that has a book, that's what they do. Is they go, no, no, no.

I do interviews, you can tell them I get paid for interviews, whether you do or not, they don't know. I get paid for interviews. It's just, it's a negotiation. Sure. And then they go, okay, no, no, no, you're right. Okay, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Because I've had guys say, well, you know, we don't want you to get over exposed.

I'm like, what, like Nike? Like Adidas? Right, Google. Cut the fucking shit, bro. That doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Besides that, I promise you, when when you're done writing the screenplay, it'll look nothing like my story. Right.

That all the dollar amounts will be bigger. My escapes will be huger. My, my, I'll be, I'll be this mastermind guy that doesn't really exist. Right. I'm a bumbling idiot. Right. You know, you're going to paint me in some completely different fashion. Sure.

So it's, it's not going to be, it's not going to be what it is now anyway. We know, I know you're going to Hollywood it up. Right. So it's irrelevant. Right. Like the movie, War Dogs. Yeah, I love Ward Dogs. So Ephraim DeVerole.

played by Jonah Hill. I wrote his memoir. Did you really? I met him in prison. I wrote his memoir. I can tell you right now, that movie is not what happened. Right. It's full of shit. Right. It's just what they do. It's what they do. It's fine. So your best bet is write a book. Even if it's 200 page, it doesn't have it to be a 350 page book. Right. It could be a 200 page book. Here's the problem is now you have a a recorded document. It's intellectual property. It's recorded. You can you can have it recorded in I almost said public records.

In the Library of Congress, this is my recorded intellectual property. So if somebody else goes and makes a movie that's similar to it, you can say, no, that's too close to what I have on record as being my, it gives you an option to sue. And they kind of know that. The only other change it so much that you're like, yeah, it's similar but not quite. And you're saying Amazon does this? No, I'm saying you can.

No, I know what you're saying. You can write a book and publish it on Amazon. And they don't have to vet it or anything. They just do it? Amazon? Yeah. Yeah. Why are they vetting it?

It's true, right? No, of course. No, I'm saying vet it as far as, is it going to make money? Is it worth us publishing it? They don't. Look, every time, it costs Amazon about $3 to publish a book. Okay. So if somebody pays them $22, then they take $3.50 out of the 22.

So it's down we're down to whatever, it's 1850. Sure. And then they say, we're going to view 60% of that. And you go, okay, so I'm going to make $9 or 10 bucks or whatever. Let's say 50, 50. Let's say, okay, so I'm going to end up making, you know, $9.25 every book. They go right, and we're keeping the rest. Right.

The person pays for the mailing, and that's it. And is that the same thing with, like audio books? Like the way it's... Audio books even better because they don't have to make anything. Right. You know, you can do the audio yourself or you can actually go to somebody who will do the audio for you. and then they'll take like 40% of the cut or 50-50

and they only do that for like three years. Well, Amazon has, Audible. Audible, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of Audible. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. But you could do the Audible yourself. Once you've written the book, you're then doing an audible. Because when I was saying, I make whatever, $1,200, $1,200 a month on this, keep in mind like $500, 400 or $500 of it is audible. Is it really? And I didn't even do my own audible because I read like at a fourth grade level. I paid, I didn't pay something.

somebody. I made a deal with somebody. He did the whole Audible. He got my book. He did the whole Audible. He put it up. Everything. No shit. I made a jacket cover. And then I get a check cut. And they only do that for so many years. I think it's, I think I just said like three years. But I think it's like five or six years. Anyway, at some point here soon, Audible will cut him out and I'll get his chunk. You got to, we got to go over this whole thing. Yeah, I can go over everything. It's really fascinating, though. Like, I didn't know that you didn't know that you didn't

you didn't need a publisher to get a write a book. I thought you needed a publisher to get a book and that's how it works. But you could kind of self-publish through Amazon. Right. And keep in mind, too, if it's huge, like we know guys that put out a book a few months ago. I mean, it only stayed up so long because it was too salacious and it had to do with with Diddy's baby's mama who died. And it was supposed to be her memoir, right?

Before she wrote before she died, it's not. whatever. They put it up and because it said some horrific things about her former husband, he got it taken down. Okay. He threatened to sue Amazon and sue this guy, whatever. But it was up for a month. It made, um, roughly $400,000. No shit. In a month. Now, that's never going to be me. That's a pipe dream. Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. We'd love to reproduce that. Right. Right. But, um, it did, it did make me think, hey, maybe you need to start going with celebrities. Some celebrity shit. I know a guy, guys who make a living who write books that are complete bullshit and they put them up and make a living doing that. So, you know, you just have to, look,

if you've written a book and you continue to do podcasts, the book's going to sell. Right. Because every time you do a podcast, that's just free advertisement. Of course. So it just keeps selling and selling. And at some point, if it's sold enough, Amazon says, hey, we're going to start promoting this white because people are buying it and they're leaving great comments and he's got a four out of five or four and a half out of five star rating and people

seem to like this. So then they start kind of and you can also advertise it. Hmm. This is super interesting to me. You can pay to advertise the book. No shit. Like boost it. Yeah. Through Amazon Marketplace, I think it's through. No shit. It's very interesting. Super interesting.

Yeah. Well, I'm not super, I'm not exactly living on my book on my royalties, but I do know the process. Right. You know, yeah. I just didn't know it was an app. I didn't know it was a thing. Yeah. Like I said, you don't have to have a 300 page book.

Write 150, 200 page book. Yeah. You know, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be eloquent. But if you, if you wrote, if you write as good as you told the story, it's going to be a pretty good book. Yeah.

You know. I mean, now that, and even towards the end of the, of my sentence, I've been telling this story. You know, like, I, I pretty much, got the story down, you know, like I got how to tell the story now, you know, but putting into a book

is a little different, you know, so that's what my whole mental hang up, and I think it's all mental. I really do. I think it's all mental that, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I never wrote a book, you know, the last thing I wrote was, you know, the content from my website or the, you know, like stupid little things, you know, but, you know, I think it's more intimidation where, you know, writing a 300-page book or a 200-page book is more intimidating than writing a story or telling a story, but the way you say it, where, you know, write a little, write one story a day, you know, write a page a day, you know, and that's, and I think that makes sense. Listen, there are times when I would sit there, and the good thing about an outline is it,

it stops being this monumental task. Right. Because you've written a 10-page outline, right? Which is just really, you know, bullet points. Chapter one, and obviously it could change, you know, chapter one, right, you know, childhood. And then you bullet point, you know, I was never supposed to be born, you know. For instance, in my case, my mother went in for hysterectomy in 1969 and found out she was pregnant. She was like four months pregnant with me.

That's fucking crazy. So I'm not supposed to be here. Like the doctor actually cut her open. That's wild. And was like, uh, that's not me there. Pregnancy. Like, she was, they'd already adopted three kids. She wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant.

No shit. That's wild. So she was barren. That's wild. The fact that she's pregnant and I didn't spontaneous abort after he cut her open was amazing. That's incredible. So that's a little story. Right.

It's only a couple. It's only a paragraph or two. Right. You know, and then you put another bullet point is, you know, my father was an alcoholic or, you know, I didn't live up to his expectations. Or, you know, you put little bullet points. That's it. Just enough to remember. You don't have to say anything crazy.

It's just enough to remember the story. Just, you know, you know, learning disability. Dad was disappointed. That's it. Right. And then chapter two. You know, this. Boo-Boo-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Chapter.

You do that over the course of... You don't have to do that in an hour. You write that over the course of three days. Right. But once it's done, you just have to go back and say, write this one thing today. And maybe it's three paragraphs.

Right. Maybe it's a page and a half. I've stared at the page and literally for two hours, three hours, and walked away and I've written four sentences. Right. Like, just like couldn't get it out. But on the flip side,

you could walk away with eight pages or ten pages. What's great is the next day when I'm scheduled to write again or I think get up an extra hour early to write throughout the day I've thought to myself, how would I write next thing? I got to remember to say this. Oh, wait. That's, yeah, I'm going to say that. Oh, yeah, I remember. I always remember my mom had this blue dress. Right.

You see what I'm saying? And so by the time you sit down the next time, boom, three, three paragraphs. Yeah. If you wrote three or four paragraphs a day for six months, look, honestly, honestly, Honestly, for four months, you've got a book. It's over. That's crazy. By six months, you've had somebody read it over for typos and had an editor read it and edit it.

And you're talking about what's the jacket cover. Do I want to do a jacket cover where I do kind of like a... What is that? The glamour shop? Right. I'm going to do a glamour shot. Yeah. Jacket cover.

Do I want to have one where I'm holding two knives and blood's running down my face and I'm going, You know what I'm saying? You get to think that's the fun part, right? So, yeah, you can, you can, you know, you can do that and you don't have to think about it. You just have to think about the next story and the next story. I've had a book title and a jack-a-cover idea for months, a year, yeah. Listen, every guy that wants to open, I learned this in prison after guys would come to me and they'd want me to write like business plans for him and talk to them about everybody, everybody, not everybody, but every guy that approached me in prison. to help them try and write a business plan to open up a restaurant,

that they have no business opening, that they have no experience. Every one of them had a co-opon. Of course. And I would listen to them for 45 minutes, tell me about how they're this and this, and we're going to get, and we're going to have ballet, we have this and this. And by the third guy, I'd be like, what about a coi-pon? I was to thought about that. I thought I want to have a coypon.

That's hysterical. And then I would get to the point when they'd come and they talk to me. Right. Yeah, yeah. Look, I know you've got the valet and you've got the site location and you got this and that, what you're going to serve. And I know you, and I understand you've laid in bed and you've thought about the coy pond. They're like, how'd you know? Because you're just another idiot.

Right, right. Anyway. So, yeah, everybody does that. The name of the book, they've got themselves on the jacket cover in some way. It's the actual right. It's like planning the wedding and not thinking much about the marriage. I've done that twice. So your first thing is write the outline.

Yeah. And then you just have to follow the outline. And then in four months from now, five months, it's done. And then it's a month of polishing. And then when you're done, you say, hey, I'm going to Amazon. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to put it on Amazon. And that way you've got something reported and you can hand it to people. And you know, and you can take that book and turn it into a synopsis, which is 10 or 15 pages.

And that's even better because then you can hand it to people. You can hand it to a producer. And that AI does that. now. Yeah. Dump your whole book into this. Right. You can fine-tune that and say, I need, yeah, I need a 12,000 word synopsis of this

50,000 word book and then you go, and then you got that. It's wild. Play with it a little bit. And then you can have something, because when you go to a producer and you say, listen, I've written a book. I've been on a much podcast. I have over 10 million views on podcast. My story's amazing.

It was covered on ABC, on Fox News, on CNN. It was huge. It was in, you know, whatever, this, such and such business. magazine and they go okay okay and they go well do you have something and then for you to hand them a 200 page book they're going to be like like jeez fuck what am i going to do now fuck i don't have 10 hours to invest in this maybe what you can do is you say hey here's 12 pages and they go cliff notes now you're talking right i can read this or you can say hey you pick the podcast you think you did the best on you can send them that link and they'll listen to it on the way to work i like that you know

Makes very, a lot of sense. Right. But these are all the things that they would want, because they have to turn that into a pitch deck and pitch it to somebody. Right. I like it. It sounds like I know everything about it, does it?

And yet I have hit wall after wall, after wall. Well, they have a saying. I forget exactly what the saying is. Those that can't do teach. Well, I wasn't going to go there. No, but, you know, quitting is the biggest failure or something that effect.

I'll never quit, you know? No, I have no, yeah, I always say, like, losers have the best stories. Yeah. And the other thing is, is that, like, I, you know, I don't have a problem with failure. I have a problem with not trying. I agree with 100%.

If you told me you'd open up six businesses and every one of them failed, I'd be like, yeah, but you've opened six business. Like, you're going to, you're going to hit. You know, it's the guy who says, no, I worked at Walmart and daydreamed my entire life about opening a business and never did it. It's like, yeah, damn, bro.

like that's. I'm the same exact way. I'm with you, yeah. I've been failing my whole fucking life. I've been failing my way through life. But you do what you do. Right.

I'm doing all right. Yeah. And that's the way that, you know, I always, you know, my second ex-wife always just tell me, well,

I'm taking count now. She was just somebody, every day it's a different idea. I said, yes, every day it's a fucking different idea because that's what I like. You know,

that's what, that's what I always think of things to do and different used to go on because if you again if you don't try you fail that's what it is do you know what a jackass thing that is for her to say I tell you right now she was an idiot anyway I tell you right now you should look up

there's a there's a interview with Jeff Bezos and and so the guy sit down he's like man Amazon when you came up with that idea he's like oh everybody said it was horrible they were like the internet thing is nothing and they were you know and he does the whole thing about how everybody was saying you're crazy or crazy or crazy. It's never going to work. It's crazy.

And what are you going to sell books? Why would someone buy a book on it? You can't look it up. You can't read it. You got to he's like, no, no, but it's the biggest thing. And I don't need to store it. And I don't. And so, you know, he does the whole thing on the books thing. And they're like, yeah, and then that was it. That was, it was huge. He's like, yeah, well, there were many, many times when it wasn't going to be. I mean, look at, look at our president. Our president went bankrupt seven times before he made it, you know. But what he does is when you listen to the interview, he says, it's funny. He said, everybody

focuses on Amazon. and how big Amazon. And then they mentioned one or two other things that he's done. They're like, and you did this and that's huge. And you did this and that's huge. He's like, yeah,

yeah, no, those are great money makers. They're huge. And they're like, yeah, wow, he's like, is it funny because everybody always focuses on those.

Of course. And they're like, right, right, why? Why do you say that? He goes, nobody ever focuses on the, the, you know,

the Bluebell, yeah, the Bluebell app that we started. And they're like, what's that? He's like, exactly, we dumped half a billion dollars into it.

Right, 18 months, we lost all of it. Nobody ever remembers the 400 million we dumped into this project that went belly up and all the investors. He names like six things that he had done that failed. And he said, they only focus on the positive. He said, trust me, he said, we've had more failures than we've had successes. But the success is when they're successful, they're huge. Right.

And that's how I feel. It's like, yeah, I'll keep throwing shit at the wall. Me and you were very similar. Yeah. I don't mind failing. No. I don't mind failing. I fail all the time.

It's not trying that bothers me. I always said, and I've been rejected my whole life. It's no big deal. Yeah. I think that was a side felt like. It's so funny because my wife is taking her captain's license right now. To captain what? To captain boats.

No shit. That's awesome. And she, listen, the last couple days, she's like, I don't know. There's five parts. And I don't know if I should take all the parts at once because I don't think I'm ready. And she's like, you know, I can take like one every week. I can take one that can focus on. I'm like, you just blew through the entire three weeks of classes making almost, you know, all one hundreds on your tests.

Why would you not think you're going to pass? She's like, I don't know. I just, you know, your tests are different than the ones in class. I'm like, maybe. But you're prepared. And she's like, I'm like, why not just take all of them? She's like, what if I fail it? I'm like, if you can just take it again.

Right. And she's like, I know, but you can only take it three times. And then you have to take the whole thing. I'm like, so what? Yeah. Like she doesn't, like most people, they, they don't want to even attempt something because they're afraid they're going to fail.

I don't give a fuck. No, I couldn't give a fuck. I'll fail and fail. I'm going to pass it. Eventually, right, right, right. And if everyone was, oh, yeah, but you fail, fuck you. My buddy, I told you, when I was telling the story,

I told you my buddy who owned the vape shop when I first started getting the vape committee. We became very close friends. We still see each other to this day. And he's a very personal guy. I'm not a bad-looking guy, good-looking guy. And he always tells me, He always says, and when I was bigger, it was, you know, I was bigger, you know.

And he always said, you get laid a lot more than I do. I said, well, I ask a lot more than you do. Oh, yeah. And he was like, I can't ask. I said, you have a great personality. I said, you have a great personality. You carry a conversation really well. You know, you make yourself the center of the room when you do it.

That's all it is. Well, what if they say now? Well, then you go up to the next one. I've never seen her before. Right. I'll never see her again. Even if I do, it gives a fuck. Especially if you go up to them expecting them to say no.

Right. Like, I've, I've dated women. You know, these guys are like, I can't find a girlfriend. But then you're afraid to ask. Right. You know what I'm like? My dad told me this joke, and I've told this before. The name of the joke is it's a numbers game.

And it's two guys standing at a bus stop. You probably heard this. There's two guys standing a bus stop. And this girl walks by. And the one guy looks at her and he goes, he goes, hey, baby, you want to go back to my place and screw, she slaps them in the face and walks off. Another girl walks by and he goes, hey, baby, you want to go back to my place and screw? Boom, she slaps it in the face and walks off.

Another girl walks by, he just want to go back to my place and I have sex? Bam, she slaps him. The guy's standing next to the guy asking, looks at him and just starts laughing. And he goes, man, you must get slapped a lot. And he goes, yeah, but I fuck a lot of women. And that's just what it is. My father used to tell me this story all the time. He used to go out with his buddies to club. And one of his friends would go up to just random girls and just say the most vile shit in there. Really?

You don't want to go home and do this, this, that. And he would get slapped all the time, but more times than not, he went home with a girl. Yeah. I bet you by the end of the night. Right. He was getting late. Some chick's going to be like, really?

And you're like, got one. Right, right. So I'm with you 100% on everything. Did you eventually tell your 12-year-old son? that you were in prison. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, so that's the story. So we're going back.

Right, right. We're going back. Segway. Yeah, it's fine. So what happened was I started scheduling interviews and I said to myself, well, he's going to see something. Right. So I'm sitting down, I'm sitting down with someone I said, and it was day before CBS was

coming to my house. And I said, Scotty, I got to talk to you. And I called my ex-wife and I told her also because I guess it's a major. thing. I got, I don't want to look like a lot. We don't want to all look like liars together. So I call, she was like, all right, talk to him. So I sit down and I say, you know, when daddy was in, in Dominican Republic, I wasn't in a resort, you know, I was in jail and this is what happened.

He knows what I do and everything knows my events and stuff like that. It was like, whoa. But now, fast forward to three weeks when I'm doing more interviews and stuff like that, he's the first one to be checking sites and he's the first one. went to be for screen recording news. So he's all into it. You know, like he's super into it.

He calls me up, no, I see him when I get off the plane, right? And I get in the car and he's like, he kind of like taking back. He was like, dad,

you look so much bad. I mean, you lost a lot of weight in this, that and the other. I said, yeah, I know he said, dead,

you got to keep it off for your health and this than the other. I said, yeah, I'm going to him to work at it in this, you know, I'm going to go to a gym and I'm going to do the right thing.

I'm going to eat right. he goes, well, if you put it back on, you're going to have to go back to the DR. I was like, fuck. That was a little brick. This was before he found out of the prison. But yeah, so that was the story. But he's, my kids, I'm blessed to have amazing children.

You know, patting myself and my ex-wife on the back, you know, give him, I don't know if you've been married multiple times or just once or whatever it may be. This is my second marriage, my last marriage. And, you know, you know, through my marriage to my first wife, it became very apparent that we shouldn't be together. As far as a husband and wife. Yeah.

But I would choose nobody in the world to parent my children, to be a co-parent with my children. She's a great mother. She's a great person. You know, just sometimes two people don't belong together. I mean, she was gorgeous, and she was 19 years old. I was 17. I liked heavy metal music like she did. So it was awesome, you know.

But yeah, so that's that. But yeah, she, but I told him, yes. Yeah, I was going to say it's funny. My ex-wife, she's Puerto Rican. But, and you want to talk about somebody who's doing time for a new husband? Doing time, right. Wouldn't trade places for anything. I'd rather go back.

Oh, yeah, you're paying, brother. That's a tough motherfucker right there. But, yeah, she'll, like, if I don't call her, like, once a week or we don't text or something, then she'll call me up one day and I'll answer it. And she'll be like, what is the problem? What's the problem? You don't text me, you don't call me. I'm like, I don't know if you're alive, if you're dead.

I'm thinking like, we're not even co-parall. Our son's like 25 years old. You know what I'm doing? Like, I'm done with you. I'll tell you a funny story. When I first have lost my first wife, the mother of my kids, she was always, like, even in our relationship, I'm always the most passive one. Like I'm always the one to make up or, or kiss ass to kind of,

get out of the dog house. That's what, even if I'm right, you know, I'm fine with it. And so she, and I was raised to never yell at a woman or never, you know,

got, never put my hands on a woman, but never mistreat a woman, no matter how hard she goes at you. Right. So she calls me up at you. Sometimes. Right.

So she calls me up one day and she moved out of the house and she's actually living with her now husband at this time, you know. And she starts yelling at me some bullshit, like yelling at the top of her lungs. And I never forget, I'm standing outside and I'm holding my phone. I put my, I take the phone away from my ear for a minute. And I look at it and I say, I pick up the phone. I said, I could tell you to go fuck yourself now and I hang up the phone.

It was the single greatest liberating moment of my life. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Relationship. It's something. I'm waiting for wife number third. He's still asking, Colby's still asking, ready to ask more questions.

Like, what happened, the money and the, yeah, yeah. We're over that then. I just got to scan through the CBS report on YouTube. If you could go back and change anything or do anything different, would you? Yeah, do you think you, I was, yeah. I wouldn't assigns for the pallet, number one. No, but I'm saying, like, like, would you have given better instructions for packaging? Or would you just say, that's your problem?

But you didn't, because you just completely don't feel like, oh, I should have been more clear. You just don't feel like I didn't do anything wrong at all. I was just trying to help everybody out. Right. Right. Whatever even occurred to me. But looking back on the whole spectrum of the experience, would I have changed anything? To this day, there was probably a more efficient way to handle the whole thing with, you know, I had 10 lawyers, you know, through the whole story, I've had 10 lawyers.

Right. You know, I've had, you know, so there was, but my anxiety, obviously, in that situation got, you know, I wanted to get to the finish line before I started. You know, that's where, and that's where the whole, you know, there were three lawyers that said, I got the deal, you know, like that. And that's where that came, that came in. I was never, I could never face the fact until much later that I was going to be here until this was over. You have to trust the process. You have to go through the process. Not necessarily trusted, but go through the process.

And I think that's what I would have changed more mentally than what I did because I didn't know what I was doing. I was just throwing shit up against the wall until I got out or until I could get to a point where I can get out. So I don't know. I think that the whole story would have changed a lot if I thought differently. You know, I'm here. I never really came to that realization until I have to trial that I'm here. I got to wait this fucking thing out. You know, I was on the phone up until 16 months.

I was on the phone, how do I get out sooner than my date? Yeah. How do I get to court sooner than by date? How do I get to, you know, how do I strike a deal sooner than when I'm supposed to? Right. So that, if I did that, I think I would have been in a much better place mentally. I mean, I spent 18 months crying in my bed, you know, because I missed my kids and because I missed my mom and, you know, and the whole thing. So, you know, my, I almost had like a full-time job of how the,

fuck do I get out of here as soon as possible. Right. You know, that's what it was. So I think that if I had to change anything, it would be take a step back before I take 10 steps forward that type of thing. I was going to say after being locked up for so long, like guys would get to prison, they'd show up. And then, you know, let's say me and Pete would sit around like a, say right now, a guy

named Donovan Davis who got 17 years for a Ponzi scheme that he really had nothing to do with. And he went to trial because he's like, I didn't do this. this. He lost because that's the way it is. That's the way it is. He got 17 years and then he was appealing his case. So when he got to prison, he's in the middle of the appeal and we're sitting there. I'm sitting there with my buddy Pete and he's

sitting there telling us about his appeal and how he's going to win that. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this and this he's like, so I could be out of here in like six months and Pete and I kind of glanced at each other and we're just like, yeah, man, that sounds like, we don't want to tell him like, no, you're going to lose your appeal. Right. You're going to lose your appeal. Right. Why? Because

98% of 99.99% of everybody loses their appeal. And it sounds to me expect, you know, and you went to trial. Yeah. So you, they feel like you had an opportunity. Right. So, you know, so, and then when he lost the appeal a year later, year and a half later, and it was like, I'm going to file my 2255 and this and I can bring up this and this, which I couldn't bring up in the appeal, but now I can bring up this and this and this.

And I'm going to win that. And of course, Pete and I. Sure you are. Sounds great. Man, that's solid. That's a solid argument there. I'm like, this guy's fucked. Yeah, he's like, you're walking.

I'm like, what do you think? He's, come on, you know what I think. You know, it's like, and then what's so funny is once Donovan loses all of those. Right. Then it's me, Pete, and Donovan with the next guy going, well, you know, I'm filing a 2255 right now. Like I should get, if all I'm going to do is get five years off and, you know, I can be out of here, you know, in six months and we're all looking at each other. We're like, man, yeah, solid. Solid argument.

You know, you just realize after seeing it, you know, you know, what. happening, you realize like, no, bro, you're, you're doing 17 years. That's, you know, it, you know, I think when you realize what you're facing or at least what you're doing, it punches you in the face. It really does, you know. When I came to a realization where, I mean, 20 years was an option, you know, like, what the fuck, you know, my kids are going to be, you know, X years old, like, you know, and that, that's what really gets you, you know. But, you know, again, when they, they said a year and a half, you know, half, I wanted to go home then, but, you know, I was almost done.

You know, and that's the sense of relief. I'll never forget. It's a hope that gets you through. Right. I never forget. I was on, I'm a big, I don't know if you notice it, but I'm a flirt. I'm a flirt. I'm a big, I'm a big flirt with waitresses. I flirt with everybody, you know, and so, um, the, I was in the bus. The second day of trial, I was in the bus. And we picked up this beautiful Dominican girl from the prison next door, which was a woman's prison. And I noticed her on the bus to the court,

but I didn't want to say it because I wasn't in the mood. I was super fucking anxious. But when I got out of court and it was done and it was established that I was going, I sat next to it. We were touching each other's leg. We were talking about sex. We were doing the whole thing. But I was relieved.

You know, you have a sense of relief. You know, I never forget when I was sitting on the bus, I'll be home for Christmas came in my fucking head every every on the way back to jail it came in my head I'll be home for Christmas I'll be home for Christmas

and even still when before I gave up on getting out early I would still say worst case scenario I'll be home for Christmas and that's how it was you know Hey you guys if you like the video do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so get notified a video

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