Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Master Thief Reveals How To Steal Anything From Anyone

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Master Thief Reveals How To Steal Anything From Anyone

And it was a good bank. There was more than one band of cash to win up. So I had 20 grams. So I drive away and I'm maybe a minute, half a minute from the rent the car. I'm going to dump this and I'm going to get out of town and I'm good. Right. Look in the rearview mirror and the lights, man. I got I got lit up and my foot's doing this number, right? It's going back and forth between the gas pedal and the brake. I'm like, you know what, man? It's been a decent run. Eventually, everybody gets caught, right? Pull the drain over to the side of the road. So I've got three strips of of double-sided tape that are just shining like hell on the top of my head.

On the front seat of the car is a microwave oven, right? Makes perfect sense. And where the keys should be is a screwdriver about that long. And he looks at me and he goes, do you know why I'm pulling you over? And I go, nope, I'm trying to work that out. Your gas capsule. You know, in this heat, you're probably losing about a gallon an hour. He's like, for real.

You might want to get out and close that. So I crank this thing down. I said, thank you. He goes, have a great day. Turned around. Right? And I drove off. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Captain Tommy.

He is a YouTuber. He runs the YouTube channel, The Lifeboat. I think he will correct me if I'm wrong. And he has an extremely interesting true crime story. So check out the interview. I appreciate you, you know, coming on the channel and telling me your story. You just kind of, you know, we just had a kind of a rundown. And I know we have, we have Tyler.

in common my booking agent does he book guest for you or is he just booking you he does not he just reached out to me um i think uh probably through um uh the a a ron channel over there on growing up in scientology i've been doing a lot over there with them and those two have a common bomb so it's funny somebody said in the comment section the other day because i always say you know because to me it's like start at the beginning like where were you born you know what i'm saying but and a guy in the uh in the comment section the other day said if matt cox was interviewing jesus christ he'd start with tell me where you were born you know it's a pretty decent comment and and i have watched enough of your stuff to know that that was coming i grew up in new england i was born in uh in the state of vermont

small state and uh grew up i had really an idyllic childhood man i grew up uh norman rockwall like really small New England town and just did a lot of skiing, a lot of sports. My parents stayed married until the very end. Yeah, man, I really am one of those guys that if you look at, you don't go all. It's pretty obvious why the student ended up in prison, right? Like everybody else in my family sort of took a different direction. But I took a lot of pain medication from the ski injuries. I did a lot of backflips on skis, things like that.

ended up competing in the Red Bull, big air circuit, and I just beat my body up really badly. And I spent a lot of time on pain meds. And it sounds ignorant as hell saying it out loud, but I had no idea that when I stopped taking them, I was going to get sick. And I mean, I literally was on him for years because I was just always injured. And, you know, a couple of times I would stop taking him and I would get sick and they didn't realize it was withdrawal. Like I just thought, you know what? I had a really bad, bad two week cold there, you know, whatever, couldn't sleep. And then, but once the addiction really got a hold of me.

me. At about 18, it just the wheels came off and I started to, I started to look for every way possible that I could to make money without having to do real work. I mean, that's really what I came to. Real things. Started out with me FedExing, FedExing drugs from one part of the country to the other and smuggling a couple of really large loads of cocaine into Australia. That was the like my entree into the into the world of crime. I was really, really young. In fact, the day of the Rodney King. How old were it?

Well, it was April 26, 1992, right? It was the Rodney King riots was the day that I landed in in Sydney, Australia, with cowboy boots loaded from toe to top with bags of blow, sucked sealed. So, yeah, I was 20. I don't think I was legal 20, 21, somewhere in there. I was really young, really, really young. If I was legal, I was just legal. Like, I was just old enough to drink at that point.

And I probably would have stuck with that. I made a lot of money doing it. But I had the most horrific experience on a trip going in there. They didn't want to let me take in cowboy boots because they were snake skin. And the guy was like, we don't, you know, we have the largest reptile population on the planet You're going to need to take the boots off, leave the boots here. We'll just put them in a bag and then give them to you. And, I mean, I pull this boot off and it's all over, right?

You know, these are big, suck-sealed bags. You know, I think on that one, I had 36 ounces, 38 ounces, something like that. I mean, enough to do a lot of time in Australia that probably, and I just got really lucky. Dude walked up as I was looking like I was trying to pull the boot off and sort of saying to the guy, you know, these are not real snake skin. I paid almost nothing for these. And a guy came up and pulled off one of the scales, like bit it until it was flat.

And he goes, no, you're good, mate. You can go ahead. Like, I walked out of the airport with my leg, you know, and that was the end of my drug smuggling. That was the end of that. The adventure of going through customs with Blow was enough to talk me out of that real quick. So now I started, got back and started sending a lot of Coke to, from Houston, Texas to, to Bob.

in Massachusetts and kind of got wrapped up with some with some bad cats like the people that I was sending the stuff to were you know these these fellows or at least really associated with with with some Irish guys that were uh it didn't have a very big sense of humor when it came to business but I worked with those guys for probably about two and a half years never lost it load never had a problem um it just got to the point where uh getting them to send money up front. Everything wanted to be fronted and everything wanted to be. And, you know, every fifth load, there was a story. And the story was, you know, was somebody broke in last night. They got half the load. And it just became one of those things where I knew

I was going to end up shooting one of these dudes or they were going to shoot me. So I started to, the idea was, Matt, the idea was that I was going to start going straight. And I started looking for something that I could do that would be halfway legit. legitimate. And I couldn't find anything. I really couldn't. I mean, I think I just, I think I was just sort of larceness from day one. At that point, I just really kind of, there was abhorrent of any kind of real work. So I fell in with a group of people that used to go from town to town and you've seen the ads on TV. You know, come to the Radisson on Tuesday and we're going to teach you how to make money in real estate or how to make money on the internet or how to flip houses or whatever the flavor of the month. Club was. But we would make infomercials. And it became a really huge thing. Like we made insane amounts of money. And basically, we were able to skirt the laws. And if you looked at what we were doing, at any given point, we were this close to go into prison. But we had a team of attorneys that wouldn't everything fly so that if somebody wanted to take us to court, we had a really

good case. We didn't lie. But I was literally the first person that came up with the concept of the phrase using techniques found within this system. If you watch the old infomercials, a person had to say, all right, I bought this kit. I made this much money. Well, that's impossible because what came first, the chicken of the egg. How the hell did you find the kit? There had to be an infomercial. There had to be a testimonial, right? So it becomes a very difficult thing to get that first one up and off the ground. So what we did is we just found a group of guys who made. money. It didn't matter how you did it. You're selling you're selling porn on the internet. Half of the people we had were people that were doing porn stuff because the internet was

brand new. But using the phrase, you know, using the techniques found within the system. So we just took the system and put it together based on whatever anybody was doing. It was legal. It was really unethical, but it was legal. So you guys would do what? You do infomercials, put them on what in the morning? We sell a kit for $39. Yeah, middle of the night, middle of the night, $500,000. thousand dollars a week in in media buys and middle of the night stuff every once in a while you might get like a Sunday afternoon or something but for the most part it's the middle of the night and you try to get people that are up in the middle of the night you know you're not up in the

middle of the night because all your bills are paid right you know and we're looking for people that have a little bit of desperation we're looking for people that that are not happy with their life and uh you charge $39 and believe it or not we would lose like 10 bucks right to sell that kid for $39 was costing us about $49 to put it in their hand. But when they opened it up, it said, call your startup specialist. And the startup specialist gives you a spiel where we say, hey, everybody on that infomercial had a coach, right? Coach holds your hand. Make sure you're successful because we need those testimonials, right? And I walk you through the process of why this is going to be so easy. There's no chance of how you can fail on this unless you're

just a blithering idiot, right? If you can follow a roadmap, you're going to be successful and we're going to use you as the testimonial in the next end commercial. And that's 10 grand. And it takes about 24 minutes, 25 minutes, if you're good at it, from start to finish. It's a two-part sale. So one guy finds out that the person's got money. You're not talking to anybody that doesn't have cash. But we put this entire scam together and it got really big, really quick.

Like at one point, we had a room that was doing a million dollars a week and six. And that was one telemarketing room. And we had 16 going. And 9-11 came. And as it turned out, are you familiar with the concept of the reverse shell merger, right? In stock, this is the greatest, this makes all of us scammers on the planet look like ministers, right? They find the company that's defunct. They find a company that was publicly traded, say, 1910, before the act of 1930 when all of the stock laws and everything came into place, what they call the act, right?

They gets you insider trading or whatever. If you find the company that went out of business before that happened and you acquire that company, that stock is still live. The stock never goes dead. That's why every stock certificate says par value zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero and then it has that one. It's like one one billionth of a penny makes that so that it is an asset. It's never going to go away.

You take the company, you put a new name on it, right? If you control all of that stock. So what would happen is we would go find these these companies and you would go and find find the stock certificates, death certificates, find out who used to own the stock, see if you could get made a piece of paper that says that they actually sold that stock to somebody in 19, you know, 42 or whatever the case may be. But we would acquire every single share of the stock. And now you control it completely. So a guy calls up and puts in a bid, right? Mattie says, I want to buy X stock at a dollar a share. Nobody fills the bid. They

can't. I own every share. Right. So no one's going to fill this bid. broker calls back says, I'm trying. No one's filling the bid. He says, okay, bump it up to two bucks a share, right? I'll pay too. Yeah, nobody did it. Keeps doing that until he gets to five. I fill the bid, right?

So now the stock is trading at $5 a share, and I'm sitting on 250 million shares. Now, there's nothing there. There's no assets. There's no anything. The government has made it so that you can't get away with this. Every single quarter, you have to tell them what your assets are, what your liabilities are, everything that's going on in the companies. It's called you 10 Q's, right?

But if you're pre-1933, you don't have to do that. You actually only have to fill out those papers once a year. So you just trash the ever-loving hell out of this company. You got 365 days to do a pump and dump. You get the stock up as high as you possibly can. Then you get rid of all of it. Then you change the name, shut the company down rung like hell. Usually the guys at the very top probably leave the country.

But I got very involved with people doing that. And it was great because those guys made. you know rock star money that was the first time that I saw money that was just like unreal you know as this was being explained to me I was a young kid and the guy said to me you got $100 on you and I didn't have $20 on me I said that you know what I don't know if I got one right so he takes one out of his pocket and he puts it on a on a photocopier he says I make a copy of this thing right and we both had the chance to go into prison right he said I take this same piece of paper and I can make a stock certificate out of this that we can sell legally for whatever

we want, right? Legally. And, you know, as long as we're done by the end of the year. So they end up walking into banks and they say, I got 200 million shares of free trading stock in a company that is trading at $5 a share, right? I would like to borrow $35 million. You know, how much of the stock do you need to, you know, to as collateral for this? And it just became kind of manufacturing money. And at this point, my habit just got to the point where it was insane. I mean, like literally insane. I was doing seven or eight grams of heroin a day. Six daily. If I was partying seven or eight grams, and this was in the days when heroin was still really expensive, you know, so the matter how much cash I was making, I was spending thousands of dollars a day.

And if I made a million bucks in a year, I spent a million in 25. I just had that. I'd never been a person that could seem to keep. It didn't matter what I did. Yeah. Moderation. at all. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. You know what I'm saying? And that's, that's really where it was. So we continued running these scams until one day, we got in with a group of people out of Canada who had Celine Dion, Dion Sanders, Emmett Smith, Muhammad Ali, like 70 stars endorsing this deal. And I don't know for legal reasons if I should mention the name of the deal. It should not be hard to figure out. If you type in everything I just said into Google, you'll get it.

It was a Canadian company. I don't know what the legalities are with this thing because the guy that was running it was a, he was a scam artist. He was a Canadian scam artist. He'd already been to prison, already done some dirt. But they were bringing in money by selling a soy product. And we were feeding meals to homeless kids. This is the theory.

And, you know, this is pretty much where my conscience actually, you got to get at some point, there is a line that you don't cross. and that that deal was probably the one that that ended my my legal this is what really sent me off the rails I was their public speaker and I could go into a room of people and get them to donate money and take 10% right so if the if the room donates 100 grand you know I make 10,000 and go all over the all over the country doing this and you got big huge stars to you know people would pay unbelievable amounts of money to get a picture taken with Muhammad Ali and we went We went everywhere with him. We got to meet the cat and, you know, really had a very interesting time, but there was never anything about it that smelled right. You know what I mean? It was the way it was set up. We ended up, the thing ended up really exploding epically. Fortunately, I had already gone by that point. I was getting ready to go on stage to speak. And I had one leg up. I had no pants on, right? Because you keep your pants looking greased out before you walk out on stage, right? So I'm just

sitting in a pair of boxers and a shirt with a tie and I'm sticking a shot behind my knee, right? There's about the only place I could still find the vein at that point. And a guy walked in and looked at me and went, what the hell are you doing, Tommy? And I was like, insulin? And he said, brown insulin behind your knee. And I said, look, dude, you know, I'm addicted to heroin. I've been addicted to heroin since the day you met me, right?

There's never been a point in which I wasn't on heroin. It's not like I'm walking out on stage for the first time wasted, right? just go watch what I do and you know this is not a big deal I promise I'll go get help or whatever he's like no man you're you're done you're fired like you're you're done done and I was like you're going to go out and do the show I mean you know it is most people are not really fond of standing up in front of a group of people even the people hire you to do it I assure you don't want to go out and do it themselves in a very very short time we negotiated it a very large one last deal and I went on stage and did the last show and I got 20% instead of 10% and I got

blackballed. I mean, blackballed, bro. Like, I could not get a job as a public speaker on the planet, like anywhere I went. And this was my, this was my gig. I didn't have another skill, right? I was a skier. There was nothing else I could do on planet Earth except sell from the front of the room. And I have a $600 a day heroin habit, right? I'm doing six grams a day. Now, by the end, it was $100 a gram. I got really cheap. You know, now I think it's probably down to 30, but, you know, I remember when it was 300 a gram, but I still had to come up with 600 bucks a day every day for me. My wife had a habit, you know, we had cars, houses. You know, I had to come up with just under 30K to cover the nut. And I don't have a paycheck anymore, right? There's no more money coming in.

And my wife had not worked in years. You know, I made the money I made, I don't think she understood what I did. You know, my wife had a horrendous alcohol problem. My first wife was, she was just drink all day, you know, and not, I mean, she was classy. She was a very classy lady, but she drank an ungodly amount of booze. So once I was blackballed, I became a criminal and I became a criminal really quickly. Now it was, now it was whatever I could steal. I needed to come up with this money. And there was no other option. Like, you know, at this point, I really don't have a criminal record. I mean, I had been pinched for stupid stuff as a kid, but I didn't have massive felony.

He's hanging over my head. I jumped a fence at a concert or anything like that. You know, silly stuff. But now all of a sudden, I don't know how to be a criminal. You know, the kind of the crime I did, I put a suit on for. And now I had to become like a blue-collar criminal. And I started off ripping off stores and just stupid things. You know what I mean?

I would steal things. And I'd think, oh, this is fantastic, without realizing that then you had to sell it, right? You can't just take the DVD player to the dope man and say, how many grams do I get for this, right? So I started shoplifting and I started shoplifting big time because I had to come up with a lot of money. So I wasn't your average run-on-the-mill shoplifter. I used to go into hardware stores and I would go to that little door on the back

that's got the alarm. You hit that door and it goes, eh, eh, eh. Right. I would know that expandable foam right off the shelf and that would hit the speaker and just covered the entire thing. And then I'd walk around and fill up a cart. And when I'd come back through the second time, you'd kick the door open, it wouldn't make a sound. You know, you're covered. And then we'd fill up the back of the truck and leave.

When we finally got poked for this was one particular hardware store that everyone in the world shops at. When it was all said and done. Who's we? Who's we? Well, just I had a getaway driver. I got a cap by the name of Jack, who was, Jack never got a felony and was there for probably 90% of the dirt that I did. He just, but he's a stand-up cat. You know what I mean?

He really is. He's a stand-up cat. And he didn't have a felony. And at that point, I had two or three. So, you know, he was a getaway driver if I needed one. And for the most part, I really didn't like doing things with other people. You know, they tend to screw up every time. And they tend to run their mouths.

The FBI had Jack for like 30 hours before the idiot. realized he literally could say I'm not talking to you people and I'm leaving like they had him 30 hours and he didn't give me up like he didn't give up anything to get out of his mud which is really kind of incredible for a guy who's never done any time you know but so when you when you so you finally go into this store you get pinched what what how'd you get grabbed so I go in right and I didn't have Jack with me I was going in to do a deal alone so I was just going to grab a couple of thousand dollars worth of stuff and she'd walk out the front door right And I got, I have a check in my pocket made out to Home Depot, right? Just a case, right? So it looks like I'm ready to go. Obviously, I'm planning on buying this. I'm not planning on stealing this. Like a little thought in advance.

But I pick up these two suitcases full of Ryobie tools. There were like $1,200 a case at that time. And I started walking to the front door. And I got, I'm not talking about 50 feet from the front door. Like I'm nowhere near the towers. I'm nowhere near anything. I just got tackled like a boom. Dude takes me out from the side like Lauren.

Taylor and you could have still paid for six guys on me I was like absolutely absolutely right that's what I'm yelling I'm like what is wrong with you I said and I'm doing the Academy Award stuff what are you crazy I said I got to check I'm inside pocket man I'm here to they bring me the back right they saw you walk of a century all right scene in the century I'm getting perp walk to the to their little back office and I'm yelling the whole time my lawyers are going to destroy you are you crazy I am and I walk in and need an entire wall is me there are pictures like top to bottom on the entire wall and there are pictures of me in different outfits and and stores that I know aren't even that store like like this has been the

headquarters of where they're trying to get us but they've got pictures of me in like six or seven different home depots and I just looked up and he goes what were you saying you got what did you want to tell me and I just looked up at the wall and I was like I'd like to talk to it you know I don't I don't really want to talk to anybody right now and that was the first pinch that sent me to prison that was they estimated the that we had stolen two and half million dollars worth of stuff from them so well they estimated that i did because jack didn't get pinched in any of that but um in the period about seven months about seven months wow um yeah we were going really hard there were five in the neighborhood i mean five in the city so

we were just we were going you know every day we'd pick a new one and go in there and you just had to steal a lot and and you know fences are the worst people on the planet honest to god like fences and pawn shops so you know but you go to a fence and and you bring him stuff and he goes oh my man this is awesome right at 2,000 bucks here here I'll give you a grant now you go back with the same thing and he's like man what am I going to do with this right I don't know I don't need any of these things I give you I give you 10 cents on the dollar and you're stealing you know eight nine thousand dollars and you're getting 1200 bucks and and you need the dope there's not there's no way you can say no and I remember I sat down with jack one day and I said I'm not

stealing anything I got to sell a bergen like from this point on I'm stealing money I'm not stealing anything that I got to convert to anything. I'm stealing cag. And he's like, so you're going to become a bank robber. And originally, believe it or not, I went the stupider route. And my first foray into robbery, for real, I knocked off a casino. Now, before you think of like Oceans 11, right, I want you to think of a strip mall. So you've got like a Scaleri store, right? You got a Scalaris store in the strip mall. And like two doors. down from the Scalaries is just another sliding door and it goes into a William Hill sports book. So it's basically a bookie and where you can place sports bets and they've got maybe

60 machines, 70 machines that, that play. But this is a legal casino. It's just a little shitty. I'm in Nevada. Yeah, I'm in Nevada. This is this is, but it's just it's, these are all over Nevada now, right? The, the, the, the strip center casino, the local, you know, like Dotties. There's a whole chain of them and it's like the local little 40 machines 50 machines it keeps you out of the big casinos um but that was the first uh that was my first leg and the and the reason I did it is because the got the word the cash register was what is on arm's length from the door like as I walked by the thing automatically opened and I looked and I saw the the cash register I'm like you gotta be kidding me man what ship for brains would put a cash register that close

to an exit, you know, it just didn't make any sense. So I walked by and, you know, went in and the guy was standing right at the register and I was like, listen, open that thing. I need all of it. You know, give me the cash underneath. I want every penny. And I figured, you know, being stupid, you know, it's got to be, what, 30, 40 grand. This is a casino, right? It's got to be a ton of money in this. And I got about $5,000, which was a lot of risk for $5,000. Like, you know, that's 25 years. That's armed robbery. And in this, and instead, Nevada, you messed with the casino like they had gotten me within the seven years i actually got away with that uh that one i never got caught so tried to cut a deal on it later have you got a gun or are you

just telling them open it um actually as as sad and and humiliating as this is um i would have got charged with a gun because i didn't know any better but i didn't have a gun i had what looked remarkably like a gun but it was not a gun and uh and the reason was just um yeah i honestly am not really a gun person which is funny because I ended up doing time for a crap load of guns, but I'm not a gun dude. I'm, you know, I'm never, I'm not much, I'm not, I wanted to hurt people. I just want cash, you know what I mean? Like, I wanted, I wanted the money.

And unfortunately, sometimes you had to hurt people because it's that kind of a gig. But for the most part, I just wanted to, I just wanted to have enough money to do dope and not have to worry about life, you know, get my bills paid. So after the casino, I was like, that's a wrap. I'm not doing, I'm not doing that ever again. That was way too much risk for not enough rewards. So I started to research bankrupties, and that was the start. And I did my first one, and I was absolutely heinous at it.

Like, it's amazing that I didn't get caught. What was the first one? Like, how did that? Like, how did you pick the place? Like, how did that go? So the first one went like this. I met a convict when I was in the state joint, who said to me, how long did you go to the state?

By the way, you never said how much time you got for that? They gave me, they gave me 36 months. and in typical Tommy Schofillville, my life is like nobody else's kind of fashion. An inmate fell off of, he was going to get glasses off the top bunk, and you've been in prison, you know, so he was standing on the bottom bunk and the mattress slid toward the wall. So he came down this way and he hit his head on the silver, I mean, on the stainless steel sink. And it just ripped the back of his head open like that way. It's over.

This dude's going to bleed out in like four minutes. And I went in and got him like this and stuffed my hand into the back of his head because the blood was squirt in every direction. So they come in and I got this dude. headlocked. And there's blood all over the floor. You know, they're, and they're literally just wanting to kill me. You know, get your hands in the air. I'm like, dude, this isn't what it looks like. If I put my hands in the air, this dude's done, you know what I mean? I'm not. So I got kicked out of prison for saving this dude's life. Nice. Like I got, it took, it took two months for

them to do paperwork. And, you know, people had sort of like whispered about it. I thought it was BS. And a guy came to me, I was playing softball. And he's like, they want you, you. You're gone. I'm like, gone where? He's like, you're going home. You know, they're kicking you out. So yeah, in typical Tommy fashion, that didn't, that didn't last very long. But once, I met a guy in there that said to me, I've robbed X number of banks and I'm like, you're in a state facility, right? If you're a bank robber, shouldn't you be in the feds, number one? Like, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that you're a, that this is a state, you know, charge. But he starts to tell me about how, how to rob a bank. And sounds pretty legit. Like this dude, this dude is

definitely, if he's not a bank robber, he's sure his crap is thought up a really good story for what a bank robbery should look like. And I followed his instructions. And the way I picked the bank, always in forever, the way I picked the bank was first, I wanted to know where the police station was, right? I didn't want to, because you can accidentally rob a bank that's a 60-second ride from a police station. If you don't start going around in circles, I robbed the bank once, and I'm not even being funny. This is a gospel truth. I robbed the bank once. And I've never had anybody close. I'm long gone. I've never, I've never had a copy. pull up with one exception I never had a cop get anywhere close to me right there was never I was

always long gone I was in and out very very quickly but I robbed the bank where a cop car pulled up in front of me and a cop car pulled up behind me like came screaming in like this I'm already in the car and I thought well that's the end of that right I put my hands up like this and they run inside they hop out of the car and go smoking into the bank like T.J. Hooker and I backed the car up and drove away and, you know, shaking like a vibrator. And I would always have a dump car. So I would steal a black Dodge Durango. At the time, they were like everywhere, right?

Every car looked like a black Dodge Durango. And I'm not a car thief, but I can steal a black Dodge Durango really easily. I can smash a screwdriver into the, you know, into the, and snap the column and get that to go. So I would steal a car and I would do the, I would do the theft in a stolen car. I would steal a plate from the front of a Black Dodge Durango, put it on the back of the one I just stole, right? You never look at your front plate. But that way, if somebody did report the car stolen,

I'm not going to be on the hot sheet. Nobody's going to see that plate. But within usually two miles of the bank, I had the rent-a-car. And I would take, after I robbed the bank, I would go get in the rent-car, take off, and then boom, that's it. You know, leave the first car, the stolen car behind and be gone. And in the car would be, you know, usually a wig, a microwave oven.

I used to keep a microwave on the front seat and plug it into an inverter into the cigarette lighter. The idea being that the tracer bill, in most banks, you're not even going to get like the things that people see in all of the movies. You're not going to get all of that crap. 90% of the time that none of that happens. But on banks that do have good equipment, on banks that know what they're doing, they have a, bill, that if you hold the bill up to the light, there is a mechanical device inside there, and it's going to emit a signal. And they're going to follow you right to that signal.

So electronics and microwaves don't get along, right? So the old man said, just microwave the cash throw it into the microwave, crank that thing on, leave it on while you're driving away. And I promise you will kill that bill. He said, then you get home and you go through it. And it did. You know, at one point, I had a collection of them. It's funny you say that because I knew a guy named Easter.

in prison. And he used to say he used to do the exact same thing. He would immediately throw it while he was driving. As soon as he got in, he'd throw all the cash into a microwave that he had hooked up to the plug. And he'd turn it on. Yeah. If you don't,

you're done. Yeah. If you don't, you're done it. It's really funny because it's like, you know, the first bank I butchered. Like,

I was so bad at this. I can't even begin to tell you how bad I was at this. What happened? What happened? I went into the bank. And so there's a really good idea. you should probably be the only person in the bank, right? Really a good idea because the guy next to you could be packing, you know,

he could have a concealed weapons permit. He could be an off-duty cop. You don't know. And you know what? If they catch you in the act of robbing the bank, they're going to shoot you in the head, right? They're not going to tell you to get on your knees. They're not going to, they're just going to put one in you, right? So I always tried to rob the banks alone.

And it looked, I waited. I was out there for like 20 minutes trying to talk myself into doing this, right? And I got out of a car and I went walking in, and I got inside there. It was like nine people in there. I was like, with the amount of time I spent outside, there was no way that anybody could have not done their business. And I went in and the place was just pat. And I went to turn around like I was going to leave and I thought, oh, now I'm looking to see what if I turn around and I leave. Like, I'm just, I just looked like a rookie who was trying to rob his first bank is what I looked like.

My palms were sweating. And I went up to the woman and said, I need you to give me. And I probably should not be telling people how to rob a bank. But there's no money at all. When you go in there and you say, give me all of the money, you're going to get $2,900. right you might get three grand if you hit a lick you might get 4500 right underneath that right and they do what you tell them to do so if you say give me all the money they're going to open that first drawer and that's all the money you're going to get if you say i want the bottom drawer too right now right all of it

right give me all of it give me the toys the banded money all of it because that's the other thing you get geniuses who say i no no big bills right or no only big bills i want everything man right give me the quarters i don't care right they all spend i want i literally want every piece of paper area in the drawer and the band of money you're going to get one 10,000 stack guaranteed right? If you get the top and bottom drawer, there's going to be a 10 rack in there, at least one, guaranteed. Now, more than likely, the die pack is going to also be in a big banded stack. So you don't put the bag on the table like you see in the movies and say stuff all the money

in this bag. You say stick all the all the cash up on the counter, right? And you do it yourself. And, you know, you take a stack of cash and you bend it. And if it doesn't bend, it's because there's a big disc on the inside of that thing that's got paint in it, right, die in it that's going to explode. And it's a proximity sensor. So when it gets far enough away from the bank, right, it just goes bang. And then all of your money turns a very lovely green or a very lovely red and becomes very difficult to feel good about passing.

The other thing is it will burn the ever-loven snot out of you if it happens to be close to you when it goes off. like it's a it's a chemical kind of a process and uh i um i did not find the dye pack in the right didn't really understand the die pack concept the old man did not describe that nearly as he did the microwave so after getting uh into the car and sticking everything in microwave microwaving the the the die pad right which you would think would kill it i'm taking the cash out of the out of the thing and boom this thing goes off sprays the inside of the car sprays me and this is the kind of stuff that doesn't like to come off of you, right? Like, you don't go into the bathroom and just hit this with some soap. Like, you need two or three weeks to hide at a friend's

house kind of a thing. You know, this is, this is, this is no joke. And my money is now, my money is now basically worthless, right? So you're driving down the street. You're driving out the street with the inside of the car sprayed with red. And this is also, so my first attempt, I didn't, I didn't steal a car, right? The first attempt, I actually did it. I'm ashamed to say this, but I actually used my car. On my first bank robbery, I actually used my own car, which is quite possibly the most embarrassing thing to say out loud for a bank robber. I did, however, put a plate on it that wasn't because I was pretty slick. I taped a fake somebody else's license plate to it. But I parked probably 300 yards away, right? And which is really

pretty stupid. But as I got behind the bank and started running to my car, A phenomenon that has happened to me two or three times since where your vagus nerve literally says to your knees, I'm not going to support you. You know, you're so freaked out that as you're starting to run, you get this drunk effect that you literally can't, it's almost impossible to continue to run erect. And I'm running down this alley, shaking like, you know, there's no tomorrow. Yeah, the first bank was an absolute miracle that I pulled it on. It was an absolute miracle. And then I had to give my, my boy Jack took all of the tainted cash and he would go into casinos and he would put two or three of them in a machine along with some other cash and he'd gamble for a little bit and, you know, cash out and go. And then he did that.

And we managed to wash all the cash that way. But it took an eternity. It was not, it was definitely not worth the effort. So I started to try to get better at it. And at that point, that was right around the time I shaved for the first time. So I started wearing wigs. I started doing things to make myself look different. And I started learning some tricks.

Like there's a merchant teller, right? And if you get that merchant teller, every once in a while, something really crazy will happen. Like I did a merchant teller and it was the same drill. I walked in. I said, hey, how you doing? She said, good. I said, I need to give me the top drawer and the bottom during it right now, right?

He needed to just put all of it up there. And every single person I ever robbed said, are you serious? I don't know whether it's just something that everybody says or they're trained to ask you if you're kidding. But every single one of them goes, are you serious? And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm serious. And she put up the 10 rack and I'm like, sweet, right? Got at least 10,000.

And then another one. And then another one. And I'm sorry. Like, if you're a bank robber, if somebody comes on and they tell you that they got $250,000 robbing a bank, right? They're a liar. Or they hit a vault and, yeah, that's really, that's sketchy stuff. That's heat. I never had any desire to go for a vault of any kind.

There is a vault directly on the other side of the counter that is not the big one. It's called the manager's vault, and it is in the floor. And I was in a bank, not robbing a bank. I was in a bank being a citizen, and I've watched this woman lift the top off of it. And I mean, I was like, I was 20 feet away from this thing. And I know there was at least 150, 200 grand than it. It was a hub bank, too. In other words, like, if you've got, there's going to be one Wells Fargo in town that has all the money.

And then if a smaller Wells Fargo anywhere needs it, that bank's shuttle. all of the cash out. But it really is, it's astonishing how little you get if you don't know what you're doing. Like, you know, you were in federal prison. How many times do you meet a guy and say, you know, you robbed, how much did you get? Do you ever hear anybody tell you, 100 grand? I mean, everybody you talk about that. No, it's always like, you know, like the average bank robber gets like $3,500.

And you'll meet a guy who got, you know, he got $5,000 one time, 15,000 one time, you know, 35,000, you know, 2,000, you know what I'm saying? like it's never what it's never more than an average of maybe 10 or 15 thousand dollars no it really isn't 15 15 was always um literally like that was my threshold if i if i hit 15 i thought that was really a good bank i'm stoked right that's that's pretty much going to get me through um i started liquidating everything you know what i mean i didn't i didn't keep the same lifestyle i had i started getting rid of cars i started getting rid of watches i have a watch fetish like you wouldn't believe and but i got i thinned down and and uh i became a professional bike robber like that's what i did

you know and and and it very much became a living and it got when you say you got rid of i don't understand what you say you got rid of a bunch of stuff like you're now making money why are you getting rid of stuff no i see i have a 30 i had a 30 000 a month nut was when i stopped my public speaking right so right i'm going to have to do two banks just to cover that and then i got to get and then I got to take care of dope. So I started pairing down to the bare necessities. You know, one, one nice watch. I started driving a Honda, right? I got rid of two Porsches. I started to make myself look a lot less flashy. I started to, you know, if you don't have a job, and it's pretty obvious you don't have a job, you're not, you're not leaving your house ever.

And you know, you got a 9-11 and you're, your middle age, you know, depending on where you live, that can draw a decent amount of heat. But I said, so I had sold off most of that. I got. my nut really low. And I got to a point where if I could do one bank a month, I was good. I was doing more than one a month pretty consistently. I was, and I was, I don't know, I was just one of those guys that was looking for an angle at all times. You know, I got, I got very, very lucky for a period of time where I was doing one of these reverse shell merger deals that I was telling you about. And I ended up in Moscow. And a waiter refused to take one of the new $100 bills.

He was like, you know, this, you know, it's, we don't know what this says. This isn't, it was brand new. I said, no problem. I said, they're changing the 100. I'll just give you one of the old ones. Like, you know, there weren't a lot in the wallet at that point anyway. They were kind of rare. And, but this dude, like, was in an absolute panic.

He said, so wait a sec. All of the old money's going to, they're just going to, what, change all this so now all the old $100 bills will be worth nothing. Well, every single person in Russia has all of their money in old $100 bills. And they're keeping them in Bibles and they're keeping them under desks and a ruble's worth. nothing. So usually they have one $100 bill or $5, $100 bills or whatever, but that's their life. That's their savings. We, through the use of an attorney, ran an ad in a couple of magazines that said the United States is changing the $100 bill. And the currency that you hold

today, someday may be worth nothing, which is absolutely legally true, right? Now, that's not a very good chance of that someday, but someday it may be worth nothing. You know, 150 years from now, there's an excellent chance that will be worth nothing. But we wrote it up in such a way that we, you know, we knew we were we were covering our assets. And we would give you 80 cents on the dollar, right? We would buy back a $100 bill for $80 for $80. That are still worth $100. Right. Yeah, it's still absolutely worth $100. And we figured it would be if we, if we scored a couple of thousand bucks, like this was going to be great, the ad didn't cost much. And in the first month, like, we made probably 10 or 15 grand.

We were freaking out. And I was like, it's hard to believe that, you know, month, we didn't run the ad a second month. We had only run it for one month. Well, those magazines, like, they get passed around. People hold them by month two. They're coming in with, like, garbage bags, pull of mail every single day and dumping it. We got to a point where there were like 46 people in the room that are full time

opening these things and, you know, setting out cash and doing the math and it got to a point where the money got insane. I mean, it literally got insane. And it was piles of cash, just piles and piles and piles of cash. And now it would look really odd. But at the time, you know, we were, we were halfway between the new and the old money. So you were, you know, this was the $100 bill you've been seeing, but you're seeing every single one of them. It's just every time you ripped open an envelope, it was just $100 bills. And it got out of control. Wait a second. So they're mailing it in and you're mailing them a check or just mailing them new money? No, we actually mailed back currency.

And we in the ad, we'd say put it between two pieces of cardboard. So they were always like it was a stiff, a whole mail bag full of like stiff envelopes, right? The trouble became how do you police people who open envelopes full of money for a living, right? Like, how do you do that? There's nobody in the room that isn't ripping off at least one envelope a day, maybe two envelopes a day. And there's no way to tell, right? It's a very, very difficult process. And we're also on drugs.

You know, every day we were doing this in very close to Park City, Utah, right? So we would go skiing and we would go over to Wendover and gamble. And we were very rarely in the office. We had a girl that was running it, but no idea how much was getting stolen. And it got to a point one day where it got so big that we couldn't keep up that it was literally impossible. And we just said, you know what? We're not going to mail back anything anymore.

You know, F it. Like we're just going to shut this place down. We're going to, you know, pull the name off the wall and get rid of everything and be done. And that's precisely what he did. Didn't work out exactly how I thought it would. You know what I mean? They didn't disappear and they certainly found us. We were in a boiler room doing another deal of selling some other scam.

And my friend said to me, there are two guys walking up the pathway. He goes, and I guarantee you these people work for the federal government. And I kind of looked out the window and I was like, no, no, they had leather sold shoes. You know how terrible the shoes that the FBI wears. It's like you can always tell someone in the feds because they wear the ugliest shoes in America. So I looked down and I was like, no man, I got beautiful shoes on. That's not a Fed. But he was Interpol.

And they showed up and they didn't argue that what we were doing was illegal. Like that was never an issue. You know, there was none of that. What it was, you know, the not delivering to the people that gave you money is a real problem. And they came up with a dollar amount that was ridiculous and said, if you pay this, you know, we're not going to, we're not going to, we're not going to, basically we will there will be no charges this can go away if you reimburse the people that got burned and i said okay i think we might be able to do that and the number was it was a phone number like it was over a million bucks it was a lot of money i had they called my friend rex and said

him hey rex i'm in serious trouble you know i mean like really serious trouble if i don't come up a lot of money i'm probably going to prison and he's like don't relax relax relax this is the guy did the infomercial for i made this guy very very wealthy he's like relax relax he's like how much we talk I said that's probably over a million you know and the uh the speed at which this cat changed his tune went from no problem to are you kidding me uh but he put up the cash and in hindsight i'll bet you that they kept it like i bet you i honestly don't think that went to anybody except those cats that came walking up the path i thought about this for for years since it have. But I am absolutely 100%. I handed that money over in a cashier's check, right?

Those people, they walked off. But that was the retirement fund for two really old guys from Interpol. I'm absolutely 100% secure in the fact that that was not going back to anybody in Russia. If they were from Interpol. If not, they're the greatest scam artist in history. Like, you really got to tip your hat, if that's the case. So then I get, then I get pinched, right? Now, this is kind of the classic. I actually stopped robbing banks. I hadn't robbed the bank in a long time. And I was, what had happened is I had found a new line of work.

This guy could deliver my drug of choice for pennies on the dollar. So I'm now, I'm not considering myself a drug dealer, but I most assuredly am selling off product to other people who are doing it. I wasn't looking to build a customer base. I was looking to just stay high. I was not looking to make a whole lot of money. I was laying low. I had a little bit of cash put up. I was kind of actually trying to get my shit together.

And this kid that I had done dope with for a really long time got pinched for like a 20 bag or something. Like literally got pinched for nothing. And when he went in, he was so afraid of withdrawal that he started saying, you know, I can give you this. I can give you that. Well, he gives up a dude on a small time robbery or whatever. And the guy that he gave up and lived with me at one time. I let this guy live in my house. And he said, I don't know what this dude does for a living, but he's got a

crap load of money. He never goes to work. And I guarantee he breaks the law. Like, all he does is drugs all day long. And, you know, you get to read the discovery. It was lovely. Like, this dude did a hell of a job just painting a picture of who and what I was. And they thought I was a drug dealer.

They started staking me out, you know, hoping to catch me selling drugs. They found me buying a bunch of drugs. They didn't see me, you know, doing anything remotely like that. And what ended up happening is crazy as crap. They pinch it, dude, for a bank robbery. Same kid, right? The guy that got called with the 10 bank, does a bank robbery, gets pinched. And they told him straight out.

I swear to God, they sat in the room and said to this kid, you tell us that Tommy you helped you plan this bank robbery, right? We'll get you a deal and this whole thing will be over because they brought me in and they started showing me all of these pictures and I'm sitting there with my attorney and I'm looking at pictures as they're putting them out. I'm like, all of these people are me. That's what you're saying, right? And none of them look like me, right?

First of all, it was different heights, different weights. You know, I would never did the sunglasses and the hat, but I always had on, you know, a prosthetic beak. Like, it doesn't take much to buy a decent makeup kit, right? And I never looked the same. And when it came time to get right down to it, they had not enough, right? But they had the willingness to spend the rest of their life trying to make sure that somebody believed that I was the person in every one of those photos. And I was really careful.

Like honestly, I consider myself maybe a little bit smarter than the next bank robber. For instance, if I went out of town to rob a bank, I left my cell phone at my house. Right. My homeboy would not come with me. I told you I don't like my getaway driver didn't do banks, but he would go to my house. He would phone my kid, talked to him on the phone for 25 minutes, send some text messages, do stuff so that there's, I'm at my house. Like you look at any kind of favorite trail. I am at my house. And at the time, I could basically fly all over the country as my brother, which probably wasn't the kindest thing to do, but we are almost identical. Like for for years, we were assumed to be twins. Um, so yeah, I, I, I kind of considered myself a little bit, uh, a little bit smarter. Um, but the attorney that, uh, that I ended up with was a, an older woman. And she was lovely. She's a very nice woman. Uh, but, she wasn't showing up. And, and you know the frustration when you're in jail and you call your attorney and they say, yeah, I'm going to come up and I'm going to see it. And right. And they never do. And it's and, and it's the most hollow feeling in the world because you feel like your world is going to end and there's nobody that's going to help you in the matter. And how many phone calls. So I started screaming. And they had sent me to paralegals. And I said, you know, this is my life, man. I don't want to talk to some, you know, somebody that just got out of, you know, a 12 month course. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I needed to talk to an attorney. So I walked around the corner and there was just a beautiful girl that had been sent

up to see me. And I walked in and I said, you know, I'm not trying to be a jerk. But I'm really made a point about wanting to see an attorney and not a paralegal. Like I've already seen two. and she said, no, I'm not a paralegal. I'm an attorney. And this girl looked like she was too young to be an attorney. And I said, you don't look like an attorney, you know, no hard feeling. She had on a sweatshirt that said, sublime. I said, you don't look like an attorney.

And she said, you don't really look like a bank robber. To be really honest with you, she said, you don't really match the bill either. I ended up marrying this girl. And which was, it made the whole process of going to prison really messed up. The judge, obviously, everybody involved got really, really angry. What do you say? You married here before? No, but everybody knew. I married her. I married her about five months after I hit my first federal yard. But everybody, the cat was out of the bag long before my sentencing that the two of us were together. Amazingly, the FBI went to

her house to question her about us. And she just like didn't, you know, didn't lie, didn't see me. Right out of the gate. It just was like, I love the dude. But years ago, we did. dated and when we did there was a huge fight and you know since then i really feel like maybe he's got his life together uh i don't think that this you know that he's done what he's accused of if a lawyer knew you before they can't be this barred for anything that's like the the the bar and she told me that in the very beginning so every every conversation you know usually started with an apology of what an ass i was earlier on in our relationship uh but yeah i i ended up marrying her but why you know i'm at my sentencing and they're playing

phone conversations between me and my attorney and embarrassing phone conversations. Like, embarrassing phone conversations. I had a year and a half of nothing but time on my hands and we talked on the phone a lot. And I remember saying, like, I'm like, dude, I'll take the longer sentence, man. Like, seriously, stop playing this. I don't want this on the record.

I don't, you know, just stop playing this recording and I will be more than happy to just take whatever the top deal was. It was humiliating. It was awful. But I definitely got, I definitely got more time because of, because of my relationship with her. There's no two ways about it. And more so the second sentencing than the first because, so I, she wrote with me the entire time I was in prison. I started out at FCI Phoenix.

How much time did you get? 60, 60 months, 60 months, which is about standard on a first, on a first bank robbery, without a gun, without a gun. If you use a gun or you threaten force or anything like that, then they start going up. But for a standard 2113A or whatever, yeah, I know guys have got like three years, four years for. Yeah, if you have no criminal history, yeah, yeah, if you have no criminal history, you can be out in 34 months. Like, you see some really, really short ones. But I got sent to Phoenix, which was a lovely yard. I mean, it was as far as prisons go.

It was great. And she would come down every other weekend and visit me. and there was just this cop that used to just say that like really vile things about her like being there stripping out like you know the procedure after a visit and he's like your wife is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen come through visiting and I said thank you man I really appreciate that you know I said she's a she's a great girl and he goes I said no no we're from northern Nevada he goes maybe I ought to swing by and you know after the shit ever and I was like dude did you really just say that's any man you know like I've never been out of line with

anybody here, man. I've never once disrespected anybody in uniform here, man. Like, that's so freaking out of line. And this went on like three visits, four visits. And like, I got pissed enough to file. I'm, you know, I had a BPA-8 in, BP9. And the warden called me was like, I want to talk to you about this because this is going to go in his file. I'm like, it freaking needs to go in his file. You know what I mean? Like, and get this guy out of visiting where I'm going to end up hurting him. Like, I'm not playing with you. I've been really cool. And I get probably five, six weeks, so every other week. So a long time goes by, I don't see the guy in visiting.

I figure maybe they pull him. And then she comes down one day and there he is. And, you know, she sat down and said, just don't do anything stupid today, please. You know, Tommy, don't do anything dumb. And I said, you know, if an alarm goes off, it's because this dude said something really stupid. Because I'm, you know, I'm a pretty laid back guy. And, yeah, he's stripping me out and we're going through the same thing. And he hadn't said anything stupid.

And I thought maybe it wouldn't talk to him, right? and he goes oh man he goes and i'll tell you what man he goes my clock's three times the size of year she's going to be a lot happier and i went oh you're not looking at this right brother sort of gave like i was tugging on my jump and as the dude looks down i hopped up and i got him i mean right on the point of the chin and i've been in a lot of fist fights right it was absolutely the best bunch i've ever thrown in my life and it just i got him right here and this dude went like this and then he fell this way and you know how everything in prison is just built like so you can't break it so this is the toilet and that little piece of metal that

goes between the two toilets he hit his face on and it just split him and uh i went over to the window right and knocked the guard came over and i was like i think your boy's going to need some assistance you know what i mean like a pile of blood's getting bigger and uh they beat me like a pinata like it my my my prison life changed dramatically in five seconds i spent the next three hours you know the little cages that you get uh stuck in like the cyrus the virus cage in in con air those little itty-bitty cages okay well they had one of those in the lieutenant's office they cuffed my hands above the bars on the top like this for three hours i'm i cannot begin to tell you what that is like i mean i cannot begin to tell you when they took the cuffs off my hands just went uh-huh right

i mean he said put put your hands through the food chuck i got you know i got to lock you up i could not get my arms i'm like and i'm moving brother you're going to have to reach in here you know my arms have been above my head for three freaking hours and i got sent to louisbourg man i got sent to the smoo the special management unit at louisbourg which was i mean hell on earth i don't know if you know anybody that's been through the smoo but that broke me man like absolutely broke me so louisbourg pennsylvania was one of the three prisons that they built when alcatraz got shut down right so they built leavenworth um long paq or one of four atlanta and and uh lewisberg and louisburg and louisbourg was

the gangster yard. That's where every famous mobster that ever went to prison went. And all of them ended up on J Block second floor. So when you see like Goodfellas and he's in there cooking, that's J. Block second floor in Lewisburg. And I happened to be on J. Block second floor in Lewisburg. But I was on a lockdown unit. So we were locked down 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You get out one hour a day, five days a week for wreck. And you're in a cage. And the white boys have a policy that you have to go to wreck, 365 days a year. So freezing rain, whatever you're doing, it just sucked and absolutely sucked. And there were no windows, no lie, right?

All the windows have been broken out, you know, decades ago. So there's no heat at all in the winter. There's no air conditioning in the summer. We would take extra blankets. They would give you two extra blankets a month, right? Two extra blankets a month. And we would rip them in the strips this wide. We put it in the middle of the room in a coil and light it on fire.

And this was like a daily event You held out until it was really cold Like when you could see your breath But poof And if you made coffee If you did anything I mean you're in a lockdown unit There's nothing they can do to you

They can't send you to the hole They can't do anything So it uh yeah It'll break you It was the worst The cops carry night sticks Carry billy clubs Um

The first day I went to wreck You know the drill I'm sure you've been in the shoe At least once right You know right right foot Right and they wands you And all that crap So the guy goes right foot

I put my right foot up, he wants it. I put my left foot up, he wants it. Then he takes his nightstick from here and hits me in the back of the knees with it. I mean like the scene from dumb and dumber, right? He just brings it up here and smacks me in the back of the knees. I drop like just like I'd been shot. And I got up and I said, a boss, if you tell me what I did, I will make a point to not do that again. You know what I mean?

And he goes, no, no, you're cool. And I was like, all right. And this happened every day for seven days. and the back of my legs, I mean, we're black. And I said to my sonmate, I'm like, I'm not going to wreck today. Like, you got to go to tell the homeboys that I can't walk. And he's like, if you don't go to wreck, I'm going to have to stab you. You know what I mean?

Like, that's how it's going to go down. So you're going to wreck. And I got up and I went to walk out and he smacked me on the knees. And I went down, I stopped to the guys. I'm like, look, man, I can't go to wreck tomorrow. I cannot, you know, this is my eighth day there. I'm like, you've got to see my legs and I'm showing these guys. And the shot collar was like, nah, you headbut this dude bite.

him do whatever you got to do but you know make sure that they see those bruises just do something bite the guy you know headbutton because i'm going to be shackled um but when i came back up he's bringing me up the stairs right and i'm the first dude there i got to wait for my celly and he goes turn around i'll uncuff you i'm like now i'm you're talking about you're gonna uncuff me you know what i mean like i got the doors got to be shut i'm like what i slip my cuffs now you're gonna you know you're gonna beat me to death and he goes dude i just found out what cop you hit he said he was on this yard he's like we ran him off this yard he said uh I know who you hit.

He's like, if you had told us that, I said, well, you didn't even tell me why you were hitting me. You know what I mean? He's like, well, I was hitting you because you hit a cop. But it was eight days of it, eight freaking days again. That place was more brutal than anything. It's not like the BOP. I saw them put a guy in a four-point harness, you know, like the crucifixion deal,

face down for 14 days, for 14 days. That man did not leave that position. They would take, they would blend all of his breakfast lunch and dinner into that new shake, stick it on. underneath him with a straw and he urinated and defecated himself for two weeks. They took him down the hall, up and down like a show, said, this is what happens if he had a cop and his ankles because there had to be like 60 pounds of crap. The most brutal thing you've ever seen in your life, red, red like just diaper rash for 14

days for a guy. You know, they managed to shut it down. There was a group of lawyers called the Lewisburg Project that managed to get in and actually get them to pull the plug on the smoo there. There were no rules. You know, was there? Meach was there, Big Meach. Right.

He and I went in on the bus together. He and I were on the bus together, actually. I think I was actually on three yards with that cat. We kept following each other around the system. I left from Sheridan. That's where he was at when I left. That cat was everywhere. But yeah, the special management unit absolutely broke me.

I went from Lewisburg to Florence, Colorado, and that's where I left, right? my attorney wife comes and picks me up. I'm free. And I'm not going to, I really don't want to smut her up. We had a fantastic time, right? We lived like newlyweds, right? We lived like newlyweds. And we had a really, really good time.

And we went all over the country. And it went really well for about a year. And then I just, I'm a criminal. And what happened is a guy came to the door and said, hey, man, I'm in a really bad position for money. And I said, and you want to borrow money for me? Because it's not really my line of work. And he goes, I got some stuff I want to sell.

And he had basically the bed of a Bronco, right? You know, the entire back part of a Bronco was filled with weapons. I mean, just filled. And the vast majority of them handguns. So I don't know how many were there, but it was well over 100. I mean, there were a ton of guns there. And I was like, what are we talking about on these? And he goes, first of all, their family.

He's like, I took this from my family. This is my family's collection. He said, no one's going to be at a hunting camp for probably six months. It's not going to be reported stolen. Do whatever you do with it because we're just going to claim the insurance money on it anyway. I said, all right. He goes, I'd like to get 16 grand. And I said, I'd like, and he was like, yeah, I'd take eight.

And I bought it. It was crazy. So I bought these guns in a basically fed sting and absolutely full on entrapment. And then I sold it to a group of feds, absolutely entrapment. As textbook and travel as you could possibly. So the Fed sent the guy to you to, or he came up with, hey, I know a guy that might buy these. And he's wired up. So you buy them.

And then you turn around and they provide a seller who's a Fed. So you sell them. Yeah, they follow me. I buy the guns from the, from the, the, the, the mark, right? And suppose it sounds like you're the. I couldn't. back to seven what sounds like you're sounds like you're the mark no question right so so they go they okay so they come to you and they they set you up and then a hundred percent a hundred

percent and the the crazy thing is so if i'm just keeping this real like if if so if my girlfriend or my wife i should say at that point um was a school teacher right this is a completely different outcome right i don't go to prison none of this happens they throw all this out. I'm free. But what ends up happening instead is they come in and they say, we'd like to ask you a few questions and they lay stuff out on the table. I'm like, you know, I'm married to an attorney. I'm like, obviously, I'm not answering any questions, right? You what I mean? Like, I would never get late again. This is my wife and she's an attorney. Obviously, I'm not having a conversation with you people. And he said, he puts out two pictures and then he

puts out an arrest warrant from my wife. And one of the pictures that he had was of us. dropping off a load of guns to an FBI informant, right? And my beautiful blonde-haired wife, who looks like Britney Spears, has got an AR-15 up like this, like demoing the night to an undercover. And I'm looking at the picture, and I just went,

I would really like to make this go away. You know what I mean? Like, whatever we got to do. And to her credit, like she was sitting there freaking out going, no, no, no, no. I was like, look, like right now, dude. I will, I will make this go away right now.

We will, I'll, I'll go down there with you. I will, elocution from start to finish, you know, but nothing happens there. No charges, no disbarring, none of that, BS, right? You, you leave my wife alone and I'll plead guilty to this thing. I'll plead guilty to this at the arraignment, but you don't arrest my wife. I mean, they had her dead. Dad. Right.

And hindsight being 20-20, I should have said, I didn't do anything. That chick did it. You know, if I could do it all over again, if I could do it all over again, I would have said, she's the mask to mine. She stole my identity while I was down. She ended up with a drug dealer, and she really went off the rails, unfortunately, because she's a beautiful person and a great human being, but she, I didn't do any real good for this, for this girl.

But then a miraculous thing happened, and you'll really appreciate kind of how miraculous this really freaking is because you have been to the federal system. but how much time did you get 13 years okay 13 years the the gun thing and and I had I had a better lawyer for the second one than I had for the first one my wife hired me the best attorney in the city hands down by reputation he was a huge dog crap but by reputation he was the best attorney in the city and he says we don't worry about it we guidelines for breakfast we got this thing don't worry about the first thing in the morning the San Bernardino shooter right that shooting took place the day the night before my sentencing and I walked into court

and literally the first thing I said to my attorney you think San Bernardino is going to screw me you know what I mean like I had a bunch of AR-15s how about off of mine he's like I don't think that's going to be an issue he said he's supposed to keep things like that before we get started right mr. Scoville I have a question for you I said yes sir he goes do you ever worry about any of those guns ending up in the hands of people like what happened yesterday at San Bernardino This is before anything starts at sentencing. I said, I didn't realize I was being charged with San Bernardino. I said, I'm not trying to sound racist, but if your last name was Muhammad,

I probably wasn't going to sell you anything, right? You know? Right. I said, you're nothing to worry about, sir. I bought the stuff from you guys, and I sold it to you guys, right? You got nothing to worry about. I bought it from the feds and I sold it to the feds. You know, who's going to get hurt?

I'm the only person that got hurt in the entire deal, right? But so while in prison, I got a job at Unicor. and I'm at it you know this whites and blacks don't spend the tremendous amount of time together at the higher custody levels and the uh and the higher the custody level the less time you're going to spend talking to somebody of another race so um I'm at a high and uh I run into a a black dude who um who sees me coming out of a cell and he knows what I'm doing like that you know I basically went to the trap right I was in there picking up a bag of dope or whatever and he came down and walked right into my cell and said you're the dumbest smart

person I've ever met or you're the smartest dumb person I've ever met he's like one of the other he's like man he's he had a life sentence he said I'm pissing my life away in here he's like but you're gonna you're gonna piss away yours and you don't have to and I said yeah really not in the mood for this speech like no no disrespect or anything else just really not in mood for the speech I'd like to go down and get you know get high and get about my day and then I just started watching the cat and he just um he had he just had this like zen kind of piece that i've never seen a human being have and like if you got within a hundred yards of this cat there was something that just made you want to understand why this guy wasn't as miserable as the rest of the

world and uh and he got me sober and um it's been over eight years and uh you know the um the lifeboat was kind of a pay it forward thing to him and it started out as I'm not going to say a joke because it was but i didn't take it seriously when i started out i didn't see this thing um taking off at all and uh you know it's it's not a fun subject and and having people show up that uh to to hear about sobriety you know they love to hear about you know gun battles and you know what banks i didn't get caught for whatever i got some great stories of almost getting caught people like hearing that but um you know for 10 000 people to show up to uh to talk about sobriety is a pretty good thing and we're aft right now in this country like you know you know the

drug, what drugs are doing to us right now in this country. It's absolutely unbelievable. Like, you know, we've been sold out and, you know, there's fentanyl and cocaine. But I hope it's fentanyl and cocaine. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You know, they're putting fentanyl in speed. You know, these drugs on the street today are designed to kill. They're not designed to get you high. You know, as a businessman, this is just business 101. If your product kills your customer, you make it weaker, right? You don't make it stronger. But every single batch they catch is stronger than the previous and that's a pretty bad sign so that's what we're doing on the lifeboat and you know it was a it was really kind of a um an amazing run there's a lot of really kind of interesting

things that happened along the way um you know the uh i've been this couple like again it's just some really unusual things that happened along the way boom but i will i will hit you with my absolute favorite bank robbing story i don't i don't look back fondly truthfully on most of the crimes that i did i really don't i think that the ones that I didn't hurt people like I really justified that I wasn't hurting anybody when I hit a bank I could right after he was going to take care of that um crimes where crimes where I realized that that the end user got stung that messes with me a whole lot more but I got a good one I was uh I was actually in Arizona I was doing a bank and I'm in the Durango and it was a good bank like

there was more than one band of cash the one up so I had 20 grants so I'm already and by By this point, I've robbed enough banks that I don't do this one anymore. Like, I know I'm going to get, I'm going to get it, I'm going to get out. I've gotten pretty good at this. So I drive away and I'm maybe a minute, half a minute from the rent the car. I'm going to dump this and I'm going to get out of town and I'm good. And the lights, I look in the rear view mirror and the lights, man. I got lit up and my foot's doing this number, right?

It's going back and forth between the gas pedal and the brake. I'm like, oh, that. I'm like, you know what, man? it's been a decent run you know eventually everybody gets caught right and i knew what i knew what it carried i wasn't going to get a hundred years i knew what i was looking at so i pulled the uh i pulled the durango over to the side of the road and i'm waiting for this number right like the door's about to open right and this is a stolen dorengo too yeah this is a not so picture to see here i just robbed the bank i just yanked the wig off so i've got three strips of double-sided tape

that are just shining like hell on the top I have just removed the goatee, right? So right here is just shining, right? The spirit gum makes you look like a blazed donut, right? All through here. And on the front seat of the car is a microwave oven, right? Makes perfect sense. And where the keys should be is a screwdriver about that long.

And I'm waiting for this one, right? He's going to wait for backup. I just rob the friggin bank. No. Party five comes walking up like this just do, do, do do do. And I'm like, holy, I roll down the window. when I'm looking at this dude, right? And I am, I mean, I am the picture of a bust, right? And he looks to me and he goes, do you know why I'm pulling you over? And I go, nope, I'm trying to work that out.

And he goes, your gas caps open. And I go, huh? He goes, your gas caps open. Not just the door, like the gas cap. Like maybe someone was trying to trifen or something. He goes in, you know, in this heat, you're probably losing about a gallon an hour. He's like, for real. You might want to get out and close that. And I was like, okay, no license. Can I see your license registration? Proofing shirt. Nothing, right? Just get out of the car and I get out of the car. My legs I'm doing the spaghetti number to the back of the car trying to keep my legs stiff underneath me. And I'm wearing cowboy boots. So I crank this thing down. I said, thank you. He goes, have a great day. Turned around. Right. And I drove off. I called Jack. I said, man, you are not going to

believe this. And I said, boy, tomorrow when they say, you know, there was a bank robbery. We're looking for a black Dodge Durango. I said, can you imagine the crap? His friends are going to give him when he tells him that he had that car pulled over. He goes, is, are you kidding? You think he's telling anybody he had that car pulled over? He's like, there is no way he's copped into that. But, yeah, that was, I had a couple of, I had a couple of pretty funny ones. No joke, I walked into a bank to rob, and somebody was robin it.

I swear to you, I walked in there was one person in the bank. There was one person in the bank, and I watched him walk in, and he'd been in there about 15 minutes. And if a guy's in a bank more than four, then he's, it's a loan officer, right? He's talking to somebody because banking is four minutes. You're in and out. So I figure, all right, cool, the guys, whatever. So I go walking in and he's right by a teller, right? So I'm just saying there.

So I go up and I'm acting like I'm filling out a withdrawal slip or whatever. And I hear him just clear as crap go, no, I'm talking about all of it, all of it. And then the idiot says, go to the next drawer. And he moved her down. He did three drawers. So when they get him, and I'm sure that they did, you know, that's kidnapping. Like when you tell the teller to move 12 inches, right, against their will, it becomes kidnapping and you're never getting out.

Those are the bank robbers that are going to do, you know, a whole lot of time. Second best only to carrying a weapon, right? You know, but yeah, you start any of any of the weapon crap, you really can start, you know, stretching a sentence out pretty good, you know. Right. I've been, I was very fortunate in that I got a short sentence on the banks. I did not get a short sentence on the guns. They basically maxed me out on the guns.

they could have given me I think I think the max out was like 120 so um all together with the with the previous it came out to 13 years is what I've done all together and I think I hit seven yards or eight yards um I did Victorville did a couple of the ugly ones um but I did I also did Sheridan which was I mean the softest federal I don't think there's a softer federal prison if there is you know I certainly had I didn't see it but I never hit a camp as a bank robber I'm not eligible for any of any of those things. so I never did any of the door-looking stuff. You hit camp, correct?

No. No? I avoided. I did three years. No, no, I did three years in the medium. And then I did nine years in the low. And of course, I did a year in the Marshall's holdover. So it was like 13 years.

But in the low, so yeah, it was a dorm. It sucked. Like I was desperately, didn't want to leave the medium. You know, you get into a routine. It doesn't matter how rough the place is. once you're in a routine, you're good. And I had a good routine. I'm teaching GED.

I work in the library, you know, but I didn't want to. But by that point, I was below, you know, the threshold, like the 20-year threshold. They said, you got to go to the fucking low. So I go to the low and it storms and it sucks. You get used to it. But then I get into a routine there. And then they wanted to send me to a camp. The problem was, and I wouldn't have cared honestly.

But my problem was that the camp, closest camp, was Miami and that's like a four-hour drive for my mother and my mother used to come see me every two weeks well Coleman's only an hour north of Tampa she can go an hour she can't go four hours yeah do you see what I'm saying so she's already in her she's already in her 80s like I'm not going to make her do that so I did everything I could I actually entered the ARDAP program to in order to for them to put a management variable on me but it took months so it took like three or four months for the management variable. So I went, let's say I went like five months before it was on there, five or six months.

And then I dropped out. Then I waited. So then let's say three or four months later, they come to me and they say, look, we're moving you to a camp. I said, what are you talking about? I got a management variable. They said, I know. I said, that's good for a year. And they said, yeah, I know Cox, but they're pushing for people to go to a camp.

And you, honestly, that was for ARDAP. you're out of art app and I said listen bro I'm going back to art app I said I got a problem I can't lose I can't leave here thinking the way I'm thinking I got problems I got to go back so I said I already put in for I'm meeting with a doctor like next week I already got an appointment I didn't have an appointment I immediately went and applied and within about two weeks I did have an appointment they put me right back in and so I go in again this time I stay even longer because you know now I definitely now I realize they may fucking ship me I may get out and two weeks later be on a bus so i waited till they till they put me in for for the uh like

i knew i was going to be put into for the halfway house like they didn't have time i knew they didn't have time to ship me so then i dropped out again you know in my um i remember the doctor who ran the thing her name was dr smith she kept saying cox what are you doing like she's why don't you just complete the program and i say because if i complete the program i said i'll get a year off, but I only get like two or three months halfway house. And I said, I need the halfway house. I said, let's be fake. I said, let's face it. I said, if I come back to prison, I'm going to need, I'm going to need that year. And she's like, don't say that. Don't. No question. So I dropped that again. Within a few months, they, they had me schedule for halfway house. And I

did like seven and a half months halfway house. You know, that was the, I think probably the strangest experience for me was the uh was the was the house um the you know they dropped me in Oakland I don't live in California you know but they don't have at the time I was living in in northern Nevada near Tahoe but there's there's nothing there so um it was going to be Sacramento or Oakland and they dropped me in Oakland and uh it was a very unusual time to drop a white guy in Oakland too you know what I mean like the uh this is when the riots and everything were going on and um I mean I got no I got no political ink I never tipped up I never did any of that garbage so I can usually I can usually fit in but the yeah that halfway house was just straight

I mean ridiculous if I walked in the first day and I'm like you know I'm gonna be a good dude and I'm I'm ready to you know I really want to take it seriously and I'm four years sober I walked into the dorm and there's a guy snort in the line like this long off the desk he's like oh I think you're on the top bunk I was like oh shit you got to be kidding me man like this is just you know I honestly I wanted to go back downstairs and say I don't think I can be here you know. Yeah. I was so terrified to, uh, to go back. But, uh, fortunately I got, you know, just like you said, man, I think that, uh, life is a program, for real. I think that's what I probably learned on the, on the third go around in, uh, in prison that I didn't learn on

the first two is that if, uh, if you can actually start programming yourself, you can get, you know, a routine that you do that you, that you stick to that's important to you. You know, that balances out things like your dome and your body and, you know, and paying bills on all of those things. You know, you got a semi-decent chance of actually staying out of prison. The numbers are terrible,

man. The numbers are absolutely terrible. Everybody goes back. Everybody goes back. Well, I think, you know, for me,

after 13 years, I was like, honestly, like living in someone's spare room is, you know, if I have to live in someone's spare room and I can barely pay my bills, like that's probably better.

That's better. I'm better off doing that. You know, although the truth is, I like, I kind of felt like, look, if I'll do that for a year or so,

but if I got no hope of ever getting out of that situation, I was probably going to just commit fraud again. Yeah. Because we used to always joke like, you know, well, what if you get to be too old to work and you don't have enough money? I go the BOPs always got a fucking spot for me. That's it.

So you know POP retirement program. Yeah. And I knew guys that were in there who had gone in, who were like in their 70s and they went and they just fucking robbed a couple of banks, robbed two or three banks and then literally just waited for the cops to show up. Like they didn't even trying. They know. Who's that?

yeah kind of really famous case and he he did forever he was down for like 30 some odd years for bank robbery and uh he was he had been down so long dude that he was going for parole every year still like he was he was still under awa he was going every year for parole and still getting denied and they finally gave him his uh his parole and i think it was like two or three days and he just went straight into a bank and robbed it and then you know it's it's it's really sad to watch um but it's uh it's really understandable how it happens you know what i mean it really is i i went through um a shock uh getting out this time so much more than anything else because you know prison is a hateful joint like you know they're everything that there's just that's the default setting is hey right

there's not a lot of uh there's not a lot of positive energy that goes on unless you creating yourself um but i came out to to a brother who was pretty well known on youtube and i look exactly like him so like i i i'm getting in the van to be sent to the airport to go to the halfway house, right? And I'm walking in, and this is the time of COVID, right? And I got a mask on, and I had a goatee that would stick through the mask. It was like this long at the time. And I'm walking, and this guy comes walking straight up to me, gunned the whole works,

and he goes, I know who you are. And I thought to myself, holy crap, dude. You know what I mean? Like, there's no such thing as freedom. Like, I've been out of prison two minutes. They're going to bust my balls. I'm like reaching for the paperwork. And he's like, you're the dude on the internet that eats the peppers, right?

And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's me, man. But I came out to this world where everybody liked me. And it was a pretty bizarre thing because, you know, let me, let's be really honest. Our former vocations are somewhat popular now to listen to, which is an ironic thing. If you think about it, but it's insane. It is. It really is. You know, that, but here's the deal, though.

I understand there are parts of it I really understand. Like what you did is fascinating, right? Like, like, no joke. I've spent time looking at how you did what you did. And to me, that's fascinating. And there were people in prison who, you know, you would hear angles of how people were doing certain things and you would just go, oh, my God. Or just opportunities.

Like, you went through Oklahoma City, right? So you've been, oh, yeah. So I'm in Oklahoma City and I'm in a dorm. And I'm sitting down late nights that you can, it's a dorm. So you can come in the middle of the night and do whatever you want, right? So I'm sitting out watching the TV at like the middle of the dorm. night. And this dude comes and sits down and he goes, I've just found out I'm going to such and such a camp. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to go to a camp, bro. The two of us were having a

conversation. And he proceeded to spend two and a half hours telling me what really happened in Benghazi. And this dude, like, had his paperwork and everything. He was charged with insider trading, one count of insider trading. It was given 50 years. This cat, they're burying him because of what he knows. But it was so bizarre because you hear these stories. And, you know, I had cerebral infarction, right? And so I had to walk with the cane. I've had enough head injuries from skiing that I've got some issues. And I'm doing considerably better. I used to have to use a cane. And it caused, it caused some problems getting around on the yard. When I left Victorville, I got stabbed, right? And was life lighted off the eye because they sent this dude to go stab the old white guy with

the cane, right? And I was literally like the other old white guy with the cane. Yeah. Yeah. And it cost dude, it cost dude everything, like the guy that, the guy that did it. You know, that was, that's a career ender. You stabbed their own person and he's a different race. Like that is an absolute career ender. But once I got sent off that yard and they started to look at my head, and they found that about the cerebral infarction, they wanted to send me to Springfield. And I'm like, I'm not going to Springfield. You go to Springfield, you die. Like, I've never, no inmate comes back from Springfield. Like, have you ever known anybody that comes back? They get sent there and they die. And I'm like, I'm not going there. And so they

gave me, like, they said, but you can go to Terre Haute, the pen. And I'm like, that's a job out. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not, you know, no, I'm not going there. And they're like, well, those are your options, right? Those are the two. So I went through the shot caller in the yard and I'm like, hey, dude, I'm in a pretty weird situation. And he's like, you know, are you, are you a career criminal? Like, are you going to be back? Can you get to spend the rest of your life in here? I'm like, maybe, you know, like he goes, then maybe, then maybe you shouldn't go, you know, just a buck on this thing and you're just probably going to do the rest of this rip in the hole. And he's like, but he goes, I'll sign off on you going there. He said,

but on the last day, you're treating it, right? Whatever, how long they're going to be treating you? On the last day, you leave that yard by punching somebody. Like, you go find a freak and you take them out. You leave the yard that way, you're good. And this dude was about as high up as you could get. So I got him to write it down and had the kite and everything else. And then when my last day was up, I went, yeah, I don't think I'm going to hit anybody.

You know, by that point, I had about three years of sobriety in me. And I just said, this isn't going to be my career. Right. And the next spot was, you know, was Sheridan. And a solid white boy can't walk Sheridan. You know, all of the rules are so stupid in the feds that, you know, you got to fire on somebody because this person's crime. And look, I'm not a fan of freaks. No one is.

Right. But they really are getting to the point where they're almost at every institution, you know. They're really very few that that aren't that don't have them anymore. But when I was on that yard, Drew Peter. you know that cop he was on that yard right um i was uh i had a job as a secretary in the kitchen and uh he was my assistant for almost two years year year and a half i worked with him eight you know eight hours a day and uh yeah just really really funny because every day i just walk in every day and look at him at the time i was uh there was a girl that was still in my life

and i took a picture of us together i wrote on the back when i wrote was a marriage counselor Melded home. I said, this is my new marriage counselor. No, I actually, I actually heard that cat slip up and, you know, you talk to somebody long enough. He slipped up and made a huge error and said something about his missing wife being dead. And I called him on it like that. I said, she was what? She was what, true? What did you just say? And he goes, well, that's what everybody says. I go, oh, you're slipping old man. I'm like, you are slipping. I'm like, you are slipping. I said, it doesn't matter. I mean, that dude's, you know his story. Like, once he got caught, he tried to hire somebody. He tried to hire a prison snitch. jailhouse snitch to kill the prosecutor he's never getting out i mean unless he escapes he's never getting out and he's uh but yeah there yeah who else came through there was there there were a lot of famous people that came through that yard because of the medical um Gucci man man came through there um yeah there was a bunch of a bunch of people had pretty pretty pretty decent where madeoff died no uh made off died at um butner butner buttoner yeah you're right butner and i'll tell you something the word is butner is the sweetest place in the entire world like if you could put up with

some of the people that are there like you talk about facilities like they actually have programs you know how they they BS the world and tell them that you know we can do all of these things there are classes ready for us to take and all of this right there's a class there it's because you're doing it through a correspondence course or you're or there's somebody hooking you up in the library you know you're working with somebody but it's amazing how little they do to rehab anybody inside the joint yeah no it's up to you Yeah. And then, and the, you know, you, they really do turn people into, into things that they weren't. You know, you show up in the concept that put and work in. I know that this is one that freaks people out every time they hear it. But, you know, I remember hitting Victorville. And I was not a young kid. You know, by the time I got to Victorville, I was like 46 or 47 years old. And then again, I'm walking with a cane, right? I've got this, this diagnosis that is not particularly good that has to do with my brain. And I went walking into the shot call and figured, you know, I had my paperwork. I was clean.

I figured I'm an old guy, right? So, you know, I've done my time. You know, I've been through the special management unit. I'm not going to have to. He's like, you're fourth in line. I said, what is like? The footwork and you're fourth in line. What's the dude?

I walk with a freaking cane. He's like, I'll send two or three guys with you. You know, we just want to make sure you're down for the, you know, come down for the team. I was like, all right, dude. I have a buddy that like had to, you know, put in work. And he said, and he was like, I got so lucky. Like, it was him and like two other guys.

and the other guy punched him, punched the dude, like got into the fight and boom, the guy hit the green, the whole thing. And he's like, so we, you know, and then we, of course, immediately, you know, took off. And that was it. He's like, me just standing in the room was me putting in work.

He's like, so I didn't know. I think a lot of times, yeah, they just want to know that you're not pumping Kool-Aid, right? That you actually have a little blood in your veins. And, you know, like the, when I got to Victorville, the, the, the, the FCI, I was. 45 seconds in my cell and they just sent the guy in that went like you know came in and squared off and just started to go and you know a white dude like and I'm looking at this guy just

trying to figure out like where do I know this dude from because obviously he's really pissed off you know right this dude he's he's getting into into position and I just I ran at him to you know the first good swing I could get and then like an army of dudes came piling in and basically just separated everybody and kind of held us and the guy was like hey calm down calm down he's like just just a heart chat brother he's like it's you know It's just the first part of the deal. It's just a heart check. You're good.

You're good. I was like, no, it's not really the welcoming committee I was hoping for. You know, I was hoping for maybe a couple of ramen soups and some shower slides. You know, you guys are making it way harder than it has to be. Holy shit, man. It is the dumbest. No, it really is. It is so messed up.

I don't think people realize the world that you live in, you know, when you get, once you walk into that facility. You know, I've been making the rounds quite a bit talking about this Danny Mastison free. you know what what this cat is in store for but can you imagine coming from the life that this dude's been living and he's gonna he's gonna walk into a into a cali prison as a i was gonna say listen if if if if he was going to a low security prison like if he was going to the low colman the low security prison it wouldn't be that big of a deal you know but now now there may be a guy that might fucking you know they may smash him he's probably not going to get to watch tv but that's honestly that also let's say 50 50 that people give him a hard time the 50% chance

that people kind of see him as a celebrity and don't bother him at all right he's not he's not going to be able to watch tv you know he's that there's some things guys are going to give him a hard time but he is going to walk the yard he is not he is going to be able to eat he isn't probably going to get that hard of a time at a low but a california prison and he's going and he's going to be at a three man i mean with he's got he's got two counts and one with the use of fire up so this cat he's not going to be looking at at a low of any kind like this dude's going to be doing he's going to be on a real yard um but by the way i'm in absolutely no disrespect to anybody that's listening there are two coleman's right because you know i said you know he'd be on a freak yard you

there are two colman's right there's a coleman one and there's a coleman too and they uh they have a sex dependence on one and not on the other. I know you were at Coleman. I'd want to do. No, they have, so they have two pins. Right. One is kind of a dropout pin, right?

Like it's kind of, you know, retirees. Yes. And then you have the medium and then you have the low. You have the low and then you have the camp. So the camp used to be women. It's now men.

So they're all male. Matter of fact, my wife was at the camp at Coleman when it was for women. so um but yeah i mean if he went to the low like at the medium i don't i don't know i don't think he's going to walk walk i think he could have i think he could walk like uh i left the last prison i was at was sheridan and sheridan is soft as hell bro it's and it's a white boy yard it's a white guy yard primarily and it is soft as hell but i think he could walk that yard i think eventually he'd get cracked somebody's going to get him because what happens is

in the feds they're going to send somebody to that yard who's a solid solid right down peckerwood who's going to walk in and be like there are what here point me to the most famous one right because i'm leaving the yard tonight yeah they don't want to watch that yeah i watched that at uh at you know it happened routinely we had one one row in every unit that was all essays that's just how they did it they would call it chomo row right and uh you know a guy would come in and he'd say um oh wait a second you got you know you us ex found this on this yard and we'd be like yeah, he'd be like, I can't, I can't be on this yard, you know, I'm, I won't spit out any of the gang names because I don't want to get anybody angry, but he's affiliated. And if he's

affiliated with one of the, with one of the white, you know, organizations, they cannot walk that yard, right? They cannot step foot on that yard. They're considered, you know, that's a career anger. They'll kill you for that. So, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a screwy world. It really is. It's a scurry world. And you sit there and just hear the dumbest things. I was, I was at Victorville, the pen, and the Shaw caller came to me and said, hey, we need you to do something for us. And I said, you know, I really distinctly remember putting work in here. Like, you know, I did this. Right. And like, I went overboard. Like, I really put work. And I got busy with it. I figured if I made a show of it, you know, and snarled a little bit and maybe spit once or twice,

they would, they would not send me a second time. And he goes, no, the thing is, this is your boy. Like, this is your homeboy, right? This is why you got more. and you. And it was a guy that just had done a ton of drugs with a really close friend. And he just, he ran up some debts with some people. And he's like, we're not kicking him off the yard, but he's getting stabbed. Like, that's how, you know, and you're going to stab him. And I was like, holy crap. So I said, yeah, I'm, I said, you got a piece. I don't even have one. And I'm open to buy myself a day, right? And he's like, yeah, don't try, hold off here. And he comes back and he brings an ice pick. He's got, he's got a wooden handle that's round, done

nice with a little bit of leather and he's taken the rod out of a typewriter right so there's about that much him sticking out and it is sharp as hell as the point and i walked in and i said hey what's going on man and my friend's name was terry i'm like terry i'm here to i'm here for a reason you know why i'm here and he's like hopefully to get high i was like no that's not the reason i'm like i'm here to stab you bro i'm like straight up and he goes oh crap i'm like yeah i said so i'd like to hang someplace where we don't hit any vital organs or anything like that you know what i mean like but i got to do this and he's like yeah i got it i'm like where do you know how about right here right that way it'll look like maybe i was going for

your heart you know and maybe i'm a killer whatever right right all right all right so i get this guy and he's leaning up right against the mirror and i'm like all right dude on three right you got this he's like yeah man i'm like just take a deep breath i promise it's going to be quick it's going to be over and i went one two and right right on two just went in there and he looked at me he's like it all happened to three i was like i didn't want you to you know move or do anything But I poked this dude good. Like I gave him a really good one. And then I walked out and I went back in.

I handed the dude and it was blood dripping off. And he was like, you stabbed him. I was like, yeah, you told me to stab him. I'm like I stabbed him. And yeah, unfortunately, he got a really horrendous infection. We actually really got a bad infection from it. But that's not my fault. That's, you know, I, yeah.

But that crap happens more often than you think. For real, that to everyone watching that happens way more often than you think. Like, I got disciplined maybe about eight times evicted for buying dope from Mexicans. They got on this kick that you could not buy dope outside your race because it had been causing bites. And I'm like, I got a drug hub. Who's the white guy selling dope?

And they're like, there's no white guy selling heroin. Well, then I'm buying dope from this guy. And you can kick the crap out of me. And the more you kick the crap out of me, the more dope I'm going to need because it's a painkiller anyway. But they would send somebody down. And about the third time, like I had a friend who would come in and I'd have it on the table and I'd be like, you know, just get this over with, right?

come in there and crack hit you one in the head and walk out to this one it's absolutely retarded what an what an awkward conversation just to be like listen i'm gonna have to stab you i feel bad you know yeah exactly this is not personal you know this right we're home boys the reason they sent me is because we're home boys right but i do have to stab you there's no uh there's no getting around this one and then they do the oh look he says if i got a if i got a razor right and if i just kind of like got myself right there he's like i'd be leaking like hell and people would think that you did it. I'm like, yeah, that's not going to work, bro. I'm like, seriously, it's not going to work. I'm like, you know what's going to happen if they think I didn't

do this, right? Somebody's going to be coming in going, hey, Rocco, I want to do. I'm here for not a good reason. I don't want someone visiting me the way. I got to visit you. But yeah, I had to stab the dude. And that kind of crap happens, you know, prison was boredom, nonstop until it wasn't. And then when it wasn't, it was horrifying. And, you know, we, I saw some just once that spice stuff started to really take off in there and everybody started smoking that garbage. I'm sitting there playing poker at a poker table and a guy jumped from the top tier onto the poker table and broke his thigh. Like, I mean, broke it. So it did this number. You know what I mean? Like you could look at it and tell that it was broken. And no rhyme or reason. Like I've absolutely

no idea what he was planning on doing. Like, you know, if you just thought he was stepping down or but there were so many crazy things that happened with that with that garbage were you in uh with the with the k2 oh yeah they would run around stripping they would guys would strip naked and run around the compound at 730 at night and you've got 20 guards trying to grab this guy naked and i honestly god people i honest to god i have seen this i saw a black dude who was he was bigger than the cat from the green mile right i worked with him at unicorn a gentle giant but one of the biggest dude you've ever seen in your life. And he walked out of the shower, dragging a towel like Linus, right, just on the ground behind him, naked as a Jay Bird. And he's just calmly strutting

across the entire day room. And he's just, I mean, he's huge. And there was two cops on and one was a woman. And so the male went up and he goes, hey, man, you are right? He goes, yeah. He goes, what the hell are you doing? He goes, going back to my cell, boss. And the guy was like, oh, okay. You see him go for the deuses. You know, like, get me some backup. Um, But it happened so often that they just started calling it an incident. Like they would say incident lockdown. And, you know, these, or somebody crying in the middle of the day room, just sobbing. And you're looking around going, oh, yeah, that stuff looks like fun.

Let me, let me try some of that. Funny about that is that we wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and you've got a guy laying in his bed screaming uncontrollably. And then so now, like, he's been screaming for like five, 10 minutes. And finally, of course, the CEO realizes, okay, something's going, you know, they're doing the rounds or something. Or he finally hears it and he's like, fuck, I'm going to go check this out. So he goes, checks it out. Then they turn the lights on. Then as the cops are all starting to come and you're just laying in your bed like, you know, waiting for watching the cops walk by.

Now the lights are on. It's like everybody's awake and they're screaming, staying yourselves. And then all of a sudden you hear another guy start screaming. And then in the next unit, because. there's a hallway that connects them the next unit you hear another guy screaming because when the one guy started screaming the other guys realized i have the same batch he has that's the good shit yeah and then they take it it's like that's the good stuff he's screaming he's on fire he thinks crabs are eating him and now you think oh that's a good stuff let me get some of that yeah

it's exactly i'm looking i'm looking for the the satanic panic right this guy comes up i'm playing poker and he's like, hey, I'm maybe here. The guy that freaked out yesterday that they had the hog tie. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, you want to know him? He's like, no, what was the name of the stuff? He was smoking. You guys got a name for it?

I was like, I don't know, dude. So he comes back like two minutes later. He's like, hey, satanic panic. Is that the stuff? I'm like, you want to smoke something called the satanic panic? You knock yourself out, cowboy. Have a good time. Yeah, I watched just the craziest crap in the world.

And the guy will come back and do it again. Like, you see this person, normally that, would get you to maybe go clean, you know? When we went on, they cut the warden at Victorville at the FCI. I was there for it. He got them from here all the way to the waist. 72 staples. It was ugly. Yeah, really bad. But during that lockdown, in a five-day period, we had four people that a bad batch of that stuff came through and we had four deaths in a week. And they came in and basically just said,

we're taking over, you know, the, it was the deuce. It was number two because they have two FCIs there. FCI1 and FCI2, and the deuce was just so out of control that they came in and just took over. Like they started moving anybody who was in any kind of authority out

because it just got so, so crazy, so quick. Like the inmates took over that yard. On Cinco de Mayo, that the, they went to pat down a serenia, And he had told everybody, he's like, this dude's super disrespectful every day coming back and chow. If he does it tomorrow, it's on.

And you know how those boys are, right? If one of them goes, they all go. So, you know, this cop got rough. And he jumped on this cop and they came from everywhere. It looked like something from the movies, dude. Like they were on point ready to go and they came from everywhere. And it was the only time in my life, I saw guns on a prison yard. Like they came in.

it was like the National Guard kind of crap like it got crazy and uh but everybody got locked down and you got people who are sitting on tons of this stuff and in many cases not mixed so they don't have denatured alcohol they don't have all the stuff they need so they're in there taking the powder right and putting it on a can and smoking it and that stuff turns off people's computers quick as hell i saw some crazy like you said and every single time someone will go ooh dude who's uh who's selling the stuff that just caused homeboy to jump off of the uh the tier right i'm trying to get a hold of this some of that um it's a bug spray you know it's funny um when you mentioned talk about the the guy that are putting in work it you know guys whenever

i'm sure you get this whenever some people find out you were in prison they're always like bro what's that like like were you scared were you worried you this and you know i always say you know well and i mean initially i was i was worried but you very quickly realized that like if you get stabbed in prison, you probably had it coming. Like, they're not randomly, they're not randomly running up stabbing people. Like, like, they gave you a chance. You borrowed money. You were, or you were disrespectful, you gamble. They broke your credit card the first time, right? Then you get all kinds of chances. Right. Like, they're not just running up and doing it because you glance at somebody wrong. I mean, not that that doesn't happen, but that could happen on the street. It just as easily. The one that

that always shows me off is that, you know, you, the first question. you're right is always where you freaked out how did you deal with that and the second question is always you know did you ever see guys getting raped like that's a question that people yeah you're right constantly and it's probably because of movies but you know it's it just isn't like that you know what I mean I will tell you I heard a guy having a pretty bad time and uh well I was going to say too I've heard that but that was that even in that was in the Marshall's holdover yeah you're probably as bad off there as you're going to be anywhere I mean The feds, honestly, you know, the feds don't give you, there are a lot of things because of the Zimmerman, they took away the weights, they took away the video games, they took away, you know, you can't have Playboy magazines or anything like that.

They changed all of these laws, and they made it a little bit more restrictive. But I think you get a different class of inmate, or you used to especially, you used to get a different class of inmate. And you're an intelligent cat. You're, you know, you could get off of a bus and in a very quick fashion, figure it out. You know what I mean? But how many times did you watch somebody? come in that wasn't that bright you know what I mean like it's it's a scary thing to watch somebody come into a system that um that you know is just going to eat him alive you know what I mean like

especially when you get up to the higher custody levels I watched kids come in and you know the vultures would descend on these kids and they would go over to him and be like hey you want to get high you know there's everything here dude I can get you I can get you this that and the other and you don't pay for it whenever you want you don't have to pay for it now whatever and they'll run that dude five ten thousand dollars in debt they'll do half that dope with them, then they'll smash that dude off the yard and they'll get the next kid that comes. And there are people that do their entire life. You know, that's their business model is they run up the next young kid into debt and destroy his career, send him to a dropout

yard, whatever. And there's also people that get to prisons who live that way. How many times you see a guy get to prison and, you know, you're like, how long you've been down six years? He's going to store to buy a radio. You're like, yeah, that's not good. Right. The last yard he left, they took him for every single thing he had. You know, the gambling degenerate. it's there's uh you know when you get in there there's a lot of people that get in trouble gambling there's a lot of people that get in trouble uh with dope if you if you don't if you're not doing dope and you're not gambling you're right there's no chance you're gonna get stuck if your paperwork's cool like you're if you're in there for for something that they don't find reprehensible

you know what i mean um i was i say i go ahead sorry well i think i think i think honestly surviving the feds i think it comes down to brain pan i've watched some people um get killed in there that, that just plain, it's just stupidity. It literally is just, you know, like how dumb do you have to be? I watched a guy front four sheets of paper this size of K2, right? Four sheets. And, you know, for prospective people, they're literally selling pieces of paper the size of an eyelash, like they're cutting these things that small.

And he gets all of these sheets and I'm like, you know, what do you owe on that? And he's like, 4,000 a page. and I just, I'm like, dude, don't smoke one hit of this. If you smoke one hit of this, you're going to, this is going to be the end of your career because you're going to smoke the entire thing and you're going to end up owning these guys and these aren't, you know, these aren't the kind of guys you want to owe money to him, you know, and he proceeded to smoke the entire thing. And they just, you know, they smashed them off the eye, destroyed him, but you can watch

it. It's terrible to watch. After you've done a little bit of time, you watch people come in and you're like, brain wreck. You know, this kid's going to, this kid is going to run up. That's this kid's going to get it. is ass kicked. And it's sad because, you know, the, you then end up, there are guys who were trapped in there for 25 or 30 years. And, you know, in the first three weeks you're there, you do something that's going to make you hang out with the likes of, you know, Larry Nasser

and, you know, those people, you know, it's, it's a pretty messed up system. It really is. But, you know, you got to tip your hat to anybody that survives it and gets out and stays out because they really designed it to bring you back in. I mean, they really do. The, you know, my paper just, I just killed my paper less than two months ago. And, uh, how old have you been out? I got out in 2020. Okay. So you had what, four years?

What's that? I had three years. I had three years of paper, but they would not let the paper start until you leave the halfway house. Oh. So I had to do, I had to do a year, a halfway house because if I had lived, if the halfway house was anywhere near my home, I owned the home. But I couldn't go to my home because it was in another state.

You've got to be within, what, 30 miles or 20 miles or something, the half-bass? So I had to do an entire damn year there. I did 12 months at the halfway house in Oakland and then went home. And then it starts running the three-year tail. But I got to a year and a half. I am one of those inmates who absolutely did get them to kill the paper at a year and a half. It does happen. I did 50% of my street and then got it killed.

I'd never failed a drug test. I never missed a meeting. I never missed the payment. There was nothing like that. And on top of that, I had, by the time, you know, they were putting in the paperwork for that, the Lifeboat had four or five thousand subscribers. And, you know, a quarter of a million people had showed up for a drug meeting,

you know, and I think that probably carried a little bit of weight. You know, if you were doing that to get off paper, a thousand one hour videos is a lot of effort to get off paper. I think the judge may finally believe that I'm silver. The judge didn't like me. No, I. the more intelligent you are the less they care for you do you find that i well my you know yeah my judge didn't although he did give me a great quote um he uh for my that i put on the

cover of my book i put it's uh the quote is uh the complexity what what is it the complexity nefariousness of cox's crimes are breathed or cox's fraud are is breathtaking And I remember thinking, nice, you know, I know you didn't mean it that way, but it's nice. Right. Appreciate your honor. Thanks. Yeah. So it was five years.

I got five years paper. I'm still on it. Really? Yeah. So at two and a half, you know, you can. Oh, no. I've got, I already tried that. Oh, and they, they shot you down.

No, I got, I was six million dollars. So. Oh, yeah, but I mean, no one pays the restitution. No. So, I pay every month. I pay sometimes it's $200, sometimes it's $900. But, well, but I'm saying when I, at three years, I put in for it. And my probation officer said, look, you know, it's, it's the problem is, is he owes this money.

And based on our policy, if you owe money, we don't recommend you get off early. And so the judge said probation didn't recommend it. Boom. Yeah. And it, well, and I have been told that it's almost. rubber stamp. If you can get the people at probation to do it, the incredible thing is, so the prosecuting attorney was a lovely blonde woman, almost the exact same age as my wife. The two of them did not like each other. Long before I ever came into the picture, they hated

each other. One is a defense attorney. One is a prosecuting attorney. I entered the picture, and I said some really horrendous things about this woman on a recorded phone call that also got to get played. Something about helping everyone in her family pass the way from cancer and that her uterus would fall out, something along those lines. I don't remember exactly, exactly the verbiage, but it was not, it wasn't good. And yeah, the judge said to me, honestly, the quote that I took away from my last sentencing was, he said, there is not a doubt in my mind that you're the smartest man in the room right now, but you've done nothing with it. You know, Every gift you ever got, you did nothing with.

And I said, well, if you let me out, you know, like short in my sentence, I actually have a plan. And the incredible thing is the plan, like I described the lifeboat. So when the time came that I came back, you know, and I also said to him, and you know what, the day is going to come and it has already happened. You know, where you get a, you get an email from a mother that said, when you described how to tell a kid was on dope, if I had heard this three years ago, my, my sons would still be alive right now. I believe that. And I just like to send those to the judge, you know, forward those over to them and say, you know, because the blood's on my hands for what I did. But you really threw the book. I mean, he, he basically, you know how it is. You know what you're going to get before you go in. I mean, within reason, you have a pretty damn good idea what you're going to get. The judge might go a little higher. My judge might go a little lower. I was walking in there for 34 months. That's what I was walking in for. Like we had, we had all been agreed. Yeah, we had all been agreed to 34 months. For all I was going to plead to was one count fell in the possession of a firearm. And when we got in there, the San Bernardino thing, the judge was like, there's no way in God's green earth that I'm taking this deal.

He's like, there is no way. This is happening. It's not. And there was a, yeah, it was ugly. And I mean, the maximum that it gets carried, I think I was like four months. He said, I would like to give you a little light at the end of the tunnel. He said, so I'm going to run your. probation violation at the same time, right?

Because I was on federal paper when I got caught. He said, so to give you a little light at the end of the tunnel, I'm going to, which I mean, Amounted did nothing. So I hit him with a good looking out, Your Honor. Appreciate you. Good looking out, Doc. I really do appreciate you. So what was your hustle inside?

So I taught the, this is funny. I taught the real estate class. Yeah? And, you know, the ace course. Yeah. And so what I would do, you know, you get 30 guys show up, 35 guys maybe, they show up and, and which really, I mean, you know, it was actually I taught a great course. But so they would show up and I'd say, listen, you guys, like I know, I know that at least half of you don't want to be here. Right. And I'd say, so I understand right now, I'm going to give you the opportunity to leave.

find me later on on the compound or before class or you can wait around for the next 45 minutes and after the class and we'll talk about how to how to make sure that you get your certificate okay so you know and then so they were all I'd say this isn't I'm not fucking with you're not being a you know now in the medium half the class would get to leave in the low because there were so many people snitching on each other that they'd stick around but they wouldn't show up the next time you know so like they come up to me within the next day or two say bro what was up with that and i go look man you know like give me depends on how much how desperate how many people really dropped out i'd say look give me like three creamers and two coffees

you know within the next fucking few weeks and i'll fill out all your paperwork i'll sign you in every time i'll fill out your task that's it and then what i would do is then i'd say and i always tell them show up the last day of class to get the certificate of course they wouldn't so i'd end up having to track all these guys down but they would pay me you know so and i knew where they were of course because i know what unit you know they'd write down their name their unit and then they'd show up and they'd give me the stuff and so i would have my you know my locker which was normally pretty empty was at least for three or four at least for a couple of months during that you know the course it was packed packed right so you do that for four months and then you

have about a month between and then you start the next class i'd teach it like three times a year. I did that for 10 years. But I also, of course, I also wrote, you know, I wrote guys stories. And what happened was after I'd been there, let's say, well, after I went from the medium, in the medium, I was just a GED tutor. So I'm getting paid. You know, I'm getting like 80 or 100 bucks. But I don't really buy anything. I don't do anything. You know, I don't do drugs. I drink coffee. I eat what they give me in the chow hall. That's it. So when I went from After the three years in the medium, when I was the low, that's when I started writing. But I kept, I also taught the real estate class.

I taught it the medium. I taught it at the, at the low. So the low, it was the same thing. But then I started writing. And then after about two years, I got a book deal. So I got some money for that. And then another year or so later, I got another book deal. And that was like $3,500.

That was like big money. $3,500. That's a lot of money. No, you're a prison millionaire. $3,500. You are a prison millionaire. And then we got these guys, and I got somebody in the Rolling Stone magazine and I got a book deal for that. And then we optioned the book deal.

So that was like a little over $6,000. So once again, that's a lot of money. It wasn't Christopher Smith, was it? No, no. It was a guy named Doug Dodd. I got him a book deal. Well, I got him a book deal with Skyhorse publishing. I mean, he didn't write the book.

I wrote the book. It's a memoir, but I wrote it. Um, right. And you know, so it says, you know, Doug Dodd and Matthew Cox. Uh, and then got him and him and his buddies into Rolling Stone magazine. We option the film rights to that. And so what's happened is they've optioned it like three or four times. So what happened was I got one option. And then a few years later, they optioned it again. Got another nice chunk of nice jet. And then I got to the halfway house, got to the halfway house with 400 bucks. Like the second day I was there. I, I went and bought $300 with her clothes at Walmart. I'm not sure I'd ever been in a Walmart. So, um, great place to come straight from prison to, right. Some two choices to Walmart. Yeah, with this, you for Walmart.

Yeah. Bought that and then what I remember thinking like I called my buddy and he said, I'll give you a job working at a gym and I remember thinking, okay, well, and he was would pick me out, but I was like, fuck, I got to save money for a car. I got to save money for this. And I hadn't been there a week. And my ex-wife, I got a phone. My ex-wife called me.

She said, hey, listen, I got another check or I got another envelope from that law firm. I said, what law firm? She's the one that sent you a couple years ago. They've been sending checks every couple every 18 months to continue. Get the fuck out of here. I said, open it. She opens it. She goes, yeah.

It's like $6,500 or $6,400. I was like, yes. So I was able to buy a car, pay. for a year's insurance. You know, I was fucking thrilled. Yeah. And they've optioned it against them 10.

I'm not surprised by that at all, though. They're going to continue to do that, you know, until they get ready to do it. It's a great story. You know what I did? I had, so I used to run the photocopier, right?

When I was at Victorville, the greatest hustle I ever had. I ran the photocopier. And they were really tight, right? So doing sports books for people, you know, all needed. There's a bunch of people that all need photocopies made. And normally the people

charge and that's how they make their money. What I did was I would take your GED test. So you bring me, you bring me your ID. And I take your ID. I put it on the photocopier, right? And all I do is I swap out my picture on your ID. So I take down the photocopy of that and I go, listen, I lost my ID, but I got a GED test. I got to take this morning. My name is Smith. And I throw it to him. And the guy would be like, all right, good, go ahead. And I'd sit down and I'd rip through it. And I, and The jeep. Hungry now. Now.

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he test by the time you've done 10 of them right it's not a particularly difficult test right so and you can charge a ton of money to get a cat a GED but i'm sitting in there one day and this guy comes walking in and he's like tell me what's going on and test and right and I'm not tell me and I'm like yeah you know getting a little bit more sideways and you know I gave him kind of the head nod and he's like GED man you don't have a frigging GED come on do you got to have a GED and I'm like I'm doing that oh come on dude you know and And yet this cop just completely outed me. And he's like, no, that's not his name.

And I thought, I figure I'm screwed, right? I'm not. But the guy that I was taking the test for, yeah, they took him to the hole. I actually got in no trouble for any of that. But I took a bunch, a bunch of GEDs. That was my hustle. And then when I got to the higher custody levels, the crack law was just coming out. So they were, and for those of you who don't know, the crack laws were like five.

to 10 times to one crack to powder, which was determined to be pretty racist because it was primarily a black versus white issue. White guys were snort and the stuff. Black guys were smoking the stuff. So they finally changed the law to fix the inequity in it, right? Right. And all you had to do if you had the right case was it's boilerplate. You give me your name. I put it on the top. I mail it off. The next guys is the same thing. I just put his name on. You know, you, you changed maybe three places. It's really easy cut and paste stuff. And, uh, I had been doing it on a yard. And when I went to the next yard, there was nobody there that, like, there was nobody.

Like, I got there and said, you guys aren't filing to get off of the, you know, the crack laws. And they're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And I was like, I mean, I had, I had people who were helping me, you know, like I had people helping with the, because there were so many people. There were just so many people. I, I helped the blood on credit because this guy said to me, he goes, look, I'm cut off. He goes, no one will even acknowledge I'm alive. He's like, in here, they literally got to leave me alone. He's like, bro, you get me out.

I'm going to take really good care of you. He's like, just please fill this out. And I'm like, you know what, dude, for what it takes. Like, the guy's not going to give me any money. You know, you know the story. Every time someone's about to do, I'm going to leave it. I'm going to mail you this. But I did it anyway.

And I go and I look at my books in the morning. And I got like 3,000 and some change more than she should be there. And I called my life. And I said, hey, did you put money on the book? She said, I told you, I would do it by noon. And I'm like, so you didn't do it yet. And she's like, no, I'm like, well, you don't need to. And, yeah, one of the brothers came up and said, hey, man, did you get that?

Because you were supposed to get? I said, yeah, I got it. I mean, I was charging 200 bucks is what I was charging people to do those things. So I took, guy was a stand-up cat. Like, he left and actually, the only person, by the way, whoever left prison that did what they said they were going to do. I used to tell people, like, on the way out the door, don't even ask me. I'm not doing anything for any of you. Look, at least I'm not going to lie about it.

Right. I'm not doing anything for any of you. I'm going to get out. I'm going to take care of myself. I always hated that stuff. Dude, when I get out, I'm going to put shut up. Don't. You're going to get out and forget prison in two minutes if you're smart.

Interesting. I hope that that gets made into a film. Yeah. Trying to think of who did that play you. No, no, not me. Oh, this is the other cats, dude. This is his. Oh, okay.

So it's his story that's options. What was his crime? it was a it was a bunch of clean cut wrestlers in high school that started doctor shopping and then several of them got got um they got scholarships to other you know other um uh to college to different universities and so some of the guys stayed in florida and kept doctor shopping and they were mailing the pills to them you know and honestly i didn't even want to do the fucking book but i had written a guy's book a guy named uh did you ever see the movie War Dogs? Yeah. Okay. So, you know, you know,

so Jonah Hill plays a guy named Ephraim Devoroli. Right. So I, the real Ephraim Devaroli, I wrote his memoir in prison. It was called Once a Gun Runner. And so that got published.

Like we got a deal, I got a deal for that, and that got published. And so when everybody knew I'd written my book and, but I hadn't published it. I had a manuscript. I had a literary agent. And then I wrote Ephraim's book.

And then everybody, I knew I'd written it. So before it even got published, guys are coming out of the woodwork. Bro, you got to listen to my story. You got to listen to my story. So I'm like, all right, well, what's your story? This one guy, Doug Dodd, he's following me around every time he sees me. Bro, you got to hear my story.

I'm like, you didn't even have a story, bro. You're like doctor shopping. I can take a rock and hit sick. I can skim off a fucking five fucking guys here. No question. You don't even know, bro. Yeah, he's like, you don't even know. And he's such a jerk off.

So I sat down one day and I said, all right, what's the story? And he started telling me the story, and I thought, it's not a bad story. I said, the thing is, you don't have any publicity. And he's like, oh, there's an article. There's one article. This is one article. Okay, listen. I said, everybody's got one article.

I said, so one article in a local shitty newspaper. Okay, fine. And I was like, that's not good enough. I said, here's what I'll do. Here's what I'll do for you. I'll write a synopsis of your story, basically like an article. Right. 6,000, 8,000 words.

I'll mail it to a couple of. to some to some reporters and if I can get one of those reporters to get you into a magazine and that'll give you some publicity I'll write your story he's like you think you can do that I'm like no I know I don't think I can do it but I can try and do it I mean I said I do all kinds I put effort into all kinds of shit that's never going to happen right so I write this article I sent it to about eight different reporters I think like four of them three or four of them got back with me like three of them were like look man if you can wait six months to a year. I'll get to this. Like, it's a good story. You wrote a great article

here. And I just called them synopsies, right? But they always say there are articles. So to me, an article is published. So, and I'm like, one guy came back and said, listen, I can jump on this right away. And I was, okay, well, let's do it. So he ended up, there's a whole thing there. We were, it ended up going to Rolling Stone magazine. And Rolling Stone said, let's do it. And the article was supposed to come out. It was supposed to be, it was written from him. It was written from hint he and I and the last minute he told me rolling stone didn't want to have my name associated with the article because I was in prison now I later found out that wasn't true the the editor at rolling stone magazine told me bro your name was never on the article like I've never

see I saw your boy just did you there he just fucked me over but it's but listen when they optioned it I was a part of the option now you know I I I didn't and it and it And at that point, that made me realize that life rights were valuable. So when I, we option this guy's life rights and I got a little check, you know, not a big check. Like these, they optioned it for like 50 grand. I, you know, I got a small point like 15% and after the lawyer and everything. I, but whatever, that's fine. So, no, not 15%.

I think I was seven and a half percent or something. Anyway, the point is-cleaning sells, brother. Yeah, it does. So, well, then what happened was the next guy comes to me. I said, bro, I want you to write my story. It was like, I'll write your story. But you have to sign, you have to sign over your, attach your life rights to the story that I'm writing and I own it. Now, I'll give you half of whatever I make, but I'm not doing it for free.

And if I'm going to put all my money and effort into this, then I deserve to have something. If I can turn it into something, and let's face it, right now you've been locked up for seven years. you've never done shit with your story. And what are the odds you're going to? Right. Well, when I get out, I'm thinking about writing a book. Well, great. Good luck.

Let me know how that happens. How that works. Did I turn around? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Right. If you haven't written your story while you were incarcerated, you're not going to write. You're not going to write.

Yeah. Absolutely. And so I started writing these guys stories, you know, and so far it's worked out. Like I've gotten out. I've gotten some, there's interest. I don't put a lot of effort into it because I started the YouTube channel and I, you know, And it's taken off. It's done, you know, it's not huge, but it's paying all my bills, which is great.

I'm thrilled. Well, and it's cool content. And here's the thing. If you put up good content, eventually something happens. Absolutely. Right. And when did you start yours? About two years ago.

I started at, yeah, July of 21, I guess. How often you post? Daily. We do meetings every single day. And it really does. here's what it really comes down to, man. It's me talking for an hour. And there are days that that's very centered on recovery.

And then there are days that it could be just about freaking anything. Because what it comes down to is I could be going, want, won, won't, won't. What happens is a lot of people get in the live because I do everything live. And people get into the chat and start to build relationships. And you get people who have never said out loud, I have a dream problem, right? People that never would say that would never enter a 12-step program.

because the idea of standing up in a room and saying, I'm Tommy Schovel, I think the heroin turns their stomach. You know, because people are so afraid of public speaking, the entire concept of what they want them to do is retarded. And then on top of that, you've got courts that are making every single person

who gets caught with a lousy dime bag have to go do 90 days of, you know, of AA or NA, right? Anything that you do, the judge is going to make you go to AA or NA. So you've got an entire room full of people that don't want to be there that are wasted. So the people that actually want to get sober, walk in and look around and just go, good God, this is, this is my option, right?

Like this or the bar, I think I'll go to the bar. And what we do is a little different. And when I started it, I thought, I don't want to get high anymore ever. So if I do this and I do it a couple of times a day and, you know, if I start looking like I'm slipping, people will call me on it. And, you know, pretty soon there was a following. And then it was a larger following. And then the following got a little bigger. And now we're at about 10,000.

We're growing by about 130 people a day, which is a pretty good clip. Like I'm into the growth cycle right now. I feel blessed to beat hell that people will listen to me. You know what I mean? I really do, especially because, you know, I struggle with it, bro. I really do. Like, I did a lot of damage. I spent a lot of time really up and up.

You know what I carry some regrets. I really do. I think some people get out. Like I dig this genre. I really do. I love watching Sammy the ball. I absolutely love watching Sammy the Bulls. You know,

and I know a lot of people hate Sammy the ball. I love Sammy the ball. I really do. I love the content. But it's a very interesting genre. And if people have their way, it's all I would talk about. I promise you.

It literally would be all I would talk about. Because we've done some pretty unusual scams and some pretty unusual, some of the ways that, We ripped stuff off was pretty funny. But, yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to focus really on the, I'm trying to help cats. And the lifeboat's done that. We've been, we've been really blessed, you know.

So, yeah, I feel, I feel blessed to be out alive and sober. You know what I mean? If you think about, I mean, how many of our mates actually make it out and stay out? It's, it's pretty terrifying. Well, you know what's interesting is like literally months before I was, getting out, I was thinking to myself, like, you know, you're going to rent somebody's spare room, you know, you're going to, you're going to write when you can write, you're going to get a job at McDonald's, and then maybe you'll get a job selling used cars, and then maybe you'll get

a job, you know, whatever, you're going to do what you know, because I didn't know what YouTube is. I'd never been on YouTube. It just come out like a couple years before I went into prison. And I didn't, I don't think, I don't ever recall having been on it. I've never been. Yeah, I was feel pretty confident i've never been on youtube um certainly didn't really know what it was i mean know what it is because you're watching tv and they mention it or something right i don't know what it is i didn't know what we're a little old i think for the uh yeah right i didn't know what the last generation the the term podcast didn't even come into existence until i had been locked up four or five years you know so didn't know what that was and so i remember laying in bed thinking how are you

what are you going to do to survive? I had nowhere to go. I stayed every day in the halfway house. Didn't even try and go anywhere else. Why would I? They take 30%. I can't live anywhere for 30% and they feed me. Right.

And they feed you. Right. So, you know, does it suck there? Sure, it would have sucked if I had a wife and a kid and I, and, you know, somebody out there, you know, who wanted me out there, but nobody did. So, you know, and so I stayed every day. I moved into someone's spare room. And I started doing, you know, I,

I kind of figured out YouTube slowly, not quickly, and resisted, and then started doing it. And I'm making a living, doing something that didn't exist, that's insane to me. And I used to joke when these guys were like, what are you going to do when you get out? I was like, I'm going to figure out a way to make money doing, just being me. And they were like, how's that? I said, I don't know. They were like, what do you mean? I said, I'm thinking just write stories about criminals and maybe I can sell books and

Maybe I can do something like that. Like, I didn't really know. And people had told me what a podcast was. Now, you got to do a true podcast. What is that? I don't know what that is. And they would show me an article. And people tried to explain it that came in.

No, no, it's like a TV. It's like a radio show. On your phone. Right. I don't have any idea. I have no. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Even today, it doesn't make sense to me.

So the idea that that I can post four videos a week and basically talk to people that, that I enjoy talking to. The truth is, I find very seldomly to, and I probably shouldn't say this, it's fine. I say all kinds of stupid shit. So the idea that I can talk to another person and find interest in them for someone who's extremely narcissistic, like typically I don't have very much interest in anybody else. I really appreciate the kid out of that kind of honesty

I mean that's raw But do you see what I'm saying Like I get to talk to guys that I'm interested in Like I'm sitting here talking to you the whole time I'm like right right And I'm kicking myself because I'm not asking enough questions But like I'm just interested in the story But if you were an accountant

This would have been a five This would have been a 10 If I had a lot of discipline Maybe a 15 minute interview Probably five to 10 but if I really was disciplined I could have dragged it out for 15 but that would have been it

and that would have been me talking half the time so yeah so but no I you know here's the thing too you know I think and correct me if I'm wrong but um so again I've been weighing in on the Masterson case a lot and

picked up a huge following of people who are ex Scientologists a very large group of people who uh who follow my channel who have left Scientology which is odd but that's how some Sometimes things build on YouTube, but they tend to stick together. And the reason is the similarities in language that they speak because Scientologists literally speak a different language than other people.

It's fascinating. But they lived in such a different world that I think we went through the same thing. Like you spend 13 years incarcerated and having to have to just live on your wits, right? I mean, people don't really don't have an appreciation for like, I remember an old man saying to me, when you get to prison, you got your word and you got your balls, right? And if your word isn't any good, your balls better be fantastic, right? Because if, if you're, if you're not, you know, if you give somebody your word and you don't come through, you're going to fight. Like, it's guaranteed. And the person isn't going to show up Queens of Marksbury rules and stay back to

in this one. He's going to come at you with a lock and a sock, right? And doing this number coming in and every time that thing hits you, you're taking six stitches. And the level of violence that exists in there. It's really funny that you said, you know, I'm a bit of a narcissist, right? I don't think that there's anybody that ends up in prison that doesn't have a bit of them, right?

Some of us a little more still than others. And I think sometimes it may be commensurate with IQ for real. I think a lot of times that the cast that you meet in prison who just seem happy as hell to be in there, dumb as a brick, right? That literally they're just,

They're happy to play spades and slap the cards down as loud as they possibly can. And, you know, this is their retirement plan. This is literally where they're going to be spending their golden years. I think I was pretty much in the same place as you were. But I remember very distinctly, and this is so funny because my brother was laughing about it. I was at a party once years ago. And there were some people, razed us. Back in the day, people, you could get away with that, right?

You could really tear people apart. These days, no one allows that to happen. but everybody was kind of tearing me down for being a bit of a degenerate drug addict and a thief. And one of my friends there said, you know what? They just haven't invented it yet, but someday they're just going to start paying

people for being who they are. And when that happens, Tommy's going to make a fortune. And I remember it like it was yesterday because I remember saying, I said it to my brother and he's like, how freaking prescient was that? Like that was 35 years ago. This cat was like, someday they're just going to pay people for being who, you know, their own

personality. And you're going to do just fine. Unfortunately, I had to spend a little time in the joint. Listen, I'm going to tell you so, you know, the one thing prison definitely taught me was being to be very honest. And, and, you know, because, you know, like, let's say borrowing from somebody, you know, something like that. And I'll give you a story. Like, you'll understand it that most people, when we were standing in the room and it happened, everybody was looking to me like, are you

insane? I was working at the gym. And, you know, they give you your bad, bag lunch when you leave the halfway house in the morning. They give you a little bag with like a, with like either a peanut butter and jelly or like a bologna sandwich and you get maybe a bag of chips and little packet of a drink mix. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a little Kool-Aid packet. And so I go. And so one day, and I've been there, whatever, a month, two months. And I'm just eating my lunch every day. And I can't leave.

You know, I can't leave the halfway house, really. I mean, I'm sorry that my job. I eventually figured out I could leave. You know, I trick them into, you know, calling and saying, I have to go do this for my job and whatever. But initially, I'm still just sitting there. There's a couple months. I'm still scared.

You don't want to go back. Yeah. Yeah. So I, and keep in mind, my boss, the guy that hired me, he'll cover me for anything. But still, I didn't want to pray. I didn't want to ask it for any favors. So I remember this woman who worked there, her name. Oh, God, what was her name?

Damn it. Let's call her Linda. Linda's going to get lunch. And she says, Matt, do you want lunch? And I made it kind of like a, like, it was like a game to try and save as much money as I could. Like, I'm as cheap as possible. I'm eating every day at the halfway house. It's all I eat.

So Linda's leaving. No, wait. Her name was Leanne. I'm sorry. Leanne is leaving and Leanne's going to get lunch. And Leanne says, Matt, do you want me to pick you up something from Jersey mics, let's say. So from Jersey mics. And I went, no, I'm okay.

I have my bag lunch. She goes, you eat that every day. She was, why don't you get something? And I went, I said, because honestly, I don't have any, I don't have any money. I don't have money to get, to be buying lunch. It's a luxury I don't have. And she was, I'll buy it for you. And I looked at her.

And now, keep in mind, there's four or five people just looking around. They're like, yeah, you know, she's like, I'll pay for it. It's no big deal. And I looked at her and I went, listen, Leanne, I said, if you, I said, let me explain something. I said, if you're offering to buy me. lunch and buy me a sandwich and you're going to give me that sandwich and you do not expect that it's going to it's reciprocal in any way that at no time in the future will I be going to get lunch and say hey Leanne let me buy you lunch today or that you think I'm going to get my paycheck and

I'm going to say hey here's that $10 for buying me my lunch the other day said if you were simply buying me lunch out of the goodness of your own heart and at no time do you ever think that I'm going to reciprocate in any way by all means I'll take a sandwich and a Diet Coke. I said, otherwise, I'm good. I got my bag lunch and I'm okay. And she went, everybody's looking at me like, Jesus Christ. And she goes, I'm going to get you. She goes, I'm going to get your lunch and it's going to be okay. And you don't owe me. And I go, okay. And that was it. I love it. If you were in, had been in prison, you understand that. I'm being clear. I don't want it coming back. I don't owe you shit. Don't ask me.

And there is no gray area. There is never any gray area. You lay that shit out. Like, I used to cluck, too. When I got sober, I ran a poncha up. And I ran, so I was in prison, they called clucking. And guys would bring me stuff, and I would, I would float them stamps so that they could go smoke K2. That's really what it boiled down to was. Right. I lent money to K2 heads.

And they would bring in a brand new pair of shoes, right? You know, a brand new pair of Nike high tops in the box or whatever. And, you know, you lend them 10 bucks and they can go buy two hits or whatever. And it's easy money. Unfortunately, you end up having to. break a lot of hearts when you say to a guy, no, I'm really not giving you back your MP3 player or your radio or whatever. You know, that's just, you know, you need to get sober or whatever. But yeah, you would have to lay it out. And I would say to somebody, look, bro, you know,

payday is on, is on Thursday. And I will give you until Saturday. Because things happen. We're in prison. But Saturday rolls around and you don't have the money. The shoes are no longer yours. You can never refer to them as yours again. You won't say, I got a pair of shoes. And it's not going to happen. Like they're my shoes at that point. And I promise you, they're already sold like i got a guy that takes every pair of nikes i get at five bucks more than i i i clock them for so but yeah you're right and and if i had been standing in that room it would have made perfect sense to me i i ran into something really similar you get a mentality that you can't leave so apparently i get contacted by a producer who i don't know right but apparently

this guy's kind of a big deal but he sends me like four emails it's just one like two words and And it's just a very unusual way to communicate. And he was like, you know, if you can get out to Sherman Oaks and blah, blah, blah. And I, so I jibro wrote back and I was like, you know what, dude, I'm not trying to be a dick. And I know maybe I'm a Neanderthal or whatever, but like I can't communicate like this, man. I know that talking to people is like real like blazé these days. But if you want me on your freaking show, I probably ought to talk to you first, right? And if you don't want to call and do that, then I guess he'll probably pass.

And the funny thing is that he called me and he's like, that's the craziest email I've ever bad in my life. He's like, I can't believe you said that to me. I was like, I honestly had no idea why he thought that was odd. You know what I mean? Like it's right. I don't communicate like this, man. You know, it made more sense to me to actually talk. But yeah, you know, I think there are some benefits from the joint, Matt, I really do. I think that you have to be the right person to walk out having received any benefit at all. What you did is you and then changed who you are and you you learn to focus in a different way and in a different direction. And that's, that's incredible. It really is because I can't stress enough to anybody that's listening to

this. Nobody did anything to help you. Nobody did anything to help you. I mean, that's just not how it works. If you think, I got a college degree while I was in, right? Nobody came and said, here's how you do this, Tommy, we'll make this easy as hell, right? Because we have these grant programs that they tell you about. Okay, somebody's getting money for those grant programs, but they're sure is shit not giving it to the inmates right i i went to the smoot and the paper says they take us out of our cell every day and they take bloods and crips and put them in the same room so that they can learn how to get along like that's it they literally wrote all that out and we have to take 12 classes per per year in order to get through the program i never saw one human being i got thrown

in a cell they locked the door and that was it like till the day i left that was it um and i i remember writing, on the 17th of September, I wrote a kite and I said, I have the tooth that has a cavity that hurts so badly. The tooth is viable. I don't give a shit. Pull it. I don't care. Do whatever you got to do, but this pain's got to stop. On the 23rd, January, they brought me to medical to do that tooth. And I had been sober at that point and I'm buying cocaine from a guy and putting it on the tooth, like literally buying small bags of blow and using this thing just so that I could get through half of the day. And when I went in, the doctor said, oh, yeah, it's a really healthy tooth. You really want me to pull it? I'm like, no, I'd like you to fill it. And he's like, well,

we don't do that on this yard. I'm like, well, then yank it the hell out, you know, but you hear people on the news talk about how, you know, the prisoners get, they get free health care. They get free this. People, if you knew how they feed inmates, if you knew how they take care of you as far as the medicine goes. Look, I'm not trying to be controversial in any way, but if you're a doctor in the feds, there's a really good chance you got caught with your hand somewhere that it shouldn't have been. You know what I mean? Like you didn't get that job. Nobody gets to the top of their field and ends up working in a federal prison. No. So, and on top of that, we used to always say that medical was the leading cause of death at Coleman. No question. I mean, they would do a long

shit. They would let you walk around with hernias. They would like, listen, I knew guys that went into the medical two, three times complaining a chest pain. One day they walked back and died. Boom. Yep. I watch them indigestion. They tell them it's, you know,

come back Tuesday. Drink more water. Yeah. Get ibuprofen on commissary. Exactly. They sell that on commissary. They sell that on commissary. That's their famous. We watched a guy during the lockdown when the warden got cut. My friend had already left the prison, right?

He was out on a day pass, so to speak, for open heart surgery. So the warden gets cut while he's having open heart surgery, completely successful, right? Good surgery. Everything's good. He's 58. They bring him back and make him go to the second floor. This dude, after open heart surgery, literally cracked his chest, he's trying to walk up the stairs. And the white boys are banging on the door.

They're screaming. Like, are you shitting me? you're making this dude well the following morning he uh you know he was found dead in his cell and as it turns out he didn't get meds like the medicine that they were supposed to give them

he never got and that was when yeah this is when the fed the feds came in they like kicked out everybody they had to take over because people were dropping I mean we lost like six people or it was either five or six people in one week in one week and yeah they don't they don't care people really have

a different idea of what goes on in there. I promise you they do. And there's two camps. One camp thinks that we are the most babyed people in the entire world. And that as soon as you go in there, they're like, here's your TV. Here's a very comfortable pillow.

I don't know. Look, I never got a pillow once. I had to buy my pillows. And every time there was a shakedown, I lost my pillow. Every single freaking shakedown, I lost my pillow. And then I would have to buy another one. We would go to the guys in leathercraft. And, you know, they'd buy the stuffing to fill teddy bears.

or whatever or whatever that and you'd buy the stuffing from them and you'd make your own pillow and you'd put it in a pillow case and it yeah can you imagine that people you literally do not get a pillow imagine i've just 13 years of ah you don't need a pillow you can't be too bad for your neck just to sleep you know unbelievable unbelievable yeah it's uh i think it's a testament man and it's it's an awful lot of fun to talk to it really is i uh okay i find myself craving um contact from people from the inside i think that there's there's something to that you you spend 13 years living in a culture that has its own language completely right its own its own its own customs its own language its own everything

and then it gets completely yanked out from underneath you and you're thrust back into a world with a language that you stopped speaking 13 years ago and a code of honor that's just completely different you know what I mean like when you said hey man the link will be sent to you at such in such a time I wasn't tripping usually when someone says the link will get sent I always think there's a 50-50 chance that's going to be late a convict says that i i had absolutely no doubt whatsoever what time the link was going to be sent it's just different and uh especially the ones to stay out because the ones that stay out are intelligent and i'm not trying to be mean but you know if you continue to go back on the on the installment plan i got i did it three times at three freaking

times you know um it's it's not the uh it's certainly not the pinnacle of uh of deep thought right not burdened by deep thought if you're allowing yourself to uh to continually get sent back again again and again but um usually i don't know for me for me drugs was a was a huge thing i think for you you're you're a creative cat it's good that your creativity is now uh now going in the right direction i think i think this is a perfect venue for you man you're good at it you know well we'll see i'm going to keep working at it it's working so far yeah well and i think i think that this is a I think that we're in a genre that's taking off faster than most others, right? There's, for whatever reason, people are really, they're fascinated by those of us that broke the law.

But like my friend used to say, like, we'd be sitting in the day room and he'd go, look around. If women didn't dig outlaws, this place would be empty. It was his favorite expression. He was about 105, but he would go, if chicks didn't dig outlaws, this place would be, I think. But there's certainly something, something to be said for the fact that people seem to be fascinated. My first day, and I'll leave with this thought, because I think this is hysterically funny. But the first time I walked into prison, the first two people that I came across were black. They're sitting down playing chess together.

And it was, I was not in a unit. So these guys were outside and they were working, basically. They should have been sweeping the hall. And instead, they were playing chess. waiting to get led into my unit and the guy goes hey brand new fish i go yeah i just got here man and he goes uh you want some advice i said yeah he goes don't let this place change you man for real because it can i said all right and dude got up to go the bathroom or leave to go somewhere and his friend said don't you listen to that stupid i won't use the word you can uh because uh

he said make sure this place changes you he's like your goal is to make sure that this place changes you and uh i don't know man i feel like uh it took it took three tries but um the last time certainly changed me and i think it was a combination of meeting a really fantastic dude who had mad balls because to be black and work with me every day in a uh in a level three yard took took mad guts but um his name is cue and uh he is um i'm still fighting every day to get him out and uh hopefully someday that happens he's a really really solid dude uh one of One of the greats, one of the absolute greats. All right.

Thank you, my friend. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you coming on. This went way better than I thought. That's always good. You know, I don't know what you're going to get. I didn't know what you're going to get. Well, especially, you know, I'm Captain Buzzkill, right?

You know, I'm Captain Tommy. And these days, I'm the guy you wouldn't want it to party. I've never been anti-drug. I've never been anti-anything. just I'm the guy that doesn't want to see people. It's a pretty bad lifestyle. Right. But yeah, the lifeboat.

I really appreciate you doing this. This has been fantastic. It's been an honor. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching the interview. Do me a favor if you liked it. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. Make sure you hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Leave me a comment in the comment section.

Check out, check out Tommy's YouTube channel. It's called the Lifeboat. We're going to leave the link in the description. and I really appreciate you guys watching. I hope you liked it. Thank you. See you. All right.

So, I'm going to call you Batman. Yes, sir. All right. So everybody calls you Batman. Well, we have a mutual friend that calls you Rob. So Batman, everybody. I noticed when you called me, it said Batman. A lot of people tell me that I ain't even know I was, I don't know how happened.

So, okay, so what happened? Let's start real quick with basically where were you born? Well, I was born here. Yeah, I was born here in Tampa. You know, I was born in 19, 67, December, 23rd, Christmas. All right. Yeah, I was born in the Sinai area, Seminole High area. I went to Greco.

I went to Slide Junior High School. I went to King for my sophomore year, but I ended up going to Armwood for my, to finish my two years of. I graduated first class at all. I started working at a roughly young age, I guess. While I was in school, I was in school, I was working also. I was working at a Mexican restaurant on Del Mabry called Costa Gajardo. I started out there washing dishes, busing things of that nature.

You know, working with work. After that, you know, I've... Growing up, I always wanted, I guess, to be my own person. I wasn't really good with people really telling me what to do. Right. I love to learn, but once I figured out I got the job, I'm ready to go, you know, I want to be off on my own, you feel, instead of somebody telling me, hey, man, we need you do this.

And I got kind of like fed up not being able to move further at Casa Garo in my job. They just wanted to continue me busing and watch the dishes and things up. We had a problem. people was getting hired above me. Right. Yeah. People was hired and above me. I had been there like a year and a half or so

and just wasn't moving from that spot. End up getting fired so to kind of quit at the same time because I just neglected doing the things I was supposed to do at the job coming in late things of that nature because I just was ready to go when I was getting fed up with. So up to that, a little adventurer. I was unemployed.

I was living with my mom. Just hanging out with fellas doing the little thing. My brother-in-law, we was just, you know, hanging out, doing a little thing. We were here and there, things of that nation. I started another job. Yeah, I started another job. This was probably 92. I was working with my father at Ed Morris Cadillac.

At the same time, I was working for, I was working two jobs at that time. I was working at Edmore's Calais and I also was working at Cache and Cairing. I was working Ed Morris in the daytime, Cache and Carrey at night. Is Cache and Cary still around? No. Okay. I think when Dixie bought out Cache Carey, something like that back in the day. So I was working at Cache and Carey at night from midnight to like 7 in the morning,

putting stock up and then like 8, 9 o'clock in the morning. I'd go from there to A.M. Morse Cadillac. drove parts. I was a parts delivery. After a while, um, I did with and dabbled in different things. Um, I got out there in the streets a little bit while I was doing the parts going by my cousin house seeing how they were making thousands of thousands of dollars a day, you know, just sitting around the house, you know, I was like, man, I was doing this. So, um, he's like, hey, you know, we're doing this right here, this right here came out, which is, was crack. Crack. All right. Okay. I was like, damn what is that and he was like oh they take cocaine they made this right here so I started

doing that for a little while he showed me the ropes made some money in that end up quitting the job at edmore's cattle like that when dixie because the money doing the other thing was greater than working both of those right right I was making a lot more money at that time I think Reagan was president and they had he he made a drug Caesar or something they they was fighting the drugs against Columbia or whatever was a big drug thing going on that year and so it was hard to get cocaine, it was hard to get product

right, you know, so it was and I was a small guy, I wasn't nothing big or nothing so if the big guy wasn't getting it you know, definitely the small guy wasn't getting it so I was spending my money it wasn't there. It was just going, going, going. I had everything going out but nothing coming in.

So we were sitting around with my brother along. You know, we were just talking And I was like, I think I said something like, man, you know what, man? I need to rob a bank, something like that. And he was like, man, rob a bank. I was like, yeah, man, I was like, man, look,

that's all in place you're going to go get it and it's there. You just got to know how to do it. You just got to be able to do it. And he was like, see you. He just smiled. He was just laughing. He was just, there's a quote from a guy

named Slick Willie Sutton who was a bank robbery. they asked him like, why do you rob banks? He goes, because that's where the money is. That's where the money is. It's not straight to the source. I mean, you know, growing up, you watch the news, people was robbing like little grocery stores, little gas stations and getting, what, like $500 and stuff.

I'm like, man, look, no, why would you take that chance when you can take a chance and do something big you're going to get basically all at the same time? Look, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that. I always been about bigger things. thing. You feel? I always been about the big, there's nothing smaller petty about me. If I'm going to go, I'm going to go all the way. I've always been like that. I always thought like that. So, um, my brother-in-law, I think, like, maybe two days later or something, he came

and he was like, hey, man, I know this guy, and he wants to rob the bank. I'm like, yeah, who is he? Like, oh, it's this white guy, I know, you know, like, damn. So, It's a white guy? It's serious. You know, he was in black. I was about like, man, maybe he just bullish, and he might not be. But he said he was a white dude. I was like, well, this guy might know something.

We can probably be able to help. But he might be more know something. Anyway, look, he introduced me to him. He brought him over. He introduced me to him. He told me he had been watching his pain. And I was like, yeah. It was so crazy, man.

This guy can come and take me to this bank. It's okay if I give address this? Yeah. Okay, so he went to tell me to this bank. It's a bank on Hillsborough, Habana. That's my first bank, my very, very first bank. Hated that bank. Reason being because you had to be buzzed in.

That was my first thing. Why would you wrong with bang? Why would you ride with bang you have to be buzzed in? That's super. He was like, man, I've been watching this. It's going to be easy, man. It's easy. It's going to be easy.

I'm telling him. I was premature. I was like, okay, he's been watching. I'm going to do this. He's like, okay, I got a guy. You're going to steal the car. And we're going to do it. I say, look, we're going to need two cars.

If I'm going to do it, we're going to need two cars because simple fact on that first car. Once they get that making model, that car, they're going to be on it. So we're going to have to be able to get to another car without being seen. leave that car there and we're gonna that was my whole thing giving a whole giving like an obstacle illusion make them think I'm going one way when I went the other way you feel me so what I would do I would get in the car get to my other car

have no one see me bend the corner when they think you're going north I'm actually going to be going back south or something like that I'm gonna get to you right here this I have I said, look, we're going to have we're going to need two cars. He said, okay, fine, no problem.

We ended up getting a Mustang. Stoll the Mustang, he got from someone like one of his buddy, he got a less son. We've already had a maximum. Okay, a Nissan maximum. I had basically got that maximum myself from the Nissan place on Fletcher. Oh, Fletcher is crazy.

All right. with keys and everything so we've i had been driving that car for maybe like six months or so so that was that was going to be our second car so it was me him and another guy i'm gonna just call him d d was with us we had everything we had the gun we had the mads we had the bags we had clothes i had a change of clothes because i always wanted to go in the bank with one one outfit on but i wanted to be able to change when I'm coming out wherever I go I want to be able to be changed I don't want to have the same type of clothes on me

because I know them the first thing people are going to be looking for the officer are going to be looking for that so as we're driving up Hillsboro we get to Armenia right okay you know that the bank I'm talking about is the next light which is a banner the guy who was with me

the D was in the back the other guy who originally the white guy he was sitting in the front. As soon as I pull up to the light, the guy just started crying. He said, Rob, I can't do this, man. I can't do this. And I know, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's like, no, me then I'm on federal probation. But which guy is this? This is the white guy. Originally who said he wanted and who I was introduced to, yeah, to do this. Okay. All right. So he's on federal paper. He's on federal paper for utter and a forged instrument I found out that later. Anyway, we pulled up till the light, he'll burn on me and this guy like, man, I can't do it, man, I just can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.

I said, damn, okay, Rob, what are you going to do? I said, just chill, you want to? Just chill, it's okay, it's okay. I said, hey, damn, what's up? Which, D, hey, what's up? I said, you still want to do this? You're like, hey, man, whatever you want to do. I say, fuck it, we're going to do it.

I pull over over there to Crystles, crystals hamburgers right there. I pulled over to crystals right across the street from the bank. Right. Dropped him all. The white guy got out, Dana got up front. It's just me and him. I already have the Nissan Maximum behind the Win Dixie because right there on the corner was the bank. The grocery store right there was Wind Dixie, old Win Dixie.

I'm not mistaken because it's published now, but it wasn't public. Yes, it was public. it was public stand so we put the other getaway vehicle behind publics so me and Daniel

dropped him off we got in the car we rode up to it we go out to the bank I already know we had to be buzzed in because he told it but I didn't want to do it because of

I didn't even know you never you didn't me check it out yourself first you just thought he had it all things well I went first by night before I went to look at in the window. Right, but you didn't. Okay, but it was open. No, it wasn't open. I went at night just to look in the window. I wanted to see everywhere. The camera is placed, the layout, you know, where everything

hopped off the way, I'm going to have to run. I did that, but I never went in there before that prior to that. Me and Dana, we pulled up to the front of the bank. We're sitting there in the car. I don't think I got my mask pulled down. I just got to like pull right at the top around my head. Okay, we're sitting there. I got gloves on there. I see two old people getting out the car. I know they're going to have to be buzzed then. I say, Dana, you see them two people right there? When they get out the car and they get up there, we're going in and right behind them.

He said, all right. Never not knowing that Dana's going to really go behind me, I'm just thinking, hey, when you see me get out, you're behind me. I'm going to go with you, man, I always. The old people come out, they're kind of really old because they're, like, leaning on each other. They're taking their time. I think the guy, the older man, he opens up the door for the lady. Soon as she started to walk in, boom, I jumps out of the car. I go, here come Dana.

I open up the door, grab the door, Dana comes behind me. I don't even see where Dana plays. I just know I have to get money. I ride straight to the counter. I hear in my ear, I hear the manager say, just do what they want. Just do what they want. Nobody don't do anything. Just do what they want.

I'm going. I'm over the counter. And bam, I come down, I pull it out the draw of them. I got a bag on my shoulder right here. I'm putting my in-up stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. I don't think they had a drive-thru. I can't remember they had a drive-thru, but I don't think I hit the drive-to because it was,

I was just like trying to hurry up, hurry. We get as much as I can to get out, bam. I think Dana say, time. And when he said time, it's like 90 seconds. When he say time, I'm coming back over the counter, when we come out, we jump in the car, I head out of the bank, downing me around behind to Publitz

where there are other cars that I jump in there. So I'm making them think that I'm going up Havana heading. Wait a second, did you have a gun? I didn't have a gun, he had the gun. Oh, okay, all right. I didn't have a gun that time, but after a while I started, right, right. But yeah, because it doesn't matter if you,

people don't realize, like, if you say he has a gun, I might as well have a gun. Right, exactly, we'll all get talked for the guy. Exactly so. And I didn't want me being in the process of doing when I had to do to leave the gun, drop the gun or something of that nature. So I wanted him to be the one to protect me.

Right. You do your job. I'm doing my job. We straight. So, okay, so we came out of bank. I jumped in the car. We went behind, changed it to the second car. Now, they're thinking I'm heading south on Hibana.

But I jumped in the second car, came around, came back up the hills borough to Armenia, heading east on Hillsboro to our location. So after that, Dana and me went, the guy who was with me, the white guy, he had called another acquaintance that we know to pick him up. Because I was like, damn, how did I meet up with him? Because I paid him.

I wanted him to be a part of it. right I paid him for the car and to have watched me do the whole thing I gave him money because I wanted him to keep his mouth where I was going to say I wanted him to be a part of he feels like if he's if he's a part of it there's a better chance he doesn't tell anybody exactly so that's why I did that even the guy who came to pick him up and do about it I paid him also I gave him 500 and I gave him 500 I think out of that that first bank there I I got like $24, $2,700. Yourself or just total?

Total. Because the average bank robber gets like $3,500 total. Or I think it used to be $1,500, I think it's like $3,500. In that range, it's not a lot. It's not a lot because I never wanted, I mean, it was fresh to me. It was, it was my first, it was my very first. So, but to get a lot of money, you'd have to do it. like a takeover like you have to right you have to do it that a super dangerous that's super stupid yeah

you know i mean no we're not we wouldn't it's not it's not heat or nothing like that we're we're not equipped to do anything like that and it just even the movie heat right it doesn't make sense but um my thing was to just in a small amount of time get as much as i can and on that first one it was 2700 i was i was pivot better comments to getting away i was pissed because i was thinking that we were gonna get a little bit more than that. Going by what we had spoke about earlier, me and the other guy, the white guy, and, you know, I guess from what he'd heard,

what he'd seen, or I don't know, where he got that information. We was gonna get like 25, we were gonna get like 25, 30,000. Yeah, okay. Because I guess he was going by what he thought the tellers hold in the tills, but he's absolutely wrong. Yeah.

You have to go in like the cash drawer or something. It's called a cash cow, which is behind them, but I didn't know about that until later on in my bank robbery endeavor or whatever. But anyway, so we get back to my location, I guess I went back to my house of county all up and divide amongst the people who was involved. And I was like, damn, okay, that's crazy, man, I can't believe that's all I got. And I relived it. I relived it to see, okay, wait.

that I went wrong. How could I have got more? What could I have done? But and um to stay safer, uh, uh, super safe, there was kind of like nothing I could have done because I didn't want to be in there no longer than I was, you know, and I hid everything that was there. But this was a small bank. They don't really do that much business. And that's one thing that I didn't know. It depends on the bank. And as things went along, the money. got greater so you know um I don't know the time period I did them in between I'm thinking a couple months maybe like four or five months I my second one was my second one was on I think down near like Bayshore area is it was it was

It was a sun bank and it was off like Howard and Meena down there, Gandy, Kennedy area. We ride around, me and Dana, you know, we hung out pretty tight. We were just riding around. We spent the mining. I had no funds coming in. And I thought, okay, man, we need another bank. So I got down towards that area.

I seen this bank and it was surrounded by shrub, brushed trees, you know, all the way around it. It was two ways in, two ways out, you know, you could have got into that inches on the back end, or as you're going down that main street there, you could turn it in right off the road, but it had one there and one there. But the thing about it was, it was hidden.

So I was like, man, I can do this. It's hidden. So after the bank got closed, I went just to look through the window to look at the layout. And I didn't have the white guy anymore. Right. It was me.

It was all my planning. I had to come up with the cars now because he knew people who can steal cars. I didn't know anyone who could steal cars. I didn't start getting in trouble until I was like 25 years of age. Right. You know, I don't have a juvenile criminal record or anything of that nature. So I knew the Spanish guy who I was. was closely familiar

where he knew people Spanish guys we know how to steal a car and they were really quick with a screwdriver driver like then how do you know they can

a strew driver that's it yeah man okay yeah yeah yeah so I said hey whoever give me a car

I give him $500 just don't give me give me a car if I give him $5 a lot so we had the car I still had the Nissan

maximum at the time I was still using I already used it in the first bank robbery didn't get called and nothing like that still had the car still had it. So that was going to be my second car again to use in the second finger

robbery. So he got the car for me. Me and D. We got together. Um, I think the first day we went down there. We, I'm trying to find a good location to sit and wait because I think it was kind of busy that first day. As I was trying to find a place to sit, I seen a TPD officer ride down the street. I told Dan, we're not doing it today. He's like, oh, man, he might be going to lunch. He's going down. I like, we're not doing it today. Right. Anytime I seen an officer in that area, period, I didn't do it regardless. Because everything's on my side. Timing is on my side. I can pick and choose time to do it whenever I want to. I don't have to rush it, you know. I wasn't, I, I'll wait tomorrow. Okay.

A lot of problems Cause that spooked me By officer That's like it was a warning to me I don't know I just felt like Hell now I got tomorrow

Right We go, leave Regul Wait tomorrow Get back together Tomorrow morning Get back Everything

We come back So this time Everything was smoke It was good We went in there Was hardly no cars In the parking area Of the bank

Pull the route Pulled right into the front of the bank just jumped out when he came right behind me we were in our over the i was already over the counter before the two ladies was in there even knew one it was two black ladies two black females one was over at like a office desk or something she was sitting there wiping it down but i think she had her back to me and the other one was i'm not sure exactly but i remember when she came out but I was already behind the counter getting money. So I spent roughly 30, 40 minutes, seconds, 30 or 40 seconds behind there,

pulling out money, put it out money. It was not really a lot of money though. And jump back to go to the counter, came out. Now, this was the exciting part. As I'm coming over the counter, come out of the door, we were in a, yeah, okay, we were in a looper. a Lincoln Town car stole a Lincoln Town car

that was the first car that we pulled up in the bank in when I got out of the bank I'm pulling off with the bag of money we heard a poof in the car oh the die pack dip pack went off in the car we had all the windows up in the car but it's in the bag it's in the bag

did it blow through it all the smoke and everything tear gas and everything is coming out of the bag as we're driving down and street, right? We got, I'm looking over here, we couldn't, I couldn't even always see him. That's how much it's in there. And he got blob and tears coming out of his eyes and snucked him out of his nose. And I'm like, man, I'm trying to get the, we trying to get the window down. We can't get the window down because it's a Lincoln Town car. Before the big window go down, that little window

have to go down first. Right. Couldn't see it. Couldn't see that that window was going down. We just knew that that big one was going out because it was out. They may, open up the door. I'm driving down the street with both doors open. His door and my door in my airing it out. I pulled around the the corner we pulled to the second car which is the um Nissan maximum get out toward in park grab a bay jump in the other car we come around Bayshore I take Bayshore all the way down to like downtown area jump on the interstate get off on 50th Street because I stayed over there on 56 we get to my house we pulled all the

money onto the carpet a lot of money had read die all over it it was burnt because when that when they ruined when it's When it explodes, when it explodes, the eye gets all over, and it's hot, this burning. So some of the money had burn spots all in it. So what we did, we separated the money to get the money that basically didn't have no burns, no ink or nothing like that on it.

And if I'm not mistaken, it came up to like $3,500 that didn't have anything wrong with it. And like $5 grand that had ink and everything on it. and check this out. It's serious. Dana was young. D. Dana. He was young.

And I know that he wasn't going to get into that red money because that would have got us messed up. Right. So I took the $3,500. I gave him $1,500, and I kept $2,000. I still have the $5,000 that was burnt, some of it, like holes in the spots in it, but a lot of red.

Me and my girl were sitting there looking at all this money with all this red ink on it, and I'm like, we're in. I told Dana, okay. After I paid Dana, I said, hey, look, tell this up. Here right, nobody, don't tell nobody nothing. Hey, you tell her that you got a lawsuit or somebody left you some money

but don't ever tell anybody about anything we do that was with anybody with me I always made sure I embedded that in their head but I say if I'm able to do something with this money if I can clean it up then I'm gonna break bread with you

I'm gonna go ahead and pay you I'm gonna give you what you your percentage out of this If I can't, I'm going to destroy it and get rid of it. So he was like, okay, okay, he was happy. I could give him $500. He would have been happy. Right.

You know, because, you know, he already got away. Yeah, we got away, and he was with me because it was hard to come across money. I don't know if he didn't like working. I didn't like, we just wasn't working. We were together. We were doing our thing. I gave him that, and me and my girl was sitting there. We were sitting in an apartment looking at all this,

money with red dye, and I'm like, me and Tim, I don't know. I cannot throw this away. My aunt, granted, worked that chlorox. And I remember, like, the week before, chicken, it's, God's good. My aunt worked that chlorox. And I remember, like, the week before, I was over her house, like, doing some hedges or cutting some grass. You know, we did side jobs, cutting grass, trying to come up, you know. And she's like, uh, um, I arrive her. Um, I got a, bunch of bleach and all kind of stain removed and all kind of stuff like that. Now, if you ever need something, if you want something, go ahead and get you something

because they give us all them damaged cages. I got, well, she did, now, her utility and she got a case. I'm going, chase. I'm like, now I don't need nothing right now. I'm straight. I'm good. She said, okay. So I thought about my aunt when I was sitting there looking at this money. I'm like, man,

it's got to be worth a try. So I go to my unhouse. I say, hey, gee, I I said, you remember you said you had all that bleach and stain removal stuff you think I can get some she said, boy, go on in now you get whatever you

want. So she had like three different kind of stay removers and two different kind of bleach. So I got it all, one of this, one of that, one of that. I went back to the house and got a five gallon bucket empty bucket. I poured

half water into the five gallon. I put water into a half, pulled all the money in there pushed all the money in there all the red dye money in there all the stain removing stuff bleached i pulled it in on top of it and i just started swirling around so i said hey man i'm gonna take like um two hundred is money and we fin a year and go to the grocery store i'm gonna take a shower real quick while i'm doing this i get out of the shower and i come back i just happened to go and glance over in the bucket and i see like a red film starting to float on top of the water and i said damn

this might work. So, me and my girl, we get together, we go to the grocery store, we spend like $200 come back. We put the grocery up. I said, okay,

now I'm going to get the money. So when I got the money, pulled all the water off, now you know, water and chemical separates. Right. So whichever the money that was in the chemical,

the longer, the most of the money that was in the chemical, it was the weakest. The money that was above that was mostly in the money. in the water, it was a little bit better. So when I pulled all the water off,

cleaned it all up, and made the bills weak. They were clean. It wasn't no red on it, period, at all. And I told the, but I don't see that. So I said, okay, baby, we got to dry the money up. So we put something in the oven. We got, all right, we dry in this money, we do on whatever, you know.

But the only thing about it is the money that was down in the chemical, the longest. You know, when you do money, you do it like that. it had just come apart. Okay. So I say, we got to go to Agri-Dusto and get some tape.

So, for a girl, man. This is this. So $5,000, let's say $2,000 of it was really, really weak. Right. It was clean. Pristine clean.

Really, it was clean. But the money that was down in the liquid, the chemicals, the longest was the weakest. So I said, you know what? I got all this

Scotch tape like wrapping presents and stuff I put here a lot of money one that ripped the week I put tape all around it right so what I would do I would get like

three or four of those bills that had tape right some good bills and I would go get money orders like in a day you know we can get money orders up to $250 dollar money order so I'm going around all these different stores trying to change this much

getting money orders and it worked and they did this one store that was on Kennedy that we just happened to go around to and it's just a bit off track but it's just some apart the story that I was telling

I went to this like Oriental store and they had money orders I got a $250 dollar money order and he was like hey my friend what's wrong with they what's their money I say my girl wazzy got real dope man it's good though put you

I know I can't remember how I used to check it then. I think maybe with the plan and then back then, I can't remember. But he took it, gave me money order. I used the money order

with a couple other money orders to pay my rent and my apartment complex for that month, right? Right. Only that one Oriental guy, he stopped payment on the money order

and I'm not sure what he did with the money, but I did a lot of money orders, but that was the only one he stopped paying. payment my rent lady came not done the door she said rob I said hey what's that she said you remember that money or you gave me to pay the rent

I think yeah what what problem she's like they stopped payment on it she's like I don't know I ain't never seen nobody stop payment on the money water I like he just had some issues with the way to turn the money in the bank they wouldn't take it exactly so he stopped payment I said okay cool no problem so I went in the house went in the shoe box got out 250 whatever was and gave it to him and it was cool so that was that was that was that was from that was from the second that

was from the second bank that's when a die pack blew up on my third bank i i got how to like getting the small amount of money i wanted to get a bigger amount of money so i said you know what i'm going to bring some guys going i'm going to get two other guys well so that just me alone trying to get the money on they have two guys over the county getting the money right and two guys watching my back so i go out i go out carewood area over on and this right so it's like a suburb of yeah yeah right over there i think it was anderson railroad over there they had a uh burning what was that bank i mean it really that that matter um we scouted out that bank I, and you just go get two guys,

you just go talk, do you just know, two buddies, don't rob a bank. No, no, they're not just to anybody. It's because, Lulby's not robbing them back. Okay, so, I have, no, I mean, I'm a good talker. Right, it's some guys that had been hanging out with me and, and I know they were, they were good

for what I needed them for. They had already knew about what I was doing, but I just never brought them in me, and I didn't need them, you know. Um, and it was close, people. I'm not going to mention any family friends, you know, people of that nature that I knew I could trust and stuff

like that. And I brought two other guys in. I had went out to the one out there in Anderson and Carrollwood area. And I thought maybe there would be a good chance of me to get more money. I'm not sure. I think I had

went out there one time before and I had to go in there to do some corn exchange, money exchange or something, and, and, and, and they had a lot of money on the counter. And I was like, man, I would like to come back here. I think it was, we had just hit a house or something. We got some foreign cars and we needed somewhere to take, take the money to it. I had just happened to go over there, to go in there. And it just was counting money on that back counter and it was just like, man, but you wouldn't know with the face. So there was nothing

to be done that day. I was like, I want to do this. Right. I like this So I went back out there I went back out there the next day And I was like Okay so I got to find a getaway route I got to make them think we're going on the other way And we're going to go the other way

So I decided okay we're going to go down Anderson We're going to go down Anderson and the road Make them think that And it's apartment complex Soon as you get down Anderson road You get out of the frame of the bank There was an apartment complex

I can turn left and go through And then I can come back and come out Good man that's that road Good I can come back up and come up and come out, guys. So I say, okay, yeah, okay. Well, you know, by the way, just the naming the streets

and everything doesn't matter because people and they don't know what hell. Yeah, I mean, people, I, people in Australia. But the people who do, they're like, man, that guy's smart. So who was around. So you figured out with the, you figure out the goal. I figured out the area and how I wanted to do it

to make them think that, you know, we're heading back south when I'm actually heading east. I came up that night took a peek in to see the layout to see exactly where everything was at if I'm not mistaken that same day I placed the car

so I had it there overnight that was the one I had the keys to and that was the Nissan maximum I always had the keys to that and the one that was used with the screw driver that we paid so I wanted to get that was to go up to car

So this is a funny one too So we're driving up and here We're going towards our location And I pull up into the parking lot And it also is a grocery store Inside that area too So we pull around It's a pretty big parking lot

And I'm looking at from a distance at the bank To see who's there Make sure no officers It's in the parking lot roaming around just to see where everyone's place at. So I started

towards the bank. Once I got out to the bank, I found a nice parking area where I wanted to be. I'm always wanting to be towards the front of the bank. It's not in the front parking area of the debate

just because it cut down time. And so as we pulled up to the bank, we get out. And I think this one was an astro minivan. This was a

Astro Minivan, and I love Astro Minivan for the simple fact that when I'm going to the second location, the guy's able to change their clothes standing up in the back of the minivan, sliding doors. It's just bigger, roomier. You can do a lot of more things than, you know, as far as getting ready. So we pull up to it. We left the vehicle running. I run up to it, and it was just great timing that I pulled up at that time because Wells Fargo

was just had left that bank. they had thousands of dollars right on the front counter and normally that's what they do they have to count the money after the money is delivered they have to you know count and make sure it's what's on the tag what's on the receipt is what was it delivered right so it just happened to be so once when i jumped when i went through the door there was four of us two people was going to go over the counter two people was going to hold everyone at bay so when i ran in i'm the first person So when I jumped over the counter, I didn't even have to jump off of the counter because all the money was right there. So what I did was squat down and just started grabbing money from the counter.

Didn't even have a jump. And my second guy, he jumped on the counter too and he was grabbing money. But from my proof of vision, I seen he had got off the counter and doing whatever. Man, look, I'm getting this money. So after I get all the money off the counter and he was doing what he did, I felt like I had enough time. I didn't even check the drawers because I had spent so much time on top of the counter and getting the luggage.

I came down, hey, let's go. We proceeded towards the door. We went out of the door. As we get back in the minivan, soon as I'm pulling out, the one person who went over the counter with me inside of his pants,

he stuck a thing, a 20s, a band of 20s. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, a band of 20s is $2,000. He stuck it in his pants and it was a dipak and it blew up in his pants.

He's thinking, you guys. Yeah, I'm gonna steal a little bit not tell them. Exactly what I got. He's actually got a couple extra grand. Right. But he's also, so it came back on him because he's got.

True story. True story. DiPacket. So you have like 30 to 40 seconds after you breached the door from the bank that the die pack going to go on. Soon as we hit the,

got an in a min event, I'm pulling out to go on the annalsing to go to my second car. Boom, blow, oh, I said, hey. I was driving, like, hey, man, hey, what the fuck is that? He's like, oh, no, I don't know. And I said, get it out, get it out. I already know. I already had the iPad before.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, I'm so quick. I was like, look, look at each other. I'm thinking he tried to cuff $2,000. Put in his pen, it blew up a little. He pulled out one, he pulled out one stack of 20s from the left. side of the drawer because it's always going to be a die pack there i found that out too later anyway so he threw it out the winter roll the winter down he threw it out the window

read there as we was getting back on the arles through it out the winter it wasn't that bad as far because he i guess he muffed it by having in his band but he had on like two or three bear bands so he didn't ready to get burned i guess that all right but he a die pack blew up in his pants all right i get to my second vehicle this is a crazy thing too i get to my second second vehicle we're getting out of the van to get everything with us and Dana as I'm leaving I'm asking everybody okay what's the weapon where's this where's this whatever we want he left one of his pistols in the minivan that was like one of the first bad things that I could think of that ever could have happened because now I'm thinking damn was there any fingerprints on it

was any fingerprints on the bullets was there this fit or shit there ain't there's ain't no state it's real You have to be on a point. So, no problem. As we're leaving, because I'm making them think that we're heading south, but we're actually heading east. We see the helicopter heading back towards the bank. Right. So I'm already in my second vehicle. They're looking for a white-a-van where I'm in a burgundy Nissan maximum.

So as we go on, we see the helicopter going on and, you know, Another thing that I also used to do. Underneath the outfit that I went in the bank, I always had a shirt and tie. A white shirt with a tie. And in the back of the Nissan Maxim, I used to have a blazer, a jacket hanging up there for the guys in the back.

I always wanted to be looked like I was the only one in the car. So I had them down on the ground on the floor in the car. After we got out of the van to get in our second vehicle to get back to the house, They was in the backseat down. The blaze were hanging up. I'm sitting alone driving with a white shirt and tie on. Make me look, you know, like, presentable.

Exactly. So I'm headed back to the house after that one. So what did you guys get there, roughly? I mean, I know you did the 57. Oh, okay. 57, well, all right, I think I get like 30 on my personal. 57,000, right? Oh, okay, well, that's a deal.

He said, yeah, okay, well, I thought you had 57. No, I remember all the money was on the tape. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm not sure how much fell on the floor or anything like that. So as time went, time went by, you know, I did and dabbed and did other little things of that nature. And two or three more went by into this one that I said, you know, I think I had Tampa hot. I think it was, you know, I had already at this time did like five, six banks. And I couldn't really find an area or a bank that I pretty much can do

and had all the things that I needed, you know, the optical illusion getaway route or knew that there wasn't a lot of cops in that era. So I kind of like did everything I could do on this part. So I said, you know what? I'm going to go across the bridge. I want to go to Pinellas County to see what they got to offer over there. So we just took a ride,

and I went and I seen, as soon as I got across Gandy and got on the 4th Street, yeah, 4th Street, St. Pete, that over there, I turned to the left and right off, red off Gandy there, there was a bank,

I think it was a first national bank or something similar to that. and I was like man this is pretty good this is pretty good because there was there was a side street also that cuts off from the bank and there was a apartment brand new apartment complex which looked like it had like 500 units so it was kind of huge and um I said um I can come off the main street boom boom or go off the main street cut down the side street come out there and then jump back on again and take the bridge across will come to Tampa I like I can pretty much I can do this. So we waited to that night, went back over there, and I just wanted to look at the

layout of the banks. I mean, basically banks are pretty much all set up the same, but just you personally, just knowing you have that visualization of where you're going, what you're going to do, is a plus for me, me not being blind. I'm already know where the chairs laid out. I know where the cameras, I know where to counter. You want to know, you, as soon as I get it, as soon as I get, I got to run a note. 20 feet this way over the thing. Not, I think that was my thing of looking at night. I could come in a daytime and go on.

Yeah, but then the Kerman and the RBC and Zachary. Exactly. So I got a layout. I got a view of the layout. We got all our tools, everything we needed. We went ahead and placed a second car over an apartment complex, which was pretty cool. It was a big apartment complex.

And when a lot of people, it was fairly new, so was a lot of people walking in the dog. are out so I thought that was pretty good um this was a pretty decent bank we had we push I think I rode down fourth street just to see if there was any cost in the area I didn't really see anything I think I did it on the first day I didn't have to come back the second day at night I think it was like the perfect song everything was on my side I pulled up to the bank um it was just and Dana. It was just two people on this one, if I can't remember correctly.

I put up into the bank, got out of the car, wasn't no traffic, wasn't a lot of people coming out or nothing. The one particular thing that I can remember by this bank, there was a bunch of college kids in there. And the robbing

the bank, to me, because I played sports when I played football, is like running, for a touchdown you can hear the crowd but you can't it's like you're in a silent state you kind of like focus in on what you're trying to do or what you're doing and that's the same thing and like robbing the bank because when I was going after that money I was focusing what I had to do but I can also hear the baby in the background crying or somebody screaming or yelling or old lady or something like some of that nature but one thing about this bank right here in particular

I can hear the college kids that was cheering us on they were like go man yeah yeah go go go go go and that was just like one thing that stood out in that bank so um I came across the counter we jumped in the vehicle went to our second vehicle and and came across and basically that was it on now when I did like $32,000 on that one we split I think I gave him like 17 I always I know I I get him like 12, because I always felt like this was my thing. I'm always going to get the majority of the pay. I'm always the one who invested.

I'm the one who invested time in. I'm the one who invested the gas. I'm the one who invested on the planning. So all that costs. But the good thing about the guys who I ever did anything with, they never questioned what I gave them. Right. Well, I mean, they're talking about a guy

who's getting 5 or 10 grand, he's not making anything. I think the reason being is because they knew just knowing me or being my friend, they're going to always be opportunities for them to make money. So why bitch about something, then he might not need me for the next one? Right. So they never, man, why did I get this?

Man, how much you got? That never occurred. Right. So as time went there was like my last one I was pretty much like getting out of the bank thing I was I had me a detail business going on I was not really hurting for money I think I had just did when I had

a substantial amount of money I was pretty good at the time And I think I had game up on a Jamaican guy who was fronting me pound this time I was whatever the case was but I was good I wasn't really thinking about banks. My girl, her friend comes up and She kind of like knew what I was doing but didn't know what I was doing or Didn't want to tell me but kind of like she like bro she used to call me bro. She's like bro she used to call me bro. She's like bro um man, I need you. I'm like, okay, well, then what you need? She's like, Mom, I was down in E-Boer this weekend,

and this white girl, she pulled out in front of me, and I hear her car, and it wasn't nothing wrong with her car, and wasn't nothing wrong with my car, and we thought it was okay, so I just left, and now she got my tag number and put out for a hit-and-run, and I got the chair, the TPD calling me, the detective looking for me and all this, but I need to get some money to get my car fixed.

She's like, man, I don't know what you do, but I'll do anything you need me to do. You want me to try. You want me to do, yeah, whatever. I'm like, man, what the hell is she talking about? Like, what you said? Well, what you need? She's like, man, I need, like, maybe, like, $1,000 or something.

So I was like, damn, man, I want to help. Because I'm always wanting to help people. I'm always, you know, I always thought about I like Robin Hood and stuff you know people like when I was a kid

growing up Robin Hood was my favorite guy who now Batman and robbing things of that nature helping other people who didn't have you know trying to look out that was kind of like me so I had already seen this one

bank that was on Heim's in between Hills, Berlin MLK and there was cross street from El Lopez part Whatever they call it right now And it was kind of like Hitting away too

You know It had brushes and shrubs all around It was kind of like hitting off in the cut So this girl She like She like depended on me It was like I was her last You know

Resort And I was like I can do this And I can make myself look good At the same time helping her You know, I could be that big brother she said I was, you know, come in at the cluts. And not only that, I can, you know, put a few more dollars in my pocket also. I'm pretty good at what I do.

So I like, and then she wanted to help. I'm like, what could she do? What could I use her for? I say, damn, I won't have to pay someone $500. I can use her vehicle for the second vehicle. Right. So that's what we do. on the first vehicle

I used the maximum I used that for the first vehicle and I use her car for the second vehicle I left the maximum hidden in the apartment complex where hers was that

right around the corner from the bank on on Himes right behind there there is apartment complex and I'm thinking that because of the way the apartment complex is set up

you turn in and you go and it's hidden off the street they're never going to find the car so i'll come back days later and i get the car but there was a guy up in apartment complex up there when we came back to switch cars after doing the bank right he was up in the third floor apartment looking down and that guy right there kind of like told what the second vehicle was and they were looking for her car and that's how i got screwed up so now they didn't know me. They just knew that vehicle was the vehicle that the people who robbed the bank

left in. Right. Okay. So she had took her vehicle and placed it off a street off MLK and North Boulevard, let's say that. DPD, right, and all the other places looking for that vehicle because when they came looking, they formed that area. Somehow they knew that they dug this, they just searched right there for the first vehicle and they found it and the guy up there seeing all these cops down there he came down here hey i need somebody and the woo-woo-woo a different type of vehicle uh Subaru whatever it was so now they're looking for her for that car okay now as i told you before earlier there was a guy who had did other little in and odd jobs with me when we used to like just going houses

big houses, do little things. He had, did something without my knowledge and he got a Rolex watch, which he waited upon in his name. So this is a guy who did like a robbery. You were doing robberies. Right. He did a robbery on his own.

He wasn't supposed to. He wasn't supposed to, or if you, you know, you're your old person. Right. You could do whatever you want to do, but don't mention me in anything. Right. you know and and to be honest with you i think i used to tell them don't do anything that we did

together right make us something else don't do you know my emo don't don't do anything gives you some wiggle room right exactly so he took another guy and they went they got a Rolex watch out of some house or something he went upon it in his name and that's how they got along to him got on him which he put them on to me right now the reason why he put they they he put them on him because they found a jacket that was in his house. And that jacket was from a squat team member's house that I had went and kicked the door. Right, so this is another robbery you guys did

and there was SWAT team stuff and guns. Just a B&E, right. So we took all the guns, the squat team. He took the jacket, I took like some bulletproof theirs, things of that nature. To connect him to that. And I have a question when he goes into that other one and he gets to Rolex, was that like a home invasion?

It wasn't a home invasion. It was just like kicked the door in, like a B&E, breaking an inner. Was someone in another house? No, okay, no, okay. So he's in trouble, he's just not in that much trouble. He's not in 20 years. Outstate prison trouble.

After they finding him with that jacket, that jacket makes him in that much trouble. Oh, because that's the gun. As opposed to say, they want them guns. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we had Sig Sawyer, nine millimeters. We had, um, A.K. We had saw all shotguns that came out of there.

We had them love. Right, because the SWAT team members going to be a lot of different. The military automatic weapons, like you see them during that, yeah, we had, I had, so they wanted, so they put the press on him and he told him about me. Now, my birthday is December 23rd.

And on December 20th, T.S. So, no birthday party for you. No, my birthday, my birthday is December 23rd, and around the 21st, I go to a friend of mine. He owns a pawn shop on Hillsborough

and you know it. All right, I'm not cutting. I go through his pawn shop and this is probably about no, the 5 o'clock in the afternoon. I go over there because I'm getting ready to get this big bracelet and I'm going to get this Batman charm with diamonds

and all that on there and he was going to make it for me so I had stopped by there and we kicking it I'm flipping through this book where I'm picking out this bracelet and this white guy comes in you know I'm out without looking at the book and he said hey hey he's like oh I just want to look at some CDs said okay he rocked the Parshot guy said okay go ahead Look at whatever.

I'm just looking at the bridge. We're looking with, Hey, how much this is going to call? Hey, how much of them? So a guy got whatever CDs he wanted. He headed back up there to be cashed out. He went down in there. I'm still looking.

He cashing him out. So the guy, my friend, who owns the pawn shop, he comes down to me. He's like, man, man, that guy just spooked the shit out of me. I like, what are you talking about? He goes, um, He told me to be careful. Well, I said be careful.

I wasn't really to be careful. He's like, he just told me be careful. I like shit, he just said, be careful, so be careful. So, well, how much did it cause? So I'm not really, because I was smoking, you know, I was not really paying attention. Right. You know, I was chilling. Just getting ready to be my birthday.

I'm not. So, bam. I pick out the bracelet I want. I leave. I come back. I went to the house now here it is it's my birthday December 23rd

that morning me and my girl we already said out there we was going to go out of clear water on a double eagle deep seed fishing trip for my birthday salt water so I said I'm going to drop my daughter off at the daycare and then we're going to run by McDonald's grass and I eat and then we're going to come get all the fishing gear

not knowing that at this time the FBI is watching me the whole time when I came out to take my daughter to the daycare there was this big bread van white bread truck parked next to my car I had a 500 series BMW at the time and they were parked so close to the driver's door that I couldn't get in so I'm thinking that it was this we would have it five rock the lines lay down i lived next to the office building at department complex so that's why most of the people who was doing the work that's where they came up with the office there so i'm thinking

it's one of those people part so close to the to the bmw that i couldn't get in the door so i'm carrying my daughter and i'm walking all around and the windows was so tending on there you couldn't even look in there right so i'm walking on around went over there by the pool here i'm looking for some guys that was doing some work there was nobody i'm like man he's my little customer hand on to get on them you know so what i did was when i told my girlfriend oh let's go we're just gonna i'm just going to clam through it on the passenger side you need put her in the in a chair i clamped through and got on to the driver's side by going through the passenger side so as i'm leaving i'm going to drop her off to the daycare over off uh florida avenue which we made it over there dropped her off

all this time the feds are following me i don't know it as i'm heading From the daycare, I go to McDonald's. We go to McDonald's, grab some breakfast. You know, I wanted to eat something before I go on an official trip. I proceeded to get on Hillsboro. I'm going back towards my street, which is a habana or whatever, the street apartment was on at the time. I go to make a left.

They still follow me. So I pull up to my apartment, till I pull up to my apartment, and like I said, I'm right next door to the office. I live on the second floor to the right. When I pull up, I look upstairs, you know, I'm getting ready to get out, but I just have, I'm, I just always used to try to, like, be on point of notice who around, you know, I was doing bad things, you know, I wanted, no, I know there was going to be

one day somebody was going to be looking for me. So I always kind of be, I want to be on point B, you know, I need some, like you said, wiggle room, I need time to run or whatever I need to do to try to get away for that, for that day. So I happen to look upstairs, and I see these two, white guys on the left side. I lived on the right side. So I was like,

you know, I wonder what the hell they want. They dressed the same. They had on like two white t-shirt and some wings. I thought maybe they were some salespeople or something. So I still, I think the car still are running at this time. Put it in park. I go to open up the

driver's door. I turn it off and before I can get my first foot out of the door, the squat team has me on the ground. So they, they, that's how I got her, that's how I guess they're that fast. Yeah, I know. And it was like, it was like 15 of them, you know, they geared up, masked up and everything. They're like, all right, they know, and they got me.

They're celebrating. My girl's next to me. She's crying. And they got me on the ground. And they're celebrating. I can hear the guy saying, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, persistent page. We've been out here since 6 o'clock this morning.

And then the guy walks up to me and he goes, hey, how are you, I'm in charge of this right here. I'm Sergeant McIrmeyer and, how are you? First of all, let me just tell you happy birthday. And, yeah, while I got handcuffs. They're all cocky. Swear to God, swear to God. And I had handcuffs on you.

Like, first of all, let me just tell you happy birthday. And you know this guy, you know this guy? I'm like, man, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. You're like, well, oh, we think you do. We heard that, um, you're armed in danger. You're a menacing society. I like, man, I don't know who told you that, man.

Y'all got the wrong guy. I was like, can I talk to my wife? Oh, you know, you can't talk to her. She cried and stuff. Um, then I hear him tell them. We're going to meet back up at, um, East Lake Mall. No, Tampa Bay Mall. We know, Tampa Bay Mall was open at that time.

And that's where they planned the whole thing. And that's where they met up at the talk about. what just happened so at that time the feds came they got me um rushed me um downtown because when when you in the federal system you don't just go to booking you don't go to jail and stuff like that like a state charge or you get picked up by the city guy they just take you to the orient road or just take you to the city jail when you picked up by the feds they take you downtown you have to go to the um fbi office you got to the um fbi office you got to go to the U.S. Marshal, you've got to take hold over.

You got to U.S. Marshers take pictures of you, not only that. Then you have to go in front of the magistrate judge and see if you're going to get a bond or not. So there's a lot of things that take place before you go over to the city jail and be booked in on those charges. So that would happen to me. So now I'm booked in and not really knowing what I'm facing

because not really knowing how I got to this point that that guy told you're not even sure what they're arresting you for right exactly i didn't know that guy had told me about this i didn't know about they found the rolex and he had to jagged and this is how this thing all came about so um i'm i'm sitting in there because i'm on federal charges they have to ship me over to morgan street so i'm sitting in morgan street you know uh think my lawyer can't see me and to let me know what i was being charged with and um I was being charged with the armored car at the time. I wasn't being charged with no banks

because I never got caught doing any banks. He told on me about the banks, but they didn't put that on me at the time. Right. And it's kind of good for me that it didn't because how it all worked out for me not having them put that charge of me right then I was able to group it

and my proffer agreement now me first time been arrested first time being in jail never knowing what a proper agreement is and how I found out about a proffer agreement is just it's like my first week in Morgan Street

and I know basic things like don't let nobody know about your case and don't talk to people that try to get on your case and you know try to get time not off theirs so don't talk about your case just you know make up something so I had this old man just came up to me

someone who I never knew I never talked to I don't I didn't even know the guy was in the same cell it's just an old man just came out to me out of nowhere and he goes hey buddy I don't know if you did anything else besides whatever you didn't here on out down the street that didn't get called for but if you did you need to ask your lawyer about a profit agreement

So I was like I still really didn't talk to the other I was like well okay So I'm like damn Oh I did something I better call my lawyer So I call my lawyer And I go

I had a lawyer That was Presented to me by the state But he was a private lawyer For the fees And the fees you don't just get public defenders You get private attorneys That have their own authors

but they work for the state. Yeah, there's a federal public defender's office, but they only have so many. Right. So what happens is that if they're full, well, then the court will actually appoint a private lawyer. And that's what happened to me. And mine was out of Sarasota, Bradenton.

And I called him up. I go, hey, check, this out, some old man just came up to me and he was asking me about a proffer agreement. If I knew anything, if I have, you know, did anything that if I know anything about some crimes

that was committed and no one never got called for it. I was like, what's a profit agreement? He's like, oh, a proff agreement is, you know. First you have to go over to the state prosecutor and present to them or whatever information that you might have and they make the last decision

if they want to give you a proffer if they think whatever you got, it isn't interesting. I said, what if I knew about a guy that robbed in banks? He's like, if you know about a guy that robbed, 10 banks, you're going home tomorrow.

I was like, I didn't want to tell him me just in case it didn't work out in my favor. I just said I knew about a guy, not me. Yeah, and you're never going home tomorrow. No, unless you know if there's a terrorist or something, yeah, something imminent. Exactly. So he went over and talked to the state prosecutor

and federal prosecutor. Yeah, exactly, my bad. He talked to the federal prosecutor And let me know that I knew about some banks that had been robbed that the case haven't been solved. And if he was willing to do a proffer with him. He came back over and talked to me. He was like, I'm not going to make you any promises.

But if the people who I send over to talk to you, if it's worth being able to do something, then I will. And the good thing about a proffer, it's only about things that I have. I've done. You don't gotta tell anybody this thing that you've done. And another thing about a proffer

is that it has to be everything that you've done. Yeah, no, if you give them any room at all to yank the proffer away from you, like I made sure they knew about everything. Told us this, but we just found out, once we looked into it, we found out this, you never mentioned this, so we're not, right, you need, exactly, nothing.

Exactly, and they still know about what you told them and they can still use out of guiche. So I made sure that, um, And plus, this was an opportunity and a chance for me to get it. It's a chance you walk out of prison not being out. And they were like, I can never ever be charged in the middle district of Florida with anything I've ever done.

That sounded good at the time. Yeah. So what were you looking at anyway? I think my PSI came back to like 27 years. 27 years. Oh, I know, I've got it. I had a TSA. I'm gonna not 17 off.

Right, my, so anyway, so, okay, so after that, one morning, I'm in Morris Street, I'm sitting there and they say, hey, Robert, you gotta go to medical. You gotta go to medical. Okay, hey, listen, well, I'm ready. I'm getting ready, I'm getting ready to go to medical. And I'm thinking I'm going to medical,

but I wasn't going to medical. They took me down to the challenge, And when I got down to the chapel, there was two FBI agents waiting to talk to me. Well, like, yeah, they don't wanna let the other inmates know that you're having a discussion with the FBI. Is that, you're gonna say, oh, he's fucking snitching, he's this, exactly, exactly.

So it's not in their best interest that, for your safety too. Right, well, yeah, exactly. So we go to chapel, they introduced me to do. I introduce who I am, so we go in. And I started out with, The very first one. And that was the one I told you the very first one.

Yeah, he was in. And when it had to be buzzed in and everything. I told him exactly how I happened. What I did, I think that day right there, talking with them, I got to, like, three up. The very next day, they were back. Now, there were two different FBI agents. There were two different ages, age groups.

The older gentleman, he had to be around, like, maybe I'll say he was. was like 65, 60-something years old. He was older. And the younger guy, he had to be like maybe 30, 32. The next day when they came and pulled me out to come up to the chapel, they were standing in front of the chapel door waiting for me. The officer was walking me down in the hallway. I get there. And this is the first thing that happened. When I walked down and I, you know, saying good morning to him, the younger FBI agents, he was like, hey, man, did you ever get a chance to see the movie

or did you get to see the video of you robbing the bank? I say no no sir. He's like man fuck man why didn't you play basketball football he's like man as soon as you open up the door the first step you're over the counter you're over the counter man you're fucking

man you're great man I know you're not playing some type of sport and I'm sitting there thinking like this LBI guy is talking to me like he's a fan something I've just done and he's like telling me how excited he was for watching me robbed his bait

and being able to come back and talk to me about what he's just seeing and it was just crazy why the older guy was standing behind him with his hand in his pocket he was just standing there just letting them yeah but you got to understand too these guys by the time they talk to you they've been trying to solve this

right to you what I'm saying they've imagine how much time they've spent trying to find this and then to have the guy like they've spent hours and hours and hours driving around and just thinking about you and who you are and looking for you. So they're super curious about you.

So when they get to talk to you, they already have this fantasy of who you are. They're like, they're thinking you're this person and you find out, no, this is who he is and this is what happened. Exactly. So it's, it's, and that was another thing. You're saving them a ton of time.

And that was another thing, that was another thing cause like every, after every bank that I robbed, I used to go to Disney, go down to Orlando, just to get away from Tampa because I was like emotionally shook, about so so much so much rush was going on so anxiety anxiety and not knowing if i made a mistake or something that they might be knocking on my door so i get the hell away so i try to put some miles in between till everything comes down i stay there for the weekend but every morning i used to

get a paper and exactly what you were saying they always used to say man we can't get it we can't wait to get a chance to speak with this guy we cannot wait to get a chance speak with this guy and then they were like having um um news people asked some questions like what do you think he's and they were thinking that i got it from this movie that one movie um with the surfers oh yeah yeah um point right they were thinking i was getting it from that movie things from that movie and um i had to watch that movie before where you watch it were you wearing a mask oh it's the first mask that we wore was the guy did this right here oh it did you uh huh nixit mask uh huh well okay that's the connection And that's the connection between the movie.

You ever seen Point Break? You've seen Point Break? That was one of the first mass. Oh, I got to... I mean, I was. I was just wanting... Yeah, Point Break, they wear... They all wear...

They all wear President's masks. Right, and that were because... And they jump on the counter. They immediately... They run and jump up, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're wearing the outfits, the whole thing. Yeah, they did. But I didn't...

I... I really didn't get ideas from them. I had seen the movies, but I just knew that in order for me to pull this, all these are the things that I had to do, you know? The two-car things,

I mean, a lot of things that I did, I can't really say that I got it from a movie. It was just like common sense with me. Yeah, I don't think I'm going down, Dale Maybury when really I'm, you know, I'm going south on down Mabry. Not only that. I'm really going.

The switch of the cars. The switch of the cars. I've seen bank robberies stay in the same car trying to get to the house in the same car. I would never try to do that. I wrote a story about it. You know? Right.

From the place. See, that's not, see, see, that was somebody who, like, not so, not impatient, but they just wanted to rob the bank. They didn't really have a plan. They just, the money was more important than getting away with it. Right.

You see, to me, the money wasn't more important than me coming back home. Right. That was more important to me, so I'm going to make sure I'm not worried about when I get in there about exactly how much money I get out of there. I'm worried about I go about my plan

and I'm able to walk out of them doors without having to have a shootout or being locked up or shot or walking out of a million dollars and getting caught two hours later is needing to. Phillip it. Right. And same thing when I was in prison, you can sit up here and tell me about all the planes

and Lamborghinis you got, but you're able to spend the same $60. is the weakest moon. Yeah. Yeah, I always used to say prison is a great equalizer. Exactly. Multi-millionaire. Exactly.

You were born, we're raising the projects. So I, you get a bunk, you're wearing greens, you're wearing greens. We're the same. Yeah, we're the same. So I used to read the Metro after I did each one, just to get an idea if what I did made the paper. And they always made the paper and I always try to see if anything was left for, or, you know, or if they spit out some information, it might be good for me to hear what they had to say.

Oh, we got a tire track or something, whatever. I just wanted to read what they had to say about the. What happened with, I'm sorry, what happened with the armored car one? Like you skated over the, you guys also hit an armored car. So the armored car was, the armored car was like, it was in between my six and six, seventh bank like and there was just something that these set of guys had already had this

armored car set up to rob because one of the brothers had worked on the armor car right and he wasn't no longer working on the armor car so he knew the layout and what's expecting things of that they never knew about me these guys never knew about me my link was with with them was through my brother-in-law because my brother-in-law as he says that he I was the only crazy brother he can think that might be able to pull it off because he knew about what I did. So one day I'm sitting at the house. He's like, hey, man, man, I got, I might have something for you. I said, okay, what's that?

And he's like, I know these guys who, you don't want to do this job. I said, all right, man, what you yet? I meet you at the house or something. I talk in person. So I go to his house and he come to my house or whatever the case was. And we talk about these two guys, two brothers. One of them used to work for the armor car. I think it was Wells Fargo.

Was it West Fargo? Yeah, I think it was Wells Fargo. And he's like, man, the guy working on the truck, he knows it's going to be easy, man. It's going to be like $200,000, $300,000, you know, real quick. They want to know if you can be able to pull it off. I say, shit, I need to go see what it looked like.

First, show me the route. Show me where the truck had. Show me where it's going to go down. So they came and picked me over to St. Pete. It was the money store. The money store was an old. bank in St. Pete that closed down and they changed it to the money store strictly for all the armored cars to come pick money up from there to take the banks in stores right so this old bank

they change it over converted over to the money stores just for armored cars to come pick up money I think they might have brought money there too yeah they in and out just for armor cards he knew about it because that was his route he used to go there to pick up money and delivered to banks and grocery stores or whatever the case may be so they came and showed it to me we set outside downtown st pete i can't remember exactly what the street it was but it was downtown right off the interstate somewhere and we sat over in a parking area parking spot while we watched the armored car pull up the guy get out open up both doors go inside the money stores the money stores had like double doors too because they roll out like um laundry bins full of money and um

we're sitting there we waiting we waiting he finally comes out reopened up the doors to the um to the armored car and he just started throwing money in the back of the truck i'm like yeah we can do that yeah so i think i waited like two or three days we geared up got all the stuff two cars and everything we pull up we in the minivan it's me he's the driver the guy who used to be the driver for the west fargo me and his brother with it to gunman inside the armored car you have the driver and the messenger the messenger is the guy who grabs the money out of the and puts it in the back of the armored car so soon as the armored car pulls up we're sitting over in the parking spot I say, wait, just wait until he get out, and then we'll ease over there.

So as soon as the messenger got out, he started opening up the bike doors. No, no, no, we waited. We waited for him to come in and come out with the money. So he started, I guess he unlocked the bike doors to get it ready, went over to these set of doors here of the building, locked down there, whatever. They opened up the doors. He went in there. He was in there approximately a minute or so.

When he started coming out with the laundry bin, that's when I told him, let's ride. So we started easing up there. We pull a red around and pull right along the side of the armoured car. I'm the first thing coming out. I had a 44 Desert Eagle. When I came out with a gun like this, the messenger seen me, he dropped everything and ran, ran to the front of the truck. So I ran to the back of the truck, looked down the truck to see where he went. He was stooped down by the front tire on the driver's side, I came back to start getting the money to throw into the minivan. My second guy went over to keep an eye on him to see what the messenger was doing. When I went down to grab the first bag of money to throw into the minivan, that's when gunfire.

The guy, messenger started shooting at my guy, he started firing at him. I grabbed the money, that money was like heavy, really heavy. It was like, um, 80 pounds. to try to get with gloves on and it's shrink wrapped with plastic so every time I go to pick up the money it slips out of my hand I cannot get that money out of this bin

because it's this big straight money is heavy when it's that much so then at that time the driver started shooting at me I'm standing from here to where my daughter is the driver is shooting at me 15 feet away he shoot at you

He shooting at me. I'm not like, it's this going so fast, so I grabbed the 44, and when I pointed it, 44 is already caught back, and when I pulled the trigger, it just went off, and it just went, boom, boom, boom, I couldn't control it with one hand. No one can control the 44. Right, unless you're like, the Hulk or something. But it just went crazy.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. I drop it. I try to get the money. I seen the minivan leaving. his brother ran jumped in the minivan I seen him trying to leave I turn around I'm running I jumps in the minivan

they shoot out all the windows in the minivan his brother gets shot in the back of the head oh I see blood coming out of the back of his head because he has on a white bulletproof vest I have on a black bulletproof vest I see a red line going into the vest we make it down to where we have the second vehicle parked

by the interstate downtown St. Pete jumped back in it get on the interstate come back across town and so no money and somebody gets shot in the head exactly

but was he out or just like he was okay he was okay and had to go through the glass so it slowed it down it just grazed them okay I was gonna say and we're talking about a nine millimeter

I'm not saying it didn't hurt but I'm saying it didn't penetrate his skull it grazed them so soon as we get back to the second vehicle they go with me and the second vehicle they jump in the old purse of the car because he didn't know how serious condition his brother was in. So his aunt is a nurse in Orlando.

So he's like, man, I'm going to rush my brother down here in Orlando. My aunt's a nurse and I'm going to get hurt or take care of Woo-Woo. They did that. I come back home. I'm going through the process of everything that just took place and how did this happen and this, that, and the other. That night, I get a knock at the door. It's by Hillsborough County Sheriff Office.

And if I'm a domestic violence charge that was dropped against me, but I guess the state picked it up or whatever and this deal had a warrant out for me, I'm thinking it was for the other. So the guy was like, no, no, and my girl was like, what do you, what do you want him for?

She's like, the officer was like, he has a warrant out for his arrest for a domestic violence charge. She's like, no, no, no, no. She started crying and everything, but they went with it. They arrested me that night. that night because of me robbing

or attempted robbery of the armored car when I fell asleep everything that drilling everything that happened earlier that day was playing in my head, in my dream and in my dream

I kept hearing like a in my dream I was like what is that noise I'm dreaming about the whole shit that took place and I'm like I could just keep hearing these and I come up

I wake up in the middle of the night I'm breathing I'm in jail I'm in jail I just attempted I had a shootout downtown St. Pete I dropped the guns now I'm having this nightmare

about I hear this noise that I couldn't make out what the hell it was so I said you know what I'm gonna go by sleep I'm gonna go back to this dream I'm going to slow this dream down I'm going to find out I'm going to see

what the hell what the noise I want to see what it was for everybody's sleep I'm in the dream I'm in the dream I catch bike up I slow it out

I'm shooting and I slow it down and I slow it down and I can see it was bullets and I check it I think I'm bullshit if somebody's shooting at you from rat there

and I'm right here and you go to the range all the time and you don't hit me and I go to sleep and I have this dream that is something passing quickly by me but I can't and it was bullets

and it didn't touch me not one bullet now the bullet that did get me is when I turned around to run to jump in the minivan they started blasting the minivan up one of the guards shot the ground and they ricocheted off the ground

and went into the hill of my foot and right now in this shoe right here in the back of the hill of my foot I have a little round circle that's healed up now but on this hill right here is smooth but on here you'll see a little circle with a little indention

where a piece of shrapnel went in the hill of my foot when I got the jail at night That's when I found out when I had to take my shoe and socks off. No, no, no, I found that at home. I had already to, yeah. I found that home. When I got home, I had to take my shoe off. I didn't even notice that there was a little hole in the back of the hill of the shoe.

But when I took my sock off, there was blood all there. And I looked at the back of my hill, and there was a little hole where a little shrapnel had went in the hill of my feet. I don't remember pulling it out or nothing. I don't know if it just ricocheted and went in and out or however it was done. but that's the only thing that happened to move. So let's go back, your PSI is supposed to, your PSI says 27 years, you get 17 knocked off. So what happened was, this is how that happened

to finish up this right here. I say I can't do 27 years. Right. I can't do 27 years, I'm kinda added up. I think at the time I was like, okay, 3, 28, or whatever it was, I was, I was not being able to do 27 years because I would have got out of like 60 or something like that.

So I remember this guy saying, in everyone's case, there's something wrong. You can't leave it up to your lawyer to do it. It's got to be on you. There's something the judge did, your lawyer, the prosecutor, the arresting cop, the detective, paperwork, something somewhere is wrong. So I say, okay,

All right, this one, okay, man, 27 years. I got my PSI. I'm talking about this right here. They're trying to make me a violent habitual offender. Right. I was like, man, what the hell is a violent habitual offender? I said, okay, I'm signing up for the lie law girl. I rolled down, signed up for the lie.

So did you already get sick? You just have the PSI. I ain't get sentenced yet. Okay, okay. I just got the PSI that just delivered it to me. So I say, you know what? I'm going to the law library. I go to the law library.

I look up, first thing, I want to know what a violent habitual sender is because that's what's giving me all this time, all these extra months. So I want to see what that is. And they say, a violent habitual offender is a person who has two past convictions of violence or two of drug or one of each. That makes you a violent habitual offender. I say, okay, okay. All right.

what I'm being charged with so I look at my charges I have two charges before the charge that I'm on and one charge after it right but the definition for

violent habitual offender means they have to happen before so and the word was consequent I don't know what the hell consequent right that's before so

So I look at my charges, and what it is, they try to make me a violent, a habitual sin. I have to pass conviction of violence, none of drugs, but one was before the charge and one was after the charge, and you're trying to say, nah, damn, how was one before and one was after, because I had already had one before. I got charged with a charge that they're holding me on. I bonded out and got another charge

and I pled to that charge right but I'm still being held on that so one was before and one was absolutely they both had to be before in order for them to make me a violent

a bitch offender right so I call my lawyer of I say uh-uh and they can't do that I'm saying myself I rip out the page in the law library

that says that and I ripped out the destination for a bitch of offending and I brought it back to myself I call my lawyer up I said um hey how do you

I said hey man I think you need to get here because I think my PSI might be wrong you they're trying to meet me with he's like okay Robert and I'll be right there tomorrow so when I he came I presented him with the information that I had I showed it to him he looked at it he looked at my PSI he looked at the dates he's like man I think we got something here he's like you're right we got something here I think yeah yeah I got I said, so what you're gonna do? He's like, well, I'm gonna get to you, I'm gonna do. And one week's time, they send me amended PSI

with 17 years knocked off my signals. Nice, just because of that one thing that I did myself. Yeah, no, you can't, you can't rely on you. I could have been lazy. I could have depended on my lawyer. I could have just laid down, say, no, man. You can't rely on your lawyer. Like everybody thinks, you know,

anybody who, people that have never been through the system always think, oh well, you get a lawyer. Like all lawyers are the same. They're not all the same. They're not all working for you. They're not always interested in, or, you know, they're not, they don't always have your interest, you know, in mind.

You have to understand that the law work, that's a lot of work. It is. So they're trying to limit, limit their, the ability of- Have a lot of case loads. Right, oh, it's ridiculous. I'm not saying, it's a ton of work.

We might not even get an hour worth of their time on your case, man, because of the simple fact, they just have so many people put in them in their overloaded. My attorney, I just know he, wasn't he wasn't able to do the job for me because in the first few minutes they don't give him anything he didn't he didn't he didn't sound like well hey you know what i'm going to find out this right here so i said you know i remember that guy saying in everyone's case there's

something wrong so let i'm going to start i can't do this time i got to just see what's wrong in my case and i thought and it probably was other things that was wrong in my case right but i just found that one thing at that time right there and that was enough to knock 17 years off my sentence. So you get 10 years, you did eight and a half, how much halfway house? None. No halfway house?

None, because I had people who was, I had a house to come to and I did no halfway out. Well, I did three years supervised release, but 10 years for the state. Yeah, all right, okay. Yeah, it's, yeah, 10 years in federal prison and three years, and three years, probation, okay.

You got a year, and a half off though, right? For a good time. For the, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't do 10 years in prison, you did eight and a half. Right, because what were we at? 85% they do it?

Yeah, yeah, 80%, yeah, 85 days. So I got my little good time because it was 10 and I did eight on it, eight on it, so. And then I got out with, well, then I got out with 36 months supervirously. I'm thinking I'm going home. home but I had a concurrent sentence I had a concurrent sentence with the state ran with my feed and my state time like overlap it was a little bit more so Florida was waiting for me

they picked me up from Atlanta because I did all my time in Atlanta federal prison because I had to I escaped from Orient Road one time so I had to be on a train right a moving train jumped doing a moving train, I escape from booking. So I have to be in the maximum security and we didn't have, we only had a medium and low here. Yeah. What's the name of our federal prison here? Coleman.

Coleman only had a medium and a low and they were building the max. Yeah, yeah, the max is built now, but I was finishing up my time in Atlanta when the max finally got finished. Florida waited for me. I came here. I went to a home's correction.

I did two years in the state and got out from the state with a 10-year probation period time, and I just completed it like a year ago, August 28th.