Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Millions Lost Prison Time Tai Lopez Convicted Ceos Last Interview Before Prison

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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The SEC sued Ty Lopez for basically securities fraud. But all the headlines are saying it's $112 million Ponzi scheme. I was charged by the same prosecutor for $171 million Ponzi scheme. And I report to prison on October 9th. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. Let's talk about your case first and then we'll get to Ty's case. The housing values were crucial. crashing to the floor, as you recall, in 2009, 010, that no one was there to buy those assets.

But I knew that there was a generation of people coming that would need the assets. And also, the housing starts had dropped almost zero. So there was no new inventory coming online for 2012 and 15 and 2017, because they weren't pulling permits the years earlier. So I knew that if I could get as many of those houses as possible, I could win. And so I put all that together, and by 2009 or 10-ish, I was like, yeah, what I needed, what would be great is if I had a fund to go buy a bunch of distressed assets and keep them. Right. Sit on them until the market changes. This has got to be the best thing. And I ran across a mutual friend and the conversation with something like, well, why aren't you at the courthouse?

I'm like, why would I go to the courthouse? What are you talking about? He's like, well, that's where all the foreclosures are. I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. And he's like, well, I'm down there four days a week. Just come down there. Like, okay. So I go down to, I think it was 7th Avenue, is the name of the street. But it's one little courthouse, and it's the size of the suite at the time, that had all the foreclosures for the entire state of Nevada,

was in that one place. And so we would buy like a condo. Let's say the condo had sold for $250,000, which was really a lot of money. back then. And now it was going on the market for, you know, 30 and it gets bid up to 50. And so you buy it, you put some cheap carpet and paint on it, and you sell it right back off. You just get rid of as soon as you can. So I really started working on that. And just about as soon as I got going on that, which was roughly around 2010, 2011, it started instantly drying up.

People from L.A. were showing up at the auction to buy cheap houses. You can't forget Southern California is like, I think even today it's like the seventh largest economy in the world. Yeah. So when any part of that population wakes up and says they want to buy something, it's kind of over. So I sat there and I thought about it. I was like, man, I could do this anywhere. And so I did some research and I recalled the days of doing loans here. I'm like, wait a minute. It's not the same. The situation is different in Nevada or in the West Coast than the East Coast. The West Coast has what's called a trustee auction. So foreclosures work a lot like a car in a practical sense.

If you simply miss three mortgage payments, the bank can come take your house or make all the moves to come take your house. Whereas on the East Coast here, you've got the legal situation where everything has to go in front of a judge in some way or another. Right. So I did some research, and I realized the whole East Coast is years behind the West Coast because every foreclosure has got to get in front of a judge, right? So, and then I realized we could go back. I realized I could do this anywhere as long as I moved to the East Coast and as long as I kept, you know, I kept, doing this. And so I mentioned it to my wife one day. I was like, we could do this from Tampa. And she was like, I want to go back. Because we lived here for a little while in Tampa in the early

2000s when I had the branch out here for the lending side. Right. I'm not sure if I mentioned that. And she just loved Tampa. So yeah, we packed up roughly around 2011. I think we were here by 2012, you know, moved back to Tampa. And I did exactly that. I found some people that were had the, so it's interesting. In my search to try to find to get into foreclosures here, pretty much closed out of every place. The banks really controlled a lot of it, and there wasn't like a public auction like it was in Vegas. And so one of the groups I ran across, they're like, they specialized in tax deeds. And I was hardly interested. I'm like, well, I'm not really interested in buying up somebody else's taxes. I'm interested in the property. And so I did a couple

deals with them on the tax deeds. You know, if you buy the tax that somebody doesn't pay, you get a yield on I think 12% or something like that, and then they pay it off, you get your money back. And so... You could eventually take the house, though, if you wanted, right? Like if you wait long enough, you buy enough years in a row or something like that? Well, yeah, so it's all about if they redeem it or not. You know, if they redeem it, you know, you don't... Yeah, you just get your interest.

You just get your money back, yeah. So, and I was, of course, talking to everybody, all my other friends back on the West Coast, and we'd already, we'd formed a fund, and I had met my attorney there in a, Las Vegas. And he, you know, top attorney. So my attorney was, he went to Pepperdine, he went to Oxford. I met him at a company called Dwayne Morris. Have you ever Googled your name? With one quick search, I can find all of your information on very sketchy websites. Your phone number, your old addresses, want to know how scammers get your information? This is it. And that's why today's video is sponsored by ORA. There are companies called data brokers that take your personal information

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Go to aura.com backslash mat to try aura for free for 14 days. You'll see exactly where your information is being sold. I'm not leaving myself wide open. you shouldn't either. Once again, that's aura.com backslash Matt for a free 14-day trial. This is like a white shoe law firm. They were in the Wells Fargo gleaming glass building. And they had created all my documentation for me to raise money to go buy foreclosures. And so I came out, I used that to come out to Florida. And so in my conversations with the tax deed guys, they're like, well, you can just buy the houses at the taxi dock.

you can just skip, skip this process. Well, let's do that. I don't want to do this anymore. So they showed me how to go to the tax deed auction to bid and buy properties. And what I discovered pretty quickly was, if you weren't paying them enough money, you weren't getting the good houses. You know, so as soon as I could, I started doing it myself, which was very, it was challenging insofar as you had to do all the title work yourself.

There's no title insurance policy. So buying a tax deed property from the auction in the world of auctions is like the hardest thing to do, you know, because it comes with no title insurance. It's all cash and the commitment's 100% and you're not supposed to see the property before you buy it unless it's vacant. So, but it's got the biggest spread. You know, we were buying houses for $10,000, $30,000. These are the same houses that are half million dollars today. Right. So that's where you want, that's kind of where you wanted to be for the most spread anyway.

So it's kind of interesting how the market forced me to be in that spot, but it's where the biggest spread is. So that's what we did. We started buying up all the tax deed properties. And, yeah, we, you know, raised capital. And, yeah, I'm not sure how much more I can say about that right now because I think we're budding up against my SEC gag order right now. So anyway. So you did that for a while? Did that for a while, right?

And so that was really fun. And we did other cool projects. Start to open up a couple of breweries we financed. So this is becoming lucrative. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we bought the oldest house in Tampa over in Ebor.

And we'd already bought a lot in the South Tampa area. There's already in the historic district. And so we bought the house, I think we bought the house for $50 grand. And we moved it for like $214,000 over to this, lot, which instantly made it protected. Because where the oldest house was previously was not protected. Okay. Yeah, you need, you need so many houses on the street to make it a protected street, and there wasn't the houses there for it to do that. So it was just kind of languishing there. And that was a lot of fun. It was the longest move ever of a house in Tampa. So it was pretty cool.

If you had pictures here, I'd show you. We had a picture of us going by Emily Arena. So going back to 2013, we were audited by the state of Arizona, because we were raising almost all of our money out of Arizona. I had my friend running a sales group there raising capital. And essentially, what you do is take our packages into family offices and people that manage money and say, hey, do you have a real estate investment? Yes or no. And if they did, then it was usually a pass, right? You don't need another one. But if they didn't, they were interested, you leave the package and we raise capital that way. What are you raising every month?

Like, how much money are you raising and you're putting into these houses? Like, is there, we were going through a couple million dollars a month? No, it was a lot. Like, I think I raised about $100 million within five years. Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, so I bet you'd be careful what would I say. So my gag order is really interesting.

You can't confirm anything and you can't deny anything. So, anyway, so we got to be a pretty sizable operation, you know, as an upstart company. And so I knew the SEC was looking at us in mid-2019 or 18, I think. And I was just largely unconcerned about it. I'm like, yeah, whatever, I got the best attorneys on the planet Earth. You know, my guy that I had followed from Dwayne Morris went on to Fox Rothschild. And we were always expanding and always growing. so we'd open up new products.

And I think it was by the time we got to DLA Piper, which is one of the largest law firms on Earth, we'd open up the QOZ fund and the REIT, which was going to be our transition away from the funds into a product we could eventually take public was the idea. So yeah, it was a pretty sizable enterprise. We were doing a lot of things, and yeah, it was pretty cool.

We were living a great lifestyle. You know, we'd, again, we'd risen the wave, you know, up, so to say. And I certainly had all the things that the newspaper articles talk about. I'd always been into collecting watches. So over the decade before, I'd been buying, selling, flipping watches, and I built it up to a pretty sizable portfolio. And I had really good connections with, you know, some of the manufacturers like Adamar's Pigay and Petek-Philippe.

So it was a really, really cool experience. I actually flew to Switzerland and got to tour the Petect Factory. I went to Basel World a couple of times to see the new watch releases. And so the watches that I bought, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because that's one of the things I think I can talk about, is the watches I bought it, I think over the years I bought between $4 to $6 million worth of watches. by flipping my way up and buying retail. And some of them had 10x in value. You know, they'd shot through the roof.

Some of these watches were super rare, like one of the first 13 F. Pejorns ever made. So, yeah, I had that going on. I was into cars as well, you know. And even in 2019, we flew to the Geneva Car Show. And the place I was buying my cars from got us into the Geneva auction, or the Geneva car show like the day before, like on Press Day. So we got to walk around the whole Geneva car show.

And this is like when the speed tail came out from McLaren. You ever seen this car? No. I think is this the one that's in the newspaper article you sent me? No. So this car I don't think is legal in America. But it's the wildest thing. It's like this hypercar.

And the back fin literally moves up and down. And the metal doesn't have a crease in it. Yeah. So I was there for five minutes just staring at that, watching a little thing go up and down. I've never seen that before. But it was a pretty amazing environment, right? The best cars on the planet.

And I'm walking around there, and my guy says, hey, are you familiar with Paghanis? I'm like, I'd heard of them before, but I wasn't really impressed by them. To me, they're like a kit car, essentially. Got an AMG V12 and a custom coachmaker, right? So I went up there, and we were walking around, and my wife and I, we were talking to them for a while. Really nice people. met Mr. Pagani, and I don't think his kids were there at that time. But, yeah, we were hanging out, and it's like, oh, yeah, by the way, you know, this car is for sale.

And it's usually a waiting list, right? You have the custom order them and do all that stuff. And so this one was specked out by Mr. Pagani. So it was a pretty nice, it was a very, very beautiful car. So, and when on the flight back home, of course, the guy's calling me, hey, do you want to take it, you know? And I'm like, man, I don't know, man, I got to figure some things out off and move some things around or whatever. But, yeah, I'm interested, right? So I get back and, you know, I decide that, yeah, if I sell off a bunch of cars that I have and, you know, I move some things around, I can make this work.

And so I'd also gotten a call from... How much is this car? Well, so the car was 2.4, I think, roughly. Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing I think might be interesting for people. Buying a $2.4 million car is not a big deal as you might think it is. Okay. Let me help with this.

Tell me how that works. Let me help you with this. So if you're in your late 40s and you've taken all these risks and you've built companies and maybe one of them's taken off and been successful, you have some money. Right. Okay. But you don't need all that money. So all you have to do is find a million dollars somewhere in your life.

Somewhere in your life, if you've accumulated a million dollars, there you go. And you've got asset base that are cash flowing, right? So you put a million dollars down on the car, and the leasing company, you can lease it. And the payment's like $15,000 a month, which is a lot of money. But if you've got an empire you've built with 350 units, you know, it's doable, right? So, yeah, so that's one of the things I like to share with people. And people are all amazed you about a $2.4 million car. It's like, well, you know, did you pay cash for your Mercedes?

Did you pay cash for your Toyota? you know, nobody does that. I have a 2007 FJ. Toyota FJ. Well, today, so, so one picture on my website has got my four Fiesta that right next to the Pagani. Right. You know, it's all part of the same story. But I'm highly upgraded right now.

I have a 2014 Lexus, you know. Nice. So I'm, you know, it's within a decade. So I'm very excited. You want to buy it? I'm going to prison. So I don't need it anymore. I've kept it up really well.

well. So there was all that going on for sure. It was a wonderful lifestyle. And, you know, it is what it is. And so the SEC really got interested in me in 2019. They sent me a fund. They sent me a letter saying, hey, we're opening up an inquiry. We'd like to have your records and whatever. And so I took a copy of the letter and I sent it over to Paul, my attorney, and I gave it to my CPA and I said, you know. Were you at all concerned? Not in the slightest, bro. Yeah, so that's the dumbest part about all of this.

I should have been way more paranoid, way more, well, any of those words that make you more concerned about the federal government being interested in your life. So they looked in, so they dealt with it for maybe six months or so. And I was pretty much disconnected. You know, I'm running the business, going. on vacations, living life. And then finally around late 2019, I realized that they were asking for more stuff

and asking weird questions. Like, I think they asked like where employees, they wanted employees addresses and home phone numbers and all this other stuff. I'm like, this doesn't seem like we're, you know, doing a standard, you know, what's going on in your business and are you compliant with securities laws?

And so I remember talking to all my attorneys. And so the interesting thing about having your business at a large law firm is, I call it getting passed around. So let me give an example. So when we were opening up all these new entities like in 2014, 15, 16, you know, Paul would say, we'd have a conversation about, let's say, the REIT. And a REIT is a really interesting investment vehicle because it's really well understood by Wall Street and everybody else. There's very specific guidelines to it. In a technical sense, a READ is completely governed by Treasury. What makes a REIT a REIT are tax laws, not really security is like.

But so we talked about transitioning over to a REIT so I could raise more capital because the funds are kind of limited. Once you, unless you're BlackRock or somebody, in my experience, once you hit about $100, $150 million, it kind of capped out on the fund thing. You know, it's not a very efficient tool. So when he talked to me into that, and I agreed, of course, but he would pass me around to everybody in the firm that, you know, well, this guy's a, he's a REIT expert, and this one over here is a REIT tax expert. This one over here is a REIT guideline or securities expert as well. And so on all these emails, I have like five different attorneys at like, let's say, DLA Piper, all building out my investment vehicle, right? And so all this time, you always had more than one person reviewing your stuff. Right.

And I say this because, you know, people have always asked me, well, do I blame my attorneys for where I'm at? No, I don't think so. I think everybody had a chance to look at everything, and it is what it is. It's not like one or two guys, you know, made a decision about everything. So we had a new group of people come in in late 19 to review the documents and everything from the legal side and work with the SEC. And I remember talking to Paul one time. I was like, do I need to disclose this to my investors? Like, is this a thing?

And can I just talk to them? All the attorneys, of course, are, no, you cannot just talk to the government. I'm like, okay. So, oddly enough, just a couple months later, the SEC wanted an interview with myself and our staff CPA. What is their concern? I don't know at this point. I don't know. So they're gathering everything from the Phoenix area, all the marketing materials, and then they're gathering everything from us.

And it's interesting. They made, like, certain requests, like, asking for, I remember one day they asked for work product. I'm like, well, what is work product? Like, you know, so I talked to my attorneys and like, well, it's just whatever you're working on. It's like, well, what do you mean? Like, we look at properties. People offer us deals. We analyze them.

We decide yes or no. And they're like, well, yeah, you have an Excel spreadsheet with all the stuff you're working on. I'm like, well, for sure, we got all kinds of Excel spreadsheets from all the years of how we, you know, how we correlate things. And so we gave them that information, for example, just, yeah, here you go. This is what it looks like inside, you know. So they subpoenaed myself and my CPA to go in for an interview at December 5th of 19, I think it was. And we voluntarily went down there, spent the whole day in the interview. And coming out of that, I realized I was even more confused and it was nothing like I thought it was.

So when I went in there, I really brushed up the week before on, I worked with my attorneys like how to answer questions appropriately. Like I was speaking right now would never fly, right? It's very black and white and right. And then also all the properties, like the valuations, where everything was and the entities that had what. So I filled my head with all this stuff going into this interview. We flew down to Miami for it. And the whole interview was just simply, you know, is this your marketing page? paperwork. Is this your PPM? Who is this person? And so it was after eight hours of that,

I was like, I don't know what we're doing here. They asked me like four real estate questions and eight hours, I think it was. So I have a question. Have investors been losing money? Nope. Have investors been complaining that they were misled? Not that I know of. Nope. I know lawsuits, no complaints, no issues, no nothing. So how did the SEC even decide we need to look at this? I don't know. I suspect, so going back to 2013, the reason why the state of Arizona pulled us up is that, and we believe that the reason is, other people that were selling like real estate products didn't like the idea that a Vegas, Florida company was offering real estate deals and kind of pulling money away from their local deals. Okay. Okay. So we think we got

turned in by somebody, said, hey, we got a guy from out of state offering securities from something to Florida. It doesn't sound legit to us. Right, right. Okay, so that did that whole investigation, and then that was, and how an investigation goes away is it just dies. They don't give you tickets. They don't find enough to prosecute you for anything, given to anything, they just goes away. Right, totally. So it just went away. I was going to say sometimes, and I don't want to mention the company, but I know of a company, where they're offering a product in a state and the state feels like it's okay there are other products it's questionable but they're making a lot of money and they'll go in and start an investigation and basically

come up with drum up some possible charges and this is a specific kind of i'll tell you off off screen. And then the district attorney in that, for that state, let's say it's a national company, will say, we'll go to them and say, look, just pay a fine. And we'll quash this whole thing. And it's like, we're selling this in 50 other states. Yeah. Nobody's ever had a problem with what we're doing.

Yeah. You guys are now investigating us. if we've done something, and they came back and they said, if we've done something wrong, charge us and we'll go to court. And it's not like criminal, but it's civil. And they're saying, we'll go to court. And we'll, because people don't understand like states can come in and charge a company with civil violations where it's not a criminal, but it's not criminal, but they're saying, and they'll try and get some kind of a, you know, some kind of a verdict where they can get a bunch of money from that company.

And maybe they pay, you know, victims. So that's why sometimes suddenly AT&T, suddenly you're being told, hey, AT&T has this massive, you know, this massive a lawsuit was filed by the state of Florida. The AT&T has to pay this much money. And you may be eligible to get some of that money. If you had bought a phone in one of these locations, whatever, that type of thing. But what people don't realize is a lot of times, that money just, the fines and things just

go to the state. Yeah. And so this company I'm thinking of, the, the state attorney goes to them and says, just take a fine. Like, you give us a fine. And they're like, no. And they're expecting them to say, okay, how much is the fine? But this company is like, we're not doing anything wrong.

And we'd rather just pay our lawyers because they're thinking to themselves, we'd rather get a verdict that says, you're absolutely wrong to let all the other states. Because if we pay a fine to you, these other states might start coming in and saying they want, they want to, you know, they want us to pay fines to them. and we're not doing anything wrong. So in my mind, and I didn't, until I was a part of this whole thing, I didn't really realize that that was a thing. 100%.

So we ran into that a little bit. We were pulled up arbitrarily, you know, let's call it once every six months by some state. Right. Like I think Michigan had sent us a letter. I want to say like Indiana did. You would provide them what they want and then they just go away. I was much lazier than that, Matt. I would just get the letter and be like right over to legal and I bought not about it.

Like, so, yeah, so all the states individually have an agenda and they think they're protecting their people. Right. And then, of course, there's the federal agencies. And so, yeah, the layers that you have to protect yourself from are so vast. It's, I never understood the, the vastness of it at the time, you know, and you don't know until you know, right? And you only know the hard way, because your attorney never can prepare you for everything.

They, you know, they give you the paperwork. and they say, yeah, this is the framework, and this is what we agree on. But, you know, if anybody of the 50 states or any one of the three-letter agencies doesn't agree with it, it's dead, you know, just instantly. So in December, I think it was December 5th, 2019, my CPA and I went to Miami for formal depositions, eight hours. You know, there's four, three SEC attorneys, SEC accountant, myself, my two, my two, SEC specialist attorneys. In fact, one of them was an ex-U.S. attorney, all from DLA, you know.

We're sitting at a table like this size and what I think of as a closet. It's like a super small room. And then you got the little court lady, you know, keeping track of everything. So eight hours of just showing me documents, most of them I'd never seen before. All of them was like marketing materials. Right. And I'm largely a hands-off. I'm not a micromanager guy. Right. So whenever we had to do marketing, it always had to be approved through legal. But I would see the emails. I would see the emails.

Okay, there's Barry talking to Paul about marketing and Barry likes it, doesn't like it or wants this. And they're going back and forth. And I would just look at my phone sometimes, see the conversation and then, you know, move on. I trusted him explicitly and he's my best friend at the time. And I'd met him in early 2000 at one of the loan shops in Phoenix. So he'd already been my friend for, you know, over 15 years. So, you know, and that's just how I handled it. And so they're showing me all these documents and all this paperwork.

And I'm just, you know, I want to answer questions because the idea in my mind, very, very naive, I'm thinking if I show up there, I can tell them anything about my business and it'll be great. Right. You know, we'll get through this and we'll wrap it all up and this will be done going into 2020. And no. So after a whole day, I just emotionally and mentally beating just being hammered by attorneys, I left that and I got caught a call from Barry. And he's like, well, how did it go? And I'm like, man, I'm just so confused by it all. They're just just showing me paperwork and everything. I just, you know, stuff I didn't know and I don't think is relevant and it's just weird.

So a couple weeks later, I really kind of gotten with my attorneys to try to say, listen, can we do another one or can I tell them about the real estate? I want them to feel good about the business if they're concerned about any of the marketing stuff, because that really was the focus, was all about the marketing materials. And so the attorneys were going back and forth in December with the SEC. And finally, in the last week of December, they said, yeah, they want you to sign a tolling agreement. I've never heard of this document before, but this is a document the attorneys give you to basically give themselves an extension on you. Oh. Yeah. No. Yeah. No.

So they want an extension on the on the statute of limitations on when they can charge you. No. Right. You got enough. That means they're already talking about charging you. They charge me now. Well, so I asked my attorney, he's like, what if I don't sign this? Well, that's what they said.

Well, they'll just charge you now. And I'm, and I was like, well, wait a minute. Well, with what? Yeah, they probably don't have enough to charge you with. That's why they're asking for more time to gather more evidence to put something together to go in front of a grand jury. They don't, they don't feel at this point, they don't feel they have enough that they can go in front of a grand jury. Great. So, no.

I don't think the SEC does grand juries because it's civil. They do something. Yeah. They didn't have enough time to do something. They didn't have enough time to gather enough to do something or they would have charged you already. They were saying, hey, can you give us more time to gather information to charge you? No, no. Charge me what you got if you can.

Well, I decided to sign it. And my thought process was this, you know. I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't. Well, no, but I'm also responsible for a lot of other people's money. Right. You know, and throwing myself in an adversarial position with the government was never my idea, right? So I just came to a decision that, you know, at the end of the day, they are the regulating body.

And, you know, here we are. So if they're going to charge me later, they're going to charge me now. I'd rather them do it later and do it strategically or maybe we can work something out with a fine. Whatever we've done wrong. At this point, I don't think we've done anything wrong. So I signed the tolling agreement like in the very last week. of December of 19. You still think the government's your friend.

You still think they're looking out for you. Santa Claus is real. That's so cute. So, yeah. You watch too much law and order. I have been socialized, yes. So, so we went through the Christmas break and, you know, the attorneys kind of pick it up in January, whatever. And so I had to pick and choose what I can say here now because it's going to

get close. So February, so February 14th was the day the U.S. Marshals and the law firm took over the office. They had in hand the lawsuit from the federal government, the SEC, against us, and the order to seize all the assets of the companies and all my personal assets, minus two entities, the QOZ and the REIT, interestingly enough. And so, but I wasn't processing all that at the time. You know, I literally came back into the office around 9 or 10 o'clock from an early morning dentist appointment and, you know, my office is being overrun by people. So I immediately call my law firm DLA Piper and they send over a person right away.

And she's there. She talks to this guy who's calling himself the receiver and all of his attorneys running around. and basically after a few minutes, she's like, she reads the paperwork or whatever, and she talks to my attorneys on the phone that I'm used to working with inside of DLA. This is civil? Yes. This is a civil. They came in and started seizing things on a civil case. It gets better.

So I've been working with them for a year, right? I just a little over a month before I'd gone in for a deposition, fully. complying with them in every respect, gave them all the paperwork. And they had an ex parte meeting with the judge. And I estimated about 40 minutes. I've read the transcripts a million times. I estimated it took about 40 minutes for her to approve seizing all of my life, all of it, except for the read and the QOZ, which is just, I don't know why they didn't include that. So, yeah, and they just took over the building, all the bank accounts, everything. And so So that happened, like I said, February 14th, 2020.

In retrospect, we've had time to rebuild all the situation. The internet went out the day before. And one of my ex-employees always brings that up to me. He says, don't you remember the internet going out the day before? Man, we had the best equipment in that building. Why would it go out? And the guy couldn't figure it out. And so they now think that that was them, you know, tapping into the building and so forth.

And then, you know, thinking back, mid-January, late January, we, Tony and I, my number one guy, we would walk out of the building usually at night together pretty late from working on stuff. And I remember standing out in front of the building a couple times. We'd locked it up, but we were just finishing our conversation in front of the cars and looking across the street and seeing a Dodge sitting there like a cop car, just like sitting there in the nail salon place, like no other cars all by itself. and that went on for like three or four days, and we would laugh about it. Like, oh, somebody's leaving their car there, whatever.

We'd make jokes about it. So later I would find out by the billing cycle and the transcripts that the SEC was already working with the law firm to seize the company, even before they talked to the judge. So the receivership had already hired private investigators to track us and follow us around and learn our movements before they even got to the judge. So they knew exactly what they were doing. Yeah. Okay, so you come in. There's lawyers everywhere. Lawyers everywhere, yeah. Coming in, which to me makes me think of like FBI agents, like they're everywhere,

a seat grabbing what, the computers or. Yeah, so they seized everything. Like my personal computer I did everything on was there at the office. Yeah, they seized everything that I, that I can think of. Are you shocked? Like, what's going on? You don't say, like, did anybody say this is, is this is something that could be could happen no this is coming nope nope nobody everybody everybody was shocked so what do your lawyers say when you tell uh well they they have to confer they have to figure out what's going on they're scrambling as well so i'm given the document and i can barely read it because everybody's just walk it's surreal it's just shocking like you know everybody's interviewing all these attorneys are just every interviewing every employee in there going through the computers and

everything and i'm just like what is going on so we have like a little sitting area in the main area. I remember sitting there with Tony and Tony and I were like they were not interviewing us. They did not want to talk to us. And so I just sat there and I was like, I don't know even sure what to do right now. Like I can't interfere. They're federal agents. And I asked one of the employees, I'm like, how did they even get in? And they showed up with U.S. Marshals. And the U.S. Marshals were here and the attorney's to said, told them it was safe enough that they could leave. So I don't know if any FBI agents were they. that day or not, but definitely, from what I'm told, the marshals are what help them secure the

building and just take it over. So, yeah, you know, the lawyer came over from DLA Piper, the office here in Tampa, and, you know, she, there's nothing for her to do. There's nothing, you know, you got a federal court order. Everybody's just trying to figure out what's going on. They're like, yeah, stay out of their way, don't interfere. So I was there for maybe a couple of hours, and I was like, I just don't even know what else to do. So I went home. So I went home. So I went home and yeah I just waited for the attorneys to call me back and that's really what started all the phone calls with the attorneys and so I can't remember what happened really what happened next just I remember you can't say what it was in the promotional or marketing material that got

them so upset that they that they decided they wanted to come in and seize everything Nope. You can't say anything about that because that's all part of the gag order with the SEC. Correct. Just want to make that clear. Yep. Yep. Which is really disheartening for me because, you know, in my entrepreneurial journey, I love the community of entrepreneurs.

Like, for example, I was a member of the EO chapter in Las Vegas and in Tampa. And for a little while, I was their president. And EO is a really fantastic organization, entrepreneurial organization. And I credit them with partially building. me. For example, like, when it's flashback here a little bit, okay? So, you know, EO has events. So you get to join EO. And once you join EO, they have events like regional events, global events, whatever. And those are going to go to those events. They have speakers like business people that have written books and stuff. And I'll never forget this. One of the regional events I went to in EO really

changed my life because, you know, when I came out of the 90s and early 2000, I knew the mistakes I had made in business and I wanted to make sure they didn't happen. So I was rather, I'm not a micromanager by design, but like I tried to be more involved with everything in the business, right? I just wanted to know what everybody was doing to make sure it was done right. And I'll never forget this. I walked into one of the training seminars. A guy wrote a book called Turn This Ship Around. And I wasn't really interested in listening to him because he was ex-military.

And my father was military and he and I don't talk much. And so anyway, I went in and I sat there and was like, well, this is going to be horrible. And he told the story how he was the captain of the lowest performing naval submarine. And he turned it around, right? And this is a story about management success in the military on this naval sub. And he basically talked about this concept called the water line. And it was an idea that any decision, the water line on a ship is, you know, where the water gets in this hole. Right.

So if there's a hole above, you're not dying. sinking the ship, pull below, you're dying, right? So the concept was, just draw a line on a piece of paper of all the tasks in your business and your people that you have, and it's a longer explanation, but basically get rid of all the decision-making and the jobs that are above the water line. So that is really how I came to a place where I was able to expand as much as I did because I hired people, we all, you know, we came up manuals, procedures, and guidelines, but also the decision-making, I gave them a lot of a time.

autonomy because if as long as it was above a water line, so to say. I've always been involved with entrepreneurs. Right. So it's always been my tribe, so to say. All my friends were business owners, small business owners in town, lots of events, lots of things to go to. And here I am, I've had these wild experiences in my life and I can't share them with anybody. I can't warn anybody publicly about, hey, this is what I've learned and this is how you can help yourself. Right. So that part about the gag order has got to be one of the most frustrating pieces of it for me because I can't even share how to protect yourself or what I've learned to the community. And really quickly, why is that gag order in place?

Like what is the definition or why? This is one of my favorite questions. So I learned this. The gag order is in place because it's a tool used by the SEC. So this is going to have a longer discussion, but the gag order in itself was created in 1972. It's just a how they called a housekeeping rule. It wasn't voted on by Congress. Nobody got it approved.

It just showed up on their regulations one year. And as my receiver said in my sentencing, I was there in the 1970s when they implemented it so that when people walked out of the courtroom, they couldn't say I didn't do it. Right. So it's simply a tool to silence the other party. It's not a tool that actually has any usefulness to the investing public. It doesn't have any real utility. So the gag order was instituted in 1972, and the SEC usually incorporates that with any settlement that they offer you.

So in my case, so I got seized on October, I mean, I'm sorry, Valentine's Day 2020, the gag order wouldn't show up in my life until about a year later. So I got seized and I'm sitting at home. The attorneys are trying to figure things out and trying to, I'm thinking trying to unwind this thing and explain it. Because there are other choices you can do if you're a regulator. You can put a company under a monitorship. You know, you can give them guidelines and rules. they didn't want to do any of that.

They just wanted to seize things. So I'm sitting at home and I'm sitting there waiting for the attorneys to figure it out. And this is going on through the weekend. And then Sunday night, my attorneys from DLA Piper want to get on a conference call with me. Now, keep in mind, you know, my main attorney, I've known him at this point, I think six or eight years. He's, I've moved three law firms with him. He's built me up from scratch. I've gone through other audits with them.

Yeah, so they all get me on a phone call on a Sunday night and basically tell me they can't represent me anymore because they've also represented the business entities. And so they don't represent me personally, which is really frustrating because I had asked Paul about the personal representation versus the legal representation years earlier. And as I recall, the explanation was, well, they're all single member LLCs. you're the manager, you're the shareholder, you are personally represented. And he did personally represent me in several different legal matters over the years. So, yeah, I got fired on that Sunday night. So when I got a chance to read that paperwork that I was given, I had two weeks to show up to court to answer to the charges on the SEC complaint.

Right. Right. So my attorney has fired me. and I have two weeks to go show up in federal court. And so I start calling around my other attorneys. So I had another law firm that I was working with here in Tampa. Great law firm, great guys. But another, they're a large law firm for Florida.

And I said, can you represent me? Do you have a securities division? Do you do this kind of stuff? He's like, yeah, we do, but we don't want to represent Ponzi guys because that was the headline at the time, right? So I'm like, well, you know, can you help me? all. He's like, well, let me see what I can do. They're saying they don't want to represent a Ponzi of someone being accused of running a Ponzi scheme. Correct. Correct. So all the, all the high-in law

firms don't have anything to do with that. Okay. There was one guy in Miami that I called, because I'm just searching for anybody right now, calling up anybody that'll take my call. He said he would represent me for a period of like 30 to 60 days, I think it was, to get me through that first hearing or whatever was schedule. I can't remember now. They wanted a half million bucks. I'm like, well, I don't have a half million dollars right now. Everything's been seized. For what?

I'll take a public defender. Well, no, so do you know there's no public defenders for civil trials? That's insane. Let that sink in. Yeah, so I, so if you're sued civilly, there's no public defender for you. There's no network. There's nothing there. Okay.

Yeah. So there I was with all my assets frozen. My attorneys fired me. And by the way, I've got to. to go defend myself against the three-letter agency. So scrambling around for that. So the Florida law firm did come through, and it was really cool. But I could tell it wasn't a good personality match, right?

You know, working with the attorney. Yeah. It was just, it just wasn't a good match. And so one of my business ventures that I was... At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation, of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart

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And he says, and so I asked him, you know, is there anybody there that can help me if, you know, if I'm looking for another avenue? And he says, yeah, we just got a guy here who's actually a senior manager from the Southern District of New York, SEC. Like, oh, this is going to be great. So I transferred law firms to him, and he gets me through. you know, the first summer. So what happened was in February is when the receivership took over, but about 30 days later, I realized that they hadn't taken the QOZ fund and the, then the REIT. And there's like 40 or so properties in these. There were new entities, but they had some stuff on them. And so the court had me responsible for those. Now, keep in mind, all of my employees are still

working for the company. The receivership is running them at that time. But I can't have access to anything. No access to money, no access to records. I can't talk to them. So I had to, so I'm sitting there in my house. I'm taking phone calls from, you know, the different property managers. And because some of the properties were up in Tennessee. Some of them were, one of them, I think, was a brewery building. Anyway, so they had all these questions for me, bills. I remember my roofing guy here in Tampa sent me a roof bill. I'm like, bro, I can't pay a roof bill right now. So it was pretty comical.

So I had to find another accounting firm here in town, which I was referred to by my friend, that would actually do that on my behalf, which is weird. So the court had to say that this other accounting firm could take care of the accounting and deal with the assets and these other two entities on my behalf, but I could not do it. So everything went through the attorney. and everything was approved by the court. And so I was advised by my attorneys, I shouldn't touch anything, right?

Don't talk to anybody. Don't, you know, because they decide that I'm interfering, that'll make it worse. Okay. So we did that for a while. And then finally in the summer of 2020 is when I have my first hearing. This is the first time I get to show up my side,

my legal side gets to show up and say anything and do anything, right? And right now, COVID is just getting kicked off. Right. It's a rough time. So I'm pretty excited about this because my attorneys, you know, have read the complaint now. I've given them as many emails as I can. There's like 9,500 emails on my personal or my business email. And so we've gone through as many as we could.

We came up with rebuttals and, you know, a strategy and a plan. And the day before the hearing, the receiver dumps in like hundreds of text messages, just this data dump, like on the last, like, literally at 5 o'clock the night before. And my attorneys are freaking out about it. And I'm like, well, what are they doing? What is going on? It's like, yeah, they're just trying to muddy the water as much as possible. I'm like, well, what is the receiver care?

What are they doing? This is my battles with the SEC, right? The receiver is just like a neutral third party. They're supposed to be marshalling assets to protect investors. Yeah, no. Right. So we get to the hearing, and it's my first, like I said, my first chance to be heard. And one of the first things the judge says is, I can't stand to read another thing.

And I'm like, oh, yeah. So because she's just gotten too much information, too much barrage of data. And so, you know, the strategy did work to some degree. So in that hearing, she just pretty much. reaffirmed everything. And yeah, it was pretty much over at that point because you can't really unwind a receivership. Once you seize a company, it severs all the contracts

you've ever had, all the ties and all the financial responsibilities. They're all broken at that point. And that's on a business level, right? So on a personal level, I can tell you what happens is all of your banks fire you immediately. Like the very next week, I was getting letters from every bank have been a part of. They're closing. So they're closing accounts of mail

them any money that's in there back to the receiver right i don't i'm not to me right um and uh you know same thing with insurance you know aig fired me right away uh anyway so yeah so that was the that was the first fired you mean they're they're closing the accounts yeah okay okay i consider being fired right so okay so then after that you know it was was about the money right so i so i So my father-in-law said he would lend me money to, you know, try to, you know, pay for the family and try to fix my situation. Right. And I remember telling my attorneys, I have a half million dollars set aside from borrowed money to deal with the legal matter, right? And they were like, yeah, half million dollars may be able to get you to trial, but a trial will be a couple million bucks.

And I was like, oh, geez, you know. And can I get my companies back? No. The companies are already gone, man. You got to let that go. So I'm borrowing a few million dollars to fight a legal battle that I can't even get the companies back and what'll maybe clear my name maybe? And so we had this conversation about what would I get out of it if I went to trial? And they're like, well, there's some concepts you need to understand.

I'm like, sure, you know, go ahead. So number one is prima facie. And we heard the SEC say this on the first hearing. prima facie, there's different levels of accountability. There's no one of what I'm looking for. There's different levels of burdens of proof. That's what I'm trying to say. There's like the highest one, as I recall, is beyond a reasonable doubt, right? That's like murder trials and so forth. And then

there's preponderance of evidence. There's another one. That's typically civil. And below that is what's called prima facie. And prima facie is a Latin term, and it literally means it looks like it. The only burden of proof the SEC has is prima facie. So that is the only level that they have to go to, but for you to win, you have to go beyond that to win. Okay. So, so the opposing side has got more horsepower than you. They've been working on the case for over a year, and their only burden of proof is prima facie. That's one concept. second one is section 17a it's called strict liability it's in all securities laws and strict liability there's two different pieces of it but the most damaging one is simply means uh if any if anything

has occurred at all in the company whether you knew about it or not whether it was a one-time thing or a part of your culture you're guilty so if you put prima facie on top of section 17a it's impossible to win a case. That's why the Mark Cuban case is so important. He took the SEC to trial. And I think it took him a decade, and he spent about $12 million on it. And at the end, I don't think he'd ever do it again.

But he's a very rare case. So we're having this conversation, right? They're introducing me these concepts. I'm like, well, how can they say the things that they said? Because I'm angry about everything right now, right? This is in 2020. And he said, well, first of all, you know, All the prosecutors have, you know, qualified immunity.

They can say whatever they want to. You know, the SEC has prima facie and Section 17A. So you're not going to win. You're not going to win on the trial. I'm like, okay, so we're negotiating now. Yes, we're going to do a settlement. That's the smartest thing to do. Okay, there we go.

So the new strategy is we're working towards a settlement, towards the last half of 2020. So my attorneys had to go to the SEC and ask me if they'd even do a settlement because right now they're suing me. right? They're marching towards a trial. So as a big win for my attorneys, the SEC would be allowed to enter settlement negotiations, which is kind of a gift in a way. So we went down that road and they determined that roughly, you know, there's a certain number that they decided that I was not entitled to or was no good, and that's what they wanted back. But in the negotiations, I have to

negotiate with the receiver and I have to negotiate with the SEC to approve this settlement. And if those two parties approve it, then you give it to the judge and the judge says it's okay or not. So in that process, they realized I had far more assets and they wanted it at all. So that was the number. The number was, the number moved from like 18 to 24, it ended up at $27 million. And so that that's the only number of. they would settle for. Otherwise, we're going to trial. And I don't have the money for trial because my assets are all frozen. Right. I'm like, okay, whatever, I'm young enough, I'll recover, right? So that's how you get to the road of a settlement, right, the thinking in the process. So in the settlement process,

it's all about, you know, you turning over assets. And oftentimes, they'll ask for things like, you know, a securities ban or something to that effect. And I have no securities ban whatsoever. which is I find kind of ironic in my case. But so we're negotiating the settlement. And they start sharing the paperwork back and forth, the attorneys. And finally, it comes down to the final part of it. And this is in late, this is early 2021, I think, roughly. I can't remember now exactly.

But that's when the gag order first showed up. And it's just part of it's just built into the document. It's not even like a certain addendum or anything. It's just built in the language of one of the pages. And I went over with my attorneys and they're like, oh, yeah, this is standard. This is what they always do? I'm like, well, what do you mean? I can't talk about it.

And it's like, well, you just can't confirm or deny the charges publicly, you know. And so at the time, I was like, well, that sounds pretty specific. Okay, whatever. And at this time, you have so many problems in your brain, right? Your finances are screwed. You have no brand name in the public anymore. and at this time I was learning that and I think it was late 2020 I learned that the SEC and the receiver had contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office and were trying to get me indicted on criminal charges.

So, and they had already interviewed a few of my employees in the summer of 2020, the FBI had. So now I know the FBI is involved, the U.S. Attorney's Office. And so my thinking was, well, I just need to close down damage, right? just choose fewer battles to fight. So I signed the SEC agreement, turned over everything. I'm financially destitute at this time. So I'm living off borrowed money from family. And, you know, the criminal investigation is in full swing.

So the FBI puts up a website dedicated to me, and they have it up for five years. Yeah, yeah, I have my own FBI website. What does that say? Looking for information. I just had a it had a little sentence there about my the things I was accused of with the SEC. Right. And then if you have any information, contact us. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so that's, it's challenging to get past a second interview if you're applying for jobs when the FBI has it was. Right. You might be shocked to know that. So, so I end up borrowing some money. No, my, my wife and family, use some of that borrowing money to go back. buy an asset, another piece of real estate. So we're working on developing that during the time of 20, 22 or so. And so we're working away on it. We settled with the SEC. My wife's family bought

her a new house. We all live there. And that's when the gag order came into effect effectively at that time. Okay. So you end up, you settle. The, you settle. The SEC thing is settled. That's done. So that should be a wash and you're trying to kind of start your life over at that point. It doesn't work that way in this case. Right. So the SEC is settled, but the receivership is open, right? And some of these receiverships can run a decade. Like the guy, the guy running my receivership, he's a, he's a professional. He's worked for like, I think, 14 years inside the SEC. And it gets handed off a lot of these receiverships. So if you do any research on receiverships, you start seeing the same names over and over again. You know,

the attorneys that work at one law firm that are on a receivership or on a different receivership in Miami. It's like a little, it's like a little circle of people that just kind of pass them around. So the receivership is still active and alive. And, you know, one of the things they're charged with doing is investigating everything. So they're still investigating all my bank accounts. They have questions for my attorneys. They're still involved. with me on the day-to-day. So I've got criminal attorneys that are trying to learn about my situation and how to deal with them from a criminal point of view because they think it's different than the civil point of view. But I can tell you from my shoes, it's the same.

Right. Everybody just does whatever they want to do. So I hired a couple of attorneys here in town to deal with a criminal situation. And that went on for years. And so there's all kinds of legal spatterings with the receivership. You know, it's just an amazing dynamic, you know. As far as a professional organization goes, it's probably one of the lowest I've ever seen. Like, for example, there were some things that I wanted to keep, like gifts that were given to me. I actually got a letter from somebody saying, yeah, I gave Brian this gift.

There's no record that I ever paid or bought it, and they just wouldn't give it to us, you know. You know, I was involved in several businesses around town and then set on some boards. and when the receivership takes over, that's theirs now. So they're showing up to meetings with my friends, other business owners, and saying certain things about me. It's just a wild dynamic. So all this is just going on and on for all these years. And so during this time, you know, we're watching the receivership.

We're watching his reports that he's giving out, and they're watching the actual asset sales, and just seeing what just doesn't match up very well. So that's part of the interesting part is just sitting around watching all that go on like that. I wrote a story about a guy named Donovan Davis. And he went to trial and was found guilty of running a Ponzi scheme. Not because he actually did anything, but he was kind of duped into it by two con men, duped him into being a part of the company.

And they duped him into being a part of the company because he had a bunch of his family, was wealthy. they had wealthy friends Donovan was their first investor so there's two guys start a 4X trading trading firm they go to Donovan because one of the guys was like a friend of the family

his parents were friends of you know they don't his parents were friends of Donovan's family so he comes in and says Donovan hey we're doing a 4X trading would you mind investing we're kind of trying to drum up business so Donovan gives him like a hundred grand

a month later, there's like $112,000 in the account. A month after that, there's like, you know, $12,000 or $26,000. He's made like $26,000 in two months. He's like, wow, this is amazing. Like, this is like over 100% return on my money. And, you know, annually, of course. And he's like, you know, this is amazing. So these guys come and they, would you mind if we pitch your family and some of your friends?

He's like, yeah, they pitches them. He's like, I'm doing great. And so the family invests about a million dollars. into it. And then they go to Donovan, and Donovan tells a couple friends, they invest money. They go to Donovan and say, Donovan, can you, would you be interested in being a part of the firm? And he's like, are you serious? Donovan, by the way, is, his family sells dirt. It's one of those businesses that you don't know exist, but like they, you know, in Florida, we're at sea level or below. So you have to buy dirt from some place and move it to build, right? To build a subdivision.

And so that's what his family does. And so Donovan is trained to basically drive these massive earth movers and be a diesel mechanic. You don't know anything about 4x trading. And so, of course, these two guys go to him and say, would you come in? And all you have to do is raise money. And he thinks, that's great. I can do that. Like, I just got to smoze people.

I can just tell people about how great I'm doing with you guys. so he does that for the next year he raises like i don't know like 17 18 million dollars and then the whole thing collapses is actually a Ponzi scheme donovan didn't know was a Ponzi scheme he goes immediately to the u.s attorney and the u.s attorney says we'll look into it and they go to all these investors and all the investors are like donovan's the one told us to invest oh yeah so donovan they indict donovan along with everybody else he goes to trial the two con men cooperate against him donovan knew the whole time so they get their sentence But they all do like this one guy doesn't even do any time.

One guy I think he does a year. Next guy does like maybe three or four years. Donovan got 20, no, Donovan got 17 years. He's still in prison. 17 years? Yeah. How much was the loss? Like 20 million, but he went to trial.

Oh, yeah. They don't like that. They don't like that. They're not happy about that at all. And so he, and his lawyer the whole time was like, even if you lose on it, and the most you'll get it's three or four years. So he goes. He goes like, yeah, he told me if you get more than four years, I'll get.

up my license. And Donovan goes, well, I got 17 years. He's and he's still practicing. So anyway, the point is, is that during this whole process, the judge, who hates Donovan's guts, brings in a receiver to manage all of the stuff. And there were still, I forget how much money was still left. You got like four or five million dollars, start selling off assets that Donovan says was stuff that I bought before I even was a part of this whole thing. thing. Like, they're selling off my boats, my cars, like stuff that, and they're trying to sell off stuff that his family owns. Yeah. And so they're like, that's my dad's car. Like, what are you

talking about? My parents bought that. I mean, the receiver's trying to grab assets from his parents. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's so it's, it's, it's funny, but it's not funny, but it's funny because what happens is, uh, because there's a quote from the judge, which always cracks me up, uh, that the receiver is selling off stuff, but he's not, he's selling it off. you know, pennies on the dollars. Like, like, I mean, like,

it didn't even make sense how low he's selling this stuff. And everybody always kind of tells me that in the receivers, like they sell it off to people that, you're basically selling it off to people you know. And then they resell it. And then a year later,

you might, the receiver might get his cut. Like, it's, it's, it's like a good old boys network. And so what's funny is that it's kind of like known, but unknown, right?

And you kind of know it, but it's, it's not really talked about. and what's so comical about is this particular receiver had was doing, had done it so blatantly. Like, you shouldn't be living in a $3.5 million house. You're a lawyer. You're a lawyer who's being given, who's a receiver, who's not supposed to be, you're not supposed to be making this kind of money. Anyway, eventually the FBI gets involved and they start investigating him and they find out that this guy is embezzled like $20 million or something.

And when he gets, so including money from Donovan's company. So money, the $3 or $4 million that should have, could have gone back to some of these investors is gone. Right, right. Did the receiver basically take himself out or did he flee? I think there was something kind of interesting about the way that ended up to. And the FBI during, I think the raid, I think maybe he might have done something. I don't know, I'd have to reread it. But what's funny is that the quote from the judge,

so think about it, Donovan's defense is, at the time, these guys were making, it appeared to me they were making money and that this was a good investment. That's his whole defense, which kind of makes sense. I mean, granted, you, you know, he doesn't really realize he has a fiduciary responsibility to these people that are donating money.

He's just saying, I'm going based on the fact that it looks like a good investment and it had been a good investment. And, you know, and so in retrospective, it wasn't, but at the time it looked like it. So he has a quote from the judge who appointed the receiver. And he says, I mean, at the time, he had a good, he had a good reputation. He seemed very capable. So it's like your argument for appointing this guy and you're not going to jail, judge, is that you're, is the same argument. that Donovan's making for, you know, he seemed good.

He had a good reputation. It seemed okay. Like, yeah, but isn't that Donovan's excuse? You said that wasn't acceptable. It's not going to work out. And you've appointed this guy that ripped off $15 or $20 million worth of assets that should have gone to to victims. Like, they're re-victimized. Yeah.

And it's funny, in Donovan's case, remember the million dollars that he and his family ended up putting in? He's actually sentenced. Part of the, when they add up the loss, part of the, loss is the million. His own money. He's like, and that's like what pushes him over, you know how they have different brackets of money. That pushes him over. He's like, my millions is what pushed me over the edge to get another enhancement. How long did he get? 17 years. How long ago was this? Oh gosh, 13, 14 years ago. He should be out. He really should be out now, but they're dragging it. He should be out like on an ankle monitor right now. He should be

in a halfway house or probably home confinement. But the Bureau of prisons is just dragging. They're just, oh, and his judge is throwing up roadblocks for him to get out. I mean, his judge just for some reason has this complete dislike for him. And really it's because he went to, you know, he went to trial. It was also the judge's first major case. I read the whole transcripts and throughout the whole transcripts of the, of the trial, the judge was a state court judge. he keeps saying to the he keeps saying and what does the state have to say i mean what does the government have to say he i mean through the whole we're talking about days and he just it's like you could tell he hasn't he hasn't read stuff he's not really he's gotten getting people's names wrong he can't stand

donovan donovan don't literally will put in like let's say a 20 page motion and you know on the docket sheet, it says like it was entered at one, you know, at one o'clock or one 15, right? 112. 112 declined. Literally three minutes later. You can't read the 20 or 30 pages

in three minutes and it just immediately declined. Like as quickly as you saw it come in, you type up a, yeah, denied. You couldn't even read it. I mean, it's that, it's like, it's like 112 and at 115, it's denied. It's like, bro, you're not even fucking trying. You don't even.

at least wait two hours, make it seem like you don't, but see the judges have 100% discretion. Totally. There's just nothing you can do to a federal judge. He basically would have to go out and murder someone in order for him to be taken off the bench. And he probably still wouldn't. He'd have to be incarcerated at that point. He'd be like he'd walk me, walking into the prison, and then they'd be like, okay, we're taking him off. Like, he could be listening to cases that whole time while he's on supervision.

It's the wildest thing. Having this be my first experience at all with the legal system, it's just phenomenal. You never believed it. This is how it worked. No, I was the guy. I was the guy. There's smoke. There's fire.

Yeah. And the government's not going to waste their time doing just nothing. Yeah. Well, everything, you know, people are so programmed to believe what the government tells them. It really is, and I'll use the Red Bull. When Red Bull was a guy, his name was Andrew Levinson, he said, during Baudier at his trial, one of, they were, they were questioning the jury of their future jury, potential jury. And one of the guys, one of the potential jurors, they're questioning him,

they said, do you believe that you could find him? After reviewing all the evidence, you could find him not guilty. And he goes, no. And they were like, what do you mean? No, you haven't even seen anything yet. He goes, well, he was indicted on 22 counts of wire fraud. He did something. Yeah. And that's what they think. And Red Bull was like, and I appreciate him saying that. He just was honest. Everybody else is thinking it, but they know the appropriate thing to say is,

yeah, if I look at the evidence that it doesn't, is it, I could find him not guilty. That's what they know what to say. To him, he's like, no. Yeah. No, I don't, no. They couldn't indict you on 22 counts if you weren't guilty of something. That's what he think. That's what they think.

So at least he said it. And that's what Red Bull always said. He's like, at least he said it. Yeah. Of course, he didn't get it on the jury. No. But can't have that guy on there. No, that's wild.

Yeah, so my receivership, yeah, within like the first few months of the receivership, I mean, he's billing out like almost 100 grand a month straight away. How could you do that? I mean, well, because everybody's involved, right? Like, you get, you know, he gets his legal bill. His law firm gets the legal bill and the accounting firms. And then he hires specialist lawyers. Yeah, it's just the wildest thing.

Yeah, so the summer of 2020, when I, you know, I'd found out that the FBI was called in to interview my ex-employees. You know, I also found out that he had already put his son on payroll. And, you know, so there was a situation where we had to turn over our house to the receivership, which is a hysterical story. So we're all going to meet at my house to turn over the property to the receivership, right? Okay. And this is important because here in Florida, this is one question I get quite a bit is, well, your house should be protected, it's homesteaded.

Okay, let me tell you something. If the federal government comes in and says, we're going to sue you to oblivion or you're going to give up your house, you're going to give up your house because you have no money because your assets are all seized. So the house was included. So we met all there at the house to turn over the assets. And his son, the receiver's son, is running from room to room. laughing. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. How's the son? I'm not really sure, but he's not young. I was just like flabbergasted. And so that's going on. And this is a time

when I'm turning over the watches as well. So the receivership brought in people from Sotheby's auction house, which was actually very good because it's very reputable. That's a great way to get rid of these watches. But people from Sotheby's flew down and they were there and everybody's all very solemn and serious. And so they're going over everything. And this guy's running from room to room, you know, making jokes and sounds. And some of my ex-employees are there as well. He brings, it's like a big party.

And he's got like, I don't know, six other attorneys there with himself. And so we're all sitting there turning over everything. And one of the things that happens is we're sitting in the back room and I'm just watching them catalog everything. And I really don't want to leave until everything gets cataloged correctly, right? So he comes down the hallway, and I'm in the conversation with the guy from Sotheby's because he's asking me specifically about some watches and their paperwork and so forth. So I'm telling him. And he comes in and he interrupts and he says, Alia, did you want a cookie with your sandwich?

Yeah, he had to break up the conversation to ask Leah if she wanted a cookie with her sandwich. And then it was nice enough to turn and ask us if we wanted a sandwich. He was catering a party at the house for everybody there. And he wanted to make sure. I'm like, no. So we did not have sandwiches at the house party at my house with the investors' money. So hysterical story. So I knew he had him on payroll and, you know, very early on in the receivership.

And one of the other attorneys that I had interviewed for the criminal side, another ex-U.S. attorney here in Tampa at a very good law firm. he had actually mentioned to me when I told him this story, I told him everything that was going on. And he's like, yeah, I'm not surprised about that. I heard something that he was looking for a job. And I'm like, well, you know, dad got him a job. That's pretty cool. So he's all squared away now.

Yeah. So the receivership would go on and on, right? And so we would find out things as it progressed on. And so in the case of my receivership, you know, this is when the market was shooting through the roof, right? in the, you know, 2020 to let's say now. And so he was selling properties to wholesalers below market, and the wholesalers were flipping them within 30 to 60 days and making an extra 10, 20 percent on like dozens of properties.

Inside of 30 days, they're already flipping the properties. Right. So they clearly were selling them below value because somebody who's walked in did almost nothing and got rid of it, right? And there's, you know, dozens of those. So the other interesting thing, the receivership came up with an idea is that very innovative. He came up with an idea that he was going to create an auction house that was going to charge the buyers of the properties of these properties 5%. And that was going to save the investors money.

Okay. Right. Right. So if you're an investor and you're about the business of buying assets or houses and you go to an entity and they're like, yeah, so we have this house here, you know, you can bid on. it, by the way, there's a 5% fee. What's the first thing you do? Well, just count it 5%. Right.

Right. But in his land, no, everybody's going to pay a 5% premium. Well, he's a bureaucrat. They don't understand. You don't have bureaucrats run businesses. You have them work for the government. And that's where he's not like a gray land. He's not really

in the government, but it is the government. It's the weirdest thing. Well, he can't lose. No, no, no, no. He's untouchable. Like, none of this is affecting his face. Yeah, so I would bring these examples to my attorneys and be like, well, listen, can we, can we do anything about this? I mean, at the end of the day, if we're trying to get investors their money back, this is, you know, this is a problem.

They're like, yep, there's nothing to do. And so, yeah, so we sell them houses at a discount. And then, like I mentioned, I was selling off a bunch of cars and I had them already being shipped to places to be sold or already had agreements in place to sell. He canceled all those and sold the cars off at losses. Like he lost like over, you know, at least 300,000 that I can find that by not keeping the contracts that I had in place to sell the cars. He just, he just canceled them all. He just set on them. So somebody's going to buy one of the cars for 400,000.

He cancels the contract and sells it to somebody else for 320,000. Exactly, exactly. And he just over and over and over again. So one of the cars we had back in, you know, in 19, we got one of the very first colonnons here in town, the Rolls-Royce truck. Right. And so we had that car there on the property. And like, I don't know, six, seven months later, suddenly I'm getting an email from my attorney. You know, the receiver's attorney needs you to sign off on this title.

You need you to sign off on this title. And I'm like, out of all the things, she wants me to sign this thing. Like, I think I'd sign only two titles over. I had a lot of assets, a lot of, and there's only like a couple times they wanted me to like stop what I was doing and sign something and give it back to them. and it was a title for the truck. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. It's weird because it was like, I think it was a one-pay lease. And I mean, I think the title belongs in the bank's name.

So I was kind of confused by it. So I was thinking about it. And she already had it filled out with the mileage on there. And I looked at it and I was like, I didn't drive that truck, but I don't think that's what that was. And so when we went to turnover, there was a couple different situations where we were returning over property. to the receivership, right? And one of them with the cars was, I already got a feeling that there

was something not great going on for me. And so I was taking pictures of all the odometers of the cars. And so I had taken a picture of the colonel in, fortunately. And so this went on over a couple of days this email. And finally it got nasty, like, if he doesn't sign this, we're going to take it to the judge. And so my attorneys are like, oh, okay, you don't want to go to the detectives to the judge. You just sign off on it, Brian. And so I stopped what I was doing, and I looked up in the the pictures and I found that the mileage that I had for the colonel in was actually different than the mileage they had but what they had was actually less. So I mentioned this to a couple of people around town. Now keep in mind, you know, the receivership has got all my same employees there.

He gave them all raises. Most of them are still working there today. And so, you know, we did a lot of business around town. So there's a lot of people giving. me feedback over the years about things in general. And so one of the stories I got was they saw the colon and driving around town in 2020. And I was like, well, that doesn't make any sense. It's on the receivership. So I'm confused now. I'm wondering at like why the mileage was different and why they wanted me to sign off on it. And so finally when I presented the evidence, it was, you know, the response was good catch. It was dropped. So I'm sitting there thinking, wow, I already know the FBI is investigating me, U.S. Attorney's Office, the SEC, the receivership,

and this lady is trying to get me to sign off on odometer fraud, because it's right there on the, there's any variation that's odometer fraud. And I'm like, wow, what an easy thing for them to get me on. You know what I mean? Like to add to the, whatever they're building on my case. Well, I thought you were saying that they had driven, that somebody was driving the vehicle and rolled the odometer backwards? No, I don't know that per se, but I did hear the car was on the road after I didn't have it. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what I'd heard. But I know that the odometer statement that she wanted me to sign was different than the one.

Was it higher? More mileage or less? I don't want to get any detail. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a pretty big sticking point for me. I was like, oh, yeah, this is just, that's where this is going. With their kids in a candy store? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, another great example is they, you know, I've had personal ownership of a mobile home park here in town,

and I had bought it as a semi-distressed asset, and I'd spent half million dollars buying 11 brand new mobile homes from Titan here in town to be on the property. So they're brand-new units, and I got them in a pretty significant discount, and after COVID hit, everything just ran through the roof. roof, right? So the value of these mobile homes, because it went from suddenly you could get a mobile home any day of the week if you just ordered it, to now there's like a two or three-year

waiting list, right? So the value of these mobile homes that I just put on there, and they had full factory warranties doubled, right? So the receivership puts up the property for sale and, you know, sells it and in his paperwork he produces you know he has to ask the judge permission to sell it and he gives a story on why he should sell it right in the documents and so in the documents he says you know we offered it at you know i think it was three million and we got three and a half million dollars for we think this is a good sale we think this is a good good thing we did and it's just a normal arm's length transaction they have those words in the document and uh you know this is this is a good thing i saw that and I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

So I looked it up. And I've got friends that have realtor licenses and so forth. So I had access to the MLS. And it turns out it seems like it was transferred to the attorney that was handling all of the properties as far as the real estate sales. It certainly appears as transfer to his brother-in-law. So the sales price, they say, was 3.5. But the mobile homes on there were worth an extra million dollars. So we actually paid $2.5 million for the property because he's got a million dollars with the mobile homes he can sell.

So while all the receivership was going on in the background was the receivership sued the law firms that had represented me and built the companies. Okay. Yeah. So I guess the statute of limitations ran out for the first law firm, Dwayne. Morris, but Fox, Rothschild, and DLA Piper were sued by the receiver for bad paperwork, essentially, not compliant. So roughly around 2022-ish, the rumor of the settlement, I think, I think that was the time period that the settlement was coming out. And so ultimately, they ended up settling for about $22 million each. So both the law firms together paid four,

$44 million. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. So I paid $27 million and the two law firms paid $44. So it's $75 million in just, you know, I call it compliance drama. Right. Penalties, fines, whatever, you know.

So the law firms paid up and I learned in that process that I had a claim because I was represented personally. and so if I could get an attorney to represent me, I could sue DLA Piper and Fox Rockchild. Right. Okay, yeah. So I went on a little mission for about a month, scouring the universe on Google Land for law firms that would represent me because I don't have enough money to do it myself.

There's no way I have enough money to go sue DLA Piper. Right. And I gave up all my information. I had my attorneys prepare my information for me to explain it legally, you know, what the situation was and why. it mattered. They chewed on it on the commercial division for a while and came back and said they're not going to take the case. Declined to me. And my attorney's responsible as well, that was semi-predictable, you know, nobody wants to go up against DLA Piper. These guys make like a billion

dollars a week, you know, it's, there's, you know, it's just, they're just too big. So that's my, that's my legal saga inside the legal saga. Where, what you'd be seeing, suing them in the state of Florida? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Trying to think. I have an attorney that represented me for the lawsuit against Warner Brothers and incarcerated entertainment. But he is out of Pennsylvania. But he was, I guess, one of his associates was able to fight the lawsuit in Florida. And he fights all kinds of

I mean he just won a massive massive lawsuit I mean he's he's always doing these big companies but so he may be interested but that I'd love to chat with them I think that I my statute of limitations has run out as I recall you only have two years and so you've got to get it filed

within two years of learning about it and so I think that 2020 was my but you know maybe there's something else going on I don't know but yeah that was just hard because it was probably the only chance to reclaim anything. Right. And it just got blown up out of the water.

So by the middle of 2024, my attorneys had let me know that my criminal attorneys now had let me know that there had been contact with the U.S. Attorney's Office. And I think it was September or October of 2024, my two criminal attorneys called me up and said, yeah, we need to meet. We just met with the U.S. attorney. I'm like, okay, cool. And I'd have been online enough to know there was this thing called a proffer and that kind of stuff. Right.

And nobody asked to interview me. That's another amazing thing about this whole process is that the FBI has never interviewed me once ever. U.S. Attorney's Office, the IRS has never interviewed me. No one's ever asked for my opinion on anything or my thoughts or my story or whatever. So the two attorneys apparently go into this meeting and it's called a river. proffer. So my attorney show up and the government gives their big presentation on the board. Okay. So my guys come back from that and they say, yeah, you know, they're looking at everything. Are you there? No. I wasn't invited, you know, which is crazy. Yeah, I would be like, I want to be there because

I don't care how good your attorneys are. Yeah. They don't really know the case. No. They'll never going to know it as well as you. No. Because you could be there and say, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not true. Wait, what are you talking about? That's not what happened. where they're just going to be sitting there going, okay, okay. Yeah, I really, I don't like that part of it. I really enjoy these two attorneys. I like them a lot. We would use them again, but I don't love that piece of it.

So they came back and they had a meeting with me and they had a pile of paperwork on their desk. And it basically was just all the consumption items, cars, watches, whatever. And it put it down on the table. And they're like, yeah, this is what they're really talking about and all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, I had a lifestyle for sure. I mean, you know, okay, you know. And so we talked about all the things that we would do about the specifics because they were looking at, I think, wire fraud, mail fraud, that kind of stuff, right?

And I'm like, no, we can rebuttal all this stuff. I got emails for this. I got emails. Because at this point, I spent all the time in the world on 9,500 emails correlating everything. And so I feel very confident about that. And then they said, well, you have the tax issue. And I said, well, yeah, I've got a tax issue because they seized my life in early 2020. And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't able to pay.

Right. So. But they've taken it all back. So I don't have it anymore. I don't have that lifestyle or any of those assets. It's separate. The SEC and receivership, they took everything back for sure. But the IRS is separate.

They don't care about that situation. So I make $3 million. I owe 600,000 to the IRS or 800,000 to the IRS. The government comes in and seizes the $3 million, and I still owe $8 million to the IRS? Yes. Yep. Well, that's some bullshit.

Yeah, plus penalties, plus interest. So I knew that I had a tax issue, but at the time, you know, the attorneys are more concerned about wire fraud and mail fraud, because that has 20-year statutes, right? And that taxed up, they're like, we'd probably get that worked around just a payment schedule and, you know, figure that out. Fing schedule for what?

Selling used cars? Like, what are you doing for a living right now? Exactly. Like, who's hiring you at this point? No one's hiring. Right. Yeah, yeah. So that was the conversation all through that process.

So finally we get to, you know, the October-September time period of 2024. And so I had this big, long meeting with my attorneys, and we go through everything. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm thinking of my mind. I'm self-soothing at this point, right? Like, you know, I got everything after five years of going through emails and correlating everything. And they said, yeah, so one of the last things they showed us was the taxes, you know, so forth. I'm like, well, the taxes, you know, and they said, no, they're going to, they want to take it criminally. Oh, and so that's something I forgot to mention before. End of February, I contacted my new CPA that I had hired after the receivership. Right. And I had all of our business over there. My personal, Nicole's personal and our business activities, all with this new CPA firm. And this is the CPA firm that I had given the business to manage the QOZ and the REIT for us when I had it during that few months in 2020. And so they said, oh, by the way, you probably already know this, but the IRS raided the office last week or something.

Like, no, I had no idea. Whose office? Their office? The CPA office? The new CPA office. So I said, I said, for your stuff? Yep. And I said, well, what are you talking about? And they're like, yeah, we, you know, the IRS came through and they demanded all your stuff and they were going to interview everybody. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. You know, I don't know, I don't know what this is about. So I said, can you send me over the document? And just to show you the government has a sense of humor, the grand jury subpoena is also dated February 14th. 2024. So they love Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day is a very active day for paperwork with the government. So yeah, and it listed Brian Davison, Nicole Davidson, and Equialt and all the stuff. I'm like, they've known, they've got to know that I, there's no equialt activity, you know, going on with the new, new accounting firm. And so whatever, that happened. And so what happens when your accounting firm gets rated? You get fired. So I'm on my way to go find another account.

firm and my wife and her family they take their business elsewhere too um afterwards and so so that was that happened in uh early 2024 and then by mid or late 2024 is when I had the reverse proffer and that's when they made it clear to my attorneys the tax issue was a much larger issue and you know they believed that I manipulated my taxes and and I'm like well what did they think they did and they said, well, let's go through it. And so, of course, they've had my tax returns there, and there are 131 pages. I'm like, well, what's the problem with it? So it all comes down to, I would learn this from reading the transcripts of the agents' interviews with the CPAs, was shareholder loans. So one of the ways that accountants can, you can take money out of a

company and defer taxes to later is do a shareholder loan and just pay back the money later from whatever asset you had, which my case would totally apply, because there's the cars and the assets that I own, like the watches, have gone up exponentially in value. And so it's a very plausible activity. So they decided they wanted to throw all that out. So the minute that the IRS throws out your deductions, no matter what they are, you owe money right away. Right. And so in my case, they threw all of that out.

And the number they had was like $6.3 million. And taxes owed. So I'm like, well, okay, that's a huge. huge problem, but I can explain this. I've got, again, emails and all my stuff was prepared by a professional accountant that are in good standing, blah, blah, blah. And so they said, yep, we can do all that. But, you know, we're looking at probably, you know, anywhere from five to $700,000 in, you know, a case. And more than likely, they're going to bring other charges, too, if you don't sign on for this one. And ultimately, at the end of the day, they had your wife's name

circled in red on the presentation board of your taxes because we had filed jointly. So they said at the end of the day, you're going to end up facing your own charges and they're going to more than likely charge your wife. That's how they telegraph that information to a defending attorney. And one of my attorneys actually literally just came from the public defender's office in Hillsborough. So he knew exactly. Yeah. So yeah, so from there, you know, I just entered down the road of negotiating a plea deal, you know, told my attorneys, I really can't afford to have you guys negotiate this out. I got a public defender. He kind of walked me through all the rest of the process. And so in early 2025, we're negotiating the plea deal, right? You know,

dollar amounts and all this other stuff. And, you know, they're trying to go back all these years. And so they asked me to sign a tolling agreement. So I did because I'm trying to limit the damage in the negotiating part, right? But it actually, it works for. me a little bit. So one of the things that they that they brought up was, you know, my tax avoidance, but I'm like, no, in 2016, I paid over a million dollars in personal income taxes. Like, literally I wrote the check, you cashed it. So I do have a history of paying a fair amount of taxes. And so what they did is they allowed me to go hire a third party CPA firm. And the government paid for it. So my public defender found somebody that I think I think everybody had to approve it,

like the U.S. Attorney's Office and my defender guy had to find somebody that would do this. And so he reviewed all the paperwork and he came up with a number of like 2.7. So it's a difference of like $3.5 million. And so he gives him this report. I'm going to shit if it's fucking, I mean, if it's, you know what I'm saying? It's undoable. It's undoable. You know what I'm saying? I mean, to me it's like that's what do you mean? If I can't pay it, I can't pay it. It doesn't matter if it's $100,000 or it's $6 million or it's $40 million. Well, I can't pay it. I don't have it. You took all my shit. 100%. 100%. I can't pay the taxes because they seized everything years ago, right?

But what I'm thinking right now is I can pay it back over my lifetime. And at this point, I'm a little bit freaked out. So I'm online studying everything about sentencing and criminal. And I'm aware of this chart about how they get these levels of enhancements and stuff. So I'm like, I got to get a low number. Yeah. Because this is like a video game, right? You know, it's like golf, you know? So, so they, so be given that report and I'm like, yes.

And we waited like six weeks to get it. I'm like, it's not, wasn't what I was looking for because I thought I owed no taxes. Right. But I'm like, I'll take it, man. Yeah, they're like, yeah, no, we don't want to do that. Did they just rejected it. I'm like, uh, so. But I thought they agreed on the third party.

they didn't agree to accept the report oh okay yeah yeah yeah i okay yeah yeah i okay yeah yeah yeah that the game yeah so we'll consider it yep so i signed off on it and um i have a deal now right and uh the judge signs off on it as well and guess guess what judge i got uh the same judge same judge with the receiver from 2020 with the receiver so she's been very good getting reports for five years on me. Brian's every version of an asshole. Right. And great. Here we go. I finally got my life reduced down to just a tax issue. And so I'm like, oh, well, this could be bad. So I asked my attorneys, is there any way to get out of this? It would get like a, you know, a fresh start with an attorney. Nope. No, no, there's, you know, technically yes, but the

backfire would be so bad. You don't want any part of it. So there we go. So, um, so, um, I go off to PSR land. You're familiar with the PSR for land? Yeah. A sentence report. Oh, yeah. So the probation officer shows up. Yeah.

So my wife's family paid to hire white collar. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Justin Paperni. Yeah, yeah. So, because I really want to be actively involved at this point. You know, part of my thing. How did you get a, how did you find white collar? YouTube.

YouTube, okay. Was it through this channel? Because it was through this channel. No, I was going to get it. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. No, no, no, no. Because there's through my link.

No. Justin has to stroke me a chat. No, no. I was about to say, though, he has text. I probably didn't tell you. He texted me like a month or two ago saying like that he's gotten calls. Oh, yeah. I get updates all the time.

I'm in shock how many people are contacting him through the channel. I get like every couple of days. So and so. clicked on the link, filled out the form from our link. From your YouTube channel. Yeah, so there's got to be 30 or 40 of them, but I guess none of them are hiring them because I haven't gotten any checks. Justin.

Uh-oh. No, I'm sure it takes some time. Yeah, yeah. He's full price, that's for sure. But they're very good. Yeah, yeah. So I really, I've been watching them for years at home, right? Yeah.

So you hire Justin. So the precent and got involved. Yep. the probation officer comes. Super nice person. Super sweet. No, no, she was actually a wonderful person to be around. And so you go in for the meeting, right, with your attorney. And my attorney, my defense attorney is like, listen, I know you think you have a lot to say and you have a lot rattling around your head, but listen, this is a tax plea deal. Don't talk about anything else. And don't go down any rabbit

holes or any roads. Just answer yes or no. But answer honestly and just make it a nice, pleasant meeting. Okay. So we had this meeting and she starts asking me all these questions like, well, what did you do before? What's the last couple of companies you've worked at? What jobs have you had? And of course, all the stuff that's involved in the SEC, I have to, you know, say it to her. And so, and so my attorney's like, you know, he's telling me not to say stuff. And I'm stopping him halfway. I'm like, do you want me to answer her question or not? It was the funniest situation. And so that meaning happened, but I didn't feel bad about it. I felt like they were just trying to like, she was doing her job and he was doing his job, right? And I was like, you know, it kind of is what it is, you know. So she puts together her PSR report. And when she puts it together, she shares it with the prosecutors and the defense, right, before it becomes final, I guess. Yeah, well, they have, everybody can come back and say, wait, those enhancements don't apply or the government will come back.

back and say, no, you didn't give him enough time. Right. You need it. He also, you give him this enhancement and this enhancement. He's cruel to small children and dogs. That's a two-point enhancement. Right. So that happened in my case.

So she looked up all my company stuff. He heard someone's feelings once. So she recommends a two-points enhancement for illegal getting the money that I didn't pay the taxes on, I guess is how I say it. Okay. illegal obtaining the funds frauds yeah however however they say that right so isn't your charge tax evasion is a charge tax evasion yes so the charge is a version of the tax I just

call tax fraud but I think I guess it's evasion but so she adds on all that stuff and writes a glowing paragraph about all the SEC charges I'm like oh so I go back to my attorney and bottom line is he asks the prosecutors, okay, are you going to proof up on this? Do you want this to be a thing? And they say, no, they decline it. So she leaves the paragraph in there about it and recommends the two-point enhancement.

But I don't know if the two-point enhancement stuck for the final or not, but the paragraph about the SEC stuff did. And so the reason why this is interesting is because it would show up at sentencing. So, sentencing day comes and we all go to the courthouse, right? And, of course, the receiver walks up and the receiver's attorney. And, you know, like five other people, I'm guessing their IRS and FBI.

You know, it's like a party for them. And it's just me, my wife, and my daughter and my defender there that day. So we're sitting there at the sentencing, and the judge, reads the paperwork. And one of her first questions was, well, you know, Mr. Davidson here, he's accused of all these other crimes and everything. Why are we just here on tax?

And we're only, you know, what are we doing here? And so she starts asking the prosecutor why basically you're not charging him with a bunch of other charges. And so he's kind of backpedaling, backpedaling. And he says, you know, this is a civil deal. Anyway, that's already been, that's already been, that's a simple case, and it's already been handled.

And she even made the comment. She's like, yeah, Mr. Davidson didn't pay $27 million of the goodness of his heart. And, of course, I'm thinking, well, no, it's because you seized it. And then I had to negotiate it back from the government. So, and then, so my attorney gets up to, to address something else very soon after. There's a lot of going back and forth. And, you know, she, and my attorney says something to the effect, well, we, it wasn't really in our scope to deal with all these other, these other items you're on. This is a plea in a tax case.

And she hands it to him too. She says, no, you have plenty of resources. You could have defended this. And she went on a little bit about it. I'm like, man, this is not good for me. This is really not good. So there's the point in the sentencing where you ask for victims. And patent.

Yeah. And there's no victims in the room and there's nobody there. and because all the investors have been paid. So what about all the investors that lost money? Yeah, they're all there. Yeah. They're all there. They're all there.

They're all packed in the room. So how do you have victims that didn't lose money? How do you have a victim if he didn't lose money? Well, the IRS lost money on me. That's, you know, I was there for. So you've got one victim. Yes. So she asks if anybody wants to speak.

And, of course, the receiver waves his hand and says, you know, he wants to be heard. So he shuffles up to the box there and he gets sworn in. And the judge starts asking him questions. And he goes on to say like how much the value of the estate was at this point in years and this and that. And none of it made any sense really. But the most comical thing was, and his daughter had a Ferrari. And my daughter's in the back and she gasped a little giggle. Like, no, my daughter never had a Ferrari.

That's absurd. He's just throwing stuff out there. And the whole purpose of that was to bring up the SEC case and make it as damaging for me as possible. And that's when he said on the stand, you know, because she asked about the gag order, the judge did. And asked about if the gag order applied to the criminal and the civil, she wanted the clarification on that,

which really speaks to the fact that the judges don't understand the system as far as how that all works. And so my receiver says, yes, we instituted the gag order in the 1970s when I was there, so people wouldn't walk out of the courthouse and say they didn't do it after the court proceedings. Yeah. And I was just like, you got to be kidding me. I got a guy in front of me.

Now, he's in his 80s, right? But he's actually one of the guys that took away people's First Amendment rights just to settle with the government to not go to trial. Right. That's amazing to me. So I find that to be amazing. So, yeah. So I got sentenced.

I got 36 months. Yeah. Got to pay back forever. And you went, did you go right out of the courtroom, go get your fingers printed, your picture taken, and leave or had you already done that? No, I've already done that. You'd already played guilty. That happened when you, and they let you out. Did you have an ankle monitor on or? No. No, just. I've been out on my own bond or whatever. And they've been fantastic about that. You just roam the streets? Yeah, dude, I'm just a wild mamey. I mean, I mean.

do not put me near taxes. Yeah. I, uh, yeah, that's, uh, so, so did you, what, what did you, what did the PSR say? So do you call it a PSI or PSR? PSR. PSR. Yeah. Uh, it's a pre-sentence investigative report.

Yeah. So PSR. Yeah. So what did it say? Did it recommend 36 months? Or was it a range, it was a range, but you were going to get the low end, right? That's what they were, you were being told they're going to, to recommend the low end? Yeah, I don't recall that part. I recall very, very clearly she was all

about the two-point enhancement. Okay. But she didn't get that. But the prosecutors were asking for 47 months. Okay. And my defenders, like, listen, you've already been here under watch for five years. You haven't done anything. Yeah, yeah. You can try to rebuild your life. So he asked for 18 months. Right. And she's like, yeah, no. Yeah, she even mentioned in her part of her conversation in the courtroom that day, you know, about the prosecutors asking for all this long time for PPP loans. Right. And, you know, so she was, I got the feeling she was disappointed that I wasn't charged with more or asked for more time.

Okay. So you got 36 months. Yeah, 36 months. What were you expecting? I was expecting about that. Oh, okay. I mean, I'm not, I'm not shocked by it. I didn't, I didn't necessarily think I was going to get anything lighter.

I'd hoped for it, right? Yeah. But once I realized I had the same judges before, you know, and I wasn't. able to make any payments. I knew that it wasn't going to be great, you know. They're terrifying people. They are. Well, everything is their discretion. Yeah. Absolutely everything. It's almost like we don't have a criminal or a criminal justice system. We have a prosecutor's system because it's whatever the prosecutors say, right? Like in my experience, if they ask for 47 months, that is this, that's where we're starting and the conversation might deviate a little bit or are above it, right?

So if they say it's 36 months or they say it's 18 months, then that is the conversation. It's fascinated to me. What is the similarity between Tye's case and your case? Well, the similarity really begins with the headlines because it's less about the actual losses for the investors and what happened. It's all about the headline catching fire across the Internet, right? Right. So I've read through the indictment and there's a lot of really interesting pieces to it. You know, there's some quotes in there, some emails that are pretty damning about, you know,

the language he uses with investors and so forth, not so great. But the SEC complaint indicates on the first page, it's $112 million. But on page nine, it says they raised $230 million. It doesn't tell us where the other $117 million in cash went. So the indictment does talk about how they raised both debt and equity. So if you take an investor money, they'll either get equity in the company. the upside, or they'll get a promissory note of some sort a debt instrument, meaning there's usually payments attached to that at some level, either monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Right. So one of the things they can say is that the money raised on the equity side went to the debt payments with the other investors. So I know that some of the ways around that from other investment vehicles, if you just borrow money from a bank, a true third party, and you raise equity from investors, and the investor's equity goes to the payments, that's considered acceptable. So it's hard to say what exactly went on inside the vehicle itself. You think initially they, they file a lawsuit to start the process and get him into court, assuming he may, he may end up wanting to go to trial. And then, but, you know,

what here's what I'm getting at is like, I have a buddy that's actually still in prison. is that initially they came in and they filed a lawsuit. And he just, he just, you know, pled the fifth, right? He's not, I'm not going to, he's not, he really sat there and just allowed them to the SEC to, to lay out the entire case. He didn't really defend himself. One of his co-defendants defended himself, got up on the stand, and actually lied a bunch of times. But in the end, they lost that lawsuit.

for them the whole company was had gone under anyway and it was really just suing the company like he didn't really you know what I'm saying like they're suing the company they these guys are representing the company so they're there but it wasn't going to spill over to him and there wasn't much he could do like he wasn't really concerned it wasn't a big deal right but what they really did was they use that as a vehicle to do like depositions and a bunch of work on the company and get some people to make statements. And what they didn't realize at the time, although I'm sure their lawyers did, is that they were really laying out a whole bunch of information

for the FBI to come in and investigate the whole thing and take all that information and turn it into a criminal complaint and indict them criminally, and now they do have a problem. A hundred percent, that is always an avenue that I think the guys, government looks for and everything I've read and been able to see. So the SEC civil complaint is just that. You know, it's their own rules and guidelines. But if you read the SEC training manual, there is a sentence in there that says, we'd go about the business, something to the effect of, we'd go about the business of working with criminal cases, referrals at the same time. So they

absolutely are in their training manual to go down that road, 100%. So if they come across anything criminal, they're certainly going to send it to the law enforcement. Right, right, right. Or work with them hand in hand if they feel like that's what's... Yeah, and so my view on, you know, going to trial with the SEC and so forth is once they bring charges, you've already lost. Right. That's that area called Section 17A. There's the two and three, and Ty Lopez is... A couple of his charges are that. And it doesn't say necessarily that you had to do anything wrong, but it does talk about how just simply negligence.

So if anybody feels like you were negligent in your duties, you're guilty of a securities fraud claim. So in my view, he's already lost. It's a whole, if you didn't know, you should have known. Totally. Right, right, right. So he'll either do one of two general roads, right? If he decides to go down the road of I'm going to trial, like Mark Cuban,

I think it'll probably take the better part of the decade of his life. He will spend probably $10 million on it like Mark Cuban did, and it will come down to a couple of emails and a couple of texts. And it will largely be a popularity contest, much like Mark Cuban's trial was. Mark Cuban is one of the very few people to prevail in a securities fraud trial. And so that's why I think it's the only example that might apply to Ty Lopez based on his popularity on the internet.

More than likely, he'll probably be given the advice to keep his mouth shut during this process and then settle with the SEC, close it out as quickly as possible. That's the smartest move, right? Well, that's what the attorneys will tell you, to shut it down, pay the fine, and hold your breath and wait for to see the criminal side's going to pick it up. Right.

Yeah, so it's my experience that they're already working with the criminal side to pick it up. So, you know, if he's got the financial means, which I think he might. He makes millions of dollars a year on his other ventures, I think. And I didn't see any sort of asset seizure in these documents. So I think he might be able to defend himself. So he could defend himself long enough in the civil trial to make it look like it's challenging for the criminal trial. But you're saying that too, you didn't, you're saying there's no asset seizure. Is there a loss? It's saying a Ponzi scheme, but is it talking about an actual loss?

So as far as I think everything I've read, there's no actual. talking about losses. That's why there's no asset seizure, right? Well, so the asset seizure can come from perceived losses and also ill-gotten gains. Okay. So in this, and what I've read here, they've only indicated about $16, $17 million and misappropriated money that they took out. Okay, so they could come after that. So they could come after that.

And I've got a feeling he probably can pay it. So he could pay that, close out the civil, and move forward. But there's two problems with that. think that the it's my estimate that the civil will keep working with criminal to go to go down the criminal road and the second thing is he's got a very high likelihood he's got to sign that gag order to once he signs the civil settlement so he won't be able to talk about his case in public so i don't know what that's going to do to his credibility going forward if he just can't talk about whatever happened so the only headlines the only news out there is whatever the government put out

So has he, do you know, has he made a statement or said anything since? I haven't heard anything on the internet about it. I'm fascinated by it because the headlines match, right, or really closely with my situation. But I haven't seen anything like that at all. I really believe he's taking his attorney's advice, which is probably hunker down, say nothing, and let them try to digest what's going on

and try to minimize their losses just in the civil side. And like in your experience, or your guess, like, do you think that this would turn criminal? Like, do you think he would end up? I have every belief that they're already working with criminal. Yeah. You know, one of the main drivers for a successful prosecutor's career is getting headlines. You know, you want to have high dollar amounts of stopping financial fraud, right?

And the other is the headlines and the helps build the credibility of the prosecutors. Like Mark Cuban even said in one of his statements, all through the ten, years or so he was going through his situation with the SEC, those attorneys would come and go, and they would put on their resumes, on their public profiles that they worked on the Mark Cuban case. And he hadn't even gone to trial yet. So there's a lot of, you know, trying to posture themselves as far as, you know, looking like they're really working for protecting people. And what was, I know you mentioned it in the podcast, Mark Cuban, he spent like $12 million fighting the SEC. Like, when was that? I don't know anything.

about it was like a pretty it was in the mid 2000s uh i forgot when he first started it i was i was say it was i think it was after 2008 i'd have to look it up but it's it took a whole decade maybe 12 years or so it was it was super long it was the moma stock mama stock something like that yeah he sold he sold early and got out of it and uh it all came down to a text apparently as i recall something like i like to win was the text and uh That's what they were using at trial to indicate that he had the intent to try to have less losses on the stock trade. That's crazy. It's crazy.

Yeah, that could mean anything. I mean, just that. Yeah. It's just the wildest thing that can get to trial, you know. But he had the means to do it. And he's, you know, for a guy like that, he's all reputation, right? Mark Cuban's not Mark Cuban. Who is he?

You know, so certainly I think that's why he had to do it. And Elon Musk was going to fight his SEC charges as well, but I think in one of his interviews, he pretty plainly says, the banks told me that if I didn't settle, kind of paraphrasing what he said, if he didn't settle with the SEC, they're going to pull their funding on his companies. Right. So I remember hearing that statement. Yeah. So, you know, what are you going to do? It's no longer about the SEC case and fighting the issue. It's the leverage of the entire system uses against you.

This is just kind of the overview. according to the recent lawsuit followed by the SEC, Ty Lopez and business partner Alex Murr were accused of defrauding investors of $112 million for a Ponzi-like scheme involving their company. While investors lost significant funds, the full extent of the individual loss is not yet public. Mis-sitting investors between 2020 and 22, Lopez and Murr acquired struggling retail brands like Radio Shack, Pier 1 imports. The SEC alleges they made false claims of 200 to 100. of investors about the brand success of profitability and that they were on fire and with strong cash flow when none of them were profitable. They're quoting Ty Lopez as saying, this is one of the

best investment strategies you can invest in. And then also talking about the portfolio companies in general were quote on fire and that quote, cash flow is strong, unquote. And then the very next paragraph, the SEC complaint, it talks about that doesn't mean anything. I mean, you know, cash flow is, you know, what was it? Cash flow is what? Cash flow is what, what's that mean? That doesn't mean anything. It's like saying, you know, profit, what is the, the profitability is on fire or profits are on fire? Well, he's talking about right here that cash flow, the companies were on fire and the cash flow is very strong. It sounds like, the company's it's on fire. It's fucking going under. Yeah, it's going under. It's on what, how's the,

hey man, how's the company, man? It's on fire, it's burning down. Massive dumpster fire. Yeah, it's dumpster fire. That doesn't mean anything. But you, but you, but you, You can have strong cash flows in a company and have enough tax credits, especially if you're buying distressed assets, enough tax credits, enough write downs that you're not profitable, meaning that you don't owe the IRS any profits, but you definitely have enough cash flows to make all your debt liability payments and keep the business going. Right. So that's why, like, on page three of the complaint, it's kind of confusing to me.

It's like, well, you know, both of these things can be true at the same time. So, but later on the complaint, it does specifically talk about revenues. were less than the liabilities, I think, is what it says. And if that's the case, you know, that'll be an issue. So we'll see how it goes. It's hard to tell this. It's very, very broad. It's very, very general.

I had to guess, I think the Ponzi part comes down to they raised money, both equity and debt in the same investment vehicle. And investors may have gotten two separate sets of documents. And, you know, the complaint does talk about how the equity was going to be used. for anything in the normal course of business. And so in the normal course of business, a business will pay its debts with whatever cash it has. So if you have investors that are bringing in equity

and bringing in debt, and a debt payment is due, and you use those investors, that equity from those other investors, to pay that debt instrument that was probably created like a year earlier, there's a pretty good argument for new investors versus old investors. Yeah, that's what they'll do.

The Ponzi-like payments and an overview. guess is to pay returns of early investors, Lopez and Mer allegedly used money from later investors. At least $5.9 million in returns were reportedly paid this way rather than actual company profits. It's interesting to me because my understanding was he was buying companies that were dead. They were defunct, right? All of them were traditional brick and mortars. And I don't know what stage of the game those brick and mortar companies were in. If they were already going through a restructuring or had been restructured or not. And so the idea that he felt under pressure to do all of this so fast is pretty interesting to me. The personal use of funds or the misuse of funds, the SEC alleges that Lopez and

Murr misuse approximately 16.1 million of investor funds for their own personal use. Yeah. Whistleblower involvement, former employees reportedly tipped to the SEC and 2003 raising concerns about the company's financial dealings. So when... In 2003? In 2000, sorry, it's 23. I was going to say. So when the company or when an employee does that, you know, like, just so Ty knows he's

under investigation over these next two years. He knows something's coming or how does that kind of... He doesn't have to necessarily mean that he knows anything. Yeah. And that whistleblower also is eligible for, I'm sure, some kind of a cash, I don't want to say prize, but cash payment of some kind, you know. Yeah. So he may not have known anything.

Well, you know, he's under a lot of pressure from not only his service providers, like his CPA firms and his attorneys, but also the people that worked for them and anybody else that they may take the investigation too. I can only imagine that if the three-letter agency calls it for typical business, and they say, we think someone that you did business with has done something possibly criminal. We want to ask you about it. They're going to comply. They're going to give you whatever story you need me to tell you.

That's the story because I don't really want you trashing into my business with the same investigation. And is this the same thing that happened to you as far as what I'm about to read next? Or is this just kind of different? Because who was the people that took over your business? What'd you call them? So my company was seized... Receivership. Receivership.

Okay. So it says investor settlement. An investor group reportedly took control of the brands from Lopez and Merr, which may have prevented individual lawsuits from those individuals. However, the settlement does not affect the SEC fraud case. So I guess that's different than your situation. Yeah. It sounds to me like he knew he was in trouble, either out of his depth management-wise or the company

was just dying off. So they sold it to another entity, and I think it's called Omni something or rather. And in doing that, it all depends on the voting shares and how they were able to do that. But the SEC doesn't seem to have a problem with that sale. And that sale may be the best thing for the investors at the end of the day. But you're right. The SEC is, there's different rules, different universes. There's the universe of business, but then there's the universe of securities law.

And to violate securities law takes shockingly little. I think like I talked about earlier, first of all, securities, the only criteria they need to hit is prima facie. And then they also have Section 17A, 1, 2, and 3, which is all about strict liability. So to violate securities law, I don't think it takes hardly anything but the wind of blow for normal business to violate securities law. And you mentioned it because of the prima facie thing, right?

Yeah. And what does that, what was the definition? I know you mentioned it earlier in the podcast. It just has to look like, uh, at first blush, basically. So the, the level of evidence and, and proof is different than that of a criminal trial, for example. Criminal, you typically, the goal, I think, is to show intent and then to back it up with a lot of documentation proof, uh, you know, uh, impact statements and so forth, witnesses are great, you know. So, um, it takes, It takes shockingly little. Did you follow the Martin Screlli case at all? The Farmerbrough guy?

Okay. So he's another character who's not well loved broadly by American society. Is he the one that bought the cancer medication? Yeah, but any AIDS? Yeah, yeah. Well, whatever. And then jacked it way up, way up,

which is perfectly legal, but... Legal, but in bad form, I think, most people. Yeah. And then he allegedly, I think he put a bounty on a piece of Hillary Clinton's hair. at one point. And so I think he was really stirring up the pot a little bit as far as like...

A bounty on her hair. I think he put a, yeah, did you read that anywhere? Do you know about that, Colby? Oh, yeah, I have no idea. No idea. Okay, so anyway. What was his name? What was his name?

Martin Screlli. He's on YouTube now. He's done his time and he's out. So what I could read about his case specifically was there's a plethora of charges. Most of them, they, I think about half of them they beat. But what really sank him was, They had an investor get on the stand and say something to the effect of Screlli was supposed to have audited financials for this particular business entity, and he didn't. And so just that simple, I thought he was doing this.

I thought he told me this way. And it wasn't. You're guilty of a civil crime or a, you know, securities crime. And in 2017, Martin Screlli offered 5,000 bounty on Facebook for a strand of Hillary. Clinton's hair during her book tour. Federal prosecutor cited the post as evidence that Scarelli was posed a danger to the public and successfully petitioned to have his bail revoked why he awaited his sentencing for security fraud.

I'm curious from your experience because you said you guys have the same prosecutor. So I just want to read the legal action. This is the kind of last little title that I probably will read about the Tai Lopez case. But it says legal actions, the SEC complaint was filed in September 22, 22, 20. which is probably like a week ago in Florida in the Florida federal court and it seeks civil penalties disgorgement of ill-gotten games I don't know if I said that right and Lopez and Murr to be barred from acting as officers or directors of a public company so like your experience with this prosecutor like what what's your kind of going through

it personally so we do we share that, but I don't know that I can shed a lot of light on it. Like, for example, in my case, at no point that I recall, and not at the end, was I ever requested by the SEC to not be a director in a company or being involved in securities. So a guy like me, I can run out and open up a fund tomorrow or go work at a fund tomorrow, I think. I have no restrictions on that. How they pick and choose that, I just don't know. that would be completely their discretion.

I'm not sure how they would get around to deciding that. Give us a prediction. So I predict he'll probably try to settle it out. That's what his attorneys, I'm sure, are doing right now because we haven't heard of him on the Internet, as far as I know, making any public statements. So I think he's following the advice of the attorneys, like all the different attorneys that I had, all the same advice.

Shut up. Let's contain this problem and work on the next problem whenever it shows up. So I suspect that's exactly what he's doing right now. In hindsight, I don't know that I would do that again. Because if you're going to end up signing that gag order, you might as well get as much information out there as possible forever. You know, that just is your only chance to tell your story the rest of your life. So I suspect that's the way it's going to go.

I think if there's any other wrinkle in his life, the FBI is going to find it and they're going to make him their project. Like I was investigated for five years. And I'm 100% sure if they would have found something, something else that they, that they would have, you know, found a way to include that. So do you think that that the case will, will, regardless of whether he listens to the attorneys or not, ultimately you think it still turns into a criminal matter? Because you said they're, you feel like they're already working with the criminal. I'm highly confident based on what I think I know about these activities that it's already looking that way.

Now, keep in mind, they have all the time in the world. They have five years. Right. So the FBI can pick this up in three years and do a year's worth of investigating and then make a decision. I think a lot of it has to do with political climate, you know, manpower, whatever else is going on in the world. You know, who knows, they may decide that he just pays back a 16 plus a penalty of 10 million. They bar him forever. And if he's quiet and he moves away to Portugal, he might be safe.

But, you know, if he runs out and hits it again and he tries to open up another fund or hit the Internet big time in the next. year or two, I think they might make in this project. When do you turn yourself in? October 9th. 36 months. It's so funny because I know in your mind that seems like forever, but that's not. Well, they've got the programs, right? Yeah.

So I just plan on working the programs. Did you get Art App? Mm-hmm. Okay. So you'll go right into Art App. The problem with Art App is people think that you're going to you're going to people think oh I'll go into ARDAP

and I'll get you know I'll get time off and I'll get more halfway house and that you'll go through there's three phases you'll go through the first three phases because the first two phases they're just trying to

you got to think what they're dealing with they're just trying to get you to eat with a fork and a spoon and say thank you and please because that's what they're dealing with and you're like this is nothing you'll sail through like I'm polite to everybody I could have dinner with Hitler and Stalin and be like,

yeah, you guys did some damage, bro, what's up? You know, like, I could be, I'm a nice, polite person to everybody. I'm not an asshole. So you're like, I'm going to sell through. The second one, you're like, oh, I'm helping people. I've learned a lot. And you're, that's great. And then the third one, you're like, this is a joke. I'm going to be done with this.

And that's when they come for you. Because that's when they come for the educated, intellectually superior people, that's when everybody turns on you. The DTS is everybody. Because suddenly, You're an arrogant, narcissistic prick who's not taking responsibility, who all the things that you're doing. And you're like, what are you talking about?

I'm helping the other participants. I'm doing all the right. You're manipulating us. Oh, you think, and everything that you think you're doing that's correct becomes manipulation and you're a con man. And trust me, that's why I dropped out in the third face every single time. Dropped out, dropped out, dropped out. Because that's the problem is that everybody, I, remember Dawsey, you should read, you should,

should watch Dawsey's video. Dawsey's a black guy. He's got a scar on his face. Did real estate fraud, but I mean blatant 100% real estate fraud. Great, great video, but we talk about Ardap. Listen, the last

two months of Ardap for Dawsey, he is walking around the compound by himself. And I'm like, hey, Dossi, how's it going? He's like, bro, it's bad. It's bad. They're coming for me. I'm terrified to talk to anybody. everything I say is getting twisted and then you think

so he's trying to kind of stay away from the program and the people in the program but if you do that then it's you're not participating we don't see you here anymore Brian what's going on why are you not participating you're not being a part of the community

do you feel you're better than us is that what's happening you're like the fuck happened I went to chow I mean I didn't do anything I'm talking to these I'm doing my job I just no no you I mean you trust me You're, it's bad. Are you talking about the other inmates or the counselors or the members above you?

All of them. They're horrible. Horrible. I was lucky because I didn't need the year off. So I was able to behave like a complete menace. I was a maniac because I don't care if you fire me or kick me out or do whatever. So people were terrified of me. I'm saying insane stuff.

There's something where you, you call people up. in the group where you say, hey, I'd like to call up, Mr. Baker. Could you please stand up? And you both stand up in like they have a morning meeting.

Bro, I got a book out. You got to read. I read a book called the program about ARDAP. It's insane. I didn't know that. Oh,

it's hilarious. You have to learn, listen, it's the, this is going to be insanity for you, bro. I'm sorry. I mean,

to me, it's, you're going to, because you're going to sail through and you're going to think you're great. And you're going to think everybody likes you and everything. And then that last,

So there's three stages. Three stages. First two are a joke for some of a civilized individual. But that last one, who. And listen, everybody that works there, all the DTSs is hate your guts already. Sure. Because just for some, you're a rich, you're a rich white male. Thank God you don't have blue eyes.

You know, blonde hair, blue up, well, platinum. You know what I'm saying? Like they despise you. Yeah. But literally, like, they call it, oh, pull up. That's what pull people up. So they have a morning meeting. So there'll be like 120 guys in this unit.

So 60 people on one side and 60 on the other. And so what you're doing is you're calling people up. You say, Mr. Baker, could you please stand up and I stand up? I'd like to call Mr. Baker up and Colby stands up. And you say, Mr. Baker, I noticed yesterday that when you left the chow hall, you took two pieces of bread with you. You know we're not allowed to remove any item out of the chow hall. And I saw you take the bread.

and you're not taking you you feel you're that's super optimism you'll learn all these terms that's super optimism yeah you feel you're very you think you're better than everybody you think you're you know you you can get away optimism in prison it's a real thing it's super optimism you're and that you start name off all the things he's struggling with and how he can fix it and then other inmates will stand two other inmates will stand up and they'll say the same thing how do you need to work on it and what's happening is really what's happening is um colby if he doesn't respond correctly or if he's been pulled up too many times,

he might get recycled or even kicked out of the program. That's a year for him. Cold being too better. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you might get in trouble for pulling him up because it may be, maybe they'll say you're manipulating the situation or, and you're like, and you're sitting there,

these guys are going back and forth, round and round in front of the DTSs. It's like entertainment for them. And literally at some point, like I would be sitting there thinking, are we talking about bread? Is this guy about to lose a year? He might be kicked out of the program

and not get that year off of his program because he took two pieces of bread because he's 240 pounds and he's overweight and he's hungry. He gets hungry about 8 o'clock at night. He has to go to bed. Like, he has nobody sends him money. He doesn't have any commissary.

He took two pieces of bread. Are you serious? Listen, I saw a guy get pulled up and get recycled because he borrowed salt from someone. You're not allowed to bring salted. you know we don't have salt in the chow hall he brought that salt in you're only allowed to use what's in the salt so do you feel you're better than him because you brought salt in and you use the

salt i'm like this this dude's about to lose a year of his and there's 60 people all doing this at the 120 no there's 120 watching and you're standing there in front of them and you're sitting there going is this over salt is this guy about to look this guy's about to do another year for salt because he he used some guys it really just because they don't like the guy No, because, well, so you Or are you shifting blame away from themselves? There must be another. Well, so it's, it's, you're holding him accountable.

You want to hold your, the other participants accountable. You want him to take the program serious. You want him to work on himself. And you know we're not allowed to be using condiments. We're not supposed to be using condiments in the chow hall, and they don't provide them. And if for you to sneak condo, you know that that guy had to sneak that salt in, and then you use the salt. You know that's against the rule.

And breaking small rules leads to breaking big ones. Do you think you're better than everyone else? Is that what's happening here? Listen, and you're in there brushing your teeth in the morning, and you have some guy walk up and you're like, he's like, hey man, you need to turn the water off. Can I talk to you for a second, Mr. Cox? Yeah, what's up?

You're brushing your teeth. You need to turn the water off because, you know, we need to conserve water. And it's like 99% of all water in Coleman is recycled. Okay, so I'm drinking your pee right now, by the way. I'm brushing my teeth with your piss, but it's all recycled. So I'm not really wasting anything. And I have a BA. I'm here for fraud charges.

And you're a crack head. Like on the street, you sold crack. You're a crackhead. And now I'm being told how to live my life by a guy who was selling crack to pregnant children or pregnant women. I know this because I'm a group with you. And I remember you're talking about selling. getting people's food stamps that were pregnant and selling them crack.

So I'm not lying and you're telling me I need to shut the water off while I brush my teeth. And if I don't shut the water off or I say anything like, go fuck yourself. You're going to pull me up tomorrow. So what I have to do is thank you very much, Mr. Johnson, for correcting me. And you're terrified all the time. Now, I wasn't terrified, but that last three. Maybe I'm not. Yeah.

That last three months, but you're lucky. You got 36 months. You're going to go right in the drug program in nine months, assuming you may get through that last few months. You get the year off. They'll send you straight to a halfway house. You'll also program, yeah, bro, you could be out of there in like a year. Could be. But that means I have to get into ARDAP right away, and I don't think that happens a lot, does it?

No, but if you take a few people out, you got to send a couple guys in there to take some guys out. Sounds like I need a crew. Pull some, pull some, you get in good with a couple of guys. Knock a few guys out. I like it. You got to, you got to get it. You got to get my commissary to get myself in. Absolutely.

Sneak some commissary to some guys. Slip a note in saying so-and-so is betting at the tables or whatever. Just cause some havoc in the area and they'll knock a couple guys out. You can sponsor a gambling ring and then turn them all in. Absolutely. I'll knock out four or five people. Absolutely. You're going to have to get creative.

Yeah. This is how you run a conspiracy. This is good stuff. It's going to be, it's going to be an experience. You're going to be a better person for this. I'll come back and tell you when I'm out. Maybe. Maybe, maybe.

Listen, I am going to send you my ARDAP book. You're going to die. You're going to be like, this isn't real. Yes. And I was actually in the ARDAP program. when two people attacked one another. I think I heard this story for me. Yeah.

A guy pulls up another guy. Was that an accountant guy or something? Yes, he was there for tax fraud. Yeah, he pulled up a guy that was there for tax fraud. And he was a guy who was like a crypt or something or a blood in Hawaii. He'd beat like the state with two murder charges. And the guy with tax evasion guy pulls him up. You were a scene smoking marijuana last night or whatever it was, you know, in the bathroom.

And this is the second time. I feel you're suffering from. And the guy just glens at them. And that never happens, by the way. But I was there when the one time it did happen. And it was just like chaos. The entertainment value is really. People watching.

Yeah. It should be a reality TV show. Yeah. It really should. You're going to learn something. You're going to have a new appreciation for life. I'll tell you that. I bet.

I bet. You're going to be around people that you've never been around. So I was going to ask you about FOIA requests. I tried to do a couple, and I'm not good at it, apparently. Why? What are they saying? So I asked the SEC for some documentation, and they came back and they asked me like two separate emails asking me questions about what it was for and this and that. And finally, they just came back and said, I need to narrow the scope because the amount of data equals 275 boxes.

Right. So, well, I'm surprised that in the end, they'll probably try and charge you. Yeah, that's okay. Well, if you're incarcerated and you do it, typically you can get away with not being charged because you're indigent. You can say, I'm indigent. Okay. But it takes like a year to get that stuff, you said, right?

It takes forever. Yeah. It takes forever. I don't know if it's shorter now or longer, but the problem is, is typically it's not that much data. you have a massive amount of data, I'm sure. And they're not going to like to get all those. Well, actually, if it was, if you actually had a legal case going, they would have to accommodate you.

But they'll tell you, like, if you were to get that information in prison, they would tell you, oh, we're not giving you this. They'll do that a lot. We don't have to give you this. You don't have to. What are you talking about? Like legally, that's my court documents. That's that you have to start going in on them.

And then they're like, oh, well, fine. We'll do this, but you'd be shocked how many times that the staff and federal prison will just stare you straight in the face and blatantly lie to you. But yeah, it takes time. It takes a lot of time. And it depends. Everybody's different. Like the Secret Service might get you stuff within a few months and the FBI might take two years. SEC, you're saying, what, a year or so? I don't think I've ever gotten anything or applied at the SEC.

I'm not sure. To try it out. It's fun. I don't want to I don't have room for 22 boxes and I don't want to read 22 no it's 270 yeah come on it's an insane number it's outrageous yeah in the end what are you going to get anyway yeah I'm hoping to get conversations there's all kinds of things you learn in the process the problem is that they'll go through that whole thing and they'll redact all the so you have like FBI 302 forms and DEA 6es then basically what

they are are all of those are like memorandums of conversations. You know, on this date, we spoke with so-and-so, and he said this. It's like a summary of the conversation. Yeah, it's a summary. But the problem is, is that they'll redact the hell out of it. And sometimes you can still look at it and you can go, okay, I know this had to be Brad, but I don't know what Brad said, but apparently he said a lot because there's 12 pages.

So Brad had a lot to say. but it's heavily redacted, and there'll be a line here and a line there that mean nothing to you, and you'll go, okay, I don't know. So has it ever been useful to you? It has been because somebody who said, man, I've never even talked to them, and then you get something that says,

no, no, they clearly did talk to him, because this is Susan. You know, I met Susan here, and it'll give you just enough to know, well, this is Tom, you know. But it doesn't really tell you what Tom said. Now, the state's different. The state will just tell you they'll just put all somebody's business out there.

But the feds will heavily redact everything to the point where it's useless. You don't really know what was said. You'd have to basically go back to the judge to say, hey, I need this unredacted and give an explanation of why. And then the government can always come back and say, oh, it's a fishing expedition. He doesn't know what he's looking for, blah, blah, blah. You know, it just drags out and drags out, and in the end, I don't know what you end up getting. Yeah, may not be enough.

You know, but it may be worth, you know, it might be worth looking for it. And a lot of it, that stuff... I have a lot of free time on my hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But a lot of that stuff would be repetitive. Like, you'd be shocked how many times you'll see the same documents over and over and over and over.

Sometimes it's five or six times, and you're like, well, no wonder there's 200-some-off boxes. Really, there should be 50, because a lot of this stuff is over and over and over and over and over again. but yeah yeah it's you know but you know when I was writing I mean it was hugely entertaining you know you get the you get to hear your name called for for mail call so you get to go do that you get to pick it up and you get to read through it and throw out what's not you know get down to

core information and you get junk mail in mail in prison very very little you just throw out the stuff you didn't like yeah yeah of course you but you might still get junk mail you'll still get some junk mail. Not a lot, but you might get some junk mail. Okay. You know, you get books mailed to you. That's it. I'd be shocked how many friends, how many times I had people that, they try and like mail you a t-shirt or something. And you're like, you can't mail me a t-shirt. Like you can, you can't even mail me a book. Like, you can order a book through Amazon and the publisher has to mail it. Like, if your wife said, oh, I just read this book, I'm going to mail it to you. You'll never see that

book. It has to come from the publisher because she could. write something in the book or she could you'll see these guys that will dip a corner of page 22 will be dipped in some kind of a chemical that you can roll up and smoke you'll see these guys smoking oh listen you haven't been around these people you don't know what you know what you know I'm sure the creativity will be amazing yeah yeah it's insanity and you know and they'll smoke stuff that you're like I can't why would you that's not like it's marijuana it's something that makes you think you're on fire and these guys will strip their clothes off and go running around the compound naked screaming.

Awesome. Can't wait. I've also heard those drones. Drones drop stuff in? Yeah, I mean, not when I was there, but yeah, there's, if it's a camp, guys will, they'll have runners because there's so few guards to monitor the, the inmates. Someone will go and make a drop, and then there'll be a runner, and some guy will run to the spot, pick it up, and run back, they'll pay him, and they'll be guy, they'll be cell phones,

and, you know, all kinds of stuff to get yourself in trouble. Yeah. So it's better to just read the Game of Thrones series and, you know, get into a good piece. Yeah, get into a good book series and write out your time. And, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's going to be entertaining.

You've got to look at it like an adventure. Yeah, and anybody you meet that's getting released soon, they have a good story. Yeah. Send them our way. Yeah. Okay. We'll do it. We'll do it. Slip on me out.

The craziest guy. That's what you need. Oh, you're in the, well, really, wherever, in the Florida area. One quick question just to clear something up. With the civil case, was there, did we ever find out exactly why? I remember you said at the time you didn't know why they were bringing the civil case. Did investors lose money or what exactly? I think this falls under the gag.

Yeah, if it does, that's fine. I just want to clear that up. Based on what I gathered was that they felt that the market, the way they were marketing the funds and the different vehicles that they were using to get investors to invest was misleading. And so that's my opinion is that they felt it was misleading. What bothers me about it is that nobody lost any money. Nobody complained.

Nobody lost any money. But somebody somewhere in a competing organization, or firm, said, hey, these guys are getting people to invest in Nevada. Nevada, am I saying right? Arizona. And they're investing that money in Florida. So they put in some kind of a complaint to the SEC. The SEC looked at the marketing material and said, we feel the marketing material is misleading.

They started an investigation. He ended up paying a fine because they came in and seized everything. So I can't fight it. they put you at a disadvantage he ends up paying a fine of $27 million and in the meantime that triggers

an IRS investigation because now now he can't pay his taxes because they seize the money like I just that kills me it's like part of the reason part of the reason some of these Ponzi schemes or different not Ponzi because this isn't a Ponzi scheme

but part of the reason some of these schemes things go wrong is because the government comes in and shuts down a company and so like okay there may have been $5 million in loss but that was it the government comes in

seizes the company sells off everything and now there's $20 million in loss and so you get hit with the $20 million in loss you're like yeah but there was only $5 million

I could have paid the $5 million back no now it's $20 million so that's my understanding but there was a gag order and that's perfect that's perfect just to tie up

any loose edges for anybody that might have gone over their head. Yeah, I have all kinds of assumptions and guesses and some things I've, you know, I've learned over the last few years. But, you know, when you read, it's called the amended complaint. And the amended complaint, I don't know, it's at 40 pages? Dude, bro, it covers so much stuff. And so, yeah, if I talk about any of it, it just triggers them, right? And it's the document that I signs explicitly says, I can't confirm or, I can only, I can't

confirm or deny anything or speak to any of the charges. And the charges are like, you know, page. So it's just super dynamic. And that's part of my frustration is I wish I could tell people, hey, this is what I, you know, theoretically did right. And this is what I theoretically did wrong. And by the way, you know, these are the people that were helping me do it. Don't do this. You know, it's wrecked my life, right? I mean, so. But you can't speak on those things because of the gag order. Correct. Yeah, yeah. I just want to, I know you may made it clear, but I want to kind of bring it up that way. Because there will be people in the car.

I still don't understand what did this guy do wrong. I still don't understand. Right. Unless they read the documents, the court documents. They're all on record, but they're really laborious and hard to read. When you're talking about the watches you had, you mentioned a lot of brand names. Can you explain how you get access kind of what you're saying when we were on break? You have to get on a waiting list.

How much are these watches worth? Yeah. So that's why I had so much money to pay back. is because almost everything I touched during that time period of, let's say, 2015 to 20, and 10x in value. To a large degree, the whole portfolio did. So, like, for example, the watches, if you're buying watches from a retailer, like, let's say, Patac Philippe or Otomar's, you know, you're allowed to go in and buy entry-level watches.

And entry-level watches for those types of people, and don't laugh too hard, is about $40,000. So you do. For the peasants, for the little people. I understand. Beginners. So, but these are very nice entry-level watches, and they could be heirloom pieces all by themselves. And so what I was doing is I was buying watches at the auction that kind of needed work. Like, for example, I really enjoyed buying the original Royal Oaks.

They only made a couple thousand of them in the early 70s. And this is the original steel sports watch, luxury watch. And so back in, you know, early 2000s, I was buying them up at auctions for like, let's say, 20,000 or so. And the Otomar Pigay Service Center for all of North America happens to be right here in Tampa. So I was going, taking my watches in there and having them repaired, I would get them certified and get the little certificate and make them good. So you can't really, it's not a great idea, just like a car. You don't want to over restore it, right? But you do it just enough that it's usable and in good shape. And so then I would take that. I'd sit on it for about a year. And then

you send it up to a major auction house like Sutherbees, Christie's, or somebody like, you that and you sell it on the on the on the on the market whenever you think it's going to go for a good price and so that's I made I made a lot of money that way just just doing that little process but take some time you know and I enjoy it it's fun to it's fun to sit with a watchmaker after you takes it apart and tells you you know all the all the parts original and when he thinks the last time it was serviced and what it would take it to make it functional but not overpolished and that kind of stuff and then it's fun to take it to market you know you take it up to Christie's or

Sotheby's you show them all the work you've done to it and they They kind of have a market price idea, and sometimes it goes for higher, and sometimes it goes for lower, so it's fun. Yeah, for example, you know, if you can buy a brand new Patek-Philippe Nautilus that's Tiffany stamped, that's a watch that retail is about $45,000 and you pay $5,000 in tax, you know, you take that watch and you can resell it on the open market for, you know, several hundred thousand dollars. And you've done nothing. All you've done is just buy a watch at a retail store and sell it on the open market. Same thing with the ones I was repairing, those Royal Oaks, those vintage. watches. You know, you'd buy it for maybe 20. It'd take maybe 8,000 to repair it, and it would sell for 120. How has the last five years been for you, like, socially with the civil case and then the criminal, like how does, as a white color, you know, upper class, you know, or wealthy individual,

like how does your community? How does that go? Like, do you see people with distancing themselves, people backing you, or a little bit of both? Or just how has that been? in the last five years? Overall, everybody walks away, you know. You can talk about that. Overall, you know, it's not, none of it's even remotely acceptable. You know, if you're a business guy and the government comes out and uses any, any words that equal the word Ponzi, it's basically a pedophile. Yeah. In the middle class business world. So, Yeah, I have a handful of people that I'm still close with, I think five to be exact, and I'm very grateful for them. But everyone else, they have to distance themselves.

And it really comes in different layers. They have to? Or they just do? Let me explain. So when you're accused of these things, on a social level, you have to distance because you don't want to be seen as been doing business with that guy or associated or like on a social level, right? And then there's a very pragmatic situation where I was invested in several small businesses, breweries, et cetera, and other projects in and around Florida. And all those people, best I can tell, got interviewed by the FBI. So my closest people that I was with all got pulled into it at some level, their time, their energy.

They had to hire attorneys, I'm sure. So, yeah, it's, it's there, you know, it's a complete reboot of who you are. You know what I mean? Like, it's a complete, hard reboot. And then there's also the other social aspect, like, for example, when the press releases came out, you know, my daughter was bullied in school. People said things to her. And it was, you know, it's very, very painful to know that, you know, your activity is,

is affecting your kids like that. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. You realize right away what assholes people are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's challenging for sure. Yeah. But there's also, like I said, there's people that have been wonderful.

You know, like my family's been wonderful. They've been behind me 100%. And like I said, I've got those five people that I think are solid. And I'm sure their lives are turned upside down and they had to hire attorneys for a while to deal with fallout from being my friend. So they still talk to me. Yeah. And what is your mindset or game plan going into, you know, the next three years? Is there something that you want to get out of your time away or like what's your?

I really don't think it'll be three years. I think it'll be a year, even if it's two years. It's not even going to be two years. But even if it was two years. Just your mental space. Like, what's your approach? Like, what are you thinking as far as for yourself? So I really appreciate that question.

I got to tell you. So Colby's a much more thought. provoking that. Yeah. So I've really spent a lot of time. You know, in my 20s, I just loved being out in the world in the blind ambition of building building Brian Davison and doing whatever I wanted to do in business and so forth. And then when 2006, 7, 8 came around, that was a hard reset, right?

So I got to rebuild myself again in, like, business life. And I built myself, I thought, safer and not. stronger. I wanted to build a big real estate fund with no debt. You know, I mean, like, so I couldn't, I would always have assets and it couldn't be hurt, blah, blah, blah. So now the last few years, I've really focused on being a middle-aged guy. I really dove into the podcast and reading. It started with like stoicism, you know, not to sound too basic and cheesy, but it starts there and then you end up at Alan Watts, and then you spend six months listening to everything. Ram Dass ever said, And then you end up at Deepak Chopra, and then you end up, you know, just going through the list, right?

And it has been good for me because, and I put this on my personal website, you know, my little meandering's about just trying to discover who I really am if I'm not part of the system, right? If I'm not part of, because you really kind of get kicked out of the system when you get a white collar criminal, right? Or anybody, I guess, right? You know, you're sucked into the criminal system and you're kicked out of the other system. system. So, and for me, I was in limbo land for these last five years, and you just have a lot of time to sit and think, you know, do I want to go build another business and be that guy again? You know, do I want to move to another country and start over somewhere else? I don't have to live in America. My kids are pretty much grown now. I can be anywhere. I got friends all over the world.

Or, you know, I don't know. So you have a lot of time to think about those things. I'm not really sure what the path is. You know, quite frankly, what comes to prison, I do plan. I do plan to keeping to myself and just using the time to kind of detox from the phone and just keep reading philosophy and just find out what I'm going to do the last 40 years of my life. Yeah. I think about that a lot. That's like the number one thing I think about all day long. It'll be good. It'll be good. Listen, honestly, if I wasn't married, I wouldn't care about gifts. You said, hey, Matt, you're going to go. You can leave right now and go spend six months at the low and step right back into your life. I'd be like, let's go. I'm ready to go.

You wouldn't mind it at all. I wouldn't care at all. Okay. That's how bad. That's what I'm saying. It's just not that. But for you, it's, you have a wife and kid. That to you is a torment. Being there will not be a big deal. Right.

It's the torment that my family's out there. Yeah. That's what's going to kill you. Yeah. And so that's, like I said, that's the worst part. And I used to always say that, is that like, thank God I don't really have anybody out there. For sure. You know?

Yeah. that I didn't have a wife and kids because those are the guys that have it the hardest is the wife is anybody who's got a wife and kid that's out there you're just going through hell because you want to get back to him so bad yeah other than that you'll be you'll be fine you'll be like yeah you'll listen and you're going to be in great shape you'll walk the track you're going to come out the best you're going to come out like like like shining example of a middle age man yeah I'm serious you're going to be like there's no cheating there's no cheating on on on everything Oh, I'm going to go in the middle of the night and go go in the fridge and eat some food or I'm going to get some cookie. There's none of that. That's over. Well, you're going to come out of there. You'll be like never look this fucking good in my entire life. I got abs.

Yeah. I looked amazing. I got out of it with a buck 50. Really? I'm 180 right now. And I'm struggling. I took the old second thing. I did that whole thing.

That was bullshit. That lost. I got down to 170. Shot right back up to what. You got to keep taking it. Not taking that forever. People are going blind. Yeah, I'm so horrible.

I'll never see 150 again. So you need the low. I do need the, I would, yeah, that's what I'm saying. If I could step out and step right back into my, my problem is if I went to the low, I'd lose everything I have right now, you know, that's the problem. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button at the bell so you get notified of videos just like this.

Also, if you want to check out Brian's links, we're going to leave his links in the description box. You can click on there. You're going to be able to go and check out his website, socials, and, we're also hoping at some point we're going to have an Amazon book link in there for his book. So once again, thank you so much. Please consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month.

It really does help. Colby and I make these videos. See ya.